Vladimir Pastukhov, one of the most insightful analysts of Russian affairs, says that neither Russia nor Ukraine can retreat from their current positions about Crimea. No conceivable Russian government will ever give Crimea back to Ukraine, and no Ukrainian government will ever drop its insistence that Crimea belongs to Kyiv.

Because that is so, the London-based Russian analyst says, it is time to think outside the box and consider the possibility of a joint Ukrainian-Russian administration of Crimea, an arrangement that would allow each side to claim that it was not backing down and prevent the Crimean situation from further poisoning life in Russia, Ukraine and the West.

In an essay on the Republic portal today, Portnikov says that “the most important thing that we have lost in this war and that makes peace today impossible is the ability to like those with whom one does not agree” and thus be in a position to examine problems on which there are deep divisions in an open and potentially fruitful way (republic.ru/posts/93300).

“The problem,” he continues, is not that with regard to Crimea it is impossible to agree because of diametrically opposed approaches to the problem. The problem is that not one of the proposed approaches for various reasons is acceptable.” Both sides have a basis for claims to the peninsula, and neither is prepared to recognize any merit in the claims of the other side.

However much one objects to what has happened, it is not possible to simply go back to the status quo ante; but it is also not likely that the world will tolerate an eternal war given that as long as the Crimean problem is not resolved in some way, the war, “at least a cold one,” will continue.

According to Pastukhov, “there are no simple solutions. And those who say ‘Crimea is ours’ are lying. And those who say that it is possible to go back to the past are foolish. And those who hope that all will wind down and be forgotten are deceiving themselves. This is an unusual situation.” Everywhere “there is a dead end.”

Consequently, the Russian analyst argues, “it requires unusual moves at that moment when conditions for its resolution arise.”

The pro-war party in Moscow has made two serious miscalculations. On the one hand, it assumed that after the annexation of Crimea, the rest of Ukraine would quickly disintegrate and fall into Moscow’s hands either fully or partially. And on the other, it believed that the West would complain for awhile but gradually come to terms with the new de facto situation.

But Ukraine has succeeded in surviving – that is its greatest achievement, Pastukhov says – and the West, fearful that changing the border in the case of Crimea could spark a series of similar changes and completely undermine the existing international order, has proven unexpectedly steadfast to principle.

As a result, “’the price of Crimea’ has turned out to be much higher” that many in Moscow thought five years ago, Pastukhov suggests.  It has turned out to be “one of the most significant geopolitical catastrophes in the history of Russia since the time of the formation of the Empire.” 

It has involved Russia in a war with the West that will go on forever and a war that because of its smaller resources, it cannot possibly win and may lose in ways that will cost it the territorial integrity of Russia itself.  “This is,” the analyst says, “worse than Afghanistan, albeit still less obvious and therefore still more dangerous.”

Nonetheless, neither Putin nor any future Russian government, except one installed by those who might defeat it militarily, will agree to give Crimea back to Ukraine; and Ukraine will not have the military strength to take it back from Russia. That means if disaster is to be avoided, some kind of compromise is necessary.

One possibility would be to transform Crimea into “an independent subject of international law operating under a mutual protectorate of Russia and Ukraine and with guarantees from the EU and the US.” That would save the face of both Moscow and Kyiv and avoid a humanitarian disaster in Crimea.

Arranging this would be difficult but perhaps not impossible. There would need to be an agreement on Crimea’s demilitarization and on Crimea’s functioning as a free zone, under joint administration. Of course, there would be enormous problems in getting to this point and sustaining it; but the possibility it could prevent a bigger disaster means it should be explored.

What does a megalomaniacal president of the United States do when he’s cornered? We’ll soon find out. 

House Democrats are beginning a series of investigations and hearings into Donald Trump. 

Senate Republicans have begun to desert him: Twelve defected on the wall; seven refused to back Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. In the House, Republicans joined Democrats in a 420-0 vote on a resolution to make Robert Mueller’s report public.

That report, not incidentally, appears imminent.

Trump cannot abide losing. His ego can’t contain humiliation. He is incapable of shame.

So what does a cornered Trump do? For starters, he raises the specter of violence against his political opponents.

In an interview with Breitbart News published on Wednesday, Trump noted: “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

In case you missed it, “they” are Trump’s political opponents, including House Democrats and the mainstream media. And the “certain point” could be impeachment but is more likely to be reached if the House investigations reveal crimes Trump committed both before and after he became president.

“I actually think that the people on the right are tougher,” Trump warned in the same interview. “But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest[igations] – that’s all they want to do is – you know, they do things that are nasty.”

Here we have it, in a nutshell. In Trump’s mind, congressional investigations that could cause him shame and humiliation, and quite possibly result in a prison sentence, will be countered by forces loyal to him: the police, the military, and vigilante groups like Bikers for Trump.

To put it another way, the work of a democratically elected Congress will be met by Trump loyalists who, he asserts, are “tougher” because they have brute force on their side.

It is impossible to know what bizarre scenario is playing out in Trump’s head. But another hint came on Friday, when, in the wake of the horrific shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, Trump told reporters he didn’t believe white nationalism is on the rise. 

“I don’t really,” he said. “I think it’s a small group of people.”

As usual, the facts are otherwise. The number of hate groups in the US increased 7% last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hate crime reports increased 17%, according to the FBI.

Recall that 11 people were murdered at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on 27 October, at the hands of a white supremacist. A few days earlier, a white supremacist murdered two black people at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

It is hardly the first time Trump has played down white nationalism, or signaled his support for those who might use violence on his behalf.

At a Las Vegas rally during the 2016 campaign he said he’d like to punch a protester in the face; at another event encouraged his supporters to “knock the crap” out of any protester making trouble.

“I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees,” he said.

But as Trump becomes ever more entrapped in the web of his own misdeeds, his threats are becoming more ominous.

At a rally for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley in September, Trump said his opponents “were lucky that we’re peaceful”. He continued: “Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump … They travel all over the country … They’ve been great.” But, he warned, “these are tough people … they’re peaceful people, and antifa and all, they’d better hope they stay that way.”

In February, the White House Correspondents’ Association called on Trump to make it “absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable”. To date, he has not.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, another of Trump’s bottom feeders, predicted that “2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the civil war”.

Throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump has given cover to some of the most vile bigots in America. As he grows more desperate, he is giving them encouragement.

It is our job – and the job of all senators and representatives in Congress, regardless of party, and of military leaders – to condemn hatred and violence in all its forms, even when the president of the United States makes excuses for it.

And it is up to all of us to reaffirm our commitment to democracy, even when the president of the United States threatens to unleash the military and vigilantes against it.

A five-year National Action Plan for Combating Bribery and Corruption initiated by Sri Lanka’s Commission to Investigate Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) was launched under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena in the presence of over 1,200 civil servants and heads of government institutions at the Shangri-la Hotel in Colombo.

Speaking at the event, President’s Counsel and Director General of the Commission Sarath Jayamanne said that the eradication of bribery and corruption from a country requires a vision which must be displayed to the entirety of the nation in the form of an action plan.

“This action plan is a culmination of a task which we received the mandate for in October 2017. Since then, CIABOC has travelled all over the country seeking and consulting with ordinary citizens on the changes they wish to see,” he said. “The true ownership of these publication rests with the individuals representing a cross-section of the society, who contributed to the intellectual discourse over a period of one year. We aim to create a new generation instilled with positive values and virtues, a public and private sector of integrity and a law enforcement system which is just and equal to all.”

Speaking at the ceremony, speaker Karu Jayasuirya commended the work of the CIABOC adding that it had his and the parliament’s fullest support in forging ahead in this fight against corruption. “I am fully aware of the very difficult and trying situations that these CIABOC and other law enforcement agencies have worked under. Whilst commending their work, I assure them of our support to achieve these endeavors.”

He added that the Nation Action Plan should be enforced by all, irrespective of their political party and other affiliations.

CIABOC along with the Presidential Secretariat and the Ministry of Public Administration brought together stakeholder institutions to collage information. There had been 50 such consultations out of which four were held in parliament.

The Action plan sets out four strategies for combating bribery and corruption in Sri Lanka. This includes preventative measures, value-based education, community engagement, institutional strengthening of CIABOC and other law enforcement agencies, law and policy reforms.

Palestinian landowners and West Bank residents filed to intervene in a lawsuit against Airbnb over the booking platform’s decision to remove listings for Israeli settlements in the West Bank in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Dual Israeli-U.S. citizen settlers whose listings are to be removed and potential renters filed the original lawsuit against Airbnb, claiming discrimination.

A Palestinian-American and two Palestinian villages, whose properties are the very properties that settlers have listed on Airbnb, filed counterclaims against the settlers, arguing that their actions constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and discrimination on the basis of religion and national origin. They also bring claims of trespass and unjust enrichment against the settlers who are on their lands. Another Palestinian-American and resident of the West Bank filed counterclaims against the settlers for discrimination. All four are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Anyone looking at the facts can tell that we are the rightful owners of this land, no matter how the settlers try to spin it,” said Ziad Alwan, a Palestinian resident of Chicago who has the document proving that the land is registered in his father’s name, even though a settler runs a bed & breakfast on his land. “I am filing this lawsuit in my father’s memory, and for my own children, whom I’ve taught to never forget that this land is rightfully theirs.”

The filing argues that the Israeli settlers who sued Airbnb have participated in war crimes by aiding in Israel’s seizure of land in occupied Palestinian territory, including the specific lands on which the Airbnb properties stand. The rentals are in Israeli-only settlements from which Palestinian residents of the West Bank are barred as per Israeli military orders, and which are sometimes surrounded by physical barriers, military bases, and security gates.

“The settlers who sued Airbnb are cynically using the language of discrimination in order to further their own unlawful ends,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Staff Attorney Diala Shamas. “Our clients’ experiences –Palestinians who are directly affected by these settlers’ actions – show where the real discrimination and illegality lies. This case puts the settlers on trial in a U.S. court.”

In their lawsuit, the settlers have claimed discrimination under the Fair Housing Act—which attorneys for the Palestinian intervenors say turns the law on its head. They note that the properties the settlers wish to list on Airbnb are located in Jewish Israeli settlements that Palestinians are prohibited from entering and that the listings themselves indicate discrimination on the basis of national origin and religion.

“I’m bringing this lawsuit because I want to live in peace with my family and among my community without the constant looming threat of arrests, killings, nightly raids, demolition of homes, restrictions on movement, and so on—all part of the military occupation that serves to protect discriminatory settler practices,” said Randa Wahbe.

Lawyers say that not only has Airbnb not discriminated against the settlers who filed the lawsuit, but that, had it not de-listed the rentals, the company would be contributing to international law violations.

In the past few weeks, Algeria has been shaken by large-scale protests against the decision by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to run for a fifth term. But apart from the immediate political reasons, the manifestations look like the symptom of deeper social strain caused by the country’s economic problems. Considering the challenges that Algeria is already facing in the form of terrorism and illicit traffic and that neighbouring Libya is still in chaos, a destabilization of Algeria would seriously impact the region and Europe alike.

The protests

The recent wave of popular unrest has started in late February, when incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that he would seek re-election for the fifth time. He has been uninterruptedly in power since 1999, when he managed to put an end to the bloody civil war that had ravaged Algeria during the so-called “Black Decade” of the 90s. Bouteflika systematically won all the subsequent elections, including the last one held in 2014; even though he did not campaign personally since he had suffered a stroke one year before.

As a matter of fact, he has rarely appeared in public since then. Now aged 82, Bouteflika remains officially in power and has decided to run again for the Presidency. Of course, many are sceptic about his ability to continue leading the country; and some suspect that he is actually just a façade President that the de facto rulers of Algeria exploit to dominate the country.

In this sense, the dynamic of the recent electoral bid is notable. Bouteflika did not submit is candidature in person, since he is currently in Switzerland for medical treatment; and following the protests he explained in a letter read on the national TV that he is going to run again, but just to preside an “inclusive national conference” before calling for anticipated elections to choose a new President. So, Bouteflika never appeared personally during the whole issue, letting his spokesmen to act on his behalf and raising doubts about who actually took these decisions.

Several important figures of the opposition did not submit their bid and various key political forces announced that they will boycott the election. In this context, Bouteflika was expected to win another term, and many are protesting against what they consider an unfair and not transparent election. In the wake of popular unrest, he decided to step down and withdrew his candidature. Yet, protests have continued going on. The fact is that the issueis more complex than it might seem at first sight, and go beyond purely political issues. The wave on social unrest looks like the result of the strained conditions of Algeria’s economy, itself a direct result of Bouteflika’s policies over the years.

Algeria’s social contract

When Bouteflika took power in 1999, Algeria was just coming out of years of civil war that had caused more than 100,000 casualties and had left the country socially divided. It was therefore imperative to bring better economic conditions to the Algerian people in order to restore social cohesion.

To achieve this goal, Bouteflika exploited the country’s main resources: oil and gas. Under this particular kind of “social contract”, he collected the revenues from the state-owned energy firm and redistributed them to the population in the form of generous subsidies. From a social point of view, this policy was successful in improving the people’s life conditions and in tackling the economic problems that had fomented the civil war; but from an economic perspective it has resulted into a typical state-dominated, hydrocarbon-centred and export-dependent economy marked by inefficiency, lack of competitiveness, corruption, inequality and high-public expenditures to sustain the subsidy system.

But like in similar cases like Venezuela this socio-economic model is very vulnerable to the fluctuations of oil & gas prices and is not sustainable in the long term. As of today, hydrocarbons continue to play a fundamental role in Algeria’s economy. At the end of 2010, the country hosted 12.2 thousand million barrels of oil, meaning the 16th largest proven reserves in the world.

But Algeria’s real strength is gas. In the same year, its stock amounted to 159.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which translates in the world’s 10th largest. Most notably, Algeria ranks third in the globe in terms of shale gas reserves; which is significant considering how US shale gas have deeply changed the global energy market – even though the American shale miracle is unlikely to repeat elsewhere due to various factors. Looking at Algeria’s macroeconomic outlook, hydrocarbons revenues account for more than 90% of exports, 30% of the GDP and 60% of the government’s budget.

This economic model functioned as long as the price of oil and gas was high: the state could collect revenues from energy exports and redistribute them to the population in the form of subsidies on basic goods and services. But following the fall of global hydrocarbon prices in 2014, Algeria was put under significant stress.

Once positive, its trade balance turned to a 9.5 billion dollars deficit in 2017. Algeria’s GDP grew of 3.7% in 2015, but two years later the figure shrunk to 1.4%. Public debt increased from 20.4% of the economy’s size in 2016 to 27.5% one year later, and external debt rose as well. But the most notable figure is probably the one about the government’s budget, whose deficit amounted to almost 10% of the GDP in 2017. These figures reflect the executive’s reaction to the declining hydrocarbon prices.

Since the income was no longer sufficient to cover the country’s high public expenditures, the government was forced to take emergency measures. In the immediate, it countered the problem by borrowing money and by using the considerable foreign currency reserves accumulated when the price of oil and gas was high.

However, this approach can only work in the short term, as the foreign currency stock will erode with time and debt will risk becoming too high; and the country’s economic fundamentals – especially in this difficult moment of low energy prices – do not allow to easily repay debts.

As such, the Algerian authorities have also recurred to other measures to stabilize the public finances, notably by gradually increasing taxes to bring more money in the state’s coffers and compensate the losses deriving from declining hydrocarbon revenues. However, this move was obviously unpopular, even more because it breaks Algeria’s longstanding social contract. Before, it was the state who paid for the subsidies; now, it is the citizens who pay for them. But this means that what Algerians receive from the state is largely given back to the government, thus diminishing the people’s purchasing power in real terms.

The other possible solution, namely reducing the subsidies, would also have negative effects on the standard of living of Algerians and would be even more unpopular since it is immediately felt in everyday life; so, the government has unsurprisingly refrained from lowering them.

The recent social unrest in Algeria is to be interpreted in the context of these complicated economic conditions, which include an unemployment rate of almost 12% in 2017. The people’s anger is not only driven by merely political reasons linked with Bouteflika’s bid for re-election and to the opposition to the de facto leaders of the country, but is also the result of economic problems.

Solving them demands careful yet resolute reforms to diversify the economy, attract investments and develop the private sector; but all this takes time, notably in a country like Algeria where decisions are slowly taken by consensus between the various stakeholders like the Presidency, the Armed Forces, the public energy company and the local oligarchs. This raises the risk of political instability in the country in the immediate future, which would have consequences for the whole region and for neighbouring Europe.

Conclusion: Algeria and stability

In geopolitical terms, Algeria is a vast country with a population of 42 million people that connects the Sahara-Sahel region with the Mediterranean. This has important implications. If social unrest became common and especially if the situation degenerated into another civil war, then a new hotbed of instability would appear in North Africa just next to Libya. Apart from the possible flow of refugees from its crowded coastal cities where most of the population is concentrated, having two intertwined conflict zones would be the ideal terrain for illicit activities.

It should not be forgotten that North African states like Algeria and especially war-torn Libya are the crossroad for the illegal flow of goods to Europe as well as for the migration routes originating from Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, several terrorist groups operate in the Sahara-Sahel region and in Algeria, but the country is also an important partner for Americans and Europeans in fighting Islamist groups. As such, stability in the country is essential to avoid it becoming a safe haven for terrorist organizations.

For all these reasons, the evolution of the situation in Algeria is to be monitored in the coming weeks but also in the longer-term future. Even if the current wave of protests produces no negative effect, the economic problems at their base will not be solved anytime soon, meaning that the potential for instability will persist in the country for the years to come.

This article was originally used as a script for a video published by the YouTube channel KJ Vids.

*Alessandro Gagaridis is an independent International Relations analyst and owner of the website www.strategikos.it

Iranians hold and celebrate many different events and festivals all year round.

“Charshanbe Soori,” is an ancient Persian “Festival of Fire” and one of the most beloved celebrations among the Iranian people. This festival has historic and ceremonial roots.

Iranians will hold the fire festival on March 19, 2019. It always begins at the sunset of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, which will happen this year, too.

In this ancient custom, they sing: “Sorkhie to az man, zardie man az to,” which means: “I give my ill to the fire and receive the redness and warmth from the fire.”

In this fire festival, ordinary Iranians pile tinder from bushes and pieces of wood in public places such as streets, alleys, and squares, and then set them alight. People gather around the bonfires and jump over them, with shouting. The intention is to hope for enlightenment and happiness throughout the coming year.

But it’s not only that.

The other reason is problematic for Iran’s detested rulers, because, with the help of fire, the people also recall tribulations. These include the long battle against dictatorship and the ignorance of reactionary forces throughout their history.

For Iranians today, this especially includes the 39-year dark era of the ruling mullahs in Iran, from 1979 until now. By the light of the fire, Iranians think about the true facts of their situation, and for many, the need to end this regime.

The fire is conducive to meditative thinking. So with the fire festival, it is not uncommon for Iranians to think of ending the repression, torture, executions and human rights abuses that have taken over their country, and contemplate how the arrival of spring, as the New Year begins, (on the 20th of March 2019) brings hopes for ending this regime forever.

The fire festival also has other customs. Spring housecleaning is carried out to welcome the new year. This year, many people hope the whole country will wipe out the regime for complete cleaning.

So with the fire festival, it is not uncommon for Iranians to think of ending the repression, torture, executions, and human rights abuses that have taken over their country and contemplate how the arrival of spring, as the New Year begins (on March 20, 2019) and brings hope for ending this regime forever.

In response to the festival this year, the mullahs and their security forces have put bans in place on fireworks, letting businesses know they can lose their licenses to do business.

These economic threats are meant to discourage people from buying fireworks to celebrate the festival. Additionally, checkpoints are being put in place, and the security forces are making it uncomfortable for individuals to gather to celebrate.

The MEK (the Farsi initials for the democracy-promoting People’s Mojahedin of Iran) inside Iran have called for mobilization by the Iranian people together with the “resistance units” during the celebration, marking the festival as an annual anti-regime event. They have made this fire festivity a platform for the uprising and to welcome the new year.

Statements issued by the prosecutors general and revolutionary prosecutors of various provinces and cities throughout Iran indicate that they are preparing for an influx of arrests. It’s so extreme that in many instances, they have declared the creation of a separate branch to deal with violations and possible crimes related to the fire festival.

I am not projecting as I describe the Iranian festival this way: during the past decades, the fire festival in cities across Iran became the scene of protests and expressions of outrage against the regime. Last year, the sound of exploding grenades and firecrackers was heard constantly in many cities, following the explosion of firecrackers by angry young Iranians. In this case, the regime’s agents blacked out a whole town where it happened, and the attack of security forces on people turned to confrontation. Then clashes broke out between the youths and regime’s mercenaries, who tried to disperse them.

But this year, the fire festival will be very different from that of last year, especially after protests that rocked Iran during the past 16 months. The regime is even more fearful of the fire festival this year and has issued harassing directives in the public media to deter the people from holding the customary annual celebration.

The mullahs not only fear more of the ongoing protests by Iranians throughout the country but fear new calls for a nationwide uprising to mark this particular celebration by the resistance units. Senior Iranian officials have also acknowledged the resistance units as the organizer of the recent flare-up of protests across the country. The upcoming fire festival and the calls for protest make the situation more crucial for the regime and its suppression forces.

With the coming heated fire festival, the people in Iran have this message to the regime now: “Fire is the symbol of our long battle against dictatorship, we are all altogether, and repression will not affect us.”

Any wonder the mullahs are afraid?

*Hassan Mahmoudi is a  human rights advocate and Social Media journalist seeking democracy for Iran and peace for the region.

The US-China 90-day trade truce is unlikely to end the trade war once and for all. It will linger unless China shrugs off retaliating. Curbing the trade deficit is not a near term solution. It warrants persuasive business negotiations rather than coercive methods.

To this end, an aversion of trade war as per the Japanese way provides some tips to ponder. The US-China trade war is in a sense a revisition of the US-Japan trade row. During 1980 and 1990, over a decade, the US and Japan were locked in trade skirmish over Japan’s bulging exports to USA. The USA accused Japan of utilizing a fixed exchange rate with US Dollar. It indulged USA for a tactical currency war by abandoning the fixed exchange rate and raised Japanese yen value in Plaza Accord in 1985. Eventually, Japanese goods became uncompetitive and USA’s imports from Japan declined.

Japan’s economy is export based and the USA was the biggest destination for exports, plunged into haywire. To undo the impact of yen appreciation, Japanese companies shifted their factories to Asian countries and USA. Japanese investment increased more than double in Asian Nies and triple in USA during 1987 to 1989.

Reasons, Asian countries provided turf for low cost production and export to USA therefrom. A spurt in investment in USA provided employment opportunities to American workers and thereby quelled USA ire. Surge in Japanese cheap exports to USA were damaging American domestic industries, which resulted big unemployment in USA.

This is exactly the same way that China is now facing the trade row with the USA. With its trade deficit heightening due to Chinese dumping, the USA adopted similar strategy of trade war to dent China’s cheap exports. With Japan, initially the USA threatened a high tariff war on the Japanese export of cars in mid seventies and later to a currency war in 1985. There is only one difference in this war: Japan avoided retaliation and China has raised retaliation ante.

This has unleashed a fact that investment diversion across the border should be the salutary action to avert the trade war, instead of retaliations. Further, even if a truce is finalized, there are challenges embedded in the truce. These challenges are tough to meet over a period of time, owing to unprecedented changes in global trading system. Given the fragility of the trade truce, which is underpinned for 90 days, though ongoing trade negotiations provide some ray of hope, complete consensus of both sides for a comprehensive truce is unwarranted.

Even though notable moves were made with China agreeing to reduce taxes on car imports from the USA, revising Intellectual Property Laws, enacting new Foreign Investment Law to undo the compulsion for transfer of technology and so on, the truce is unlikely to be complied in toto without a guarantee of reduction in trade deficit and taming the technology war.

Against this backdrop, China should harp on investment abroad, the way Japan did. China has already started an overseas FDI binge following Chinese President Xi Jinping;s call for ‘Go Out’ policy in 2012. It became emphatic for overseas investment. From a paltry overseas investment of US $ 3 billion in 2005, Chinese overseas investment in non-financial sector increased to US $170 billion in 2016. It became the third biggest overseas investor in the world.

Paradoxically, the USA is the biggest receiver of Chinese investment. Chinese investment also made a surging growth in South East countries including Myanmar, Indonesia , Malaysia and Thailand.

China lost inward FDI sheen, owing to a plummeting GDP and export growth since 2011. Despair in China grew. Many MNCs were considering pulling out from China. Best Buy, an American electronics retailer and Media Market , a German company, put their shutters down. Tesco, a British retail giant, joined hands with a local firm, turning down its intention to go alone in China.

China+1 was born out a new strategy for augmenting Chinese overseas investment. Chinese investors as well as MNCs in China started diverting their investment expansion in low cost countries like India and ASEAN nations, without shutting down their China doors. There are three advantages of the new strategy.

First, it acts an hedge against Chinese product’s competitiveness, produced in third countries. Second, It will help risk diversification by spreading production process across the countries. Third, a country like India will act a major savior with big domestic demand.

Should India reap the benefits of China’s overseas investment binge?

Make in India is a prime initiative of Modi government. A lot was done to steer the initiative by dismantling the bureaucratic tangles, improving Ease of Doing Business and reforming FDI policies. Notwithstanding, it lost the steam. Domestic investors were shy to invest. Nevertheless, foreign investors were upbeat to invest. While new domestic investment by Indian corporate slipped to an half in between 2014 and 2017, FDI surged by more than 45 percent during the period.

Hopes are raised on FDI to drive the Make in India. With trade war sullying the investment potential in China, hopes for Chinese investment diversion to India brighten.

Chinese investors are ecstatic to invest in building up India’s innovative digital ecosystem. A big share of Chinese investment in India flowed in the fields of start-up business in India. Nearly US $2.5 billion was committed for investment in Start-up business in between 2015 and 2016. The major investments were Beijing Mitene Communication Technology investment of US $ 900 million in Media.net and Alibaba investment of US$680 million in Paytem and US$ 500 million in Snapdeal. In mobile phones, China has already established its presence in India. It outsmarted Japanese and Korean brands, capturing more than 50 percent of market share by manufacturing in the country.

Mr. Chris Devonshire Ellis, senior partner at Dezan Shira & Associates, a professional services firm providing FDI consultancy services in Hong Kong, said that many of their foreign investors’ clients in China were contemplating to go to India, not necessarily to shut down their manufacturing operations in China, but to take advantage of the large domestic demand.

There is still one question: Should India open a red carpet to Chinese investors, despite the political relation could be tarnished with China’s veto in UN Security Council to designate Mr Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mhammad, as a global terrorist?

Views are personal

Since pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Trump administration has defined its policy toward the Islamic Republic as involving “maximum pressure” through economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation. The policy of the European Union and its member states, by contrast, remains largely undefined. For a very long time, their strategy could be reasonably described as “maximum conciliation”, but recent events have indicated that European lawmakers are occasionally willing to confront Tehran in certain ways over some of its misdeeds.

We should all hope for an overall trend that moves continually – and swiftly – in this direction, but in spite of EU sanctions and a handful of harsh statements, there presently is no overall change. In other words, the European approach to dealing with the Iranian regime can best be described as incoherent. It’s as if Brussels has not yet arrived at a consensus regarding what to expect from Tehran or what can realistically be accomplished. Yet answers to these questions are not as hard to come by as they may first appear.

The secret lies in recognizing and rejecting Iranian propaganda, which is far more consistent than any European initiatives taken in response to Iran’s malign activities and broken promises. Tehran, its foreign lobbyists and its state media, are simultaneously fixated on presenting an image of strength for the clerical regime while giving foreign governments the impression that internal moderation is a realistic possibility.

The latter goal was served by hardline authorities’ embrace of President Hassan Rouhani’s initial election in 2013. This was lauded by some Western observers as a potential signpost on the road toward reform. But notwithstanding Rouhani’s pursuit of the nuclear agreement, nothing in the administration’s record has supported this optimism. Rouhani and his cabinet officials have proven to be loyal servants of the theocratic system, and indeed the system is expressly designed to only allow such sycophants into high office.

The lack of any real divide between the “moderates” and hardliners was made apparent on a number of occasions. For instance, during Rouhani’s first term, the position of Justice Minister was occupied by a figure whose contempt for any meaningful concept of justice could not be clearer. Among the black marks on Mostafa Pourmohammadi’s record was his participation in “death commissions” that sent 30,000 political prisoners to the gallows in the summer of 1988.

In 2016, after new information was released about this massacre, Pourmohammadi publicly declared that he was “proud” of his role in carrying out “God’s command” of death for members of the nation’s leading pro-democracy Resistance group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The resulting backlash may have prevented Pourmohammadi from reclaiming his post in Rouhani’s second term, which began in 2017. But at the same time that this was no doubt embraced by some casual Western observers as a sign of progress, the administration’s choice of replacement told a different story.

The current justice minister, Alireza Avaie, participated in the same massacre, in roughly the same capacity as his predecessor, although his public profile on the matter was somewhat more subdued. Furthermore, as of last week, his violently repressive voice is amplified by the new head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, who has been credited with the very worst brutality during the 1988 massacre, to say nothing of his further record as a state prosecutor.

While the Justice Minister is a member of the presidential cabinet, the judiciary chief is purely an appointee of the Supreme Leader. Together, they signify that the two factions of Iranian politics are in fact of one mind in their rejection of basic human rights. And the very same thing can be said of Iran’s foreign policy, especially in light of the recent threat of resignation by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who remained in his post after being praised by the Supreme Leader as a reliable figure on the “front lines” of the regime’s war against Western influence.

These are just a few of the many signs that Tehran is every bit as much of an ideological monolith as its detractors believe it to be. And crucially, those detractors consist not only of foreign adversaries like the Trump administration but also domestic activists like the members and supporters of the PMOI, who have been a driving force in recent protests throughout the Islamic Republic.

It is largely because of those protests that the regime has been so transparently turning in the direction of more vigorous repression, as by appointing its most prolific executioners to the highest positions in Iranian jurisprudence. As a consequence of such moves, more than 8,000 civil and political activists were arrested in the year 2018 alone, and 50 were killed. Yet public demonstrations against the regime have continued unabated in what Iranian opposition leader Mrs Maryam Rajavi has called a “year full of uprisings.”

There is far more consistency in these protests than there is in European policy toward Iran. Overwhelmingly, the Iranian people are calling for regime change because they know exactly what to expect from the ruling theocracy: endless repression and a constant state of animosity toward the international community. If the nations of Europe would only come to understand that there is no “moderate” alternative to this policy within the existing regime, they would surely begin to realize that their support could help the Iranian people achieve the freedom and democratic governance for which they are so willing to risk their lives.

*Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics, was vice-president of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He is currently president of the Brussels-based International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ)

From past to present, technology has shaped the path of sustainable development in several key Asian economies, according to a new report launched today by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The study, titled, Evolution of Science, Technology and Innovation Policies for Sustainable Development: The Experiences of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore tracks the trajectories of science, technology and innovation (STI) development policies in the four countries from pre-industrial to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The country narratives draw on recent initiatives and experiences in forming STI policies that support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Guided by the report, the Asia-Pacific region stands to accelerate commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by facilitating STI capacity development.

“In a world of rapid technological transformation, the capacity of governments to leverage innovation for sustainable development and mitigate against risks is a key element for future prosperity. This report and training will help our member States to understand and prepare for these technological changes,” said Ganbold Baasanjav, Head of the ESCAP Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia.

To maximize the potential for innovation, the report delivers information relevant to the public sector, civil society and professionals in science, technology and innovation. Through the lenses of the four Asian leaders in STI initiatives, the report provides concrete and up-to-date technical data on STI development and contains detailed analysis accessible to civil society, innovators, entrepreneurs and governments.

While innovation is often considered the realm of the private sector, the report identifies three main ways governments can be innovative, through improving service delivery, creating new public services and developing new forms of governance that address specific societal challenges.

The report was launched in Incheon, Republic of Korea at an Expert Group Meeting held in conjunction with the Training Workshop on STI Policies for Sustainable Development in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, organized by ESCAP Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia, the Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on STI Policy (ARTNet on STI) and the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), a Korean governmental research think tank specialising in STI policy from 18-22 March 2019.

The training workshop serves as an introductory programme for senior policy makers on developing STI policies aligned with the SDGs in the context of the rapid technological change. The meetings also builds the capacity of government representatives from across 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region to develop effective policies on frontier technologies for sustainable development. Participants will hold thematic discussions on research and development for catch-up and leapfrog growth, building human capacities in the era of AI, and fostering linkages between the public sector and academia, civil society and the private sector.

A large part of the world is currently experiencing water shortages and the poor are the most affected adversely. These poor, especially the farmers, can be served better by small water storage, and not by mega-dams.

This is a gist of a technical paper Spreading the Water Wealth written by Patrick McCully, former executive director of the Berkeley (California)-based International Rivers (formerly known as International Rivers Network, or IRN), an advocacy group that supports communities around the world opposing destructive river development projects, and promotes sustainable and equitable freshwater management and energy policies.

“The ability to store water for when it is most needed, is certainly vital especially for farmers in those regions of the world where rainfall varies widely over each year and between years. And global warming is making the ability to store water even more important.”

“Large reservoirs are not the only form of water storage. Water stored in small reservoirs, in groundwater and in wetlands generally provides much greater economic benefits—and benefits that are more likelytoreach the poorest—than that in large reservoirs, “he said.

Small reservoirs and rainwater harvesting structures, such as the 300,000 liters agricultural tanks in South India and the million liter ponds in China are more likely to benefit farmers as they are geographically dispersed and more likely to be built and controlled at the community level.

“Large reservoirs, in contrast, mainly provide benefits to the relatively wealthy minority of large farmers living in the fertile plain areas that usually receive canal water. In many respects, the best way in storing water is underground. Groundwater does not evaporate, is well protected from biological contamination, is geographically dispersed and provided energy or pumping, can be accessed whenever needed, “McCully said.

The fact that farmers, rather than irrigation agencies control when groundwater is supplied to crops is the main reason why crop yields in areas irrigated by groundwater, are often double than those in fields irrigated by canal watered schemes.

In Pune, India where I led agroforestry projects, groundwater has recently overtaken rivers as the main supplier mof water for crops. The same is true in the Iringa region of Tanzania where 60, percent of the country’s irrigated area is sustained.

According to Adin Dob Roy and Tushaar Shaab of the International Water Institute: IWI, “groundwater is the democratic water source and poverty reduction tool in India.”

Yet, many governments currently focus most of their budgetary resources and manpower on centrally created and managed large canal irrigated systems from mega-dams allowing only a fraction of groundwater resources.

The downside of groundwater use is that in many areas, it is being used much faster than it is replenished via rainfall and floods. In areas where groundwater is abused, it can lead to collapse of agriculture and contamination of drinking water supply with saline water.

From the perspective of food production and poverty alleviation,, it is far more important to implement policies to manage groundwater extraction and practices to recharge aquifers than to invest in more big dam projects.

The Dangers of Hydro-Addiction

McCully wrote, “the argument much-used by the hydro power industry, that developed countries could escape poverty, if only they could use more of their hydro-potential, is beset by over- simplification and irrelevance as the per capita myth.

While there is a clear trend for countries to get rich as they increase their use of modern energy, the trend goes the other way for hydroelectricity dependency.

Hydropower provides 50 percent of electricity in 58 countries in the world and more than 90 percent in 24 countries. The majority of these hydro-dependent countries are among those with lowest human indicators as measured by the UN Development Program.

Of the world’s 40 richest countries measured by per capita GNP, only one is more than 90 percent hydro-dependent. Of the world’s 40 poorest countries, 15 are more than 90 percent hydro dependent.

Numerous hydro-dependent countries have suffered drought-induced blackouts and energy rationing in recent years. Mega-dam construction displaces people destroys biodiversity, culture and indigenous knowledge.

While developing countries have much more unexploited hydro power potential than developed countries, they also have massive unexploited potential for new renewable technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal and modern biomass energy.”

The Poor Must be a Priority

Just as the great majority of people without access to water live in rural areas of developing countries, so do most of the 1.6 billion without access to electricity. The energy needs of poor rural areas are most likely to be met by improved cook stoves, mini and micro hydro projects, and other small renewable energy sources such as wind–powered pumps for lifting groundwater. Massive hydropower projects that power transmission lines headed to mines, industries and big cities rarely provide benefits to rural people.

Improving access to water and energy in rural communities across the developing world would free women and children from the drudgery of many hours spent every day carrying water and gathering fuelwood. It would dramatically improve people’s health (especially if coupled with low–cost sanitation schemes). And it would reduce hunger and increase incomes, not just because of greater yields, but also because of the greater availability of energy for crop processing. Furthermore small–scale technologies are just as viable for meeting the water and energy needs of the sprawling slums of the developing world.

Intelligent water and energy infrastructure development alone cannot solve the scandal of global poverty and inequality. Many other policy and institutional changes are also needed. But without a radical realignment of priorities in the water and energy sectors, the hope of water and energy for all will remain a distant dream.

By Giorgi Lomsadze*

While the world reels from the mosque shootings in New Zealand, some in the Caucasus are puzzling over the alleged gunman’s references to their own history.

The accused shooter’s Twitter account showed images, posted ahead of the attack, of rifle magazines scrawled with a variety of historical references, including some written in Armenian and Georgian.

Two Georgian rulers were cited: the 10th and 11th century King David the Builder as well as David Soslani, the consort of Queen Tamar, who ruled about a century later. David the Builder and Queen Tamar are the most celebrated Georgian monarchs and have been canonized as saints by the Georgian church. 

The Caucasus is an ancient bulwark of Christianity, and for centuries it was a front of Christian-Muslim confrontations. And what the two Georgian Davids have in common is their famous battles against Muslim enemies of Georgia, leading to the assumption that the killer took inspiration in these ancient conflicts.

Other magazines posted by the accused shooter, Australian Brenton Tarrant, were mentions of the Battles of Sarıkarmış and Sardarabad, World War I fights in which Russian and Armenian forces defeated the Turkish army. They were among many references to historic battles against Islamic forces, including others from the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

The Armenian National Committee of Australia issued a statement condemning the Armenian references.

Georgians have no record of participating in terror attacks against Muslims, but the nation has recently seen a growing antagonism against Muslim immigrants. Ultranationalist groups marched last year down the David the Builder Avenue – a part of capital Tbilisi that is popular with Middle Eastern visitors and immigrants – and called for tightening of immigration laws.

Georgia’s ambassador to Australia, the closest diplomatic outpost Georgia has to New Zealand, said on March 15 that Georgia had not received corroboration from New Zealand authorities about the alleged writings. “The investigation has not reached out to us yet,” Ambassador Giorgi Dolidze said. But later on the day of the attack Georgia’s security agency launched an investigation.  

“The State Security Service is in touch with our strategic partners to receive detailed information on the individuals arrested and weapons seized in the terrorist attack,” the agency said in a statement on March 15.   

*Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.

By Leesa K. Donner*

Getting your hands on a firearm in New Zealand is no easy task. Everyone knows this and yet here we are again having the same old knee-jerk discussion about more gun control, following a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch early Friday. At this writing, the death toll stands at 50, and approximately two dozen people remain hospitalized. Like all acts of terror, ‘tis a sad tale, indeed.

At such times it is a politician’s wont to rush to judgment, to try and fix things and come out of it all looking very moral and heroic. Customarily these efforts result in making the situation worse. Such appears to be the case as the prime minister of New Zealand prepares to “fix” the country’s gun problems with more restrictions in the wake of this tragedy.

But here’s the rub: New Zealand already has quite a strict gun control policy as it is. Owning a firearm in the land of the Kiwi is not a right but rather a privilege bestowed upon those who are willing to run the gauntlet of gun laws. And they are many. Everyone must be licensed and background checked. They must all take a safety class – it is a long and arduous process to legally own a firearm. If you can think up a gun control law, New Zealand likely already has it on the books.

It’s Never Enough

Guess what all these firearm restrictions did to stop Friday’s tragedy? How about nothing. If you look at the facts of the case (and they are difficult to ascertain amid all the vitriol), one could even make the case that New Zealand’s totalitarian gun laws made the situation worse. How so? If you dig into what really happened, you will notice that a heroic bystander wrestled the weapon from the shooter and managed to fire two rounds as the attacker attempted to flee the scene.

Ah yes – the old good guy with a gun scenario that gun control advocates love to ignore time and again.

So, one must ask, what if there were armed people in and around those mosques? What if they had fired upon the perpetrator? Could he have been stopped before so many lives were lost? The logical answer to all these questions is yes, yes and yes.

Last year the worst car crash in 13 years occurred in New Zealand. The next morning the airwaves in South Taranaki were not filled with people calling for a ban on vehicles. Why? Because a vehicle isn’t a weapon unless someone uses it in that manner. Such is the case with a firearm. But don’t tell the politicians that. They will have no reason to grandstand.

As it is, the mosque killings have provided ammunition for the anti-gun political class to run amok. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern already has plans to “act swiftly to enact stricter laws” and her cabinet plans to meet on Monday for “proposed reforms,” according to The Guardian.

More Sheep than People

Step aside because the anti-firearm show is about to begin, even though the left already loves to point out that, “New Zealand generally has very low levels of gun violence — likely due, in part, to its restrictions on firearms.” Perhaps it’s actually because of a projected population density of only 18.4 people per kilometer by 2020. Fact is, there are about seven times more sheep than people in New Zealand. Might that have something to do with the low homicide rate?

There is one bit of good news for those who believe in the right to bear arms – approximately 1.2 million people in New Zealand own a gun. That’s about one firearm for every four people. Let’s hope these gun-owners will not be led to the slaughter like their four-hoofed friends; let’s hope they resist all efforts of the do-gooder class to take away their firearms.

*About the author: Leesa K. Donner is Editor-in-Chief of LibertyNation.com. A widely published columnist, Leesa previously worked in the broadcast news industry as a television news anchor, reporter, and producer at NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. She is the author of “Free At Last: A Life-Changing Journey through the Gospel of Luke.”

Source: This article was published by Liberty Nation

By George Pickering*

As the economic contagion of the global financial crisis was spreading from country to country in 2007, it was frequently noted that the mainstream economics profession seemed to be just as much in the dark about the true causes of the crisis as were the general public. In place of anything incisive and theoretically grounded, most people were forced to make do with vague hand-waving and metaphors to explain the crash, with one particularly well-worn bromide sticking out in my own memory as almost the defining phrase of the crisis: “When America sneezes, the whole world gets sick.”

However applicable that apophthegm may have been to the 2007/8 crisis, it was certainly the phrase which came to mind recently when news broke that, following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s dovish turn last month, central banks across the developing world have followed suit by shifting back toward lower interest rates.

An aggregate of interest rate moves across 37 developing economies showed that, over the course of February, the number of central banks in that group which had cut interest rates was greater by three than the number which had raised interest rates. This compares with a net rate rise in January, with one more central bank having raised rates than cut them in that group. Indeed, this aggregate of 37 developing economies had not shown any net fall in interest rates throughout the previous nine months leading up to the end of January 2019, with interest rate hikes having either equaled or exceeded interest rate cuts for the duration of that period.

An Easy-Money Trend

The trend began on 1st February — just two days after Fed chairman Jerome Powell announced that “the case for raising rates has weakened” — when Azerbaijan’s central bank cut its refinancing rate by 50 basis points, bringing it down to 9.25%. This move was followed shortly afterwards by the Reserve Bank of India, which unexpectedly cut its key interest rate by 25 basis points on February 6th. One of the biggest interest rate cuts of the month followed on the 14th, with a surprise move by the Egyptian central bank, which cut its deposit rate to 15.75%, and its lending rate to 16.75%, a decline of 1% in both cases. Then on February 20th, the Bank of Jamaica cut its key rate by 25 basis points, down to 1.5%. Two days later, the Central Bank of Paraguay made a similar 25 basis point cut to its policy rate, bringing it down to 5%. And rounding out the month, the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic cut its own policy rate to 4.50%, down from 4.75%, on February 26th.

What has prompted this widespread shift toward looser monetary policy in the developing world? While the rationales may differ from country to country in some of their specific details, one prevailing theme has appeared time and again throughout the various justifications for these shifts toward lower rates: fear of deflation.

After having strengthened consistently throughout most of 2018, the US dollar first stumbled and then noticeably fell between mid-December and mid-January, and has largely been flatlining since. As the equal and opposite reaction to this weakening of the dollar over the past few months, the currencies of many of these developing economies have correspondingly strengthened in terms of dollars. This has threatened to drop certain measures of inflation in those countries below their central banks’ inflation targets, which, in the mind of the mainstream economist, brings with it the threat of unemployment and economic slowdown. Couple this with the various uncertainties and potential shocks currently manifesting on the global economic stage, such as the Chinese economic slowdown and the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, and you have a situation in which cutting interest rates would seem to be, to the mainstream economist, the textbook response. After all, what harm could possibly come from central bank inflationism and artificially low interest rates?

The Price of Low Interest Rates

The advocates of Austrian Economics may find themselves increasingly occupied with the task of answering that question, over the coming months. After having maintained near-zero interest rates for most of the past decade, the past two years have seen the world’s central banks gradually start the process of normalizing rates again in response to the sluggish recovery. However, as the Austrian Business Cycle Theory of Ludwig von Mises demonstrates, that period of unsustainably low interest rates will not have been without costs. Such low interest rates will have induced investors into risky, long-term projects, which will no longer maintain the illusion of profitability once rates rise back to their natural, long-term levels. The relative upswing in the global economy over the past few years will be put under increasing pressure by the rising cost of borrowing, pressure which it will likely not be able to withstand, given the unsound foundation of unsustainably low interest rates on which that upswing has been built.

Examining the movement of interest rates over the previous two business cycles in, for example, the United States, seems to reveal a familiar pattern. As the economy was recovering from the previous bust and entering the next boom, the Fed took this as its cue to raise interest rates back up to non-crisis levels. Just as the Austrian Business Cycle Theory would lead us to expect however, these rising rates shook the foundations of the unsustainable booms created by the previous periods of lower interest rates, causing the economy to stutter. The Fed then reacted to this weakening of the boom by first halting and then reversing its interest rate rises, with the recessions of 2001 and 2008 both having followed shortly after such reversals. With central banks around the world currently signalling a likely softening of their previous plans for rate hikes, it may well be that we have begun entering into the final stages of of this familiar cycle once again.

*About the author: George Pickering is a 2018 Mises Institute Research Fellow and a student of economic history at the London School of Economics.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

What do US-China tensions in the technological sphere mean for ASEAN’s digital ambitions and how can it respond?

By Amalina Anuar*

Boasting an increasingly wired and growing middle class, as well as a wealth of data stemming from a 642-million-strong population, ASEAN’s digital economy is ripe for the picking. By 2025, it will be worth an estimated US$240 billion.

The prospects of market dominance and significant data pools to be mined for developing future technologies, combined with ASEAN’s geostrategic location, have lured greater major power interest into the region’s digital economy. Though global tech titans are more visible players in ASEAN’s digital space, greater government-to-government cooperation is emerging as economics and security become increasingly intertwined. What then might this mean for ASEAN?

Development Opportunities

Boosting financing for ASEAN’s infrastructure, digital or otherwise, could increase digital economy take-up. Competing infrastructure partnerships such as China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) and the Washington-initiated Indo-Pacific Economic Vision (IPEV) could help service hard and soft infrastructure gaps across the region.

Under the DSR, fibre-optic cables have boosted data-carrying speeds, improving telecommunications connectivity. In Malaysia, Alibaba’s Digital Free Trade Zone serves as a cross-border logistics and e-commerce centre, with another digital trade hub servicing Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand mooted for Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor.

Generating soft infrastructure, Alibaba has promoted SME (small and medium-sized enterprise)-friendly trading initiatives via the Electronic World Trading Platform— a move that may heighten SMEs’ 10%-30% contribution to ASEAN’s exports.

Benefits could further trickle in for ASEAN’s smart city initiatives. Aside from DSR initiatives, the November 2018 US-ASEAN Smart City partnership followed on the heels of the IPEV launch in July 2018, which allocated US$25 million to prime private sector investment in regional digital connectivity and cybersecurity.

Where Washington’s commitment has lagged, moreover, other Quad members – Japan, Australia, India − have stepped up to fill the gap. Besides the smart city partnerships slated for 2019, Japan will train 80,000 ASEAN high-tech specialists. Meanwhile, Tokyo’s upcoming G20 Global Data Governance Agenda, along with 2018’s ASEAN-Australia Digital Trade Standards Initiative, could aid in hammering out multilateral regulatory infrastructure for ASEAN’s internet economy.

Divisive Risks

Yet intense major power rivalry to build and control the infrastructure of the future, specifically 5G networks and their concomitant technologies, could risk a divided ASEAN digital economy.

So far, ASEAN’s response to US pressure to ban Chinese-built 5G networks has been mixed, with the Philippines greenlighting its Huawei-serviced 5G networks, while Thailand and Malaysia have approved Huawei’s 5G trials. Though President Trump recently struck a more conciliatory tone on Huawei, calling for greater competition rather than ‘blocking out currently more advanced technologies’, pressure to aid continued US technological market hegemony may not abate given underlying geopolitical tensions.

A lack of 5G market competition could result in costlier technology and stymied innovation. Delays in rolling out 5G networks may be more detrimental, as 5G is instrumental for harnessing Industrial Revolution 4.0. In countries where 3G is still relatively prominent, ASEAN members could leapfrog to higher levels of economic development by transitioning to 5G — though expectations should be tempered as 5G’s transformative impact may not be felt in the short-term until applications such as smart factories become more ubiquitous.

Another concern is the interoperability of Chinese versus non-Chinese 5G technology. While both types of networks must interact in the future regardless, cross-network transaction and operation costs could rise without seamless connectivity. While global standard setting bodies can craft multilateral frameworks, the tussle over technological rulemaking could stymie progress and adoption.

Hardware aside, competing digital standards split between US-supported liberal versus protectionist rules could undermine the competitiveness of ASEAN’s digital economy, if businesses must tailor operations to disparate regulatory regimes.

Exacerbated socioeconomic divides pose another a risk. Smaller local enterprises may struggle to compete against the various foreign tech titans advancing into ASEAN’s digital sphere, who are bolstered by greater investment capabilities, digital-savvy talent pools, and access to data.

Unpredictable Disruptions & ASEAN’s Response

As technology becomes more integrated into supply chains, security concerns and greater politicisation of market operations via policy-driven economic decoupling will likely continue to disrupt the business landscape. However, the extent of disruption remains unclear.

As businesses adjust, trends to localise or re-shore supply chains in the hopes of avoiding non-tariff security measures may pick up speed. Though ASEAN could benefit from these supply chain redistributions, it could also herald a period of greater business uncertainty and hence, lower economic growth.

Soft infrastructure such as competition policy should be updated for inclusive growth in the digital age. Developing an ASEAN framework to ensure infrastructure projects align with ASEAN interests and economic development visions, as voiced in the Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity and ASEAN Economic Community goals respectively, would not be remiss.

This could cover monitoring the impact of digital trade and infrastructure projects on SMEs for a people-centric ASEAN with an eye towards including micro-enterprises, dovetailing with Thailand’s goals of Digitising Micro-enterprises as 2019’s ASEAN Chair. Enhanced logistics and market access alone are insufficient for growth without addressing traditional, offline pain points such as lacking SME export strategies and trade financing.

Way Forward

With cybersecurity underpinning the trustworthiness of ASEAN’s digital economy, enhancing ASEAN’s capabilities on this front will become even more critical, especially if the region’s supply chains are to withstand stricter security probes.

Going forward, cybersecurity could be an added consideration under the Thai Chair’s prioritised Digital Integration Framework Action Plan (DIFAP). This could include devising regional security standards applicable to multi-vendor 5G network providers, as excluding Chinese technology from ASEAN’s nascent digital space is not viable in the larger context of the region’s economic interdependence and the potential repercussions of jettisoning neutrality.

Lastly, increasing ASEAN’s appeal as a single market— including by implementing DIFAP— would reduce the risks of a divided digital economy and strengthen its credibility as a production base of choice for businesses, better preparing the region for both the best and worst of times in the digital era.

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

“If intense warfare broke out tomorrow, India could supply its troops with only 10 days of ammunition, according to government estimates. And 68 per cent of the army’s equipment is so old, it is officially considered vintage”. This is what was stated in a recent report published in New York Times about India’s military equipment.

Mikoyan-Gurevich-21 or MiG 21 was India’s first supersonic jet fighter aircraft manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1955. It is considered a second-generation jet fighter, which was first inducted in the IAF in 1963. MiG 21 once thought to be the backbone of Indian Air Force, playing a stellar role in the 1971 war against Pakistan.

It was also used in the skirmishes which broke out between Pakistan and India in 1999 during the Kargil War, where one IAF MiG 21 was shot down by ground fire. The IAF was forced to continue using this outdated warhorse mainly because of the delays at the part of Indian Defence Ministry regarding which their own senior naval official has claimed is incapable for even asking for the batteries for their submarines and secondly because of the poor and defunct technology of the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, eventually leading to numerous accidents.

Moreover, according to various reports and the answers given by various former defence ministers to the parliament MiG 21 were among the biggest casualties with more than 177 peace time air crashes so far. However, almost after every accident a committee was for formulated which stated these aircrafts to be outdated based on a design of 1950s.

Since its induction or more precisely since 1970s more than 200 pilots have been killed in MiG 21 accidents, which also resulted in the deaths of 40 civilians and also earning a name “Flying Coffin” or “Widow Maker”.

Whereas IAF officially claims that pilot error were the main cause behind accidents, internal reports conclude otherwise stating technical defects and engine flameouts to be the cause behind the crashes further strengthening the speculation that India’s MiG fleet may have certainly outlived its service life.

Notwithstanding, in summer of 2013 within two months, two incidents of MiG 21 jet crash took place and that too both the jets crashed whilst attempting to land at the Uttarlai Air Base at the Bamer district of Rajasthan, and the height of incongruity was that the crash had been attributed again to pilot error and later an inquiry was commissioned.

However, the thing to mention here is that soon after the incident, Wing Commander Sangeet Singh Kaila, a serving officer from the IAf, who himself was a MiG 21 crash survivor petitioned the High court for scrapping the entire fleet of the MiG 21 because of their being vintage and other technical defects. He was involved in a crash during flight exercise in 2005.

The court later gave the verdict in his favor where he has alleged in his petition that poor maintenance work executed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which manufactured all the domestically made MIG jets, had contributed to the failure of his aircraft.

The Indian Air Force has inducted more than 1,200 MIG variants in its fleet since 1963, when it was first used by the military. Currently, at least 252 MIG-21s are known to be operational in the air force, according to the Indian military enthusiast site Bharat Rakshak, including the latest upgraded version, the Bison, the same upgraded version was being knocked by the Pakistan in the very recent dogfight between Pakistan and India and the same has been crashed a couple of days ago in Rajasthan but this time it was not the poor pilot but the poor bird behind the crash.

Nevertheless, truth be told it had certainly to be taken off service long ago even IAF pilots often joke around that it is just a hollow tube with an engine which flies very fast however, they also forget to spice up the joke that this hollow tube also lands very fast like 330-334- km/h.

The aircraft has exceeded its stress limit and recommended life and flying hours.

Premier Modi and his party won the office on the back and support of hopes that they will put India on the course to becoming a superpower and had also promised a modernize military, now again he and his party is on board with same outdated mantra very much like their so called modernized technology. But this time results are very clear already.

*Ubaid Ahmed, Independent Researcher. He can be reached at Ubaidtalks@gmail.com

By Pete Baumgartner

(RFE/RL) — Having ruled Kazakhstan with an authoritarian grip since the 1980s, President Nursultan Nazarbaev shocked many when he unexpectedly announced his resignation on March 19.

“This year marks the 30th anniversary of my term as the supreme leader of our country,” Nazarbaev said during a hastily arranged nationwide address. “[But] I have made the difficult decision to resign as president of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

Nazarbaev is credited by many with turning Kazakhstan — the world’s ninth largest country — into an energy powerhouse during his long reign, but strongly criticized for trampling upon democratic norms and freedoms while brutally suppressing all opposition to his rule.

“My generation and I have done everything we could for the country,” he said in the TV address. “The results are well known to you.”

Though leaving the presidential post, Nazarbaev will retain many other influential positions in the Kazakh government, leaving many to wonder if he’s really giving up power.

Still Holding The Reins?

Nazarbaev, 78, will continue to head Kazakhstan’s powerful Security Council, the ruling Nur Otan political party that he founded, and the country’s Constitutional Council.

The last Soviet-era president to leave office, Nazarbaev noted during his announcement that he was also granted the lifetime status of “Elbasy,” or “leader of the nation,” by parliament in 2010.

“So, I am staying with you,” Nazarbaev said. “The concerns of the country and the people remain my concerns.”

“He isn’t leaving the scene but when a new president is installed, he will lose some of his power,” Paul Goble, a longtime analyst of Russian and post-Soviet affairs, told RFE/RL. “I think we are in the midst of a transition that will likely take a year or more but that won’t have the discontinuities which might have occurred had he left by dying.”

Erica Marat, an associate professor at Washington’s National Defense University, thinks Nazarbaev’s presence will be felt in Kazakhstan for some time.

“He will remain a central political figure until the end of his days,” she told RFE/RL. “His cult is likely to live for decades as well, with future leaders building their legitimacy on the notion they continue building on the legacy of Nazarbaev.”

Nazarbaev announced that veteran politician and diplomat Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, currently the speaker of the Kazakh Senate, would take over presidential duties as of March 20 and serve until the scheduled presidential election in 2020.

As head of Nur Otan, Nazarbaev would likely select that party’s candidate for next year’s presidential election.

And his position as head of the Security Council, which he noted in his resignation address has “serious authority,” would allow him to control the country’s foreign policy.

Timing Is Everything

Nazarbaev’s resignation comes just two days before Norouz, the springtime new year’s holiday that is celebrated in many predominantly Muslim countries.

The timing could be seen by many as symbolic of a new beginning and give people in Kazakhstan time over the holiday to discuss and digest the big political change taking place in their country.

While certainly a surprise announcement for many Kazakhs, others saw it coming.

“It was both long anticipated and an abrupt change at the same time,” Marat said. “Nazarbaev has been considering various options for power transition and has chosen one that will allow him to oversee the succession process and normalize the idea that Kazakhstan can also be ruled by a leader other than himself.”

The longtime leader had shown his hand about resigning, Goble said.

“Nazarbaev signaled that he wanted to resign by asking Kazakhstan’s highest court to clarify the conditions under which a president could leave office,” he said. “He clearly wants to leave but to manage the transition to a new generation rather than serving until his death with unpredictable consequences thereafter.”

If there were an award for yellow journalism, Rolling Stone would be at the top of the list.

In 2015, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism demolished a piece by Sabrina Rubin Erdely about gang rape at the University of Virginia. In 2011, I demolished an article by the same writer for her hit job on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Now Rolling Stone is back with a scurrilous story by Nicholas Lord on Australian Cardinal George Pell.

Lord begins his article by citing the recent case where Pell was sentenced for sexual abuse. The author accuses Pell of cornering “two thirteen-year-old choirboys in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral” wherein he forced  “one boy to perform oral sex while the other flinched away.”

What Lord did not say is that the boy who “flinched away” died of drug abuse, but not before telling his mother on two occasions that Pell never abused him or anyone else. Importantly, over 20 witnesses who marched in a procession with the two boys the morning of the alleged abuse said the boys never left the line of march to be with Pell in the sacristy after Mass. A priest who helped Pell with his vestments in the sacristy that day confirms that no boys were present.

Lord says another boy was molested by Pell at a camp. He leaves out salient facts.

The accusation by a Melbourne man who said he was abused by Pell in 1962, when he was 12-years-old, was thrown out by a judge when nothing could be substantiated. Not a single person who worked at the camp supported the charges, and all of them signed statements that were favorable to Pell.

Moreover, the accuser had been convicted 39 times for offenses ranging from assault to drug use. Indeed, he was a violent drug addict who served four years in prison. He drove drunk, beat people, and took amphetamines. I guess Lord missed all of that.

Lord accuses Pell of doing nothing to stop Australia’s worst sex offender, Gerald Ridsdale, who raped victims in a presbytery in Ballarat where both men resided.

Conveniently, Lord does not mention that the authorities dismissed a case against Pell and he was completely exonerated. Also, Pell was accused of joking about Ridsdale’s crimes at a funeral Mass in Ballarat. But there was no Mass that day and the priest whom Pell was allegedly joking with was living someplace else when the supposed incident took place.

Lord rolls out Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, both of whom claim Pell abused them. What a pair they are.

If Lord were not so lazy, or vindictive, he would know that Monument was a big boozer, a drug addict, a drug dealer, and a thug who beat and stalked his girlfriend. An ex-con, he has also been arrested for burglary,  assault, and making threats to kill. Damian also has a record of violence, and has been arrested for drunk driving.

Not surprisingly, Monument and Dignan have also made accusations against former teachers. Regarding Pell, they claim he inappropriately touched them while throwing them off his shoulders in a swimming pool in the 1970s.

True to form, Lord is dead wrong about crimen sollicitationis. He refers to it as a directive issued by Pope John XXIII which “threatened to excommunicate Catholic officials who reported pedophile priests.”

In fact, the 1962 document, “The Crime of Solicitation,” was about the seal of confession. It allowed for a priest to be thrown out of the priesthood if he engaged in sexual solicitation when hearing confession. It also made it clear that if the penitent were to tell someone what happened in the confessional (perhaps another priest), he or she had 30 days to report the incident to the bishop or face excommunication.

If anything, this showed how serious the Vatican was about the offense—it threatened to punish the penitent for not turning in the guilty priest.

Why did Rolling Stone publish this trash? The answer is given, rather unwittingly, by Lord. “To liberals [in Australia], Pell was the enemy. He fought the ‘secular agenda,’ gay rights, abortion, IVF, euthanasia, sex outside of marriage.”

That’s right. Cardinal Pell is the poster boy for Catholic-hating secularists, not only in his home country but around the world. They hate him for his orthodoxy and the fact that he was, until recently, the third most senior cleric in the Catholic Church. No matter, he will go down in history as the biggest scapegoat for clergy sexual abuse in the history of the Catholic Church.

Those who know the facts about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and Cardinal George Pell, know there is a world of difference between the two of them. Pell does not deserve to be spoken about in the same breath as McCarrick, but to those who hate the Church, they are one and the same. This is pure bunk.

Contact Rolling Stone editor: Jason.Fine@rollingstone.com

Ron Paul, the libertarian communicator who ran three times for president, has been neither a “never-Trumper” nor a loyalist of President Donald Trump.

Instead, Paul, through the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s presidency, has judged Trump’s various comments and actions against Paul’s understanding of right and wrong.

Interviewed recently by host Larry King at King’s Politicking show at RT, Paul’s assessment of Trump’s presidency came out mostly negative.

In the wide-ranging interview, Paul, who King introduces as “always outspoken,” lives up to that description in providing clear criticism of Trump in regard to several matters.

From increasing United States military spending to piling on new US government debt to continuing mass surveillance to seeking to build a wall at the US-Mexico border through the exercise of “national emergency” powers to keeping US troops in Syria, Paul declares Trump is following the wrong course.

Paul, however, is not entirely negative regarding Trump’s presidency.

In the interview, Paul dismisses the accusation that Trump is “beholden to” Russia President Vladimir Putin.

Paul also praises Trump for talking with leadership of the North Korea government, though Paul notes that the effort toward improving relations with North Korea appears to have recently been “sabotaged.”

Watch Paul’s complete interview here:

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

A proposed Northern Serengeti all-weather tarmac road that will bisect Serengeti National Park, a World Heritage site, has sparked considerable debate.

Opponents say that the road could disrupt the migration of approximately 1.5 million wildebeest, zebras and gazelles between Serengeti National Park and Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, and increase already high levels of poaching. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that the road will facilitate national and local economic growth, which in turn will reduce poverty and improve the local quality of life, which is expected to lower pressure on ecosystems.

Research instead of ‘Build first – worry later’

The pros and cons of road projects proposed for remote areas with high biodiversity conservation value are rarely examined before they are built in the explosion of road expansion projects that are currently underway in many developing countries.

Researchers from University of Copenhagen have used a method called a discrete choice experiment to determine how road development would affect local peoples livelihood activity choices in the Serengeti area. A discrete choice experiment allows researchers to use hypothetical scenarios to measure the strength of preferences and trade-offs for local people regarding different livelihood options. The study is published in PLOS ONE.

Contradicting outcomes

Solomon Zenas Walelign, one of the authors of the study and postdoc at University of Copenhagen, says construction of the road could result in one of two contrasting outcomes.

“One possible outcome is that increased market integration will allow intensification of existing crop and livestock production, and the development of non-farm micro, small and medium enterprises, both of which will reduce environmental resource extraction. However, a contrasting outcome predicts that people will expand existing production, which will lead to land conversion and overgrazing and commercialisation of hunting to meet urban market demands,” Solomon Zenas Walelign says.

Informed policy making

“The effect of roads on livelihood activity choices can typically only be observed after the implementation, which prevents the design of timely mitigating policies and strategies. We used the discrete choice experiment to see how people expect to change their livelihoods,” said Jette Brehdal Jacobsen, professor at University of Copenhagen.

The study helps shed light on how local communities in the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem expect to adjust their livelihoods in response to road improvement. This information is urgently needed to enable informed predictions about emerging and changing environmental pressures that result from land use change, overgrazing and the bushmeat trade.

People prefer more of the known

The study found that people did not expect to increase effort hunting bushmeat – but they did not plan to reduce the number of household members engaged in bushmeat hunting either. However, the clearest result was a strong preference for traditional livelihood activities, adding more agricultural land and more livestock, as travel time to markets was reduced through road improvements.

“The results indicate that if new roads are constructed or old ones upgraded, people will prefer to expand their traditional activities by converting more land to cropland and increasing the number of cattle in the region. Together, these changes will likely increase illegal grazing pressure in the protected areas, which is already a major conservation concern in Serengeti National Park,” says Associate Professor Martin Reinhardt Nielsen, who is one of the leaders of the AfricanBioServices project, which financed the study.

Another path for the impact of road building

The authors of the study suggest that land use planning and control of land use conversion and illegal grazing is critical when constructing and upgrading roads in the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem. This should be combined with education programmes and strategic efforts to encourage the development of local non-farm micro, small and medium enterprises that are alligned with conservation goals and take advantage of the large tourism income potential in the ecosystem.

Facts

Assuming that land was available, the study predicted an average increase of 1.54 acres of cultivated land and 1.43 cattle per household.

The study did not find any evidence that local people would take up new wage-earning opportunities or engage in business development as travel time to markets was reduced.

Low-interest loans and extension services could help modify the preference for extra land, but only to a limited extent, the researchers found.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hailed joint action by Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad against terrorism as a leading factor binding the three countries together.

In a Monday meeting with top military commanders of Syria, Iran and Iraq in Damascus, Assad said, “The relation, which gathers Syria with Iran and Iraq, is strong.”

The bond was reinforced during Syria’s battle against foreign-backed terrorism and militancy, he added.

The Syria president also described the terrorists and mercenaries as a mere façade for the countries that support them.

Assad and the three commanders also discussed the latest developments in Syria and ways to enhance coordination for a more successful anti-terror battle, Press TV reported.

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, Iraq’s Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanimi, and Syrian Defense Minister General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub held a trilateral meeting in Damascus earlier in the day.

In the meeting with Assad, General Baqeri said the anti-terror fight and defending Syria boosts Iraq and Iran’s security as terrorism threatens the three countries alike and also targets the region as a whole.

The states and peoples of the region have to coordinate their efforts to combat this threat, the top Iranian commander added.

Speaking to reporters upon his arrival in Damascus, the Iranian commander had announced that the foreign forces stationed in Syria without coordination with the Damascus government should leave the Arab country.

On Monday, General Baqeri said at a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpart that the fight against terrorists will continue until their full elimination.

In recent years, the Middle East region has been plagued with Takfiri terrorist groups like Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), which are believed to have been created and supported by the West and some regional Arab countries.

The terrorist groups, which claim to be Islamic but whose actions are anything but, have been committing heinous crimes not only against non-Muslims, but mostly against Muslims in the region.

Iraq and Syria have been gripped by insurgency with various terrorist groups, including Daesh, fighting their central governments.

In the meantime, Iran has remained a close ally of the countries and supports their legitimate governments in the face of foreign-backed militancy.