By Eurasia Review

By Eva Maurina

Following the famous words of my professor Anis Bajrektarevic that: “the Atlantic Europe is a political power-house (with the two of three European nuclear powers and two of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, P-5), Central Europe is an economic power-house, Russophone Europe is an energy power-house, Scandinavian Europe is all of that a bit, and Eastern Europe is none of it.”, I wanted to examine the standing of my own place of origin in the ‘new European constellations’.

What happens to a country which suddenly is free to govern its own territory and people? What is the biggest fear? Is it the inability to satisfy its population or a threat from the former conqueror? Should a country opt for the ‘shock therapy’ or experience gradual changes? How to deal with the privatization of state-owned institutions? The following lines objectively question how the well-being of the East-European nation has changed in 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the course of the country’s integration into the EU. The authore also answers whether a small country like Latvia can actually preserve both its political and economic sovereignty. On a bigger scale, the findings suggest that the well-being in the Latvian SSR was better than it is today, while others strongly disagree. Furthermore, the author concludes that Latvia had to sacrifice its economical sovereignty in order to preserve its political independence. Is any other choice conceivable, now or in future?

* * * *

The Republic of Latvia is a small country situated on the Baltic coast, in Eastern Europe. The estimated population of 2012 slightly exceeds 2 million. 60% of the population is ethnic Latvians, while a significant part, i.e. 27.3%, is Russian, demonstrating the legacy of the past. (Eurostat, 2012)

Just slightly over 20 years ago Latvia was under the Soviet rule and Communists were the ones who had the power to make decisions. The government of Latvia was not recognized by the international community. The nation itself experienced the Soviet economic and political system. In other words, during the time of occupation, the Soviet Union introduced the Russian language into all aspects of everyday life. The intelligence was deported and a 5-year economy plan led to empty store shelves and starving people. Even though the productivity of the agricultural sector was high, all harvest was transported to other Soviet territories. Nevertheless, industrial capacity was significantly improved, employment was high, education was for free, and most of the basic needs of the nation, such as housing, were satisfied.

Latvia’s de facto sovereignty was recognized in 1991, and the first years of independence were spent developing a functioning state. The most difficult tasks facing the government were the creation of administrative bodies, reforms in the health and education sector and also a much needed shift from a planned economy to a market economy. When a political stability was reached and reforms initiated, the nation became increasingly concerned about the preservation of its statehood, so in 1995 the Latvian authorities adopted a statement defining foreign policy goals. They argued that the sovereignty can be strengthened through early integration into the European and world-wide security and political and economic structures. Latvia became a member state of the UNO in 1991, and joined the EU and NATO in 2004. (Jundzis, 2010)

However, clear existence goals for the country were absent for the first decade of independence. While political sovereignty was at the top of the agenda, the majority of the society believed that the continuous increase of average human well-being and a long-term conservation of cultural heritage and Latvian language should be the goals. Even though the initiated reforms strived for improved living standards, similar to those of many Western countries, and increased individual freedom and protected rights, many question whether these reforms and integration into the EU have supported the achievement of one of the main goals – improved human well-being in Latvia. (Pabriks & Purs, 2001)

The Human Development Index, published by UNDP, assesses the long-term progress of human development regarding a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. The overall human development value in Latvia has been positive as the HDI value has risen from 0.693 (1990) to 0.805 (2011). Hence, the statistics rank Latvia among other high human development countries. (UNDP, 2011)

The majority of indicators, compared from 1990 to 2010, have followed a positive trend. Very often the development was slow during the first years of independence when the reforms were launched. Years later, in the 21st century, especially after Latvia’s accession to the EU, human well-being improved more rapidly until the crisis in 2008 which resulted in its decrease. Nevertheless, improved absolute numbers should not be overestimated.

The previously centralized health sector has experienced notable reforms in the last 20 years; thus, the health condition of the inhabitants of Latvia has improved. The system was decentralized; hence, it entitled the foundation of private health care institutions; thereby, the health care became more accessible and more qualitative, as displayed in Figure 1. Furthermore, as the health expenditure of the state’s budget has increased and the money from European funds can also be received, new technologies have been implemented. At the same time, more and more people are unable to afford the health care services due to the growing prices.

Figure 1 Satisfaction of surveyed population of health care system (quality, price, accessibility) in Latvia during three different time periods

One can say that in the Soviet Latvia general care was easily accessible, but, when it came to a very specific treatment, it was challenging to find a proper physician. On the plus side, nowadays there are various physicians specialized in their fields; however, sick people might have to pay for treatment out of their own pockets in order to receive help without waiting. Consequently, many people are unsatisfied with prices of medical care in Latvia. On the bright side, the quality of care provided has definitely improved over the past 20 years.

Despite advancements and reforms in the health care system, demographics are in recession, which is a serious threat to the country’s succession. A natural decrease of population due to lower fertility rates and a considerable migration outflow (especially within the first years of the collapse of USSR and after Latvia’s accession to the EU) has contributed to the fact that the population has decreased from 2.67 million in 1990 to 2.24 million in 2010. As a consequence of smaller number of new-borns and rising life expectancy, the population is aging, which imposes an increasing burden to the economically active part of the population to finance the retired people.

Unfortunately, not only is financing the retired people a serious issue, but also a complete burden to costs of primary goods which have increased. Thus, paying for one’s own needs is becoming harder. The results of surveying 130 people suggest that in the Latvian SSR more than 60 per cent of the representative sample had funds to pay for all basic needs, such as food, housing, health care, education. Currently, less than 40 per cent of respondents have means to pay for all these needs. The proportion of people who can finance their needs just partially has risen from 29 to 47 per cent.

Figure 2 Ability to finance the basic needs (food, education, health care, housing etc.)

Even though the absolute income has increased, the amount of people earning less than the subsistence minimum is rising, especially in the rural areas. It has to be mentioned that the content of Latvia’s subsistence basket has not been revised since the first year of renewed statehood; thus, in reality, it does not contain all goods and services required for living decently. Furthermore, since the accession to the EU, prices have risen rapidly. For instance, total housing costs have increased significantly – in the USSR the rent and public utilities were highly subsidized by the government, whereas in 2005 the average housing costs amounted to 80 US dollars and 170 dollars in 2009. (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, 2011)

These costs are borne by the private sector and the burden is becoming heavier due to lower income compared to the costs themselves. The situation is even worse, considering the fact that the proportion of overcrowded households is one of the highest within the EU. If people lived in and paid for apartments so that they were not characterized as overcrowded, the housing costs would be even higher compared to their income. Many people agree that they enjoyed much better housing conditions when they were a part of the communism country.

Similarly, the respondents of the survey mentioned that the Soviet Times guaranteed a certain security regarding employment. The majority of the economically active population was employed in the Latvian SSR compared to the 16 per cent unemployment level in 2009. (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, 2011) Even though the absolute remuneration was considerably lower in the Soviet times, it had more purchasing power. On the other hand, the labor market is becoming more knowledge intensive, and the workers – more educated and better specialized in their professions. Working conditions have also improved significantly, partly because of the regulations of the ILO.

Transformation to knowledge-based economy has been supported by the development of the education system which is highly recognized by international surveys. High literacy and enrollment ratios are requirements for the nation to educate people who can efficiently participate in such natural resource-scarce economy. Smart people are one of Latvia’s major assets. Nevertheless, the state has to further advance its education system, as remarks from the Soviet system are still present (books, teaching concepts, teachers etc.). Furthermore, the government has to understand the role of education expenditure. Ongoing budget cuts on education sector deteriorates the quality, as teachers and professors lose their motivation and pupils and students become more motivated to enroll in universities abroad.

The EU has provided significant advantages to the Latvian population, especially the youth which now is eligible to study permanently or temporarily at foreign universities, enjoying the same terms and conditions. Also, to the people who are entrepreneurial, open-minded and have a certain understanding of how to take an advantage of new business opportunities. The EU has also contributed to the modernization of hospitals, schools and the infrastructure. Furthermore, the EU sets standards as well as observes the development of human well-being; therefore, Latvia is motivated and under a pressure to demonstrate continuous advancement. As a result, the nation believes that the health and education systems have been improved and provide higher quality and accessibility. Nevertheless, given their income level, they are discontent with the prices of the tertiary education and specialized health care services. On the other hand, the Soviet government paid for housing, education and health care thus more resources were available for food items, leisure time, clothing, and also the employment ratio in the Latvian SSR was close to 100 per cent. Therefore, there are people who believe that the communism times ensured better well-being. In addition, the equality within the population was much higher. However, as very often respondents mentioned, everybody was equally poor. Nowadays, the income polarization is a significant issue.

To complete the picture about human development trends in Latvia, which have followed different directions, it is worth referring to the final question of the conducted survey. It asked the respondents when, in their opinion, the well-being was the highest: in Soviet Latvia, in Latvia before joining the EU or in Latvia which is a member state of the EU. As the graph illustrates, the opinions vary – approximately every third of the respondent pool shares a different view, which simply further proves the finding that there are indicators which have improved along the movement towards Europe and there are aspects which so far the sovereign Latvia has not been able to offer its people as it was done by the USSR.

Figure 3 The period of the highest human well-being in the opinion of the respondents

In order to succeed and reach the well-being benchmark set by the Union, first of all, a sustainable economic growth is needed, resulting in means which could shift into a social system. Additionally, the political powers have to cooperate with the society ‒ finding a common ground, establishing goals that are seen as important and beneficial to the state itself and its population. It is of utmost importance to assure that the population lives decently, meaning, their basic needs, such as food, housing and health care, are satisfied. It should be the main goal of the government, thereby increasing the satisfaction and loyalty of the population to the state. Hence, the society would be willing to contribute to the development process, also by properly paying taxes.

Furthermore, lessons from the past should be learned. One of the main arguments for Latvia entering the EU was the economic advancement. As tariff and non-tariff barriers would be abolished, the trade between the EU and Latvia, especially the export originating from Latvia, would further increase. Productivity would be increased when people started working into more productive sectors.

Furthermore, fixed and human capital investments were expected to be attracted via low labor costs, the adoption of EU legislations and additional privatizations. Investments would initiate an upward growth spiral. Nonetheless, skeptics argued that not every person residing in Latvia would benefit. Citizens who benefited the most would be young people, as they would enter better paid jobs, whereas the pensions of retired people would not increase as rapidly as the prices of goods and services. Latvian farms would face serious hardship due to a surplus in the market resulting from foreign competitors that are subsidized by their own governments. (Memo, 2000) They were right.

The EU has suppressed the Latvian economy as a result of shutting down industrial plants, uncontrolled FDI inflows, enabling cheap credits, a significant inflation and price increase, and foreign companies creating a competition which small Latvian companies and farmers cannot defeat.

The smaller economy led to an increasing budget deficit, external borrowing and, finally, budget cuts demanded by the IMF and the EU, which have harmed the population as their adjusted income is not as high as living costs. One can say that Latvia traded a part of its economic sovereignty in order to ensure its political independence and the population is paying the price.

However, the people living in Latvia have been willing to pay this price for the sake of Latvia’s sovereignty. In a survey, carried out by the national news portal TVNET, it was asked what the biggest threat to Latvia’s sovereignty is. 53 per cent of the 5311 respondents indicated Russia and unknown money influx as the biggest danger. Contrary, just seven per cent perceive integration into the EU and NATO as imminent danger to Latvia’s independence. (LETA, 2004) On one hand, if Latvia had not joined the EU, the threat imposed by a money influx would have been limited, but political independence would have been significantly less insured, suggesting that preservation of economic and political sovereignty is impossible for a small country like Latvia. In words of my former professor: ‘difference between a dialectic and cyclical history is a distance between success and fall.’ (Bajrektarevic, 2012)

If Latvia had not joined the EU in 2004, it could have taken its time to develop the industries which correspond to the society’s interests, not to the EU regulations. In addition, the migration outflow would have been smaller; therefore, people who are desperately needed in Latvia to cultivate the economy would have been available. Hence, the money influx into an economically stronger country would not have resulted in such a crisis. In this case Latvia would have experienced a slow and stable economic and social welfare growth. However, at some point in time, say 10 years later than the original accession date, Latvia should have joined the EU, as it is too small to be acting alone on the global stage. Latvia does not have significant raw materials or highly developed industries; thus, it lacks international power. Its needs and ideas are heard and pushed forward only in cases when stronger partners share the same interests. The EU is a platform where Latvia can find like-minded countries; therefore, it can find “allies” and together strive for developments and economic and political stability.

As for the Latvia’s situation in the EU, in 2014, Latvia is expected to join the Eurozone if it fulfils the requirements. At the moment, it is believed that Latvia will succeed and be allowed to join, but opinions whether the country really needs to adapt the Euro vary. In September 2012, the public opinion on the Euro adaptation was record low, as only 13% of Latvians support the idea. Being a member of Eurozone would further disable Latvia to control its monetary policy and raise the prices which would not correspond to the income earned by a less productive workforce and industries compared to the ones in other EU states. Therefore, many experts believe that Latvia should postpone its adoption of the Euro until the future of the Eurozone is clearer and Latvia recovers from the economic recession and advances its production regarding productivity and value added.

Once Latvia substitutes its Latvian Lats for the Euro, it will be economically even more dependent from the EU and its regulations, but it would also present new trade opportunities for Latvian companies and therefore cultivate the economy and increase human well-being. The state would also become more creditworthy to foreign investors. Nevertheless, one should not forget how the FDI affected the economy three years ago. Swedish banks, which acquired Latvian banks, issued loans excessively and irresponsibly during the pre-crisis period; thus, fuelling unsustainable and imaginary private consumption and property prices in the country. Sweden’s position, demanding severe budget cuts that affected education and the health sector, was indicative of their fear of losses in case the loans issued decrease in value due to devaluation. Latvia has to be well prepared before welcoming Euro as a replacement for its Lats, which was only reintroduced in 1993.

EVA MAURINA
eva.maurina@inbox.lv
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna

References

Bajrektarevic, A. (2013), Of 9/11 and 11/9 – How did Europe become itself? Taylor & Francis, UK
Bajrektarevic, A. (2012), Future of Europe Europe’s World, Brussels
Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2011), Materiālā nenodrošinātība Latvijā. Riga: 2011.
Jundzis, T. (2010), Latvijas Valsts Atjaunošanas Parlamentārais Ceļš, 1989-1993. Rīga: Latvijas Zinātņu akadēmijas Baltijas stratēgisko pētijumu centrs.
LETA (2010. gada 11. 3), Ielādēts 2010. gada 19. 5 no KAS JAUNS: http://www.kasjauns.lv/lv/news/sia-vares-dibinat-ar-viena-lata-pamatkapitalu&news_id=18184
LETA (2004, November 14), Muciņš skaidro izmaksu pieaugumu veselības aprūpē. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from TVnet:

http://www.tvnet.lv/zinas/latvija/204012-mucins_skaidro_izmaksu_pieaugumu_veselibas_aprupe

Memo, M. (2000, July 13), “Will Joining EU and NATO Benefit Latvia?” Retrieved March 12, 2012, from The Baltic Times:

http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/35/

Pabriks, A., and Purs, A. (2001), Latvia: The Challenges of Change. London: Routledge.
Paiders, J. (2002), Nē Eiropai! Vai Latvijai ir nākotne ārpus Eiropas Savienības? Rīga: JPA.
Rajevska, F. (2005), Social Policy in Latvia. Oslo: Fafo.
Tragakes, E., Brigis, G., Karaskevica, J., Rurane, A., Stuburs, A., and Zusmane, E. (2008), Latvia: Health System Review. Retrieved February 17, 2012, from European Observatory of Health Systems and Policies:

http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/95124/E91375.pdf

UNDP (2011). Human Development Report 2011: Latvia. Retrieved March 12, 2012, from HDR: http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/LVA.pdf

The article Latvia: 20 Years To Trade Economic Independence For Political Sovereignty – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IPCS

By Prof Chintamani Mahapatra

In recent years, Asia-Pacific region has caught global attention more for periodic political upheavals than for its economic dynamism. Most of the political turmoil, significantly, has been caused by the fastest growing economy—the people’s Republic of China.

The apprehension that economically sound China will generate political heat and will lead to muscular assertion of Chinese influence seems to be coming true. The latest in the series of regional political turbulences has been sparked once again by China when the Xi Jinping government made a unilateral decision to establish an Air Defence Identification Zone and asked other countries to inform the Chinese authorities in advance any of their aircraft entering the zone or else face “emergency defence measures”.

This sudden declaration on 23 November last surprised many countries and forced some to react strongly. While Japan asked its civil airlines to reject Chinese authority, the United States responded after two days by flying one of its nuclear capable B 52 bombers over the zone without informing the Chinese. While the Obama Administration stated that the aircraft was unarmed, who had the ability to verify?

Obviously, the United States did not desire to take a step that would unnecessary spark military confrontation, but its quick response aimed at sending a strong signal that the Pentagon would not tolerate imposition of any restrictions on the open skies by the Chinese. Subsequently Japan and South Korea, two American allies housing US military bases and thousands of US troops, followed the US example and sent their own aircraft to fly through the zone without informing China. South Korea went a step ahead and declared its own ADIZ that overlapped the Chinese ADIZ, significantly over a disputed islet, called Leodo. The Lower House of the Japanese Diet passed a resolution against China’s behaviour in East China Sea.

It is inconceivable that Japan and South Korea would have responded so strongly without Washington winking at those moves. The smart move by the US, after the voyage of B 52 bombers, was reflected in the advisory the Obama administration issued to US airlines to respect the Chinese ADIZ and inform the Chinese authorities, while entering the zone.

What explains the US behaviour and ambiguous measures? US Secretary of State John Kerry goes to Tokyo and Seoul and reiterates US commitments to the respective alliances close on the heels of the Chinese declaration of the ADIZ. Then he goes to Beijing and says little during his interactions with the media after five hours of discussion with President Xi Jinping.

There was, of course, a precedent to such US diplomatic ambiguities. Last year, Sino-Japanese tension over the sovereignty claims on Shenkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea flared up soon after the Japanese government bought those islands from Japanese owners. The United States at once reiterated its commitment to US-Japan Treaty of Alliance and simultaneously assuaged Beijing that Washington would not take a position on the sovereignty issue.

The Chinese assertiveness and the American responses speak volumes of slow but steady emergence of a new kind of relationship between the existing superpower and the emerging superpower. This is not a new kind of major power relationship that President Xi Jinping proposed during his summit with President Barak Obama in June last year. This is also not the kind of a G-2 relationship that the Obama Administration envisioned during the early years of his first term.

The emerging pattern of Sino-US interactions symbolizes “cold confrontation” between a hegemon that appears to be experiencing relative decline of its influence in world affairs and a rising power that has begun to assert its position in the world after its miraculous economic achievements.

The US strategic planners have long been carefully monitoring China’s military modernization, particularly capacity building of its Air Force and the Navy. The US suspects that the PLA has been striving hard to acquire sea-denial and anti-access capabilities that would compromise the so-far-unrestricted mobility of the US navy and air force in the Asia Pacific region. In fact, the Pentagon has already made investment, despite the defence budget cut, to develop a new concept of Air-Sea Battle that would render Chinese anti-access/sea-denial strength vulnerable.

Prof Chintamani Mahapatra
Chairperson, Canadian, US & Latin American Studies, JNU

The article China And ADIZ: Cold Confrontation With The US? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

By Karl Starns

Despite disappointment for the European Union and its Eastern Partnership Initiative with Ukraine at Vilnius, the EU need not be discouraged and should look forward to success at the Riga summit in June 2015. Riga can be the success Vilnius wasn’t. In Ukraine, time now favors the EU and will only erode obstructions on the road to European association. By June 2015, Ukraine may be able to pivot toward Europe through only weakened resistance.

Europe’s Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius did not produce the success with Ukraine that was hoped for. Last-minute decisions, failure to meet European Union conditions, frantic political maneuvering, and external pressure derailed Ukraine’s signing of a European Association Agreement that would have moved Ukraine closer to the European Union and the West. The signing of an Association Agreement at the Vilnius summit was expected by many in the EU and Ukraine to be a landmark success for the EU’s Eastern Partnership Initiative and supporters of European integration in Ukraine. The summit has come and gone, hopes were dashed, and future progress may seem grim to some. However, the next Eastern Partnership summit scheduled for June 2015 in Riga has all the potential to be the success hoped for in Vilnius. In the time between summits, many of the roadblocks that hampered Vilnius may be removed. Time is on the EU’s side.

At the eleventh hour, several roadblocks appeared that derailed Ukraine’s European progress at the Vilnius summit. As the summit approached, Ukraine’s parliament voted to officially shelve all preparatory work for signing the EU Association Agreement. Ukraine also failed to approve legislation to release incarcerated former presidential candidate and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoschenko, a critical condition set by the EU for signing any agreement. Political maneuvering by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and external pressure from the Russian Federation also obstructed Ukraine’s European path. The interim between the Vilnius summit and the Riga summit in June 2015 could likely see the resolution of most if not all of these roadblocks.

The release of Yulia Tymoschenko is a critical issue for the European Union. Before the EU will approve an association agreement for Ukraine, it insists that Ukraine allow former presidential candidate and previous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoschenko to seek medical treatment in Germany – for spinal injuries stemming from a slipped disk – and her eventual pardon. After the 2010 presidential election and the victory of President Viktor Yanukovych, the courts reopened a 2004 court case against freshly-defeated Tymoschenko for alleged abuse of powers during her time as prime minister. This came immediately after she declared the presidential election fraudulent and the new government illegitimate. She was sentenced to seven years in prison where she remains today.

The European Union sees her incarceration as politically motivated and an example of selective justice in the country – practices the European Union’s values do not tolerate. There is now plenty of time for Ukraine’s government to consider a pardon for Tymoschenko before the Riga summit. Pressure from Yanukovych’s opponents will make this even more likely. In February 2015, Ukraine is scheduled to have its next presidential election. If Yanukovych is reelected, it will be his last term and much of the political motivation for keeping Tymoschenko in prison will be diminished. If he loses, the opposition candidate is even more likely to consider pardoning her. Either way, time will likely favor Tymoschenko as well.

Political maneuvering by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych will also be constrained or could even be removed from the calculus before the summit in Riga. His recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi raise concerns that Ukraine might repeat Armenia’s sudden u-turn toward the Moscow-led Eurasian Customs Union.

In September, after several months of work had gone into signing its own Association Agreement with Europe, Armenia surprised everyone by abandoning its work with the Eastern Partnership and abruptly joining the Eurasian Customs Union. Despite surface appearances, Ukraine cannot make such a u-turn without getting stuck on the median. Again, the approaching presidential election in February 2015 significantly constrains President Yanukovych’s ability to make any sudden shift toward Moscow.

The next presidential election in Ukraine will likely place its relationship with the European Union and Russia at its center. Right now, the pro-European opposition in Ukraine is more energized than at any time since the Orange Revolution. Any further moves made by Yanukovych toward the Eurasian Customs Union or away from Europe will only strengthen his opponent in 2015. If President Yanukovych tries an Armenian-style u-turn now, he will certainly crash on the median, and it will likely cost him the election. No matter who emerges victorious, the presidential election in 2015 is geared to be a referendum on Ukraine’s orientation with either Europe or Russia.

External economic pressure from the Russian Federation was another critical factor that influenced Yanukovych’s decision to delay Ukraine’s European integration. Russia desperately wants Ukraine to join its Eurasian Customs Union, and has made it brutally clear that admission to it and the signing of an association agreement with the EU are mutually exclusive decisions.

EU officials have frequently stated that the European Association Agreement was not a certain path to EU membership. The pro-European opposition in Ukraine has often expressed that they want a path to EU membership.

The Russian Federation made the economic benefits of its special relationship with Ukraine the cost of signing the European Association Agreement. Russia then used its weight to demonstrate to Ukraine exactly what it would be risking for just a “maybe” on EU membership.

The time leading up to the Riga summit will allow the EU to offer more incentives to Ukraine to better protect it from Moscow’s economic pressure. The European Union is still suffering from expansion fatigue and has only recently come out of the Euro Crisis. The interim between Vilnius and Riga will give the EU time to become more confident in their recovery, and more able to extend assistance to Ukraine to better protect it from Russian economic pressure.

Also by June 2015, the United States and the European Union should have finalized their own free trade agreement. Closer U.S. ties with the EU bring a better chance that the United States will reinforce Ukraine’s economic parachute in time for the Riga summit in 2015. It is also likely that U.S. political interest in Ukraine will increase in the time between summits. U.S. interest and relations with Ukraine have been at a low point since September when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling for the unconditional release of Yulia Tymoschenko. A presidential victory for the opposition in 2015 or the release of Tymoschenko will only encourage U.S. interest in Ukraine. Any likely political shift in Ukraine will be of more interest to the U.S. than the current status quo.

Time may solve most of these problems even sooner. Protests in Ukraine have been occurring in Kiev and gaining momentum since its parliament voted to halt work on the association agreement. The pro-Europe demonstrations are calling for the release of Tymoschenko, the resignation of President Yanukovych, and resuming work toward European integration – and they are continuing to swell. Also noteworthy has been the lack of any counter protests in support of President Yanukovych in Ukraine’s east (Yanukovych’s base) and strengthening ties with Russia. Any concessions made to protestors in Kiev will be steps toward the European Union.

The Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius was not the success the European Union was hoping for, but the EU should not be discouraged. Time is on the EU’s side, and will likely remove several of the key barriers that kept Ukraine from signing a European Association Agreement in Vilnius. The Vilnius summit may not have been a success, but it brought several issues to the foreground that time may resolve before the Riga summit in June 2015. Vilnius was a disappointment, but it may have paved the way for success in Riga.

Karl Starns is a recent M.A. graduate in International Studies with a regional focus on Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia; and specializations in global business and supply chain management from the University of Washington. He recently relocated to the Beltway from Seattle after completing contract work at Amazon.com to pursue opportunities in international affairs. He originally heralds from Louisiana where he completed B.A’s in both History and German Language from Louisiana State University

The article Ukraine And EU: Time Brings Hopes For Success In Riga – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By James Petras

Introduction

The recent interim accord between the six world powers and Iran has been hailed as an “historic breakthrough”, a “significant accomplishment” by most leading politicians, editorialists and columnists (Financial Times, (FT) 11/26/13, p. 2), the exceptions being notably Israeli leaders and the Zionist power brokers in North America and Western Europe (FT 11/26/13, p. 3).

What constitutes this “historic breakthrough”? Who got what? Did the agreement provide for symmetrical concessions? Does the interim agreement strengthen or weaken the prospects for peace and prosperity in the Gulf and the Middle East? To address these and other questions, one also has to include the powerful influence wielded by Israel on US and European policymakers (Stephen Lendman

The Historical Record: Past Precedents

For over a decade the major US intelligence agencies have published detailed accounts of Iran’s nuclear program (see especially the National Intelligence Estimate 2007 (NIE)). The common consensus has been that Iran did not have any program for developing nuclear weapons (National Intelligence Estimate 2004, 2007). As a consequence of this ‘absence of evidence’, the entire Western offensive against Iran had to focus on Iran’s “potential capacity” to shift sometime in the future towards a weapons program. The current agreement is directed toward undermining Iran’s potential ‘capacity’ to have a nuclear weapons program: there are no weapons to destroy, no weapon plans exist, no war plans exist and there are no strategic offensive military operations on the Iranian ‘drawing board’. We know this, because repeated US intelligence reports have told us that no weapons programs exist! So the entire current negotiations are really over weakening Iran’s ongoing peaceful, legal nuclear program and undermining any future advance in nuclear technology that might protect Iran from an Israeli or US attack, when they decide to activate their “military option”, as was pulled off in the war to destroy Iraq.

Secondly, Iran’s flexible and accommodating concessions are not new or a reflection of a newly elected President. As Gareth Porter has pointed out: Nearly ten years ago, on Nov. 15, 2004, Iran agreed “on a voluntary basis to continue and extend an existing suspension of enrichment to include all enrichment related and reprocessing activities” (Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service 11/26/13). According to Porter, Iran was ending “all manufacturing, assembly, installation and testing of centrifuges or their components”. Despite these generous concessions, on March 2005, the Europeans and the US refused to negotiate on an Iranian proposal for a comprehensive settlement that would guarantee against enrichment toward weapons grade. Iran ended its voluntary suspension of all enrichment activity. The US, led by Zionists embedded in Treasury, (Stuart Levey) then escalated sanctions. Europe and the UN Security Council followed in kind. The practice of the US and Europe first securing major concessions from Iran and then refusing to reciprocate by pursuing a comprehensive settlement is a well established diplomatic practice. Iran’s flexibility and concessions were apparently interpreted as “signs of weakness” to be exploited in their push toward ‘regime change’ (An Unusual Success for Sanctions Policy, FT 11/27/13, p. 10). Sanctions are seen as “effective” political-diplomatic weapons designed to further weaken the regime. Policy-makers continue to believe that sanctions should be maintained as a tool to divide the Iranian elite, disarm and dismantle the country’s defensive capacity and to prepare for “regime change” or a military confrontation without fear of serious resistance from the Iranians.

The entire charade of Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons as a threat’ has been orchestrated by the Israeli regime and its army of ‘Israel Firsters’ embedded in the US Executive, Congress and mass media. The ‘Big Lie’, promoted by Israel’s propaganda machine and network of agents, has been repeatedly and thoroughly refuted by the sixteen major US Intelligence Estimates or NIE’s, especially in 2004 and 2007. These consensus documents were based on extensive research, inside sources (spies) and highly sophisticated surveillance. The NIEs categorically state that Iran suspended all efforts toward a nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not made any decision or move to restart that program. However, Israel has actively spread propaganda, based on fabricated intelligence reports, claiming the contrary in order to trick and push the US into a disastrous military confrontation with Israel’s regional rival. And the President of the United States ignores his own intelligence sources in order to repeat Israel’s ‘Big Lie’!

Given the fact that Iran is not a ‘nuclear threat’, now or in the past, and given that the US, European and Israeli leaders know this, why do they continue and even increase the sanctions against Iran? Why do they threaten to destroy Iran with pre-emptive attacks? Why the current demands for even more concessions from Tehran? The current negotiations and ‘agreement’ tell us a great deal about the ‘ultimate’ or final strategic aims of the White House and its European allies.

The ‘Interim Agreement’: A Most Asymmetrical Compromise

Iran’s negotiators conceded to the’ 5 plus 1’ all their major demands while they received the most minimum of concessions, (FT 1/25/13, p. 2).

Iran agreed (1) to stop all enrichment to 20 percent, (2) reduce the existing 20 percent enriched stockpile to zero, (3) convert all low enriched uranium to a form that cannot be enriched to a higher level, (4) halt progress on its enrichment capacity, (5) leave inoperable half of its centrifuges at Natanz and three-quarters of those at Fordow, and (6) freeze all activities at Arak heavy water facility which when built could produce plutonium. Iran also agreed to end any plans to construct a facility capable of reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel. The Iranian negotiators agreed to the most pervasive and intensive “inspections” of its most important strategic defense facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been closely allied with the US and its EU counterparts. These “inspections” and data collection will take place on a daily bases and include access to Natanz and Fordow. The strategic military value of these inspections is inestimable because it could provide data, heretofore unavailable, for any future missile strike from the US or Israel when they decide to shift from negotiations to the ‘military option’. In addition, the IAEA inspectors will be allowed to access other strategic facilities, including sites for developing centrifuges, uranium mines and mills. Future “negotiations” may open highly sensitive military defense sites such as Parchin, where conventional missiles and warheads are stored.

Obviously, there will not be any reciprocal inspections of the US missile sites, warships and military bases in the Persian Gulf, which store weapons of mass destruction aimed at Iran! Nor will the IAEA inspect Israel’s nuclear weapons—facilities in Dimona – despite Israeli threats to attack Iran. No comparable diminution of “military capacity” or nuclear weapons, aimed at Iran by some members of the ‘5 plus 1 and Israel’ is included in this “historic breakthrough”.

The ‘5 plus 1’ conceded meager concessions: Unfreezing of 7% of Iranian-owned assets sequestered in Western banks ($7 billion of $100 billion) and ‘allowing’ Iran to enrich uranium to 5 percent –and even that “concession” is conditioned by the proviso that it does not exceed current stockpiles of 5% enriched uranium. While the Iranian negotiators claim they secured (sic) ‘the right’ to enrich uranium, the US refused to even formally acknowledge it!

In effect, Iran has conceded the maximum concessions regarding its strategic national defenses, nuclear facilities and uranium enrichment in what is supposedly the ‘initial’ round of negotiations, while ‘receiving’ the minimum of reciprocal concessions. This highly unfavorable, asymmetrical framework, will lead the US to see Iran as ‘ripe for regime change’ and demand even more decisive concessions designed to further weaken Iran’s defensive capacity. Future concessions will increase Iran’s vulnerability to intelligence gathering and undermine its role as a regional power and strategic ally of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the current beleaguered governments in Syria and Iraq and the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

The ‘Final Settlement’: Decline and Fall of the Islamic Nationalist Republic?

The real goals of the US sanctions policy and the recent decision to enter into negotiations with Iran have to do with several imperial objectives. The first objective is to facilitate the rise of a neo-liberal regime in Iran, which would be committed to privatizing major oil and gas fields and attracting foreign capital even at the cost of strategic national defense.

President Rohani is seen in Washington as the Islamic version of the former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev. Rohani, like his ‘model’ Gorbachev, ‘gave away the store’ while expecting Iran’s imperial adversaries to reciprocate.

The ‘5 plus 1’, mostly veterans of the ‘imperial shake down’, will take all of Rohani’s concessions and demand even more! They will “allow” Iran to recover its own frozen assets in slow droplets, which the neo-liberals in Tehran will celebrate as ‘victories’ even while the country stagnates under continued sanctions and the people suffer! The US Administration will retain sanctions in order to accommodate their Israeli-Zionist patrons and to provoke even deeper fissures in the regime. Washington’s logic is that the more concessions Teheran surrenders, the more difficult it will be to reverse the process under public pressure from the Iranian people. This ‘rift’ between the conciliatory government of Rohani and the Iranian people, according to CIA strategists, will lead to greater internal discontent in Iran and will further weaken the regime. A regime under siege will need to rely even more on their Western interlocutors. President Rohani ‘relying on the 5-plus-1’ will be like the condemned leaning into the hangman’s noose.

Rohani and the Neo-Liberal Collaborators

The ascendancy of Rohani to the Presidency brings in its wake an entire new political-economic leadership intent on facilitating large-scale, long-term penetration by Western and Chinese oil and gas companies in the most lucrative sites. Iran’s new oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, has made overtures to all the oil majors, and offers to revise and liberalize the terms for investment and provide concessions designed to greatly enhance multinational profits, in the most lucrative fields (FT, 11/27/13, p. 2). Zangeneh has kicked out the nationalists and replaced them with a cohort of liberal economists. He is preparing to eventually lay-off tens of thousands of public sector oil employees as an incentive to attract foreign corporate partners. He is prepared to lower fuel subsidies for the Iranian people and raise energy prices for domestic consumers. The liberals in power have the backing of millionaires, speculators and political power brokers, like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani head of the key Expediency Council, which drafts policy. Many of Rafsanjani’s followers have been appointed to key positions in President Rohani’s administration (FT, 11/26/13, p.3).

Central to the ‘Troika’s (Rohani-Rafsanjani-Zangeneh) strategy is securing the collaboration of multi-national energy corporations. However that requires lifting the US-imposed sanctions against Iran in the shortest time possible. This explains the hasty, unseemly and one-sided Iranian concessions to the ‘5-plus-1’. In other words, the driving force behind Iran’s giveaways is not the “success of sanctions” but the ascendancy to power of the Iranian comprador class and its neo-liberal ideology which informs their economic strategy.

Several major obstacles confront the ‘Troika’. The major concessions, initially granted, leave few others to concede, short of dismantling the entire nuclear energy infrastructure and lobotomizing its entire scientific and technical manpower, which would destroy the legitimacy of the regime. Secondly, having easily secured major concessions without lifting the sanctions the ‘5-plus-1’ are free to escalate their demands for further concessions, which in effect will deepen Iran’s vulnerability to Western espionage, terrorism (as in the assassination of Iranian scientists and engineers) and preemptive attack. As the negotiations proceed it will become crystal clear that the US intends to force the ‘Troika’ to open the gates to more overtly pro-western elites in order to eventually polarize Iranian society.

The end-game is a weakened, divided, liberalized regime, vulnerable to internal and external threats and willing to cut-off support to nationalist regimes in the Middle East, including Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The US recognized and seized upon the rise of the new neo-liberal Rohani regime and secured major unilateral concessions as a down payment to move step-by-step toward bloody regime change. Washington’s “end game” is the conversion of Iran to a client petrol-state allied with the Saudi-Israeli axis.

As far-fetched as that appears today, the logic of negotiations is moving in that direction.

The Israeli-US Differences: A Question of Tactics and Timing

Israeli leaders and their Zionist agents, embedded in the US government, howl, pull out their hair and bluster against the ‘5-plus-1’ transitional agreement with Iran. They downplay the enormous one-sided concessions. They rant and rave about “hidden agenda”, “deceit and deception”. They fabricate conspiracies and repeat lies about secret “nuclear weapons programs” beyond the reach (and imagination) of any non-Zionist inspector. But the reality is that the “historic breakthrough” includes the dismantling of a major part of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, while retaining sanctions – a huge victory of the Zionists! The ‘5-plus-1’ negotiated a deal which has secured deeper and more extensive changes in Iran while strengthening Western power in the Persian Gulf than all of Netanyahu’s decade-long campaign of issuing ‘military threats’.

Netanyahu and his brainwashed Zionist-Jewish defenders in the US insist on new, even harsher sanctions because they want immediate war and regime-change (a puppet regime). Echoing his Israeli boss Netanyahu, New York Senator Chuck “the schmuck” Schumer, commenting on the interim agreement brayed, “The disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will pass additional sanctions” (Barrons 12/2/13 p14) This is the same stupid policy that the embedded Zionists in Washington pursued with Iraq. Under the Bush Presidency, top neo-con Zionists, like Wolfowitz, Ross, Indyk, Feith, Abrams and Libby, implemented Ariel Sharon’s war dictates: (1) murdered Saddam Hussein (regime change) (2) destroyed the Iraq’s economy, society and modern infrastructure, and (3) provoked ethnic fragmentation and religious war – costing the US over 2 trillion dollars on the war, thousands of US lives (millions of Iraqi lives) and at a cost of hundreds of billions in high oil prices to US consumers – further shattering the US domestic economy.

Among the few moderately intelligent and influential Zionist journalists, Gideon Rachman, who realizes the strategic value of the step-by-step approach of the Obama regime, has called for the White House “to take on the Israel lobby over Iran” (FT, 11/26/13, p. 10). Rachman knows that if Israel’s howling stooges in the US Congress drag the country into war, the American people will turn against the Israeli lobby, its fellow travelers and, most likely, Israel. Rachman and a few others with a grain of political sophistication know that the Rohani regime in Tehran has just handed over key levers of power to the US. They know that the negotiations are moving toward greater integration of Iran into the US orbit. They know, in the final instance, that Obama’s step-by-step diplomatic approach will be less costly and more effective than Netanyahu’s military ‘final solution’. And they know that, ultimately, Obama’s and Israel’s goal is the same: a weak neo-liberalized Iran, which cannot challenge Israel’s military dominance, nuclear weapons monopoly, annexation of Palestine and aggression against Lebanon and Syria.

Conclusion

Having secured a “freeze” on Iran’s consequential nuclear research and having on site intelligence on all Iran’s major national defense and security facilities, the US can compile a data base for an offensive military strategy whenever it likes. Iran, on the other hand, receives no information or reports on US, European or Israeli military movement, weapons facilities or offensive regional capabilities. This is despite the fact that the ‘5-plus-1’ countries and Israel have recently launched numerous devastating offensive military operations and wars in the region (Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya and Syria). Having set the agenda for negotiations as one of further unilateral concessions from Iran, the US can at any point, threaten to end negotiations – and follow up with its ‘military option’.

The next step in the unilateral disarmament of Iran will be the US demand to close the strategic Arak heavy water plant. The US will demand that Iran produce a basic minimum amount of uranium and retain a stock pile to cover a few days or weeks for energy, research or medical isotopes. Washington will strip Iran of its capacity to enrich by imposing quantitative and qualitative limits on the centrifuges that Iran can possess and operate. During the next round of negotiations, the US will preclude Iran from undertaking the reprocessing of uranium at Arak or any other site. The US will tell ‘the Troika’ that the “right” (sic) to enrich does not extend to the right to reprocess. The US will demand stringent “transparency” for Iran, while maintaining its own high level secrecy, evasion and ambiguity with regard to its military, diplomatic and economic sanctions policy.

In a word, the US will demand that Iran surrender its sovereignty and subject itself to the colonial oversight of an imperial power, which has yet to make a single move in even reducing economic sanctions. The loss of sovereignty, the continued sanctions and the drive by the US to curtail Iran’s regional influence will certainly lead to popular discontent in Iran – and a response from the nationalist and populist military (Revolutionary Guards) and the working poor. The crisis resulting from the Troika’s adoption of the “Gorbachev Model” will lead to an inevitable confrontation. Overtime the US will seek out an Islamist strongman, an Iranian version of Yeltsin who can savage the nationalists and popular movements and turn over the keys to the state, treasury and oil fields to a “moderate and responsible” pro-Western client regime.

The entire US strategy of degrading Iran’s military defenses and securing major neo-liberal “reforms” depends on President Rohani remaining in power, which can only result from the Obama regime’s compliance in lifting some of the oil and banking sanctions (FT 12/1/13, p. 6). Paradoxically, the greatest obstacle to achieving Washington’s strategic roll-back goal is Netanyahu’s power to block sanction relief – and impose even, harsher sanctions. The result of such an Israel Firster victory in the US would be the end of negotiations, the strengthening of Iran’s nuclear program, the demise of the oil privatization program and added support to regional nationalist movements and governments. President Rohani desperately needs western imperial reassurance of the benefits (sanction relief) of his initial giveaways. Otherwise his credibility at home would be irreparably damaged.

The imperial prize of a militarily weakened and neo-liberalized Iran, collaborating in maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, is enormous but it clashes with the Zionist Power Configuration, which insists on all power to the Jewish state from the Suez to the Persian Gulf.

The article Iran-US Interim Agreement: Historic Breakthrough Or Historic Sellout? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Palestine Chronicle

By Kim Bullimore

Nelson Mandela, a courageous resistance fighter is dead. Mandela died on December 5, aged 95. He devoted his entire life to the struggle for his people’s freedom, spending 27 years in prison for both his unarmed and armed resistance to South Africa’s brutal and racist apartheid regime.

With the death of this courageous resistance fighter, we are now greeted with a sickening spectacle which whitewashes his history and the fact that Mandela was first and foremost a freedom fighter. Politicians and commentators in Australia, the USA, the UK, Israel, Europe and elsewhere, many of whom who had previously labelled him a terrorist, supported his incarceration and the South African apartheid regime, are now pretending they did no such thing and are falling over themselves to laud him as a hero, a great man and a man of peace.

Their eulogies whitewash the South African anti-apartheid struggle and Mandela’s actions as a freedom fighter. They have rinsed clean, from their histories of him, that Mandela was a radical, who worked with and was inspired by communists both in South Africa and Latin America (Today, in the wake of Mandela’s death, the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) have issued a statement confirming that Mandela was a member of the SACP in 1962 when he was arrested and imprisoned – something which had been previously denied for political reasons). In order to create a whitewashed caricature of Mandela, these revisionists are attempting to rewrite history and the fact that Mandela’s resistance and struggle against apartheid encompassed all forms of disobedience and defiance, both violent and non-violent.

As a leader of the ANC Youth, which he helped found with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu in 1944, Mandela worked to convince the ANC to adopt mass militant non-violent tactics, which included boycotts and strikes. In the wake of the brutality of the 1960 Sharpville massacre which saw 69 unarmed Black South African’s gunned down by the regime, Mandela co-founded (with Walter Sisulu and Joe Slovo) the Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation which carried out sabotage against both military and civilian infrastructure in South Africa. In founding Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, Mandela took inspiration from the revolutionary struggle taking place in Cuba, in particular from Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s 26th of July Movement.

Mandela recognized the importance of all forms of struggle against the violent oppression being imposed on his people. In 1980, as the non-violent mass struggle once again began to flourish, both inside South Africa and internationally in the form of the boycott and sanctions anti-apartheid solidarity movement, he wrote in a smuggled message from his prison cell that “between the hammer of armed struggle and the anvil of united mass action, the enemy will be crushed.”

“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”

And today, as the revisionist politicians and commentators eulogize Mandela, they also seek to scrub from Mandela’s history his lifelong and steadfast support for the Palestinian people and their struggle. Just as they were complicit in supporting South Africa’s apartheid regime, many of these same revisionist politicians and commentators are today complicit in supporting Israel’s apartheid regime.

In 1948, the same year as the Palestinian Nakba which saw Zionist militia ethnically cleanse more 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and destroy more than 500 Palestinian villages, South Africa formally adopted the apartheid regime. Throughout the long years of Apartheid in South African, as Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s notes in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (2010), there were close military and trade ties between these two colonial oppressors. It is unsurprising therefore that there would be a close comradeship between the two struggles, viewing their struggles as one and the same: a struggle against colonialism, oppression and racism. For Mandela and the ANC, Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians were “comrades in arms” and they supported their struggle against the Israeli state – both armed and unarmed.

The comradeship between the two struggles was highlighted by Mandela, just sixteen days after he was released from 27 long years in prison in 1990. In February 1990, Mandela met with Yasser Arafat in Lusaka in Zambia. At Lusaka airport, Mandela embraced Arafat and reiterated his support for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian struggle telling the media that Arafat was “fighting against a unique form of colonialism and we wish him success in his struggle”. He went on to say, “I believe that there are many similarities between our struggle and that of the PLO” stating “We live under a unique form of colonialism in South Africa, as well as in Israel, and a lot flows from that.”

Eight months later, during his three day visit to Australia in October 1990, Mandela reiterated his support for the Palestinian struggle and the PLO saying: “We identify with them [the Palestinians] because we do not believe it is right for the Israeli government to suppress basic human rights in the conquered territories.”

Mandela told the Australian media, “We agree with the United Nations that international disputes should be settled by peaceful means. The belligerent attitude which is adopted by the Israeli government is to us unacceptable.”

He went on to tell the Australian media that the ANC did not consider the PLO a terrorist group, stating “If one has to refer to any of the parties as a terrorist state, one might refer to the Israeli government, because they are the people who are slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in the occupied territories, and we don’t regard that as acceptable.”

In 1997, in a speech on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela once again spoke in support of the Palestinian struggle stating “it behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice”. It was important, said Mandela, for South Africans “to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood” because “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world”.

Worse than Apartheid

Increasingly over the last decade, more and more South Africans who were active in the South African anti-Apartheid campaign have joined Mandela and have spoken out in support of the Palestinian struggle. In many cases, they have denounced Israel apartheid as being far worse than South African Apartheid.

Not only has Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu equated Israel’s policies and practices to Apartheid, in 2008 veteran South African anti-apartheid campaigners visited the Occupied West Bank and declared what they saw as worse than the apartheid they had experienced in their own country.

One of the participants who visited the West Bank as part of the trip, Mondli Makhanya, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, told veteran Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, “When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid”.

Another participant in the trip, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a member of the South African parliament, who had been imprisoned during the apartheid era for her opposition to the South African apartheid regime told Levy, “It is hard for me to describe what I am feeling. What I see here is worse than what we experienced”. When asked by Levy why she thought it was worse than South African apartheid, Madlala-Routledge explained, “The absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw”.

In November 2011, the Reverend Allan Aubrey Boesak, a veteran of the South African anti-apartheid struggle reiterated the assertion that Israeli apartheid is far worse than South African apartheid. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, Boesak, explain that “It is worse, not in the sense that apartheid was not an absolutely terrifying system in South Africa, but in the ways in which the Israelis have taken the apartheid system and perfected it, so to speak; sharpened it”. Boesak went onto explain:

“For instance, we had the Bantustans and we had the Group Areas Act and we had the separate schools and all of that but I don’t think it ever even entered the mind of any apartheid planner to design a town in such a way that there is a physical wall that separates people and that that wall denotes your freedom of movement, your freedom of economic gain, of employment, and at the same time is a tool of intimidation and dehumanization. We carried passes as the Palestinians have their ID documents but that did not mean that we could not go from one place in the city to another place in the city. The judicial system was absolutely skewed of course, all the judges in their judgments sought to protect white privilege and power and so forth, and we had a series of what they called “hanging judges” in those days, but they did not go far as to openly, blatantly have two separate justice systems as they do for Palestinians [who are tried in Israeli military courts] and Israelis [who are tried in civil, not military courts]. So in many ways the Israeli system is worse”.

ANC and South Africa’s Support for Palestinian BDS Campaign

In 2012, Mandela’s party, the African National Congress (ANC) which is also the ruling party of South Africa, formally endorsed and adopted as part of its official policy, the Palestinian call for Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In 2005 Palestinian civil society issued a call to the international community for a program and campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to be applied against Israel as a way to pressure Israel to end its violations of international law, respect Palestinian human rights and engage in fair negotiations for a just peace.

The ANC Conference not only formally endorsed the Palestinian BDS campaign but also adopted a resolution which specifically called for “all South Africans to support the programs and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”

The ANC conference also adopted two other resolutions relating to Palestine and Israel. One of the resolutions reiterated the ANC’s long held stance in support of the Palestinian struggle, stating “The ANC is unequivocal in its support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination, and unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed in the conflict with Israel.”

In addition, the conference also adopted a resolution condemning Israel’s treatment of African refugees stating “The ANC abhors the recent Israeli state-sponsored xenophobic attacks and deportation of Africans and request that this matter should be escalated to the African Union”

The adoption of the resolutions formalized the position already held by the ANC and the South African government. Two months before the conference, South Africa’s deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Ebrahim had noted that: “Because of the treatment and policies of Israel towards the Palestinian people, we strongly discourage South Africans from going there.”

In April 2013, the South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane reiterated the ruling ANC’s position, saying “the struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle”.

Mandela’s Legacy

Today, Mandela is honored by both those in struggle and by those in power. Once, however, he and his struggle were demonized and hated by those in power, including many of those same people now praising him today. And while mealy mouthed politicians and hypocritical commentators sing Mandela’s praise today, attempting to whitewash his legacy, they will not succeed in rewriting history.

For those in struggle, Mandela’s legacy will always be one of a freedom fighter. It will always be one of a courageous resistance fighter who waged an uncompromising struggle against colonialism, racism and oppression. His legacy to those of us in struggle will be that he was an internationalist, who saw his people’s freedom tied up with the freedom of others – who saw his people’s struggle as being no different from the struggle of the Palestinian people and all those struggling against colonialism, oppression and tyranny.

South African apartheid may be over, but apartheid has not ended. Apartheid is still alive and flourishing today in Israel. And today, the best way to honor Mandela, his legacy and the courageous struggle that he and his people fought against South Africa’s apartheid is to take a stand in support of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid and occupation.

This is Mandela’s legacy, a legacy of actions and deeds – not just empty words – in support of the struggle against injustice, oppression and a brutalizing regime which oppresses and dehumanizes an entire nation of people. As Mandela knew: apartheid was wrong in South Africa and it is wrong in Israel. Honor Mandela by joining the struggle for a Free Palestine, by joining the struggle against Israeli apartheid and by supporting the Palestinian BDS campaign!

- Kim Bullimore is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine (www.iwps.info) and the co-convenor of the Melbourne Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. She writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Red Flag (www.redflag.org.au).  Kim also has a blog here, where this article first appeared. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

The article Nelson Mandela, Palestine And The Fight Against Apartheid – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Seema Sengupta

He who rejects change is the architect of decay, said former UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) astounding victory in the just concluded assembly elections should be seen as a sign of a vibrant Indian democracy in full bloom. However, one should also pause and analyze the reasons behind Congress’ electoral debacle and ascertain whether this complete rout was the result of the so-called Narendra Modi magic.

People who are ecstatic over a BJP victory and confident about Modi’s ascendancy to throne in 2014 must be reminded that politics is the art of possibilities. Between now and May 2014, when the parliamentary poll is scheduled, there will be lot of ups and downs in the Indian political arena. Let us not forget that even “a week is a long time in politics.” Who knows, the fate of the Congress might change altogether with introduction of new ideas and a charismatic face.

Surely, the grand old party of Indian politics is in dire need of an image makeover and an equally powerful script to confront the slide. Indeed, a vacillating Congress leadership — including Rahul Gandhi, who virtually groped in the dark — caused a massive damage to the party’s electoral prospect by failing to read the pulse of the nation. It is time for the Congress to unleash its most potent weapon Priyanka Gandhi to stem the rot.

The people of India had voted Indira Gandhi back into power less than three years after overwhelmingly rejecting her dictatorial leadership during the emergency of the 1970s. There certainly is no reason why the Congress cannot bounce back with an assertive and decisive Priyanka leading from the front. Priyanka, 41, despite the Indian politics’ son-in-law syndrome, remains the best bet for a tottering Congress and 149.36 million young voters. She is youthful, passionate and sympathetic toward social issues and above all is not an intrinsic part of the routine political mudslinging that this nation has become used to these days. Indian women will find much needed solace in Priyanka and it will be easier for the masses to relate with her just like her grandmother Indira.

An increasingly intolerant India, where women are feeling unsafe every moment, will surely gain from Priyanka than a sexagenarian Modi. Moreover, the Congress needs a leader capable of retrieving the party’s lost glory given the fact that it has, over the years, forfeited its character of a political outfit representing a grand social coalition. Rahul Gandhi’s technocrat-like working style has only exacerbated the party’s discomfort. The BJP, on the other hand, must not take this election verdict as a gate-pass to power in 2014. The results of the four states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi cannot be extrapolated to predict the outcome of next summers’ parliamentary election because these provinces are in no way pan-India representative models.

Moreover, the minority vote share in the four states, with 72 parliamentary seats, is no more than 10 percent. Modi might be attracting some section of the masses with his eloquent rhetoric but cold electoral arithmetic does not favor him or his party.

Those who are predicting a near 180 seats for the BJP seems to be oblivious of the fact that the party’s base is confined to the Hindi heartland and they are not expected to give a fight in more than 350 parliamentary seats out of a total of 543.

Even if one is to presume that the BJP will gain from states like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Odhisa, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Delhi, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir from where they could not fetch a single representative last time around, they cannot hope to get a working majority. In fact, the ground reality is — Modi continues to be a pariah for the minority community and will not receive en-masse support from the Hindus either. Rather, Muslims hold the key to the 2014 general election outcome as the fate of approximately 220 parliamentary seats depends on their voting pattern.

Moreover, the BJP has no base in large swath of south and east of India while the province of Uttar Pradesh, which sends maximum number of lawmakers to the Parliament, will be a divided game with multiple contenders in the fray.

Adding to the woe, their existing allies are also on a weak footing. After Balasaheb Thackeray’s demise and the fratricidal split over leadership issue, the hard-line Shiv Sena’s vote share is bound to fall drastically. In Punjab the Badals of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) may not do well due to public disenchantment. Besides, when Modi’s government — citing Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 — ordered 500 odd Sikh families settled in Gujarat to sell their land and return to Punjab since they were not of Gujarati origin, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal remained mute. Hence, Modi’s companionship will certainly have a harmful effect on the SAD’s poll prospect in 2014. Then, prospective allies like Jayalalitha, Mamata Banerjee, Chandra Babu Naidu, Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, Naveen Patnaik, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and other regional political satraps will play their cards close to the chest due to a combination of personal ambition and significant minority vote share in respective political fiefdom.

Therefore, everything is not yet lost for the Congress and the BJP cannot be complacent either because their restricted national outreach gives enough scope to alternative forces like Aam Admi Party (AAP) and others to fill the political vacuum.

This article appeared at Arab News and is reprinted with permission.

The article India: Not All Is Lost For Congress – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By James M. Dorsey

In a bid to reassure Gulf states worried about a US-Iranian rapprochement and critical of American Middle East policy, the Obama administration has opted to back Saudi efforts for regional hegemony through greater integration of Gulf military capabilities in the framework of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The United States-backed Saudi blueprint would effectively establish the kingdom as the region’s military superpower and first line of defence while allowing the US to balance its commitment to the region with its goal of pivoting towards Asia. But it risks splitting the GCC which was established to enhance Gulf security.

Giving Saudis what they want

Speaking at a think-tank dialogue just a stone’s throw away from Bahrain’s restive Shiite neighbourhoods, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel made this move on his first visit to the Gulf since last month’s agreement between the United Nations Security Council permanent members – the US, China, Russia, Britain and France – plus Germany and Iran aimed at resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. Hagel handed Riyadh what it wanted: a first step towards a union of the GCC member states – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman – with the kingdom as the dominant power.

In doing so, Hagel went beyond seeking to reassure Saudi Arabia and its closest allies within the GCC that its rapprochement with Iran would not be at the expense of the energy-rich, fragile Gulf autocracies. The US also wanted to show that it would remain committed to its defence umbrella for the region despite focusing increasingly on Asia.

Confidence between the US and Saudi Arabia, home to a fiercely anti-Shiite puritan interpretation of Islam, has eroded as a result of Saudi opposition to the Iranian agreement because of the prospect of Shiite Iran reintegrating into the international community and emerging as a power house capable of rivalling the kingdom.

Saudi confidence has been further undermined by American support for the popular uprisings in the Arab world; failure to provide Syrian rebels with the arms needed to defeat the regime of embattled president Bashar al-Assad; inability to force a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and an increased US focus on Asia rather than the Middle East and North Africa. Saudi concerns have sparked a series of critical statements of US policy and persuaded the kingdom to demonstratively refuse to join the UN Security Council when it was elected to a seat.

Fear of being swallowed

By laying out a series of steps to put the GCC, in which Saudi Arabia is by far the most powerful member, rather than individual Gulf states at the centre of US defence policy, Hagel effectively endorsed Saudi calls for a union of Gulf states. This is a move that so far has been thwarted by fears among some of its smaller members that they would be swallowed by their big brother. Indeed, the Saudis failed in their initiative in the last year to forge a union with Bahrain, where Saudi and UAE troops are based since the brutal squashing of a 2011 popular uprising to bolster the regime.

In a rare public statement against Gulf union, Omani minister of state for foreign affairs Yousef bin Alawi Al Ibrahim, a onetime representative of a separatist movement, confronted his Saudi counterpart, Nizar Bin Obaid Madani, in no uncertain terms. “We absolutely don’t support Gulf union. There is no agreement in the region on this …. If this union materialises, we will deal with it but we will not be a member. Oman’s position is very clear. If there are new arrangements for the Gulf to confront existing or future conflicts, Oman will not be part of it,” he said.

Al Ibrahim suggested that the Gulf’s major problems were internal rather than external and should be the region’s focus. Last year, Ahmed al Saadoun, at the time speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament, rejected a Gulf union, saying that as a democracy Kuwait could not united with autocratic states.

Barely a hundred metres from where he spoke, police vehicles and machine-gun mounted armoured vehicles patrol the perimeter of the Shiite neighbourhood of Karbad. Graffiti on its walls reflects the area’s mood. Slogans include: ‘Down with King Hamad’, ‘Martyrdom is our habit’, ‘Our goal is toppling the regime’, and ‘we bow only in front of God’. A local resident said: “This will never end. It’s gone too far. Reform is the only way out.”

Saudis pleased, but not smaller Gulf states

Hagel couched the new US approach in terms of “strategic agility” and “wise deployment of our influence”. The US would help the GCC integrate its missile defence capabilities, he added, by emphasising the GCC as a “multilateral framework that is the best way to develop an inter-operable and integrated regional missile defence”. This would include missile defence in annual meetings of US and Gulf air force commanders and officials; making missile defence, marine security and counterterrorism-related sales to the GCC as a group rather than to individual member states; and instituting an annual US-GCC defence ministers conference. Hagel said the first such conference should be held in the next six months.

Saudi officials, endorsing Hagel’s proposals, said the defence secretary had understood the kingdom’s needs and in doing so had supported their effort to achieve a Saudi-led Gulf union. “This fits our agenda perfectly,” one official said.

Integrating regional defence as a step towards union is likely to prove easier said than done due to more than just political resistance by smaller Gulf states. The GCC for one has no mechanism to make military purchases despite its members having signed a joint security agreement a year ago. Even if it did, Gulf states would likely squabble over every detail of the acquisition.

In addition, smaller Gulf states are hesitant to rely on Saudi Arabia for their defence not only for political reasons but also because of the kingdom’s checkered military record. Saudi Arabia was unable to defend Kuwait against Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the Gulf state. More recently, Saudi troops had a hard time confronting Houthi rebels on the other side of their border in the north of Yemen.

“The Omani foreign minister’s remarks were unprecedented. Other Gulf states may not say publicly no, but they certainly won’t buy into it,” said an analyst from one of the smaller Gulf states.

This article was published by RSIS and reprinted with permission.

The article Gulf Security: A Risky New US-Saudi Blueprint – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By SA News

South Africans should be proud to have lived in Mandela’s time, President Jacob Zuma told thousands of mourners in Johannesburg as the world reflected on the icon’s life on Tuesday.

Not even the rain could deter the many people who travelled by buses and trains to be at the official Memorial Service.

“That we are Madiba’s compatriots and have lived during his time, is a cause for a great celebration and enormous pride,” Zuma told mourners in his tribute to Madiba at the service at FNB Stadium.

This is the same venue where former President Nelson Mandela made his first speech in Gauteng shortly after his release from prison in 1990.

“Never before has our country celebrated a life as we are doing with that of Madiba.

“We do not call Madiba the father of our rainbow nation merely for political correctness and relevance. We do so because he laid a firm foundation for the South Africa of our dreams – one that is united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous; we do so because Madiba was a courageous leader,” said Zuma.

Courageous leaders were able to abandon their narrow concerns for bigger and all-embracing dreams, even if those dreams come at a huge price, Zuma said.

Thousands of people whistled and clapped as Zuma quoted from Mandela’s famous speeches, including the address he made at an ANC Youth League conference in 1951.

Mandela was one of the founding figures of the ANCYL and the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto Wesizwe, structures that became instrumental in forcing the apartheid government to review theirs policies of segregation.

Zuma urged South Africans to learn from Mandela, who he said embodied values of Ubuntu and respect. Mandela had put the people of South Africa in everything he did. He paid a price for that, said Zuma.

“For 27 years, the South African people spoke about him in hushed tones, out of fear. In fact, if the apartheid government had its way, they would have been banned even from thinking about Madiba.”

Mandela could continue to inspire the people every single day, from inside prison walls. He demonstrated unique leadership in starting negotiations with the apartheid government whilst in prison. He also negotiated for the release of his fellow political prisoners first before his own release.

“His release from Victor Verster prison on the 11th of February 1990 was one of the most remarkable and moving moments in world history,” Zuma said.

The world came to a standstill watching this tall, imposing figure walking out into a world he had left behind 27 years before.

Zuma said South Africa needed a leader like Mandela to help it through a difficult transition from apartheid to a free democratic society.

“In the bumpy road to our historic first free and fair elections, there are many times that he brought our nation back from the brink of catastrophe,” said Zuma.

He thanked the high number of leaders who attended the memorial service, saying their presence was a true testament of the respect and love the people of the world had for Mandela. About 91 Heads of State and Government graced the occasion. Among them were US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton.

Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyanye thanked the nation for showing up in their numbers to support the event.

Mandela died at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, on Thursday, at the age of 95. He will be buried in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Sunday

The article South Africa: Be Proud To Have Lived With Mandela – Zuma appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By RT

The number of Americans incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country has increased by nearly 30 percent over the past ten years, according to a new report by an investigative arm of Congress.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday attributed the 27 percent surge in prison population to mandatory sentencing minimums. The practice, in which a judge’s discretion is almost completely removed from the sentencing process, mandates that nonviolent drug offenders are given pre-determined sentences. Critics have asserted that those prison terms are needlessly harsh and can put someone who presents no physical threat to society behind bars for decades.

“The Department of Justice’s (OJ) Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is responsible for the custody and care of over 219,000 federal inmates – a population that has grown by 27 percent in the past decade,” the GAO report states. “BOP is composed of 119 institutions, 6 regional offices, 2 staff training centers, 22 residential reentry management offices (previously called community corrections offices), and a central office in Washington DC.

“With a fiscal year 2013 operating budget of about $6.5 billion – the second-largest budget within DOJ – BOP projects that its costs will increase as the federal prison population grows through 2018…A variety of factors contribute to the size of BOP’s population. These include national crime levels, law enforcement policies, and federal sentencing laws, all of which are beyond BOP’s control,” the report continued.

Punishment for the same crime has become much more severe over the past quarter-century, according to a study released earlier this year by the Urban Institute. Drug offenders arrested in 1974 were facing an average of 38.5 months, yet if someone was charged with a similar crime in 2011 they would have faced an average of 74 months.

Prison populations only swelled during that time. Just 50 percent of convicted drug offenders were sentenced to prison in 1986, but that percentage jumped 40 points to a 90 percent likelihood in 2011.

Such numbers are relevant not only to drug users and their families, but also American taxpayers who foot the bill for the swelling incarceration rate. The Justice Department’s budget for the federal prison system increased from $5 billion in 2008 to $6.9 billion today. Of that total, $2.5 billion is meant for inmate programs such as drug treatment, “psychology services,” and $435 million for food services.

Signaling the Obama administration’s awareness of the growing problem, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced in August of this year that the Justice Department would no longer pursue prison time for nonviolent drug offenders. He also called on federal prosecutors to charge suspects in ways that do not automatically trigger mandatory minimum sentencing.

Holder said that the War on Drugs of past decades now means “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.”

The article US Prison Population Jumps 27% In Decade Over Harsh Drug Sentencing appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Balkan Insight

By Meri Jordanovska

Civil society groups promote the government’s plans and attack its opponents – raising doubts over their independence.

On a summer day last June, several hundred protesters burst through a police cordon around the barracks-like headquarters of Skopje’s Centar municipality.

“Burn in hell, Antichrist!” they shouted, pounding the walls, smashing windows and startling the officials who were meeting inside.

The protesters had been mobilised by a citizens’ group, referred to in the press as a non-governmental organisation, or NGO.

Their rage was directed at opposition party officials who had assumed control of the local government in an election that spring.

The attack on the building seemed to be a violent interpretation of one of the vital functions of the NGO – presenting the people’s demands to the authorities.

Macedonian civil society has become a stage for the country’s political battles, with NGOs cast as the lead actors.

Many of the organisations promote the ideology of the main party in the government, while attacking its critics and rivals.

In some cases, officials from the party have close links to the NGOs – raising the likelihood of conflicts of interest in a sector in which politicisation, though unavoidable, is meant to be kept in check.

The ruling party has in turn accused NGOs funded by foreign governments and international foundations of serving as proxies for the opposition.

Macedonia has been governed since 2006 by a coalition led by a centre-right party known by its acronym, VMRO-DPMNE. The party has cultivated a business-friendly image abroad while adopting ethno-nationalist rhetoric at home.

Its critics accuse it of authoritarian tendencies, citing the decline of the independent media and the gradual dominance of party sympathisers in commerce, culture and the public sector.

According to those critics, that dominance has also spread into the arena of civil society, where NGOs and informal associations are defending some of the government’s more controversial programmes – such as a costly revamp of the capital’s public spaces and restrictions on women’s access to abortions.

“After the contamination of politics, business, state institutions and the media, it is now the turn of civil organisations,” says Radmila Sekerinska, a former leader of the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, or SDSM.

However, Ilija Dimovski, a spokesman for VMRO-DPMNE, says it is hypocritical to accuse the government of manipulating civil society.

“The opposition parties always say we should listen to the demands of the citizens,” he says. “But when the citizens protest against them, they respond with such accusations.”

NGOs are key players in civil society, a nebulous term that has been loosely summarised as a public arena for debate and action that lies outside the state and the market.

There is also no universal definition of what constitutes an NGO, although the concept is widely used in international development, often interchangeably with “charity” and “non-profit organisation”. Nevertheless, most definitions agree on certain shared characteristics.

For instance, the European Union and the United Nations state that NGOs should not do anything illegal and should not make a profit. Above all, they should be independent of any form of government – as implied by the name itself.

Many governments fund NGOs, at home and abroad. In these cases, political officials are usually excluded from the membership of the organisation in order to preserve its non-governmental status.

However, the line between political and civic activism often appears blurred in Macedonia.

‘Free transport and sandwiches’

Several NGOs that espouse government causes have loose ties with the main party in power.

Last summer’s attack on the municipality building followed claims that the newly elected mayor of Centar, Andrej Zernovski, was planning to demolish a partially built church in the capital. He has consistently denied the claims.

Zernovski is from a coalition opposed to VMRO-DPMNE. Soon after being elected, he announced an inquiry into Skopje 2014, a multi-million-euro scheme that has given the capital’s public spaces a faux-baroque facelift.

The scheme is among the most visible and divisive of VMRO-DPMNE’s projects, attracting criticism for its cost and its apparently kitsch aesthetic. Much of the new construction has been carried out within Zernovski’s constituency.

The claim that the mayor was planning to demolish the half-built church was made by Veritas, a previously unknown association that mobilised hundreds of supporters, seemingly overnight, to protest outside the municipality office.

Veritas is not on the official register of NGOs. Its spokeswoman, Suzana Minovska, gave interviews to the press at the scene of the demonstration. In a later conversation with BIRN, she described Veritas as a “citizens’ initiative”, operated by volunteers.

She insists there was no political aspect to the protests. “We didn’t even have money for this. Just an idea that we believed in,” she says.

Political allegiances nonetheless appear to have played a part. “We got a phone call from the headquarters of the ruling party,” says Dragan, a 24-year-old member of the youth wing of VMRO-DPMNE.

“They told us when we should go to the municipality. We asked why, and they just said that everyone has to go,” he tells BIRN, speaking on condition that his real name was withheld.

Dragan says the demonstration was well organised, with the protesters receiving free transport and sandwiches.

Minovska says she does not know who paid for the sandwiches. Nor was she aware of VMRO-DPMNE members being summoned to the protest. “You should ask the party about that, not me,” she tells BIRN.

At the time of the protests, Minovska was married to a former deputy minister. She said her relationship had no bearing on her activism.

Veritas is one of several civil society organisations that share the ideology of the government.

In an interview given a month after the attack on the municipality, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski appeared to endorse the motives behind the protest – but he also criticised the use of violence.

“In the Veritas case, there was a clear and serious reason behind the protest, though breaking windows was not the best move,” he told a local broadcaster.

One-sided debate

The public usually first hears of groups such as Veritas when their founders are quoted in the media, countering critics of government policy.

An NGO by the name of Akord burst into the spotlight in 2010, shortly after the government released the details of the Skopje 2014 redevelopment.

The plan was attracting intense criticism from architects and conservationists, as well as the SDSM opposition. Akord entered the fray, inviting the media to what it promised would be a debate about Skopje 2014 at a plush hotel in the city.

Journalists who attended the event, however, found that the debate was rather one-sided. The panellists seemed to be entirely in favour of the faux-baroque makeover, confident that it would do wonders for the city’s image.

Akord is registered at an address on Boulevard Partizanski Odredi, the main thoroughfare in Skopje. The NGO’s headquarters is also the home of Violeta Samardziska, who in 2010 was a councillor in the Centar municipality, which was then governed by VMRO-DPMNE.

Samardziska says her organisation is no longer active. She also rejected any suggestion of a link between her activism and her politics.

“I don’t see a connection between my NGO and my involvement in VMRO-DPMNE,” she tells BIRN. She did not wish to comment on who had funded her organisation when it was still active. Akord does not have a website and BIRN could not find any public document listing its donors.

Right to life

Revita, a small NGO from the southwestern city of Bitola, emerged in 2008, when the Macedonian government launched a campaign to discourage women from seeking abortions.

The campaign, accompanied by graphic advertising, claimed that childbirth was a divine event and the termination of pregnancies was tantamount to murder.

It was criticised by a range of activists and associations, from women’s rights workers to medical guilds and human rights groups.

Revita alone backed the campaign. On a website, it echoed the Macedonian government’s criticism of women who sought abortions. “By killing their children, they destroy the country, the family, the nation and the future,” it says.

Revita has received funds from the central government’s budget for the civil sector, as well as from the municipality, which is controlled by VMRO-DPMNE.

Its founder, Blagica Pepovska, is also a member of the party. However, she says, her political sympathies have not helped the organisation, which also receives money from private donors.

“There are not so many advantages [to being a party member],” she tells BIRN. “We succeed through hard work.”

This summer, the government pushed through a law that required women seeking an abortion to seek permission from the health ministry.

During the debate over the law, Pepovska was called to give her opinion in parliament, as one of the few external voices in favour of the new rules.

“A woman has a right to choose her partner and to choose whether to be pregnant,” she told the assembly. “But once she is pregnant, she does not have any rights.”

Tolerating criticism

Many employees of foreign-funded NGOs maintain that the government has a direct hand in the civil society groups that share its ideology.

“If we don’t see Prime Minister Gruevski on the news, then we see the NGOs who convey his message,” says Nikola Naumoski, an activist from Plostad Sloboda, an NGO that has protested against Skopje 2014.

His organisation is financed by the Open Society Foundations, an international fund established by the investor, George Soros, and headquartered in the US. Macedonian government officials frequently accuse Soros of meddling in the country’s affairs.

Naumoski in turn accuses the government of harassing activists like him who receive money from abroad. The complaint is echoed by his colleagues in the foreign-funded part of the NGO sector.

The Youth Educational Forum, an NGO that advises on reforms to the educational system, was attacked in the local press when it revealed that Soros’ organisation was one of its donors.

“We always face barriers when we try to co-operate with the government,” says the NGO’s head, Marjan Zabrcanec, complaining that the authorities ignore his organisation’s research and accuse it of working against the state.

All NGOs in Macedonia are obliged by law to publish an account of how much money they receive, from whom, and what they do with it.

However, this transparency is not followed across the board. Many of the smaller state-funded organisations do not have their own websites, and therefore do not list their activities.

The state bodies that fund them – such as ministries, municipalities or a central government agency – do not give away many details either.

“Projects are only published with titles,” says Malinka Ristova, president of the European Policy Institute, a foreign-funded NGO that promotes debate about EU integration. “There are no reports on what has been done, so we cannot know how they spent the money.”

Many Macedonian activists believe that the key to making civil society more transparent and less politicised lies with the EU, which their country has applied to join.

They look for a model to countries such as the Czech Republic, which also emerged from communism but now have a healthier civil society – in part because of reforms carried out to join the EU.

The contrast is stark. Lucie Bilderova, from the Multicultural Centre, a Prague NGO that works with minority groups, says the Czech foreign ministry often funds organisations that are critical of its work.

Vit Dostal, from the Association of International Affairs, an NGO that trains students in political debates, also says his organisation is often critical of its donor – the Czech government.

“The government knows what to expect from us,” he says. “They do not discriminate against us over that.”

The mayor’s festival

While foreign-funded NGOs are often criticised in Macedonia’s pro-government press, those that receive their funds from the state are under less scrutiny.

In the town of Radovis, in southeastern Macedonia, the overlapping interests of local government officials and an NGO appear to have gone unnoticed.

For three days every August, the town celebrates the festival of St Spaso Radoviski, its patron saint.

The celebrations start with church services and culminate in a concert in the main square, which has also been named after the saint.

The festival is a highlight of the calendar in a town of 20,000 people, where the best hope of employment comes from a nearby copper mine and most of the young dream of migrating abroad.

The star attraction at this year’s festival was the Croatian pop singer and contender for the 1994 Eurovision song contest, Toni Cetinski. At the end of his show in the public square, the hostess went on stage and thanked the festival’s organisers.

“Two people share the blame for this event,” she joked. “The first is your mayor, Sasko, and the second is the director of the chamber of culture and the president of the town council, Nikola Miovski.”

The crowd cheered as the names were announced. Yet this outpouring of local pride is a relatively new tradition. St Spaso Radoviski was declared the town’s patron saint in 2009 – the result of a decision by the municipal council.

The festival is organised by an NGO that was formed in the following year, and which also goes by the name of Spaso Radoviski.

According to municipality documents, the town of Radovis spent more than €32,000 on the NGO between 2010 and July 2013.

According to the central registry, the organisation was co-founded by Sasko Nikolov, the mayor who was publicly credited for organising the festival.

Miovski, the head of the town council who was also thanked on stage for putting on the event, is listed as one of the key members of the NGO.

The municipality allocates its funding for local NGOs by inviting tenders for a project. The bids are voted on by the town council, and its decision is approved and signed off by the mayor.

The mayor and the head of the town council thus play a significant role in allocating funds for an NGO in which they are also deeply involved – an apparent conflict of interest.

Moreover, the mayor uses the festival – funded by public money through an NGO which he helped establish – to burnish his political profile. His website lists this year’s event as one of the top achievements from his first 100 days in office.

Nikolov told BIRN he had given up his role in the NGO when he was elected to the mayor’s office in the spring. However, at the time of the interview this summer, the central registry – which is regularly updated – still listed him as one of the key members of St Spaso Radovis.

Nikolov acknowledged that his apparently ongoing involvement in the NGO and in local politics could be construed as a conflict of interest.

“I will check,” he says. “Maybe there is some misunderstanding over the laws.”

BIRN tried to reach Miovski for comment on his mobile phone but he did not answer. A visit to the address where the NGO is registered revealed a locked building that used to house a restaurant.

BIRN also asked the state anti-corruption body to comment on whether there may be a conflict of interest in cases where government officials were also active in NGOs. A spokeswoman for the commission confirmed the requests had been received but did not provide a response.

Dimovski, the VMRO-DPMNE spokesman, acknowledges that some NGOs provide a cover for political interests – but he blames this phenomenon squarely on the opposition.

“The problems arise when people use the cover of the NGOs to promote the party’s agenda,” he told BIRN. “For example, there are civil society activists who speak at opposition party meetings.”

Nevertheless, Dimovski says members of political parties cannot be prevented from running their own NGOs.

“There are people who are members of VMRO-DPMNE or SDSM and they have their own NGOs and there is nothing wrong with that,” he told BIRN.

Dejan Donev, a professor of ethics and an expert in NGOs at the University of St Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, says many organisations operating in Macedonian civil society are “quasi-governmental”.

“We don’t have the basic form of non-governmental organisations, which should be understood as non-profit civil society groups that represent the citizens’ needs,” he says.

Most Macedonians seem to agree that their country’s civil society is deeply politicised. In a survey last year by the local office of Transparency International, a global organisation that promotes good governance, 67.5 per cent of more than 1,000 respondents said NGOs existed purely to serve the interests of political parties.

Meri Jordanovska is a Skopje-based journalist. This article was edited by Neil Arun. It was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

The article Uncivil Society: The Politicisation Of Macedonia’s NGOs – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IPCS

By Angana Guha Roy

A day after China launched its first Stealth Drone ‘Lijan’, it also announced its Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in East China Sea, overlapping with the existing ADIZ by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Does this demonstrate China’s strategic attempt to evoke concern among its neighbours and other major players in the region? What are China’s Air Identification Rules? Do they violate International norms? Why China has abruptly come up with this strategy?

While questioning China’s real intention to establish an ADIZ, it has been speculated that this is attempt is ‘to possibly buttress its maritime and territorial claims’. Meanwhile China has elicited international criticism for the Air Identification Rules (AIR) it has put forward. The most important is is – China did not consult any of its neighbours before announcing the ADIZ.

Air Identification Rules (AIR)

According to China’s National Defence Ministry document any aircraft must abide by while flying through the ADIZ. The document provides few Identification criterions. It asks international aircrafts to report flight plans, maintain two way radio communications, activate the transponder if an aircraft has to broadcast their location, clearly mark their nationalities and the logo of their registration identification.

As per the AIR, any aircraft flying through the zone must follow the instruction of the Ministry of National Defence of the PRC, the ‘administrative organ’ of the ECS ADIZ. In case, any aircraft refuse to follow the identification rules, China’s armed forces shall adopt ‘defensive emergency measures’ to respond to non-cooperating aircraft.

Confronting International Norms?

The legal position China has taken for the ADIZ establishes a version of sovereign airspace. The unilateral imposition of its regulatory document departs from accepted practice. First, it does not distinguish between aircraft flying through the zone with no intention of flying into China’s airspace and those that do, unlike the US.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry has stated, ‘freedom of overflight and other internationally lawful uses of sea and airspace are essential to prosperity, stability, and security in the Pacific. We don’t support efforts by any state to apply its ADIZ procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter its national airspace’.

Secondly, the ‘Means of Identification’ violates the international norm of airborne ‘innocent passage’ by asking for Flight Plan reports. Thirdly, its Radio Identification Criteria violates UNCLOS treaty according to which the aircrafts at all times ‘monitor the radio frequency assigned by competent internationally designated Air Traffic Control (ATC) authority or appropriate international distress radio frequency.

Thus, China’s credibility to cover all transits could be questioned. It has issued a warning statement in the regulatory document to the extent that it can adopt ‘defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or otherwise refuse to follow the instructions.’ This is contradictory to the international norms that exempt state aircraft from any such obligation to any national authority so far the transit is with ‘due regard for the safety of civil aviation’.

Strategic Objectives

China’s ADIZ strategy has rattled Northeast Asia. The strategic move has abruptly come up during a period when Japan under the leadership of Abe, is trying to increase its military capability. It has encompassed the airspace over the disputed Senkaku Island, now owned by Japan, in its ADIZ. As per the Air Identification Rules, Japan has to share its flight report or provide Identification details to China over the Island it itself owns. This clearly indicates China’s strategy to challenge Japan on the disputed zone.

In an interview political scientist Ian Bremmer says, ‘It’s important to remember that this was a plan Beijing had been developing ever since last summer (if not before), when Japan’s then prime minister Noda purchased more of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, altering the longstanding status quo from Beijing’s perspective…Beijing wanted to maximize the chances of getting this done with limited pushback from the US ..With that as the goal, it was good timing…the Iran nuclear deal was underway, for which the Chinese foreign minister was supporting John Kerry in Geneva.’
China has also gone ahead to include the disputed Leodo reef, also claimed by South Korea, that falls under their respective Exclusive Economic Zone. This will perhaps, give China an airspace leverage on Leodo, which in accordance to UNCLOS can’t be claimed by any country, for being a ‘submerged reef’ under the water.

China’s ADIZ strategy has projected its assertive unilateral attitude in the region. This no doubt indicates its attempt to establish a sovereign airspace in the region. Although to justify its attempt, it has referred to countries like US and Japan who has previously established ADIZ, it didn’t follow their course of bilateralism in this regard. US which established the first ADIZ setting the tradition coordinated with Canada. On the other hand, Japan, despite facing much opposition from Taiwan, coordinated with it before implementing the planned action.

But China’s move was sudden and abrupt, projecting its impudent foreign policy attitude. Does this in turn, portends any trouble for China’s other South Asian counterparts, hinting towards its tendency to impose unilateralism as per its national interests?

Angana Guha Roy
Research Intern, IPCS

The article China And Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ): Assertive Unilateralism? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By PanArmenian

The iPhone 5S is now fully stocked at Apple Stores, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says, according to CNET.

In his latest survey of 60 U.S. Apple retail stores, conducted on Dec 4, Munster found that 100 percent of iPhone 5S models were in stock at each store. That number was up from 24 percent two weeks ago and 8 percent at the start of October.

“We believe Apple has caught up to demand, which we had expected ahead of the core holiday period,” the analyst said in an investors note released Monday, Dec 9. “In reflecting on the supply for the 5S product launch overall, we believe that net-net Apple has done a better job in supplying stores with phones proportional to demand.”

Last week, Apple lowered the estimated wait time for online purchases of the 5S to 1 to 3 business days. Previously, it had been 3 to 5 days.

The article iPhone 5S Now Fully Stocked At Apple Stores, Analyst Says appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By MINA

As an unemployed electrician, Alan Douglas has endured a difficult few years, not least because of the collapse of the once buoyant Irish building industry. But getting a letter from the Irish welfare authorities advising him to take a job in Coventry in the UK was a new low.

“It made me feel like I was being pushed out of my own country,” says Mr Douglas, 26, from Bray, near Dublin.

He is one of 6,000 people who have received letters encouraging them to look for jobs abroad. One jobseeker was sent details of a job as a bus driver in Malta, which paid just €250 (£209) a week but came with a “Mediterranean climate”.

Youth groups and opposition parties accuse the government of a policy of state-sponsored emigration, which is being dubbed “The Scattering” – a play on the name of Dublin’s “Gathering” tourism initiative to encourage the Irish diaspora to visit Ireland.

Such accusations are blighting an otherwise triumphant moment for Dublin: after three years of painful austerity, including €28bn in tax rises and spending cuts since 2008, Ireland will on Sunday become the first eurozone nation to exit its international bailout. In the run-up to that event, the government has been busily touting evidence of a fragile economic recovery.

Dublin rejects criticism about forced emigrations, saying all foreign job opportunities advertised are voluntary and no one will lose their benefits if they do not apply for an overseas job. But the letters raise questions about the basic fairness of its response to the crisis and highlight how a generation of young people with little hand in causing it are now bearing the brunt of the clean-up.

One in four under 25 are unemployed and emigration has reached record levels, with 75,800 people aged 15-44 leaving last year. Tens of thousands of others who bought properties in the housing boom are struggling with sky-high home loans, negative equity and mortgage arrears.

Children have also suffered, with the percentage of under 17-year-olds living in consistent poverty rising from 7.4 per cent before the crisis to 9.3 per cent in 2011.

“The negative social and economic impact of emigration is not recognised here. The government only sees it as a way to save money on welfare and imposes policies forcing people abroad,” says David Gibney, of the youth wing of trade union Mandate.

Unemployment benefits for the under-25s have been halved, while dole for older people and state pensions remain largely untouched.

An embargo on recruitment in the public sector has left few opportunities for graduates. Those lucky enough to get one of the few public jobs offered in key sectors are paid less than existing staff, who are protected under reforms agreed between unions and government.

The mass emigration is causing unexpected problems in an overstretched health service. Almost half of Irish doctors are working abroad – the highest rate in the OECD group of countries that aims to promote sustainable growth – forcing authorities to recruit hundreds of foreign medical staff to plug gaps. “Doctors historically have left Ireland for a year or two to work abroad but now many are setting up home abroad and are not returning,” says Dr John Donnellan of the Irish Medical Organisation, which represents doctor sin the country.

Critics say the government, where the average age of ministers is 56, is out of touch with one of the youngest populations in Europe – its median age is 35. But the power of the “grey lobby” means there is little political cost.

“Young people have less influence because they are less likely to vote than older people,” says Jane Suiter, lecturer at Dublin City University. “This causes youth to be hit harder in a crisis.”

Dublin defends its decision to slash benefits for young people, saying it is better to encourage them to take training opportunities.

It points to a fall in unemployment to 12.8 per cent, down from a peak of 15.1 per cent last year, as proof that its policies are working.

“Growth has now returned and unemployment is falling,” says Joan Burton, Ireland’s social protection minister. “We are creating the conditions, in other words, that I hope will allow many of those young people to return and build productive careers and lives in Ireland.”

The article Irish Government Encouraging Citizens To Look For Work Abroad appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Trend News Agency

By Umid Niayesh

Iran will launch Kavoshgar-7 (Explorer-7) carrier, carrying a living creature into space from Imam Khomeini Space Centre near Semnan city in the north of the country next week, head of Iran’s aerospace industries, Mehdi Farahi said, ISNA news agency reported on Dec. 10.

He went on to note that the carrier will orbit at an altitude of 120 kilometres.

Commenting on Iran’s aerospace projects Farahi underlined that the Kavoshgar projects are steps towards sending astronauts into space.

Iran sent its first bio-capsule containing living creatures into the space in February 2010, using the indigenous Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) carrier.

Iran sent a monkey into space aboard an indigenous bio-capsule code-named Pishgam (Pioneer) in January 2013.

The country successfully launched its first indigenous data-processing satellite, Omid (Hope), into orbit in 2009.

As part of a plan to develop its space program, Iran also successfully launched its second satellite, dubbed Rassad (Observation), into the earth’s orbit in June 2011. Rassad’s mission was to take images of the earth and transmit them along with telemetry information to ground stations.

Iran also launched its domestically-built Navid-e Elm-o Sanat (Harbinger of Science and Industry) satellite into orbit in February 2012. The records made by the telecom, measurement and scientific satellite could be used in a wide range of fields.

The country is one of the 24 founding members of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which was set up in 1959.

The article Iran To Launch Kavoshgar-7 Carrier Into Space appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Al Bawaba News

The Iranian foreign ministry has dismissed President Shimon Peres’s offer to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, AFP reported Tuesday.

Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, said her country would never recognize the Jewish state or change its stance, and claimed Peres’s offer was aimed at easing Israeli isolation in the world.

“There has not been nor will there be any change on Iran’s stance and views regarding the Zionist regime,” Afkam said.

“Iran does not recognize Israel. Our position regarding this oppressive and occupationist regime – which is completely illegitimate and has been created to occupy the lands of the Palestinians – is clear,” she added.

On Sunday, Peres said in an interview he would have no problem meeting with Rouhani.

“Why not?” he said in an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest at the Globes Israel Business Conference in Tel Aviv. Israel and Iran are not enemies, he added.

The important factor was not the man in question, but his policies, and the goal was to turn enemies into friends, the president said. Peres compared the decision to Israel’s choice to meet with deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ahead of the Oslo Peace agreements.

The fact that structural players in Iran opposed Rouhani’s perspective complicated the matter, Peres said.

“If it was only him I’d take it with greater assurance, but there are other structures, other people,” he said. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, half army and half organization, spreads terror all over the world and I’m not so sure they support the president. We have to see the balance of the situation.”

Original article

The article Iran Dismisses Israel’s Offer To Meet With Rohani appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By JTW

By Habibe Ozdal

The protests in Ukraine have been continuing for nearly 18 days and have recently intensified. The harsh reactions of the government and the general course of events have been covered widely in the international press. The protests started after the President’s decision to suspend the commission for the Eastern Partnership and still continue.

The EU Eastern Partnership Summit was held in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on November 28-29th. The EU had two basic prerequisites for signing the Association Agreement with Ukraine. The first of these was allowing former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, currently in custody, to be treated abroad. The second was the implementation of some of the economic and political reforms. Since these two conditions were not fulfilled, the future of the agreement was up in the air. From this standpoint, although it wasn’t clear whether the EU would sign, a week before the summit President Yanukovich decided to suspend the Agreement’s drafting commission. Protests started cropping up and growing began a week before the EU Eastern Partnership Summit. Initially, the focus of the protests was that President Yanukovich unilaterally suspended the Partnership Agreement process. According to surveys, 45% of the public supported signing the Agreement. The fact that the President Yanukovich unilaterally suspended the process elicited reactions from the public who believed that their will was being disregarded. Once the summit was over, the crowds on the streets increased and talk of a second Orange Revolution started both in the Western and the Russian media.

What protesters really protest?

Regarding to what are the people on the streets aiming at, or what are they demanding from the political authorities; the mass of hundreds of thousands on the streets is made up of a number of groups supporting different political parties and who are not led by any political leader. In addition to the young and educated core, it is possible to see opposition members of all ages and political views. When you look at the big picture, the demonstrators appear to be reacting to their demands being ignored at a time when the country’s major foreign policy axis is being determined and the improper practices that threaten the political system’s structure.

For the groups supporting EU integration, the European Union corresponds to a vision of modernization and reform for Ukraine both politically and economically. For these groups, the EU integration process is vital for the future of Ukrainians within the context of, for instance, fighting corruption, resolving income inequality, providing transparency, and technological innovation. Seeing as the demonstrators are mainly educated and young, we see that the demands of this mass are parallel to their expectations and worries about their future. The young population supporting the protests wants their future to be close to the standards of European Union countries. In this regard, the main objective of the demonstrations is not only the Agreement. The demonstrators are in fact trying to show their demands about what kind of a country and what conditions they want to live in. Dissatisfactions about various issues in the country and the irregularities of the system are also important elements in the demonstrations.

One of the reasons President Yanukovich did not sign the Ukraine-EU Partnership Agreement is that he does not want to deal with the economic difficulties and reforms that could divide the ruling party’s electorate during the period before Ukraine’s 2015 presidential election. If the Partnership Agreement had been signed, it would have started a rapid process of economic and political reform in Ukraine. They would have had to be some important reforms in fields such as fighting corruption, public participation in politics, human rights, and democratization. However, these are not top priority objectives in the short term either for Yanukovich or the political elites in his circle. During a period when it is critical not to take any steps that could damage public support, the Yanukovich administration seems to have miscalculated with its decision not to sign the Agreement.

Protests have their own internal dynamics. However the affect of Russia and the Europe is also widely discussed. In the Russian media especially it is alleged that EU countries in particular are provoking the events. On the other hand, those supporting the current protests in Ukraine claim that the government is getting support from Russia and trying to suppress the protests through force.

In order to understand the developments in Ukraine it is necessary to evaluate the domestic dynamics first. It is vitally important to start with the reality that a process supported by 45% of the public has been suddenly suspended. If the chain of causality cannot be recognized correctly, we cannot analyze the situation correctly using ambiguous statements about foreign powers. At the same time, as in other examples, foreign countries will try to benefit from this process by supporting certain sections in such a manner that strengthen their own foreign policies.

Habibe Ozdal, USAK Center for Eurasian Studies

The article The Demands Of ‘EuroMaidan’ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By JTW

The only conclusion to be drawn from both economic indicators and global levels of human and democratic development is that there is virtually no respect in which the Shanghai Cooperation Organization can serve as an alternative to the European Union.

By Ihsan Bal

The meeting on 22 November between Prime Minister Erdoğan and the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin was made noteworthy by the Prime Minister’s remark about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: “come already, take us too.” The issue of Turkish membership in the SCO has been dropped as a hint at various times, either half-jokingly, or as a veiled warning to the European Union; but it is now on the table. Because the topic is now being argued seriously by those who believe that Turkey’s future lies in the East. Whereas many analysts and even some government supporters have frequently emphasized their view that the Western world is the main axis and orientation of Turkish foreign policy and this Eastward glance is but a secondary angle. Indeed they declare that Turkish EU membership is too important to be left just to the wishes of Europeans; that it expresses an orientation portrayed by Turkish foreign policy-makers as a state policy offering sustainability. Consequently, EU membership is a widely-supported vision project with a common denominator at the national level and in many other respects.

Human and democratic development and the SCO

With the decline in interest in the EU recently, the search has been on for alternatives, the most important being the SCO. So it would be appropriate then to get an idea of what standards a potential SCO membership could promise Turkey. Sadly, when the development levels of the organisation’s six members and five observers are set out together, one doesn’t get a very encouraging picture. Let us begin with the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI determines countries’ development levels on an international scale and is used as reference by leading international organisations like the United Nations. Moreover, the HDI allows comparisons on a large number of topics, from average life expectancy to health standards, and from food cleanliness to education levels.

According to the HDI figures, in 2013 China comes between Jordan and Turkmenistan, ranking 101st internationally. On the same list, the other SCO members Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan rank 55th, 69th, and 114th respectively. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan share 125th place. Of SCO observers, Iran ranks 76th, Mongolia 108th, India 136th, Pakistan 146th, and Afghanistan 175th. The bottom three countries on the list are Mozambique, the DRC, and Niger, while virtually all the EU countries are in the top 25.

The less than stellar human development in SCO countries shown by this data is decidedly not at a level to which Turkey would wish to aspire. What is more, a similar picture emerges when levels of freedom, democracy, and human rights are measured. Let us take the best-known source in this field, the Freedom in the World report. This report measures countries’ levels of democratic development. The criteria are the civil, human, and political liberties that the UN uses as references. According to its report for 2013, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan are “Partly Free” countries. China, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan are among those that can in no way be considered free or democratic.

Another publication similarly taken as a reference in global measurements is the Democracy Index. Compiled by The Economist, the Index determines countries’ levels of democracy according to 60 indicators in line with UN criteria, and classifies countries into four different categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. According to its 2012 data, China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan are governed by authoritarian regimes; Uzbekistan, and Iran by dictatorships in the full sense. Only India, though it has its weaknesses, qualifies as a democracy.

And the economic indicators reveal…

Suppose we take it that it is not democracy but wealth which matters. The argument frequently repeated during the world economic crisis, that wealth is shifting from the West to the East, may convince some. Naturally, orienting towards the SCO in order to join a wealthier club might be justifiably motivated. In fact, according to World Bank data on per capita income in 2012, China, a founding member of the SCO, came 92nd out of 180 countries with $9,233. In the same table, Russia came 43rd with $23,501; Kazakhstan was 69th with $13,917; Turkmenistan 84th with $10,583; and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan came 141st and 142nd with between $2,000 and $2,500 per capita. Pakistan was 135th with $3,876 and India was 127th with $3,876. Similarly, Mongolia was 109th with $5,462 per capita, and Iran 78th with $11,395. According to the same data, most EU countries appear in the top 25. Bulgaria at 64th place and Romania at 60th are the poorest of the EU countries. The top country on the table is Luxemburg, an EU member. The average annual income per capita in the EU is $33,527. If the EU was an independent country it would rank 24th, between Japan and Italy.

The Gini Coefficient is a further indicator of economic development. The Gini Coefficient is a means used in measuring a country’s wealth or income distribution. Every country is identified with a fractional value between 0 and 1: the closer it approaches to 0, the more just is its income distribution, the closer it approaches 1, the more unjust. The Gini Coefficient for China is given as 0.47; for Russia, 0.40; and for Uzbekistan, 0.36. That of Kazakhstan is 0.29; of Kyrgyzstan, 0.36; and of Tajikistan, 0.30. Of the SCO observer countries, Iran’s Gini Coefficient is 0.38; Mongolia’s, 0.36; and Pakistan’s is 0.3. China, in particular, followed by Russia, are countries whose disparity in incomes is conspicuously high. The places in the world where income distribution is fairest are Central and Northern Europe, the regions where EU members are concentrated. It is also worth adding this: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and to some extent Pakistan are the SCO countries where income distribution is most equal. Of course the situation there means ‘equality in poverty’ and in each case is a sign of the low annual income per capita.

When one compares the statistics for corruption or the resources spent on scientific research there is a similar gulf between the EU and the SCO. According to Transparency International’s figures for 2012, the countries of the SCO are among those in the world where corruption is most widespread. In the ranking of countries with the least corruption Uzbekistan takes 170th place; Russia and Kazakhstan comes in at 133rd; China 80th; Kyrgyzstan154th; and Tajikistan 157th. Of SCO observers, Afghanistan ranks 174th, Pakistan 139th, Iran 133rd, and India and Mongolia share 94th. Against this, the EU-enclosed Northern and Western Europe head the regions with the lowest corruption. Turkey is ranked at 54th place.

To turn to the resources devoted to scientific research: the ratio of a country’s spending on R&D (Research and Development) to that country’s gross domestic product reveals the degree of priority it attaches to science. The ratio for China is 1.7% and for Russia 1.16%, while for the other SCO members and observer countries it is so low as to be negligible. While the ratio for Turkey is 0.84%, some European countries have the highest ratios in the world. For example, Germany’s percentage is 2.83, Sweden’s is 3.4%, Finland’s 3.88%, Denmark’s 3.06%, and Austria’s is 2.75%. If one compares the ratio of patent applications to households, the EU countries have made more patent applications that all the SCO member countries (other than China) and observers put together.

Frankly, in light of all of this data, it’s a rather difficult to say that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization can offer a persuasive contribution to Turkey’s progress, development, and economic prosperity. Especially as an important part of foreign direct investment in Turkey comes from the EU countries: 2013 data from the Ministry of Economy states that as of the end of September, of the $7.1 billion in capital inflow used for direct investment, $4.3 billion belongs to EU countries.

So when the economic realities are weighed, one sees even more clearly that the notion of turning to the East does not rest on rational considerations. When we rank all these developments in terms of Realpolitik, it is obvious that there is virtually no aspect in which the SCO could be an alternative to the EU. At least that is what today’s data obliges us to say. But if one day the world should begin to speak of the East being more developed than the West with regard to economic, democratic, human rights, and freedom indices then doubtless advocating for the SCO will be more realistic and less flippant. So let us leave the topic as it stands, engage in sensible debate and deep reflection, and concentrate on our work at hand. For the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is no alternative to the EU.

Ihsan Bal, Head of USAK Academic Council

This article was first published in Analist Monthly Journal, December 2013.

The article Turkey’s Foreign Policy On The Brussels-Shanghai Pendulum – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Hindus are thinking of erecting a statue of Lord Hanuman if the space is available in the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds in Oklahoma City.

Universal Society of Hinduism is planning to apply to Oklahoma State Capitol Preservation Commission for permission to place a statue of Lord Hanuman in the statehouse grounds and hopes that Commission will approve it.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, in a statement in Nevada today, said that if the Oklahoma State Capitol was open to different monuments, we would love to have a statue of Lord Hanuman, who was greatly revered and worshipped and known for incredible strength and was perfect grammarian.

Zed pointed out that besides honoring the Hindus living in Oklahoma, this statue would raise awareness of Oklahomans about Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought.

Rajan Zed stated that he had written to Oklahoma State Capitol Preservation Commission Chair Trait Thompson and others for detailed procedure, required forms, conditions to be met for approval, size and dimensions of the statue, etc., for permission to erect the Lord Hanuman statue, which they planned to make big and weather-proof.

The article Hindus Interested In Erecting Lord Hanuman Statue On Oklahoma Capitol Grounds‏ appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By EurActiv

(EurActiv) — Aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in light food products and soft drinks, does not pose risks to the general population, the European food safety agency (EFSA) said on Tuesday (10 December). It urged the Commission to strengthen the confidence of consumers, hoping to overcome the mistrust of citizens towards the additive.

After considering the results of hundreds of studies, EFSA concluded “that aspartame and its breakdown products are safe for consumption,” the chair of its panel on food additives, Alicja Mortensen, announced on Tuesday.

The amount of aspartame one person can consume per day, or ‘acceptable daily intake’ (ADI), is currently at 40 milligrams per kilogram (of food). “There was no reason to revise this ADI,” EFSA argued.

The agency flagged that people suffering from phenylketonuria (PKU) do not fall under this recommendation: PKU patients are unable to metabolise a certain type of amino acid found in aspartame and, EFSA advised, “should avoid all food items containing aspartame”.

Aspartame is primarily known as an artificial sweetener that is used as an alternative to sugar substances in many soft drinks and ‘light’ food products on the European market. The sweetener has been re-assessed six times since it was authorised for use in the EU in 1994.

The agency added that the European Commission can now work towards strengthening the confidence of European consumers in products containing aspartame.

Wave of public concerns

In 2010, public mistrust towards the artificial sweetener peaked after two studies linked aspartame to the development of cancers in mice and to premature childbirth. As a result, the European Commission asked EFSA to fast-track its re-evaluation of aspartame, which was originally up for scrutiny only by 2020.

The agency’s final opinion paper was supposed to come out last May. But when the agency opened up the process to public consultation last January, it received more than 200 comments, the majority of which were submitted by NGOs, members of the food industry and journalists.

“We wanted to take the time to answer all of the criticisms,” said Mortensen, acknowledging that there were many important aspects in the earlier draft opinion document that needed clarification.

The opinion claimed that more recent scientific research has discredited the studies of 2010, referring to research that demonstrated the levels of aspartame detected in the blood during similar tests are low and show no cause for concern.

The European Food Safety Authority is often criticised by NGOs for its ‘revolving door’- experts sitting on panels and in decision-making bodies often have a background in the food industry, or return to this industry after they leave EFSA, leading to conflicts of interest.

Early in the re-evaluation process for aspartame, two members of the panel voluntarily resigned because they took on jobs in companies with a commercial interest in the sales of products using aspartame.

“These persons only participated in the first, introductory meeting [of the panel],” being offered such positions only after this meeting, senior officer of the food ingredients unit Georges Kass stressed, dismissing allegations of possible conflicts of interest.

The article Aspartame Poses No Risk For Consumers, Says EU Food Safety Agency appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By VOA

By Cindy Saine

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has strongly defended the Obama administration’s interim deal with Iran on its nuclear program, and asked Congress to hold off on passing any new sanctions on Iran to give ongoing negotiations a chance to succeed. The Senate is sending mixed signals as to whether it will take up a measure to impose new sanctions on Iran before it leaves for recess this year.

For the first time since the agreement on Iran was reached in Geneva last month, Secretary of State John Kerry came to Capitol Hill to address concerns that have been voiced by skeptical lawmakers. Kerry heard plenty of those from both Democratic and Republican members of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee. The committee’s chairman, Ed Royce, a Republican, said Iran has a history of deceiving the international community about its nuclear program.

“Iran is not just another country. It simply cannot be trusted with enrichment technology, because verification efforts can never be foolproof,” said Royce.

Kerry argued that the agreement is a big boost to both U.S. national security and the security of close U.S. allies in the Middle East, including Israel.

“Once implemented, this agreement halts the progress of Iran’s nuclear program, halts the progress and rolls it back for the first time in nearly 10 years,” said Kerry.

Kerry appealed to members of the House and the Senate to hold off any efforts to impose new, tougher sanctions against Iran during the six month period specified in the deal, saying this could derail the process.

“Let me be very clear: this is a very delicate diplomatic moment and we have a chance to address peacefully one of the most pressing national security concerns that the world faces today,” said Kerry.

The House already passed tougher sanctions on Iran in July, but the Senate has not. There are mixed signals coming from the Senate. Republican Senator John McCain, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicated to VOA that the panel is considering a new sanctions bill.

“[We are] still negotiating, we should have an agreement soon,” said McCain.

The Senate Banking Committee is not planning to pursue new sanctions against Iran. For this year, the Senate only has a little more than one week to act before a planned recess.

The article Kerry Asks Congress To Hold Off New Sanctions On Iran appeared first on Eurasia Review.