Pakistan’s largest oil marketing company, Pakistan State Oil (PSO) has announced its third quarter (Jan-Mar 2014) result, posting profit after tax of Rs3.6 billion (EPS: Rs13.25) as against earnings of Rs3.06 billion (EPS: Rs11.27) for the same period last year, up by 18%YoY. The result was below market expectation that was mainly attributed to lower than expected exchange gains due to Pak Rupee appreciation.

Other income, of the Company increased by 352% to Rs2.89 billion on account of interest income from Pakistan Investment Bonds (PIBs) during 3QFY14. There was 37%YoY increase in financial cost that could be attributed to higher working capital used during the quarter. The rising receivables of PSO from different IPPs and state owned power plants are creating a liquidity crunch for the Company and forcing it to utilize utmost working capital lines.

The 9MFY14performance of the company also remained very encouraging as evident by 107%YoY improvement in net profit to Rs19.4 billion leading to EPS of Rs71.41 as compared to Rs34.5 during the same period last year. A quantum jump in other income was the key reason behind earnings growth during the period under review. Furthermore, a 15%YoY growth in gross profit also contributed positively to the bottom-line of the Company.

As the summer season is approaching, the more electricity need will increase demand for furnace oil, while the irrigation needs will take HSD sales higher. PSO will be the major beneficiary of this demand uptick due to its expanded retail network.

The post Pakistan: PSO Third Quarter Profit Up By 18 Percent appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ruhee Neog

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its election manifesto that promises to “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it, to make it relevant to challenges of current times,” and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement about a global no first use (NFU) policy, there has much speculation on the subject.

The nuclear programme mandate that the BJP has delineated for itself, should it come to power in 2014, pins itself on the changing security scenario in South Asia. With Pakistan’s increasing nuclear stockpile and emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons (TNW), a retaliatory Indian nuclear posture is considered insufficient. The most significant of the implied revisions is to its NFU pledge, which is considered the bedrock of India’s declaratory policy as couched in its nuclear doctrine. It must be noted however that despite assumptions to the contrary, India’s NFU is not absolute.

An Absolute NFU or Flexibility of Response?

It has been argued that India’s own 2003 statement makes its NFU pledge ambiguous. It states, “However, in the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons.” There are two concerns here: one, what defines ‘major’? Two, a literal interpretation of the statement means that India’s first response via nuclear means will also be directed against chemical and/or biological attacks – technically, this is in fact nuclear first use. That this may be a deliberate attempt to dilute the official stand on NFU only stands to strengthen the notion that the NFU is not meant to be unqualified, and flexibility of response was preferred but not signalled. However, this also questions the credibility of India’s NFU by the audiences for whom the doctrine is intended, which could have dangerous implications for nuclear postures and arsenals.

Accidental Nuclear Escalation

While India’s nuclear policy has the country’s civilian leadership at the top of the command and control structure, in the event of a crisis, conventional forces may prompt inadvertent escalation. As Vipin Narang writes, this may be by targeting the adversary without knowing (or caring to know) whether these targets are conventional or nuclear, and without prior political authorisation. Such an action will of course have huge implications: through the use of its own conventional abilities against a nuclear-armed adversary, India could trigger nuclear first use – either by putting the adversary in a ‘use-it-or-lose it’ situation or by causing an unintended ‘nuclear detonation’.

Election Posturing?

The draft Indian nuclear doctrine was promulgated in 1999 and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) released a press statement in 2003. Significantly, the draft doctrine and the press release were both undertaken while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was in power. The sudden mention of India’s weapons programme – which is rarely discussed in public – at this critical time, can be read most importantly as posturing for elections. The BJP has sought to re-claim ownership of the doctrine and rebuke the Congress for having ‘frittered away’ the ‘strategic gains’ made under Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee’s leadership. Manmohan Singh’s statement therefore seems to be an attempt at responsible nuclear pledge-making in the run-up to the elections.

It must also be noted however that that the BJP had made similar promises in its election manifesto of 1998, which it delivered upon. Interestingly, although the election manifesto offers a blanket doctrinal review, with no mention of the NFU, analysts have been quick to specifically argue the merits and de-merits of the NFU. If the BJP wins the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it may keep to its word and undertake a review of the nuclear doctrine. There have long been calls for a US Nuclear Posture Review style exercise in India by security analysts to review and update the doctrine in response to the dynamism of the regional security environment. This would therefore be a very welcome move, given the increasingly complex security scenario, which includes the presence of tactical nuclear weapons (Pakistan’s Hatf-9), concomitant command and control issues, non-state actors (not sponsored by the State establishment), sub-state actors (sponsored by the State establishment).

Even if there is a review or revision of the Indian nuclear doctrine, the NFU itself is unlikely to change, seeing as its current form serves the purpose of ‘calculated ambiguity’ rather well – although it is unclear whether this ambiguity is calculated or accidental. It remains to be seen whether the associated dangers (of a flexible response) are given equal consideration in the event of a review.

Ruhee Neog
Senior Research Officer, NSP, IPCS
Email: ruhee.neog@ipcs.org

The post India And No First Use: Does ‘Calculated Ambiguity’ Help? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Andrei Soldatov

The intrigue is growing over the Federal Security Service’s involvement in Ukraine. On April 11, Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor General said there was no evidence implicating the FSB in events on Maidan Square. At the same time, it is officially confirmed that FSB generals visited Kiev on Feb. 20 to 21. Recall that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry sent a note to Moscow on April 4 demanding to know why FSB Colonel General Sergei Beseda visited Kiev on Feb. 20 and 21, and that the very next day Interfax cited a source in Russian intelligence confirming that visit.

The answer as to why Beseda was in Kiev with his entourage could be key to understanding the role of Russia’s intelligence agencies in the current crisis and to the Kremlin’s entire strategy in Ukraine.

Beseda heads the FSB’s Fifth Service, or the Service for Operational Information and International Communications. That service includes the Operational Information Department that Beseda headed until 2009. Since the end of the 1990s, that division has been responsible for conducting intelligence activities focusing on the former Soviet republics.

When the chekists formed their own foreign intelligence agencies, they cited a number of reasons why Russia needed a third such service in addition to the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU. They argued that when the SVR became a separate intelligence service, the FSB still included divisions responsible for recruiting foreigners living in Russia, and that in turn necessitated the formation of a coordinating structure at its central headquarters at Lubyanka. But it was soon apparent that the FSB agencies intended to expand the scope of their intelligence work. That is understandable: Russia was headed for the first time by a former intelligence officer who was accustomed to primarily trusting information gathered by intelligence agencies. The Kremlin considers its near abroad a priority, and it apparently seemed illogical to President Vladimir Putin not to have information from that region coming directly from the country’s main intelligence agencies.

The foreign intelligence agencies of the FSB have developed a well-defined style during their 15 years in operation. For example, in contrast to the SVR and GRU, the FSB has no qualms about appearing in the spotlight and its generals have a penchant for paying visits to senior officials in neighboring countries. As a result, Belarussian observers accused the FSB of trying to influence the political situation prior to that country’s presidential elections in 2003. In 2004, FSB generals visited Sukhumi, Abkhazia to support the pro-Moscow candidates in their presidential race and, according to news reports from Chisinau, FSB generals personally worked with local Moldovan politicians in the mid-2000s. It also came to light four years ago that FSB intelligence services are actively involved in Ukraine. As an example, in 2010 a disaffected chekist published FSB documents on the Lubyanskayapravda.com website he created. That site was scuttled only two weeks later, but among the documents it revealed was a report on a Ukrainian document the FSB had forged with the intention of misleading the government of Turkmenistan and spoiling a gas deal between Kiev and Ashkhabad.

The second distinguishing feature of Russia’s intelligence services is their lack of interest in mass movements and the activity on the street in favor of a total focus on the corrupt elites holding power. This is based on the old idea that “if we control the shah, we control the country.”

Oddly enough, this aspect of their work is remarkably similar to the style of British intelligence during the collapse of the British Empire. In the 1950s, British agents in Egypt tried to their very last to compromise the monarchy, whereas U.S. agents were already working with the “free officers” of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, ultimately leading to the Suez Crisis of 1956. At the same time, the corporate cultures of the British Secret Intelligence Service and the FSB are so different that this single unexpected similarity can have only one explanation: The intelligence services of imperial powers tend to have the same biases toward their former colonies.

This approach has at least two major drawbacks. First, all of the Ukrainians who cooperated with the FSB now have no political future in that country — depriving the FSB of access to the ruling circles. Second, if the FSB relied entirely on information provided by close associates of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, how accurate was their picture of the overall situation in the country?

Even this problem could be overcome were it not for the fact that all of the decision-makers in the Kremlin also share a background in the FSB. In the case of Ukraine, some former KGB generals now serving in Ukraine’s security service told a different group of former KGB generals now serving in Russia’s Federal Security Service what was happening in the country. And that situation is further complicated by the fact that, according to a report in The New York Times, that information was passed along to Putin’s inner circle of presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev and FSB head Alexander Bortnikov — all of whom, together with the president, worked in the KGB.

That common “education” might help them all stay on the same page, but it does nothing to help them understand the world at large. In fact, KGB operatives were not taught to engage in politics. They were instilled with a narrow and limited view of events, one confined to a reliance on tactics while ignoring overall strategy. This is an outlook that disregards larger social processes in favor of a focus on agents of influence in different states.

Perhaps this explains why government officials are constantly saying privately that Russia’s policy is nothing more than an improvisational reaction to various crises. If that is true, it makes the situation in Ukraine even more unpredictable.

Andrei Soldatov is an intelligence analyst at Agentura.ru and co-author of “The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB.”

Published in the Moscow Times on April 16, 2014

The post The True Role Of The FSB In The Ukrainian Crisis – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Luis Ramirez

The Obama administration is facing challenges from the opposition and the news media on its handling of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in which killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed.

At issue is a newly released email from 2012 that critics say bolsters their claim the administration tried to deflect blame for the incident by falsely saying the attack was triggered by a video that insulted Islam.

In that email, the administration lays out talking points that then-United Nations ambassador Susan Rice was to follow when she appeared on television news shows to explain the incident.

The email was written by White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and said the administration’s goal was to underscore that the protests taking place at various diplomatic posts at the time were rooted in the video.

Later, U.S. officials confirmed the attack at the consulate in Benghazi was the result of an organized terrorist plot.

In a heated exchange with reporters that extended from Wednesday to Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney accused the opposition of politicizing the Benghazi attack.

“This administration’s focus since that event has been on pursuing those who did harm on Americans, who killed Americans and bringing them to justice and taking action to ensure that the failures in security that helped cause this or lead to this event were addressed and changed. What we have seen since hours after the attack beginning with a statement by the Republican nominee for president, is an attempt by Republicans to politicize a tragedy and that continues today, and yesterday,” said Carney.

Administration officials say the email was discussing the wider incidents in which demonstrators held violent protests outside several U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region.

The administration released the email only after a lawsuit demanding the handover of all emails related to the Benghazi incident, fueling further criticism among those who accuse the administration of covering up or downplaying the attack.

The post White House Challenged On Benghazi Email appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A preliminary report released by Malaysia’s Transport Ministry reveals that officials didn’t notice for 17 minutes that the missing flight had gone off radar and didn’t activate an official rescue operation until four hours after the disappearance.

The five-page report notes that the plane disappeared from radar in Kuala Lumpur at 01:21 local time on March 8. As the plane’s crew should have contacted Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Vietnamese air traffic controllers waited 17 minutes before asking Malaysian air traffic control where the plane was. After this, there was a four-hour gap before an official rescue operation was launched.

On Tuesday, a Malaysian official said the aircraft could have flown on for another seven-and-a-half hours, meaning that the plane may have been airborne in the four-hour gap, and for two-and-a-half hours after the fruitless search began.

There is also confusion surrounding the role of Malaysia’s military on the night of the disappearance. Malaysia’s prime minister has said that the military tracked a plane on its radar that may have been flight MH370 as it made a westerly turn and headed back across the Malaysian peninsular. But the report makes no mention of the military at all.

Compared to other reports on recent major flight investigations, this one is scant at best. In contrast, the preliminary report into Air France 447 was released one month after the plane disappeared but was 128 pages long. And a preliminary report into the Quantas engine explosion over Singapore in 2010 was more than 40 pages with diagrams and charts.

The report makes one safety recommendation, for real-time air tracking to be installed on all commercial aircraft.

“There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known. This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner,” the report states.

The same recommendation was made after the Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, though nothing was done to satisfy the proposal.

There is also anger at why Malaysian authorities delayed making their report available to passengers’ relatives and the public, even though the same report was delivered to the International Aviation Organization some days ago.

Relatives advised to go home

Malaysia Airlines has advised the families of passengers to go home, adding that they will receive any further updates by phone or other means.

Since the aircraft’s disappearance, the airline has been providing hotels for the families. Malaysia Airlines has stated it will close its support centers by May 7, though it will open two different “family support centers” in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

The airline also announced Thursday that it will start paying advance compensation to MH370 passengers’ next-of-kin to help with their immediate economic needs.

Where is the plane wreckage?

The report’s release comes just one day after the large-scale air search – which was being operated out of the Royal Australian Air Force base in Pearce, north of Perth, for more than six weeks – was finally called off.

Despite over ten planes taking part in the search, nothing from the missing aircraft was found. A scaled-down search by ships and submersible vessels will continue for an indefinite amount of time.

GeoResonance, an Australian firm, says it has used spectral analysis from satellite and plane images to detect the presence of aluminum, titanium, and copper in the Bay of Bengal, which it says is from a commercial jet.

But GeoResonance’s claims are not supported by the majority of aviation experts.

“My blood is boiling. I’ve talked to the leading experts in satellite capability in NASA, and they know of no technology that is capable of doing this. I am just horrified that a company would use this event to gain attention like this,” Miles O’ Brien, an aviation expert, told CNN.

But with the search area in the southern Indian Ocean yielding no results, investigators have to take all claims seriously. Bangladesh has sent two navy ships to the location in the Bay of Bengal cited by GeoResonance.

“I think at this point, because of the lack of results where they’ve been searching for weeks, they’re almost stuck. They have to go look,” said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the US Department of Transportation.

The search began in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam until it was revealed by satellite data that the missing plane was still airborne for seven-and-a-half hours after it lost contact with air traffic control.

After this, researchers analyzing the data said the plane most likely came down somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Australia.

A new search then began, coordinated by Australia and involving planes and ships from eight nations – Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Malaysia, the US, Japan, South Korea, and China.

The post Malaysia Releases MH370 Report appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ivet González

The lack of markets to supply raw materials for Cuba’s new private sector, along with the poverty in isolated rural communities, is fuelling the poaching of endangered species of flora and fauna.

In 2010, the socialist government of Raúl Castro gave the green light to private enterprise in a limited number of activities, mainly in the services sector.

But without wholesale markets to supply the 455,000 “cuentapropistas” – officially registered self-employed people – unforeseen phenomena soon appeared, like the rise in poaching and illegal logging.

Forests, which cover just under 29 percent of the territory of this Caribbean island nation, are suffering the consequences.

“You can get a permit to work as a carpenter, but it’s hard to get the raw materials,” Antonio Gutiérrez, a carpenter who works at a sawmill in the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest Caribbean island wetland, told Tierramérica. “You can also build more homes, or upgrade homes. People need boards, windows, everything…and to solve the problem they go into the bush and cut.”

Last year, the forest ranger corps levied 19,993 fines for a total of 125,000 dollars, and seized 2,274 metres of wood. Although there are no statistics on wood confiscated in previous years, the authorities say illegal logging is on the rise.

“That’s confiscated mahogany and oak,” said Gutiérrez, 48, pointing to a pile of thin tree trunks on the ground. “Those trees had a lot of growing to do to become real logs.”

He maintained that more wood should be sold to people in order to safeguard forests from illegal logging.

The Agriculture Ministry’s forestry director, Isabel Rusó, told the press in March that the law in effect since 1998 provides for fines that are not effective in dissuading illegal logging. She also said private businesses either have to face a sea of red tape to purchase wood from state-owned companies or buy wood on the black market.

A new forestry bill is to be introduced in parliament in 2015.

But the problems are not only limited to the country’s forests.

Last year, the authorities confiscated 1,696 boats and registered 2,959 cases of illegal fishing – up from 1,987 in 2011 and just 996 in 2012.

In the western province of Pinar del Río, which has rich nature reserves, over two tonnes of poached sea turtles were seized, most of which belonged to endangered or threatened species.

In addition, 219 simple fishing boats were confiscated, and fines were levied for the use of banned fishing techniques, the capture of protected or toxic species, and vandalism against state fishing companies, among other offences.

The capture of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) “is indiscriminate because it is done at night and the females are often on their way to lay their eggs in the sand,” Pedro Fernández, a 62-year-old bricklayer from Havana who has been a hobby fisherman for four decades, told Tierramérica.

“The turtles are killed and cleaned, and the waste is dumped at sea,” he added. “Because of the way things are done, it’s hard to control and assess the real magnitude of the problem,” said Fernández, who added that he had never fished illegally.

He said that to catch the turtles, the fishermen place net traps at the bottom of the sea for a month or more.

From May to September, loggerhead turtles, green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) lay their eggs on Cuba’s beaches.

Many of the beaches are protected areas, such as the ones in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, the San Felipe keys, the Largo del Sur key, the Isle of Youth (Cuba’s second-biggest island), and the Guanahacabibes peninsula in Pinar del Río.

But that doesn’t stop the poachers. Nor do the stiff penalties against poaching or the strict police controls.

The meat of different animals and fish and seafood sell for astronomical prices on the black market. One kilo of loggerhead sea turtle or crocodile meat fetches between five and seven dollars.

The average salary of a state employee – the government still employs roughly 80 percent of the workforce – is the equivalent of 19 dollars a month. But some Cubans have other sources of income, and can afford such forbidden luxuries.

In this business, however, not everyone is always lucky. A young man from Havana returned last month from a trip to Pinar del Río, 160 km west of Havana, with empty hands, after making the journey to buy loggerhead turtle steaks.

“No fisherman sold me anything,” the young man, who occasionally sells prohibited foods,” told IPS. “People buy up this soft, tasty protein-rich meat really quickly.”

Poaching and illegal logging are increasing along Cuba’s coasts and in its forests, mangroves, swamps and marshes – even in the country’s 103 protected areas.

The damage caused by poaching endangered species is the most visible face of the illegal hunting, fishing and logging in this country, which has 1,163 endangered species of animals and 848 endangered species of plants.

The shrinking populations of manatees, dolphins, crocodiles, caimans, green and loggerhead sea turtles, pirarucu, black coral, queen conch, parrots, and the multicoloured polymita land snail are all targeted by poachers.

Generally, poachers are men, although women take part in transporting and selling the products.

The authorities are beefing up oversight and inspection, to prevent international smuggling as well, while stepping up environmental education.

“But alternatives must be found to boost the development of populations that live near or inside the nature reserves,” Carlos Rojas, the manager of the Laguna Guanaroca-Gavilanes protected area, told Tierramérica.

In the nature reserve, located 11 km from city of Cienfuegos in southeast Cuba, which depends on both tourism and fishing, poaching has been reduced “due to fear of the law, but not because there’s environmental consciousness,” he said.

“Educational programmes help, but we see that people still feel like they have the right to fish. The bans cause conflicts when it comes to how they make a living,” Rojas added.

One positive step in his administration was to increase the number of people from neighbouring communities on the reserve’s payroll. But Rojas lamented that a project for sustainable fishing had never been implemented. And he said ecotourism would be another path to environmentally-friendly local livelihoods.

Demand is the main driver of poaching of fish and seafood in the reserve’s lagoon, he said. And there are newer, growing phenomena, like collectors, or the lack of markets providing supplies for the private sector, he added.

“Permits were issued for making crafts and selling food, but no one knows where some of the things that are sold came from,” he cautioned.

Two years ago, the non-governmental Cuban Association of Artists and Artisans adopted restrictive measures for those who sold crafts made with coral or shells from vulnerable species.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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On April 18-19, 2014, Mr. Ditmir Bushati, Albanian Foreign Minister, conducted his first official visit to the Republic of Turkey.

Mr. Bushati’s arrival to Ankara is the continuation of an extensive dialogue and bilateral cooperation between both nations which has gained a new momentum with the official visit to Albania by Turkish Foreign Minister, Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu, on October 4-5, 2013, as well as the first official visit to Ankara of the Hon. Mimi Kodheli, Albanian Defense Minister, on April 18th, 2014. Immediately after the leader of Albanian Socialist Party, Edi Rama became a Prime Minister, in September 2013, after the general elections of June 23rd, 2013; Albania’s strategic relations with Turkey were given a special priority and became highly important.

According to Prime Minister Rama, Turkey is considered a strategic partner in Albania’s Foreign Policy Strategy and his government aims to further strengthen the bilateral cooperation with Ankara, especially in the economic and commercial partnership. Under this framework, in February 2014, was held in Tirana the Albania-Turkey Economic and Trade Forum. In his statement Mr. Rama emphasized that Turkish investors will very soon experience a tremendous reduction of bureaucracy and friendly policies towards the opening of their businesses in Albania.

He added: “We consider you as ambassadors and promoters of our country in the world.”[1] Turkey is the second largest trading partner of Albania and its daily consumption products, merchandises and commodities are always present in Albania’s markers. Some of the largest Turkish companies, with a focus in areas such as construction, telecommunications, transportation and education are: ENKA, Gintaş, Armada, Metal Yapı, Aldemir, Servomatik, Çalık Holding/Türk Telekom, Makro-Tel/Hes Kablo, Albanian Airlines (Evsen Group), Gülistan Foundation, Istanbul Foundation, Epoka University.

In his visit to Ankara, Mr. Bushati had a lengthy conversation with his counterpart, Prof. Dr. Davutoğlu, and particularly addressed the strong bilateral economic relations, international and regional security issues, and most importantly, Tirana’s aspirations to establish a bilateral “High Level Partnership and Cooperation Council”between Tirana and Ankara.

In their joint press conference, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu said that the two countries have agreed to establish the “High Level Partnership and Cooperation Council” and this bilateral body will be meeting in the weeks ahead, to discuss pending items of the mutually beneficial agenda. Turkish investments in Albania have increased by US$ 2 billion and the bilateral trade volume has reached more than US$1 billion, from US$400 million, only five years ago.

Another item in the discussions were the potential venues of strengthening the cooperation between the two ministries, while placing a special importance to Albania’s EU integration and membership status.

According to Minister Davutoğlu, the Turkish Diplomatic Chief: “We together endeavor for our common goals, will continue to work together, at the highest level in international organizations as well. We agreed to establish the Turkey-Albania High Level Cooperation Council” [2]

In this occasion, the two counterparts signed an agreement and Memorandum of Understanding focused in the bilateral Cooperation of Information Technologies.

Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, visited Albania on October, 2013; he met with Prime Minister Edi Rama, and Foreign Minister Bushati. During his visit, Turkish Foreign Minister initiated the dialogue to establish the High Level Strategic Cooperation Mechanisms, that would be highly beneficial to both countries’ economies, trade and bilateral political dialogue.

Albania and Turkey, have maintained a close partnership within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Southeast European Cooperation Process (SEECP) as well as have been working closely in Peace Keeping operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia Hercegovina and other hot spots in the world. This year, Tirana will assume the chairmanship of SEECP and under its leadership the strategic role of Turkey and its contributions will further be solidified in the Balkans.

In Tirana, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu met with President of Albania, Mr. Bujar Nishani, Mr. Edi Rama, and Mr. Ilir Meta, the Speaker of Albanian Parliament.

Bilateral relations between Albania and Turkey, are characterized by a strong sense of cooperation, friendship, mutually beneficial regional stability and stronger commercial and economic ties.

Over the last three years there have been multiple official visits undertaken by top Albanian government officials to Ankara as well as the government of Prime Minister Erdogan has kept a keen interest towards Albania. In October, 2011, Mr. Bamir Topi, Albania’s president, led an official visit to Ankara, which was a very productive and set the tone for a closer cooperation between both countries.

Mr. Topi’s visit was followed by Dr. Sali Berisha, Albanian Prime Minister’s visit to Turkey in April 2012 and Mr. Cemil Çiçek, Turkish Assembly Speaker to Tirana in June 2012. Additionally, in October 2012, Albanian Foreign Minister, H.E. Edmond Panariti visited Ankara, and gave a keynote address in the International Conference entitled “From Balkan Wars to Balkan Peace” co-organized by the Center for Strategic Research of Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Panariti held fruitful talks with H.E. Foreign Minister Davutoğlu and other high level officials of the Turkish government.

Another important variable in Albania-Turkey strong bilateral cooperation is the high number of Turkish citizens of Albanian origin living in Turkey and the attendance of Albanian students and professionals who have decided to reside and work in Turkey. There has historically been a significant bondage between Albania and Turkey, even the Albanian language has been influenced over many centuries by the Turkish language. Currently, there are more than three thousand common words in Albanian and Turkish languages, that are used daily in both nations. [3]

Another important aspect is the cooperation in the areas of national defense training, and technological equipment. Albania depends heavily on Turkish forces’ assistance in training and supply of cutting edge defense technology as well as the reconstruction of Albania’s military bases and their maintenance.

Over the last twenty years, Turkish military personnel, from various branches: infantry, land, naval and Air Force bases have trained Albanian Armed Forces, provided technological equipments and helped rebuild its military infrastructure. Albanian soldiers assigned to Afghanistan under the NATO mandate, are serving within the Turkish command deployed in Kabul.

Sources and References:

[1] http://gazeta-shqip.com/lajme/2014/02/27/rama-ne-forumin-ekonomik-cdo-detyrim-per-biznesin-ne-60-dite/

[2] http://www.mfa.gov.tr/foreign-minister-davutoglu-_we-agreed-to-establish-the-turkey_albania-high-level-cooperation-council.en.mfa

[3] http://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkey-and-albania.en.mfa

The post Turkey And Albania Establish Dynamic Agenda For Bilateral Relations appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Rahul K Bhonsle

That the separatists, terrorist groups and their masters across the Line of Control will attempt to disrupt or at least restrict participation of people in the General Elections in the Valley was a given. United Jihad Council (UJC) chairman and Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander appealed to the people to boycott forthcoming polls, Salah-ud-Din said; “Incidents like the hanging of Muhammad Afzal Guru and rape of innocent women at the hands of Army indicate that all Indian agencies are hand in glove to inflict maximum humiliation on Kashmiri people. The government of India, its armed forces and other establishments are pursuing the same policy vis-à-vis Kashmir and its people. Guru was hanged to appease Hindu fanatics while the death sentence of Bhullar was commuted to life sentence,” Salah-ud-Din said

While the mood was sullen yet the overall percentage was decent. South Kashmir polled approximately 29 percent one percent higher than the 2009 elections. In Central Kashmir polling was 26 percent again a notch higher than that in 2009 by the 12 lakh electorate in Lok Sabha constituency amid tight security. This is a marginal increase from the 25 percent or so that was recorded in 2009. Surpassing the same has not been possible due to a number of factors.

With separatists extending their boycott of elections in the Valley there were not much expectations of high voting. Lack of enthusiasm in the masses for Lok Sabha elections as compared to local ones is another major factor apart from the boycott. While the Srinagar city has recorded a mere 11 percent plus other areas on the periphery which are the strong hold of National Conference have seen relatively heavy polling at over 40 percent thus raising hopes of permeation of nationalist sentiment in these areas. Similarly there was a fair percentage of voting in Anantnag and Kulgam segments of the South Kashmir constituency but Shopian and Pulwama particularly Tral remain a concern as in the latter only 6 percent plus voting was recorded indicating both a fear amongst residents to come out and vote and tacit support to boycott call by separatists. It is apparent that the security forces could not prevent militant groups from creating fear by targeting grass roots leaders of nationalist parties’ just days before the elections.

It is not the level of polling but continued alienation of the people in selected pockets that should be of concern. In ways this is a grim reminder to the government, security forces and civil society of challenges of bringing normalcy to pockets of the Valley which can be swayed by actions of terrorist groups and calls by separatists. A focused approach to tackle separatist sentiment in areas such as Srinagar Downtown, Tral, Pulwama, Shopian, Bandipora and Sopore should be attempted while consolidating gains in Anantnag and Badgam amongst others. Areas as Kangan and Ganderbal have always favoured the National Conference thus retaining allegiance of the people in these areas is important.

There are a number of tacks that militant groups in the Valley followed to prevent smooth conduct of the polls process and upset the security grid prior to the elections. One such tactic was targeting village headman who are elected representatives at the grass roots and have thus invited resentment by separatists and the terrorists groups alike. At the same time it is difficult to provide security to these given that they are too many in numbers and are thus vulnerable to sporadic attacks by terrorists. This vulnerability has been exploited in the run up to the elections in the Valley with killing of a number of sarpanches in succession thereby placing the security forces in a quandary while at the same time making a strong anti nationalist political statement with mass resignation of some of the village headman. This however had a localized impact and is also seen by some as a part of the tit for tat actions by supporters of the mainstream parties the National Conference and People’s Democratic Party or PDP.

In Central Kashmir campaigning by National Conference leader and union minister Dr Farooq Abdullah was targeted with a series of bomb attacks which fortunately did not result in loss of lives. The contest also assumed a high pitch with the National Conference fighting the so called Modi wave that is expected to see the BJP come to power in the country after 10 years of Congress rule.

In case that happens special provisions to the State of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 are likely to be one of the major subjects of debate. Article 370 of Indian constitution grants special autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir. This Article specifies that except for Defence, Foreign Affairs Finance and Communications, Indian Parliament needs the State Government’s concurrence for applying all other laws. Thus the State’s residents have a special privilege related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to other Indian citizens. Article 1 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir on the other hand states that Jammu and Kashmir is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India, thus providing a counter guarantee. Removal of Article 370 may thus have a snow balling effect and any move by the BJP is not likely to receive support from other parties.
Rahul K Bhonsle
rkbhonsle@security-risks.com, rkbhonsle@gmail.com
www.security-risks.com

The post Lessons From Kashmir 2014 Elections – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Government of Pakistani (GoP) is all set to issue Soverign Ijarah Sukuk up to PKR45 billion (around US$ 458 million) during the first week of May. It will be the country’s first Sukuk issue during calendar year 2014.

Backed by the M3 motorway, the issue is aimed at meeting the country’s escalating financial needs while providing investment opportunities to the Islamic banking industry. The M3 route is a 53km-highway linking Pindi Bhattian to Faisalabad and is expected to become an important motorway connecting southern Pakistan to the north.

Islamic financial institutions in Pakistan are currently in desperate search for Shariah compliant products and investment avenues due to overflowing surplus liquidity. Currently, Islamic banking institutions in the country are said to have approximately Rs150 billion (US$ 1.52 billion) surplus liquidity and are facing difficulties in stabilizing their profitability due to limited investment opportunities. The three-year Ijarah Sukuk offers excellent opportunity to the Islamic industry for placement of this excess liquidity.

Industry observers say that the Islamic banking sector in Pakistan witnessed a decline in investments to PKR394 billion (US$4 billion) at the end of December 2013 from PKR445 billion (US$ 4.52 billion) at the end of September last year. It was suggested that the drop was mainly attributed to the non-issuance of the Sovereign Ijarah Sukuk, which was expected within the last three quarters of 2013. It has been generally the preferred investment option for the Islamic banking sector. The GoP was unable to issue Sukuk due to technical reasons.

The post Pakistan To Sell US$458 Million Sukuk In May appeared first on Eurasia Review.

President Barack Obama’s tour of East Asia over the past week highlighted three issues regarding US presence in the region. Expectations of the US rebalance towards Asia need to be calibrated.

By Sarah Teo

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama completed a four-nation tour of East Asia the past week that took him to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. It was a trip designed to reinforce and revitalise alliances and partnerships, reaffirm US commitment to the Asia Pacific and forge stronger economic ties with regional countries.

Widely seen as a test of the current US administration’s rebalancing policy, Obama’s Asia trip occurred amid tensions among Northeast Asian states, concerns in Southeast Asia over China’s rise and the implications for the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Three messages can be gleaned from Obama’s East Asia tour.

US security role remains dominant

Firstly, the US role in the Asia Pacific remains primarily in security issues. Although the rebalance is meant to encompass economic, cultural, and security interests, it is the latter that Asia Pacific countries seem to be most concerned about. Indeed, while there was no breakthrough in talks for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), regional countries received reassurance from Obama about US commitment to their security.

To his Northeast Asian allies, Obama reiterated that the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands were covered by the US-Japan mutual security treaty. He also agreed to reconsider the 2015 timeline for the transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea of its own military forces in the face of the threat from North Korea. In Southeast Asia, a defence pact allowing for the rotational deployment of US troops, aircraft and ships in the Philippines was concluded.

The concern among Asia Pacific countries about US commitment to regional security, amid perceived Chinese assertiveness, is hardly surprising given that the United States has been the main security guarantor in the region for the past six decades. On the other hand, China continues to be the economic powerhouse of Asia and is the top trading partner of several Asia Pacific countries.

Even as regional countries continue to depend on the US for security, their economic ties with China will undoubtedly expand and deepen. The region benefits from positive relations with both the US and China. In this regard, regional countries need to be aware of how their actions could be perceived by either major power, in the pursuit of their security or economic interests.

One country’s stability is another’s instability

Secondly, while all stakeholders in the region speak of maintaining peace and stability, there is no consensus on how to achieve this goal. The security dilemma is evident. Japan views the inclusion of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the US-Japan security treaty as a US commitment to regional peace and stability. China is likely to view it as destabilising. Similarly, while the US and the Philippines view their new defence pact as an initiative that will strengthen regional security, the perspective from China is different. Chinese state news agency Xinhua carried a commentary arguing that the intention of the Aquino administration was “to confront China with US backing” and the pact could “intensify regional tensions”.

The San Francisco system of US bilateral alliances in the region is viewed by China as an arrangement that reeks of Cold War dynamics. Yet, it has been acknowledged that the US presence in the Asia Pacific has to some extent provided regional countries with public goods that have helped to ensure their security and stability. For example, Washington is seen as an important actor in preventing a potential remilitarisation of Japan. The official response of the Chinese foreign ministry to the US-Philippine defence agreement has also avoided criticising the Americans, instead highlighting Washington’s statements that it has no intention of containing China.

The Sunnylands Summit between Obama and President Xi Jinping last year highlighted the potential for the US and China to work together on common interests. Both sides also agreed on the importance of a positive Sino-US relationship. The Summit provided a platform for communication and mutual understanding. Likewise, for the region to truly achieve peace and stability, there will eventually need to be agreement on exactly what this entails and how to realise it. In short, communication is key.

Global superpower with multi-dimensional obligations

Finally, Obama’s Asia trip clearly shows that the US is a global actor, with both domestic and global obligations. Last year, Obama cancelled a trip to Southeast Asia, including attendance at the APEC Summit and East Asia Summit, due to a US government shutdown. Earlier in 2010, he had also postponed trips to Indonesia and Australia because of domestic crises.

Coupled with ongoing events in Ukraine and the Middle East, concerns have been raised over the sustainability of US commitment to the Asia Pacific region. Even during the joint press conferences with his Asian hosts, for example, questions were raised regarding US policy on Ukraine and the Middle East peace effort. The reality is that the US is a global actor, a superpower that is expected to take on responsibilities far beyond its shores. Given resource limitations, this is likely to affect the extent of its commitment to the Asia Pacific.

Expectations about the US rebalance need to be calibrated. Even before the announcement of the rebalance strategy, half of US naval assets were already deployed in Asia, with troops in Japan and South Korea. At the very least, Washington’s allies and partners can be reassured from Obama’s trip that despite its other obligations elsewhere, it still intends to uphold its alliances and partnerships in the region.

Sarah Teo is Associate Research Fellow with the Multilateralism and Regionalism Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

The post US Presence In Asia Pacific: Messages From Obama’s East Asia Tour – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Militant supporters of Istanbul’s top three soccer clubs added muscle to thousands of trade unionists, leftists and government opponents in May Day clashes with Turkish police in what has become a battle for control of the city’s iconic Taksim Square.

With 40,000 men on duty, 20,000 of which were stationed on and around Taksim, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to prevent protesters from reaching the square. Clashes erupted in various parts of the city, including Besiktas, home to Carsi, the widely popular militant support group of Besiktas JK. Turkish media reports said 51 people were injured and 138 arrested.

The significance of Taksim to both the government and its critics was highlighted by the fact that the government banned May Day celebrations on the square on alleged national security grounds but assigned an area on the outskirts of the city where the unions and others would be allowed to mark Labour Day.

Taksim, Istanbul’s historic venue for May Day demonstrations and other gatherings, has been contested territory since the eruption last June of the largest mass anti-government protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he was first elected in 2002. Militant soccer fans played a key role in those protests. The government has since banned all demonstrations from the square.

Underlying the protests in what has become a deeply polarized country is a widespread sense among Mr. Erdogan’s opponents that power has gone to his head and that he since the brutal use of the police during last year’s protests has become increasingly authoritarian, using a power struggle with Fethullalh Gulen, a self-exiled Muslim preacher who heads one of the world’s largest Islamist movement to muzzle the media, give Turkey’s intelligence service powers similar to those of the secret services in Arab autocracies and subject the judiciary to government control.

Few deny that Mr. Erdogan deserves credit for significantly growing Turkey’s economy, positioning it as a regional power at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and bridging the gap that long segregated secularists from religious segments of society.

In fact, the very nature of the debate underlying the battle for Taksim highlights significant changes Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist politician who served prison time for citing what authorities at the time viewed as a subversive poem, has brought to Turkey

Criticism of Mr. Erdogan’s focuses on his haughty style of government, his more recent refusal to constructively engage with his opponents, his refusal to allow due process in what is the most serious corruption scandal since he came to office, and authoritarian moves that threaten to curtail Turkish democracy. It does not focus on Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist credentials.

That is a far cry from the ‘us and them’ discussion of almost 20 years ago when the country’s economic elite moved vast sums of money out of Turkey for fear that then newly elected Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan would turn it into an Islamic republic. The elites at the time cheered Mr. Erbakan’s removal in a silent military coup and the banning of his Refah Party from which Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerged.

The battle for Taksim reflects that change. It is a battle for the soul of a Turkey in which all Turks have an equal interest. It is a battle that is as much about sheer power as it is about the nature of Turkish democracy. It is a battle that is in part being fought on the soccer pitch evidenced by the participation of soccer fans as well as the banners they carried and the slogans they chanted during the May 1 demonstrations.

The stakes are high for fans and go to the heart of the struggle for Turkey’s soul. In Istanbul and other Turkish cities fans denounced the government’s e-ticket system that would give it access to their personal details against the background of an effort in the past year to portray protest as a precursor for terrorism and an attempt to criminalize militant soccer groups. Twenty members of Carsi were last year charged with belonging to an illegal organization.

Several Turkish clubs have said they would refuse to implement the e-ticket system. Executives of Fenerbahce SK, Turkey’s foremost club, said they would implement their own e-ticket system that would legally free them from the obligation to provide the government with fans’ personal data. In an indication of resistance to the system and Mr. Erdogan’s policies, fans of Galatasary sang during the May 1 demonstrations in Besiktas, the territory of one of their arch rivals, a song of Fenerbahce, another arch rival, commemorating Ali Ismail Korkmaz, who was killed in last June’s protests.

The stakes are particularly high for Fenerbahce whose president, Aziz Yildirim, has been sentenced to prison on match fixing charges. Mr. Yildirim, who has consistently denied wrongdoing, was expecting to be detained after May 1 because the government feared that an earlier arrest might fuel the May 1 protests.

The Fenerbahce case is at the centre of a political battle between Mr, Erdogan and Hasim Kilic, the head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court. Mr Yildirim’s last hope to avoid serving further time in prison is a pending appeal to the court on procedural ground. In a highly unusual twist of events, Mr. Kilic recently met privately with Ali Koc, one of Turkey’s foremost businessmen and one of Mr. Erdogan’s bete noirs, who is closely affiliated to Fenerbahce. In a public speech several days later, Mr. Kilic frontally denounced the government’s efforts to undermine the judiciary’s independence, sparking a public row between the court and the prime minister’s ruling AKP party.

The post The Battle For Taksim, A Battle For Turkey’s Soul – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Globalization is an economic movement aimed at the unification of peoples under a plutocracy. It is economic because it is driven by international trade and the constant search for new markets, raw materials and ever cheaper labor. Its arrogance has created a coherent and compelling body of writing that exposes its flaws. Russia serves as the instrument of the resistance against it, and therefore, she has been and will continue to be the target of globalist forces.

This paper argues that globalism is another word for western liberalism and “democracy.” It is an inherently unjust regime of global rule that serves only the global oligarchy and insulates them from its consequences. It is presented as “inevitable” and as the result of impersonal forces. Neither claim is true, though the evils of globalization are not inconsistent with “rational” self-interest as defined by economics.

The resistance to this movement as been a bizarre coalition of mutually conflicting movements and personalities. This paper argues that, in order for globalism to be successfully challenged, a strong sense of ethnic, national or regional identity must emerge. Elements of the nationalist and Eurasianist doctrine provide some ideas on how societies can remove themselves from the destructive agenda of internationalism. In Russia’s case, these are popular and, to an extent, are already developing in public policy.

The analysis here will proceed in several distinct stages, making it easier to grasp the connections among the forces of globalization, capitalism, liberalism and oligarchy. The first section is a broad based understanding of globalization and its primary consequent, the creation of dependence. The second deals with two Russian authors briefly summarized, showing the very different arguments on Russia’s place in the new “global order.” Third, Eurasianism is described in general terms as a response to the terminal crisis of western capitalism. Finally, the Eurasian idea is described in some detail in accordance with the views of three major writers: NV Ustryalov, N. Alexeyev and Ernst Niekisch.

The overall purpose of this essay is to describe the problem, apply it to the Russian case, and, from there, describe the foundational ideas required to rebuild a strong and rational identity. Such an identity is absolutely necessary as a springboard for rebellion. The problem with “leftist” ideologies in the west is that, in dispensing with ethnic or religious identity, they are left with no real source of solidarity. This is the most severe problem with the university-based anarchist and communist groups in the west.

The Issues: Globalization, Regionalism and Liberalism

Capitalism rejects global diversity because its ideology of mass production is founded on standardization. There is a set number of products that a firm manufacturers, and their maintenance requires modular parts and design. Each part, in other words, is identical to all others of its type and hence are easily replaceable. The economic imperative itself is centered around efficiency because competitive markets, now saturated with debt, are becoming tougher to break.

The capitalist ethos, based around the production line, leads to standardized tastes, possessions and priorities. Men are as replaceable as machine parts. However, they can only be such if they are identical in mental content. Therefore, the economic imperative of globalism implies a corresponding domination of the mass mind.

The dissolution of all value into a universally fungible and quantifiable cash nexus eventually takes over every aspect of life, stripping it of all unique attributes. In logic, this becomes the foundation of formal relations and external coherence being confused for “truth.” In ontology, it descends to nominalism, where only the “individual” exists and therefore, no essential links among objects can be known. This is the elite consensus in the western world that desires its imposition elsewhere.1

Russia is in a unique position to check the insidious destruction of human thought. Given Russia’s size, educational ability, nationalism and military history, she is both the natural center of resistance as well as a prime target for absorption into the nominalist matrix. Once weak, Russia is now in the top 8 most powerful economies in the world. Russia is regaining her proper hegemonic status in her near abroad, while it is the US that is desperately seeking to cling to its post-war imperial status.

There is no reason to believe that Russia and Ukraine will be anything other than appendages to western capital once they are absorbed by it. In the Eurasian Union, the Slavic states will be significant contributors and partners. The domination of the western world by a few banks means that, in the western orbit, the Slavic nations will be sources of raw materials and cheap labor. As the former Warsaw pact has been deindustrialized to the extent they have become part of the EU, any arguments as to this Union’s benefits is absurd. No lesser light than Zbigniew Brzezinski argues incessantly that Russia, and only Russia, is the chief enemy of financial capital.

The Eurasian option for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is rational not only due to cultural proximity, but also because Asia offers far more promising growth potential than the exhausted and deindustrialized west. The western world is on its last financial legs, offering almost nothing to the former eastern bloc. As a result, the US must compensate with threats, secret coup plots and media vitriol. The plain truth is that the west bought its faux-prosperity on debt rather than the actual creation of value. She reaps what she has sown.
Globalization is a semi-totalitarian enterprise, since it affects all aspects of life. Relative to policy, joining the World Trade Organization requires a total overhaul of a country’s internal structure. In a 2012 study, the World Bank lays out the nature of globalization relative to the WTO:

WTO accession is a comprehensive process that involves much more than commitments on tariffs on goods. WTO accession will impact on a wide range of policies and institutions, including tariff policy, customs administration, rules for using safety standards on goods in a non protective manner, rights of market access and national treatment for foreign providers of services, rules for the treatment of foreign investors in goods, constraints on trade distorting agricultural subsidies, intellectual property, rules requiring transparency in the foreign trade regime and even government procurement.2

Free trade is depicted as a simple matter of efficiency or comparative advantage. Yet, as the above citation shows (and many more can be found), it is far more than that. “Free trade” is a dishonest label that veils the complete destruction of national independence. The elimination of national sovereignty is tantamount to the imposition of a global oligarchy that even the most powerful in the subject nations cannot hope to influence.
The result of even partial globalization is the absolute internationalization of national policy. These regulations serve only to secure the profits of investors. Classical economics is a classroom fetish, not believed by multinational business nor its allied organizations. Instead, the actual shakers of international finance drive to merge capital and the state, rendering the state a privatized security force for itself.

Economies that are dependent on global markets have lost all independence. This is particular galling when one considers how many lives have been lost in the decolonization process from Zaire to Ireland to Indonesia. The meltdown of western economies was based on the simple reality that all “value” was debt. Credit was artificially pumped into the stock market, completely distorting its value. Nothing of classical economic fantasy remains. Corporate capital has long graduated from purely theoretical models of the 18th century and realizes that total control is dependent on making the public private.3

The Russian political and economic recovery under V. Putin rests upon state directed investment. This has clearly been successful in Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan, and more recently, A. Lukashenko’s Belarus. The libertarian fiction of abstract producers and abstract consumers has no relation to any reality, except in that it continues to make war on identity and even the self. The domination of capital can only be measured by its actual performance, not ideal constructions that have no purpose outside of the university seminar.

Putin’s basic economic idea has been to integrate certain economic sectors into the state as a means of providing market stability.4 In the same report, the Bank states,

Economic modernization and export diversification are priorities in the Russian economic policy agenda, and several measures have been undertaken in recent years to promote other sectors of economic activity. A stable macroeconomic framework that Russia established is a necessary but not sufficient condition for dynamic exports. A governance regime that rewards productive investments over rent-seeking is also among the critical underlying factors. . .5

The problem with the World Bank’s approach is that it begins from the point of view of private capital without regard to the state’s significant role in investment strategy. Any long term development plan requires a highly stable macro-economy, something that the west cannot offer. Rent-seeking behavior, especially in Russia’s regions, is a significant structural flaw, though one that is equally problematic in the west. It is inherent in the modern state. Rent seeking uses public power for private gain and irrationally diverts investment funds from viable projects. The state however, need not be a rent seeker when it acts as the guardian of the national economy. As the government grows in scope, institutions guiding the economic system also grow more powerful. While the state is an important source of value in modern economies under extreme instability, its negative side is evident in practices that take advantage of the relative invisibility of administration. The state serves as a more stable source of investment, especially for developing economies. As the west continues its painful slide to complete insolvency, this fact becomes incontrovertible.

Two Views of Russia

The state remains essential in developing the mental and physical infrastructure to render even local trade efficient. Eurasianism is regionalism, a compromise with globalism that gives priority to cultural and historical continuity over abstract self-interest (almost always defined in financial terms). This continuity, however, goes beyond the nation and seeks complimentary partners in regional development.6 It is far more cost effective for Russia to focus on areas that have a history of regular trade with Russia rather than the WTO.

The decline of Russia as a whole in the 1990s created a population understandably hostile to western capitalism. In the 1990s, privatization plans were manipulated and old state enterprises were distributed to those with political clout. The 1990s were a total catastrophe for Russia. Those responsible, especially in the west, have yet to be brought to justice. Russia’s economy, constructed over decades of painstaking labor under harsh conditions, contracted by upwards of 15 percent yearly from 1992-1995 as the Yeltsin administration seemed either incapable or unwilling to stop the devastation. Russia went into default in 1997 as the currency became worthless.7

Not only was the economy in a tailspin, somewhat akin to Wiemar Germany in the 1920s, but the state itself collapsed. Taxes were collected more as an exception, and oligarchs, explicitly supported by the west, the ultimate rent seekers, used their connections to manipulate the vacuum. Rent seeking became a way of life. The re-establishment of state power, entirely attributable to Putin, forced at least some of these criminals to forge their own economic empires as protection, promising to be on their best behavior as Putin’s popularity soared. Some fled the country, while others cooperated with Putin to save themselves.

Y. Fedorov, a Russian who has entirely accepted the western understanding of world history, writes in this vein,

Increasing globalization is forcing Russia to make some very serious choices about her political and economic systems and her national identity. Russia may seek to “participate in globalization” and gradually associate herself with the community of democracy. This, apart from anything else, will allow Russia to use effectively her still-strong scientific assets, technological achievements and high educational potential with a view to building a modern post-industrial economy and society. Such a choice would require Russia to reject her traditional suspiciousness (which sometimes borders on paranoia) toward the outside world and accept democratic standards, values, political practices and institutions, thus establishing true (liberal) democracy.8

This very condescending argument accents the ideological component of globalization and underscores the utility of state-led regional growth. Its language is so cliched and standardized that one can be forgiven in suspecting it was written with an aim for acceptance into western academic or governmental society. In Fedorov’s view, the ideas of “democracy” and “openness” are mere buzzwords that are explicitly connected to the economic interests of those who created the globalization project.

Fedorov describes the ideological foundation of globalization (whether knowingly or not) and is honest about globalism’s end game. The Carnegie Institute, which financed the above study, argues regularly that there is a clear reciprocity between “democratization” and globalization, which again, connects vague political terminology with real economic interests. The main focus of western capital is that “openness” becomes universally conflated with cultural and ideological standardization. “Democracy” can then become universally conflated with securing the maximum return on investment.

In response to Fedorov, Mikhail Molochanov writes:

Russia’s response to globalization—its “return” to the West—has been a tale of disaster. Other countries have fared better in meeting the challenge of globalization, although some have done even worse. In Russia’s case, the country would most surely have been destroyed had it not been blessed with unrivaled natural resources, specifically oil, gas, and metals. Even so, the policies of the Washington Consensus, or what Stiglitz (2002) calls “market fundamentalism” (p. 134)—and what Russian scholars refer to as market Bolshevism—transformed Russia from a reasonably well-to-do country into an oligarchic dependency characterized by stark inequality, marked injustice, the loss of social capital, widespread poverty and a stunning demographic catastrophe.9

What western pundits never seem to grasp is that the market is the first casualty in capitalist societies once hey come to be controlled by a financial oligarchy. Fedorov seems to suggest that Russia a) has no interests as Russia, or b) that she has no interests that are separate from western capital. To overlook the extremely pointed and detailed ideological arguments for globalization and liberalism is dangerous. It leads the student to the illusion that globalization just passively “happens,” and that it is merely a better means to serve the consumer. Globalization, democracy and liberalism, taken as essentially one, makes up the elite “mental infrastructure” in the west and in privileged circles elsewhere. Few can reject it and remain respectable in western societies.

Fedorov above is factually and logically incorrect – Russia, as well as any reasonable society with any unity whatever, needs a powerful public sector so as to protect the national interest against being sold off to the most devious entrepreneur. The theory of markets assume legally equal entities entering into free contracts. The reality is that the actors in global finance are divided into those with immense resources and those without. Contracts under this duress have no moral validity.

Fedorov rejects the very concept of national interest. He conflates very complex and contested ideas such as “openness” and “identity” by surreptitiously presenting the ideological world of board-room liberalism as common to them all. In Putin’s case, the concept of state-centric development, economic regionalization and social cohesion are tightly integrated. The historical record is that such societies are far better off and more economically rational than those adopting liberalism wholesale, as Russian learned to her unending mortification by 1995.

Most of the literature in this field, however, strongly suggests that Russia has strong technological sectors that are quite compatible with western competitors. Yet, a collapsing west makes it fairly easy for Putin to ensure that regional expansion (economically speaking) are done on his own terms, and aimed at the rising east. If anything, Russia would be wise to use its presence at western trade conferences to begin buying up cut-rate western assets as their economies fail under debt and self-doubt.

The Resistance: The Economics of Eurasia

In the most general terms, Eurasianism implies that, first, Russia may well develop a regional program that splits the difference between the benefits of globalization and the benefits of nationalism.

Domestically, and within the Central and East Asian markets, Russia is using its strong state sector to target investment in poorer regions of the country, especially in the far east. China’s development strategy uses a similar approach to develop its western and northern areas. For Russia, Siberia remains a potential powerhouse which is only now beginning to develop. Secondly, Russian state-led investment and turn to the east ensured that her relative isolation from Europe made the EU’s financial decline far less detrimental to Russian interests.

The main argument for the Eurasian or regional option is Russia’s dependency. As the west orchestrates protests around the world against non-compliant governments, the EU option for any of the post-Soviet states is economically grotesque. Eurasia would place the three Rus’ nations at the center of a huge, developing region that is just beginning to feel its power. As Europe falls, China and India rise. It would be the height of absurdity for Moscow to hitch its wagon to a dying colossus that increasingly relies on covert force and market manipulation to get its way.

Russia as a part of Eurasia will remove the western elite view that the Slavs are merely sources of raw materials and sex slaves. She is, in Eurasia, crucial to manufacturing, resources, high-tech equipment and, to an extent, ideological guidance in the Eurasian resistance. Any Russian leanings to the EU is somewhat akin to relocating a luxury car dealership in downtown Detroit. The most that Russia will get out of the EU and the Washington ideology is abject dependency, which then ties the Russian worker to the irrational boom and bust cycles of modern capitalism. Russia’s banking sector will be internationalized and stripped bare, since she does not have the resources to resist, and western banks today will say and do anything to get their hands on any new supplies of liquidity. In the EU, any Russian inclination for national control over her resources will be pure fantasy.

The regional aspect of Russia’s development is now just getting the scholarly attention it needs. In 2003, professor Gilbert Rozman convincingly argued that Russia’s Eurasian strategy is designed as a hedge against the west. He writes

Russia needs to open the Russian Far East for regional integration and make use of its dynamism and vast natural resources. Initiatives of the past decade have demonstrated great sensitivity to the dangers of foreign presence, but little forward thinking on their positive contributions. Putin has advanced beyond Yeltsin, but there is still no vision of regionalism. A reorientation of Sino-Russian relations from strategic goals associated with multipolarity to economic cooperation in a multilateral context offers hope that a new approach is coming. Under the umbrella of globalization including closer relations with the U.S., Putin can more easily pursue regional integration as well. . . Clearly, Putin planned to take firm charge of managing all dimensions of regionalism, but it was less clear if he would encourage market forces.10

As a part of the Non-Aligned movement, Russia has a unique role as a partner with China in creating a multipolar world. Multipolarity is essential to the development of an alternative, mixed economic structure that can use the benefits of markets while avoiding their severe pitfalls. Recently, Putin challenged the EU to build not just a European market, but a Eurasian one as well:

We’ve been talking a lot about the resources of economic diplomacy, but fundamental changes have not been achieved. This is especially noticeable at the time when the world economy is experiencing the crisis and when protectionism becomes the norm.

We must act livelier. One should not be ashamed of promoting the products of the Russian military-industrial complex. [The west] made this a part of their state policies a long time ago, and they carry it out very aggressively.11

Putin is not shy in showing skepticism towards any form of western integration. As the western crisis becomes more acute and the irrational conga-line of mindless consumption has reached its debt limit, Putin is arguing for a strong emphasis on a national and regional economic focus to restore balance. A Eurasian market will, if properly handled, help limit the power of western banks so as to foster the development of regional banks empowering areas other than Manhattan.

Speaking in a major international economic conference in June of 2012 in St. Petersburg, Putin said,

I want to emphasize that today Russia has sufficient reserves at its disposal and a whole range of anti-crisis rapid response mechanisms, including subordinated loans, state guarantees and programs to stimulate demand and provide employment support. The entire arsenal was tested and proved to be effective in 2008-2009. And we are prepared to use it promptly and in full in the event of any negative trends in the world economy. . . Most of the recent crises arrived in Russia from external sources. And naturally, we could not do anything about these factors.12

Putin argues that Russia’s trade and budget surplus can not only create a social safety net for the disadvantaged, but for the economy as a whole by stimulating domestic demand. In 2014, this surplus has shrunk, though that is no fault of Russia’s. Most significantly, Putin demonstrates that the west can never be a reliable partner to Russian development. Western capitalism, irrational and reckless, is no model for anyone. In the same speech, Putin continues:

It is impossible to become truly competitive in the international arena without honest domestic competition, without the rule of law, without truth and justice in relations between business and the state. Competition in politics and the economy is the main engine of development. So I ask the Government of the Russian Federation to conduct a major revision of the practice of antitrust legislation and competition support.13

This argument derives from the popular trauma of the early 1990s. The reference to anti-trust legislation argues for the state’s in ensuring a manageable private sector elite.14 The west is controlled by finance capital, since they both approve corporate investments and forward money to the state. This leads to irrational investments, since financial elites are ensured state protection. For economists, this creates the dilemma that self-interest brings corporate capital to act in socially irrational ways. Since economics is institutionally separate from history or ethics, the fact that Goldman-Sachs sends millions in campaign contributions to both parties is not seen as an economic problem. Capital, now concentrated beyond the wildest dreams of Marx, is more powerful than the state. Capital today has complete dominance without responsibility. The desperate American need for cheap credit means that major financial conglomerates negotiate with “public authorities” from a position of strength. The taxpayer is relegated to a bovine mass occasionally milked for bailout funds.

The implosion of western prejudices and biases in the realm of ideology and economics is forcing the thoughtful to discover alternatives. The west is quite weak in that regard. Political science has ensured that “socialism” became identical to “Marxism,” conveniently forgetting that the several centuries, the main impetus for anti-capitalist reform came from medievalist, Christian and national sources. Other forms of socialism have been quietly dropped out of the curriculum.15 Russia is in no such position. The next section will deal with three Russian writers that might give some clues as to conceptualizing the future.

The Eurasian Ideology and Russia’s Development: Ustryalov, Alexeyev and Niekisch

The Eurasian idea is the most rational and efficient model for Russian economic growth. Three controversial writers, almost totally unknown in the west, described an alternative method of social reconstruction combining both leftist criticisms of capital and rightist affirmations of ethnic identity. NV Ustryalov (d. 1937), N. Alexeyev (d. 1964), and the German-born Ernst Niekisch (d. 1967) compliment each other in advocating for a regionalist identity as a means of anti-capitalist resistance. One not need subscribe to the entire menu of National Bolshevism to comprehend the importance of their ideas. Relegated to obscurity decades ago, the failures of western regimes now can revitalize their significance.

Ustryalov wrote when the chaos of World War I changed the European psyche forever. Liberalism and democracy could not be less appropriate when a population is desperate. The only thing that can save Russia, for the time being, is a strong state. Hence, he guardedly backed the Red government for this reason.

His version of a nationalist and civilizational order is holistic, as most Eurasians argue. Philosophy and economics are part of a broader whole. Professional scholars have a choice: can either aim at the truth as Savonarola did, or take the more lucrative root of accepting and assuming the justice of the (ideal) present order. No discipline, academic or technical, can exist outside of truth. Truth is opposed to self-interest, ideological justifications and private interests masquerading as “universal laws.” Significantly, similar to the ideas of V. Karpov, Ustryalov stresses that society cannot be considered merely the sum of private interests. This sum cannot qualitatively change into the whole.

Ustryalov stresses the important point that economic development, of itself, does not bring happiness. If anything, it creates chaos, dislocation and the retreat to fantasy, Utopianism or escapism. GDP growth is a good thing in the abstract, but it is rare that rising incomes translate into well adjusted and satisfied citizens. Revolutions have a tendency to arise during times of great growth and prosperity. Several things occur in these times: classes benefiting from such development demand power commensurate with their new wealth; expectations of the whole society rise far faster than any agency can maintain, and finally, the dislocation and confusion of rapid development destroys old social ties.16

In his National-Bolshevism, Ustryalov struggles with the real ideological agenda of the Red state. In general, he leans to the view that Bolshevism is not the same as communism or Marxism. He argues that the Red government is, in a sense, a strongly nationalist one, dedicated to improvement of labor and the maintenance of the empire. He did not believe that the “revolutionary” elements of Bolshevism would last long. Soon, the ethnic and imperial idea will come to the surface. The real argument is that, after the slaughter of World War I, the Civil War, the war in Ukraine and the complete eradication of the old royal state, Russia will desire, and her rulers will provide, some semblance of the old order. Here, given the chaos, expectations are not rising, but falling. In this case, it is much easier to rule the population. He writes,

Russia must be made powerful again. Revolution is incapable of this. The nature of the communist economy will not increase Russian power. The workers, now realizing how destructive violence can be, will demand concessions from the government while retaining her older, organic nature. The new government can keep to its stated purpose, but it can do so under the rule of a national dictatorship. From here will spring all that is needed for the revitalization of the country. It does not matter that these measures are of “bourgeois” origin.17

Many in the National Bolshevik and related Eurasianist movement were convinced of just this. The Leninists might use the slogans of Marx, but in actually ruling the country, only traditional forms can really be used. Some discovered this in Stalin’s dictatorship, others abandoned the idea altogether. Others argue that people like Ustryalov or Alexeyev sought to rationalize a fait accompli. Regardless, they show the nature of extreme possibilities in times of dislocation, confusion and inexplicable decline.

In his “Bread and Faith,” (1933) Ustryalov argues that the “advanced” economies show as much brutality as “primitive” ones. The former might be more sublimate and use more pretentious vocabulary, but oppression is the same whether it is by the bow and arrow or the judges’ gavel. His problem with socialism was that it must necessarily derive from the distorted capitalist relations that proceeded it. If Marx is right, and man is distorted and scarred from capitalist oppression, then their usefulness in social reform is non-existent. Ideology is really a means to provide quick answers to probing questions. The initiated vanguard might know the details, while the herd is satisfied with symbols. Severe contradictions are covered over with pseudo-intellectual cliches.

He argues that the post-World War I world is the very nature of revolution. Bolshevism, as he sees it, is a form of national socialism that alleviates the suffering of the proletariat while retaining the traditional content from which all legitimacy proceeds. He states,

Judging by the signs of advanced decay and crisis tormenting “civilized humanity,” confusion and chaos indicates the total exhaustion of the old bourgeois order and the requirement of a new life. Solving these psychological problems is the task of strong, new states. They must discover the ways to have the suffering people accept new systems, systems more appropriate for this age. . .Chaos creates more public anxiety. The result is that man seeks out stable anchors, looking for a system of life and thought he realizes that the world of formal legality and abstract freedom is useless. Man seeks bread; intellectuals give him a rock. Chaos lends itself to results, not theory. Present dictatorship seeks to solve these problems, especially by appealing to youth in its ideological pathos. . . The result is the violent, intolerant and acerbic ideology of the new systems.

The point here is that in times of severe crisis, “democracy” leads to the sophistical manipulation of an exhausted people who care little for freedom, since liberty is useless without security, food or some expectations for a future. What truly matters here is how significant such an approach is for the second decade of the 2000s. Man is irrational at the best of times. When society crumbles around him, anything is possible.

In his General Theory of Eurasianism, N. Alexeyev writes,

Eurasianism seeks the defeat of the West from the outside, by creating another civilization – the spirit of westernism has become our own. Russian elites have absorbed western concepts, as in the Imperial era, now even the people have been caught in the snare of western materialism, mechanization and atheism. . . Eurasianism understands that the Eurasian world is rapidly developing. Now, the Eurasian movement wants to make that development greater and more focused. This is done by aligning it with the primordial features of the Eurasian world. Production and development are not ends, those are spiritual. Labor is sanctified when man co-creates with God.18

This is a statement of a Christian communitarianism. The Eurasian idea described here is partly centered on considering the region of Eurasia as a specific field for development. This makes it a bulwark against the imperial ideology of western patricians. The constant movement, confusion and epistemological fragmentation of the west (especially in its cities, then and now) is not contributory to happiness nor sanity. To elevate labor19 to an ethical category approaching the noble will not come from the west. Ustryalov’s argument was that a strong state incorporating most of the old empire is required to protect economic recovery from the predators.

All of this investigates a new way to apprehend economics, production and importantly, human need. Rights are not abstract, but tightly bound to society and one’s specific contribution within it. As Ustryalov reminds us, times of chaos are also times when stricter, centralized and ideological governments are required. Relativism, as Ustryalov remarks, can never give a solid anchor for a struggling population.

These functional vocations, important in any social reconstruction, develop great social significance. Part of this concerns labor representation in government. They can contract with capital and implement technical standards, required training and needed services. Property is a function of labor because capital is a derivative of labor. Corporate representation, a philosophical concept from Hegel and Proudhon, is the organization which transforms labor from an aspect of self-interest to an ethical concept of service. It prevents proletarianization and its cousin, the “mass man.”

The identity-less, rootless and culture-less mass of modernity helped create modern totalitarianism. It should always be kept in mind that almost every player in World War I had an elective legislature: Russia, Austria, Serbia, England and Germany all had responsibly parliaments of various kinds, and in each case, it was their “representatives” who clamored for war. The one exception was Austria, the state most responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. Furthermore, modern science furnished the weaponry making this war the bloodiest by far up to that time. Nor was nationalism even an issue, since almost all combatants, except Serbia, were multinational empires.

Ideology, the state and aggregated mediocrity justified social dependence on the state. Previously, it was the neighborhood, parish and commune. Localism prevented massification. Modernity, using nominalism to delegitimize social institutions both formal and informal, created the existential man without vision, moral psychology and worst of all, left him frightened of a freedom that is unfairly tied to one’s highly limited and jumbled store of personal ideas and prejudices.

Alexeyev argues that labor is a whole; it is of both national and regional significance. The corporation encapsulates that whole as the hypostasis of an idea. Labor is based on culture in that it is reflective of social priorities. It also rests on one’s vocation and talents purified and rationalized the tradition of the craft. Only then can rank and hierarchy be justified, since trade standards become the sole criterion. Only in this context can rights, duties and rewards be allotted rationally. For Alexeyev, rights refer to free opportunity to act, while their corresponding duties require compulsion; the legal ideal is the relation between the two.

Niekisch’s main political argument is that liberal democracy is the political “front” of finance capital and oligarchy. It is, simply, the rule of the wealthy where the powerful promote those who exchange some power in exchange for the acceptance of any blame. Amateurs speak of the “Reagan recovery” or the “Clinton boom” as if American presidents are responsible for interest rates, public confidence, international trade flows or corporate investment policy. References to “the people” are demagogic, since no such mass abstraction exists. The networks created by the consolidated, titanic banks in the capitalist world have long dispensed with markets. They rule largely by lending to large, established institutions (as opposed to small entrepreneurs) with the obvious irrational results of further consolidation.

Niekisch was, as Dietmar Gottfried has argued, purely a man of the left. In a way, all three writers treated briefly here were. Such labels derive from the stage-managed faux-debate in the western world. What Niekisch has in common with all Eurasian and National Bolshevik writers is the fact that, given the chaos of the early 20th century, the state remains the strongest possible protection against complete and total disintegration. Disillusioned with the west after the travesty of Versailles, he looked to Russia, and saw the new regime there as an embryonic form of national socialism, or a form of proletarian revolution that cannot dispense with the traditional cultural norms any healthy soul is attached to.20

Economics is not a science, but an ideological construct that explains and affirms the present rule of capital. Darwinian survival, and not Smith’s theoretical model of Perfect Competition, drives capitalism. On the other hand, socialism, quite similar to capitalism, merely deifies the ruling party as the oligarchy that controls all economic decisions from one place. Deification is not all that far off, since the entire social world changes at their command.

Niekisch’s view is that the egocentric individual so enshrined in western ideology is an abstraction. While isolated and pampered American professors speak of the “artificially” and “invented tradition” of nationalism, they retain their beliefs in abstractions such as the state, the “world community,” “international justice” and the isolated consumer acting “rationally.” The truth is that no individual exists outside of his community. This includes language (broadly speaking), religion, customs and moral ideas that make any civil or economic life possible. The context is the nation, which in turn, is part of a larger civilizational order of complimentary nations. Nations retain autonomy, but the civilizational market becomes the locus of trade, finance and philosophical views.21

Firms should be owned by labor itself, or, apart from that, at least some substantial labor partnership with private ownership and the state. Markets can work, but it is the structure of the firm and the nature of the work itself that requires reform. Profit too, is legitimate, but that does not imply it is the sole incentive for labor.

Conclusion

The Russian meltdown of the early 1990s forces those interested in Russian history and social ideas to study and understand appropriate ideas by which this damage can be reversed. It is not just the economic destruction and the impoverishment of entire continents, but also the mental and emotional decay such suffering engenders. Warfare brutalizes a population, destroying once unexamined moral habits and replacing them with sheer instinct. Therefore, reconstruction is holistic, and cannot be relegated to formal political or economic institutions.

The Eurasian movement, the Non-Aligned coalition, ethno-nationalism, regionalism and the mass renunciation of the failed Washington Consensus are only just beginning to challenge this Faustian beau monde. To grasp the economic options of Putin’s Russia and its relation to China and Eurasian space in general is essential in crafting an alternative to global oligarchy.

The Eurasianist movement has plenty of eccentrics. Some of its advocates promote ideas that should never even be considered. But this eccentricity is compensated by the undeniable fact that a strong, centralized and ideological power is absolutely essential for reconstruction. Such power is not good in itself, but, given the alternatives, protection and regularity become the highest priorities.

Bibliography:

Ahrend, R. Can Russia Sustain Strong Growth as a Resource Based Economy? CESifo Forum. February, 2008

Dugin, A. Николай Алексеев: Теория евразийского государства. Международное Евразийское Движение, 1999

http://evrazia.info/article/197

Fedorov, Y. Democratization and Globalization: The Case of Russia. Democracy and
Rule of Law Project 13, Global Policy Program: The Carnegie Institute for International peace, 2000

Molchanov, M.A. Russia and Globalization. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, Volume 4, issue 3-4, 2005

Putin, Vladimir. Address at the plenary session of the XVI St Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 2012.

http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/4056

“Putin Makes Global Proposition to Europe.” Pravda.ru, July 10 2012

http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/10-07-2012/121609-putin_europe-0/

Ustrialov, N. Национал-большевизм. (Reprinted on the e-journal “Russian Literature,” first compiled 1926)

http://www.rulit.net/books/nacional-bolshevizm-read-252152-136.html

_____. Хлеб и вера. Final Chapter in his “Германский национал-социализм”, 1933

http://lib.ru/POLITOLOG/USTRYALOV/hleb.txt_with-big-pictures.html

Alexeyev, N. The Spiritual Background of Eurasian Culture. Trans, M. Johnson, Young Eurasia (originally published in the Eurasian Chronicle, Berlin, 1935)

http://yeurasia.org/library/classical_eurasianism/николай-алексеев-духовные-предпосыл/

Rozman, Gilbert. “When Will Russia Really Enter Northeast Asia?” in Wolfgang Danspeckgruber and Stephen Kotkin, eds., The Future of the Russian State: A Sourcebook (New York: Columbia International Affairs Online, 2003)

Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton.Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002

Taylor L. Economic Openness . Problems to the Century’s End, Wider, Finland, 1988.

Ulatov, S. and Brian Pinto. Financial Globalization and the Russian Crisis of 1998. The World Bank Europe and Central Asia Region & The Managing Director’s Office. Policy Working Paper 5312, May 2010.

World Bank in Russia. Russian Economic Report Moderating Risks, Bolstering Growth, 27, April, 2012.

Wilberg, P. National Bolshevism. NPP, 2011

http://nationalpeoplesparty.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/national-bolshevism.pdf

Gottfried, D. Um der Nation willen des Kommunismus fähig: Der Nationalbolschewismus des Ernst Niekisch. Teleopolis, 2012

Notes:
1. There can be no doubt of this, since it is official policy, largely endorsed by both major parties and major media.
2. World Bank, 2012: 33
3. The precedent for this is fairly well known. When the Medici clan took over Florence, they left the “republican” institutions intact. This was to give the impression of popular rule, permitting politicians to take the fall for the errors of the banking house.
4. Cf this author’s recent book, Russian Populist: The Political Theory of Vladimir Putin for a lengthy discussion of this strategy.
5. World Bank, 20112: 16
6. There is no essential contradiction between regional integration and ethno-nationalism. In fact, one enhances the other.
7. See Black et al 2009 and Ulatov, 2010, though these figures are very well known.
8. Fedorov, 2000: 1; the number of cliches in this statement boggles the mind. It is all based on the assumption that all countries are destined to follow the west in stressing industrialization and commodity production. Consumer preferences are all the same, and there is no good reason to actually argue for the moral supremacy of western capitalism. Further, Russia is “bound” to begin outsourcing the highest value-added manufacturers in the pursuit of mindless, post-modern pleasures. The one positive aspect of this drivel is its honesty: liberalism is a highly charged ideology seeking to forcibly impose its deterministic views on the world which are based on standardization, utilitarianism and mass market preferences. All of this is equivalent to “democracy” and “openness.”
9. Molochanov, 2005: 425; the contrast between the two authors is glaring. The first relies on cliches, abstract concepts taken as axiomatic and the basic ideological bias of western academia. The latter uses easily referenced information, concrete circumstances and actual consequences. Regardless on where the reader falls on these debates, such methodological distinctions are exceedingly significant.
10. Rozman, 2003, 1
11. Pravda, July 2012
12. V. Putin’s Remarks at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, June, 2012, accessed from public Kremlin archives: (http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/4056)
13. Ibid.
14. This is to say that private sector power can never become more powerful than the public sector. Economically speaking, this is because, while utilizing the state as its private bodyguard is in the interests of financial capital, it is irrational and destructive. In western writing, there is a strange and unexamined bias that only the state can be tyrannical, practice censorship or oppress people. The reality is that private capital is in a much better position to do just that.
15. This author’s personal opinion is that the single greatest nightmare for the American political elite is the development of a religious, national, agrarian and idealistic socialist party. Socialism was promoted and encouraged in academia so long as it remained atheist, materialist and internationalist.
16. Cf Ustrialov, Национал-большевизм, 1926
17. The original text reads: Нужно озаботиться добычею новых горючих веществ.
Нужно сделать Россию сильной, иначе погаснет единственный очаг мировой революции.
Но методами коммунистического хозяйства в атмосфере капиталистического мира сильной Россию не сделаешь. И вот пролетарская власть, сознав, наконец, бессилие насильственного коммунизма, остерегаясь органического взрыва всей своей экономической системы изнутри, идет на уступки, вступает в компромисс с жизнью. Сохраняя старые цели, внешне не отступаясь от «лозунгов социалистической революции», твердо удерживая за собою политическую диктатуру, она начинает принимать меры, необходимые для хозяйственного возрождения страны, не считаясь с тем, что эти меры – «буржуазной» природы. Вот что такое «перерождение большевизма».
18. Alexeyev, 1935, quoted from Dugin’s Теория евразийского государства, my poor translation.
19. Labor here refers to all its forms: intellectual, technical, academic and financial. The essential distinction is its closeness to real social value
20. Gottfried, 2012. It should be noted that national-socialists are not required to venerate Hitler. Socialists are not required to venerate Stalin, so the same flexibility must apply to this left-style nationalism.
21. A very good and sympathetic introduction to the movement can be found in Wilberg, 2011

The post Globalization And Decline Of The West: Eurasianism, The State And Rebirth Of Ethnic-Socialism – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Victoria Arnold

Russian law enforcement agencies’ inspections of individuals’ homes, businesses and places of worship often target religious literature banned as “extremist”, Forum 18 News Service notes. Administrative prosecution often follows on charges of mass distribution of “extremist” material. Forum 18 has identified 15 such prosecutions in 12 different regions of Russia in the first four months of 2014 alone. All 15 cases led to convictions, 14 leading to fines. However, two of these fines have so far been overturned on appeal.

Individuals and organisations are often punished under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offences (“Production or distribution of extremist materials”). Such cases often follow inspections, carried out variously by the police, the FSB security service, and Prosecutor’s Office officials, aiming “to check compliance with the law on countering extremist activity” according to court documents Forum 18 has seen.

Inspections involve searches of premises and vehicles owned by religious organisations and their members. They mainly appear to target Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses. If law enforcement agents uncover literature suspected of being “extremist”, this will be confiscated. They also question those present and in some cases summon them for further questioning at a later date. These searches are apparently sometimes provoked by direct complaints from members of the public. In other instances, prosecutors claim to be checking compliance with the the Religion Law and the Law on Combating Extremism and Terrorism.

Banned material

Some banned material on the Federal List argues for peace and respect for human rights, including Muslim theologian Muhammad ali Al-Hashimi’s “The Personality of a Muslim” and the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong’s leaflet “Global Human Rights Torch Relay”. Other banned material on the List promotes racism, xenophobia or violence. Any lower court can decide that material is “extremist” and so should be added to the List, banning the material throughout Russia. Anyone in Russia who possesses material on the List is liable to face either criminal or administrative prosecution.

The Federal List contains 2,304 entries as of today (1 May), though some entries are blank while others contain more than one item. The List includes many Jehovah’s Witness publications and works by the late Turkish Islamic theologian Said Nursi. A sermon on the Catholic faith given in 1900 by the late Ukrainian Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was added in October 2013. In recent years new material has been added at an increasing rate.

In Russian law, prosecutions can only be brought relating to “extremist” texts if they are the exact edition of the work specified on the Federal List. But this has not stopped prosecutions being brought relating to editions that are not on the Federal List.

Administrative Code Article 20.29 punishes the “mass distribution” of items on the Federal List, as well as their “production or possession for the purposes of mass distribution”. Despite the term “mass distribution”, prosecutors have often brought charges even if only one copy of a text is discovered.

Punishments

If convicted, individuals may receive a fine of 1,000 to 3,000 Roubles (about 165 to 500 Norwegian Kroner, 20 to 60 Euros, or 28 to 85 US Dollars) or detention for up to 15 days. Fines for officials range from 2,000 to 5,000 Roubles. Legal entities (including businesses and religious associations) may be fined 50,000 to 100,000 Roubles (between nine and 18 times the minimum monthly wage as of 1 January 2014). Such organisations may also be prohibited from operating for a period of up to 90 days.

Court decisions seen by Forum 18 usually order “extremist” materials to be confiscated and often destroyed.

All 15 of the current administrative cases identified by Forum 18 initially resulted in convictions. Defendants have appealed in six cases so far. Only two appeals have succeeded in having verdicts overturned, in both instances because prosecutors took too long to bring the original case to court. Thirteen of the 15 cases concerned Islamic texts or videos, the other two concerning Jehovah’s Witness literature.

Orenburg texts still banned, no progress on appeals

Six of the court decisions seen by Forum 18 involved Muslim texts ruled “extremist” by Lenin District Court in Orenburg in March 2012. This ruling covered the largest quantity of religious literature banned in a single court case, prohibiting 68 texts in a hearing lasting only 30 minutes. The bans only became known in mid-June. When the Court’s decision became known, it drew condemnation from Islamic bodies, publishers, and human rights defenders.

Several appeals against the Orenburg decision are still pending. After a delay caused by the state’s destruction of 26 of the prohibited items, the repeat “expert analysis” of the remaining material – ordered in April 2013 – was expected to take until late August 2013 to finish.

Nurzhigit Dolubayev, the Orenburg-based lawyer for one of the publishers trying to overturn the ban, confirmed to Forum 18 on 30 April 2014 that there is still no news on when the appeal will return to court.

Individuals, bookshop and mosques prosecuted

In five of the 15 known 2014 administrative prosecutions, the defendant was an organisation – either religious or commercial. In the city of Tyumen in south-western Siberia, an FSB security service inspection of the Melli Kibet Muslim shop at the city’s bus station in January seized three copies of Wahf al-Qahtani’s “Fortress of a Muslim” and five of “40 Hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi”. Both these titles were ruled “extremist” in the Orenburg March 2012 court decision (Nos. 1346-1348 and 1312 on the Federal List).

Melli Kibet’s owner, Daniya Soldatikova, admitted obtaining these books to sell to the public, but did not know they were deemed “extremist”. On 7 April 2014, Tyumen’s Lenin District Court tried Soldatikova as a legal entity and sentenced her to five days’ suspension of the shop’s operation, and the confiscation and destruction of the books.

Soldatikova’s shop is now operating normally, and she has experienced no other problems with the police or the FSB security service, she told Forum 18 from Tyumen on 1 May. The “extremist” books confiscated from her stock are now with the FSB. She said she does not know if they have yet been destroyed. Other books taken in the inspection, not deemed “extremist”, including eight copies of a Tatar version of “40 Hadiths”, have been returned to her.

There appears to be little consistency in whether shopkeepers and religious leaders found in possession of material on the Federal List are prosecuted as private individuals or as a legal entity.

In the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals on 29 April, Ordzhonikidze District Court found the Rakhmat Mosque community guilty of possessing a copy of the “Life of the Prophet” by the Indian theologian Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri. This was among the 68 works ruled “extremist” in Orenburg in March 2012 and was added to the Federal List at No. 1291. The Mosque was fined 50,000 Roubles (nine times the minimum monthly wage – about 8,350 Norwegian Kroner, 1,000 Euros, or 1,400 US Dollars). The Mosque’s Director was also give a warning about “extremist” activity.

This is not the first time the Rakhmat Mosque community has been accused of possessing prohibited literature. In May 2013, Interior Ministry (MVD) “anti-extremism” investigators raided the Mosque accompanied by OMON riot police. They seized single copies of “Fortress of a Muslim” and Elmir Kuliyev’s “Way to the Koran”, as well as three copies of an-Nawawi’s “Gardens of the Righteous”, according to a warning letter from the Prosecutor’s Office of 28 June 2013, seen by Forum 18. It warned the Mosque authorities “to take concrete measures to eliminate” these legal infringements. All three texts were ruled “extremist” in Orenburg in March 2012.

In contrast, the Mufti of the Cathedral Mosque of Saransk (Mordovia) was tried in January 2014 for possession of a copy of Nursi’s “Guidebook for Women” as an individual.

Muslim leader fined in Saransk – but was book planted?

A single copy of a text – in this case a Russian-language edition of Nursi’s “Guidebook for Women” – was again enough for administrative proceedings against the Mufti of Mordovia, Zyaki Aizatullin. Of all the 15 Article 20.29 cases identified by Forum 18 in 2014, this was the only one to involve a work by Nursi, whose writings are frequently the subject of “extremism” trials.

An inspection by the Proletarian District Prosecutor, carried out to check compliance with the Religion Law and the Law on Combating Extremism and Terrorism, found a copy of the “Guidebook for Women” in a locked cabinet in Aizatullin’s office at the “Uskudar” Cathedral Mosque in Saransk on 29 October 2013.

The mufti’s spokeswoman told Forum 18 on 1 May that the inspection team did not present a search warrant. She also described how one of them, police officer Mansur Gurin, entered the mufti’s office without permission and behaved aggressively towards the mosque staff, raising his voice to them and accusing them of lying.

“Guidebook for Women” is from Nursi’s Risale-i Nur (Messages of Light) collection and was in Russian translation declared “extremist” by Moscow’s Koptevo District Court in 2007 (No. 49 on the Federal List).

Forum 18 has been unable to ask the Prosecutor how many other Saransk religious communities have been inspected to to check compliance with the Religion Law and the Law on Combating Extremism and Terrorism.

Confiscations of Russian translations of Nursi’s books are more likely to result in criminal charges of “extremist” activity under Articles 282.1 and 282.2, as in the recent criminal prosecutions of Nursi readers in Naberezhnyye Chelny .

On 9 January, Judge Georgy Morozov of Saransk’s Proletarian District Court found Mufti Aizatullin guilty under Article 20.29. The head of the Regional Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Republic of Mordovia was fined 1,000 Roubles. The judge also ordered the book destroyed. Aizatullin appealed against the verdict to Mordovia’s Supreme Court, but on 5 March Judge Aleksandr Bazhanov ruled that there should be no change to the decision.

A spokeswoman for the Mufti told Forum 18 from Saransk on 11 April that they would continue to fight the ruling, at an international level if need be.

Was the banned book really in the cabinet?

According to Saransk’s Proletarian District Court verdict, seen by Forum 18, Mufti Aizatullin denied that his congregation members had access to the locked cabinet, which contained gifts. He told the court he could not recall how the book had got there, stating that the first time he had seen it was during the October 2013 inspection by the Prosecutor. Witnesses stated that they had never seen books taken from the locked cabinet, and that nobody could take any books from the mosque library without the mufti’s permission.

The defence pointed out that the Mosque’s library was inventoried at the end of 2012 by staff member Alsu Myakusheva. She continued to check the collection throughout 2013 to ensure that it did not contain any items from the Federal List of Extremist Materials. She testified in court that the “Guidebook for Women” was not in the library during any of her checks.

The Proletarian District Court nevertheless concluded that Aizatullin was guilty of possession of an “extremist” book for purposes of mass distribution, by permitting free access to the Mosque library.

Appeal dismissed as “groundless”

On appeal on 5 March, the defence argued that Aizatullin did not know the book was there and that the presence of one copy “cannot be regarded as possession for the purpose of mass distribution of extremist literature”. According to the appeal verdict, also seen by Forum 18, the Supreme Court of Mordovia “dismissed [this] as groundless”.

The appeal also argued that Aizatullin’s statement to the Prosecutor’s Office could not be allowed as evidence of guilt, as his words were recorded incorrectly.

The District Court also did not take into account discrepancies between the Prosecutor’s statements in court and the record of the inspection, the defence argued. According to the Mosque spokeswoman, these two documents claimed different sets of law enforcement agents discovering the book. The former listed Prosecutor’s Assistant Svetlana Novakovskaya, Marina Semushenkova (Head of the Department for NGO Affairs at the Mordovian branch of the Justice Ministry), and an unnamed official of the police “Anti-Extremism Centre”. The latter document listed only Semushenkova and Deputy prosecutor A.A. Frolov. However, the judge rejected these points.

The Supreme Court maintained that access to the Mosque and the literature kept there was unrestricted, “thus, the presence of a single copy does not preclude it being repeatedly obtained by an indefinite number of readers”.

“In practice they’ll punish you regardless of whether or not you committed a crime”

The Mosque spokeswoman insisted to Forum 18 that there had been no witnesses to the inspectors’ discovery of the book, and that neither the mufti nor his assistant was called in to verify its presence in the office. Mosque staff think the book was planted.

She explained that they also take issue with the conduct of the trial. She complained that the judge refused to call three witnesses for the defence, “even though their testimony was important for fully establishing the circumstances of the case”. She added: “So it turns out the law exists only on paper, and in practice they’ll punish you regardless of whether or not you committed a crime. It’s enough just to be a Muslim.”

Telephones at Proletarian District Prosecutor’s Office went unanswered each time Forum 18 called on 9, 10, and 25 April.

“Extremist” books in locked box leads to large fine

In the city of Samara on the Volga, the presence of single copies of prohibited texts was sufficient evidence for prosecutors to bring “mass distribution” charges against the city’s Jehovah’s Witnesses. The community was fined 50,000 Roubles (nine times the minimum monthly wage – about 8,350 Norwegian Kroner, 1,000 Euros, or 1,400 US Dollars) by Judge Natalya Valeryeva at Soviet District Court on 6 March. The two “extremist” books were ordered to be destroyed. An appeal before Judge Anna Tolmosova at Samara Regional Court on 17 April, in which the community’s Chair Andrei Bobkov argued that the books did not belong to his congregation, was unsuccessful.

According to the District Court verdict, seen by Forum 18, a police “anti-extremism” raid on the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ rented premises discovered the books among others in a locked box in the cloakroom. The search took place just before a meeting for worship on 22 January, and the police refused to provide copies of the search protocol, Russia’s Administrative Centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18.

Refusal to provide copies of the search protocol documenting confiscations is illegal, however this illegality has frequently happened. The lack of a subsequent investigation or court case to rule on whether or not an individual’s ownership of the literature is also illegal.

The Samara Regional Court decision describes how the search was sparked by alleged complaints from members of the public to the police “Anti-Extremism Centre” and the FSB security service, about Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out literature in the streets around the Moscow highway in Samara.

The prohibited materials found on the Jehovah’s Witness premises were among 34 texts ruled “extremist” by Rostov Regional Court in September 2009, a decision later upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

Telephones at the Samara City Prosecutor’s press office went unanswered each time Forum 18 rang on 29 and 30 April.

The post Russia: “They’ll Punish You, Whether Or Not You Committed A Crime” appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The epic task is well underway. The first week it happened in Kerala, Haryana, and some of Assam. The second week it happened in Karnataka and parts of Bihar, Kashmir, and Maharashtra. Last week it was the turn of Tamil Nadu and parts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. And so on it will go, in 9 phases, over a course of 36 days, until an electoral population of over 800 million people in 543 constituencies will have voted, requiring 5 million people to administer the procedure and another 5 million to provide security (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/07/-sp-indian-election-2014-interactive-guide-narendra-modi-rahul-gandhi ), and costing taxpayers Rs.35 billion ($580 million). A truly monumental effort. But is it worth it?

India’s may be the biggest election but it’s not alone in this venture. Spring has arrived and elections are in the air: Afghanistan, South Africa, Turkey, Chili, Belgium, and Egypt are part of a longer list. Many people seem disillusioned with their current government and quite ready for a change. Maybe it’s just that those who are dissatisfied are the most vocal, creating an impression of general happiness. Maybe it’s aggravated by the media focusing on the discontent, and playing it up to fill the non-profitable printed pages and 24-hour news vacuum. Or maybe the desire for change is just natural. The grass always looks greener on the other side.

But it may be more than that. It may be disillusionment with the workings of democracy.

Right now, the undemocratic nations and their rulers seem stronger. Russia has dreams of expansion and Vladimir Putin is amassing troops near Ukraine. China’s ‘peaceful rise’ has morphed to ‘quiet assertion’ and Xi Jinping is claiming territorial rights in the South China Sea. North Korea is happy to stand alone and Kim Jong-un continues his legacy of threats against South Korea. And Zimbabwe has its ageless Robert Mugabe. They seem to be able to get things done and quickly, while leaders of the democratic nations seem weak. America is gridlocked and Barack Obama seems professorial. The UK is passé and David Cameron seems haunted by his ministers’ expense scandals. Canada is usually smooth and complacent but Stephen Harper has tabled an election bill that has roused the citizens and been called “an attack on democracy”. South Africa has high unemployment and Jacob Zuma seems morally bankrupt. India is overpopulated and corruption is rampant while Manmohan Singh seems to be asleep. And under them a partisan bunch of politicians, and perhaps even a few criminals, fight it out for power and loot.

Furthermore, democracy seems to have lost its attractive sheen. Even those offered a chance of it seem to be turning their backs on it. Many assumed the unrest in the Middle East was a definite step in the direction of democracy – but it was not. And most recently, Crimea has walked willingly into the arms of Russia.

There’s no doubt that democracy is messy, slow, and inefficient. We in India are particularly aware of that. In the supposed race between China and India, we fare badly because we must do things democratically and with consensus. Crouching tiger, bumbling elephant.

Even famous Indian policewoman and social activist Kiran Bedi recently said that she’s prepared to sacrifice the cause of anti-corruption for some good governance. This statement was likely made to justify her shift of support from the anti-corruption and somewhat anarchistic Aam Admi Party to the likely national winner, the Bharatiya Janata Party. But in some sense, India has made this compromise for years now. When frustrations grow in the face of inefficiencies and lack of resources, it’s understandable why people would move towards anything that offers a modicum of efficiency and certainty.

Sometimes, given all the effort and cost and inefficiencies of democracy, it may seem as though it’s not worth it. But such thinking would be wrong.

All forms of government come with a price. But at least with democracy – good or bad, right or wrong – we get the government the majority of us voted for. It may be a bumbling elephant, but it’s our bumbling elephant. Furthermore, we usually know what we’re getting. Our skeletons are out of the closet and our dirty laundry is washed in public. India has a multitude of problems and they’re all quite obvious. America’s problems are not only known within the country but newsworthy the world over. What some of the other closets hold is uncertain. And democracy at least espouses equality and human rights.

Despite the chaos, gridlock, incompetence, corruption, and having to repeatedly put up with the expensive circus of elections, we living in democratic countries need to remind ourselves that it’s not just our right to vote but our privilege. Elections are a rare and infrequent opportunity for the common people to shape the country they live in. Democracy may be another word for freedom. Few of us would knowingly or willingly give up the freedom to succeed or fail in our own way in exchange for a more efficient life in a gilded cage as dictated by someone else.

Mohandas K. Gandhi said, “Good government is no substitute for self government”.

Here in India, we hope if we work hard through our spring of discontent, fight for what we want, and vote for what we think best, we can arrive at a summer of some satisfaction.

Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer and editor, based in New Delhi. Her articles have appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including the NY Times, IHT, WSJ, FT, and the Atlantic.

The post India: The Spring Of Our Discontent – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Should it come as a surprise that China is about to take from America the baton as the world’s number one economy in 2014… a baton America took away from the Brits well over a century ago? Should Prometheus act surprised after willingly giving life to mankind? Neither Titan Prometheus nor Americans should be surprised… for China’s fast and furious economic ascent has to be in great part attributed to the Promethean great effort of American capitalism under the guise of globalization.

Sooner or later it had to happen: the realization that implications from globalization transcend the economic sphere, eventually taking over and changing the social-DNA makeup of our society. And we are going through that painful transformation here in the United States of America now… even if the overwhelming share of the population stays blind to that fact; proceeding like somnambulistic dummies controlled by an entrenched and institutionalized cadre of Washington thugs populating the halls of the Capitol, the Pentagon and the White House. [I prefer to let the Supreme Court remain “in hiding,” at least for now.]

A harsh statement to make perhaps, but not unmerited after the American collective will has surrendered without a fight – even the semblance of a light scrimmage – to the will of a merciless capitalist elite. Elite that is herding 80 percent of the population to the final trail with a clear destination: the economic slaughterhouse for the middle class.

Here we are on this May 1st which still commands worldwide respect for the celebration of the producers of wealth in society, International Workers’ Day, or May Day, being reminded of our roots, and the struggle by labor to free itself from the brutal yoke of industrial enslavement… even if only a minute number of Americans has a clue as to what the Haymarket affair in Chicago was almost thirteen decades ago. But as things so drastically change with time, leave it to predatory capitalism to make sure things remain the same when it comes to the indentured status of the working class.

And the brutal yoke of industrial enslavement prevailing in 1886-America has been replaced with the yoke of globalization… a yoke placed on many among us without any recourse by those holding the strings of wealth, and their lackeys in politics.

It is a moral slippery slope that we walk on when we place geographical, ethnic or other barriers in how the distribution of productive wealth is made. And so, the capitalist elite has smugly confronted the situation of Americans losing US living-wage jobs by a higher call to universal compassion and the right of other non-American producers to compete for such jobs. Overall, corporate leaders tell us, globalization is not about just shifting the labor component to where the most advantageous economic cost is found; it is, they claim, the gain overall created by the synergy which is created in free trade around the globe.

But the synergy in question has proven to be asymptomatic for the most part, while the loss of decent-pay jobs, and the dignity which accompanies them, has permeated the core of American society for over two decades, as President William Jefferson Clinton became capitalism’s champion of free trade, while proving to be chief hangman for labor. His political palavering, however, is helping him relegate that ugly, treacherous behavior to the future annals of history; while now he is amassing enormous wealth he feels he deserves as one of the key figures in the New World Order. [No, I don’t delve in conspiracy theories… but what better character than Bill Clinton as a candidate for leadership in a NWO… if such existed?]

No merit should be taken away from the economic success attained by the industrious Chinese people. However, Americans should also remember the contribution they were forced to make by a capitalist elite, and its captive politicians, as they jointly failed to properly plan for the impact of such labor upheaval in a highly developed industrial society such as the United States.

Government statistics are continuously being used to mislead what the economic truth is in America, from the level of unemployment, to the type of jobs (and remuneration) being created. The state of labor in America could not be more dismal on this May Day (International Workers’ Day)… but then again, May Day is a Socialist date of the Second International. Labor Day in Capitalist America doesn’t come until harvest is over… and people thank their lucky star for the abundant life they experience living in the world’s number one economy. Oops! Will we ever admit to saying the world’s number two economy? And by then, assuming it takes a couple of decades, will India relinquish its position as number three and exchange it for number two?

The post US’ Accelerated Economic Descent Thanks To Globalization – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama established a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. We commend him for that, but more needs to be done. Colleges and universities need to get up to speed with the progress made by the Catholic Church in combating sexual assault. Moreover, public officials, beginning with President Obama, should give voice to this idea.

Sexual harassment and assault is addressed under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. So far this fiscal year, 30 such complaints have been filed with the Department of Education; this matches the total number filed in all of fiscal 2013. Now the Education Department has released the names of 55 colleges and universities where a complaint has been registered.

Title IX is antiquated, and does not meet the test that Catholic institutions have established. To be sure, it calls for institutions of higher education to take complaints of sexual harassment and assault seriously—immediate action is mandated, including an investigation—but it does not require colleges and universities to notify law enforcement. It’s worse than that. As we learned last week, Columbia University administrators recently informed students who filed sexual assault claims that they are not allowed to discuss their cases in public.

In other words, not only are colleges and universities not required to call the cops when they get a credible accusation, they are allowed to silence the accusers. That all of this is happening in institutions where sexism is routinely denounced and free speech is heralded makes it even more disgusting.

It’s time the White House called on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to instruct college presidents on how to check this problem.

The post Sexual Assault On Campus – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

It was on 1st May 1993, at the UNP May Day Celebration that LTTE eliminated a sitting President and blew him to smithereens using its infamous suicide human bomber. President Premadasa is remembered by many in different ways.

Caste / Upbringing no factor to Lead a nation: He proved that a person did not necessarily need to be of high caste, elite upbringing, come from elite Colombo schools or tutored at home to lead a nation. President Premadasa carved a niche of his own. He woke up at 4a.m. every morning, he rang his advisors who promptly had to brief and update him on all matters, he read the morning newspapers, he delivered eloquent speeches, he used technology to read out prepared speeches and was even able to spring surprises on those who interviewed him showing off that he had done his background reading.

Gangsters and Leaders make a bad combination: Quality of governance gets deteriorated when politicians move away from the masses and rely on gangster rule. The culture of depending on the underworld and goon squads started with the UNP and has been passed on and used by successive governments. Leaders are doing wrong by the country and the officials implementing laws when gangsters think they can brandish a weapon and get away with any crime. Lest we have forgotten some of these mobsters: Gonawala Sunil raped a 14year old girl but was given a Presidential pardon by then President J R Jayawardena as well as becoming an all-island justice of peace and ending up bodyguard to Ranil Wickremasinghe, then Minister of Education and people had to get his seal of approval to even admit children to schools! Soththi Upali was a close ally of Sirisena Cooray, then Minister of Housing under President Premadasa and the Sri Lanka Police had to address Soththi Upali as ‘Sir’. Chintaka Amarasinghe another goon was aligned to the People’s Alliance while brother Dhammika Amarasinghe is said to have committed 50 murders and countless bank robberies and as is always the case the patrons end up covering for them or gunning them down eventually to conceal the links. Baddegane Sanjeewa was a police sergeant working for President Kumaratunga. The other notorious underworld figures with fascinating names include : Moratu Saman, Thoppi Chaminda,, Nawala Nihal, Kalu Ajit, Vambotta, Olcott, Thel Bala, Kimbula-Ela Guna, Dematagoda Kamal, Colum, Anamalu Imtiaz, Potta Naufer, Neluwa Priyantha, Kudu Lal, Julampitiye Amare and the list continues.

Leaders are also human : Premadasa Period : When no human is perfect, no leader is perfect either and no leader can please the entire population in the decisions taken. We remember President Premadasa’s rule as a period of both good and bad. While on the one side there was bloodshed as a result of gruesome killings across the country from North to South, thousands of innocent youth perished from the South. Both UNP and the JVP have to take moral accountability for these deaths. Not a single international NGO, local NGO or their mouthpieces spoke about the human rights violations of the Sinhalese. At the other spectrum, Premadasa continued with the neo-liberal legacy – deregulated trade, financial services and privatization and created massive zones of small industries giving employment to women in rural villages through various industries like garments, shoes, toys. He is credited with starting well over 15,000 small industry-based projects throughout Sri Lanka

Passion for precision: No one can deny that President Premadasa had a passion for precision and detail. He personally supervised every project and monitored each. His briefings had to include minute details for which all those working around him needed to have at the tip of their tongues.

Immaculate Government offices and well-dressed public servants: President Premadasa insisted that all government offices were clean, had greenery and all officials and public servants were dressed properly. Anyone would recall how every Government office (big or small) was sparkling clean and even the peon was smartly dressed and everyone had to wear what we today call the ‘Chinese collar’ shirts or long sleeved shirts with tie.

Leaders must not outsource decision making to advisors: It is often the choice of wrong advisors that end up bringing down the reputation and quality of governance and result in creating the disrepute of the leader among the masses. Those linked to the economic advisors of President Premadasa continue to hold key portfolios within the present Government ringing alarm bells that todays leaders need to be watchful of. It is always the inner circle that would start the domino effect in creating the eventual collapse of leaders. If President Premadasa envisioned a scenario of making the poor richer what his advisors ended up doing was to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and that was when the people began to hate the man they once loved. President Premadasa faulted in listening to rumors and those that carried tales did so for their own personal gains and this led to turning an iconic figure into a demon and distancing himself from sane advice given freely to surrounding himself with henchmen who turned Premadasa into a virtual ‘dictator’ while they had property and visas and were ready to jump ship if the need arose. The identical scenario prevails presently and cautions leaders to be aware.

Beware of the Advisors: The demand to remove the IPKF was overshadowed by taking advice to lavish arms to the LTTE which resulted in countless innocent civilian deaths and troops. We also recall how advisors compromised the lives of over 500 innocent policemen who were killed one after the other when they were asked by the Premadasa Government to surrender to the LTTE. Premadasa’s advisors manipulated his paranoia having assessed his weaknesses and shortcomings. It is the advisors who build up animosities amongst politicians and create political rivalries. We recall how the managed to divide Premadasa Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake playing one against the other. Most of these same advisors have had close links to the LTTE and the question of how far they were aware of the assassination still hovers in many a mind. We must also recall President Premadasa’s famous declaration ‘You can assassinate me… but don’t assassinate my character’ claiming he had nothing to do with the murder of Athulathmudali. A golden rule that needs to be reminded is that one cannot rule a country by killing one’s opponents. Prabakaran did the same and those that live by the gun are ended by the gun too. We saw examples of how ill-advice on devolving powers as a compromise formula to evade war crimes probe would have cost the Government its life span in office. We see advisors dangling numerous other carrots and question with what sanity the leaders continue to keep even cabinet Ministers who go wailing to the UN with chits of manipulated grievances and nothing is done against them. There are also attempts to use playaround with terminologies and dilute the power of the unitary status of the country as well as the Buddhist identity which the Kandyan Convention is clear proof that should easily silence any critic. The UNHRC Resolution itself played around the word ‘united’ omitting reference to ‘unitary’ and not many advisors brought this important fact to the attention before the public did. Such silence will only lead to a public watching and benchmarking the character change of leaders and will eventually determine the fate of the leaders no different to how Premadasa had crackers lit upon his demise. Some of Premadasa’s advisors have been advisors and continue to function as advisors even now. Some of these advisors are actual prodigies of the advisors that drained the country during President Premadasa’s rule and it is these advisors that have fooled the leaders into the current economic decisions taken and likely to create disastrous impact in time to come.

UNP ugly legacies should not continue: Goon squads, poster mania, tv news coverage of politicians, everything Western compromising Eastern culture were some of the legacies passed on by the UNP Government. We would recall times when there was never an empty wall without the picture of President Premadasa, The Provincial Council system became a dearth to the nation eating up the country’s money and distributing it amongst those connected to politicians, their family members and their cronies. That same legacy continues and we can but appeal to leaders to end the system that will end up the basis for the downfall of leaders eventually. We look at the provincial council system and feel aghast at the quality of councillors who we have elected. Do we blame the system or our own inability to elect good officials to office!

Undermining what will sustain Sri Lanka: The neo-liberal capitalist economy led to the collapse of small industries and self-sustainability. UNP’s venture to privatization led to the selling away Sri Lanka’s infrastructure and assets resulting in a gradual demise of Sri Lanka’s agriculture. Even today, while concessions and tax holidays are showered upon capitalist entrepreneurs very little attention is given to easing the burden of the farmer who becomes victim of world agriculture mafia in the form of fertilizers and pesticides and the middleman that makes off with the profits while the farmer ends up in eternal debt. It was the UNP that scrapped the Guaranteed Purchasing scheme denying producers to benefit but gave the ricer millers and traders the riches. We can recall how 100% tax levied on foreigners was reduced allowing them to purchase real estate in Sri Lanka in 2002 under the UNF budget which was regarded as a sell out of the country to foreigners. We then question why the present Government is not taking an interest the lakhs of Maldivians and other nationals making use of loopholes in the system to marry and purchase lands in Sri Lanka. The reliance on export-oriented market is a lesson Sri Lanka should not repeat having looked at the scenario under President Premadasa. Ignoring the key home-grown assets is likely to lead the present Government into catastrophe’s too.

Proudly standing up to India: If President Premadasa should be remembered fondly and with appreciation it was to demand from India the removal of the IPKF. It is a surprise that his advisors stopped short of asking that he abrogate the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment a question that advisors of the present Government is also not suggesting President Rajapakse to do.

Packing off noisy parker foreign envoys : In 1991, UK High Commissioner David Gladstone was declared persona non grata for interfering in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka when he was found visiting voting center in Dickwella. The pluck President Premadasa showed has not been repeated despite numerous other foreign envoys doing far worse than David Gladstone.

People’s gratitude short lived: Every leader needs to understand that they will not be remembered for their past victories all the time. It is always the present decisions that lead to the masses developing a love-hate relationship with their leaders. When President Premadasa was assassinated people were not shocked that he was gunned down by the LTTE, they in fact lit crackers and fireworks thus setting smoke to all the good he did because the people had begun to hate the man for the bad decisions he was advised to take. This is a perfect example for present leaders to take note of. Leaders adopting a ‘don’t care’ attitude are likely to be in for rude and greater shocks locally and externally as well with the visible regime change operators very much into action helped by the same advisors advising the Government.

Masses are a Governments ONLY defence: While wrong advisors will do everything and anything to distance leaders from the masses, the leaders themselves need to allocate time to determine for themselves the likely outcomes of implementing what advisors suggest them to endorse. No regime change operators will touch countries where the masses are solidly behind the leaders. This is why numerous quarters are being financed to project a notion that dictatorial rule and lack of governance prevails and if the Government allows such examples to surface and do nothing about the wrong doers the leaders are simply walking into the trap.

Don’t’ undermine the Army: A key lesson for politicians taken from the Premadasa past is the manner that senior politicians and advisors in the UNP did not cooperate with the Sri Lankan Armed forces in their dealings with the LTTE. This led to the Treasury releasing funds to the LTTE, facilitation of LTTE personnel leaving the country and even getting Sri Lanka High Commission officials to accord receptions for LTTE leaders (example Jaffna Commander Kittu arrival in London). The Premadasa-LTTE tryst led to transfer of arms, ammunition and equipment to the LTTE during the 14month ceasefire (May 1989 to June 1990) and lifting restrictions on a range of items including cement that helped Prabakaran fortify his bases. A lesson that successive Governments had not learnt lessons from.

Taking decisions : When Varatharaja Perumal the Chief Minister of the merged North-East Provincial Council declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, President Premadasa did not hesitate to take action – he dissolved the North-East provincial council. The TNA has been of late testing the Governments patience even passing Resolutions that directly contravene the country’s constitution and lucky for the TNA the Government appears nonplussed. The appeals to repeal the 13th amendment continue to fall on deaf years as are the appeals to provide an alternate to the Provincial Council system and the proportional representation system that has given undue advantage to minority political parties who have no interest in the minorities they are said to represent or even the country.

Astrologers are not always right : If there was a President who relied on the supernatural, the charts, the rahu kalaya and any charm that advisors recommended, it was President Premadasa. The only fault was that none of them could predict that on 1st May 1993, he would face his last May Day rally. Leaders are often led to be addicted to relying too much on the ‘wisdom’ of astrologers forsaking their own good judgment and this can become detrimental to the nation. It is a crucial weakness that leaders need to come out of.

The life of President Premadasa in many ways serves as good lessons for not just leaders but every citizen of Sri Lanka. He was a man who reached the top showcasing the possibilities of the impossibilities. He stood his ground when he had to but he was also enveloped with short comings and these were good enough for the leeches lurking in his midst to take advantage of by feeding him with lies and rumors and leading the man into taking irreversible decisions and leading the country to a bleak period. President Premadasa no doubt will be remembered for the manner he uplifted the public service where staff were all at attention not knowing when the President would spring a surprise visit and every public servant could not be shabbily dressed at any time. Moreover, the lethargic officials found around of late would not have existed during President Premadasa’s rule for he expected everyone to brief him on all aspects for he himself had read up on the status before arriving at any venue.

When President Premadasa was assassinated by the LTTE a good look back at the newspaper captions found very little foreign calls from governments or NGOs on the human right violations done to a sitting President by the LTTE showcasing the utter hypocrisy on the terror front.

The lessons from President Premadasa’s rule are those that present day leaders should ponder some time upon.

The post Lessons From President Premadasa: May Day LTTE Victim – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

For years, Palestinian factions have strived for unity, and for years unity has evaded them. But is it possible that following several failed attempts, Fatah and Hamas have finally found that elusive middle ground? And if they have done so, why, to what end, and at what cost?

On April 23, top Fatah and Hamas officials hammered out the final details of the Beach Refugee Camp agreement without any Arab mediation. All major grievances have purportedly been smoothed over, differences have been abridged, and other sensitive issues have been referred to a specialized committee. One of these committees will be entrusted to incorporate Hamas and the Islamic Jihad into the fold of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

A rift lasting seven years has been healed, rejoiced some headlines in Arabic media. Israelis and their media were divided. Some, close to right-wing parties, decried the betrayal of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas of the ‘peace process’. Others, mostly on the left, pointed the finger at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for pushing Abbas over the edge –“into Hamas’s arms” per the assessment of Zehava Galon, leader of the left-wing party Meretz.

It is untrue that the rift between Fatah and Hamas goes back to the January 2006 elections, when Hamas won the majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), and formed a government. The feud is as old as Hamas itself. The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was founded in Gaza with two main objectives, one direct and the other inferred: to resist the Israeli military occupation at the start of the First Palestinian Intifada in 1987, and to counterbalance the influence of the PLO.

Since then, a staple argument has clouded the judgment of many analysts, most of them sympathetic to Palestinians. They claim that Hamas was the brainchild of the Israeli intelligence Shin Bet, to weaken Palestinian resistance. That too is a misjudgment.

Hamas founders were not the only Palestinians to have a problem with the PLO. The latter group, which represented and spoke on behalf of all Palestinians everywhere, was designated by an Arab League summit in 1974 as the sole and only representative of the Palestinian people. The target of such specific language was not Hamas, for at the time, it didn’t exist. The reference was aimed at other Arab governments who posed as Palestine’s representatives regionally and internationally.

The ‘sole representation’ bit, however, endured even after surpassing its usefulness. Following the Israeli war on Lebanon in 1982 that mainly targeted PLO factions, the leading Palestinian institution, now operating from Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other Arab entities, began to flounder. Its message grew more exclusivist and was dominated by a small clique within Fatah, one that was closest to former leader Yasser Arafat.

When the 1987 uprising broke out, it was a different breed of Palestinians who seemed to reflect the new mood on the ground, far away from Tunis and all Arab capitals. New movements included the United National Leadership of the Intifada, although it was quickly coaxed by PLO leadership in exile.  Other movements, like Hamas, survived on its own.

That was the original rift, which grew wider with time. When Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, the once unifying character of the ‘sole representative’ of Palestinians began to quickly change. The PLO shrunk into the Palestinian Authority, which governed parts of the West Bank and Gaza under the watchful eye of Israel; and the parliament in exile became the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), a much more restricted parliament at home that was still under occupation. The blurred lines grew between the PLO, the PA and Fatah. It was clear that the liberation project, mounted by the PLO and Fatah in the early 1960’s, became anything but that.

In fact, the whole paradigm was fluctuating at all fronts. ‘Donor countries’ became the true friends of Palestine, and geography suddenly became a maze of confusing classifications of areas A, B and C. The status of Jerusalem was a deferred topic for later discussions; the refugees’ Right of Return was a mere problem that needed to be cleverly and creatively resolved with possible symbolic gestures.

The befuddling peace process has remained in motion, and is likely to continue even after the unity deal. On April 18, former Israel lobbyist and current US peace envoy Martin Indyk returned to the region in a last desperate effort to push both parties to an agreement, any agreement, even one that would simply postpone the US-imposed deadline for a ‘framework agreement’. But little could be done. Netanyahu had no reasons to move forward with the talks, especially being under little or no pressure to do so. Abbas’s only hope that Israel would release a few Palestinian prisoners, from the thousands of prisoners it currently holds, was dashed. He had nothing to show his people by way of an ‘achievement’.

20 some years after Abbas helped facilitate the Oslo agreement, he had nothing to show except for more settlements and a seemingly unbridgeable divide between factions within his own Fatah party, but also with others. With the imminent collapse of the peace process, this time engineered by Secretary of State John Kerry, Abbas needed an exit, thus the Beach Refugee Camp agreement with Hamas.

The timing for Hamas was devastatingly right. The group, which once represented Palestinian resistance, not just for Islamists, but for others as well, was running out of options. “Hamas is cornered, unpopular at home and boxed in as tightly as ever by both Egypt and Israel,” wrote the Economist on April 26. “Its former foreign patrons, such as Qatar, have been keeping their distance, withholding funds for projects that used to bolster Hamas.”

Indeed, the regional scene was getting too complicated, even for resourceful Hamas, a group that was born into a crisis and is used to navigating its way out of tough political terrains. Despite putting up stiff resistance to Israeli wars and incursions, the group has in recent years been obliged to facilitate hudnas (ceasefires) with Israel, doing its utmost in keeping Gaza’s border with Israel rocket-free. The destruction of the tunnels since the Egyptian army coup against the government of Mohammed Morsi in July had cost the Hamas government nearly 230 million dollars. To manage an economy in a poor region like Gaza is one thing, to sustain it under the harshest of sieges is proving nearly impossible.

As is the case for Abbas’s PA, for Hamas the agreement was necessitated by circumstances other than finding true ground for national unity to combat the Israeli occupation. In fact, the Beach Camp deal would allow Abbas to continue with his part of the peace process, as he will also remain at the helm of the prospected unity government, to be formed within a few weeks from the signing of the agreement. Although Arab governments were not directly involved in bringing both parties together – as was the case in previous agreements in Sana, Mecca, Cairo and Doha – some still hold a sway.

Egypt in particular holds an important key, the Rafah border with Gaza. Hamas is looking for any space to escape the siege and its own isolation. Egypt knows that well, and has played a clever game to manipulate, and at times, punish Hamas for its closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Americans and the Israelis have the largest keys to quashing the unity deal. Netanyahu immediately suspended the peace process, as the Hamas-Fatah agreement was a last minute escape route for his government to disown the futile talks, whose collapse is now being blamed on the Palestinians. The Americans are in agreement with Israel, as has always been the case.

Scenes in Gaza tell of much hope and rejoicing, but it is a repeated scene of past agreements that have failed. Sometimes despair and hope go hand in hand. The impoverished place has served as a battlefield for several wars and a continued siege. It is aching for a glimmer of hope.

The post Palestinian Unity: Hope And Gloom In The Beach Refugee Camp – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A vacation tab racked up by President Obama and Vice President Biden has gotten pretty hefty – reaching $40 million, according to a taxpayer watchdog group.

In a statement released by Judicial Watch, the group stated it had gotten its hands on documentation from the US Air Force, via Freedom of Information Act requests, that reveals the cost of flying Obama and Biden alone routinely exceeds hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour in the air.

According to the Washington Examiner, which obtained the release, the president’s two golf outings this year cost roughly $2.9 million in taxpayer funds.

Judicial Watch estimates that since 2009, American taxpayers have spent about $40 million flying Obama and Biden to various destinations – not just golf outings in Palm Springs, California, but also for vacations to Hawaii and trips to Africa.

Additionally, the group stated that even more money is spent on accommodation, vehicle transportation, Secret Service protection, and other things. The president of Judicial Watch says the amount of spending amounts to “abuse.”

“It is clear that the Obamas continually abuse the perks of the president’s office at taxpayer expense,” said Tom Fitton, according to the Examiner. “And it is particularly interesting that Obama has chosen to take not one but two luxury vacations back-to-back while inveighing against ‘income equality.’ President Obama’s waste of the hard-earned tax dollars of working Americans on unnecessary luxury travel is an abuse of office.”

This isn’t the first time the cost of the president’s travel has been subject to scrutiny by Judicial Watch. In March, the group announced that Obama’s trips to Hawaii and Africa in 2013 cost nearly $16 million in flight costs alone. In particular, the trip to Africa was criticized by some after reports indicated that, based on previous presidential journeys to the continent, it could cost between $60 million and $100 million.

With the trip taking place as sequestration forced cuts in various government agencies, Obama’s political opponents have criticized him for taking the trip while canceling White House tours.

“For the cost of this trip to Africa, you could have 1,350 weeks of White House tours,” Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.) said at the time. “It is no secret that we need to rein in government spending, and the Obama administration has regularly and repeatedly shown a lack of judgment for when and where to make cuts.”

But those with experience in planning presidential trips have chalked up the costs as par for the course.

“Even in the most developed places of Western Europe, the level of support you need for mass movements by the president is really extraordinary,” said Steve Atkiss, who helped coordinate travel under President George W. Bush, to the Washington Post. “As you go farther afield, to less-developed places, certainly it’s more of a logistical challenge.”

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Around 700 African migrants charged Spain’s barbed-wire border fences Thursday in the country’s North African enclave of Melilla, clashing with Spanish and Moroccan border police.

Spain said 140 of the migrants managed to enter Spanish territory despite the efforts of the border police.

It was the latest surge in the tide of African immigrants trying to cross into Europe. Spain’s two North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta are particularly vulnerable and have had repeated attacks by hundreds of immigrants this spring.

The migrants on Thursday rushed the fences in two waves, with 500 arriving in the early hours and a further 200 four hours later.

By afternoon, more than 150 people remained perched on an outside border fence, fending off police by setting fire to clothing and throwing it at them, Spanish officials said. Some even swung batons wrenched away from officers.

Police used pepper spray to try to force migrants down from the 20-foot (6-meter) -high fence, but some climbed onto the lamp posts used to illuminate the border.

The Interior Ministry statement said some migrants were treated by Red Cross staff and five were taken to the hospital. It later said 12 police were injured.

The new arrivals to Spain made their way, some hobbling, to the region’s temporary immigrant center, which now contains more than 1,900 immigrants, the statement said, adding this meant the facility was above its capacity.

The European Union’s southern countries — France, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain — are unhappy about bearing the costs of border enforcement.

Spain and Morocco stepped up border vigilance in February when 15 migrants drowned trying to enter Ceuta.

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