By Monia Ghanmi

Terrorists in Tunisia have threatened to assassinate at least two candidates on the ballot in the country’s November 23rd presidential poll.

Independent presidential candidate Mondher Zenaidi received formal notification from security agencies on Wednesday (November 12th) about serious terrorist threats against him.

Zenaidi said that he was not afraid of the threats, which he described as “cowardly”. He vowed to continue his campaign with the same enthusiasm.

“The best way to respond to terrorist threats and criminal acts is to continue to work and to communicate with people in the field, to convince them of the necessity of participating in the elections, and to choose who is able to serve as president above parties and affiliations,” he said.

Slim Riahi, head of the Free Patriotic Union, was also notified about direct threats to his life.

Ansar al-Sharia members and their leader Seif Allah ben Hassine (aka Abou Iyadh) were behind the threats, Riahi said he was told by security forces last Saturday.

In the framework of preventive measures, Riahi cancelled some campaign trips planned for Tunisia’s internal regions. He also changed his residence and vehicles.

Despite the terrorist threats, he said he was keen to continue his campaign and meet with citizens.

Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou on Wednesday revealed the existence of serious terrorist threats on the eastern and north-western borders. He stressed, however, that the ministry would work to protect the upcoming presidential election, just as it had secured the legislative poll in October.

Tunisian authorities have provided tight security to protect all candidates since the beginning of the presidential campaign.

Citizens voiced dismay over the threats to the politicians.

Zied Belghith, a food products dealer, said the attempt to target political figures running for president was intended to disrupt the path of democratic transition and the normal functioning of the election.

“We must exercise caution and vigilance in this period, because terrorism is able to strike at any moment. We want these elections to be held peacefully,” Belghith said.

For her part, Karima Triki, an employee at a call centre, stressed that the best response to these death threats was the determination of the targeted candidates to complete their election campaign against all these odds.

“This is the best answer from the candidates. It will give confidence to the voters to go to the polls heavily in order for this last leg of the democratic transition to succeed and to thwart the efforts of these parties who do not want good for our country and want to spread chaos,” she said.

The post Tunisia: Jihadists Threaten To Kill Presidential Candidates appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Giga Bokeria, of the Georgian opposition United National Movement (UNM), warned in the European Parliament yesterday (13 November), that intensifying political persecution in his country was favouring Russia, which already illegally occupies part of his country.

Bokeria, who is international secretary of UNM, the political force of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, spoke to the press alongside EPP Vice President Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, who hosted the event.

Recently, Georgia’s pro-Western politicians were either sacked or left the governing coalition, depriving it of a parliamentary majority in a rift over the pace of integration with the West.

Prime Minister Irakly Garibashvili said he remained committed to closer Western ties, but suspicions are rising over the country’s geo-strategic direction.

Bokeria said that he and Georgi Kandelaki, a UNM legislator, had come to Brussels at very critical moment, when, in his words, more Russian tanks are pouring into Ukraine, a country part of the same region as Georgia.

“The next months will decide whether the historic dream of my nation and other nations will be fulfilled or postponed further,” Bokeria said.

Nearly the entire leadership of UNM is either in pre-trial detention, convicted, under investigation or in exile, he stated, adding that up to 100 key government officials are under investigation, and several thousand have been questioned.

“This happens in the context of a rise of political violence against minorities, impunity towards those violent acts, and a clear picture of selectiveness in which people with charges against them have their cases dropped if they switch sides”, Bokeria said.

The Georgian politician expressed worries that the political rhetoric of Garibashvili’s government was becoming similar to that of Russia, with accusations of conspiracy, with NGOs being labelled subversive or UNM stooges.

“The road to imprisoning political opponents leads to Putin,” Bokeria said.

Saryusz-Wolski said that the moment had come to ask the question is Georgia is still on a European course.

“On behalf of EPP, I would like to say we are increasingly concerned by the recent political instability in Georgia, which is applying more and more selective justice towards the opposition,” Saryusz-Wolski stated.

He added that until recently, selective justice was applied against Saakashvili’s allies, but now the same applied to the ruling party’s very recent coalition partners, the Free Democrats.

Indeed, Irakly Alsania, the country’s pro-Western defense minister who was recently sacked, is leading the Our Georgia – Free Democrats party, affiliated to the liberal ALDE political family.

Saryusz-Wolski made it clear that the European Parliament was prepared to ratify the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, but that this support was not unconditional.

“Those repeated trials, arrests, pre-trial detentions, with so many former deputies and ministers in prison, make us think this is an abusive use of justice as an instrument for retribution and goes contrary to declared goal of Georgia becoming a country associated to the EU,” he stated.

“Around us, there is not what we have expected, a ring of friends. There is a ring of fire and the fire has been put by Russia. By Russia, who is supplying aggressive and war-like invasion methods to prevent and to deter our partners from making their legitimate European choice to choose partners for economic and political relationship,” the EPP Vice President stated.

Call on the Socialists, the Liberals

Saryusz-Wolski further said that until recently, the EPP was alone in expressing scepticism with regard to the credibility of those in power in Tbilissi and was the only European political family to criticise the political persecution of the UNM. But now the situation has changed, because the same fate is shared by the liberal force, the Free Democrats, he said.

We ask the Social Democrats to rethink their support, and the Liberals to withdraw their support to the government of Georgia, Saryusz-Wolski stated.

Giorgi Kandelaki, member of parliament from UNM, said that a number of dynamics in his country were beneficial to Putin, “who sees the proliferation of democracy as a threat”.

“We have a number of pro-Russian forces or camps very much activated, who feel very much empowered by the departure of the pro-European forces,” Kandelaki said. He added that those forces consisted of former Communist high officials who “with a very high probability cooperated with KGB”.

Kandelaki also said that UNM had conxwena about the infiltration of Georgia’s security apparatus by “individuals with very questionable affiliations”.

The UNM MP also expressed concern abour the rise of violent anti-Western groups conducting pogroms against minorities, which according to him, enjoy support from Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s strong man. Ivanishvili, who established the Golden Dream – Democratic Georgia Party and won the elections in 2012, retired from politics the next year and appointed his political ally Garibashvili as Prime Minister.

“Ivanishvili is no longer Prime Minister, but he is the power holder, he is the decision maker”, Kandelaki said. He pointed out at a recent statement by Ivanishvili on TV, in which he quoted at length from a classified court case against Alsania’s associates, a case to which even lawyers have no access.

EurActiv.com, Georgi Gotev

The post Georgian Opposition: Jailing Political Opponents Leads To Putin appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — In a letter to the President of the European Parliament and to the Italian Presidency obtained by EurActiv, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposes a better coordinated working program of EU institutions and fleshes out the 10 priorities he has identified for 2015.

Juncker and his Vice-President Frans Timmermans sent the 4-page letter on Wednesday (12 November) to Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, and to Matteo Renzi,  the Italian Prime Minister currently holding the six-month rotating EU presidency. Herman Van Rompuy, the outgoing European Council President and Donald Tusk, who will take over on 1 December, are not included among the recipients.

The Commission President argues that closer cooperation among the EU institutions can send a powerful message at a time when the crisis still bites, unemployment remains “unacceptably high”, and when events in Ukraine “call for a strong response”.

According to the EU treaty, it is the Commission that initiates the Union’s annual and multi-annual programming. However, Juncker says he wants to share with the Parliament and Council his initial thinking for the 2015 priorities, before those are adopted at the end of this year.

The ten political guidelines were already defined in the Juncker paper presented on the day of his confirmation in Parliament, 15 July 2014. What is new are the “bullet points” specifying what he thinks could be achievable already in 2015.

1. A new boost for jobs, growth and investment

• Jobs, growth and investment package (before end of 2014) and follow up
• A review of the Europe 2020 strategy
• A strengthened Better Regulation agenda

2. A Connected digital single market

• A Digital single market package, including more ambitious reform of the telecoms market
• A proposal on copyright reform

3. A resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy

• Follow-up to the 2030 energy package agreed last October
• Preparation of the EU role in the Paris Climate change conference in 2015
• Actions to strengthen energy security

4. A deeper and fairer internal market with a strengthened industrial base

• Implementing new banking supervisory and resolution rules, completing the financial services regulatory framework
• Proposals on crisis management and resolution of financial institutions other than banks
• Work on a future Capital Markets Union
• A targeted review of the Posting of workers directive, promotion of labour mobility
• Work on a definitive VAT regime
• Measures to combat fraud and tax evasion

5. A deeper and fairer Economic and Monetary Union

• Proposals to deepen EMU and strengthen economic governance, following review of “two-pack” and “six pack”

6. A reasonable and balanced Free trade agreement with the USA

7. An area of justice and fundamental rights based on mutual trust

• Pursuing EU accession to the European Convention on Human Right
• Concluding a comprehensive EU-US data protection agreement and review of safe-harbour agreement

8. Towards a new policy on migration

• Implementing the common asylum policy
• A new policy on legal migration, starting with the review of the Blue Card directive
• A Communication on internal security strategy
• Operational measures to fight terrorism and counter radicalisation

9. A stronger global actor

• European neighbourhood policy: stocktaking and way forward
• Millennium development goals/post-2015 framework

10. A Union of democratic change

• Review of legislation for the authorisation of GMOs
• Inter-institutional agreement on a mandatory transparency register
• Inter-institutional agreement on better law-making.

Juncker further tells Schulz and to Renzi that his services are ready in the coming weeks to exchange views on these issues with the institutions they represent.

The second part of Juncker’s letter is dedicated to his proposal for a new inter-institutional agreement “on better law-making”, to be concluded before the end of this year.  The idea is that the three institutions should agree on a multi-annual program setting strategic objectives and deliverables in the beginning of the 5-year legislative term, and that the program could be reviewed mid-term.

As Juncker and Timmermans explained on Wednesday, the Commission would like to concentrate its efforts in the areas where there is a strong chance of adopting new legislation, and not waste time where lack of consensus is preventing from such advance.

It’s only the Commission who decides its working program, but the EU executive can only benefit from a dialogue with the other institutions, Timmermans said.

“The dialogue with the Parliament has taken place every year. But a dialogue with the Council has never taken place before. I am happy to have the possibility to clarify the Commission’s priorities with the member states, to see what are their priorities. And after that, we will draw our own conclusions”, he added.

The post Juncker Defines 10 Priorities For EU, Seeks Inter-Institutional Support appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Giorgi Lomsadze

The government crisis that erupted in Georgia earlier in November was originally cast as a struggle over the country’s geopolitical orientation. But as time passes, it seems the real fulcrum of contention is connected with checks and balances on authority, and the potential influence of unaccountable public figures.

The political drama, which resulted in the abrupt sacking of the defense minister and the withdrawal of the Free Democrats from the governing coalition, has sharpened longstanding worries among many observers in Tbilisi that critical government decisions hinge on one man, the 58-year-old tycoon, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

“Ivanishvili is outside democratic control, outside institutional checks and balances, yet he is ultimately calling the shots, which puts Georgia in a vulnerable position both vis-à-vis democracy and foreign policy,” claimed Kornely Kakachia, a professor of political science at Tbilisi State University.

The billionaire professed to retire from politics in late 2013, when he stepped down as prime minister after the opposition Georgian Dream coalition, which he funded, gained power the previous year. He has since supposedly busied himself with a civil-society start-up, an investment fund, and, most recently, plans to set up a think-tank and co-host a TV show on current events.

Yet he has been a near-constant and active presence in the ongoing political crisis, which began with Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili’s November 4 dismissal of ex-Defense Minister Irakli Alasania and his deputies. Ivanishvili’s prominence has fueled the impression in many minds that he is the true power behind Gharibashvili.

Alasania and his deputies were sacked after alleging that some influential individuals in Georgia were intent on preventing the country from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Alasania’s assertion, which came after two criminal investigations were launched into Defense Ministry practices, have yet to be substantiated. Despite multiple attempts by EurasiaNet.org, Alasania could not be reached to elaborate on his comments.

There is no evidence to suggest that Ivanishvili, who has close ties to Russian business circles, demanded Alasania’s removal, or is discouraging NATO membership for Georgia. But in Georgia’s clique-centric society, the patron often matters more than the proof.

Thirty-two-year-old Gharibashvili, who has worked in Ivanishvili-connected operations his entire professional career, has long been seen as the former prime minister’s Mr. Fixit. Both men scoff at such allegations.

Even so, many remain convinced that Ivanishvili is pulling the strings.

“We live in an informalocracy,” quipped Sergi Kapanadze, a former deputy foreign minister under ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, and co-founder of a think-tank, Georgia’s Reforms Associates. “The main problem with such a setup is the atrophying of state institutions.”

“Key decisions in the government are made with one man in mind,” he continued. “So, no matter how estimable, influential and rich this man may be, officials end up self-censoring their work. It creates a bottleneck in decision-making, as key decisions are queued up for approval from a person who has no direct format of interaction with state institutions, and the approval can only come via third persons who have access.”

Asked in a November 11 television interview about whether Ivanishvili was behind the government’s actions against Alasania, ex-foreign minister Panjikidze hinted broadly in the affirmative. “What do you think?” she shot back with a smile. Panjikidze is Alasania’s sister-in-law.

For signs that informal power is being wielded, observers point to several events, including the fact that both Gharibashvili and Alasania held private post-dismissal talks with Ivanishvili, and that Gharibashvili apologized for his description of Alasania as “foolish” after on-air criticism from the ex-premier.

The billionaire, despite his supposed distaste for politics, also attended a meeting of the Georgian Dream coalition held to determine the group’s future. His presence prompted Alasania, who later withdrew his Free Democrats party from the alliance, to storm out.

Kapanadze, Kakachia and other analysts believe personalities and popularity were factors in precipitating the political crisis. They point to an August survey conducted for the National Democratic Institute in which Alasania, at 60 percent of 3,338 respondents, outstripped the popularity of both Ivanishvili (45 percent) and Gharibashvili (54 percent).

Jealousy over those ratings, combined with growing respect for Alasania in Western circles, could have prompted Gharibashvili and Ivanishvili to want to take some of the air out of the defense minister, some experts believe.

But to hear Ivanishvili tell it – at length in a 90-minute November 8 television interview with the state-funded Georgian Public Broadcasting – he is “not a revenge-seeking person.”

“I will stand beside any politician who will take the country in the right direction,” he said, according to a summary published by the Civil.ge website. “I will confront everyone, who makes mistakes and takes steps damaging the country.”

He claimed he has no desire to return to politics, or to push Georgia away from Western European institutions, just a desire to know more about how the Defense Ministry handled a telecommunications tender, the topic of one criminal investigation.

Both Kapanadze and Kakachia are willing to give Ivanishvili the benefit of the doubt on the question of EU/NATO membership for Georgia. But they are concerned that he has excessive influence over governmental policy. “One big flaw with the current power arrangement is that we largely depend on whether or not [the] national agenda coincides with one man’s personal agenda. We can only hope that he personally believes that Georgia should stay the Western course,” Kapanadze said.

“Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia and most likely has links to oligarch circles there,” said Kakachia. “We don’t know what [Zurab] Abashidze and [Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory] Karasin [the special envoys in talks between Georgia and Russia, respectively] talk about during all their meetings. We see more trade and a possibility of greater dependence on the Russian economy. All of this obviously creates questions.”

Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi. He is a frequent contributor to EurasiaNet.org’s Tamada Tales blog.

The post Georgia: Political Crisis Prompts Speculation About Ivanishvili’s Political Role – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By William Chislett

Spain is blighted by a jobless rate that is still more than 24% six years after the economy took a nosedive, triggered by the popping of its debt-fuelled and massive real-estate bubble. According to the Consejo Empresarial para la Competitividad (CEC), which comprises the country’s corporate titans, it is possible to cut the rate to below 15% as of 2018 if very ambitious structural reforms are enacted.[1]

All international institutions, such as the OECD, the IMF and the European Commission, forecast the unemployment rate remaining at 20% or more until 2018.

The CEC says the unemployment rate would drop to only 21.2% in 2018 as a result of the ‘inertia of the economic cycle’ and maintaining the reforms already in place. This would create some 750,000 new jobs, the CEC calculates. But if its recipe were to be followed, 2.3 million jobs could be created, lowering the unemployment rate to 14.2%, and without abandoning Spain’s fiscal commitments with Brussels. Structural reforms would be responsible for two-thirds of the 10 pp drop in the jobless rate.

The CEC’s plan consists of reforms in the institutional framework, knowledge economy, education and energy policy (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Impact of structural measures on annual GDP and employment

Notes:
(1) The impact in each block has been adjusted to avoid duplications among them.
(2) Calculation based on 2013 GDP and the level of employment and the working population in the second quarter of 2014. The jobless rate estimates assume a constant working population between 2014 and 2018.
Source: CEC.

The average number of employees in Spanish companies is less than half that of the UK and Germany. Of the close to 3 million companies in Spain, only 24,000 have more than 50 workers and 3,800 more than 250. Larger companies tend to be more productive, competitive and tend to seek foreign markets and hence employ more people.

In the institutional area, a driving force of employment would be to greatly improve Spain’s position in the closely watched World Bank’s Doing Business ranking by cutting red tape to an absolute minimum (ie, just the paying of taxes). This is already happening and sending a positive signal to foreign investors. Spain rose from 115th in the 2014 ranking out of 189 countries for ease of starting a business (142nd in 2013) to 74th in the recently released 2015 ranking.

Spain’s exports have increased notably in the last six years, and this progress needs to be sustained when, as is beginning to happen, domestic demand bounces back and imports are sucked in.

In education, Spain has big problems, particularly the still very high early school leaving rate of 25% and the even more worrying level of those between 16 and 24 who are not in education, employment or training NEETs). Overall, only 22% of Spain’s adult population studied up to higher secondary education compared with a 44% average for OECD countries. It is hard to see how Spain can create a much more knowledge-based economy in such a situation or meet the CEC’s objective of boosting R&D spending from the current low level of 1.3% of GDP to 3% (Denmark’s rate today).

The government’s 2012 labour market reforms are beginning to impact job creation, but the great majority of new jobs are temporary, sometimes with very few hours, and in the service sector (mainly tourism and hence seasonal). The yawning gap between insiders (on permanent contracts) and outsiders (on temporary contracts) needs to be reduced, but how remains to be seen.

Also, long-term unemployment (more than two years) remains very high. Spain has the highest share (20% in 2013) among OECD countries of unemployed people between the ages of 55 and 64.

Important areas to finally get to grips with are tax and labour fraud. Spain’s black economy is estimated at 23% of GDP (15% in Germany and France), the equivalent of 4 million jobs on the assumption that the informal economy has the same productivity as the formal one. This deprives the state’s coffers of between €60 billion and €80 billion a year (equivalent to 70% of the spending on public health).

Successive governments in Spain have been too tolerant of the black economy, or have turned a blind eye. In times of crisis, such as now, the informal economy acts as a cushion, which understandably the authorities are reluctant to crack down on, but even when the going has been good, the informal sector has not been tackled.

The large informal sector helps to explain why Spain’s tax receipts represent only 37.2% of GDP compared with an average of 44.2% for 12 euro countries, even though the county’s tax rates are amongst the highest.

The CEC’s reforms are concentrated on the supply side. They would improve the growth potential, but the problem at the moment is not a lack of productive capacity; indeed, a lot of it is idle because of a lack of demand due to depressed consumption.

The reforms sound feasible on paper, but politically speaking are wishful thinking. However, this does not denigrate their value. Only the Popular Party (PP) might have the courage to implement an agenda much more ambitious than its own programme of reforms, but all opinion polls show it most unlikely to be re-elected with a majority in 2015.

The Socialists (PSOE) have rejected the plan and for Podemos –the radical populist movement that stunned the political class by winning five seats in last May’s European election (with 1.2 million votes) and is forecast to do very well in next year’s general election– the CEC’s measures represent all that it stands against.

Nevertheless, the ambitious scope of the plan deserves to start a more serious debate on how to cut Spain’s unemployment more quickly. Resigning oneself to the gravity of the problem in the presumption that the country will always be able to withstand such a high jobless rate, as has been the case so far, is not an option.

About the author:
William Chislett is Associate Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute | @WilliamChislet3

Source:
This article was published at Elcano Royal Institute.

[1] The full report is available at http://www.iefamiliar.com/web/es/consejo2.html and only in Spanish.

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By Miguel Otero-Iglesias

Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used to say that Brazil has two structural problems: inequality and the Custo Brasil (the cost of getting things done in Brazil). Since then the battle against poverty has been partly won. Unfortunately, the fight against Custo Brasil has suffered continuous defeats. The re-elected Dilma Rousseff needs to address this national problem.

Brazil has been able to successfully combat its greatest stigma: being one of the most unequal societies on earth. Since 2002 the left-leaning Partido dos Trabalhadores governments of Lula and Rousseff have reduced chronic poverty by three quarters. The Lula years were particularly impressive. Poverty was reduced by half, which means that in only eight years Brazil achieved what the experts of the UN millennium poverty reduction goals expected would take 25 years.

While inequality reached its peak in the 1990s, by 2010 Brazil achieved its lowest Gini coefficient (a measurement of inequality) since the 1960s. Unsurprisingly there is a strong consensus in favor of the 14 government-sponsored poverty reduction schemes (such as Bolsa Familia). They have helped to create a new middle class. Households earning between 2,000 and 8,500 reais (respectively US$830 and US$3.500) –when added to the upper classes– now represent a total mass of 140 million consumption-prone citizens out of Brazil’s population of 200 million.

Main pillars of growth

Due to this structural shift, and the provision of easier credit – thanks to improved macroeconomic management and favourable investor confidence during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula years – household consumption has exceeded the 60 percent of GDP threshold (it was 63 percent in 2013) and has become, alongside the export of commodities, one of the main pillars of Brazilian growth. The question, however, is how long this can last.

We are not in 2010, when Brazil’s growth was 7.5 percent of GDP (the highest in 25 years). The tide is changing. China is importing less commodities. To maintain growth in the run-up to the elections, Rousseff’s government increased its budget deficit. This generated inflationary pressure. The central bank wanted to tighten, but the government leaned against it to underpin consumption levels. This in turn has made inflation rise further (to 6.75 percent, above the 6.5 percent upper limit set by the central bank).

The possible outcome of this downward spiral has been rehearsed before. International investors start losing confidence in Brazil, they withdraw their money and the real sinks. This is a windfall for Brazilian exporters, but if the currency is too weak, inflation is likely to accelerate, the central bank will eventually need to tighten, the economy will tank and unemployment will rise. True, this time the situation is different because Brazil has US$375 billion in foreign reserves. But still, it is difficult to tame the market herd once it is in full gallop.

Tackling Custo Brasil

To avoid this Rousseff needs to tackle the other stigma burdening her country: the Custo Brasil, the obstacles that Brazilians and foreigners alike need to overcome to do business and pursue daily life. The concept is both routinely mentioned by international investors and has become part of the vocabulary of the average Brazilian.

Brazilians are fed up with the state of public services and infrastructure in their country. It is often said that life for Brazilians has markedly improved da porta para dentro (indoors). Most households now have washing machines, TVs and computers, but once the average Brazilian steps outside his front door (da porta para fora) life is very tough.

If Brazilians go a step further, and travel overseas (do país para fora), life becomes even harder because they realize that public transport and infrastructure is better abroad than at home. This is not only the case in the US and Europe (traditional destinations for middle-class Brazilians) but also in the new emerging markets such as China, Chile and Mexico.

The value of infrastructure stock in Brazil is 16 percent of GDP. In India (also a country with infrastructure problems) it is 58 percent, while in China it is 76 percent. The effects of infrastructural bottlenecks are striking. In Brazil it costs more than US$2,000 to import or export a container. In China the cost is around US$500 and in Chile US$800.

Roussef at a croassroads

Custo Brasil not only refers to poor infrastructure. It is also related to the Brazilian economy’s other ills: excessive bureaucracy and red tape, corruption, an over-complicated tax system, an inefficient judiciary, the excessive cartelization of the economy, an absence of global value chains, the average Brazilian worker’s very low productivity and a poor education system, unable to produce highly-skilled labor. In total Brazil invests less than 18 percent of GDP compared with the 23 percent regional average.

Many believe Rousseff is now at a crossroads. Either she continues to stimulate consumption or she addresses the economy’s supply-side problems. In principle, a combination of both would be the best option, although finding the right balance is never easy. There is the temptation to follow the current trajectory until it is exhausted. This would be a mistake. Rousseff needs to show that she is serious about winning the battle against Custo Brasil. Not only because it is what big business and international investors demand, but more importantly because it would be the average Brazilian who would stand to benefit the most.

About the author:
Miguel Otero-Iglesias is Senior Analyst for Emerging Markets at the Elcano Royal Institute | @miotei

Source:
This article was published at Elcano Royal Institute.

(*) Published on 10 November 2014 in Latinvex.

The post Rousseff Needs To Tackle Brazil Cost – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Miguel Otero-Iglesias

Spain is often presented in Germany as the Musterschüler (the model pupil) of the Eurozone. In a recent interview with a number of European newspapers, Wolfgang Schäuble, the Finance Minister of Germany, summarized this sentiment by describing Spain as “an example for the rest of the world”. These days there is no international conference where German officials are not full of praise for the reform efforts of Spain. International media have bought this story. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has described Spain’s determination to overcome its deepest economic slump since its 1930s Civil War as Europe’s “only real turnaround story in this crisis”.

This recognition is justified. Spain is currently the only large European economy that is growing. This is due to both the decisive action by the ECB and the reform efforts of the country. Spaniards have had to endure a painful internal devaluation process in order to regain competitiveness. Firing and hiring has been eased. Salaries have been cut. Public expenditure has been reduced. Worker and social rights have been curtailed. This has produced public discontent, but it has also helped to cut the current account deficit – which was at a worrying 10% of GDP in 2008 – to an even balance in 2013. Spain has witnessed record export numbers in the past years.

The problem, however, is that these stoic efforts have only produced meager results. Spain’s unemployment levels remain stubbornly high at 24%. The public debt has gone from 36% of GDP in 2008, before the crisis, to 96% today. The net external debt position of Spain remains at roughly 90% of GDP. Spanish firms need to pay on average a 2% interest premium for their new loans compared to their French and German competitors. Some even argue that at the current rate of growth it will take Spain 15 years before it can reduce its unemployment to 2008 levels.

Given these bleak numbers, is there any surprise that the socialist leaders of France, François Hollande, and Italy, Matteo Renzi, have no desire to follow the Spanish example? They must be thinking: “Look at the Spaniards, they have followed the German diktat, they have undertaken titanic efforts, but the rewards have been dismal. We won’t force our people to go through the same pain”. This attitude is understandable but it is also worrying. For if Italy and France do not undertake reforms, their economies will not grow, and if they do not move forward, the whole Eurozone will be stuck in a recessionary spiral.

In order to change this dynamic, the German government should not waste the reform efforts of Spain. On numerous occasions, it has proposed establishing contractual arrangements between the Eurozone member states and the European Commission whereby the former commit to reforms in exchange for targeted financial help. It is about time to apply this logic. If Germany wants to incentivize reforms in Italy and France, it is the time to compensate Spain, and other ‘well-behaved’ countries such as Ireland and Portugal, for their reform efforts.

In other words, Germany has been successful in applying the sticks. Now it is time to hand over the carrots. For this, no new treaty would be needed. The financing of new investment in this crisis-hit countries could be managed and monitored by the European Investment Bank (EIB) or, alternatively, by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which could issue project bonds for specific investment targets. In Spain, for example, there is no need for new infrastructure. But there is lack of funding for R&D, start-ups, programs to promote entrepreneurship, the establishment of an efficient dual education system and active labor market policies. All areas where Germany has internationally-recognized excellence upon which the ESM and the EIB can draw on to secure the effective use of the European funds. Under the contractual arrangement, if the money is wasted, the financing should be stopped.

The provision of this targeted programs could become a game-changer in the resolution of the Eurozone crisis. The Spaniards would feel that their efforts have brought them some tangible results. The French and the Italians would see that their future pains will bring certain compensation. Germany would no longer be seen as the bad guy that only wants to impose austerity on everyone else. The dynamic around the future of the Eurozone would change to a more positive outlook. Targeted project bonds could be seen as the first step towards a genuine fiscal union, something absolutely necessary for the Eurozone to survive in the long term.

More importantly, in the short term, this proposal would square Mario Draghi’s three-dimensional circle. It would incentivize structural reforms, it would augment investment at the European level and it would give the ECB a safe pan-European debt instrument to expand further its balance sheet if necessary.

About the author:
Miguel Otero-Iglesias is Senior Analyst for European Economy and Emerging Markets at the Elcano Royal Institute | @miotei

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.

(*) This article was published on 13/11/2014 in Euroactiv.com.

The post Message To Germany: Don’t Waste Spain’s Reform Efforts – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Elizabeth Warren, recently appointed to a Democratic leadership position in the Senate, explained her priorities by saying “Wall Street … is doing very well, CEOs are bringing in millions more and families all across the country are struggling,” she said. “We have to make this government work for the American people. And that’s what I will fight for.”

The comment is interesting because it embodies the assumption that government policy actually can improve people’s economic well-being. Many people reading The Beacon would think that the less Elizabeth Warren and her Senate cronies do, the better off we’ll be.

But let’s say she’s right, and government policy actually can improve people’s economic lot. When President Obama came into office six years ago, he was supported by a Democratic House and Senate, so they determined the government’s policies. And while the Democrats have now lost their Congressional majorities, Obama is still the president and the Senate will still be majority Democrat for a few more weeks.

If government policy actually does affect people’s well-being, as Warren implies, we could re-state her comment to say “Our party has been in power for six years now, and thanks to our policies, CEOs are prospering while families across America are struggling.” Is that an unfair interpretation of what she’s said?

The post Elizabeth Warren On Economic Consequences Of Obama Administration – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The UK government is looking into reports that the Islamic State executioner, with the British accent, referred to as ‘Jihadi John’, murderer of UK and US hostages, has been wounded in an airstrike on an extremists’ meeting in Iraq.

The Foreign Office said it has received reports that one of the world’s most wanted men was injured in a town in Iraq close to the Syrian border nearly a week ago.

“We are aware of reports,” said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman in an official statement, Reuters says. “We cannot confirm them.”

“We have a number of sources of information coming in,” the Daily Mail cited another Foreign Office spokesperson as saying. “The incident occurred last weekend, and so we have received the reports in the last few days. We don’t have any representation inside Syria, and so it is difficult to confirm.”

The paper added that Jihadi John was wounded by American and Iraqi jets while attending a summit of IS leaders.

The Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also reportedly wounded in the attack, the paper added.

However, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said on Tuesday that US officials can’t confirm whether he was killed or wounded in last week’s air strike.

‘Jihadi John’ is believed to be a British national said to have previously executed at least four UK and US hostages.

The executioner with a London accent first appeared in a graphic video depicting the beheading of American photojournalist, James Wright Foley, who had been missing since 2012 after being kidnapped in Syria.

Jihadi John also featured in the execution videos of American journalist Steven Sotloff, a 31-year-old freelance journalist who was kidnapped near Aleppo, Syria in August 2013.

He also killed two British aid workers: David Haines and Alan Henning. In March 2013, Islamic State militants seized 44-year-old Haines in Syria, while he was employed by the Agency for Technological Cooperation and Development (ACTED).

The post Islamic State Executioner Jihadi John Wounded In Airstrike appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By James Robb

Blaise Compaoré, the president of Burkina Faso who was forced to resign by mass protests on October 31, was more than simply a dictator who had clung to power for 27 years. Compaoré was the leader of a counter-revolution, a traitor, who holds the responsibility for the murder of one of the finest thinkers and fighters of the twentieth century, Thomas Sankara. Compaoré’s coup brought an end to the magnificent Burkina Faso revolution of 1983-87.

Better than any other struggle of the last century, the revolution in Burkina Faso proved that slavery was not the inescapable fate of any people; that the road of revolutionary struggle for independence and human dignity was open in even the poorest countries of the world.

For Upper Volta (as the country was known at the beginning of the revolution) was poor by any measure. In 1981, the third decade after its independence in 1960, infant mortality stood at 208 for every 1000 live births – the highest in the world. A staggering 92 percent of the population was illiterate – 98 percent in the countryside, where 90 percent of the population lived. Less than one child in five attended school. A compulsory head tax dating from the days of French colonial rule was still enforced, and in addition to that, peasants had semi-feudal obligations to perform labour for village chiefs. Average annual income was US$150; there was one doctor per 50,000 people.

The technology of agriculture was such that only 10 percent of farmers were using animals to pull the plough; the rest had to make do with basic hand tools. As the Sahara Desert advanced steadily southward – the consequence of imperialist-imposed patterns of agriculture and trade – drought and famine plagued the country. The disease onchocerciasis, or river blindness, caused many thousands to lose their eyesight in the regions close to rivers, accelerating depopulation of the best fertile lands. With very little access to electricity, or even kerosene or gas, wood was the main cooking fuel in both city and countryside, leading to rapid deforestation.

There was a tiny working class, made up of some 20,000 factory workers in small handicrafts and manufacturing, a further 10,000 workers in construction, public works, and transportation, and about 40,000 civil servants, teachers and the like. (The total population at that time was about 7 million – it has more than doubled in the period since then). The only modern factories were some cotton and textile mills and a handful of other light manufacturing plants.

This extreme poverty and backward class structure was inherited by the revolutionary government of Thomas Sankara which came to power on August 4, 1983. Sankara’s government set up Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which mobilised the population to begin solving these problems.

Sankara put forward a clear picture of the class forces supporting and opposed to the revolution in his Political Orientation Speech in October 1983, which served as the strategic perspective of the new government. In its detailed class analysis of Voltaic society, this speech often calls to mind the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels.

Speaking of the independence of Upper Volta from France in 1960, he said, “From the masses’ point of view, it was a democratic reform, while from that of imperialism it was a change of the forms of domination and exploitation of our people…Voltaic nationals were to take over as agents for foreign domination.”

Sankara describes the enemies of the popular revolution, for whom “our revolution will be the most authoritarian thing there is; it will be an act through which the people impose their will by all available means, including arms if necessary.

“Who are these enemies of the people? … They are 1. The Voltaic bourgeoisie, [including] the state bourgeoisie…that has used its political monopoly to enrich itself in an illicit and indecent manner… the commercial bourgeoisie, by its very activity linked to imperialism by numerous ties, and the middle bourgeoisie, [which] has grievances against imperialism but also fears the people…We must cultivate among the people a revolutionary mistrust of such elements. 2. The reactionary forces who base their power on the traditional, feudal-type structures of our society…who in their majority were able to put up staunch resistance to French colonial imperialism, but since our country gained national sovereignty they have joined forces with the reactionary bourgeoisie to oppress the Voltaic people. [They] most frequently rely on the decaying values of our traditional culture that still persist in rural areas [and] will oppose our revolution to the extent that it democratises social relations in the countryside.

“The people, in the current revolution, are composed of: 1. The Voltaic working class… a genuinely revolutionary class. In the current revolution, it is a class that has everything to gain and nothing to lose. It has no means of production to lose, it has no piece of property to defend within the framework of the old neo-colonial society. To the contrary, it is convinced that the revolution is its own, because it will emerge from the revolution more numerous and stronger.

“2. The petty bourgeoisie, which constitutes a vast social layer that is very unstable and that often vacillates between the cause of the popular masses and that of imperialism. In its great majority, it always ends up taking the side of the popular masses. It is composed of diverse elements, including small traders, petty-bourgeois intellectuals (government employees, students, private sector employees and so on), and artisans.

“3. The Voltaic peasantry. … Market relations have increasingly dissolved communal bonds and replaced them with private property in the means of production… The Voltaic peasant, tied to small-scale production, embodies bourgeois productive relations…It is the social layer that has had to pay the highest price for imperialist domination and exploitation. The economic and cultural backwardness that characterises our countryside has kept it isolated from the main currents of progress and modernisation, relegating it to the role of a reservoir for reactionary political parties. Nevertheless, the peasantry has a stake in the revolution and in terms of numbers is its principal force.

“4. The lumpenproletariat, a layer of declassed elements who, since they are without work, are inclined to hire themselves out to reactionary and counterrevolutionary forces to carry out the latter’s dirty work. To the extent that the revolution can win them over by giving them something useful to do, they can become its fervent defenders.”

Within this class framework, and with the obstacles ahead clearly in sight, Sankara and the Burkinabè masses set to work to transform social relations in Burkina Faso with confidence and revolutionary optimism. (A few of Sankara’s speeches were filmed and are available on YouTube, mostly in French, some with English subtitles or with live translators. They are well worth searching out: nothing conveys the sense of hope and optimism the Burkina Faso revolution represented better than these. Many more are available in the French and English versions of Thomas Sankara Speaks, a collection of his speeches and interviews from which this article was mostly drawn.)

Tribute payments and obligatory labour by peasants to traditional chiefs were abolished, as was the head tax. An agrarian reform nationalised all land and mineral wealth and made the land available to small farmers. Irrigation projects were implemented. Stern measures against corruption were adopted, symbolised by the change of the name of the country to Burkina Faso – land of upright people – on the first anniversary of the revolution in August 1984.

With support from Cuban volunteers, a fifteen-day immunisation campaign in November 1984 succeeded in immunising 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles. A conference of 3,000 delegates on the national budget decided to deduct one month’s pay from the salaries of top civil servants and military officers to help pay for social development projects. The entire fleet of extravagant official vehicles was sold off, and the Renault 5, the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at the time, was made the official vehicle for all civil servants and government personnel, including the president himself.

All residential rents were suspended in 1985, and a massive programme of construction of public housing was begun. A ‘Battle for the Railroad’ was launched in February 1985 to build a new railway to the northeastern region of Tambao, in order to develop a major manganese deposit.

A campaign to plant 10 million trees was launched, to slow down the advance of the Sahara, and buying or renting the new housing units was made conditional on the new owner or tenant planting and caring for a minimum number of trees. The CDRs of women and youth mobilised to build tens of thousands of improved stoves in order to reduce the consumption of firewood. Hundreds of wells were sunk to provide reliable drinking water to those who lacked it. An old, partly-abandoned tradition of each town and village cultivating its own grove of trees was revived. In the villages in the developed river valleys, each family was given the means and the obligation to plant one hundred trees per year. The cutting and selling of firewood was brought under strict control.

Sankara explained the revolution’s battle against the encroachment of the desert as “a battle to establish a balance between man, nature, and society…Our struggle to defend the trees and the forest is first and foremost a democratic struggle that must be waged by the people. The sterile and expensive excitement of a handful of engineers and forestry experts will accomplish nothing! Nor can the tender consciences of a multitude of forums and institutions – sincere and praiseworthy as they may be – make the Sahel green again, when we lack the funds to drill wells for drinking water just a hundred meters deep, and money abounds to drill oil wells three thousand meters deep!”

The revolutionary government tied its fate to progress towards the liberation of women. “The weight of the centuries-old traditions of our society has relegated women to the status of beasts of burden”, Sankara said. “By changing the social order that oppresses women, the revolution creates the conditions for their genuine emancipation.

“We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or because of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the triumph of the revolution.”

A national conference on women’s emancipation in Ouagadougou in March 1985 drew 3,000 participants. Female genital mutilation was banned. The second anniversary of the revolution in August 1985 featured an all-female parade, emphasising the steps towards female equality.

In 1986 a literacy campaign, conducted in nine indigenous languages, taught reading and writing to 35,000 people. River blindness was largely brought under control, with the aid of a United Nations programme. Basic health care services were made available to millions for the first time, and infant mortality fell to 145 per 1000 live births by 1985.

The revolutionary government adopted a stance of international solidarity with popular political struggles. Sankara took the occasion of the visit of French President Francois Mitterand to denounce France’s ties to the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He solidarised with revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada, and with liberation struggles in Namibia and Western Sahara. In New York to give a speech at the United Nations, he addressed a Black audience in Harlem declaring, “our White House is in Black Harlem.”

The key to these conquests was drawing the working people into political activity in their own interests. The Burkinabè people, Sankara explained over and over, had to be the initiators of social and political change, not the resigned and passive objects of a government bureaucracy and military officer caste. “The democratic and popular revolution needs a convinced people, not a conquered people – a people that is truly convinced, not submissive and passively enduring its destiny,” he said.

These advances were not welcomed by all layers of Burkinabè society. Some in the civil service bureaucracy resented the encroachments on their privileges. Teachers launched a strike against the revolutionary government. A counter-revolutionary plot linked to a pro-imperialist exile was uncovered and suppressed in 1984.

Opponents of the revolution resented above all the active intervention of the organised Burkinabè masses. “You had the impression that the whole of Burkina Faso was a military barracks” one critic of Sankara recalled 25 years later. “There were not any unions or youth organisations, at least no independent ones. Committees for the Defence of the Revolution [CDRs] were imposed on everything. There was a CDR for the youth, a CDR for women, a CDR for farmers, CDR unions.”

To some layers of society the revolution felt, as Sankara had explained in the Political Orientation Speech, “the most authoritarian thing there is.”

Did Sankara anticipate the treachery of Compaoré, his former close friend and comrade, the man whose march on Ouagadougou to free Sankara from jail had opened the revolution in 1983? That he knew of the specific counter-revolutionary plot by Compaoré seems unlikely. However, Sankara was clearly aware of the dangers and risks inherent in the revolutionary process, and he warned of these dangers in his speech on the fourth anniversary of the revolution in August 1987, a few months before his assassination.

“Since August 4, 1983, revolutionary Burkina Faso has burst onto the African and international scene especially and above all due to the intellectual genius and moral and human virtue of its leaders and of its organised masses. We have overcome adversity and triumphed over determined and vile opponents who were armed to the teeth…

“What we need to do here above all is to note the diverse forms hostile forces can take and – since tomorrow’s battles will undoubtedly be harder and more complex – draw the lessons that will make us stronger. During the past four years of the revolution we have had to constantly confront reaction and imperialism. They have hatched the most sordid plots aimed at sabotaging our work – or worse, overthrowing our revolution. Imperialism and reaction are and will remain fiercely opposed to the transformations that are taking place every day in our country and that threaten their interests…

“We have also seen adversity within our beloved Burkina, within our own ranks, in the camp of the revolution. Erroneous practices and ideas harmful to the revolution have, in fact, developed within the masses and among revolutionaries. We have had to combat these problems despite the relative fragility in our own ranks…

“For having chosen this path rather than the easier road of demagogy, we have been subjected to ever more slanderous attacks from both our traditional enemies and from elements who have come out of the ranks of the revolution. These elements are either impatient and smitten with the unfortunate zeal of the novice, or else they are frantically and openly pursuing personal ambitions… Others dream of throwing in the towel but have qualms about how they should do it. They also theorise in advance their desertion from the revolutionary struggle. That is why so many theories and ideas, all thoroughly imbued with opportunism, have been and still are circulating…

“The deepening of our revolution and the future success of our political activity will depend on how well we solve these problems of organisation and political orientation in our country. The revolution cannot go forward and achieve its goals without a vanguard organisation able to guide the people in all its battles and on all fronts. Forging such an organisation will require a big commitment on our part from now on.”

Compaoré’s coup put an end to the revolution before such a vanguard organisation could be built; the revolution died with its central leader.

Blaise Compaoré, like the Stalinist faction of Bernard Coard that overthrew the revolutionary government in Grenada four years earlier, and indeed like Stalin himself some sixty years before that, chose to clothe his desertion from the revolutionary struggle in revolutionary language. The revolution would continue, he declared, but with some ‘rectification.’ Very soon, the old ties to imperialist governments and financial institutions were re-established, the old relationships of exploitation revived, and Compaoré had amassed a large personal fortune and a correspondingly large contempt for the people.

Not all of the gains of the revolution were overthrown – for example, the ban on female genital mutilation held up at least partly, as did increased enrolments at primary school. In the villages, improved access to water, sanitation, electricity, health clinics, and contraception continued to bring small improvements in the lives of subsistence farmers – a not unimportant reason why Compaoré’s government remained relatively stable for 27 years. The health clinics are not free, however – a condition of IMF and World Bank loans. Burkina Faso remains one of the poorest countries in the world. (In May 2006 the magazine New Internationalist ran some interesting articles based on two ten-yearly return visits to a Burkinabè village by a reporter who had first interviewed a woman leader of the CDR there in 1985 – the information in this paragraph is based largely on these).

One of the many thousands of Burkinabè people who rose up to overthrow Compaoré called the protests “Burkina Faso’s Black Spring, like the Arab Spring.” It is an apt description, combining identification with the uprisings that dislodged despotic rulers in the Arab world from December 2010 with African pride. In a fast-growing and youthful population – the median age in the country is only 17 years! – the vast majority of participants in these demonstrations have been born since Sankara’s murder. The world they inherit is a very different from the one Sankara confronted; the working class in Burkina did emerge from the revolution of 1983-87 “more numerous and stronger.” They will need to re-discover afresh the rich political legacy of Sankara and apply it in this changed situation, just as does the working class in the rest of the world.

One thing that has not changed, though, is the fact that, as Sankara told his Harlem audience, “when the people stand up, imperialism trembles.”

* James Robb, a communist at large living in New Zealand, blogs at Convincing Reasons

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

The post Thomas Sankara And The Black Spring In Burkina Faso – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Russian and local authorities have severely curtailed human rights protections in Crimea since Russia began its occupation of the peninsula in February 2014. The report, based on recent, on-the-ground research in Crimea, describes the human rights consequences of the extension of Russian law and policy to Crimea since the occupation. Russia has violated multiple obligations it has as an occupying power under international humanitarian law – in particular in relation to the protection of civilians’ rights, Human Rights Watch found.

The 37-page report, “Rights in Retreat: Abuses in Crimea,” and accompanying video document the intimidation and harassment of Crimea residents who oppose Russia’s actions in Crimea, in particular Crimean Tatars, as well as activists and journalists. The authorities have failed to rein in abuses by paramilitary groups implicated in serious human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances of pro-Ukrainian activists and others perceived as critical of Russia. The authorities have compelled Crimea residents who were Ukrainian citizens either to become Russian citizens or, if they reject Russian citizenship, to be deemed foreigners in Crimea, removing any guarantee against any future potential expulsion.

“As the world’s attention has been on the hostilities in eastern Ukraine, rights abuses in Crimea have surged,” said Yulia Gorbunova, Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Under various pretexts, such as combating extremism, the authorities have been persecuting people who dared to openly voice criticism of Russia’s actions on the peninsula.”

The report is based on 42 interviews with members of the Crimean Tatar community, activists, journalists, lawyers, and others, which took place in Crimea, Kiev, Lviv, and Moscow. On November 6, Human Rights Watch sent letters summarizing key findings and concerns to the de facto authorities in Crimea.

Other countries and international organizations should not let the human rights decline in Crimea fall off their agenda, Human Rights Watch said. They should press members of the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution urging the full implementation of recommendations regarding the situation in Crimea contained in reports on Ukraine by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. They should also press for immediate and unfettered access to Crimea for relevant human rights mechanisms of the UN, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe, as well as access for the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to establish a permanent presence in Crimea to operate and report freely.

Russia and the de facto authorities in Crimea should allow access for human rights monitors from these bodies to monitor human rights in the territory.

Russia, together with the authorities in Crimea, has invoked Russia’s vaguely worded and overly broad anti-extremism legislation to issue multiple “anti-extremist warnings” to the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar representative body, Human Rights Watch said. Such warnings can be the precursor to shutting down the organization as well as to potential criminal prosecution against its individual members. The authorities have searched dozens of private homes of Crimean Tatars and conducted invasive, and in some cases unwarranted, searches of mosques and Islamic schools to look for “drugs, weapons, and prohibited literature.”

In accordance with Russia’s position of applying its federal laws in Crimea, Russia has set a January 2015 deadline by which media outlets in Crimea must re-register under Russian law. Local authorities have harassed pro-Ukraine and Crimean Tatar media outlets, searched their offices, shut some down, and threatened others with closure. Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Crimea prosecutor’s office have issued warnings to leading Crimean Tatar media outlets not to publish “extremist materials” and threatened editors that the outlets will not be allowed to re-register unless they change their “anti-Russian” editorial line.

Crimean residents who wish to remain Ukrainian citizens are now treated as foreigners in their own home territory, Human Rights Watch said. They had only one month to decide whether to take Russian citizenship or face adverse consequences. Those who wanted to retain their Ukrainian citizenship faced substantial barriers to completing the process, and the process of obtaining permanent residence status was not automatic.

As Ukrainian nationals, they will be barred from holding government and municipal jobs and treated as foreign migrants in their own country. Men of conscription age who acquired Russian citizenship, whether through choice or default, will be subject to Russian mandatory military service requirements.

“Russia is not really offering people a choice of citizenship but forcing civilians under its control to choose between taking Russian citizenship or facing discrimination and worse,” Gorbunova said. “This is a serious violation of international law and is in reality no choice at all.”

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, territory is considered “occupied” when it comes under the control or authority of foreign armed forces, whether partially or entirely, without the consent of the domestic government. This is a factual determination, and the reasons or motives that lead to the occupation or are the basis for continued occupation are irrelevant. Russia’s presence and effective control over Crimea, in the face of Ukrainian opposition and objection, constitutes a belligerent occupation, and the UN recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine.

In keeping with its longstanding policy on laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch remains neutral on the military occupation of another country and therefore does not take a position on Russia’s occupation of Crimea. However, Human Rights Watch seeks to ensure that international laws governing the conduct of war and occupation are respected.

Under applicable international humanitarian law, an occupying power is forbidden from seeking to make a permanent change to the demographics of the occupied territory and from compelling the inhabitants of an occupied territory to swear allegiance to the occupying power or to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces, as well as from engaging in any “pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment.” The occupying power has to maintain the laws in force in the territory at the time of occupation and cannot modify, suspend, or replace them with its own legislation unless it is absolutely prevented from doing so.

Russia is an occupying power as it exercises effective control in Crimea without the consent of the government of Ukraine, and there has been no legally recognized transfer of sovereignty to Russia.

“There has been a broad international outcry about Crimea,” Gorbunova said. “But it hasn’t been enough to stop abuses. More needs to be done, and the world needs to keep a very close eye on what is happening in Crimea.”

The post Crimea: Human Rights In Decline, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Upon reading a post election article in which the NAACP is all fired up about supposed black voter suppression, my response was when will these people ever seriously do something to help black people? Folks, I am sorry, but the NAACP and others in their civil rights syndicate are a despicable bunch. All they really care about is furthering Liberalism and increasing their political power. They are disgusting.

In their typical we know we can count on the MSM to help us “play” black voters and portray Republicans as the modern KKK, the NAACP and their race-baiting posse are insisting that the newly elected congress pass a robust Voting Rights Act Amendment.

Yes, heaven knows we black folks desperately need that. Why waste time and resources on fixing trivial things like black on black crime, blacks aborting themselves into extinction, epidemic high school dropouts, black baby daddies outnumbering fathers and record high black unemployment under Obama? Let’s triple down on our efforts to create victim mindsets in blacks and racial hate. That will surely empower and enhance the lives of blacks.

Every time the NAACP and their MSM suck-ups launch another of their deplorable whitey-is-out-to-get-cha narratives such as black voters were disenfranchised during this election, it is shrouded in an we’re-smarter-than-you arrogance. Not only are these vile people feeding us a load of crap, they are superior about it.

Charlie Rangel tried to scare blacks to the polls by saying that the GOP wants to return blacks to slavery in America. This is trash folks. This evil little man is a disgrace.

First lady Michelle Obama tried to bribe blacks with a reward of fried chicken for their vote. Heck, why didn’t Michelle throw in permission for blacks to indulge in an extra large slice of watermelon for dessert? A white politician making the same offer to blacks as Michelle would be tarred, feathered and run out of DC on a rail. When will black Americans wake up and smell the condescension, manipulation and exploitation coming from the Democrats; fronted by black traitorous operatives.

I could go on and on about black traitors in the Democratic Party screwing their own to please their socialist/progressive liberal massas. But why keep repeating what I have written in countless articles?

Let’s talk about the broken promises, unfulfilled and wasted lives resulting from black leaders selling out their own to the Democrats’ enslaving big government programs for 30 pieces of political silver. Real people. Real lives.

My late cousin Poochie (Lawrence) comes to mind. He was the eldest in my Aunt Bummie’s cradle-to-grave welfare household; five fatherless sons. Poochie was the lone survivor who broke free from the government welfare system. Miraculously, Poochie worked his way through college and achieved great success. His four siblings all died young on welfare; drugs, AIDS, serial out of wedlock impregnating and crime. An idol mind truly is the Devil’s workshop.

Urban blacks are finally beginning to smell the betrayal of so-called black advocates, white liberal socialist/progressives, the Democrats and Obama.

A talent agent once told me that he had seen numerous black kids with Michael Jackson talent living in the projects. According to this agent, kids in the projects were doing the moon walk before Michael brought it to the national stage. Fatherless households, drugs, teen pregnancies, quitting school and crime prevents many black youths from fulfilling their God given talents, gifts, potential and dreams.

Meanwhile, black Democrat operatives are running around trying to destro y and silence non-whiny successful blacks; laser focused on delivering blacks to the polls every election cycle scared and angry at whites.

Presuming that blacks are clueless idiotic sheep, the best the Democrats are offering blacks is a promise to stop white cops from shooting them at will, preventing the GOP from reinstating black slavery, lighter sentences when they are caught dealing drugs, free Obama phones, food stamps and more crumbs. Oh, and permission to eat fried chicken, if they are really good.

Black retired gifted neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson gained international fame for his groundbreaking work separating conjoined twins. Carson came from humble beginnings raised by a single mom. What if Carson was among the extremely high number of black abortions? Could a brilliant black baby destined to cure Cancer have already been aborted?

Why on earth do blacks in the Democratic Party and Obama celebrate, protect, fund and vehemently defend Planned Parenthood who have a disproportionate high number of offices in black communities?

Blacks kill their babies in higher numbers than other races. Why are so-called black leaders so high on abortion? The answer is socialist/progressives intrenched in the Democratic Party believe babies contribute to destroying the planet. Blacks who supp at the socialist/progressives table sacrifice black babies for their seats, keeping massa happy.

So, right on NAACP, push forward with you scheme to shame congress into passing your absurd unnecessary politically calculated Voting Rights Act Amendment.

Meanwhile, black lives are going down the toilet thanks to your failed government programs and refusal to seriously deal with real issues. And may God have mercy on your wretched souls.

The post When Will The NAACP Truly Help Their People?‏ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By David Trilling

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia suddenly found that its main rocket launch facility was situated in newly independent Kazakhstan. Since then, the two countries have periodically squabbled over the strategic Baikonur Cosmodrome. And now the Kremlin is pouring billions of dollars into a new site in the Far East that President Vladimir Putin says will allow Russia to remain an “independent” space power.

In the closed town of Baikonur, where the engineers live, the idea of Russia’s departure does not sit well with locals, ethnic Kazakhs and Russians alike. “It will be a mess,” said Adilkhan Kulanov, a utility worker. “Everything works because the Russians are here.”

A student says she hopes her Russian university does not close its doors before she graduates. But already the town looks forsaken, not the kind of place that sends rockets into space. Residents complain about heating shortages.

The Soviets built Baikonur at the height of the Cold War as a missile-testing range. These days Russia pays $115 million annually to lease this remote chunk of desert, a parcel of land about the size of the US state of Delaware. While the Russian space program may no longer set the pace when it comes to space exploration, Roscosmos maintains a busy schedule in Kazakhstan. The Russian federal space agency launches 20 to 25 rockets from Baikonur every year, roughly four of them manned Soyuz missions.

Kazakhstan has pushed for more oversight at Baikonur, but that may just be pushing the Russians away. In July 2013, a Proton-M carrier rocket exploded shortly after liftoff. It was the fourth Proton disaster at Baikonur in 14 years, say officials at Kazcosmos, the Kazakh space agency, emphasizing that Proton rockets use especially toxic fuels. Russia has balked at paying for the cleanup, they add. Environmentalists are outraged.

The manned launches confer prestige upon Baikonur, and Kazakhstan – a country that craves international attention – gains status as a space power by default. Since NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, Soyuz missions offer the only route to the International Space Station. NASA pays Roscosmos over $76 million a seat.

Kazakhstani officials stress they do not want Russia to leave, yet the Kazcosmos boss has threatened to tear up the lease. Meanwhile, Russia seems in no mood to play games: many in Moscow believe such a strategic asset as a spaceport should be situated on Russian soil anyway. It is no surprise, then, that Izvestia, a newspaper known to toe the Kremlin line, reported in August that funding to maintain Baikonur would end next year.

Russia is pouring resources into its 400-billion-ruble ($8.5 billion) Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast. During a visit in September, Putin instructed workers to be ready for a test launch next year. By 2020, Roscosmos says, launches at Baikonur should drop from 65 percent of Russia’s total to 11 percent.

Optimists say Vostochny will handle manned rockets by 2018. Skeptics call it a boondoggle, and point out that, despite Roscosmos’ rapidly growing budget, Russia is careening toward recession. Yuri Karash of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics dismisses Vostochny as “propaganda to show Russia is a great space power.”

The project has been dogged by delays, prompting Putin to put it under Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin’s direct supervision. Rogozin has installed video cameras and warned workers that he is watching. In keeping with skeptics’ expectations, on October 29 a state official in charge of construction was arrested for embezzling $40 million.

Should Russia succeed, it will have built a copy of Baikonur, making the legendary site redundant. And though Russia’s Baikonur lease runs to 2050, it can terminate with a year’s notice, according to the deputy head of Kazcosmos, Yerkin Shaimagambetov.

Even if Vostochny meets its deadlines, Russia may not leave just yet. For one, there is too much proprietary equipment, including missile silos, says Asif Siddiqi, an expert on the Russian space program at Fordham University. “The place is gigantic. It has tons and tons of pads, tracking stations, control stations. What’s going to happen to all that? I think that’s something the [Russian] security folks will want to get involved in,” Siddiqi told EurasiaNet.org. “That’s probably the only bargaining chip the Kazakhs have.”

Moreover, as long as Russia continues to use the Soyuz family of rockets for its manned launches, there is a technical rub at Vostochny. A NASA engineer says the terrain around the new cosmodrome is not compatible with the Soyuz’s emergency landing protocols.

In some ways, neither Vostochny nor Baikonur is ideal for the Russian space program. Commercial satellite launches (mainly with Proton rockets) drive the Russian space industry. They account for 36 percent of global business, worth $600 million annually, says Rachel Villain of Euroconsult. But it is easier to launch large payloads closer to the equator, where the earth’s rotational speed is fastest. Vostochny is at 52 degrees north and Baikonur is at 46 degrees. Since 2011, Russia has launched nine unmanned rockets from the European Space Agency’s spaceport in French Guiana (at 5 degrees north).

Kazakh officials complain Russia is not treating them like partners. In 2004, the two countries agreed to work together on the next generation of Russian carrier rocket, the Angara, which would be cleaner than the Proton and launch from Baikonur; Russia was to build the rocket and Kazakhstan the ground facilities. But Russia kept raising the cost of Kazakhstan’s contribution, says Shaimagambetov at Kazcosmos, from $223 million to “10 times” that. The deal has fallen apart and next month Russia is scheduled to test the long-delayed Angara from a military facility near the White Sea.

Shaimagambetov says he hopes Russia will stay, at least to use Baikonur as a reserve launch pad. If not, he insists, private Western companies are eager to set up shop at Baikonur. But much of the technology Russia would leave behind is proprietary. “This equipment is not interchangeable,” said Karash of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. “A launch pad is not like a runway that other spacecraft can use.”

David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

The post With Russia Building New Spaceport, Will It Need Kazakhstan’s Baikonur? appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Don’t count on the United States to be politically prudent in dealing with other nations of the world at any level. Maintaining hegemony, the American ruling-elite feels, is accomplished best not through overly caution or moderating discussion, but through a strong, unrelenting campaign of discrete belligerence: showing your teeth but holding your bite. The US has used that strategy for well over two decades, aided by its NATO squire and an incredibly consenting citizenship which seldom questions foreign affairs – from criminal misgivings to wars of choice – being sanctioned by the powerful ruling triumvirate represented by the President, Congress and the Pentagon.

The American elite has achieved a firm hold on the nation, economically, institutionally, militarily and politically keeping most of its 320 million-plus population both docile and totally brainwashed; bovinely following any and all edicts pronounced by the leadership ruling the empire. One would accurately guess that many, if not most, Americans find enough pride waving flags and being part of the “most powerful nation in the world,” whatever meaning that might have; relegating both their freedom and possible voice of dissent to a ruling elite in all matters dealing with the “outside world.” An overwhelming majority of Americans is only interested in domestic issues, most often represented by groupings with selfish interests, economic or social – for the most part involving a single issue – when it comes to casting their vote.

No, don’t count on Americans, regardless of either major party affiliation, to rebel against the neo-fascist leadership any time soon. Americans, fat-dumb-and-happy, think of themselves as living in the only meaningful world – the terra incognita outside their borders, populated by “barbarians” (terrorists, these days), left to be dealt with by centurions sent by the Pentagon to the thousand-plus pied-a-terre military installations strategically located throughout the globe… to defend “American interests.”

The US government, legislative and executive branches at unison, has created in the past quarter century – after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviets’ rethinking the high cost and sacrifice by the people trying to defend a sociopolitical ideology – an aura of triumphalism which permeates down to the citizenship. And such overly excessive celebration, erroneously attributed, has taken the form of vengeful and oppressive behavior for failing to obtain total victory over the Soviet Union via complete surrender of its nuclear capability. So, with the help of the European Union and NATO, the US has been openly and unashamedly encroaching on an undeclared but obvious “Russian enemy” on all fronts in order to destroy any and all geopolitical influence Russia might have on its neighbors… Ukraine being the conflict du jour; a Rubicon, however, that Russia will not allow the US and its allies to cross.

And America appears to be willing to bet all its NATO chips in its attempt to cross that Slavic Rubicon; US elite somehow convinced (or hopeful) they’ll continue to rule in a post-holocaustic world, the specter of World War III seemingly not facing them… the anti-Russia propaganda bullet train marching full speed in US’ mainstream press.

For sanity to prevail, and with the politically-dormant American people sol ely concerned with the countdown of shopping days until Christmas, the only mitigating force which makes sense would have to come from an open rebellion by nations in the NATO camp that see no rhyme or reason in being used not for regional or global peace, but designs made in Washington which are deceitfully masked, and presented, as pro-democracy and human rights.

It isn’t just Romania, Hungary and Turkey that should be questioning their lackey status in NATO, but all Southern Europe, as well as several other European countries. Spain, just like many sister European nations, has nothing to gain being part of NATO, or for that matter emulating the US in a corrupt two-party system which has led the nation to the portals of financial bankruptcy. A political force has emerged in Spain this year, “Po-demos” (We Can), which has already surpassed in strength the two ruling parties: the Partido Popular, now governing, and its Tweedledee twin, PSOE (Socialist Workers’ Party) which is neither socialist nor defender of workers’ interests. [PP and PSOE are Spanish replicas of US’ Democrat and Republican parties.]

Turkey, specifically, whether under Erdogan or any other leader, has little to gain and much to lose by being in NATO and pursuing membership in the European Union. Its future, economically, is vested in both Eurasia and the Middle East, where it can attain regional recognition and leadership, not the EU; what is being pondered these days in Turkey may also determine the merits of the Gulen movement in helping shape a role for Turkey in a major geopolitical region.

A fragmented NATO appears as p erhaps the only viable way to maintain peace, keeping the status quo in Europe; and letting the secessionist movement in Eastern Ukraine follow its natural course, with Novorossiya, which one would expect to extend south to Odessa, eventually joining Russia.

Americans deserve to be told the truth, and not be swamped with obscene political propaganda: Russia (Putin) is not reconstituting the Soviet Union… which represented an ideological (communism) as well as a geopolitical force. Russia is now simply trying to hold its legitimate economic and geopolitical ground, and should not be blamed for the present situation, one solely instigated by the neocon forces which rule in both the Pentagon and the State Department.

The post World Survival Requires European Uprising – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Peter Siegenthaler

“End overpopulation” and “protect the environment”. These goals of the Ecopop initiative appear quite reasonable. However, opponents say the freeze on immigration won’t solve any problems, but instead create new and bigger ones. A debate.

“The free movement of people fuels neo-liberal ideas. People become goods that can be moved around arbitrarily,” says Cornelia Keller, vice president of the Ecopop Association. “We want people to be able to live a dignified life where they are.”

The association’s initiative calls for growth in Switzerland’s population as a result of immigration to be limited to 0.2%. In addition, 10% of the government’s developmental aid should go towards family planning in developing countries.

“The free moment of people is an achievement of liberalism, which helps make many people wealthier,” says Stefan Schlegel, a board member of the pro-European movement, Operation Libero, which is fighting against the Ecopop initiative.

Keller and Schlegel faced off against each other for swissinfo.ch.

swissinfo.ch: Ms. Keller, a glance at your biography gives one the impression that nature is very important to you. Is it more important to you than people?

Cornelia Keller: People are a part of nature. People have no future without nature.

swissinfo.ch: In your eyes, are people today a disaster for the earth’s biota?

C.K.: I wouldn’t put it that way, but it appears that for several decades humans have posed a significant threat not only for certain species but for the whole ecosystem, and ultimately also for themselves.

swissinfo.ch: Mr. Schlegel, don’t you care about Switzerland’s nature and countryside?

Stefan Schlegel: I am the son of a spatial planner. The concern for an intact environment is in my political DNA. But I believe that the link between “ecology” and “immigration” is crude. The preservation of nature and the countryside is a question of spatial planning, the clever management of resources.

CK.: The 40-year history of spatial planning is a singular disaster. In the best case, it organizes but does not prevent the attrition of the land. The last sentence of the new Spatial Planning Ordinance states: “The building land reserves can be expanded when required by a change in population.”

swissinfo.ch: Mr. Schlegel, a Switzerland with some 8 million inhabitants looks quite a bit different from a Switzerland with 6 million inhabitants, which was the case for decades.

S.S.: Yes, but the question is whether the ecosystem is worse off. The calculation that “more people result in a worse ecosystem” is much too simple. It depends on how we live. The water quality has improved despite population growth. There are more forests today than 10 years ago.

C.K.: What Mr. Schlegel fails to mention is the fact that fewer goods, including furniture and food, are produced in Switzerland. This production has been increasingly outsourced in recent years. Today goods are imported, for instance from China or the Amazon region, where they create massive environmental problems.

swissinfo.ch: Would you like to return to the Switzerland of Gotthelf’s era?

C.K.: No, today is much better than back then. But the environmental problems didn’t exist at that time. That’s why we have to deal with this today.

swissinfo.ch: By limiting immigration? How are carbon dioxide emissions altered if a German drives a car here in Bern instead of in Hamburg?

C.K.: People come here because they earn more, and as a result they also consume more. And when they visit their relatives in their homeland, they have to drive longer distances. And some immigrants come from climate zones that are less demanding on resources, for examples where fewer materials are needed for construction. But this is not the main argument.

swissinfo.ch: But rather?

C.K.: The principle of sustainability. It was established more than 20 years at the first international environmental conference in Rio. It assigned responsibility for the environmental balance to nation states. The population and consumption of resources should be balanced. The United Nations’ environmental goals when it comes to individual countries can be summed up by the tenet: “think globally, act locally”.

S.S.: Your arguments are a strange combination. On one hand you argue from a global viewpoint, on the other hand you act as if Switzerland is a closed ecosystem. If the ecosystem means something to you, then you must campaign strongly for countries such as China and Brazil to use sustainable methods of production. Instead you want to prevent people from China and Brazil moving here.

swissinfo.ch: Ms. Keller, is it not egotistical to prevent people who are willing to immigrate from living a better life?

C.K.: We’re not saying that people in other countries don’t have the right to the same consumption of resources that we do. But we don’t want people to move to where there’s money, becoming migrant workers. They should have a better life where they are.

swissinfo.ch: But your initiative doesn’t help to improve the life of people in other countries?

C.K. You can’t stuff a whole “save the world program” in one initiative. But the Ecopop association is one of the first environmental movements, which connects the environment and the number of inhabitants.

swissinfo.ch: Mr. Schlegel, immigration has increased significantly since Switzerland concluded the free movement of persons agreement with the EU. Do you want to open the borders for all people without restrictions?

S.S.: I wish a better life for all. This is why I am committed to a step-by-step liberalisation of migration policies. Migration aids in the transfer of know how and innovation, it is the golden path out of poverty, not only for those who migrate but for those who stay at home as well.

swissinfo.ch: But don’t you also wish that there would still be green spaces here in Switzerland for your children and grandchildren?

S.S.: Switzerland has succeeded in preserving green spaces despite the pressure from urban development.

C.K.: Many species are extinct or threatened because they don’t have enough living space here in Switzerland. If Switzerland would like to maintain a minimum level of self-sufficiency, then the agricultural sector will need to produce more intensively on perpetually smaller spaces. And this intensification impacts biodiversity.

swissinfo.ch: Do you believe that the agricultural sector will adopt more natural production methods once more if immigration is stopped?

C.K.: We now have a population of 8 million people, and farming is already very much under pressure as a result. I don’t harbour the illusion that organic cultivation would expand dramatically, but the status quo is better than a Switzerland with 12 million people.

S.S.: Limiting immigration via laws in opposition to business cycles has never been successful anywhere. The law for foreigners roughly states that “when one needs labour, one can get it.” This would also be implemented somewhere in the Ecopop initiative. It’s a self-delusion that isn’t harmless but rather puts migrants in a worse legal position.

C.K.: In Switzerland, immigration is set against the business cycle. Gross domestic product (GDP) is stagnating despite immigration continually reaching new peaks.

S.S.: That’s because Switzerland is an employment miracle. Switzerland creates good, high-quality jobs like nowhere else in Europe.

C.K. And how does the local population benefit?

S.S.: In countries where the immigration rate is high, the unemployment quota for older workers is the lowest according to a recent report from the OECD. And the industries where the most jobs are created for foreigners, are those with the highest job growth for Swiss workers as well. Everyone benefits from this growth.

C.K.: You’re really singing a song of praise for neo-liberalism. Labour productivity has declined in Switzerland, while the cost of living and unemployment have risen.
swissinfo.ch: In a free market economy, an increase in supply leads to lower prices. In the labour market, this means lower salaries.

S.S.: In theory, but in reality this has not occurred. And what’s more, no free movement of people in Switzerland would mean no access to Europe’s domestic market. Whoever believes that salaries in Switzerland would be this high without access to this market, lives in the land of milk and honey.

The post Swiss Freeze On Immigration: Path From Or To Disaster? – Debate appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The courageous journey of seriously wounded Iraq War veteran, Tomas Young, ended this past Monday, nearly eleven years after he was ambushed in a wholly exposed military truck. He passed away in Seattle while being lovingly cared for by his wife Claudia.

Tomas did not go quietly, despite his being paralyzed from the chest down, excruciating pain, comas and reliance on caregivers. He became an anti-war peace activist, addressing convocations and responding to as many interview requests as his agonized condition could tolerate.

I learned about Tomas when his mother, Cathy Smith, called from Walter Reed Army Hospital in 2004, where her son was under care. She said Tomas liked to read and wanted me to visit him. I called legendary talk show host Phil Donahue and asked him to join me in bringing Tomas a box full filled with some thirty books. We learned that he enlisted in the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks because he wanted to help bring the perpetrators of those attacks to justice and also acquire some savings for a college education. Instead, he was sent to Iraq which had no connection to 9/11 or to any national security threat to the U.S. In his words, “We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned.”

Phil was so taken with his story that he stayed in close touch with Tomas and his family and helped him spread his story. With Ellen Spiro, Phil Donahue produced the gripping documentary based on Tomas’ story, Body of War, in 2007. The story was the excruciating experiences of Tomas Young, who managed to travel to some film screenings to support soldiers “speaking out against this war.”

One of the most memorable clips from Body of War showed George W. Bush joking and looking around for weapons of mass destruction (his omnicidal fabrication) at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in 2004.

Another memorable scene, one that uplifted the human spirit, was the personal exchange between Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Tomas while a recording of Tomas and Senator Byrd reading the list of those announced Senators who voted against the invasion of Iraq played in the background. Senator Byrd deemed these lawmakers “the immortal 23.”

After he received the call that he had been dreading for ten years, Phil told me that Tomas’ body and mind “took every hit” but he fought to live for over a decade. Phil committed himself to that heroic decade of survival, helping him along the way to get better health care and rehabilitation, encouraging him to keep going, and facilitating Tomas Young’s voice and place in recorded history. This friendship that developed from such a dire circumstance is a book in itself.

It was on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War that, near death and in hospice, Tomas Young sent a “Last Letter” to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Here are some of his searing words from that letter, which, of course, neither the two war criminals nor their taxpayer-funded staff bothered to even acknowledge.

“I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries…I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because…I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago…you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks… I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East…I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history…I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11…We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins?…

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

In the annals of military history, moral courage is much rarer than physical courage, in part because of the long-lasting sanctions against dissenters and those who speak truth to power about the faults in our own society. Tomas Young had both moral and physical courage. His example should be heeded by young soldiers in the future who are ordered by their gravely flawed politicians to make the ultimate sacrifice for their leaders’ illegal follies and ambitions.

The post Ralph Nader: Tomas Young’s Last Letter To Bush, Cheney – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Leaders from the G20 group of nations agreed Sunday (16 November) to boost flagging global growth, tackle climate change and crack down on tax avoidance. But ties between the West and Russia plummeted to a new low over the crisis in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin left the G20 summit in Brisbane early as US President Barack Obama accused Russia of invading Ukraine, and Britain warned of a “frozen conflict” in Europe.

Several Western nations warned Russia of further sanctions if it did not withdraw from Ukraine.

“I think President Putin can see he is at a crossroads,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “If he continues to destabilise Ukraine there will be further sanctions, further measures.

“There is a cost to sanctions, but there would be a far greater cost in allowing a frozen conflict on the continent of Europe to be created and maintained.”

Obama said Russia’s isolation was unavoidable.

“We would prefer a Russia that is fully integrated with the global economy,” he told a news conference.

“But we are also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles…. you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections.”

Before leaving the G20 Summit, Putin said a solution to the Ukraine crisis was possible, but did not elaborate.

“Today the situation (in Ukraine) in my view has good chances for resolution, no matter how strange it may sound,” Putin said. He skipped a working lunch at the summit to leave early, citing the long flight home and need for sleep.

Russia has denied any involvement in the conflict in Ukraine that has killed more than 4,000 people this year.

Climate change

Security and climate change overshadowed G20 talks on boosting global economic growth at the summit, although the leaders did sign off on a package of measures to add an extra 2.1 percentage points to global growth over five years.

“This will add more than $2 trillion to the global economy and create millions of jobs,” said a communique issued at the end of the meeting, which also committed to tackle global tax avoidance denying government’s billions of dollars in revenue.

The United States and other nations overrode host Australia’s attempts to keep climate change off the formal agenda. Australia is one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per capita.

The final communique called for strong and effective action to address climate change with the aim of adopting a protocol, with legal force, at a UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

“The most difficult discussion was on climate change,” an EU official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “This was really trench warfare, this was really step by step by step. In the end we have references to most of the things we wanted.”

Obama put climate change squarely on the G20 agenda with a speech on Saturday calling on all nations to act, and committing $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. Japan pledged $1.5 billion to the fund on Sunday.

World leaders also agreed to unite in the fight against Ebola, which Britain’s Cameron said was not only a humanitarian crisis but also a security threat.

“The best way we can keep out people safe from Ebola is by tackling it at source,” he said.

Russian sanctions

Sanctions against Russia aimed at sectors like oil and banking, as well as individuals close to Putin, are squeezing its economy at a time when falling oil prices are straining the budget and the rouble has plunged on financial markets.

“At this point the sanctions we have in place are biting plenty good,” Obama said after the summit. “We retain the capability, and we have our teams constantly looking at mechanisms in which to turn up additional pressure as necessary.”

Earlier in the day, Obama, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lined up together against Russia, vowing to oppose what they called Moscow’s efforts to destabilise eastern Ukraine.

European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel also warned of more sanctions unless Russia ends its support for pro-Russian separatist rebels.

EU foreign ministers are meeting today to consider further steps, including additional possible sanctions on Russia

The post G20 Makes Progress On Climate Change appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants fighting in Iraq and Syria claimed in a video posted online on Sunday that they beheaded several Syrian hostages and an American.

The video came two days after a United Nations panel investigating war crimes in Syria said the extremist group has been receiving “external support” in the past four years.

In a highly choreographed sequence earlier in the video, jihadists marched at least 18 hostages, said to be pilots and officers from the Syrian Arab Army, past a wooden box of long black military knives, each taking one as they passed, then forced them to kneel in a line and simultaneously decapitated them.

In the video, which is the latest in a series of mass executions and other atrocities carried out by ISIS, the extremist group announced the beheading of Peter Kassig and issued warnings to the US President Barack Obama, Britain and others including Shia Muslims.

“To Obama, the dog of Rome, today we are slaughtering the soldiers of [Syrian president] Bashar and tomorrow we will be slaughtering your soldiers. And with Allah’s permission, we will break this final and last crusade, and the Islamic State will begin to slaughter your people on your streets,” a masked militant said.

The video did not show Kassig’s beheading but showed the masked man standing with a decapitated head covered in blood lying at his feet.

“This is Peter Edward Kassig, a US citizen,” the English-speaking executor said in a British accent.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage, which appeared on a jihadist website and on Twitter feeds used by ISIS.

Kassig’s parents have said through a spokesperson their son was taken captive on his way to the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor on October 1st last year.

Kassig, a 26-year-old from Indiana and a former soldier, was doing humanitarian work through Special Emergency Response and Assistance, an organization he founded in 2012 to help refugees from Syria, the family said.

ISIS has captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, declaring what it calls a cross-border Islamic ‘caliphate,’ killing thousands and displacing millions in the two countries.

The latest video is one of many graphic videos the group posted online, showing mass executions as well as the beheadings of Lebanese soldiers and Western hostages.
If confirmed, Kassig’s beheading would be the fifth such killing of a Westerner by ISIS, following the deaths of two US journalists and two British aid workers.

Besides mass executions and beheadings, a United Nations panel investigating war crimes in Syria said in a report that the US-led airstrikes against ISIS in Syria “have led to some civilian casualties” and that the extremist group has been deploying fighters and arms in civilian houses and farms.

The report released by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria on Friday also said the group had set up detention centers in hospitals and schools and detainees were being whipped, electrocuted and suspended by their arms from the walls or the ceiling.

Moreover, according to the report, ISIS amputated the fingers of men caught smoking and lashed others for having tattoos and not attending Friday prayers.

ISIS militants have been marrying girls as young as 13, the report added.

“The abuses, violations and crimes committed by the so called ISIS have been deliberate and calculated,” Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chair of the inquiry, said, adding that the group was imposing “a rule of terror” on the areas under its control.

The report, based on more than 300 first-hand witness accounts, accused ISIS of preventing the supply of humanitarian aid and reinforcing the dependence of civilians on the services it controlled.

“Humanitarian agencies have not been unable to reach about 600,000 people in ISIS-controlled areas in Syria since July,” the report said.

According to Pinheiro, ISIS’ militants have been receiving “external support” in the last four years.

“They did not fall from the sky. They have been entering Syria with external support in the last four years,” he said, adding sarcastically that the presence of ISIS was not a “big discovery.”

Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn said that some of the fighters in Syria had shifted allegiances.

“Some of them have come from other groups, such as Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, al-Nusra Front. There is shifting alliance factor based upon money and other things,” Muntarbhorn stated.

Original article

The post Islamic State Militants Behead Additional 18 Syrians appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ajit Kumar Singh

On November 12, 2014, Security Force (SF) personnel reportedly confiscated a few flags, bearing the Islamic State (IS, formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, ISIS) monogram, near the main entrance to the Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF), based in a closely-guarded part of the historic city of Taxila, near Islamabad. Some more flags were recovered from nearby electricity poles.

On the same day, Fahad Marwat, a ‘spokesman’ for Jundullah, an al Qaeda affiliated anti-Shia terrorist group, claimed that a ‘delegation’ from the IS had visited the organisation’s leaders in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province, in the preceding week. He added that the purpose of the visit was to see how IS could work to unite various Pakistani militant Islamist groups. Significantly, the Balochistan Government had submitted a ‘secret’ report, dated October 31, 2014, in which it had noted,

It has been reliably learnt that DAISH (al Dawlah al Islamiyah fi al Iraq wal Shâm, ISIS) has offered some elements of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamat (ASWJ) to join hands in Pakistan. DAISH has also formed a ten-member Strategic Planning Wing and now seek to inflict casualties on Pakistan Army outfits who are taking part in operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Meanwhile, on November 13, 2014, wall-chalkings welcoming IS appeared on City Road, Cantonment Road, Dera Ismail Khan Road and Miran Shah Road in the Bannu District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There were similar reports from other parts of the country, including Karachi and Peshawar, regarding emerging support for IS.

Again, on October 14, 2014, six top ‘commanders’ of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), including its ‘spokesman’ Shahidullah Shahid, announced their allegiance to Abu Bakar Al-Baghdadi aka Khalifa Ibrahim, the chief of the IS. The TTP leaders included the group’s chiefs for the Orakzai Agency, Saeed Khan; Kurram Agency, Daulat Khan; Khyber Agency, Fateh Gul Zaman; Peshawar, Mufti Hassan; and Hangu, Khalid Mansoor. Shahidullah pledged “allegiance to Amirul Momineen Abu Bakar Al-Baghdadi” and declared that he would “abide by all his (al Baghdadi’s) decisions … whatever the circumstances I shall be loyal to him and obey his directives”. The TTP later sacked all these leaders, reiterating support for Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Significantly, in June 2014, while announcing the formation of the Islamic State, the group had released a map purportedly showing the areas IS planned to bring under its control within five years. These areas included all of Pakistan within the projected ‘Islamic Caliphate’. In a decisive step towards the goal, in September 2014, IS appointed Abdul Raheem Muslim Dost chief of its ‘Khurasan’ region. Soon after his appointment, Dost started extending IS outreach into Pakistan and Afghanistan, distributing IS propaganda booklets in the Afghan-Pakistan tribal belt and in some Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar. Several reports emerging since suggest that IS has succeeded in extending its influence in pockets across Pakistan.

Unsurprisingly, the Balochistan Government’s report clearly states that IS has claimed to have “gathered 10-12 thousand followers from the Hangu and Kurram Agency”. Referring to the widespread influence of the IS, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief, Altaf Hussain, on October 31, 2014, stated, “IS flags were visible from the south of Pakistan’s Punjab all the way to the Federal capital of Islamabad.” Another commentator noted,

If the Pakistan security apparatus fails to check their footprints, it could be a setback for them in future. It appears that the IS wants to focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan, particularly at the time when US Forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan. If not checked, IS will pose a major threat to South Asia and the Persian Gulf.

At least 330 Pakistani terrorists are already known to be fighting along with IS Forces in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda terrorist offshoot, Jamaat Qaiadat al Jihad fi Shibhi al Qarrat al Hindiya (Organisation of the Base of Jihad in the Indian Subcontinent or Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, AQIS) has made deep inroads into Pakistan. On September 6, 2014, attackers planned to hijack Navy frigate PNS Zulfiqar from the Karachi West Wharf Dockyard. Naval Commandos from PNS Iqbal rushed to the incidents site and a gun battle ensued. One Navy trooper was killed and another seven were injured. Three attackers were killed. On September 11, AQIS claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming that the dead attackers included Pakistan Navy officers. Subsequently, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Parliament, on September 10: “We cannot rule out inside help in this attack because without it the miscreants could not breach security. The operation near Karachi shore was an attack by al Qaeda in the subcontinent.”

Significantly, on September 3, 2014, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a 55-minute video posted on the Internet, announced the launch of AQIS to spread Islamic rule and “raise the flag of jihad” across the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan. Maulana Asim Umar, chief of al Qaeda’s Sharia Committee in Pakistan, was named leader of AQIS.

IS, which has captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and is striving to establish a global ‘Caliphate’, is a breakaway faction of al Qaeda, and is deeply aware of the fact that Pakistan provides it an alternate sanctuary in any ‘adverse situation’. Moreover, the rising anarchy and Islamist extremism across Pakistan offer ample opportunity to recruit more fighters, as well as to establish a base in the region, which accounts for over 31 per cent of the world Muslim population. Conscious of these ‘advantages’, IS and AQIS are vying with one another to fill the vacuum created by the failure of governance in Pakistan.

It is useful to note that there are a total of 60 banned organizations in Pakistan, according to the Government’s National Internal Security Policy (NISP) 2014-18 document. The document notes,

Pakistan’s economy has suffered a loss of more than US$ 78 billion in last 10 years only. More than 50,000 Pakistanis, including civilian, Armed Forces and Law-Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) personnel, were affected or sacrificed their lives… Pakistan is facing serious traditional and non-traditional threats of violent extremism, sectarianism, terrorism and militancy… Subversive activities and a pattern of targeting the national security apparatus and key installations by the terrorists and non state armed groups have compounded the challenge.

Further, a report prepared by the US Congressional Research Service for distribution to multiple congressional offices in February 2013 noted, “Islamist militant groups operating on and from Pakistani territory are of five broad types: Globally-oriented militants, Afghanistan-oriented militants, India- and Kashmir-oriented militants, Sectarian militants, and Domestically-oriented militants.” The South Asia Terrorism Portal has listed 37 terrorist outfits as ‘Trans-national Organisations’ (which carry out operations in neighboring countries); 12 groups as ‘Domestic Terrorist Organizations’ (which engage in violence within Pakistan), and another four as ‘Extremist Groups’ (engaged in the propagation or imposition of Islamist extremist doctrines and codes).

Islamabad has been forced to take some actions against domestically-oriented terrorist organisations, as the internal security environment deteriorated, creating an existential threat to the state. Nevertheless, as the NISP document notes, even in this regard, “Traditionally, the entire internal security apparatus acts in a reactive rather than proactive manner”. Pakistan’s orientation to the externally directed terrorist formations, however, remains malefic, as state agencies, prominently including the Army and its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, continue to provide covert and overt support to terrorist formations that serve their purported ‘strategic objectives’.

In its latest (October 2014) six-monthly report on the current situation in Afghanistan, the Pentagon observed, “Afghan-and Indian-focused militants continue to operate from Pakistan territory to the detriment of Afghan and regional stability. Pakistan uses these proxy forces to hedge against the loss of influence in Afghanistan and to counter India’s superior military.”

Despite the enormous domestic costs of terrorism, the Pakistani state and its agencies continue to create an environment that allows a range of Islamist terrorist formations to operate from and flourish on its soil, even as the state continues to promote radical Islamist ideologies through its various institutions and polices. It is this environment – and substantial direct support to a range of terrorist formations, including al Qaeda – that has made the country extraordinarily vulnerable to the consolidation of global jihadist organisations such as AQIS and IS. Since state agencies are yet to abandon Islamist terrorism as an instrument of domestic political management and strategic extension, it is unlikely that a focused state action will effectively block the expansion of AQIS and IS across the country.

Indeed, current orientations suggest that the Government is inclined to deny, rather than confront and solve the problem, with Federal Minister of the Interior, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on November 11, 2014, dismissing evidence of the presence of IS in the country, declaring, “No organisation of this name exists in Pakistan.”

Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

The post Pakistan: Darkening Tangle – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Sanchita Bhattacharya

In the night of November 6, 2014, Pakistani hackers defaced websites of 22 Government departments and organisations in India. On the defaced websites, the hackers identified themselves as ‘1337 & r00x! – Team MaDLeeTs’, greeted the Government of India, and leveled a range of allegations against the Indian Army in Kashmir. “We are not asking for Kashmir. We ask for peace. Nothing deleted or stolen. Just here to deliver my message to the government and the people of India,” the hackers wrote, signing off with “Pakistan Zindabad” (long live Pakistan).

On November 1, 2014, Pakistan-based hackers, calling themselves ‘Pakistan Cyber Mafia Hackers’, hacked two websites of Gujarat Government – the official website of the Commissionerate of Higher Education (www.egyan.org.in) and the official website of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee of Ahmedabad (www.apmcahmedabad.com). The hackers put their logo and some text on the homepages of these websites, which read: ‘Hacked by Pakistan Cyber Mafia Hackers’, ‘Feel the power of Pakistan’, ‘Pk_Robot was here’ and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’.

These incidents are the most recent in a rising trend. Indeed, on July 14, 2014, Communications and IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament) disclosed,

During the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 (till May), a total number of 21,699, 27,605, 28,481 and 9,174 Indian websites were respectively hacked by various hacker groups spread across worldwide. In addition, during these years, a total number of 13,301, 22,060, 71,780 and 62,189 security incidents, respectively, were reported to the CERT-In [Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In)]. These attacks have been observed to be originating from the cyber space of a number of countries including the US, Europe, Brazil, Turkey, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria and the UAE. A total of 422, 601 and 1,337 cases were registered under cyber crime related sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) during the year 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The threat of cyber crime lies outside the conventional paradigm of terrorism, but has the potential to do incalculable harm. Indeed, even sustained low grade attacks impose cumulative costs that can be prohibitive. Cyber terrorism, moreover, is not only limited to paralysing computer infrastructures; it also comprehends the use of computers, the Internet and information gateways to support and organize traditional forms of terrorism, such as bombings and suicide attacks. The most common use by terrorists is for secret communications, as well as designing and uploading websites on which propaganda can be pasted, at least occasionally masking secret missives. Direct cyber terrorist attacks use hacking, computer viruses, computer worms, E-Mail related crime, denial of service attacks, etc.

India and the United States (US) have decided to launch an all-out war against terror outfits and to annihilate them in the virtual world as well. Worried by the increasing presence of terrorist organizations in cyberspace, an Indo-US Joint Working Group (JWG) on cybercrime has been activated to dismantle the virtual command centres of terrorist networks across social networks, Indian Government sources stated, “The decision to activate the JWG was taken after weighing threat perception of outfits like IS [Islamic State], al Qaeda, AQIS [al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent], Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Indian Mujahideen (IM) and JMB [Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh] etc., in the cyberspace.”

Though such a pattern has long been in evidence, there has been a significant rise in high profile terrorist outreach attempts through the Internet in the recent past, particularly with the emergence of the IS, and the very sophisticated media campaigns this group has deployed. For example, in a 20-second-long audio statement titled ‘A message to the Mujahideen and the Muslim Ummah in the month of Ramadan’ released on July 1, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS ‘chief’, mentioned that Indians, among a host of other nationalities including Chinese, American, French, German, Australian, etc., figure among IS fighters. Another 11-minute-long IS propaganda video featuring a Canadian youth, who identifies himself as Abu Muslim, and uploaded on the internet in the first week of August 2014, clearly underlines IS attempts to reach out to Indian youth, as the video has been subtitled in Hindi, Tamil and Urdu.

Similarly, on September 3, 2014, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a 55-minute video posted on the Internet, announced the launch of a new wing in the Indian sub-continent, AQIS. Zawahiri described the formation of AQIS as “a glad tiding for Muslims in Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujurat, Ahmedabad, and Kashmir” and claimed that the new wing would ‘rescue Muslims’ there from injustice and oppression.

Cyber space has also been exploited by extremists to spread violence and unrest across India. Cyber wing officials investigating communal violence that erupted in July 2014 in the Bareilly District of Uttar Pradesh (UP), as reported on August 5, 2014, found that the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was possibly involved in sending controversial pictures to some Facebook users in Bareilly, which led to communal violence in the Meera Ka Paith locality. The origin of the controversial Facebook posts was traced to Secunderabad, Karmagunda and Madanpet – all in Hyderabad (capital city of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) – where SIMI is known to have a considerable base. The officials also found evidence that funds were provided by some banned militant outfits from Jammu and Kashmir, to foment trouble in Bareilly.

Earlier, in 2012, cyber space was used by anti-national elements during the Assam communal strife. Then Union Home Minister (UHM) Sushilkumar Shinde had noted on September 6, 2012, “It is unfortunate that the recent violence caused by the ethnic groups in Assam has been given communal colour… There is an increasing evidence of resort taken by terrorists to the cyber space domain.”

Similarly, the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar (UP) were aggravated by the use of social media networks by suspected terror groups. On November 21, 2013, Shinde had observed, “More recently, the Muzaffarnagar riots were fanned by similar misuse (of social media).”

There is mounting evidence that the abuse of the Internet against India is substantially orchestrated under the aegis of Pakistan’s external Intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). A classified note of a high-level security review meeting held in New Delhi in September 2012, noted, “The ISI is now working on a bigger game-plan in training terrorists in the use of cyber and computer technology as the Pakistani agency feels India is not fully equipped in dealing with incidents of cyber war or attack.’’ Importantly, the note observed, the training given to subversive elements by ISI’s cyber experts played a key role in spreading hate campaigns through MMS [Multi-media Messaging Service] and SMS [short message service], targeting people from the Northeast in the wake of ethnic violence in Assam. The note warned that this trend would only increase in days to come, and this was also the reason why ISI was increasingly stressing the recruitment of more educated youth by Islamist terrorist formations. An unnamed Indian intelligence officer stated, further, “It is almost certain that the Pakistani agency was behind the recent cyber attack on India, at least indirectly. Having tasted success they will try it again in future and on a much bigger scale. So we must be prepared to deal with this challenge.”

According to a Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) document, till September 15, 2014, the country witnessed 479 riots in which 107 people were killed while another 1,697 people sustained injuries in the current year.

Indeed, concerned at the abuse of cyberspace by terrorist groups, the Union Home Minister (UHM), on June 17, 2014, directed the UMHA to explore the possibility of setting up specialised cybercrime units in each of the country’s 671 Districts. Again on November 4, 2014, while participating in the 100th General Assembly Session of Interpol in Monaco, UHM Rajnath Singh underlined the role of information technology to bring about even better control in the field of cyber security, and preventing misuse of internet social media for spreading extremist ideologies and radicalisation.

The Cyber Security Initiatives taken up by the Indian Government include the setting up of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), a premier organisation providing network backbone and e-governance support to the Central Government, State Governments, Union Territories, Districts and other Governments bodies; the Cert-In, to “ensure security of cyber space in the country by enhancing the security communications and information infrastructure, through proactive action and effective collaboration aimed at security incident prevention and response and security assurance”; the National Information Security Assurance Programme (NISAP), for protection of the Government and critical infrastructures. Further, the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum (IUSCSF) seeks to establish an India Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) for better cooperation in anti hacking measures; an India Anti Bot Alliance to raise awareness about the emerging threats in cyberspace, under the aegis of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII); and to chalk out ways to intensify bilateral cooperation to control cyber crime in the two countries.

The Indian Government has also undertaken various initiatives to strengthen the cyber security. On March 25, 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Data Security Council of India (DSCI) with a view to seek expert services from the latter in managing the challenges in cybercrimes and updating officials with the latest technology. Nevertheless, these measures, in addition to earlier initiatives, have failed to adequately deal with the threat, which is approaching alarming levels. On October 31, 2014, while emphasising the severity of the cyber crime threat, UHM Rajnath Singh stated, “It can hit anyone, anywhere and anytime.”

Cyber crime and cyber terrorism have now emerged as a national priority, and this is widely acknowledged in the policy establishment. It remains to be seen how long it will take such recognition and concern to be translated into effective action and institutional development to construct and implement a comprehensive cyber security paradigm within India’s counter terrorism strategy.

Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

The post India – Pakistan: Cyber Wars – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.