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Overwhelming Support For Putin Among Russian Intelligentsia Has Three Sources – OpEd

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There are three reasons why support for Vladimir Putin is so high even among educated Russians: fear that their country might descend into chaos without him, their lack of a positive image about the future, and a traditional Russian deference to the state on foreign policy issues, according to Kseniya Kirillova.

One of the unexpected developments of recent times has been that journalists who usually do the interviewing are ever more often being interviewed by other journalists. Last week, Larry Poltavtsev of Snob.ru interviewed Kirillova about her experiences and views about Russia (http://snob.ru/profile/26145/blog/94867).

In the course of a 3500-word interview, Kirillova touched on many issues including the fact that Russian sources have indicated very clearly that she, a Russian citizen now preparing articles for Novy Region-2 and Radio Liberty, should not return to her homeland because she would face repression there.

But among her most intriguing comments are those concerning what she sees as the three reasons members of the Russian intelligentsia currently express their support for Vladimir Putin and his aggressive policies in Ukraine and elsewhere. Her answer to this question, important in its own right, is particularly significant because it informs her numerous commentaries.

First, she suggests, many in the Russian intelligentsia support Putin not because of any interest in imperialism but rather out of fear and especially the fear of instability. Because people remember the 1990s and become Putin has further demonized that period, many su ffer from the fear that “a new Syria, Libya or color revolution could arise” in Russia and that “this means anarchy, a sharp decline in the standard of living, the appearance of uncontrolled bandits in the streets, and practically a civil war.”

Moreover, “the overwhelming majority even of educated people believe that Russia ‘is encircled by enemies,’ a situation in which in the case of the weakening of central power, these enemies will detroy it instantly.” As aresult, even if they believe that Putin is wrong on this or that policy, they “do not see another leader suitable for work ‘in war conditions.’”

Naturally, “this is a lie because if the hostile environment exists, it does so only in response to his aggressive policy.” But at the same time, “even intelligent people and perhaps in greater degree than others unconsciously feel the terrible situation that Russia is lurching toward catastrophe.” Lacking the moral qualities such as bravery to do something about it, they are prepared to accept Putin’s logic even if at a deeper level they know it is wrong.

Second, “the majority even among educated people who in the past belonged to the ‘peresstroika’ generation of the liberal intelligentsia, dream about the restoration of the Soviet Union. In part this is explicable,” Kirillova says. Because the authorities offer no bright future, people take refuge in a mythologized bright past, especially as the Kremlin encourages this.

Many of them believe that it really is possible to restore the USSR, although no one knows exactly how to do this; and thus they welcome the annexation of Crimea as a step in that direction with an attitude that is also rooted in fear: they see the Soviet Union as “something powerful which no one can attack.”

And third, the intelligentsia like Russians more generally finds it very difficult to “separate itself from the state on issues of foreign policy.” This is not so much the result of “’imperial consciousness,’” as from a more genral sense of “’a feeling of Russia’ which [the Russian] state always tries to substitute for itself.”

That is especially the case with foreign policy because in that realm, “the ordinary individual understands very well his inability to influence events. In ‘a battle of titans,’ the ordinary person is helpless” and is aware of his helplessness. The Russian state exploits this and educated people are affected as much as others.

To explain the behavior of these people is not to justify them, Kirillova continues. Such people “believe only in what they want to believe.”

Many in the Russian intelligentsia also accept the Kremlin’s argument that Russia is fighting in Ukraine not with Ukrainians but with Americans. That builds them up in their own eyes. Moreover, she says, people accept what they do because “an individual can view everything bad as good only in comparison with something that is still worse.”

Thus, many for many in Russia, Putin “appears as the lesser evil in comparison with the illusory threat” which he works hard to create. Again, she suggests, understanding why this pattern works is not the basis for excusing it or thinking that nothing can be done, as hard as that may be to do.

The post Overwhelming Support For Putin Among Russian Intelligentsia Has Three Sources – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Greece Rejects The Troika – OpEd

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Just after 7 PM Greek time on Sunday, I was told that the “No” vote (Gk. Oxi) was winning approximately 60/40. The “opinion polls” showing a dead heat evidently were wrong. Bookies across Europe are reported to be losing their shirts for betting that the financial right wing could fool most Greeks into voting against their self-interest. The margin of victory shows that Greek voters were immune to media misrepresentation during the week-long run-up as to whether to accept the troika’s demand for austerity to be conducted on anti-labor lines.*

It should not have been so great a surprise. Voting age for the referendum was lowered to 18 years, and included army members. Faced with an unemployment rate of over 50 percent, Greek youth understandably wanted no more euro-austerity.

The Troika’s demand was for austerity to be deepened solely by taxing labor and reducing pensions. Its policy makers had vetoed Syriza’s proposed taxes on the wealthy and steps to stop their tax avoidance. The IMF for its part vetoed cutbacks in Greek military spending (far above the 2% of GDP demanded by NATO), despite even the European Central Bank (ECB) and German Chancellor Merkel agreeing to this.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker threatened to expel Greece from Europe, despite no law permitting this to occur. Let us see now whether he still tries to carry out his bluff, which has been echoed by right-wing leaders throughout Europe.

His retaliatory actions from an ostensibly non-political, non-elected office are not alone. The eurozone class war in support of finance against labor and industry is now open and in earnest. Instead of doing what a central bank is supposed to do – provide liquidity (and paper currency) to banks, ECB head Mario “Whatever it takes” Draghi forced them to shut down even their ATM machines for lack of cash. Evidently this was intended to frighten Greek voters to think that this would be their country’s future if they voted No.

It is an old strategy. Andrew Jackson expressed his vindictiveness toward the Second Bank of the United States by shutting it down. When it refused to appoint his corrupt political cronies, he deposited the U.S. Treasury’s money in his “pet banks.” The drain of money plunged the economy into depression. The Southern slave states welcomed deflation, because they sought low prices for their cotton exports, and also opposed northern industry with its protectionist policies and anti-slave politics.

What Greece needs is a domestic central bank – or failing that, a national Treasury – empowered to create the money to monetize government spending on economic recovery. Mr. Draghi has shown the ECB not to be “technocratic,” but a cabal of right-wing operatives working to bring down the Syriza government, in a way quite willing to empower the far-right Golden Dawn party in its stead. In light of his refusal to carry out the duties of a central bank and act as lender of last resort when Greek banks run out of cash, Mr. Varoufakis has said that: “If necessary, we will issue parallel liquidity and California-style IOU’s, in an electronic form. We should have done it a week ago.”**

U.S. popular media echoed the European right by trying to frighten Greeks and their sympathizers into believing that the vote is whether or not to remain part of Europe – as if Britain does not have its own currency while remaining part of the European Union. However, the vote does throw into question just what it means to be what pro-austerity advocates call “committed to the European project.” Eurozone officials are unanimous that it means a commitment to financial war against labor – to austerity and yet further economic shrinkage; to faster privatization selloffs (but not to Russians if they offer higher prices, as Gazprom did) and hence higher prices for hitherto public utilities; to no rejection of past insider deals privatization to higher value-added taxes on consumers; and to lower pensions for labor.

This prospect was at the center of a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels on July 2.*** There was of course unanimous support for a “No” vote to the anti-

labor, pro-creditor demands by the IMF, European Central Bank and European Council. But there also was concern that the Syriza leaders did not begin immediately upon their January election victory to educate voters on what actually is at issue: why remaining subject to the junk-economics dictates by the IMF and ECB, will make the economy subject to chronic debt deflation. Instead of spending the past six months educating the public over what is at issue with the Troika, Syriza focused on playing political rope-a-dope to demonstrate how firmly the ECB and EC were committed to austerity.

The left-wing Syriza members with whom I met during the last two weeks in Athens, Delphi and Brussels felt that more should have been done to educate the Greek public as to how impossible it is for Greece to pay the debts with which the Troika had loaded it down, with abject surrender by its pro-bank Pasok/New Democracy coalition that had ruled Greece for a generation. (New Democracy leader Samaras resigned after the vote was in last night.)

One factor that may have incensed Greeks to vote “No” was the revelation that an internal IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis – which Lagarde had sought to suppress – had endorsed what Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras has been saying all along: Greece needs a debt writedown. Its official debt is unpayable, and never should have been forced upon it in the first place – under conditions where the Troika removed the elected prime minister from office to put in their own technocrat (Lucas Papademos, who had worked with Goldman Sachs to falsify the government’s 2001 balance sheet to enable it to meet the eurozone’s entry conditions).

It was revealed last week that IMF head Christine Lagarde has overruled her staff and board to defend specifically French interests. As in 2010-11 under Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French banks are major holders of Greek bonds (including via their ownership of Greek banks). Strauss-Kahn notoriously overrode his staff when they urged the IMF not to capitulate to ECB demands to pay French, German and other private bondholders with Troika bailout loans for which they made Greek taxpayers liable.

Two weeks ago the Greek Parliament released a report by its Debt Truth Commission explaining why Greece’s debt to the IMF, ECB and European Council was legally “odious.” It was imposed Greece by the demand by Ms. Merkel and other pro-bank leaders that Greece not hold the referendum that Pasok Prime Minister Papandreou had proposed on the bailout of French and German banks at Greek expense.

That was the root of today’s problems. It also was the occasion on which European finance and democracy become antithetical, prompting the late Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung editor Frank Schirrmacher to write his famous editorial, “Democracy is Junk.”****

The Troika have refused to write down a single euro of unpayably high debt. They pretended that debt relief is an issue for later. That is what enabled Tsipras to depict his nation as being victimized by the eurozone’s vicious class war. The Syriza position has been “We’d like to pay. But there simply is no money – as the IMF’s own calculations have clearly and explicitly shown.”

Last Tuesday, Tsipras explained to Greek voters that the Troika had put nothing in writing about debt writedowns. This pierced the haze of media-induced panic. His seeming willingness to surrender simply dared the Troika to back up their promises in writing. He certainly was not going to make the tragic mistake that Russian leader Gorbachev made when he believed the verbal NATO promises that it would not move into the post-Soviet countries of Central Europe and the Baltics.

The Troika’s position was and is: “Impose austerity now. We’ll talk about debt writedowns later. But first, you must sell off what remains of your public domain. You must lower wages by another 20%, and force another 20% of your population to emigrate. Only then, when we’re sure that we can’t get another euro out of you anyway, then we may be willing to talk about writing down some of your debt. But not until we have stripped you of anything left to pay in any case!”

Tsipras and finance minister Varoufakis have been widely criticized in the U.S. media for seeming to capitulate to Troika demand. The reality is that they have been civil and polite, even taking conciliatory stance if only to show how totalitarian and unyielding the Troika has been.

That contrast between reason and totalitarian “free market” austerity is what convinced the Greeks to vote No.

Notes:
*James Galbraith summarizes the misrepresentation in “9 Myths About the Greek Crisis,” Politico,

** Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Defiant Greeks reject demands as Syriza readies IOU currency,” The Telegraph, July 5, 2015. He should be viewed as what used to be called a “certified leak” from the Syriza negotiators.

***“Peripheral debts: Causes, consequences and solutions,” sponsored by by the Eurpean United Left/Nordic Green Left, GUE/NGL (www.guengl.eu). The video can be found here: http://www.guengl.eu/news/article/press-conferences/peripheral-debts-causes-consequences-and-solutions.-2-july. (My speech begins at about 27 minutes.)

**** http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/1128541-democracy-has-junk-status

 

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Western Media Make Mistake Of Associating Islamic State Directly With Islam – Interview

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A European Youth Press fellowship took me to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum 2015 held in the German city of Bonn from June 22 to 24 to cover the world’s largest media gathering for Iran Review.

The 3-day event was held in the World Conference Center Bonn, the former home to the German Bundestag (lower house of the Federal Parliament) and several workshops and plenary sessions were arranged with different subject matters revolving around the forum’s main theme “Foreign Policy in the Age of Digital Media.” About 160 speakers and panelists delivered presentations in the workshops and plenary sessions.

On the second day of the event, Iran Review conducted an interview with Mr. Gavin Rees, a British journalist and filmmaker, and the European director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, a project of the Columbia Journalism School. Mr. Rees has contributed to CNBC, Financial Times Television and also some Japanese news networks. He has worked on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4. Gavin’s writings have appeared on the British Journalism Review, The New Statesman and The Guardian. He has interviewed several survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear attacks and moderated the workshop “Involuntary journeys – How to interview refugees in a digital age” during the Global Media Forum 2015, in which he shared his experiences with the attendees on how to interview traumatized, war-struck citizens who’ve been emotionally and psychologically affected as a result of war and conflict. The British journalist also gave a presentation at the “Understanding social media vs. digital jihad” workshop.

Mr. Gavin Rees shared his viewpoints with us about the rise of the terrorist group ISIS in the Middle East and the media coverage of its dreadful activities, the approach of the corporate media towards the conflicts of the Middle East and also Iran’s nuclear program.

Q: Your workshop was on the rise of ISIS and the influence of this terrorist organization on the digital media. First of all, as a journalist who has been working on conflict zones, do you think that the rise of ISIS was a spontaneous incident or a premeditated process? To put it better way, was the rise and emergence of ISIS a by-product of the Syrian civil war, the invasion of Iraq and the conflicts that erupted there subsequently, or do you think that it took shape overnight and now it’s swallowing the whole region?

A: I’m not an expert on the historical or political background to the creation of ISIS; say you probably need to talk to somebody else to get a detailed sense of that. But I say that everything has a history and everything has a contemporary history. So in other words, in order to understand this phenomenon, we need to look at particularly the last fifty years and try to work out what’s been happening and, you know, what’s the environment that this particular political movement has arisen from. So, I would rather prefer to look at this as a political movement rather than as a religious movement, and I think that’s a mistake that have been often made particularly in Western media of associating ISIS directly with Islam without actually looking at the conflicts within these countries and also thinking a bit more carefully about how political groups that have particular violent agendas use religion as a justification for their actions.

Q: And so, why do you think there is a tendency in the Western media, especially in the mainstream, corporate media to portray ISIS as a religious movement that is run by religious extremists, as they say, “Islamic fundamentalists” and “crazy Muslims”? Why do think there is such a willingness to depict ISIS as a religious movement rather than, as you say, a political movement which has military intentions, military purposes and military nature?

A: I think that the simplest answer we can give is that we see a certain kind of laziness. In other words, ISIS says that they are a religious movement, and therefore, the journalists in modern countries who don’t know perhaps the background [of it] in detailed ways take that at a face value. So we have a whole tradition of journalism which is based on reporting what people say is their agendas. So in a way, we are cultivating a kind of laziness. I also think it’s not a big point to make, but there’s perhaps a certain kind of Orientalist legacy or perspective in the West just as there is the reverse in countries in the East which we call Occidentalism. So, you know, both sides perhaps have slightly unrealistic views of the other and there is a kind of history thing. And if people just rely on superficial knowledge, they are not going to come to a deep understanding of the issues and that’s why we need to encourage people to do research and to investigate the issues in greater depth and with a greater degree of flexible thinking.

Q: You referred to laziness in the media. Is it simply laziness that underpins this kind of media coverage, or do you think there is perhaps a systemic effort aimed at vilifying Muslims? If a Muslim country rises in the Middle East politically and economically, and if it emerges as a superpower or a regional power at least, then it would have unfavorable repercussions for the great world powers, and they won’t like it.

A: No, the short answer is no. I don’t think there is a systematic campaign to vilify the Muslim nations in the Middle East in the sense that doing so would be extremely bad for most Western democracies, because the consequences would mean being locked into eternal conflict and that would be awful. I do think there are certain actors and there are certain political organizations who like this clash of civilizations idea. So again I think that’s why it’s important for us. I think it’s important for journalists to debunk the mythology and to say this isn’t true.

Q: Do you think the progressive media in the United States, which are mostly under-represented and not funded mostly by the big think tanks and big corporations, like the Rupert Murdoch conglomerate, can have an influence on changing the mentality of the American public, the Western public and showing them the reality that this is not all about Muslims trying to explode themselves somewhere in Washington D.C. or London, wreck havoc on the Western countries and threaten their democratic values?

A: Yeah. I think it’s a big task. It’s a real challenge and also we need to remember the different media needs in different places. In other words, it’s a question about what the general public learns and how things are framed in basic news reports. The problem with basic news reports is that there is not often much space to go into context and explain about the history of things. So, often news reports are very short and react to the fact that something bad happened and then of course what happens is that the people draw their own conclusions. So we also need a different kind of journalism that’s more in-depth and more looks into the details behind things. But also we need to have a good quality journalism written in important newspapers and important television programs, that’s aimed at people who make decisions. So, we got the general public, and we also need to make sure that the people who make policy are given useful information and reminded that maybe at times there is a risk of falling to a certain kind of tunnel vision. So this is the model of good quality journalism and good quality investigation; that we look at the real causes of things and give our societies the information that they need to make good decisions. As long as we do that, I think there’s going to be progress; if we don’t do that, we’re more in trouble.

Q: Well, you talked about the mission of the journalists in debunking the mythology. So, do you think that the journalists in the West, especially in the United States are given the adequate opportunity to reflect the alternative voices? When you turn on the TV and switch to CNN, all you hear about Iran is that it is developing nuclear weapons, trying to threaten other countries, to wipe that country off the world map, and so on. So, there is no alternative coverage, no mention about Iran’s culture, Iran’s civilization, the modern, sophisticated life of its people, etc. I think there is a tendency not to reflect those voices that give a better view of Iran. I have met many American and French and German citizens who have travelled to Iran and told me that “wow, we didn’t expect that to be the reality of Iran; everything we saw here was totally different from what we saw on the TV. They only depict Iran as an isolated land where people still ride camels in the deserts” These tourists didn’t even think that there might be flowers and trees on the streets of Iran! So this is what those media are inculcating and I think the discourse needs to change. What’s your take on that?

A: I think we need to do both, and we both need to report on the tensions and the current disagreements about the nuclear energy program, you know, the possibility of developing nuclear weapons in Iran. And at the same time, we need to report on the broader Iranian society and culture and give a sense of what the place is. So our job is not to just offer from one perspective but offer a range of perspectives, and a range of ideas. And I would agree with you in the stand that sometimes reportage can be too one-dimensional and we need a broader kind of perspective. Obviously there are some international tensions and it’s a disagreement at the governmental level between the European Union and American government with Iran We obviously need to report on that and investigate that.

Q: And finally, do you believe that cultural exchanges and a fair, balanced media coverage of events in Iran can lead to further reconciliation and rapprochement between Iran and the United Sates? In particular, what do you think is the role of media in improving the marred relations between the two countries?

A: There is always hope. I mean, for example until Nixon went to China, the Chinese and American government had never talked to each other properly. So things change. You know, that’s the point where history is an unfolding, fluctuating narrative that changes through space and time, and who knows where it will take us.

Q: And you are hopeful about the future and the fact that after these maybe four decades of estrangement, Iran and the United Sates can come together and maybe put aside the hostilities or at least reach some degree of understanding?

A: Well, it’s a bit like a kind of physicist who believes there are a lot of different dimensions to experience! I’m not going to make a prediction, but I think things could get better; they could get worse. There are lots of different possibilities. But in general, not just talking about Iran but in general, I think we can do well to trying to be hopeful. It’s often best way of getting to better future.

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Will Texas Nix Marriage Licensing? Yes, If Rep. David Simpson Gets His Way – OpEd

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Texas state Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) has an intriguing response to Obergefell v. Hodges, the United States Supreme Court decision imposing a national mandate to override the diverse ways in which state governments deal with same sex marriage. Simpson is asking Texas Governor Greg Abbott to declare a special session of the state legislature to consider Simpson’s proposal that Texas end marriage licensing in the state.

Simpson’s radical response to the court’s decision should not be too surprising given that earlier this year he responded to the war on marijuana with a bill that would eliminate all Texas laws regarding marijuana so the plant would be treated the same as tomatoes, jalapeños, or coffee. Also, back in 2011, Simpson responded to the US Transportation Security Administration’s frisking of travelers with legislation that would hold TSA employees accountable for such actions under state assault prohibitions.

While some people will be quick to write off Simpson’s proposal to end marriage licensing as unrealistic, it should be noted that state licensing of marriages has not been the norm throughout American history. In addition, Simpson’s record with his previous marijuana and TSA legislation indicates the folly of underestimating his ability to advance radical legislation. Simpson’s marijuana bill was approved — after an amendment was made to retain marijuana restrictions for juveniles — by the committee of jurisdiction shortly before the legislative session ended. Though the marijuana bill did not pass during the most recent legislative session, the committee approval suggests the bill may pass next session. And Simpson’s TSA legislation passed in the state House and was poised to pass in the state Senate until the US government threatened to shut down all Texas airports if the bill become law.

Simpson makes the case for ending marriage licensing in a Thursday editorial “It’s time to divorce marriage from government,” in the Texas Tribune. Simpson’s editorial begins with the following:

It has been said that licensing is the process by which government takes away your freedom and then rents it back to you. Marriage has existed as long as human history. Marriage licensing, on the other hand, is a modern phenomenon. It is a government program that gives power to the few to control and subvert the liberties of others. In the past, it has been used as a weapon of racial segregation and cultural intolerance.

Now this weapon of intolerance has been turned against people of faith in the name of tolerance. I cannot imagine a more Orwellian perversion of freedom than to call force and submission tolerance. Yet that is where we are. This week, county clerks and state officials were given a difficult choice — follow the law or follow your most cherished beliefs.

Continue reading Simpson’s editorial here.

Ron Paul Institute Chairman and Founder Ron Paul commented regarding the Obergefell decision last week on his daily Ron Paul Liberty Report. Paul, a fellow Texan, is, like Simpson, critical of government-issued marriage licenses.

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

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Colombia: Senior Officers Involved In False Positive Cases

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The release of the report “On Their Watch: Evidence of Senior Army Officers Responsibility for False Positive Killings in Colombia” by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on June 24 once again evidenced the responsibility of the Colombian military commanders in the extrajudicial executions of civilians.

Between 2002 and 2008, army brigades across Colombia routinely executed civilians,” said the document. “Under pressure from superiors to show ‘positive’ results and boost body counts in their war against guerrillas, soldiers and officers abducted victims or lured them to remote locations under false pretenses—such as with promises of work—killed them, placed weapons on their lifeless bodies, and then reported them as enemy combatants killed in action.”

Committed on a large scale for more than half a decade, these “false positive” killings constitute one of the worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent decades, says HRW. The scandal broke in 2008 when the bodies of 17 young people from the municipality of Soacha, a remote area south of Bogota, were presented as guerrilla members killed in combat. They were deceived with false promises of work on farms in the department of Norte de Santander, executed and then dressed in combat uniforms.

“Democratic Security Policy”

President Juan Manuel Santos rejected the HRW report due to a lack of evidence, stating that “this is not the way to oversee the respect for human rights.” According to Santos, “there is not a single investigation against these officers, so they shouldn´t come and point them out and cause them enormous damage without any justification.”

Currently, the Attorney General´s Office is investigating more than 3,700 “false positive” cases attributed to soldiers. About 800 soldiers of lower ranks have been convicted for carrying out extrajudicial executions between 2002 and 2008, when former President Alvaro Uribe was in power (2002-2010). The current head of the Armed Forces, General Juan Pablo Rodriguez, and Army Commander, General Jaime Lasprilla, are among the main individuals accused for their involvement in at least 76 murders between 2007 and 2008.

The 2014 Report of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the situation of human rights in Colombia says that it “notes the efforts to investigate these cases and punish the perpetrators. However, a majority of investigations remain in an initial phase. Most prosecutions have focused on low-ranking personnel directly participating in the crimes and have not attempted to establish responsibility, by act or omission, of commanding officers, in accordance with international law standards.”

Jorge Restrepo, Director of the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC), who was consulted by the news bulletin Sputnik Mundo, said, “it is not only that some bad military members abused power,” but that there also was “a set of public policies that facilitated the commission of these crimes, and that implies state responsibility.”

In fact, President Santos was the architect of the democratic security policy to combat guerrilla groups. This policy was implemented by Uribe and was heavily criticized for violating the human rights of the civilian population. This is also the time during which the “false positive” murders were carried out.

“The high number of false positives (potentially 5,000 victims), the long period during which the phenomenon occurred (2002–2010), the number of units involved, the nature of the violation (right to life violated by extrajudicial execution of civilians), and the fact that the operations were planned, support the idea that these violations can be considered to be systematic under human rights law. This also raises serious questions regarding the responsibility of those in the line of command who either knew, or should have known, what was happening and did not take measures to address it,” adds the OHCHR report.

Colombian Senator Iván Cepeda, member of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole, highlighted the fact that “all this issue of truth, justice, and reparations for the victims is being discussed,” and it is important that these extrajudicial executions “come to light and that those involved assume their responsibility. ”

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Greece: A Mess With Consequences – Analysis

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Greece is both defiant and desperate; EU leaders wonder if the small economy is worth saving.

By David Dapice*

As Greece teeters on the edge of an abyss, the world collectively holds its breath. If Greece is expelled from the eurozone after its “no” vote on needed reforms, the ripple effect will reach far and beyond. The crisis comes at an especially bad time for a wobbly global economy. If there is a way forward, the European Union would have to ignore the “no” vote in the Sunday referendum.

The denouement may be reached this week, but the crisis has been a longtime coming. Greece has had a dysfunctional political economy for years and should not have joined the euro with its obligations for controlled deficits and debt. After Greece joined, borrowing was cheap and the government borrowed rather than cut generous spending or increase taxes on a population that did not like to pay their legal obligations.

Even so, the ratio of public debt to GDP was fairly constant at around 100 percent from 1993 to 2008. After the financial crisis, the debt ratio worsened to 130 percent in 2010 and the economy veered towards a crisis, but fear of contagion allowed for temporizing. Austerity was imposed along with modest debt relief and an extension for repayment. From 2010 to 2015, Greece did cut spending and imposed tax increases with stiffer collection procedures, but its economy shrank by 25 percent. Debt soared to 177 percent of GDP. Unemployment is 25 percent and much higher for young people, who search for work in other countries.

More austerity will not result in solvency, and debt relief is needed – a position held by the International Monetary Fund, but politically difficult if not impossible within the eurozone, especially for Germans who feel that the Greeks are free-riding on European taxpayers. Other eurozone members who have endured austerity have little sympathy for Greece, the economy of which has been depressed for many years.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was elected on an anti-austerity platform. He refused to agree to harsh austerity demands from the so-called “troika” – the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – negotiating with him. He instead put the proposed austerity policy up to a referendum. This outraged Europeans who objected that the bargaining was not finished, that their offer had expired, and the referendum is meaningless. The Greeks voted “no” anyway.

Should Europeans maintain their current offer, it’s not clear what a “no” vote would mean. It may mean an exit from the euro, with further costs for the Greek economy because their banks would be insolvent – they are days away from collapse. Most Greeks have withdrawn euros from their accounts, and the Greek banks rely on the European Central Bank for their liquidity, but new support is ending since the Greeks did not accept the offered deal and did not pay the IMF obligation due June 30th. If Greece leaves the euro, it would partially default on debts to the ECB and set up the drachma as its new currency. Greeks would pay high interest rates on debt, though perhaps not much higher than the current 12 to 15 percent rates on 10-year government debt – a rate that clearly anticipates default.

Economists differ on what Greece should do next. Some suggest, and many Greeks believe, it would be better to somehow stay in the eurozone. This would require a softer line to the troika and hope for meaningful debt relief – something not yet offered. Staying in the euro, if on offer, would have other benefits, including likely lower financing costs for debt going forward and less political risk for foreign investors. Others say that the worst – a run on banks and utter economic disruption – has already happened. An independent currency would allow Greece to use the exchange rate to stabilize its economy, much as Iceland did. World stock and bond markets do not like the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro, even though the economy is tiny. It could set a bad precedent and weaken the entire euro project. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said as much – “If the euro fails, Europe fails” – and urged Greece to compromise. That will be difficult given the entrenched positions.

In contrast to 2010, most Greek debt has been shifted from private to public entities, so there is less danger of most non-Greek banks failing. Greek banks, of course, are in need of a bailout as they hold mostly Greek government debt for assets. The weaker economies such as Spain and Ireland are in better shape now. The ECB with its “whatever it takes” Governor Mario Draghi can use bond-buying to tamp down possible collateral damage. So, a Greek exit from the euro may not entail severe short-term shocks.

The same is not certain for longer-term economic and medium-term political damage. Unless a Greek exit leads to a much tighter economic, financial and political union, there is a threat of further crises and exits – perhaps ultimately a threat to the entire euro project. Both France and Italy could face similar problems and also resist austerity. Many economists argue the euro was a bad idea from the start because of the vast differences in economic productivity across its membership and limited mobility of workers and fiscal transfers. At this point, this is more of a political than economic matter, and more integration might create the conditions for the euro to function more like the dollar within the United States.

Diplomatically, Greece would at least be tempted to flirt with other regimes such as Russia or China, perhaps opening Europe to challenges they would rather not face. The threat of Russian influence is more immediate with Ukraine, but the rise of China is perhaps more serious. China is pressing for European investment treaties and other ways to tighten links with the EU, and a wayward member welcoming state-linked foreign direct investment in sensitive areas could raise national security questions.

The crisis comes at a bad time for the global economy. China is slowing, and its volatile stock market may suggest more severe economic challenges than are evident from the suspiciously high reported GDP growth rates. Many commodity exporters had relied on soaring Chinese demand for exports for their own economic growth. The US Federal Reserve is likely to start raising dollar interest rates, and this will weaken many currencies in emerging markets, further boosting inflation and creating pressures for higher interest rates in those countries at a time of flagging exports.

Then there is the possible UK exit from the EU – unlikely, but another source of uncertainty. These developments could lead to softer growth or even recession in much of the world. Even within the US, the likely bankruptcy of Puerto Rico and the parlous finances of some states could weaken the recovery. Adding uncertainty and disruption in the eurozone to all of this is unwelcome and risky.

That the Greek electorate voted “no” in the referendum does not mean, to them, a rejection of the euro, though it may end up that way. Although Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned to smooth negotiations, there is still a toxic relationship between the current government and the rest of Europe that makes compromise difficult. Outside of the euro, there are likely to be many more bumps before the Greek economy grows again.

*David Dapice is the economist of the Vietnam Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

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Sri Lanka: Toward A Diaspora Re-Engagement Plan – Analysis

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By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

“There is an unofficial leader of the opposition. What we have is confusion; there are MPs of the same party in government as well as in the opposition.” — Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, JVP Leader

With the parliament of Sri Lanka in a state of dissolution and elections looming ahead, the costs confronting the nation remain high. Rupees 3 billion was spent on the last election, and 4 billion on the upcoming election, according to the election commissioner. It is hoped that the return on investment for the people’s money will be worth the exorbitant spend. Colossal expenditure in the name of statecraft should help reap rich benefits, and the country awaits the promised gains. Now, the priority is to elect the best representative for the next few years in parliament.

In the name of regime change and developmental politics, the country faced a large scale re-shuffling of roles in the public service with strategic points in the nation’s administration being vacated overnight. Will August see a repeat of January’s changes? If so, the year 2015 will be marked as the year wasted. It is hoped that the same old actors do not emerge in the political arena: small nations such as Sri Lanka cannot afford years fallen to this kind of politics.

As a fulfillment of the LLRC recommendation, the Foreign Minister held discussions with the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) in London. The direct engagement with these groups (some former sympathisers of the LTTE) ensures multi-faceted debate. While some see engagement with the GTF as a positive step others brand it illegal. GTF and many other diaspora organisations supported the ideology of LTTE and were therefore deemed terrorist fronts by the previous government through a gazette notification. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1373, 15 LTTE fronts were proscribed with effect from 1 April 2014.

Recently, Suren Surendran and GTF requested a review of the list of organisations and individuals proscribed in a gazette notification and proposed a four-pillar strategy. If the government take them off the list, this would have a serious impact on the re-engagement process with the diaspora. It may open the door towards greater reconciliation. On the other hand, it may also risk strengthening the LTTE set-up and cause its re-emergence. How does the government decide whom to talk to and whom not to? Are the listed organisations willing to drop the LTTE ideology of a separate state?

Of local parliamentary opposition to the government’s actions, the opposition raised the all-important question as to how the Foreign Minster could engage in such talks without prior approval from the cabinet, President, or without informing parliament. It was further noted that it is illegal to engage in discussions with an organisation listed as ‘terrorist’. MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara said, “They should first give up the Eelam objective and declare that they are not aligned to the LTTE anymore.” MP Prof GL Peiris said that post war stability was at stake due to the government’s failure to take tangible measures to counter the threat posed by the LTTE rump. According to Ven Sobitha Thero this is a positive step to re-engage with GTF.

Given the opposition’s response, it is important to reach consensus to introduce solutions to bridge the gap between the Sri Lankan diaspora with those residing in Sri Lanka. What should be the way forward? First, Eelam ideology should be fully given up and without any further engagement with and support to the LTTE. Following this, the reconciliation process should engaged in with the genuine intention both sides to commit to it sincerely. Finally, after this, a review of the list could be considered. It was Suren Surendran who defended the LTTE recruitment of child soldiers and accused the Sri Lankan military for using cluster bombs in his interview with Al Jazeera in 2009. The process to engage with a person who defended the LTTE’s position will take time, and therefore, a step-by-step method rather than a one-off process should be looked at. A process that includes the engagement of all stakeholders – not only the government but also civil society NGOs. An organisation such as Interpeace could be looked at to facilitate and assist the process, rather than involving nations with a significant diaspora population. It is important to learn from countries that have worked on reconciliation such as South Africa, Rwanda and others. Sri Lanka should also develop its own process. Joint discussions such as the South Africa-Sri Lanka joint seminar conducted last year on reconciliation with renowned thought leaders who engaged within their own countries is important.

The Diaspora Festival was proposed by the Foreign Ministry as a means to re-connect with their place of origin. A comprehensive diaspora re-engagement plan should be prepared by the Foreign Ministry and presented to the parliament. Rather than taking ad hoc measures, a systematic approach to engaging with these groups is necessary. The engagement plan could have recommendations such as to assign diaspora officers at embassies to engage with the disconnected diaspora, gather information, and attend to their requests. Many more useful ideas could be looked at and included in this document which should be compiled with inputs from all stakeholders including the opposition members of parliament, all political parties, and the general public.

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Spain’s Economic Minister Says Departure Of Greece From Euro Should Be Avoided

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Spanish Minister for Economic Affairs and Competition Luis de Guindos highlighted the solidarity shown by the entire European Union with Greece, but stressed that Sunday’s “no” vote in the referendum makes everything more difficult.

However, Luis de Guindos added that Greece, “forms part of the Euro and is fully entitled to request a third bailout program,” if the rules are followed strictly. He explained that Spain is open to dialogue with Greece.

Luis de Guindos also said that “we are fully committed to the stability of the Euro,” and added that the irreversible nature of the single currency is, “one of the basic principles, an element of protection that guarantees improved prosperity in Greece”.

Furthermore, the Spanish Minister for Economic Affairs stressed that a departure by Greece from the Euro is a situation to be avoided. He also explained that Greece’s problem is not so much one of debt reconstruction, but rather implementation of the reforms needed by its economy. “It simply has to implement its reforms, just as Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus have done”.

Luis de Guindos also rejected any economic or political comparison between Spain and Greece.

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Cricket: Mathews Rebuilds Sri Lanka

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Angelo Mathews was the rock in Sri Lanka’s middle order once again, soaking up all the pressure Pakistan created, and rebuilding from 35 for 3 to take the hosts to a commanding position. Upul Tharanga, Jehan Mubarak and Dinesh Chandimal supported their captain as Sri Lanka gradually stretched their lead to 291 until bad light ended play on another rain-hit day.

It was typical Mathews resistance, blocking and blocking most of whatever Pakistan hurled at him, working the ball into gaps for singles and twos, and exploding into the odd emphatic boundary against the run of play. The few times he was beaten during his 177-ball stay, he shrugged and concentrated harder.

The pitch slowed down as the day progressed, although the legspinner Yasir Shah started turning and bouncing it from the line of off. Although Yasir gave it everything in a 25-over spell of 2 for 70, Sri Lanka dearly needed this effort from their captain to recover from the jolts Rahat Ali and co had delivered.

Sri Lanka had taken two overs to dismiss last man Imran Khan in the morning, making absolutely no attempt to target Sarfraz Ahmed, who was left stranded on 78. But Rahat led a stirring fightback from Pakistan after they had conceded a 63-run first-innings lead.

Ehsan Adil played his part but Rahat was the standout bowler for Pakistan, bowling with sustained pace and control, varying his lengths and extracting bounce and movement off the pitch and in the air.

Consistently taking it away from the left-handers, Rahat straightened two rippers past the defenses of Dimuth Karunaratne and Lahiru Thirimanne, the latter’s 11-ball duck ending with a swinging yorker.

Using the short ball sparingly, Rahat created doubts in the minds of the batsmen, and both Karunaratne and Thirimanne were caught half-forward after being beaten numerous times. Thirimanne was also hit on the base of the arm guard as he ducked into a lifter, and had to take treatment on the field.

Adil created similar issues for the right-handed Silva, hitting a tight line and length outside off and moving it away. Silva is a difficult batsman to bowl to, his tendency to play with soft hands ensuring most edges don’t carry to the cordon. But the kind of effort Pakistan were putting, and the zip they were generating, even Silva could not avoid nicking one for Misbah-ul-Haq to take a sharp, low catch at first slip.

Rain reprieved Sri Lanka immediately after the third wicket fell, and Tharanga and Mathews batted positively upon resumption in the few overs until lunch.

Mathews survived a review for leg-before off Rahat at the stroke of lunch, but Pakistan did not review when Imran hit Tharanga’s pad first ball after the interval. They were probably confused by the two sounds, but one of them was that of Tharanga’s bat crashing into his pad. Tharanga was on 29 then, and went on to hit a few more boundaries in a 47-ball 48 before popping one off the inside edge to short leg off Yasir.

Rahat, in such fine rhythm in the first session, was introduced in the second only after Tharanga fell. His second and third spells lacked the threat of the first, and it was Adil who created problems for Mubarak with a hint of reverse, beating the left-hander often outside off.

Mubarak was solid after another shower forced tea to be taken early, and played some superbly-timed drives through extra cover. Mubarak and Mathews doubled the score from 80 for 4 till the former fell in the short-leg trap to Yasir for 35.

Chandimal’s arrival quickened the pace of scoring, and he comfortably worked the ball off the back foot as Pakistan started to flag. He progressed to 39 smoothly, and with Mathews inching to 77, Sri Lanka’s lead was in touching distance of 300. Only twice has a target more than that been achieved in a Test in Sri Lanka, and a visiting side has never done it.

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International Al-Quds Day: A Global Cause? – OpEd

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Al-Quds Day, celebrated around the world by millions, is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan, coinciding with the most sacred time of Ramadan, the Night of Destiny. This year it is on July 11. This night especially empowers Muslims with God’s mercy, as the starting point of Muslims’ awakening and awareness in all aspects of life. Al -Quds Day was initiated in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and oppose Zionism and Israeli occupation, especially of Jerusalem.

Its importance is starkly demonstrated by the ongoing US-Israeli schemes to make Jerusalem (al-Quds, holy city) the sole property of Israel, destroy the Muslim sacred Dome of the Rock, and by widespread aggression against all things Muslim, not only in Palestine, but from Libya to Afghanistan. Ayatollah Khomeini understood the connection between the struggle to liberate Palestine and the struggle for social justice around the world, in the firs place among Muslims. “All must know that the superpowers’ aim in creating Israel does not end in the occupation of Palestine. They plan, Heaven forbid, extending the fate of Palestine to all Arab countries.”

In Iran, the government sponsors and organizes the day’s rallies. Al-Quds Day is also held throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Europe and North America. The popularity of al-Quds Day shows how all people who support the liberation of Palestine appreciate and approve of Iran’s staunch support, the only country truly committed to helping Palestine.

The UN and other international bodies firmly state that Jerusalem is not the property of either the Israelis or Palestinians, that its status must be established through negotiations making it open to both sides and even the world, by declaring it an international city. The original UN plan in 1947 proposed “an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State,and the City of Jerusalem”. Israel ignored this and instead, upon declaring itself independent in 1948 declared “the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz [greater] Israel, to be known as the State of Israel”. That anniversary is a day of mourning for Palestinians—Nakba Day, meaning catastrophe.

After the war with Arab states that followed in 1948, thousands of Palestinians were murdered and hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced to flee their homes. The UN issued resolution 194 claiming authority over Jerusalem, and resolved in paragraph 11, “that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date”.

This resolution, accepted immediately by Israel (though it had no intention of fulfilling it), is still the major legal foundation of the Palestinian right of return claim, a major point in peace negotiations. Resolution 194 also called for the creation of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine. So the mechanism for resolving the dispute has been there ever since, and al-Quds Day is a major plank in supporting this relatively just resolution of the conflict, if only Israel can be brought to its senses.

The UN has been hot and cold since then. In 1973, a General Assembly resolution about Apartheid “condemns in particular the unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, Apartheid and Zionism.” General Assembly Resolution 3379 determined that “Zionism is a form of racism” in 1975, but this was revoked in 1991 under threats by the US. Attempts over the years to expel Israel from the UN for its continued violations of UN resolutions have always been stymied by western powers led by the US.

In 2012, the UN upgraded Palestine to “non-member observer state” status, described by The Independent as “de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine”. As of October 2014, 135 (70%) of the 193 member states of the UN have recognized the State of Palestine as sovereign over both West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

There is no doubt that the success of al-Quds Day in keeping the pressure on Israel to abide by its commitments is vital here. Only the US and the states of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, all of which are associated states of the US, have consistently supported Israel at the UN. Recently Australia, under the leadership of John Howard, and Canada, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, have also supported Israel at the UN.

Ayatollah Khomeini stated, “The issue of al-Quds is not a private or personal issue. It is neither the exclusive problem of one country nor a present-day problem of all Muslims. Rather, it is a phenomenon concerning the monotheists and faithful people of all ages – past, present and future.”

The attempts by western leaders, in the grip of Zionism and determined to undermine Iran’s popularity among those who oppose Israeli occupation of Palestine, is demonstrated year after year. Living in Canada, I watch how the Zionist organizations, B’nai Brith and the Jewish Defense League, spread their hate speech in the mainstream media, where short shrift is given to the Palestinian cause. Nonetheless, support for the Palestinian cause is strong in Toronto and despite government refusal to issue a permit to organizers (the PanAm Games take precedence), the demonstration will proceed.

Last year 5,000 demonstrated, faced by threats from 1,000 Zionists, necessitating a heavy police presence. No other cause unites Canadians around international justice like the cause of the Palestinians. Organizer Seyed Rizvi said 70 organizations took part, including the Jewish Neturei Karta and Independent Jewish Voices. “Our supporters are people who feel bad when they see the pictures and images of what is going on in Palestine. We believe the Zionists are not representative of the Jewish religion. We have seven rabbis here in support of us.”

Al-Quds – an international city

The US Supreme Court recently upheld the longstanding US policy of not allowing American Jews who give birth in Jerusalem to declare their children citizens of Jerusalem, which implicitly would condone Israeli claims to possess Jerusalem. President George W. Bush signed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 2002, which violated this US policy, putting Congress on record as considering Jerusalem the capital of Israel. But Bush announced that he would not abide by the passport provision; and indeed, neither his administration nor that of Barack Obama has dared to follow the birthplace requirement. Both have argued that only the president can recognize, even implicitly, that Jerusalem is part of Israel.

The Supreme Court 5-4 decision denied the parents of Menachem Zivotofsky, an American born in Jerusalem in 2002 to put “Israel” on his passport, as “[r]ecognition [of foreign governments] is a topic on which the Nation must ‘speak with one voice.’” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “[t]hat voice must be the President’s.” A similar attempt to sneak Israeli wishes on the Canadian government in the past cause Conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark to withdraw his hasty call in 1979 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, showing how naive many western politicians are and how perfidious their Zionist advisers are. The most pro-Israeli Canadian politician in history is the current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and even he doesn’t dare make such a foolish move.

The momentum to support al-Quds Day around the world continues to grow. Both Nigeria and South Africa hosted demonstrations with 5,000 demonstrators last year. In Nigeria the 2014 al-Quds day procession took place in 24 major cities, mostly in the north of the country. The procession, organized by the Nigerian Islamic Movement,were conducted peacefully except in Zaria, home of NIM Ibrahim Zakzaky, where the Nigerian Army reportedly opened fire on the participants and killed 35 people.

The unprecedented events in the past year in Syria and Iraq, where the militant ISIS have declared a self-styled caliphate, have distracted people from the Palestinian struggle, though ISIS claims it wants to expel the Zionists and restore Muslim sovereignty to al-Quds. How credible is ISIS, can its claims of leadership of the Sunni world be taken seriously? It is openly calling for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy as un-Islamic, yet is sectarian, kills hundreds of Shia and other ‘undesirables’, dismissing Hamas and Hizbullah as kufar, and agents of Iran. This wild rhetoric is sad, as Iran is the best supporter of the struggle against Zionism.

This article appeared Qods News Agency

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Greek Debt, Austerity And The Myth Of The Hypocritical Hun – Analysis

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By Ronald J. Granieri*

Sunday’s referendum in Greece, in which more than 60% of voters rejected the latest offer from the so-called “troika” (International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Commission) provided a resounding electoral victory for the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, though it is unclear what it will mean for the next stages of the ongoing Euro crisis.

Tsipras called the referendum last week rather than continue negotiations with Greece’s creditors, which he claimed were going nowhere. His abrupt decision led to the expiration of aid to Greece on 30 June and the withdrawal of troika’s last offer, though that was the offer that Tsipras called upon his people to accept or reject. European leaders warned that a “no” vote would mean no more negotiations at all, while Tsipras claimed a no vote just meant the Greek people rejected austerity, and that negotiations could then continue on a more solid basis. Tsipras and his Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (who called Greece’s creditors “terrorists” for their attempts to encourage a yes vote) heatedly denied that “no” meant Greece wanted to leave the Euro (“Grexit”), let alone the European Union, even as many of their European partners warned otherwise. Most Greeks, facing mounting economic chaos and armed with only a vague idea of the specific deal, apparently welcomed the chance to denounce austerity without jeopardizing Greece’s place in Europe, and believe they can retain the Euro.

Such assumptions are, to put it mildly, optimistic, though the resignation of Varoufakis this morning indicates that Tsipras still hopes to restart negotiations. The coming weeks will show whether Tsipras’ gamble will pay off, and future historians will have to decide whether or when the entire Greek drama will end up a tragedy, a comedy, or a farce.

This latest twist in a years-long saga has been accompanied by an increased wave of criticism of the troika and especially of Germany, considered the sinister mastermind behind austerity.

Criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel now also includes a historical angle as well. Many Facebook feeds over the weekend were flooded with images of Greek and other European states signing the 1953 London Agreement, which greatly reduced the debt burden on West Germany, and is correctly considered a key moment in the postwar German “Economic Miracle.” Some journalists on the pro-SYRIZA Left have gone so far as to accuse the Germans of hypocrisy in refusing to give Greece the same consideration. Superstar Economic Thomas Piketty has taken the argument a step further, asserting that Germany “has never repaid its debts.”

Such assertions fit into a popular narrative that combines two popular villains (bankers and Germans) into one. Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble are now not just Mr. Potter, according to this narrative they are hypocrites to boot.

Although one can understand the depth of frustration on all sides of this debate, this particular historical analogy requires a great deal of correction. It can be helpful in encouraging creative thinking about how to resolve the Greek crisis, but not if it is viewed in the ways encouraged by Piketty and the Guardian, which are at best incomplete if not tendentiously false.

It is certainly true that in 1953 West Germany and its creditors reached an agreement that greatly reduced the debt burden on Germans. That agreement encouraged economic growth that helped not only Germany but also Europe as a whole. But that agreement did not spring fully clothed from the minds of the world’s bankers, nor was it a simple act of charity.

West Germany in 1953 was indeed treated differently than Greece in 2011-2015. What the Facebook meme forgets is that West Germany got that debt deal after the destruction of a war (which Germany did indeed start), four years of military occupation, major loss of German territory (West Germany included barely 60% of the total territory of Germany as of 1937), waves of refugees that needed to be resettled, national division, hyperinflation and a currency reform—and, it should be added, the writing of a new constitution that created a new democratic state, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. Successful negotiations also required West Germany after 1949 to assume legal obligation for all debts of all previous German states and to agree to pay reparations for crimes committed by the Nazi regime (even as the other German state refused to do either). Finally, that agreement only came after the government of Konrad Adenauer demonstrated its willingness to submit both West German heavy industry (in the European Coal and Steel Community) and its military (in the ill-fated European Defense Community) to supranational European authority. West Germany also behaved differently than Greece—demonstrating a willingness to make compromises for Europe, and also enduring a period of austerity and slow wage growth, in order to help create the political atmosphere that made the 1953 debt agreement possible.

Added to all this was the geopolitical encouragement of the Cold War and the larger significance of the German economy for European recovery, as noted by Leonid Bershidsky.

>All in all, it’s more than just Germany got some sweet deal they are denying the Greeks.

The 1953 deal was not automatic. West Germany received such consideration only as a result of policies consciously adopted by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, in the face of not inconsiderable domestic opposition. Adenauer strongly believed that West Germany’s future lay in cooperation with the democracies of the West (Westbindung), and in the integration of Western Europe. He was prepared to make significant sacrifices in the immediate term in order to guarantee West Germany’s place in that future Europe. For his trouble, opposition leader Kurt Schumacher denounced him as the “Chancellor of the Allies.” Schumacher and many of his colleagues in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) believed that Germany should be part of the West and should receive economic aid, but believed Germany was so important to the West that Adenauer’s concessions on German national interests were dangerous and unnecessary. The SPD would modify many of these positions in the years to come, but Schumacher made statements in the early 1950s—insisting upon nationalization and refusal to participate in European integration yet demanding assistance from the Allies—that would fit well in an Alexis Tsipras speech today. It’s hard to imagine that strategy succeeding in the 1950s, just as it is hard to imagine an agreement today without mutual compromise.

The simple image of hypocritical Germans rests on a misreading of the historical facts.

All of which is not to say that the Germans in general—then or now—enjoyed some inherent moral advantage over the Greeks. Those kinds of assertions, which one can find in many contemporary discussions about the Euro crisis, are just as misguided and unhelpful as the mythologies of Piketty. The Germans have a large European responsibility, and the government of Angela Merkel is on the spot to offer clear leadership, and she has proven so far to be far too cautious.

The 1953 analogy has much to teach us, but not in the ways that it is currently being used. A clearer historical perspective should help us see that things could have turned out rather differently in the 1950s, but turned out the way they did as a result of conscious choices made by leaders in Europe and the United States. Adenauer pursued his vision of German Westbindung with ruthless consistency, and found partners in French colleagues such as Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, Italians such as Alcide De Gasperi, and Belgians such as Paul-Henri Spaak, with whom he shared a vision for European integration that helped overcome national suspicions, as well as with the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, who were the key to any international financial accord.

They did not solve all those problems, and left many for future generations. Any hope that we may have of a sensible resolution to the current crisis will require much wiser and more creative leadership than we have seen thus far. Comparing West Germany in 1953 and Greece in 2015, it’s clear that Alexis Tsipras is no Konrad Adenauer. Alas, when it comes to a willingness to speak clearly in favor of European cooperation even at the short-term expense of German national interests, Angela Merkel isn’t either.

About the author:
*Ron Granieri is the Executive Director of FPRI’s Center for the Study of the America and the West, Chair of that Center’s Study Group, and Host of Geopolitics with Granieri, a monthly series of events for FPRI Members. He is a specialist in Contemporary German and International History with degrees from both Harvard and the University of Chicago. He is the recipient of a Federal Chancellor Scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and is a member in the American Council on Germany’s Young Leader Program. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Syracuse University, Furman University, and the University of Tubingen. He is the author of The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949-1966 (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), and is currently completing a book entitled: The Fall and Rise of German Christian Democracy, From Detente to Reunification, for Oxford University Press.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

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Ghani Takes Risks, But Clock Is Ticking For Pakistan Too – OpEd

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Afghanistan’s National Unity Government (NUG) had promised to bring peace and stability during their election campaigns. For this end, Ashraf Ghani remarkably changed his foreign policy vis-à-vis Pakistan, which has been considered the key for what NUG had pledged to fulfill. This paradigm change has been severely criticized inside Afghanistan. Critics argue that Ghani has been offering more while receiving nothing or very little. We discuss that the rapprochement, bearing in mind the key role and dependency on Pakistan, is an attempt to balance relations between two rivals (Pakistan and India) rather than asymmetric concessions.

Afghanistan and Pakistan relations have been drastically improved since Ashraf Ghani took office on 29th of September 2014. Visits of high ranking officials of the two countries including President Ashraf Ghani, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, chiefs of army staff Raheel Sharif of Pakistan and Sher Mohammad Karimi of Afghanistan and heads of Inter Service Intelligences Rizwan Akhter have been increased. Afghanistan for the very first time sent army cadets to be trained at the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad and this was something Pakistan has been reportedly eying to achieve since the Taliban has been ousted.

A much hyped intelligence sharing memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been allegedly signed between Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and National Directorate of Security (NDS) though it has not been officially confirmed yet. Although the MoU has not been made publicly available yet, leaked reports suggest that, besides sharing intelligence information about terrorism, it will bind AfPak to conduct coordinated cross-border military operations against insurgency and ‘separatists’. AfPak relations were greatly suffering lack of trust and neither side believed in what the other was stating publicly. To cripple suspicion and build trust, a bold initiative seems prerequisite.

In response, so far the Pakistan army has stopped mortar shelling of Kunar province of Afghanistan which took tens of civilians’ lives in the past. The army had been claiming of targeting Tahrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who they thought were hiding there, but this claim has been repeatedly rejected by Afghan government. Mortar shelling was one of tense issues between Pakistan and Hamid Karzai government, which had in turns deteriorated relations. Besides that, Pakistan national security adviser Sartaj Aziz recently stated that they have facilitated Taliban and Afghan government envoys meeting in Urumqi of Xinjiang province of China though Taliban rejected and called those who were representing Taliban ‘unauthorized’ ones. Aziz further said that the two will have another meeting in a week and it has also been said that ‘good news’ about peace is due in three months. Furthermore, Pakistan has publically made it clear that ‘enemies of Afghanistan are enemies of Pakistan’. Since action matters more than sheer words, Afghan government should seek a more solid reciprocation.

Although AfPak relations have been improving, security situation is deteriorating in Afghanistan. Causalities of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have increased. Two districts in Kunduz and another one in Kunar have fallen to Taliban. Hike in instability seems to be more seasonal bearing in mind the fighting season, but this year the scale of insurgency is unmatchable. The intensity in attacks may have reason and it is; strike with full strength which could lead you to gain more and dominate if peace talks are to be negotiated.

Afghan president is also under fire inside Afghanistan for marginalizing India. Criticism come mostly from the predecessor and of those who had antagonistic relations with Pakistan during the past two decades. Hamid Karzai’s government had friendly relations with India. They signed Strategic Partnership Agreement1, which stipulates India to train and equip Afghan army. Republic of India has spent more than $ 2.5 billion in re/construction of Afghanistan. Ashraf Ghani, considering Pakistan’s sensitivity, relatively goes cautiously with India. The most serious issue for Pakistan, what I learnt during my research on AfPak among other (the Durand Line, Baluch ‘separatists’, Tahrik-Taliban Pakistan, water management and Afghan refugee) was the growing involvement and visibility of India, “Pakistan takes the issues of ‘Indianization’2 of Afghanistan very seriously”.Parvez Musharaf, ex-president and Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, once warned countermeasure if India keeps further domination in Afghanistan. Afghanistan as a sovereign state has legitimate right to establish relations with any country that suits her interests the best. Nevertheless, to expect tangible outcome from Pakistan, it is not free of cost.

However, Ashraf Ghani paid an official visit to India where he stated in remarks to business community “we want to assure you that if you invest in Afghanistan, nobody is going to shake you down”. Furthermore, Prime Minister Narenda Modi promised to support open and functional Chabahar port of Iran, which gives Afghanistan sea access. In the recent development, Ashraf Ghani told in an interview that ‘more agreements are to be inked within three months’.

Ashraf Ghani by taking paradigm shift in foreign policy vis-à-vis Pakistan has taken risk. The risk is more domestic than at international arena. A more severe backlash may erupt against overall rapprochement of Ghani and particularly against the MoU, which has already been named by the critics who have not been made part of the NUG in malicious term i.e. ‘infamous’, ‘notorious’, sinful’ and ‘selling out of Afghanistan’ if the conciliation does not yield an expected outcome.

This time-bounded rapprochement is seemingly neither totally one-sided nor it is asymmetric concession, but it could be interpreted as an attempt to mend and balance relation between the two all-time rivals in pursuit of stabilization of Afghanistan. Presumably the national unity government pays higher cost, but clock is ticking for Pakistan and it has more at stake. This seems to be the last chance for Pakistan to befriend Afghanistan.

*Hazrat Bahar is a political commentator on Af-Pak Affairs & lecturer at Sheikh Zayed University of Afghanistan

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International Position Of Spanish Companies: On The Rise – Analysis

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Spanish companies stepped up their direct investment abroad in 2014, but it was still far from the pre-crisis annual average between 2005 and 2007.

By William Chislett*

Spain’s internationalisation, as measured by exports and direct investment abroad, has been remarkable and it happened in a relatively short period. The stock market has played a key role in this process.

Analysis

Spanish companies invested €30.6 billion abroad last year, up from €25.8 billion in 2013 but far from the average of €94.4 billion between 2005 and 2007 before the country entered recession, according to UNCTAD’s 2015 World Investment Report published on 24 June. Spain’s outflows of direct investment continued to be the world’s 12th largest (see Figure 1).fig1

The outward stock of investment, however, dropped from €719.4 billion to €673.9 billion, as a result of divestments for strategic reasons or in order to reduce debt burdens (for example in the case of Telefónica). In GDP terms, Spain’s stock at 47.9% was the second-largest among the EU’s five biggest economies (see Figure 2).fig2

Corporate Spain was a late-comer to expanding abroad, which began in earnest during the 1990s, following the country’s membership of the European Community, which opened up the economy, and gathered pace after Spain became a founding member of the euro zone in 1999. The outward stock of investment rose 45-fold between 1990 and 2014, making Spain the fifth most-internationalised economy based on the volume of its foreign trade and direct investment compared with 14th in nominal GDP terms. Spain accounted for 2.6% of the world’s stock of outward investment in 2014, well above its 1.8% share of GDP and 1.6% share of global exports.

Latin America was a natural first choice for companies investing abroad. As well as cultural and linguistic affinities, there were factors that pulled firms to the region. Economic liberalisation and privatisation opened up sectors that were hitherto off-limits, and the region’s poor infrastructure was in constant need of development. The region accounted for 17.1% of Spain’s total direct investment outflows between 1996 and 2003, and this dropped to 8.5% in 2004-13 as the focus switched to other parts of the world. The combined share of the US and Spain, the two largest investors, in the region’s foreign direct investment flows fell from 50.4% in 1996-2003 to 32.4% in 2004-13 (see Figure 3).

Latin America generated €81.2 billion of net profits for Spanish companies between 2007 and 2012, and they were more stable than those earned in other parts of the world.fig3

Spanish companies started a new wave of acquisitions around a year ago and mostly away from Latin America (see Figure 4), following the recovery in the domestic economy and spurred by large cash reserves, interest rates at historically low levels, an abundance of liquidity in markets and buoyant stock markets with an appetite for those companies financing their purchases by increasing their capital.fig4

For several years there have been more Spanish companies in the annual ranking of the world’s top transport developers by the US publication Public Works Financing than any other country. The latest ranking, published last November, has six Spanish companies in the top 12 and another three make the top 39. These companies continue to win big contracts abroad (see Figure 5).fig5

The Spanish stock exchange has played a key role in companies’ internationalisation. In the words of Antonio Zoido –the exchange’s president–, size, being listed and internationalisation feed off one another and form a virtuous circle. The companies that comprise the Ibex-35, the benchmark index of the exchange, which account for a tiny 0.1% of the total number in Spain (close to 70% of GDP), generated abroad 64% of their total revenues last year, up from 47% in 2007 and 24% in 1997. The Ibex medium cap and small cap companies obtained a similar share of their revenues from abroad (65.8% and 64.9%, respectively), while the rest of listed companies generated only 39.4% internationally.

In terms of capitalisation, some of the Ibex companies are among the largest in the world in their respective sectors (see Figure 6).1 The stock market is very active: the five initial public offerings (IPOs) raised €8.4 billion, more than a fifth of the funds for European new listings in the first half of this year and seven times Germany’s amount.fig6

Spain is in the curious situation of having a small group of very large companies at one end of the corporate spectrum and at the other end 94% of firms are micro-businesses. The average number of employees per company in Spain was 4.7 in 2014 compared with 5.7 for France and 11 for the UK and Germany. Only Italy among the big EU countries has fewer workers per company (4.0).

The country needs companies of a larger size so that the costs involved in exporting regularly and investing abroad are sufficiently compensated by profits appropriate for the level of productivity.

Telefónica, fully privatised as of 1997, is a prime example of a company that has benefited from being listed ever since it was founded in 1924. Between 1989, when the company began to be privatised, and 2014 its customers rose 28-fold to 341 million and the number of countries where it operated increased from one (Spain) to 21. Revenues soared 12-fold to €50.3 billion. Today, it is the second most-internationalised telecoms group in the world after Vodafone: last year 88% of its accesses were from outside its market of origin and 76% of its revenues, compared with 96% and 85%, respectively, for Vodafone.

The international position of Spanish companies has also been strengthened during the country’s crisis by the surge in exports. Indeed, it was exports that pulled Spain out of recession in 2014 and prevented the economy’s shrinkage from being deeper between 2009 and 2013. Exports of goods and services have increased from 27% of GDP in 2007 to more than 34%, and even taking into account the decline in GDP this is a significant structural change. The success has helped to turn around the current account: from a deficit of 10% of GDP in 2007 to a small surplus in 2013 and 2014.

Despite this, reducing the negative net international investment position (NIIP, the difference between external financial assets and liabilities) has proved to be very gradual (from 92.6% of GDP in 2013 to 93.5% in 2014). A negative figure indicates a debtor nation and a positive one a creditor country.

This is a cause of concern as it exposes Spain to adverse shocks or shifts in market confidence. According to the European Commission, even under relatively benign growth and inflation scenarios, Spain would need to achieve a record current account surplus of 1.7 % of GDP on average over the 2014-24 period in order to halve its NIIP-to-GDP ratio by 2024.

Conclusion

The challenge ahead is to build on the internationalisation success and not let it ease up now that Spain is out of recession and growing at an accelerating pace.

About the author:
*William Chislett,
Associate Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute and author of ‘Spain: What Everyone Needs to Know’ (Oxford University Press, 2013) | @WilliamChislet3

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

Notes:
1. Much more information about the international position of listed Spanish companies is contained in the pioneering report Posición internacional de la empresa cotizada española published in Spanish on 2 July 2015 by the Spanish stock exchange and Telefónica.

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Charlie Hebdo: Of Radicals, Ridicule And Rationale – Analysis

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By Prerna Bakshi*

“For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century. But only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.” With these words, Mark Twain epitomises satire; its power to correct, to balance and to liberate. In light of the recent terrorist attacks at ‘Charlie Hebdo’, a French magazine which wields this very weapon of satire, one is left to wonder if these words still hold true.

In what could be the worst act of terrorism in France in 50 years, two Islamist gunmen stormed the office of the controversial magazine, claiming 12 lives after shouting “We avenge the prophet”. The tragedy has organised its global audience into two broad encampments of outrage, ‘Je suis Charlie’ and ‘Je ne sais pas Charlie’. While one stands up for Charlie Hebdo and the fundamental right of free speech it enshrines, the other condemns the mass homicide but not without criticising the ‘sacrilegious’ works of the magazine. While plenty of literature has been produced about the magazine, the attack and global opinions, there is a need to analyse the situation from the base level by understanding human psychology. It is human psyche, its aberrations and motivations that produce tragedies of such magnitude, causing loss of life and permanently scarring the social and political map of the world. Borrowing from the field of social psychology, I explore various aspects of the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ incident to render it more comprehensible and thus easier to tackle.

Primary insight into such religiously motivated terrorist attacks comes with understanding radicalisation and extremism. Enabling and motivating pre-conditions, apart from individual factors, lay the foundation for radicalisation. Factors like poverty and illiteracy are often cited as motivational pre-conditions.[1] However paradoxically, most Islamist extremists are found to be from upper or middle-class backgrounds and tend to be well educated.[2] This shows that experiences of discrimination and social segregation encountered by middle-class and educated persons contribute more gravely to radicalisation than simply economic deprivation. Such experiences can trigger aggression through ‘relative deprivation’, the idea that you have less than you deserve, less than what you have been led to expect, and less than what people similar to you have. Due to a well educated background and financial stability, middle-class or upper class individuals are more likely than those less economically fortunate to experience this when subjected to discrimination and segregation. ‘Relative deprivation’ could in turn lead to self-identity crisis and uncertainty about oneself in the world. Indeed, a key psychological vulnerability of those drawn to extremism is their need to feel like they belong.[3] Additionally, the ideologies of extremist groups help people cope with this uncertainty.[4] The lack of identity associated with extremists is the result of self-hatred that leads to feelings of revenge toward life itself, and a compulsion to kill one’s own humanness.[5] Among enabling factors, ‘modernity’, ranging from electronic technology to availability of mass transport, is a prominent vehicle for radicalisation which allows radical ideas to spread faster and infiltrate the minds of those susceptible.[6] Not all individuals emerging from these pre-conditions and exposed to radical thought subscribe to radicalism. The difference between those who do and those who don’t is explained by a theory in social psychology known as confirmation bias. This refers to the tendency to ignore information that contradicts a belief and to actively seek out information that confirms and re-enforces it.[7] Thus individuals isolate themselves from alternate arguments and create a delusional and unsound relationship with their prescribed beliefs. Religious radical organisations have maximum appeal in such scenarios, giving the participant not only the comfort of a shared identity but also invoking sacred entities, addressing purpose of life and giving normative prescriptions.[8]

The theory of dehumanisation and group polarisation explains why under such conditions, radicalised individuals carry out violent attacks. Dehumanisation involves rationalising victims as subhuman and deserving of the acts of violence. In this particular instance, extremists of groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS dehumanise their targets by categorising them as ‘infidels’ or transgressors of god; this is similar to American soldiers referring to Asians as ‘gooks’ during the war in Vietnam. Consequently, group polarisation, which is the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclinations of its members, results in such terror attacks. In the case of Charlie Hebdo, another important factor comes into play: the magazine’s provocative material which was viewed as insulting by the perpetrators. While, most people shrug off insults, societies and groups that are indoctrinated with the ‘culture of honor’ are very likely to retaliate to them with aggressive and dominant behaviour.[9] As self identity is transferred to the identity of the religion and doctrines of the extremist group, such insults are associated with shame and taken personally, inciting violent revenge. Research also finds that collectivist cultures are most likely than individualistic cultures to react violently to and avenge ‘shame’.[10] This effectively creates dissonance between the primarily collectivist Eastern cultures and primarily individualistic Western cultures regarding Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons. While one views such artwork as superlatively insulting thereby triggering aggression, the other does not experience and hence does not understand the association between shame and aggression as the former. It is also important to note here that organisations such as the Al Qaeda, that perpetuated this attack, cultivate highly collectivist cultures.

As news of the attack spreads with lightening speed it is escorted with images of various Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons, some notoriously depicting Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, others featuring the Pope Benedict XVI, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, and Boko Haram sex slaves. While the magazines humour is called “coarse, rude and deliberately offensive”[11] it has also been shelved as “racist, xenophobic, islamophobic and homophobic” receiving wide criticism from much of the non-francophone world. Conversely, further investigation into the accusations brings forth contrary evidence. Accusations of Islamophobia alone seem to ignore the fact that the Pope, Jesus, Orthodox Jews were targeted in equal measure.[12] With regards to accusations of racism, Charlie Hebdo has partnered in the past with ‘SOS Racisme’, the main anti-racist NGO in the country, against anti-immigrant politics. Furthermore, Charbonnier, the late editor in chief of the magazine, stated that “anti-racism and a passion for equality among all people” were “founding principles” of the satirical publication.[13]

One possible explanation to this supposed paradox is offered by the Construal level theory and the phenomena of cultural dissonance. Cultural dissonance is the term commonly used to describe a sense of discomfort, discord or disharmony arising from cultural differences or inconsistencies which are unexpected or unexplained and therefore difficult for individuals to negotiate. Cultural dissonance may also lead to erroneous interpretations of behaviours, creating misunderstandings.[14] The bulk of Charlie Hebdo’s publications are seen to be steeped with double meaning and spun around French politics. Often, for individuals outside the knowledge of French politics and culture it becomes difficult to recognise the context and thus misinterpret the intention of their work. In fact it is found that when translated and put into context, these cartoons actually are explicitly anti-racist or mocking of racists and fascists.[15] Applying the Construal level theory, especially its contributions to stereotyping, reveals that perception of the works of Charlie Hebdo may not only be influenced by the artwork itself but also by other internal and external factors. For instance, Charlie Hebdo’s staff of white men making caricatures about other ethnicities and religious minorities may easily translate satire into racism due to pre-conditioning of the audience. Would the cartoons be considered Islamophobic if they were made by a Muslim or racist if made by an African American? Indeed, history of mistreatment of certain sections of society has left an impression on our minds against the perpetuators. For the larger part, the magazine argues that “We want to laugh at the extremists — every extremist. They can be Muslim, Jewish, Catholic.”[16]

The magazines argument is that its lampooning of radical Islam is aimed at separating out radicalism from mainstream Islam. “You’re not supposed to use religion for your sense of identity, in any case not in a secular state. In principle, the Arabs in France are not Muslims. Arabs in this secular, assimilationist nation are citizens like any others, and would be well served to renounce whatever attachment they may feel to Islam.” argues Biard, the top editor at Charlie Hebdo.[17] His argument, although unconventional, is substantiated by interviews with British Muslims which uncovered an important finding: people who felt their primary identity was Muslim, rather than British, held more sympathetic views towards the concept of jihad.[18] Such a concept of self-identity can be applied to any organised religion. Whether Charlie Hebdo and its staff were racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic or the contrary as they assert, it is clear that there exists a deviation between their intended message and the construed message. Recognition of this gap and conciliatory effort by both parties, the sender and receiver, avoids tension and discord.

Delving into the psychological motivations of the perpetuators, victims and audience to the attack also brings out the operational relationship between them and allows for analysis from a broader perspective. It becomes clear that while Charlie Hebdo intentions toward the Muslim community were reformatory in nature, they may well be lost in translation for the general Muslim community. Moreover, it is evident that ‘shame’ as an aggression cue for radicals and Charlie Hebdo’s strategy to “laugh at the extremists” together forms a combination for disaster. While there should be no contention that the right to free speech remain uncontested on every front, as stipulations against the right hold potential for further complications, greater awareness of the psyches of different communities and organisations will prove beneficial for the increasingly multicultural world we live in today.

[1] Khosrokhavar, F. (2005). Suicide bombers: Allah’s new martyrs (p. 265). London: Pluto Press.
[2] Silke, A. (2008). Holy warriors exploring the psychological processes of Jihadi radicalization. European Journal of Criminology, 5(1), 99-123.
[3] Borum, R. (2014), Psychological Vulnerabilities and Propensities for Involvement in Violent Extremism. Behav. Sci. Law, 32: 286–305. doi: 10.1002/bsl.2110
[4] Hogg, M. A., Kruglanski, A. and van den Bos, K. (2013), Uncertainty and the Roots of Extremism. Journal of Social Issues, 69: 407–418. doi: 10.1111/josi.12021
[5] Coleman, P. T., & Bartoli, A. Addressing Extremism. URL: http://www. tc. columbia. edu/i/a/document/9386_WhitePaper_2_Extremism_030809. pdf .
[6] Francis, M. (2012). What causes Radicalisation? Main lines of consensus in recent research. | Radicalisation Research. Radicalisationresearch.org. Retrieved 20 January 2015, from http://www.radicalisationresearch.org/guides/francis-2012-causes-2/
[7] Sinicki, A. (2015). The Psychology of Extremism. Healthguidance.org. Retrieved 20 January 2015, from http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16426/1/The-Psychology-of-Extremism.html
[8] Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 72-83.
[9] Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B. F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An” experimental ethnography.”. Journal of personality and social psychology, 70(5), 945.
[10] Shteynberg, G., Gelfand, M. J., & Kim, K. (2009). Peering into the “Magnum Mysterium” of Culture The Explanatory Power of Descriptive Norms. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(1), 46-69.
[11] Miller, L. (2015). Is Charlie Hebdo racist? Or have critics been too quick to condemn it?. Salon.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015, from http://www.salon.com/2015/01/11/is_charlie_hebdo_racist_or_have_critics_been_too_quick_to_condemn_it/
[12]Bird, L. (2015). Charlie Hebdo: They’re Not Racist Just Because You’re Offended. The Huffington Post UK. Retrieved 18 January 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lliana-bird/charlie-hebdo_b_6461030.html
[13]Philips, L. (2015). Lost in translation: Charlie Hebdo, free speech and the unilingual left | Ricochet. Ricochet.media. Retrieved 18 January 2015, from https://ricochet.media/en/292/lost-in-translation-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-and-the-unilingual-left
[14] Allan, M. (2003). Frontier Crossings Cultural Dissonance, Intercultural Learning and the Multicultural Personality. Journal of Research in International Education, 2(1), 83-110.
[15]Philips, L. (2015). Lost in translation: Charlie Hebdo, free speech and the unilingual left | Ricochet. Ricochet.media. Retrieved 18 January 2015, from https://ricochet.media/en/292/lost-in-translation-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-and-the-unilingual-left
[16] Beauchamp, Z. (2015). A new website explains Charlie Hebdo cartoons for Americans. Vox. Retrieved 18 January 2015, from http://www.vox.com/2015/1/14/7546903/understanding-charlie-hebdo
[17] Bibliography: Sayare, S. (2015). The “Charlie Hebdo” I Know. The Atlantic. Retrieved 18 January 2015, from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-secularism-religion-islam/384413/
[18] Silke, A. (2008). Holy warriors exploring the psychological processes of Jihadi radicalization. European Journal of Criminology, 5(1), 99-123.

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No One Is A Greater Russophobe Than Putin – OpEd

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Vladimir Putin’s statements about the need of the Russian state to come to the aid of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers outside the Russian Federation shows that he has no confidence in the ability of these people to survive more than a generation or two without the intervention of the Russian state, according to Pavel Kazarin.

And that shows that the Kremlin leader’s views of Russians as a nation are so negative that he and his regime merit the title as “the main Russophobe,” yet another example of Putin’s tendency of saying that others are doing what he himself is guilty of, according to the Ukrainian commentator (pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2015/07/3/7073345/).

A year ago, Putin “promised to defend ethnic Russians in Ukraine and those Ukrainians who feel an unbroken connect with Russia,” words that he has continued to live by and that have made him and the Kremlin behave as “the most consistent Russophobe,” precisely the kind of person he says he is fighting against.

Putin’s regime, Kazarin continues, have been “exploiting the thought that Russians outside of Russia are something unthinkable, that they will lose their definition, that they will assimilate over the course of two or three generations leaving behind them amusing trademarks with the ending –off.”

Putin and the Kremlin have also acted on the assumption that the state is the only basis for the continued existence of the Russians as a nation and “from this comes the conclusion that Russians must be resettled in Russia either individually or together with the territories” on which they are now living.

“More than that,” Kazarin says, “Moscow actively sells ‘Russianness’ as a kind of good.”

The Kremlin’s Russophobia means that “over the last year and a half, namely the Kremlin itself has been able to marginalize ethnic Russians on the entire space of the former Union, It has in fact closed off the potential possibility for them to engage in social struggles for their rights.”

The Kremlin, he argues, “has made impossible any participation by them in the political life of this or that country,” given that any effort to do so will look to everyone else as the first step toward another Crimea or Donbas. Putin’s regime has “convinced everyone that any organization with the word ‘Russian’ in the title is only an irredenta movement and a covert agent of influence oriented toward Moscow and not to the capital of their own country.”

In addition, the Kremlin has reduced to zero the chance that Russians can be integrated completely in the post-Soviet countries.” It has managed to convince everyone that Russiannness is a synonym for archaic thinking, obscurantism and chauvinism and that anyone who doesn’t go along is “a fifth column.”

This has important consequences for those whom the Kremlin has attacked. Everytime when some of those equate the Kremlin and Russians, he is pouring water on the mill of official Moscow because the current war is not an ethnic one but a war of values. It is a fight of the pro-Soviet and the post-Soviet.”

“Ukraine today,” Kazarin continues, “has become the frontier of a struggle” between those who want to go back to the Soviet past and those who want to go beyond it. That is an issue which divides people in many ways: “the ending of their last names and blood are very much secondary matters.”

Anyone who suggests that Russians are capable of making their own choices independent of the Kremlin is likely going to be accused of being “an agent of the State Department” because “such Russians are a threat for the Kremlin: by their nature, they contradict everything that official Moscow has affixed on its banners.”

“The Kremlin is compromising ‘Russian’ in a consistent way by attempting to cut off this same ‘Russian’ any path for retreat.” Putin and his regime “are privatizing it and imposing one single treatment of their own past and future. The right to an alternative system isn’t recognized, any disagreement” with the official line is treated as betrayal.

“The aesthetic archaic quality is being combined with the ethical,” Kazarin says. “Soviet flags with state homophobia; Soviet rhetoric with a system of public denunciations. Self-respect built on the absence of respect and a denigrating attitude to others.”

The Kremlin just has one problem in this regard, the Ukrainian commentator says. “All this construction is stillborn. It is impossible to win in a battle for the future if in the present you are attempting to revive the past.” Moreover, “the Kremlin’s effort to monopolize all things Russian is nothing more than ordinary raiding.”

When people say there is a war going on with Russians, everyone should be aware that “this is not so.” Instead, it is a war with the pro-Soviet past and with a Russian government whose leaders have nothing but contempt for Russians as an independent and self-standing people.

The good news is that many Russians are on the other side of the battle lines from the Kremlin, something that “pro-Kremlin writers declare this position a heresy.” That of course, Kazarin points out, “inspires hope” that the chief Russophobe in the world is now very much on the wrong side of history.

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Greek ‘No’ Vote Backs Angela Merkel Into A Tight Corner

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(EurActiv) — The resounding “No” uttered by the Greeks on Sunday offers yet more proof of their rejection of the vicious cycle of austerity. Angela Merkel now finds herself trapped between the will of the Greek people and the inflexibility of her finance minister.

The time for bluffing is over. After a week of campaigning in unthinkable conditions, with bank closures, cash rationing, panicking pensioners and media misinformation, the Greeks have once again said “no”. One could argue as to what this “no” is really worth, in light of the high rate of abstention.

But that does not change the fact that, in such dire conditions, more Greek voters came out in opposition to the creditors’ ultimatum than in favour of it.

Risking Grexit to avoid austerity

The Greeks chose to run the risk of Grexit over a new round of austerity and economic stagnation.

Greek voters do not want to leave the eurozone, but the message they sent to those who threatened them with expulsion from the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) if they voted “No”, including Jean-Claude Juncker and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, is this: Greece is prepared to take this risk to avoid being sucked into the never-ending spiral of austerity.

Rejecting the European logic

Once again – for the second time in six months – the creditors can clearly see the scale of the rejection of the policies they have imposed on Greece since 2010. And once again they must realise that their strategy of fear cannot continue to work.

While Angela Merkel said on Sunday that Alexis Tsipras is “driving his country into a brick wall at full speed”, she must now realise, for the first time since 2010, that her scorched earth policy has failed. The Chancellor, who dislikes taking a firm stance, now finds herself faced with an extremely tough choice.

The Greek authorities are ready to get back to the negotiating table: they never saw the “No” as a vote to split from the eurozone, but rather as a bargaining tool to gain the upper hand in the negotiations.

Greece’s negotiators are in a stronger position with the support of their people, but they have extended an olive branch to their creditors. Angela Merkel must decide whether or not to accept it.

Inaction will lead to Grexit

If she refuses and continues to treat the Greek crisis as a purely financial issue, leaving it in the hands of the ECB and the Eurogroup, Greece will be left with no other choice but to leave the eurozone.

Their banks are in their death throes. The ATMs are empty. On Monday (6 July), the ECB decided to maintain emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to Greek banks, but made it harder for them to access the funds.

If no agreement is reached with Greece’s creditors, at the very least the ECB would toughen its conditions by devaluing the guarantees provided by the Greek banks to obtain the emergency liquidity. This would cause the Greek economy to grind to a complete standstill, at least for a few days, before negotiations could be reopened.

But if Berlin fails to cooperate, Greece would be forced to print its own currency in order to keep its economy working, and the downward slide towards Grexit would be inevitable.

Stopping the machine

Angela Merkel has the power to stop the whole machine. She can accept Sunday’s result and the decision of the Greek people and continue the negotiations based on the last Greek proposal. This took the core of the plan that the Greek electorate rejected, minus a few exceptions (for example keeping the 30% VAT reduction in the islands of the Aegean Sea, delaying the cancellation of the supplementary pension for the most vulnerable).

This is an acceptable compromise for the creditors. But Athens only accepted these sacrifices as part of the effort to restructure its unsustainable debt, as the IMF recognised on Friday (3 July). The Chancellor must also be prepared to discuss them.

Angela Merkel’s unrealistic promises

There has been a lot of talk about the “unrealistic promises” of Alexis Tsipras, but less has been said about another unrealistic promise: Angela Merkel told Germany she would get back the money Berlin had shovelled into Greece since 2010, as part of an extravagant and impossible financial package.

Demagogy can be found in the most unexpected of places, and now that Angela Merkel’s “unrealistic promise” has also been exposed, she may be forced to accept Athens’ request to renegotiate the future of the Greek debt.

The Chancellor’s responsibility and the future of Europe

This is a quandary for the Chancellor. If she continues down the current road, allowing the ECB, the Eurogroup and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble to make the decisions – they believe that Grexit could be a “temporary” measure that would not inflict heavy damage on the EU – she will have to take responsibility for the consequences.

First and foremost, these consequences will affect Greece itself. If Grexit turns sour, Angela Merkel will be confronted with a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.

She will also have to be prepared to go down in history as the leader that tore down what the previous generation had built up. The Economic and Monetary Union will become a fixed exchange rate system. It will be possible to leave or be expelled at any time. This will be an economic mechanism devoid of political direction.

By refusing to accept the reality of the unsustainability of Greek debt, the Chancellor also runs the risk of pushing Greece into unilateral default. She and her finance minister would then have to explain to the German taxpayers that their inflexibility cost them far more than they were trying to protect. Finally, she will have to take responsibility for the under-played economic risk of Grexit, at a time when fears of an economic crash in China are growing…

The Bundestag will refuse to enter into any negotiations without the Chancellor’s approval. And without the go-ahead from the Bundestag, the process is blocked. The German Chancellor has been backed into a tight corner.

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Profile: Amir Reza Khan Of Indian Mujahideen

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Amir figures in the list of 50 most wanted terrorists India wants to be deported from Pakistan. He carries a reward of Rupees one million on his head.

By Bibhu Prasad Routray and Manoj Kumar Panigrahi*

Born on 5 January 1978, Amir Reza Khan, alias Parvez (also known as Rizwan and Muttaki) was one of the four sons of Ishaque Ali Khan and Hasina residing in Beniapukur’s Mafidal Islam lane in Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal. Ishaque Ali Khan managed a small construction business and a large joint family. According to the National Investigative Agency (NIA) Amir’s permanent address is in Gaya district’s Mheyan, in the state of Bihar, which is the hometown of Ishaque Ali Khan. Amir’s life was significantly influenced by that of his elder brother Asif Reza Khan.

The riots following the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 had a profound impact on Asif, a graduate from Maulana Azad College in Kolkata and a meritorious student. He gradually turned religious and started attending Tablighi Jamaat congregations. Asif joined relief committees formed to assist the riot victims. In 1993, he was arrested under Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 (TADA) and sent to Tihar jail in New Delhi where he spend five and a half years before being released in 1999. Life inside the prison as an undertrial appears to have shaped Asif’s post-release career. He is said to have met Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh inside the jail. Ishaque Ali Khan claimed in an interview that he had to spend Rupees 4.5 lakhs to get Asif out. This loss of money ruined his business and made him a pauper. Ishaque Ali Khan said that after Masood and Omar Sheikh were released at Kandahar airport following the hijacking of IC 814 in December 1999, Asif revealed his association with them. Masood appeared to have made Asif even more religious. Asif once claimed that he himself has converted at least “12 persons to Islam”. Omar Sheikh appears to have played a key part in converting Asif into a terrorist and put him in charge of carrying out explosions in New Delhi.

Over time, Asif, who had married and had joined his father’s business, emerged as an extortionist along with Amir Reza Khan. In 2001, Asif was arrested in Delhi after he fled Kolkata for his involvement in the abduction of businessman Partha Roy Burman, vice-chairman of the Khadim group, a Kolkata based footwear company the same year. Subsequently, the Gujarat police took Asif to Rajkot in connection with the abduction of two diamond merchants there a few months ago. On 7 December 2001, according to the police, Asif tried to attack the constables by snatching an AK-47 rifle from one of them. None of the two policemen he had allegedly fired at was hurt. Yet, they opened fire and killed him with the explanation that he was trying to escape.

The Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), founded in 2001, in the memory of Asif Reza Khan, and controlled by underworld mafia leader Aftab Ansari alias Farhan Malik from Dubai, was involved in the terror attack on the American Center in Kolkata on 22 January 2002 to avenge the encounter death of Asif. Five police personnel were killed and 20 others injured in the attack. Incidentally, Aftab also spent time in Tihar jail where he had briefly met Omar Sheikh in a jail hospital.

Apart from the revenge factor, founding of the ARCF also represented the nexus between terror and organised crime. The Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami (HuJI), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the JeM, along with the underworld elements like Ansari and Amir Reza Khan were involved in the founding of the organisation. Both Asif and Amir had developed linkages with the Persian Gulf region and were also involved in arms trafficking. A cache of explosives, arms and ammunition including RDX, hand grenades, anti-personnel mines, pistols and rifles seized in November 2001 in the Patan district of Gujarat in November 2001 revealed this nexus. Following his brother’s death, Amir left Kolkata leaving behind his wife and daughter. He is known to have fled first to Bangladesh, then to Sharjah, UAE before landing in Pakistan, where he is currently based under the patronage of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Although Karachi is identified as his location in many reports, he is believed to have been frequently shifted between cities and ISI safe houses.

The attack on the American Center in Kolkata was Amir’s first terror operation, which helped raising ARCF’s profile. Amir, who operated as a deputy to Aftab Ansari, took over the organisation after Ansari’s arrest in Dubai few days after the attack. Ansari was deported to India on 9 February 2002 without extradition proceeding formalities, an incident that went down as the first ever counter-terrorism cooperation between India and UAE. A psychology graduate from Banaras Hindu University, Ansari was sentenced to death by a sessions court and the Calcutta High Court upheld the same in 2010. However, in May 2014, a Supreme Court bench commuted the death sentence ruling that this case cannot be equated with the 2001 Parliament attack case or the shootout at the Red Fort in 2000. Ansari has been sentenced to life in 2009 in the abduction case of Partha Roy Burman.

Operating in an area populated by illegal migrants from Bangladesh near Habibpur, along the Indo-Bangladesh border in the Malda district of West Bengal, ACRF benefited from HuJI which had lent it some of its experienced cadres. ARCF got most of his initials funds through a series of abductions in Varanasi, Surat and Kolkata, with Amir managing the extortion rackets targeting businessmen from Pakistan. In February 2010, for example, a managing director of a five-star hotel in south Kolkata received an extortion call from Amir demanding Rupees 20 crore. The ARCF is also thought to have run explosives across the Bangladesh-India border.

ARCF’s gradual marginalisation, mostly because of the neutralisation of its leaders, was made up by Amir Reza Khan with the founding of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) in 2005. IM was established with Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) cadres and with logistical assistance from HuJI. Amir headed the IM till 2008 and played a key role in each of the IM’s terror strikes targeting Indian urban centres. The 2008 Batla House encounter changed the IM’s operational structure. Following the encounter, a number of IM operatives fled to Nepal. Amir was responsible for providing logistical support to these cadres. However, his failure to do so led to an acrimonious spat with Riyaz Bhatkal and his brother Iqbal. In the subsequent years, ideological differences and IM’s position vis-a-vis the Al Qaeda created further divide. Amir is reported to be inclined towards working along with the Al Qaeda in support of a larger caliphate.

Amir figures in the list of 50 most wanted terrorists India wants to be deported from Pakistan. He carries a reward of Rupees one million on his head.

*Dr. Bibhu Prasad Routray is Director of Mantraya and Manoj Kumar Panigrahi is a lead researcher at Mantraya. This brief has been published under Mantraya.org’s Profiling Terror project.

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Say ‘No’ To Greek Financial Irresponsibility – OpEd

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Now that the Greek public has thumbed its nose at Greece’s international creditors by voting “no” in a referendum on their most recent bailout offer, negotiations with Greece on further bailouts should be summarily terminated. Alexis Tsipras, the leftist prime minister of Greece, was audaciously attempting to use the vote to strengthen his hand with these creditors. He was essentially slapping the face the people who are, in effect, giving his country money, because they are not giving enough! It’s time to let Greece swing freely in the wind.

In the long term, this “tough love” policy will benefit Europe, the world financial system, and even Greece itself, although not without a lot of self-induced short-term pain. But wouldn’t a Greek default on its debts and exiting of the euro currency cause domino effects with other financially weak countries that would cause disaster in the eurozone? That outcome is unlikely because the economies of Spain, Portugal, and Italy have improved somewhat and the European Central Bank has offered to “do whatever it takes” to support these nations by buying their bonds—probably also a mistake, but Spain and Portugal have at least made some substantial economic reforms, on which Greece is now reneging. So financial contagion from the total collapse of the small Greek economy, which has only 2 percent of the value of eurozone GDP, should be limited.

Other countries, such as Ireland, Latvia, and Slovakia, have also had to take their countries out of the dark age of overregulation and undergo painful government austerity programs that temporarily raised unemployment. If Greece is allowed to renege on the terms of its bailout, these other nations may also backslide—for example, Spain’s anti-austerity movement might also be strengthened.

Yet amazingly, leftist economists, such as Paul Krugman in his recent piece in The New York Times, foist the blame on international creditors for not validating Greece’s long-standing gross financial irresponsibility by canceling some of its debt:

The campaign of bullying—the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out office—was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense.

What’s more, they weren’t. The truth is that Europe’s self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients—and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding. A “yes” vote in Greece [on the creditors proposed bailout] would have condemned the country to years more of suffering under policies that haven’t worked and in fact, given the arithmetic, can’t work; austerity probably shrinks the economy faster than it reduces debt, so that all the suffering serves no purpose.

First of all, even if the creditors were trying to get rid of the irresponsible and arrogant Greek government, they are not; they just want to try to collect some of the money they are owed—at this point, who could blame them? Also, Krugman’s Keynesian economic orientation, which erroneously believes that government fiscal stimulus creates real prosperity in the private economy, wants to artificially prop up the Greek economy so that it can pay its debts. But in the long-run, real prosperity has to be earned by haircuts to still-expensive government programs, including pensions—the Greek’s are still high by Eastern European standards—and more economic reforms that deregulate the Greek economy and labor markets. Such short-term austerity is painful, but is the only thing that will return Greece to genuine economic growth—rather than a temporary government sugar high of artificial prosperity, which makes things worse in the long term. Unfortunately, apparently the long-profligate Greeks need to learn this lesson the hard way.

And Americans may need to do so too if the dollar is ever stripped its status as the world’s reserve currency. That crutch has allowed the U.S. government to amass an ever-ballooning public debt—which now stands at a gargantuan $18 trillion. And this status as an immense debtor nation could actually eventually trigger a flight from the dollar as the reserve currency to the currency of a creditor nation, such as the Chinese renminbi. Thus, Americans should learn from the calamity of Greek financial irresponsibility by curing their own in advance—by substantially cutting all government spending across the board (both defense and domestic spending)—or face eventual financial cataclysm.

This article was published at and reprinted with permission.

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Ralph Nader: Letter To Jeff Bezos

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Dear Mr. Bezos,

I just learned that Mr. Paul E. Misener, VP of Global Public Policy for Amazon is testifying on Tuesday July 7, 2015 before the Senate Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security. The hearing is on the topic of “Technologies Transforming Transportation: Is the Government Keeping Up?”

I understand that Amazon plans to endorse a proposal at tomorrow’s hearing supported by special trucking industry lobbyists to force every state to allow oversized, extra-long trucks pulling double 33 ft. trailers, so-called Double 33s. These trucks are dangerous and deadly and countless opinion polls show overwhelming public opposition to allowing bigger and heavier trucks on our roads and highways. Every year on average about 4,000 people die in large truck crashes and 100,000 more are injured. This is equivalent to a major airplane crash every week of the year. Mr. Misener, on behalf of Amazon could make a very important contribution to the congressional debate going on right now about the anti-truck safety provisions contained in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill during his presentation to the Subcommittee by voicing opposition to the various anti-truck safety provisions contained in this bill.

Large trucking companies are lobbying Congress to gut and rollback important truck safety laws and regulations that will jeopardize safety and contribute to the needless carnage on our highways. In addition to the proposal overturning state laws and 39 states that now prohibit Double 33s, there are also provisions permitting truck drivers to work and drive as many as 82 hours a week and stopping an open federal government rulemaking looking at minimum insurance requirements for trucks and passenger-carrying buses. The Obama Administration is opposed to all of these attacks on truck safety.

I would be happy to talk with you or your staff about this legislation and the need for Amazon to advance highway safety and not deter the Washington Post from editorializing against such dangerous legislation.

My recent column on this important topic follows.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

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Will Humans Matter In The Wars Of 2030? – Analysis

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By Andrew Herr

Much of the future-looking discussion in national security circles today focuses on autonomous systems and cyber weapons. Largely missing from this discussion is a place for humans on the battlefield. Do today’s emerging and potentially disruptive technologies mean that humans will no longer be important in future warfare? A look at historical military operations and current technologies suggests the proper response is that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of man’s obsolescence have been exaggerated.

Back to the Future?

This is not the first time analysts have argued that human performance would be significantly less important in future combat. Stepping back to the 1960s, Navy and Air Force planners saw the radar and air-to-air missile age as forcing humans to take a backseat to technology. Missiles were the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of their day—unmanned, high-tech systems to match the speed and technology of advanced warfare. In their proponents’ vision, fighters would not get close enough to each other for dogfighting skills to matter, so the U.S. military largely discontinued specialized air-combat tactics training and even purchased the F-4 fighter without an internal gun.

The Vietnam War proved to be a rude awakening for the aviation community. The Navy and Air Force expected to have a major advantage over the North Vietnamese air force, but both Services were losing one plane for every two they destroyed in the first half of the air war. By 1969, both had serious initiatives to improve their performance. The Air Force diagnosed a failure of technology, and it spent its resources on improving missile and aircraft performance. In contrast, the Navy identified a failure in training. This led the Navy to establish the Navy Fighter Weapons School (better known as TOPGUN), which gave pilots realistic air combat training. The results speak for themselves. From 1970 to 1973, the Navy was killing more than 12 North Vietnamese planes for every loss, while the Air Force had not improved at all.1

While this demonstrates the importance of humans in the context of 1970s technology, will 2030s technologies change this calculus?

Insights from Future-Looking Wargames

Some potential answers to this question flow from a series of recent wargames sponsored by the Department of Defense (DOD) Rapid Reaction Technology Office. To identify what DOD should watch closely, the NeXTech wargames focused on technology trends by examining how the United States and competitors might use them (and might use them differently), their potential impact, and the legal, ethical, and policy issues these technologies could generate.

First and foremost, the structure of the wargames shows some areas where we rely on humans and are likely to continue doing so. While focused on future technologies, the wargames did not look anything like the futuristic military environment. Participants gathered in conference rooms to discuss scenarios outlined on paper. Although some wargames use computer simulations and sophisticated data presentation, the NeXTech environment is representative of the majority of wargames conducted for DOD. This is not intended to be a criticism; the structure made sense because the focus was on extracting ideas and judgments from people, not computer simulations. We still rely on human expertise because computers simply cannot match it.

The same is true of intelligence analysis. While analysts use software and other tools to aid their work, the final judgment lies in the hands of people. The story of Palantir Technologies, a high-flying provider of software to the U.S. national security community, highlights this. The story begins in the early days of PayPal. The Russian mafia and other criminal organizations were stealing so much money through fraudulent transactions that PayPal was in danger of failing. As a Silicon Valley–based company, PayPal’s management hired top computer scientists coming out of Stanford to design an automated system to catch fraudulent transactions, but initial attempts failed. PayPal succeeded only when the programmers changed course and designed a system whose purpose was not to solve the problem, but to help humans sort through large amounts of data to identify fraud. This software and the approach behind it gave birth to Palantir. If the growth of Palantir Technologies within the national security and commercial space is any measure, myriad organizations agree.

Google’s autonomous cars also demonstrate the value of human input to computers. Image recognition systems cannot effectively pick out a stoplight while driving down a street, but once programmers give the location of street lights to a computer, it is a trivial job to identify whether it is red, yellow, or green.2 Thus, today, humans are instrumental, and a broader lesson appears: there are tasks where humans excel and those where computers exceed human capabilities, and computers appear unlikely to close many of these gaps by 2030, even with research on cognitive computing and the structure of the brain progressing.

In a 2012 paper, even a group of leading scientists in neuroscience and biology argued that we are still in the early days of this work. Researchers still principally focus on single neurotransmitters (which act to carry certain messages in the brain) and a few neurons at a time, while there are approximately 100 neurotransmitters and 100 billion neurons that interact in ways that create emergent properties. Multiple highly funded research projects are starting or have recently started to develop a more holistic understanding of the brain. These will advance the field, but as Santiago Ramon y Cajal, one of the fathers of neuroscience, described, the neurons and the synapses can be like “impenetrable jungles where many investigators have lost themselves.”3

This is not to say that we should not be vigilant for unanticipated, nonlinear advances in science and technology, but today’s scientific and technological landscape suggests that the human brain will still substantially outperform computers in the highest level cognitive tasks in 2030. Furthermore, the competition is not simply between the brain and computers, but rather between computers and humans augmented by computers.

Humans or Computers? Both.

Gary Kasparov and the world of chess provide a valuable insight into the human-computer relationship. After decades of humans easily beating computers, Kasparov barely beat IBM’s Deep Blue machine in 1996, and a year later, the IBM computer won. The enormous computational power of computers could outmatch the best humans. This is not, however, the end of the story. Fascinated by the power of computers, but still recognizing the strengths of the human brain, Kasparov began to organize what he called Advanced Chess, games where human-computer teams competed against one another. Even as chess computers advanced, humans with relatively simple chess programs dominated chess-specific supercomputers. Perhaps even more interestingly, the winners are not necessarily grandmasters with high-end computers. In early tournaments, the organizers were surprised to find that chess novices who were expert at manipulating the computers beat the grandmasters with their computers.4 Thus, while the type of skills required changed, the human brain still gave a major advantage.

New approaches to computer algorithms and interface design will continue to enhance the joint performance of humans and computers, so for autonomous computers to reach primacy, their development will have to outpace not only humans, but also the advancing performance of human-computer teams. Taken together, these examples strongly suggest that areas such as operational planning, intelligence analysis, and command will almost certainly stay within the human realm.

Stuck at the Back Making Decisions?

While planning, command, and intelligence analysis are all crucial aspects of war, they only represent a fraction of the roles military personnel fill today, and they might be pushed to the rear if autonomous systems controlled the battlefield. However, as long as humans have an advantage in the areas of creativity and judgment, we will have a major role at the frontlines. Today’s special operations missions are one example: when missions have a significant degree of uncertainty, require the ability to adapt on the fly, and have the chance for major reversals, the adaptability of humans is invaluable.

Consider the complexity of the Osama bin Laden raid. Almost immediately upon arrival, one of the helicopters crashed. Once the special operators entered the compound, they needed to protect themselves (just as machines would need to), but they did not want to kill unarmed women and children, so they had to operate based on a combination of tactical and ethical inputs. Then people from the neighborhood started to approach the compound, and the team needed to handle an additional potential threat. Meanwhile, the mission not only required the identification and killing or capturing of bin Laden, but it also proceeded to an intelligence collection mission, collecting computers and files.

While it is possible to program some of these activities and contingencies into autonomous systems, this is no simple task, and we are still far from a world where autonomous systems can face the essentially unlimited complexity of the modern battlefield with the skill of humans. It appears that, for some time into the future, humans will continue to excel in diverse missions such as this one. Certainly, the bin Laden raid was special in terms of importance and sensitivity, but all military missions require multiple judgment calls and adaptations throughout their length, whether or not they are undertaken by special operators. To some extent, commanders could direct systems remotely, but the human brain is tailored to operate in conjunction with our senses, so not being present may rob humans—and thus, our human-computer teams—of part of our effectiveness. Being on the battlefield also enables human-human interaction, which is important for interaction with local populaces and, to some extent, with enemy forces, such as captured soldiers.

Furthermore, remote control requires connectivity, and this is not guaranteed on the battlefield of today or tomorrow. The issue of connectivity and the value of having military personnel in the midst of operations are highlighted by some of the very same technology trends that commentators suggest have the potential to replace traditional human roles. The simultaneous belief in the future effectiveness of autonomous systems and effective cyber tools is striking.

During one scenario played out in the NeXTech wargames, a fictional naval force sailed toward an island chain that the wargamers were assigned to defend. To do so, they chose to deploy cyber tools against the ships’ command and control systems to wreak havoc with their defensive systems and disable their engines in a sort of “on demand” Stuxnet attack. If the United States—or potential adversaries—is able to achieve this level of effectiveness with cyber tools, autonomous systems may be especially vulnerable because of the lack of humans in the loop who might be able to override certain commands or at least recognize that something is amiss. This creates a cyber-autonomy paradox: powerful cyber tools can turn autonomous systems, usually an asset, into a liability.

Humans are in no way perfect, of course, but our ability to identify patterns and integrate information holistically is superior to computers in many situations and is a tool that can help maintain situational awareness. Furthermore, without humans in the loop, it may be difficult for commanders to know when systems have been compromised, as feedback from a compromised system may not accurately represent its status, location, or activities. Humans will not be able to intervene against all types of attacks—shutting down an engine on an aircraft would still be catastrophic—but we may be able to intervene against misleading signals from sensors and other challenges.

The value of this is highlighted by a number of stories from the past few years that demonstrate that not all aspects of military systems are protected. In 2009, the media reported that Iraqi insurgents were viewing the video recorded by Predator UAVs in Iraq using $26 software because the signals transmitting the video to personnel on the ground were not encrypted.5 This particular weakness might not make the systems vulnerable, but it shows the difficulty of mitigating all potential weaknesses. Furthermore, it is worth remembering Joy’s Law (named after the founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy), which states that in all cases, the majority of the best people work for someone else. No matter how good our systems are, the majority of the best cyber operators and hackers will always be outside DOD.

Thus, while humans are hardly a cure-all for cyber attacks—we often enable the attacks by clicking on the wrong link or using flash drives—people may be able to mitigate the impact of certain types of attacks, such as inaccurate location information being fed into systems. We may also be able to communicate the problem so that commanders can engage defensive teams and systems to mitigate the effects of attacks. This does not mean that humans need to be on every platform, but it does suggest that it will be important to have humans near the frontlines.

The value of keeping humans in the loop to respond to erroneous data is perhaps best illustrated by the story of Stanislav Petrov. Then a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, he was the duty officer overseeing the Soviet early warning satellite system in September 1983 when he was alerted that the United States had launched a handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Tensions were high at the moment; the Soviet Union had shot down a South Korean airliner only weeks before, and the United States was about to begin major military exercises, which included nuclear weapons. However, Petrov did not believe the system. He figured that the United States would not launch a small number of missiles in a first strike. Ground radars did not corroborate the report, and he recognized the potential for the new satellite sensors and computer system to make a mistake. He declared it a false alarm, and in doing so, he prevented the alarm from potentially leading Soviet leaders to order nuclear retaliation. The cause of the false alarm was sunlight reflecting off high-altitude clouds.6

The Value(s) Proposition

Finally, cost, cost effectiveness, and bureaucracy will influence human roles. Humans are expensive because of the cost to train, house, feed, clothe, pay, treat, and insure military personnel, but machines cost money, too. For states or organizations without substantial resources, using humans is practical because it does not require the often very large, upfront, fixed cost of additional hardware. Furthermore, like humans, machines have ongoing costs for development, testing, upgrades, fuel, and maintenance. This means that humans are often more cost effective, even for well-funded military organizations, in positions where the technological solution is expensive or not yet mature. Looking at today’s technology, this still covers the vast majority of positions humans fill, and this appears likely to continue to 2030. Even if there is no longer a pilot in the cockpit of many drones, there are still hundreds of humans supporting each mission, from analysis to maintenance.

The issue of cost effectiveness is also influenced by bureaucratic tendencies. When looking at DOD, it is clear that there is a preference for more capable, more expensive technological systems. A graph often circulated in defense circles—Norman Augustine’s Law #16—shows that each successive aircraft DOD purchases is more expensive than the last and that we buy fewer units. A trend line on the graph points to a future where we will procure one aircraft, which will consume the entire defense budget. This tendency will push the United States away from cheaper disposable systems, which will likely further delay the day in which robots are more cost effective than humans in a range of roles.

The role of humans is also influenced by cultural factors within military organizations. The ethos of the warfighter is central to the culture of the military Services. While there are variations to each—pilots, submariners, Marines, and myriad others have their own mythologies—human traits such as bravery, skill, and honor are integral to their culture. So even as technology changes, cultures, which tend to change slowly without severe outside shocks, would have to change as well to significantly dislodge humans from the conduct of warfare.

Beyond Effectiveness: Social and Ethical Issues

A unique aspect of the NeXTech wargame series was the composition of the participants and the focus of one of the events on the ethical, legal, and policy implications of emerging technology. Almost all DOD wargames include military personnel and technical experts, but the NeXTech series also included journalists, lawyers, philosophers, and ethicists. As some of these participants have written about in other fora, autonomous technologies challenge our legal and ethical requirements to protect noncombatants and act discriminately.

In a scenario where a North Atlantic Treaty Organization–like force had to liberate a city from a conventional opposing force, participants debated how to approach the use of autonomous systems when targets were in close proximity to civilians. One participant asked, “If an autonomous system [accidentally] kills a civilian, is the commander responsible? The company that built the system? The individual who wrote the software code?” DOD has acknowledged this challenge at the highest levels, and it released special policy guidance on the development of lethal autonomous systems in a memorandum from the Deputy Secretary of Defense in November 2012.7

This is not to say that humans are free of mistakes but rather that we have accepted ethical, legal, and policy constructs to handle human error. This suggests that, even with the option to employ hypothetical highly effective military systems, we expect to continue to rely on humans in situations characterized by uncertainty for sociocultural reasons in addition to operational reasons. Looking to 2030, it seems unlikely that we will successfully be able to design, build, and trust autonomous systems with ethics and strategy hardcoded into them across the wide range of missions necessary to largely replace humans. Science fiction provides a number of insights into the challenges to doing so effectively.

But How Will We Keep Up?

While humans are likely to play a crucial role in the military operations of 2030, technologies will change the types of performance militaries require, and they may also change humans. To better handle the amount of data that sensors and systems provide about the battlefield, we will develop software and hardware systems to improve commanders’ and operators’ situational awareness—an example of human-plus-computer teams described above. For example, the F-35 pilot interface does not primarily rely on a heads-up display. Rather, the information display is built into the helmet so that wherever the pilot physically looks the system provides information. Even looking down provides a view of the ground from cameras with information overlaid on the visual, such as waypoints and enemy and friendly systems. While rife with problems throughout its development, by integrating multiple data feeds into the visual picture, the final version will hopefully enable the pilot to make better tactical decisions.

As is clear from the TOPGUN and Advanced Chess examples, training individuals to use technology will play a key role in enhancing effectiveness. As such, it will be important for militaries to invest in new simulation and training techniques, as well as to measure the effectiveness of these approaches. Measuring learning is only one aspect—measuring the effect of that learning is harder and almost certainly more important. At present, this is an area of weakness for the U.S. military, as performance is only rarely assessed in the context of how inputs such as training influence it, especially in realistic operational scenarios. While appropriate training can better enable military personnel to use technology, it will also be important to equip military personnel with the skills necessary to operate in the absence of certain systems—in line with the earlier discussion about the cyber-autonomy paradox. The need for navigation, air-traffic control, and myriad other areas in which military forces currently rely on technological systems will not cease due to digital disruption. Rather, operating in a technology-denied environment may be the critical skillset in future wars between sides that both possess high-end capabilities.

While these systems are likely to help, the amount of information, even if provided through well-designed systems, will require high levels of concentration and mental energy. For units operating even semi-autonomous systems from the battlefield, huge amounts of data, requirements for decisions, and self-protection responsibilities will pose major cognitive challenges. At the same time, physical exertion, sleep deprivation, and the psychological stressors of battlefield operations, including uncertainty and the potential for injury or death, will layer over this to only enhance challenges.

While mental energy is often used colloquially, studies suggest that this is a real concept. The vigilance decrement (vigilance is the scientific term for sustained attention) and decision fatigue are well-documented phenomena whereby humans lose effectiveness at paying attention and making complicated decisions over time in taxing situations. In a recent Air Force study, researchers asked Servicemembers to perform a task that required them to monitor a computer screen to identify whether small icons representing planes were flying toward or away from each other. Compared to the first 10-minute period, accuracy fell approximately 5 percent for each additional 10 minutes on task until it ended at 40 minutes—with the individuals at only 85 percent performance.8 This is mirrored in today’s operational force. Despite piloting the aircraft from air conditioned rooms in the United States, today’s unmanned aerial vehicle operators can only operate for a limited amount of time before taking a break to recover mentally.

Thus, while analytical systems, decision-support software, and other cognitive aids will help humans, this picture of future operations suggests that they will strain human capabilities; however, another set of emerging technologies has the potential to improve the ability of humans instead of simply helping us use our existing capabilities. Proven and emerging technologies in the field of human performance modification have the potential to enhance the military performance of personnel on the future battlefield. The U.S. military has used stimulants, such as amphetamine “go pills” and newer versions such as the cognitive stimulant modafinil for decades, but new technologies show the potential for more targeted and varied enhancement.

Returning to the Air Force study on vigilance, the group whose mental performance declined with time was the control group. Two other groups used a technology called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), which is widely used in academic laboratories and to date has a clean safety profile. tDCS passes a weak electrical current through the skull using electrodes taped to the forehead. The electrical current changes how easy it is for nerve cells in the brain to fire. In the Air Force study, tDCS positioned over areas of the brain involved in attention enabled the personnel to focus with no dip in performance throughout the whole 40-minute study. In other studies, researchers have demonstrated that tDCS can enhance the speed of learning (including in militarily relevant tasks, such as radar returns) and improve threat detection.

tDCS is only one of a range of technologies that show the potential to enhance human performance. For example, research taking place in the U.S. military and in academia has identified hormones and neurotransmitters in the blood that are associated with the ability of special operators to perform at high levels despite extraordinary physical and mental demands and highly stressful environments.9 If the relationship is causal, this research suggests a potential route through which performance could be enhanced or maintained over long missions.

Returning to the NeXTech wargames, the organizers specifically tasked one group with examining applications of human performance modification technologies. Commensurate with this article’s vision of the human role in future warfare, participants did not focus primarily on traditional types of physical enhancement. Rather, to improve the ability of a hypothetical American force, participants were most interested in enhancing cognitive traits. They wanted more perceptive individuals with the ability to stay clear headed under stress and who needed minimal sleep to operate at high levels of effectiveness.

This vision of the future soldier is far from the berserkers of many science fiction depictions, and participants had good reason to steer away from old conceptions of super soldiers; in most cases, they would be counterproductive from the U.S. point of view. Indiscriminate killing would go against both the laws of war and good tactics and operational art, as local populaces often play an important role in achieving long-term objectives. The value of performance enhancement technologies will only be emphasized by the fact that each Soldier, Marine, Sailor, and Airman is likely to play an even more important role in future conflicts. To destroy a target in World War II took thousands of individuals manning hundreds of bombers. Today, one pilot can achieve the same destruction. Tomorrow, one individual may control tens or hundreds of partially autonomous systems.

While this technology area has substantial promise, there are important ethical questions surrounding military use, many of which are summarized in a report by Dr. Patrick Lin of the California Polytechnic State University.10 A key factor is that demonstrating the effectiveness of human performance technologies in military environments will require testing in military populations. At the same time, governments, including the U.S. military, have historical records of conducting unethical research, especially for national security purposes. Even today with strict controls in place, conducting ethical research in military environments is challenging because the chain of command is inherently—and necessarily—coercive (military personnel must follow orders for the system to function properly). Informed consent is the cornerstone of modern research ethics, but this environment makes it difficult to separate true consent from the influence of the chain of command, although ongoing research overseen by review boards shows that it is possible to gain true informed consent. There is also the possibility that enhancements inadvertently harm individuals, affect others’ perceptions of those who take them, give some individuals a leg up on others, and may affect reintegration into society. These are important questions deserving of careful consideration, but likewise, we should also ask whether we have an obligation to provide enhancements that make our military personnel less likely to be injured or killed on the battlefield.

These and other issues will affect interest in performance enhancers and the willingness of DOD to provide them to military personnel. While analyzing these issues, we must also be cognizant of the fact that from the individual military operator’s point of view, there is substantial interest. In a recent survey of Army personnel, more than 50 percent take supplements weekly, and based on 5 years of discussions with military personnel on the topic, I can say comfortably that interest in performance enhancement is very high.11 Nonetheless—and somewhat ironically—the same ethical factors that are likely to keep humans on the battlefield will also push some countries to limit the ways in which they enhance warfighters’ capabilities.

Not all actors abide by the same ethical boundaries, though, so this is also an area of potential asymmetry going forward. Nonstate actors, especially terrorist groups, may have the least compunction about using these technologies. If an organization is willing to conduct suicide attacks, then it probably would not care about long-term damage from an enhancement: news reports suggest that the terrorists who carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai used stimulants such as cocaine to stay up for long periods of time.12

Stepping Back

A confluence of technical, tactical, operational, strategic, and ethical reasons strongly suggests that humans will still play crucial roles in all aspects of warfare over the next two decades—and probably much longer. As highlighted above, we must be vigilant for nonlinear advancements in science and technology that could change the way states and other actors conduct military operations. But we should also be cognizant of the emerging tools to enhance human-computer interactions and human performance directly, which may shift the balance even more toward humans. The interactions between humans, human-computer teams, and autonomous systems on the battlefield of the future and how to optimize these are little-studied areas, but as the TOPGUN and other examples above demonstrate, we must work to find the right balance because it will likely provide a considerable advantage—and when we find this balance, human performance will continue to drive a large part of military effectiveness.

Source:
This article was originally published in the Joint Force Quarterly 77, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:

  1. Joe Braddock and Ralph Chatham, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Training Superiority & Training Surprise (Washington, DC: Defense Science Board, January 2001), available at <www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA386579.pdf>.
  2. Adam Fisher, “Google’s Road Map to Global Domination,” The New York Times, December 11, 2013, sec. Magazine, available at <www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/googles-plan-for-global-domination-dont-ask-why-ask-where.html>.
  3. A. Paul Alivisatos et al., “The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of Functional Connectomics,” Neuron 74, no. 6 (June 2012), 970–974.
  4. Gary Kasparov, “The Chess Master and the Computer,” The New York Review of Books, February 11, 2010, available at <www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/>.
  5. Stuart Fox, “Insurgents Hack Predator Video Feed With $26 Software,” Popular Science, December 17, 2009, available at <www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/insurgents-hack-predator-video-feed-26-software>.
  6. Pavel Aksenov, “The Man Who May Have Saved the World,” BBC News, September 26, 2013, available at <www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831>.
  7. Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” November 21, 2012, available at <http://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d3000_09.pdf>.
  8. Jeremy T. Nelson et al., “Enhancing Vigilance in Operators with Prefrontal Cortex Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS),” NeuroImage 85, part 3 (January 15, 2014), 909–917.
  9. Charles A. Morgan et al., “Relationships among Plasma Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate and Cortisollevels, Symptoms of Dissociation, and Objective Performance in Humans Exposed to Acute Stress,” Archives of General Psychiatry 61, no. 8 (August 2004), 819–825; and Charles A. Morgan et al., “Relationship among Plasma Cortisol, Catecholamines, Neuropeptide Y, and Human Performance during Exposure to Uncontrollable Stress,” Psychosomatic Medicine 63, no. 3 (2001), 412–422.
  10. Patrick Lin, Maxwell J. Mehlman, and Keith Abney, Enhanced Warfighters: Risk, Ethics, and Policy (New York: The Greenwall Foundation, January 1, 2013), available at <http://ethics.calpoly.edu/Greenwall_report.pdf>.
  11. Harris R. Lieberman et al., “Use of Dietary Supplements among Active-Duty U.S. Army Soldiers,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92, no. 4 (October 1, 2010), 985–995.
  12. Damien McElroy, “Mumbai Attacks: Terrorists Took Cocaine to Stay Awake during Assault,” The Telegraph (London), December 2, 2008, available at <www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3540964/Mumbai-attacks-Terrorists-took-cocaine-to-stay-awake-during-assault.html>.

The post Will Humans Matter In The Wars Of 2030? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

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