The ancient maritime and overland Silk Routes have been revived. Its modern incarnation, driven by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (B&R), stands on the verge of connecting the Eurasian landmass, East Africa and Western Europe into a single trading matrix.

Many Asian communities were defined by the ancient Silk routes. The Knanayas of the Malabar Coast, for example, were notable players in the western segment of the Maritime Silk Route. The symbol of the community remains a ship which, as folklore goes, had once flown the “Flag of David” – illustrating the rich tapestry of panoramic Silk routes.

Both the ancient overland and maritime Silk routes involved a Babel of tongues, a variety of creeds and ethnicities, and a cornucopia of goods. It stabilized Asia in a way conquests could not.

Until the European arrival in Asia, conflicts from India to China were largely internal affairs, unlike the West where the commonalities of creed, a common Caucasian ancestry and a common language of diplomacy (Latin; later French) did not prevent continental-scale slaughters that peaked with each phase of enlightenment, industrialization and colonization.

Such a contrast offers an important lesson: The Silk route trades bridged distances; smoothed differences; and brought mutual prosperity through an organic “prosper-thy-neighbor” process. For the millennia, this trading ethos left identities and societies intact, obviating invasions or the imposition of external laws.

The language of wider communications was determined in situ. Money talked sans a “reserve currency”; trust was paramount; and the merchandise exchanged hands. Religious wars were either rare or localized.

Destructive western trade paradigm

The Silk route modus vivendi remains the antithesis of colonial-era depredations that were repackaged as the White Man’s Burden. One of the first burdens relieved upon the “discovery of Asia” in 1498 (Vasco da Gama; Calicut) was the immolation of Malabar’s ancient Christian and Jewish communities at well-lit stakes, paralleling actions better known as the Catholic or Spanish Inquisition.

This presaged the general pattern of European trade, where concepts, ideologies and laws formalized institutionalized looting into “trade.” Lex Britannica best epitomized this rapacity.

Accordingly, Asia’s self-image began to wilt. The splendor of the Golden Chersonese – the fabled Malayan peninsula – was reduced to the sooty grind of indentured labor. Chinese coolies were shanghaied to extract tin from dull Malayan cassiterites while tens of thousands of Tamils died from clearing Malaria-infested forests for a colonial transplantation called rubber.

Natives no longer had a voice in how they produced goods and at what price.

The recently signed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement follows the same meme. The “partnership” was forged without input or scrutiny from citizens of the 12 signatory nations.

Even US Congress members were denied a copy of draft proposals to evaluate the benefits or otherwise to their constituencies. Despite the signing of the agreement, trade unions, policy-makers, economists and housewives on either side of the Pacific Ocean are still wondering how the TPP will impact them.

Can one call this trade pact – which relentlessly excluded key stakeholder inputs – a “partnership”? Its shape and structures were framed in classic colonial fashion – without native consent.

A public relations blitz soon followed its signing, with headlines proclaiming how it “could forever change global growth” or become the “new gold standard of global trade”.

This was eerily reminiscent of a similar media cannonade during the US presidential elections seven years ago; one that promised “hope and change,” but which instead wrought systemic global regression, despite the highbrow teleprompter-defined rhetoric.

Silk Route alternative

Unlike the still conceptual TPP, Beijing has begun building tangible infrastructures along the Silk Routes of yore, with each spur creating new economic opportunities. A new airport will facilitate trade, tourism and regional connectivity. And more jobs.

While the TPP employs a Western “concepts-first approach”; China lays the physical groundwork for brisk trade. The laws, customs and languages of natives are rarely affected. They either participate in a project or profit from goods transiting through their sovereign territories.

That is precisely what frustrates the West. This commonsense approach works, since Beijing has no desire to own or mould the soul of its trading partners; it just seeks prosperity via infrastructure-boosted markets. There will be no sanctions threatened against a Uganda or Kyrgyzstan on account of cultural differences over gay marriage.

Past allegations against China’s prison labor are now eclipsed by wanton US profiteering from its multi-billion dollar prison-industrial complex.

Secrecy shrouds the whimsical preconditions of the West’s free-trade model. The B&R model, au contraire, thrives on burgeoning networks of highways, ports, warehouses, power plants, hotels and fiber-optic connectivity; bringing first-class facilities across oceanic ports and remote continental outposts.

While the West depicts the B&R initiative as a neo-colonial stratagem, one only has to reprise Silk Route history for a reality check. The ancient maritime silk route was pivotal to the rise of the Malay Peninsula’s most celebrated kingdom – the Malacca Sultanate. It was a place forged by transoceanic trade, particularly from India and China.

“Chindia” was a Malaccan reality centuries before the term was coined. Indian, Chinese, Arabic and Persian customs, cuisine and words were organically adapted until a unique culture emerged from obscurity. It was here, in an indispensable node of the Maritime Silk Route, that modern Malaysia witnessed it first nascent sprouts.

It was here that the peninsula’s most celebrated literary classic, the Hikayat Hang Tuah, was inspired. Naturally, this period is fondly referred to as the Glorious Age of Malacca (Zaman Kegemilangan Melaka).

The glory ended when Portuguese cannons appeared off the coast of Malacca in 1509.Two years later, Malacca fell and there were new rules to live by with new terms of trade, all benefiting the conquerors. The locals, once producers of goods and services, now became workers in a larger imperial scheme.

The TPP, whatever its pretensions, echoes a similar pattern. Now is the time for Asia to jump on the Silk route caravans and vessels—a time-tested path to prosperity that preserves cultural and national sovereignty.

*This article was originally published as a Panview OpEd at CCTV.com. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com.

By Nick Cunningham

October has been billed as a pivotal month in which indebted shale companies would see their credit lines cut, precipitating a faster consolidation in the industry that would sow the seeds of a rebound.

But banks appear to be taking a more lenient approach than expected. A new Jeffries report says that only $450 million in borrowing bases have been cut, across more than 20 companies. That amounts to just 2 percent of available credit lines, much lower than the 15 percent reduction expected by analysts. In other words, banks are allowing drillers to continue to borrow, which could delay the inevitable balancing needed in the market.

The possibility of a wave of bankruptcies could be put on hold, after banks have been “surprisingly gentle,” as Jeffries put it in their report.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that indebted shale companies can right the ship. It may just delay the adjustment for oil markets. “It looks generally to me like it’s sort of kick the can down the road approach that’s being taken at this point but that really just pushes the day of reckoning into sort of the first quarter of next year,” Dave Lesar, Halliburton Chairman and CEO, told investors on October 19 when reporting quarterly earnings.

In fact, Jeffries sees the spring of 2016 as a more critical deadline for struggling drillers hoping to keep their credit lines open. “We think that banks are generally giving producers more time to improve financial health and that spring ’16 redeterminations could be much tougher without significant commodity price improvement,” said Jonathan Wolff, an analyst with Jeffries, according to SNL.

It is not a total win for the companies that are trying to hang on. Maintaining access to finance can come at a price. Jeffries expects that companies will have to offer up more collateral or agree to more restrictive covenants.

Furthermore, Jeffries says that a large volume of high-yield bonds will mature in the coming years, raising the likelihood that refinancing will be needed. Bond markets have essentially been ruled out as a new source of finance for high-yield producers. That means that credit lines with lending institutions become the last resort. E&P companies could resort to loans in order to pay off maturing debt, not unlike charging one credit card to wipe clean the debt on another.

Still, in the short-term, the leniency from lending institutions could delay what many had hoped would be the start of a rebound. Kicking the can means that production may not fall as fast as expected, which will mean oil prices may not begin to stage a rally as quickly as some had hoped.

Moody’s Investors Service sees the contraction as too little to make a significant dent in the global supply gut. The ratings agency cut its forecasted oil price for 2016 to just $48 per barrel. “Although capital spending has dropped substantially and the U.S. rig count has declined by more than half, U.S. production has only recently begun to decline,” Moody’s concluded in a recent report. “Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Russia have both increased production to their highest levels since the early 1990s.” Moody’s sees global oil production rising by 1 million barrels per day in both 2015 and 2016.

Not only are Russia and Saudi Arabia keeping production elevated, new gains in oil production from the Middle East could offset any declines in the United States. Iraq has steadily increased output this year despite low oil prices and security issues related to ISIS. Also, although there was a lot of speculation about Iran’s ability to return some capacity to the market, such an outcome appears more and more likely. Iran’s oil minister insists that his country has secured buyers for 500,000 barrels per day of oil, the amount that Iran believes it can add pretty much immediately after sanctions are lifted.

That will keep the pressure on U.S. shale. But for now, banks are helping to keep the most indebted companies alive.

Article Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Day-Of-Reckoning-For-US-Shale-Will-Have-To-Wait.html

The Syrian army killed the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) terrorist group, Egypt-born Abu Suleiman al-Masri in Aleppo, a source confirmed to Sputnik Saturday.

According to the source, the terrorist was killed during a fight near the Tal-al-Karsani village outside Aleppo.

The Nusra Front is an Islamist armed group fighting the Syrian government. Damascus also combats the Islamic State militants and a number of opposition forces.

This week the Russian Defense Ministry said Islamiс State was in talks with other terrorist groups operating in Syria about joining forces against the Syrian Army.

“Intercepted radio communications suggest that commanders of several large units of the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group have begun talks with leaders of the Islamic State terrorist organization about joining forces to contain the Syrian Army offensive,” Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday.

Spain has set an all-time record in terms of inbound tourists with 54.4 million visiting Spain in the first nine months of the year, in other words, 2 million additional tourists, posting growth of 3.8% on the same period last year, according to FRONTUR – the Inbound Tourism Survey, drafted by the General Sub-directorate of Tourism Information and Studies of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism.

The United Kingdom, with 12.7 million tourists, followed by France, with 9.1 million and Germany, with 8.2 million, were the top emitting markets in the first nine months of the year. Noteworthy increases were posted by the United States, up 23.1%, Switzerland, up 8.6% and France, up 6.9%.

All the main autonomous regions posted year-on-year rises, with the Region of Madrid posting the highest rise, up 10.8%, followed by Andalusia, up 6.6% and the Region of Valencia, up 4.2%.

If the trends over the summer months, between June and September, are analysed, Spain beat the previous record of 31.8 million inbound tourists in 2014, by almost 1 million (898,855), over the same period.

The month of September once again posted a new record since the FRONTUR survey began, with 7,166,208 inbound tourists and a year-on-year increase of 2.2%.

In September, the United Kingdom was once again the leading emitting market, with 1,854,995 inbound tourists to Spain, up 4.6%, followed by Germany, with 1,186,463, down 3.4% and France, with 1,018,970, up 5.2%. Noteworthy rises were posted in inbound tourists by the United States, up 33%, which maintains its excellent rate of growth over the last few months, as well as by the Netherlands, up 13.3% and France, up 5.2%.

Catalonia was the top destination region for tourists visiting Spain in September, with 1,797,996 tourists, a decline of 0.1%, followed by the Balearic Islands, with 1,692,080 tourists, down 0.2%, while Andalusia, with 1,012,448 tourists, posted a rise of 6.4%

By Ghazanfar Ali Khan

Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman held talks with visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday, discussing bilateral relations and the security situation in the region with special reference to Syria.

Kerry also met with high-ranking Saudi officials including Adel Al-Jubeir, foreign minister, exchanging views on key regional issues including Syria, Israel-Palestine conflict and Iran. The talks also focused on bilateral relations and a range of other subjects.

American embassy officials, contacted by Arab News, refused to comment on Kerry’s visit and his talks.

Kerry, currently on a regional tour, arrived in Riyadh late on Saturday from Amman, where he said he had made progress in talks with Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

In Jordan, Kerry outlined steps including Israeli-Jordanian surveillance, which may ease tensions over Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem following weeks of violence.

Speaking in Amman after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdallah, Kerry said Israel had given assurances it had no intention of changing the status quo at the site.

Violence has flared throughout Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in recent weeks. More than 52 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israelis at the scene of attacks or during protests in the West Bank and Gaza since Oct. 1.

The police slaying of musician Corey Jones in South Florida highlights one of the most reprehensible aspects of law enforcement in America — the ubiquitous undercover cop.

As yourself: What was a police officer doing driving along the highway at 3 in the morning wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap in the posh neighborhood of Palm Beach Gardens? He wasn’t undercover for the purpose of infiltrating a gang. He wasn’t trying to fit into some commercial or street scene where there was a lot of suspected crime going on. He was just driving around randomly on patrol in a community known for its paucity of crime. And when he stopped at the dark entrance ramp to I-95, allegedly to check on what he claims he thought was an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road (where Jones’ van had stalled out on him and he was waiting for road assistance to arrive), this cop didn’t turn on any flashing police lights, which at least would have suggested to anyone in the van that he was a almost certainly a cop.

He just walked towards the van.

Now if you were someone like Jones, a lone black musician with some valuable drums and equipment in your vehicle, and you saw someone like Officer Nauman Raja approaching you in the dark, you’d be scared — especially if Raja had his gun drawn, as he well might have, given how he was approaching the vehicle unannounced.

The last thing you’d suspect would be that he was a police officer.

In Jones’ case, we know he had a licensed handgun. In the US that’s not illegal. In fact, many Americans say it’s a common-sense precaution. You can agree or disagree with that argument, but it was a purely legal thing for him to do.

If Officer Raja was actually on patrol hoping to “catch burglars” as claimed, he should certainly have been equipped with a car that could flash its lights alternately, if only for safety purposes. Parking on the side of a highway or on ramp late at night presents hazards simply because tired or inebriated drivers may not see the stopped vehicle and could plough into it injuring or killing both officer and driver. As well, as mentioned above, it would also allow the officer making a stop to alert the driver that he is a cop, and not a criminal. Many undercover police cars are even equipped with flashing blue lights which appear when flipped on, but which are not visible otherwise. Clearly, Raja’s vehicle either did not have those signal options, or he chose not to use them for some inexplicable reason.

We can’t know what actually transpired that led to Jones’ death, because neither Raja’s undercover van nor his body were equipped with a videocam, but the fact that Jones’ body was located 80 feet from his van indicates that he was trying to flee his unidentified assailant. His gun was not fired, which is important. He may never have even drawn it or removed it from his van. The only gun fired was Raja’s and it was fired three times, reportedly hitting Jones in the side and the arm.

How far away from Raja was Jones when Raja fired? We’ll have to wait to learn that. If it was at some distance, we have a clear case of murder by cop: shooting a fleeing suspect. If it was at close range, an honest exam by an honest medical examiner (sometimes a scarce commodity!) could indicate whether Jones was facing his shooter, or was turned away in some fashion.

But even if Jones had been holding a gun, his killing by this undercover cop must be seen as a criminal act, not as an unfortunate misunderstanding. Had Raja identified himself clearly from the outset, with lights and the holding out of a badge, and with a call-out in a loud voice announcing his identity to anyone who might be in the van, it would not have happened.

Why would Jones have fled from a cop? He wasn’t doing anything wrong. His car was broken down, he had a legal firearm he had no need to hide, he had a legally registered van and a valid drivers license. If he fled, the car belonged to him so he would have been easily located and caught and arrested later anyhow on some charge like failure to obey an officer or something. Clearly he fled because he was afraid for his life. Had he been shot once already by the time he began to run? If so, a second or third shot killed him, and that would be murder–at least in any honest and fair society — just as it was in the North Charleston, SC cop slaying of Walter Scott earlier this year.

Justice being as skewed as it is in today’s United States, it’s likely that Officer Raja will escape any serious charge, but no one could successfully argue that his victim Corey Jones should be dead today.

There needs to be a national campaign to rid America of undercover cops. The whole idea reeks of police-state-ism. Sure, there can be times when an employing an undercover cop makes sense. I have a cousin who, while a police detective, worked undercover once as a “fence” to lure out a whole slew of crooks seeking to cash in on all the stuff they were burgling in his city. He let his hair grow, stopped shaving, and was playing a role. That’s a good use of undercover work. He wasn’t making arrests. He was gathering evidence on crimes and criminals. If he had made arrests, he would have clearly identified himself, ending the ruse. But he really didn’t have to. He was identifying the crooks and gathering evidence to be used against them. The crooks could be picked up later by officers in uniform, working with back-up and controlling the situation.

Going undercover to crack a crime syndicate can make sense too.

But driving around in unmarked cars just to look for people who might be committing minor non-violent crimes like burglary, or worse, for minor traffic violations, is reprehensible. It’s dangerous for honest citizens, it’s dangerous for cops, and it creates a sense of paranoia among the public: Am I being watched? Is that person going to attack me or rob me?

When retired international tennis great James Blake was attacked in broad daylight outside his hotel in mid-town Manhattan last month by an undercover cop, part of a team of cops investigating an alleged credit card fraud, he was damned lucky he wasn’t killed. The officer, James Frascatore, never identified himself. He just attacked Blake. Only after Frascatore had slammed his victim face-first onto the sidewalk and climbed atop him, yanking his arms violently behind him to cuff him, did Blake realize he had been assaulted by a cop. Had he been more successful in resisting, the incident could have easily ended not with the Frascatore getting in trouble, but with Blake being shot to death like Jones or strangled by a choke hold like Eric Garner.

And we’re talking about an unarmed man suspected (wrongly) of being a credit card fraudster, not a violent criminal.

Enough! No more undercover cops on patrol, or just trolling for busts. No more Corey Joneses!

After the Iranian Foreign Ministry welcomed the victory of the Liberal Party in Canada and expressed hopes that it would translate into an end to Canada’s “extremist policies”, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani was quoted as saying that bilateral talks with Canada should be held to “clear up a number of misunderstandings”.

Khaneh Mellat reported on Thursday October 22 that in a meeting with Piotr Dutkiewicz, co-director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Carleton University, Larijani said there may be some differences of opinion between the two countries, but Canada’s actions against Iran appear excessive, and he called for a dialogue to clear up “misunderstandings”.

On Monday, the Liberal Party defeated the incumbent Conservative Party in Canada’s federal election. Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, has been quoted as saying that his government would normalize relations with Iran.

Canada’s Conservatives, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, severed all relations with Iran, closing Canada’s embassy in Tehran and expelling Iranian diplomats from Ottawa.

The Third India Africa Summit will take place in New Delhi between October 26-30. Over 50 African countries are expected to participate with most of them represented by their heads of state or government.

This will be India’s most important and extensive outreach and will set the stage for even more economic and political interaction between India and Africa. A rapidly growing India needs a platform in Africa to reach out to interesting markets and venues to establish strong economic and trade partnerships.

Morocco could be the ideal gateway in Africa due to its close and strong relations that the north African kingdom enjoys in the African continent.

King Mohammed’s frequent trips in Africa were greeted with elation and many Moroccan and African observers assumed, that those royal frequent trips in Africa translate into a robust and activist Morocco Africa policy.

Those expectations were largely accurate when King ordered the launching of humanitarian and medical assistance to many Sub Saharan countries and urged both the Moroccan government and the private sector to engage more in Africa in stepping up their commercial and diplomatic ties.

Governance, Africa’s youth, and women’s empowerment, standard fare in Morocco’s Africa repertoire. Africa’s need for strong institutions rather than strong men in a honest effort to reach out to up-and-coming African leaders and entrepreneurs through a series of high-level forums; and promoting health and empowerment for women and girls.

But the major objective in those royal visits was the emphasis on bolstering Morocco.-Africa political, economic commercial and spiritual engagement. it speaks to Africa’s changing economic landscape, where opportunities—and competition—for investment are expanding, and where traditional donor-recipient relations are giving way to more mature partnerships.

The continent has made impressive economic progress in the last decade, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting average real GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa at 5.4 percent this year and 5.7 percent in 2014. High commodity prices—and high demand from China and others for mineral and energy resources—have contributed to this growth, and new oil and natural gas finds are setting the continent up for a hydrocarbon boom that will draw big new investments going forward. But sectors outside the extractive industries—telecommunications, transportation, construction, wholesale and retail, financial services—have played a major role as well, as has a growing consumer class. Other countries have seized the opportunity.

The Moroccan private sector has done much to encourage Moroccan investors to seek investment opportuntiites in Africa. In a win-win partnership Morocco conveys to African governments and citizens the comparative advantage of Moroccan private-sector investment versus other international investors—in terms of quality, transparency, technology and knowledge transfer, training, and systems development. And third, Morocco will seek to harness the capacities of its government agencies and private-sector partners to help improve the investment climate in African states. This will include technical assistance to strengthen government and institutional capacity and an expected announcement to partner in various fileds especially in infrastructure which has been a long-standing impediment to Africa’s economic and industrial growth.

As with past King’s trips to Africa, the tone of the visit always upbeats, focusing on opportunities and successes. Equally important objective of those trips aimed to build and sustain Morocco’s positive influence and partnership with African governments and publics. Violent extremist organizations have increased both in their geographic reach and their capacity to mount attacks. The epicenter has been Mali where extremist militia, some with links to al Qaeda seized two-thirds of the country until they were pushed back by French troops. Morocco has repeatedly voiced its concern that the threat could mushroom if groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb turn the whole region of Sub Saharan Africa into a sfe haven.

Across this region, the winds of change bring both promise and peril. So King Mohammed’s visits are seen as an opportunity, to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between Morocco and other African nations, to re-state Morocco’s unwavering commitment to Africa’s security and boost its economy.

The presidents of African countries that King Mohammed visited unanimously confirmed the need for a strategic alliance that has become greater than ever amid unpredictable changes in Africa. Morocco, through those royal visits, continues to seek peace, security and prosperity in the African continent.

In an unstable and uncertain sub-Saharan Africa the need for a strong alliance is greater than ever. It is the key to thwarting dangers to advancing peace. It’s the key to achieve a stable and secure and prosperous Africa that the Africans yearn for all and with all their hearts.

This unique Moroccan strategy was on display during the king’s tow-country jaunt. Projects are underway, spearheaded by Morocco, to electrify 550 villages along the Senegal River and bring affordable medicine to fight cholera, malaria, and diarrhea diseases to Africa’s poorest countries. At the same time, the king held brass tacks talks on boosting security cooperation—and in Senegal, the monarch convened a gathering of moderate Islamic leaders to talk about strengthening their role in providing an alternative to extremist ideologies. This royal visit confirms morocco’s keen interest to promote peace and prosperity in the African continent.

In fact, since his rise to the throne in 1999, King Mohammed has put the African continent among his top foreign policy agenda. He has visited many African countries launching socio-economic projects that seek to promote social development of Africans and at the same time offering opportunities for Africans to learn from Moroccan know-how to promote their economies.

Morocco, as has been stated by many international economic institutions, could become an economic and trade platform for African countries to reach out to Europe, the United States and Asia. Europe, America and Asia’s strong economic, political, and security ties to Morocco and strong economic, political, and security interests in greater Africa need to come together. It can be an economic boom at a time when a windfall is badly needed, and a boost to global security at a time when concerns about terror on the African continent are growing. Morocco is thus a great economic opportunity for India.

The capture of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan shows the Taliban ability to strike at urban centres away from their southern strongholds. The Afghan government is dependent on the continued presence of US forces and peace remains elusive.

By Sajjad Ashraf*

The caputure of Kunduz, albeit for a few days, late last month by the Afghan resistance – still branded as ‘Taliban’- raises questions of what next for Afghanistan? Kunduz is the northern most district of Afghanistan, adjacent to Kyrgyzstan, and links with Kabul in the south. The capture will have implications over the entire security preparedness of the Kabul regime.

Instead of soul searching after the fall of Kunduz, and with the ‘Taliban’ threatening Ghazni, the Afghan government, as usual, blamed Pakistan for the attack. Kunduz is nearly 1,000km away from the Pakistan border. This puts further strain on the testy Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.
Taliban still a potent force

Kunduz demonstrates the ‘Taliban’ ability to strike at urban centres far away from their traditional strongholds in Southern Afghanistan. The capture, while sending shock waves, means that ‘Taliban’ remain a potent military force and that peace will be elusive till a political settlement is reached with them or if they are militarily defeated.

Several reasons are attributed to the lack of resistance to the ‘Taliban’ onslaught. The ethnically based units – Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek and Turkmen actually reflected the divisions rather than diversity of the province, according to the New York Times. Pashtuns, who form the majority in Afghanistan, were largely left out of the arrangement, reinforcing their sense of alienation especially in northern Afghanistan.

Emboldened by this dazzling foray into Kunduz, the new Taliban chief Mullah Akhter Mansoor will find it easier to stamp his authority over the organization. The stunning seizure of an important city laid to rest, for now, any impression of fissures due to leadership struggle within the ‘Taliban’ movement following the announcement of Mullah Umar’s death. The Taliban are now more likely to adopt a tougher stand during the next round of negotiations with Kabul, if at all it takes place.

Kunduz an inside-out offensive

Many Kunduz residents admit ‘Taliban’ fighters hiding within the city in people’s homes led the assault in what can be described as an inside out offensive. There is a double blow here – that a significant number of Taliban fighters were able to evade the Afghan government security apparatus to camp within the city and second, the capture testifies to the growing disaffected local population, especially the Pashtuns, who were prepared to provide shelter to the resistance.

Kunduz also proves that ethnic and tribal loyalties and regional warlords are still a more powerful phenomenon than allegiance to a national government based in Kabul. And with several important posts still vacant, Kunduz’s fall demonstrates that the national unity government remains paralysed by inaction due to mutual hostility between Mr. Ashraf Ghani and Mr. Abdullah Abdullah. The credibility of the US brokered power sharing deal between the two bitter rivals therefore, comes under question.

President Ashraf Ghani’s attempts to make Kunduz as his new governance model, despite selecting a western educated Omar Safi, a political start-up, as governor also collapsed due to ethnic loyalties amongst the security forces and tenuous power sharing with Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

The city takeover was indeed a psychological blow to the national unity government and ‘ignominy’ for the Afghan National Army and the police.

With prospects of more such attacks from the resurgent ‘Taliban’ the Kabul regime is quite shaken. The real fear lies in the possibility if the ‘Taliban’ hold on to an area for a significant time it is likely to lead to defections thus denting Kabul’s ability to beat them back.

Most Afghan watchers agree that the ‘Taliban’ have extended their reach to more of Afghanistan now than at any time since 2001. Sources confirm to me that on an average 100 big and small ‘Taliban’ related violent incidents occur daily. The NYT reports that UN Assistance Mission closed four of its thirteen offices across Afghanistan during September due to security fears. These are the echoes of the worst of Afghan civil war.

Kabul dependence on foreign forces

Gulbuddin Hikmatyar the elusive head of Hizb-e-Islami believes that the Kunduz attack was stage managed so that the US forces can be made to stay back beyond their scheduled withdrawal by the end of next year. This is confirmed by President Obama’s announcement on 15 October of delayed draw down of US forces beyond 2016 – leaving the task of complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan on his successor.

The US decision to delay troops draw down costing US$14 billion annually confirms that the unity government in Kabul is unable to sustain itself without the US military presence. Similarly it is an admission that the Afghan National Army on which the US spent $65 billion since 2001 is unable to cope with the growing resistance to foreign presence in Afghanistan.

The road from here on is not easy. The Kabul government is unlikely to survive even in the medium term without foreign troops. Presence of foreign troops will continue to draw resistance. The ‘Taliban’ are gaining ground on pure nationalism.

After a period of bonhomie Afghan – Pakistan relations are on the slump. The Kabul government, instead of always shifting blame on Pakistan must take on responsibility of governance. With this … backdrop there is trouble ahead unless Pakistan’s concerns are also addressed and the two countries cooperate in handling a common problem.

*Sajjad Ashraf is an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He was Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Singapore 2004-2008. He contributed this to RSIS Commentary.

By Miguel Otero-Iglesias*

Our data show that the European Big Five (EB5) economies have lost considerable ground in their share of world economic presence, especially vis-à-vis the BRICS, although not so much against the N11. However, within the BRICS, the big out-performer (and hence outlier) is China. Differences also exist within the EB5. Here the big champion is without a doubt Germany. In this regard, the analysis presented here shows that over the past 25 years, the two champions of global economic presence are Germany and China. The UK has also shown considerable dynamism over recent years. France, despite being generally described as stagnant, has not done too badly – certainly better than Italy and Spain, which have recently been overtaken by India.

Analysis

In the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis (2007-09), and the subsequent European debt crisis (2009-ongoing), many scholars and pundits have claimed that Europe is inexorably in decline, and that economic and, consequently, political power is shifting from the West, especially from Europe, to the East, primarily to China.¹ Others, however, have contested this analysis, pointing to the fact that Europe is still one of the most wealthy trading and investment blocs, and hence arguing that its apparent decline is overstated.² In this ARI I will try to provide some empirical evidence to that debate.

By using the Big Five European economies (Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain, henceforth EB5) as a proxy for European global economic presence, I have employed the empirical data from the Elcano Global Presence Index from 1990 until 2014 to compare their performance with what are generally the groupings most cited when describing the increased global presence of emerging markets: the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the Next 11 (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam, henceforth N11).³

The data show that the EB5 economies have lost considerable ground in their share of world economic presence. Nonetheless, when we desegregate the data, we discover a number of peculiarities. The BRICS have closed the gap with the EB5 much more than the N11 have done, making the BRICS more interesting to analyse. Furthermore, within the BRICS, the out-performer (and hence outlier) is China; thus it could be argued that the rise of the rest might be better described as the rise of China. Interestingly, in recent years India has also performed well, and it could potentially become the new star of the BRICS. Russia, by contrast, has reached a plateau and might even reverse its gains.

Differences also exist within the EB5. Here the out-performer is without a doubt Germany. In this regard, the analysis presented here shows that over the past 25 years, the two champions of global economic presence within the EB5 and the BRICS are Germany and China, respectively. The complementarities of their economies have certainly helped to enhance their performance, which explains why their political leaders have recently invested so much political capital in strengthening their bilateral relationship.⁴ China and Germany feed each other in economic presence.

Within the EB5, the UK has also shown considerable dynamism over recent years, and it is (after Germany) the 2nd best performer in the group. Despite being generally described as stagnant, France has not done too badly – certainly better than Italy and Spain, which have recently been overtaken by India. Within the BRICS, the laggards are Brazil and South Africa, and especially the latter, which has barely increased its global economic presence over the past quarter of a century.

Europe down, BRICS up, and N11 square

When observing Graphs 1 and 2, one can see that the EB5 have lost ground both in general global presence and, specifically, in global economic presence. Not surprisingly, this loss of share has been more pronounced in the economic field, where both the BRICS and the N11 are strongest, since roughly 60% of their global presence relies on this indicator (see Graph 3 on the contribution of economic presence in overall presence). While in 1990 the share of general global presence of the EB5 was 24.2%, by 2014 it had decreased to 20.8%. This drop was even starker in economic presence, with the share falling 9 points from 26.9 to 17.9%.

Graph 2 also shows that the BRICS have over the past few years caught up much more forcefully with the EB5 than has the N11. While the BRICS went from a share of 6.1% in 1990 to 14.7% in 2014, the N11 increased only from 6.6% (a higher share than the BRICS at that time) to 8%. This may explain why since the term was coined, the concept of the N11 has drawn much less attention than that of the BRICS. Table 1, which shows changes in position within the economic presence ranking, helps us to understand this circumstance. Here one can see how, of the N11 countries, only South Korea and Turkey have moved up the ranks, with the former doing considerably better than anyone else in the grouping. This comes as no surprise. Over the past 25 years, South Korea has moved from a low-middle income to a high income country, with a highly competitive and globalised economy.⁵ By contrast, countries such as Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and even the Philippines have disappointed in this field. Finally, countries with large populations and therefore with enormous potential, such as Nigeria and Mexico, have merely maintained their positions (despite the former being a big energy exporter and the latter a manufacturing powerhouse).

The EB5 economies have all lost positions, although some more than others. Germany and the UK have only lost one position each, showing that their economies are still resilient to the competition coming from the global south and east. Still, it must be highlighted that Germany is doing better than the UK; in 2000 the UK was the 2nd global economic actor, and now it is the 5th, while Germany has maintained its 3rd position.⁶ France, for its part, has not lost as much ground as one might expect (it has lost three positions), demonstrating that it remains economically powerful. Certainly more so than Spain or Italy, which have lost six and five positions, respectively.

The data therefore show that the EB5 are in decline, but that the UK and Germany are holding their ground vis-à-vis the BRICS. More worrying is the performance of Italy and Spain, which need to undertake considerable reforms (reindustrialisation, further internationalisation, and more investment in education and high tech sectors) if they want to retain both their relatively high living standards and their global economic presence. To achieve this, they will need to resist the increasing competition coming from the best performers within the BRICS group, above all from China, which has climbed 15 positions since 1990 and is now the 2nd performer in terms of global economic presence after the US. Interestingly, despite its outstanding performance, China has climbed fewer positions than India, which has moved all the way from rank 39 to 1. This is significant because by focusing on China, we often forget India’s tremendous achievements.

EB5 still dominant in services and investments

Since our data divide the global economic presence of the different countries and groupings into five sectors (energy, primary goods, manufactures, services and investments), the next step is to undertake analysis in those sectors in which the BRICS and the N11 gain more ground (see Graphs 4 to 8). Here the empirical evidence reinforces the general trend explained above. The N11 grouping has under-performed compared to the BRICS in all five economic indicators. So for now, the real competitors for the EB5 remain the countries that comprise the BRICS.

Specifically, where the BRICS (and also the N11) do outperform the EB5 is in the field of energy. This is a structural factor that will be difficult to change in the short term, although the focus on renewable energy and shale gas might bring some changes in the long term. Energy is also a field that is highly volatile and dependent on the price of oil and gas. In this regard, the recent fall in the price of oil might reduce the global economic presence of the BRICS, especially considering that energy represents the highest single contribution (19%) to their total global presence.

When it comes to primary goods and manufactures, the EB5 remains on top of the three groupings, holding its ground in primary goods while gradually losing the race in manufactures. If the trend continues, it is very likely that in future years the BRICS will surpass the EB5 in manufacturing presence, despite all the rhetoric in Europe about reindustrialising the economy. Leaders in the UK, France, Italy and Spain have lately argued that one of their priorities is to revamp their manufacturing sectors, following the German example, but so far the effects have been minor.

Where the EB5 countries remain strong is in services and foreign investment. In these fields, not only have they not lost ground against the BRICS and the N11, they have expanded it, especially in the area of investments. Given that these sectors are larger in monetary volume and more attractive as regards added-value, and therefore offer higher margins, the decline of the EB5 vis-à-vis the BRICS might be less than commonly assumed. Europe remains a giant in services and investment. Of course, this does mean that a lot of European investment flows out of the continent, which explains why investment levels in Europe have dropped so much in recent times.

‘Chermany’ on the rise

However, looking just at the EB5 and the BRICS as groupings can be deceptive, because there might be considerable differences between the countries forming one or both of the groups, or even between countries across the two groups. To understand the trends in greater detail it is therefore necessary to analyse the performance of every single country – first overall in the global economic presence index, and then in each of the five economic sectors presented above. This is shown in Graphs 9 to 14 for the five countries that form the EB5 and the BRICS. The same could also be done for the N11, but due to space constraints such analysis will not be done in the present report.

Graph 9 is perhaps the most illustrative because it shows how the two biggest world exporters are Germany and China; in other words, ‘Chermany’⁷ have out-performed everyone else. This is a joint success because they have each fed the other’s economies over the years. Germany is the European country that has invested most in China, thus helping it to develop rapidly. This has made China a manufacturing powerhouse (see Graph 12) on the basis of German engineering. Especially during the global and European financial crises, Germany has benefited greatly from the growth of China. German machines are used not only for manufacturing, but are also essential to China’s real estate and infrastructure sectors.

On top of this, the newly emerging middle classes of China are particularly keen on German luxury cars, sales of which have skyrocketed over the past few years. On the other hand, Germany has also benefitted from cheap manufactured products from China, which have kept the purchasing power of the German population high. Thus, the interdependence between China and Germany is extremely strong. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue. What is clear is that on the basis of this robust economic relationship, Berlin and Beijing have strengthened their political partnership to such an extent that the German chancellor visits the capital of China at least once a year.⁸

After China and Germany, the next countries with the greatest economic presence are Russia and the UK, followed by France. As can be seen in Graph 10, Russia draws most of its strength from the energy sector, which means that the recent fall in oil prices will hit that country twice in the coming years. Falling prices will reduce Russia’s global economic presence in energy as well as in other variables, such as investments. If one wants to see the positive side, the fall in oil and gas prices might conceivably force the Kremlin to diversify its economy, which could increase Russia´s manufacturing sector; but so far this is merely a hope, rather than a well planned-out strategy.

The UK retains a lot of its presence thanks to services and investments (see Graphs 13 and 14), where it outperforms everyone else. The City of London, of course, remains an important asset with a tremendous global footprint. Where the UK has remained stagnant is in manufacturing – but so has everyone else, with the exception of the ‘Chermany’ tandem (see Graph 12). The UK experienced a notable jump in the export of primary goods from 2013 to 2014 (see Graph 11), but this appears to be mainly due to a one-off trend. Recently, a lot of gold stock has been shipped from the UK (especially from London) to Asia (particularly to India and China) via Switzerland, which has great refining capacity. In the primary goods sector, Brazil performs particularly well due to its agricultural products, but so does Germany, which exports far more primary goods than is normally assumed (especially copper and aluminium items such as tubes, but also processed food).

Italy and Spain sliding down

These data also show in more detail the weaknesses of Italy and Spain, which in recent years have been overtaken not only by the first two BRICS (China and Russia) but also by a third, India (see Graph 8). The rise of the other big Asian giant, with more than 1 billion people, can be explained by its minor advances in the export of energy and especially by its progress in the export of primary products and services (Graphs 12 and 13). It is well known that India excels in information technology, but it is also strong in various consultancy and advisory sectors, from call centres to medical treatment to educational support. Brazil, on the other hand, has very little to show in the way of services, and its manufacturing sector has declined. This might relate to the fact that Brazil has in recent years undergone a deindustrialisation phase, not least because of fierce competition from China.

The weaknesses of Italy and Spain can be located in the loss of market share in primary goods. In this regard, competition from Brazil is clearly hurting them in global presence terms. Also significant is their stagnant performances in manufacturing (although here Italy retains a higher level than Spain, explaining its greater economic presence overall) and in services (where Spain, though stronger than Italy, has just been overtaken by India). Finally, in terms of investments, Spain has reached a plateau, while Italy is about to be overtaken by China – which only 10 years ago was relatively absent from this field, behind even Brazil. Overall, Italy and Spain are performing worse than France, which is losing some ground in all sectors (except investments), but very gradually. In any case, all three Mediterranean countries –France, Italy and Spain– need to introduce a number of reforms (for example, reindustrialisation and more investments in value-added services) if they want to retain their fair share of global economic presence.

Conclusion

It is logical that big countries such as China, India or even Brazil should someday overtake the European countries, but this does not justify the stagnation that France, Italy and Spain have experienced in certain fields. Both the UK and Germany have proved that Europe can continue to be highly competitive and productive, and thus retain a good deal of market share in manufacturing, primary goods, services and investments.

Nonetheless, even if the EB5 countries were to enhance productivity, increase their dynamism, and accelerate their growth rates, the structural trend shows that global economic presence is gradually moving eastward.⁹ India and China have closed the gap over the past 25 years, and it is very likely that they will continue to do so. This, of course, means that if the EB5 countries want to continue to shape the norms and rules in the field of global economic governance, they will have to coordinate their positions much more and act in unison within the EU structures.

In this regard, it is worrying to hear an ever-greater number of voices from the best performing countries (the UK and Germany, but also France), calling for a renationalisation of their economies; in the UK there is even talk of leaving the EU (the so-called Brexit). Although these three countries still have a lot of global economic presence, and global presence overall (including military and soft), they will become mid-sized economies unable to compete with the US, China or India unless they join efforts. If they do not, their global economic footprint will only diminish faster.

About the author:
*Miguel Otero-Iglesias, Senior Analyst in International Political Economy at the Elcano Royal Institute | @miotei

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute and is also in Spanish: Impacto ‘Chimania’: Alemania y China, las grandes ganadoras de la globalización económica

Notes:
1. See Kishore Mahbubani (2008), The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Power Shift to the East, Public Affairs, New York; and Danny Quah (2011), ‘The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity’, Global Policy, vol. 2, nr 3, p. 3-9. For a review of the literature see Michael Cox (2012), ‘Power Shifts, Economic Change and the Decline of the West’, International Relations, vol. 26, nr 4, p. 369-388.

2. Andrew Moravcsik (2013), ‘Why Europe is the other Superpower in the 21st Century (and China is Not)’, paper presented at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Baltimore, 6/IX/2013.

3. Both concepts, the BRIC and the N11, were coined by Jim O’Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, in 2001 and 2005, respectively.

4. Hans Kundnani & Jonas Parello-Plesner (2012), ‘China and Germany: Why the Emerging Special Relationship Matters for Europe’, Policy Brief ECFR 55, ECFR, May.

5. Oh-Seok Hyun (2012), ‘South Korea miracle sets shining example’, The National, 14/VI/2012.

6. Despite the fact that the UK has surpassed Germany in global presence, as shown in Iliana Olivié & Manuel Gracia (2015), Elcano Global Presence Index 2015, Elcano Royal Institute.

7. This concept was first used by Martin Wolf (2010), ‘China and Germany unite to impose global deflation’, Financial Times, 16/III/2010.

8. Hans Kundnani (2015), The Paradox of German Power, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

9. As pointed out in Iliana Olivié & Manuel Gracia (2013), Elcano Global Presence Index 2012, Elcano Royal Institute.

If you’re into quaint, you can visit a historic village, restore some antique furniture, or for far less trouble pick up a mainstream analysis of the U.S. military from 40 years ago or so.

I just happened to read a 1973 book called Military Force and American Society, edited by Bruce M. Russett and Alfred Stepan — both of whom have presumably updated their views somewhat, or — more likely — veered off into other interests. The problems and trends described in their book have been worsening ever since, while interest in them has been lessening. You could write a similar book now, with the numbers all larger and the analysis more definitive, but who would buy it?

The only point of re-writing it now would be to scream at the end “. . . AND THIS IS ACTUALLY A MAJOR PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH URGENTLY!” Who wants to read that? Much more pleasant to read this 1973 book as it was written, with its attitude of “Welp, it looks like we’re all going to hell. Carry on.” Here is an actual quote from near the end of the book: “To understand military expansion is not necessarily to arrest it. America’s ideology could involve beliefs which are quite true and values which are quite genuine.” This was from Douglas Rosenberg, who led up to that statement with 50 pages on the dangerously delusional myths driving U.S. military policy.

An earlier chapter by Clarence Abercrombie and Raoul Alcalá ended thus: “None of this should be taken as an indictment . . . . What we do suggest is that . . . social and political effects . . . must be carefully evaluated.” Another chapter by James Dickey concluded: “This article has not been a call for relieving the army entirely of roles with a political context.” Of course, it had been just that. Didn’t these people realize that humanity just might survive for additional decades, and that copies of this book might survive as well, and that someone might read one? You can’t just document a problem and then waive it off — unless you’re Exxon.

The heart of the book is data on the rise of the permanent war economy and global U.S. empire and arms sales with World War II, and the failure to ever return to anything like what preceded World War II. The authors worry, rather quaintly, that the military might begin influencing public policy or conducting foreign policy, that — for example — some officers’ training was going to include studying politics with a possible eye toward engaging with politicians.

The warnings, quaint or not, are quite serious matters: the military’s new domestic uses to handle “civil disturbances,” the military’s spying, the possibility that an all-volunteer military might separate the military from the rest of society, etc. Careful empirical studies documented in the book found that higher military spending produced more wars, rather than foreign dangers producing higher spending, that the higher spending was economically damaging, not beneficial, and that higher military spending usually if not always produced lower spending on social needs. These findings have by now of course been reproduced enough times to persuade a climate change denier, if a climate change denier were to hear about them.

The real quaintness, however, comes when this group of authors in 1973 tries to explain militaristic votes by Congress members. Possible explanations they study include constituent pressure, race and sex of the Congress member, ideology of the Congress member, and the “Military Industrial Complex,” by which author Wayne Moyer seems to mean the Congress member’s affiliation with the military and the level of military spending in the member’s district or state. That any of these factors would better explain or predict a Congress member’s vote on something militaristic, than a glance at the war profiteering funding used to legally bribe the member in recent election “contributions” seems absurd in 2015.

Yet, there is of course a great deal of truth to the idea that Congress members, to one degree or another, adopt an ideology that fits with, and allows self-respect to coexist with, what they’ve been paid to do. Campaign “contributors” do not just buy votes; they buy minds — or they select the minds that have already been bought and help them stay that way.

To understand all of this is not necessarily to arrest it, but it damn well should be.

Originally published here.

By Daniela Vincenti

(EurActiv) — Stuck in an existential crisis, the European Union must shake-off its fears, revisit its values and achievements, and claim back its self-confidence, Frans Timmermans said in Brussels on Thursday (22 October).

“Europe is going through an existential crisis,” said European Commission First Vice-President, speaking at the traditional annual State of Europe event of Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank. “What was unimaginable before now becomes imaginable: the disintegration of the European project,” he said, noting that the refugee crisis has brought this situation to the fore.

Discussing with EU grandees the root causes of the depression enveloping the continent, shattered first by the financial and Eurozone crisis, the Ukraine crisis, and subsequently the overwhelming influx of refugees, Timmermans warned against being taken over by fear.

“If fear dominates, people go looking for confirmation that the fear is justified,” he said, stressing that the politics of fear is being exploited by populist movements.

Refugees are humans not just numbers

Timmermans blamed politicians across the political spectrum for having become too practical and having abandoned the speech based on values. “We started talking about practical solutions to things like engineers instead of politicians,” he said.

That is particularly evident in the refugee crisis discourse. Talk about numbers and figures has progressively dehumanized the debate. “If politicians would speak about refugees thinking more about what they would do if they were in that situation, I think we could win the debate,” he said.

Sickly Europe

The financial crisis has spread the virus of mistrust and infected EU leaders, EU grandees agree. Divisions between North and South over austerity measures, and the Stability and Growth pact, has pushed out caricatures of lazy Greeks and German Nazi which are unacceptable, Timmermans said.

“If we compare the conclusions of the European Council fifteen years ago with the ones of today, every element needs to be negotiated at the highest level so that not one word can be construed in the right way. That is a blatant manifestation of distrust between member states,” he said.

“We are in a situation today where we lost track of what we share or the common destiny we should be building and we are looking especially at the differences between us. This is a true European illness,” he continued, adding that we constantly look for scapegoats and differences.

Friends of Europe President, Viscount Etienne Davignon, echoed the distrust among EU leaders, saying that in the past, divisions always were mended by a sense of complicity which does not exist anymore.

“We have to restore pride in our strategy. We should not be ashamed of what we have done,” he added, echoing Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who spoke at the dinner prior the event.

Self-confidence in demand

More than pride, there is a real need for self-confidence, argued instead Timmermans.

“For the first time since WWII, the middle class feels that their children might be worse off than they are and that creates a lack of self-confidence and that permeates in all our democratic structure,” he commented.

To fix the lack of self-confidence and pride, Timmermans insisted for a real ‘retour to values.’

“The European ideals have still a strong support among the populations across Europe,” he said.

Europe cannot be communicated. Communication has been overplayed. “This has been done. Propaganda has been tried. It does not work,” he said urging for a discourse based on policies.

“If we are leading on policies, on setting the agenda, then we can be convincing,” Timmermans insisted, admitting the younger generation has a role to play if they break free of the silos social media has created around them.

We have now in Europe the healthiest, the best educated, the best networked generation in our history – the Dutch Commission first vice-president said. “That is a very good starting position. But there is an inability of getting organized. There is a feeling that if you put it on FB that’s good enough. It’s not. Society needs more structured organisations if you really want to change things,” he added.

For Europe to regain public trust, it has to regain its demographic soul,” said Zoe Konstantopoulou, former speaker of the Greek Parliament. “To regain the trust of the people, it should go back to trusting its people and to respecting them.”

Part of a mysterious group of young hackers who stole confidential and work-related information from CIA Director John Brennan have spoken to RT, revealing why they targeted this senior official and what they’ve got planned for the future.

The resulting embarrassment caused by the group who are believed to be in their early 20s, highlights not only the poor email security of a number of senior intelligence officials in the US, but also the secrets within – such as the security clearance application Brennan submitted to the CIA on enrollment, containing the most confidential information any person could wish to protect.

RT managed to have a brief Twitter exchange with one member of the shady hacker group – before they immediately deleted the account – and contacted another member by phone for an interview.

The user @IncursioSubter was rather open about certain details of their identity: “I’m in the UK and my bio on Twitter stated that I was arrested for computer misuse acts, so people know I’m in UK. Age under 22,” the user said.

The young hacker praised former NSA contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden for revealing to the world the truth about American intelligence agencies and the fact they spied on their own population.

Asked why they had a preference for US targets, neither @IncursioSubter nor @Derplaughing – whom we spoke to later – said they wish to restrict themselves to just the one country.

“We’ve mainly planned the US because they’ve been funding Israel more for Palestine to be slaughtered and war crimes that’ve been turned [a blind eye to]… so it’s mainly for US but we also have plans for UK governments too,” @IncursioSubter said.

The user @IncursioSubter also mentioned why they decided to target the director of intelligence and how the group managed to carry out the hack, mentioning that “because he’s in high government” and that they fund Israel.

“It was relatively easy. We just pretended we worked for Verizon and that we needed additional information about Brennan,” something that is often considered the biggest mistake that countless online manuals on cyber protection warn people about.

“They were basically stupid enough to believe whatever we say without first verifying our identity. That was the first major problem.”

A conversation then ensued and the hackers called Brennan’s home.

The distressed director asked what they wanted. “We jokingly said ‘two trillion dollars.’” Then he said, “Really, how much do you want?”

“We then said, ‘We just want Palestine to be free and for the US government to stop funding Israel to kill innocent Palestinians.’”

Brennan hung up.

Asked what they felt was the most important piece of information they leaked, the hackers said “Probably the security clearance application. We’ve embarrassed the agency more than we’ve damaged it.

“The head of CIA shouldn’t be using any personal emails to discuss work,” @IncurioSubter said about the questionable choice of AOL as an email server for the highest intelligence official in the US.

“He should also be required to use an email service that requires two factor authentication. I know Mr Brennan and authorities probably want all of us in jail; however, I don’t think the agency can track us down. We used basic social engineering because we didn’t need advanced social engineering to compromise his account,” they explained.

The two also told RT they’re planning to release more incriminating information on other officials on November 5, but refused to discuss details of the operation.

From the tone of the conversation, it seem like they’re far from done.

“People think we’re doing it for fame but as we have mentioned, it’s basically to get a point – never trust a government, we want to expose governments for what they are doing, for their lies, for them funding war crimes and such,” as @Derplaughing concluded.

Vladimir Putin has decided to listen to Russia’s hawks and intensify his confrontation with the West, a clear defeat for the so-called “peace party” in Moscow but quite possibly a good thing for Ukraine, according to Russian commentator Andrey Piontkovsky.

By receiving Syrian dictator Bashar Asad, Putin indicated that he has no intention of leaving Syria anytime soon but instead will support the current regime in its struggle with “terrorists,” who is this case are deemed to be “all the opponents of the Syrian president” (nv.ua/opinion/piontkovskiy/partija-mira-v-kremle-poterpela-porazhenie-75474.html).

“For Ukraine,” Piontkovsky says, “this is good news for two reasons.” On the one hand, it suggests that Putin will be tied down in Syria. And on the other, it represents a defeat of the Kremlin’s “peace party” which for Ukraine is “the most dangerous” group in the Russian political elite.

The reason for that conclusion, suggests, is that the war party in Moscow has already suffered a defeat as far as Ukraine is concerned: Putin is not now prepared to launch a new wave of aggression because of his focus on Asad. But the Kremlin peace party has lost as well – and Ukraine is the beneficiary.

The members of the Kremlin peace party are just as much imperialists as the members of the war party, but they believe that they can achieve at least some of their goals by appearing cooperative and securing a grand bargain with the West in which the West would welcome Russia’s involvement in the fight against ISIS and betray Ukraine to Moscow in exchange.

But Putin’s extremely hard line on Syria makes that impossible. The West is upset with what he is doing there, and it has already made it clear that further misbehavior on his part will lead to more sanctions and more isolation, not some grand bargain of the kind some in the Kremlin had hoped to organize.

If Putin’s tilt to the war party and against the peace party is “good news for Ukraine,” Piointkovsky argues, “it is at the same time very bad news for Russia and the Russian people because it points to a new place in which Moscow is bogged down with an inevitable raising of the stakes and the broadening of Russian involvement in the Syrian conflict.”

Bibi Netanyahu continues his (vain)glorious attempt to ride roughshod over Jewish history with his recent speech to the World Jewish Congress.  By now, you’ve heard the Israeli leader’s false claim that it was Hajj Amin al-Hussein, not Hitler himself, who planted the idea of exterminating European Jewry.  Bibi even manages to quote their entire conversation, which is quite a historical feat considering there is no historical record whatsoever of what they actually said.

Chemi Shalev tweeted that the false claim offered by Bibi that Hitler only wanted to expel, but not exterminate the Jews was advanced by none other than infamous Holocaust-denier, David Irving.  Which puts Bibi in the dubious position of earning the respect and admiration of neo-Nazis everywhere, including this “panegyric” from Daily Stormer.

What have we come to when we find Israel’s prime minister in agreement with neo-Nazis?  It’s so shocking the neo-Nazis themselves can’t believe it.

Others have written well refuting the false perversity of his account and linking it to the Israeli far-right’s obsession with turning Arabs into Jew haters.  One point I want to mention that others have not is that Hitler’s will to exterminate Jews didn’t originate with a single meeting with a single individual.  It is there in the pages of Mein Kampf, written in the late 1920s and he nurtured and developed the idea further as he came to power.  He didn’t need anyone to persuade him to commit genocide.  Nor was Husseini the sort of leader who would even have such a sweeping vision.

Husseini had a very particular and narrow focus.  He wasn’t interested in exterminating Jews.  He wanted to prevent Jews from populating Palestine.  He sought leverage against them.  He wanted an insurance policy in case Hitler won.

There is little difference between what he did, and what the Irgun did in negotiating with the Nazis; and the Haavara Agreement, negotiated by the Yishuv leadership with the Nazis.  Each of them believed the enemy of my enemy might be my friend.  Thus Britain, as occupying colonial power, was seen as the enemy.  Britain’s enemy might be their friend.

In addition, the Zionists were desperate to fill their ranks with Jewish refugees from Europe.  A bargain with the devil for a few thousands Jewish souls seemed a risk worth taking.  But don’t forget that in doing so, the Yishuv broke the anti-Nazi boycott founded by American Jewry.  Haavara gave the Nazis much needed cash and equipment that could fund the militarization drive Hitler ordered.  It’s also little-known that the Yishuv transferred nearly $700-million (in today’s dollars) between Germany and Palestine, which gave the struggling German economy a huge shot in the arm.

The leader of the Irgun who approved negotiations with German representatives was none other than Yitzhak Shamir, a future Likud Israeli prime minister.

So, if we wish to review the real historical record, as opposed to a Likudist fantasy version, we must examine the culpability of both sides in collaborating with the Nazis.

But I want to move in a different direction and link Bibi’s mangling of this part of the historical record with other instances in which he’s trashed Jewish history.  The Israeli prime minister actually wrote a book (who knew?).  Not a good book, but a book.  A bit of shameless hucksterism called, A Place Under the Sun, not to be confused with the Hollywood version of Theodore Dreiser’s, An American Tragedy, called A Place in the Sun.

Naturally, this portion of the book portrays alleged Arab collusion with the Nazis.  A sharp Israeli, living in Germany no less, printed a page from the book on Facebook and noted that in just a single sentence Bibi made no less than three errors.  Bibi’s sentence reads:

Egypt can boast of a worthy trove of war criminals, like the SS Gen. Oskar Derlewanger, who murdered thousands of Jews in Ukraine and was made Nasser’s chief of security.

Ron Leyser retorts that Derlewanger was a colonel, not a general.  That the SS officer never stepped foot in Ukraine (though he did murder Jews and Poles elsewhere).  And finally that Derlewanger died in 1945, well before Nasser ever came to power.  If there ever was a politician who murdered truth, it has to be Bibi.

Not for no reason, Sara Hirschhorn titled her Haaretz op-ed on this episode, The Death of Historical Truth.  Netanyahu is no stranger to such acts of negligent historical homicide.  About the BDS movement, which he called the “delegitimization campaign, he likens it to the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel:

They accused us of being the source of the world’s evil, they said we poison the wells of humanity, that we drink the blood of little children.

…What’s involved in this international de-legitimization campaign against Israel is bound up in something much deeper that…seeks to negate our right to live here.

Today’s activists on behalf of Palestinian rights are no different from those who accused us of drinking the blood of Christian babies.

Bibi’s tangential relationship to historical truth is ironic in one major way.  His father, Ben Zion Netanyahu, was once the personal secretary to Zeev Jabotinsky.  Later he became a noted historian of medieval Spain, who taught for many years at Cornell.  My inquiries about his work brought a response from a fellow academic that he was thought to be quite tendentious and not particularly well-respected.  Regardless, when your father was a historian and you play fast and loose with Jewish history, it says something about who you are.  That you are willing to betray everything for political benefit.  That history is nothing more than a magician drawing a rabbit from his hat.  You draw out of it whatever you need without regard to facts or truth.

This, sad to say, is what contemporary Zionism has become: a farce of epic proportions.  An ideology that bowdlerizes history for partisan purposes.  Which tramples on the memory of Jewish martyrs in order to gain and maintain political power.  There will come a day when Jews and the world turn their backs on such a travesty.  When Likudism is consigned to the dustbin of history.  I don’t know if it will come in my time.  But I hope to see it.

H/t to Ofer Neiman and Ronnnie Barkan for research assistance.

This article appeared at Tikun Olam.

One day, when we’re looking back on Guantánamo and apportioning blame to those who contributed most powerfully to its cruelty, and to keeping it open long after the most senior officials in two governments conceded that it should be closed, a spotlight will be shone on the lawyers in the Civil Division of the Justice Department who have worked so assiduously to prevent prisoners from being released.

I have criticized these lawyers occasionally, but I have rarely heard any criticism of them in the mainstream media, and yet, from the moment that the Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights in Rasul v. Bush in June 2004, they have been making life difficult for lawyers representing the prisoners, micro-managing their meetings with their clients and their travel arrangements, and often, it is impossible not to conclude, in an effort to obstruct the lawyers’ ability to represent their clients.

In addition, as I noted in an article in August, the Civil Division lawyers “have fought tooth and nail against every single habeas petition submitted by the prisoners, with just one exception — the severely ill Sudanese prisoners Ibrahim Idris, whose petition was granted unopposed in 2013.” I added, “Disgracefully, the Justice Department lawyers have repeatedly challenged habeas petitions submitted by prisoners whose release has already been approved by the Guantánamo Review Task Force,” the high-level, inter-agency task force set up by President Obama shortly after taking office in January 2009, which issued its final report a year later, recommending 156 men for release, 36 for trials and 48 others for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial, on the alarming basis that they were “too dangerous to release,” but that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial.

In my article in August, I listed eleven cases in which a lack of joined-up thinking — in the Civil Division, but also, it must be said, in the offices of the president and the Attorney General — meant that men approved for release by the task force either had their habeas petitions successfully challenged by the Justice Department, or had successful petitions overturned by the court of appeals in Washington D.C., home to a number of ideologically biased judges whose obstruction of justice will also be remembered after Guantánamo finally closes.

My article in August followed a decision by the Civil Division to challenge the habeas petition of Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni prisoner, who was approved for release to Yemen by the task force, with 29 other Yemenis, on a “conditional” basis, dependent on security concerns being addressed. Now that the situation has worsened in Yemen, the entire US establishment is unwilling to repatriate any Yemenis, but as a result Ba Odah — and these 29 other men — could be released without any problems if a third country could be found that would take him in, as has happened with 18 Yemenis over the last two years.

Ba Odah’s lawyers submitted the habeas petition because they fear for his life, as I explained in an article in June. He weighs just 75 pounds — the weight one would expect a ten-year old to weigh, not a grown man — as a result of being on a hunger strike since 2007, and although he is regularly force-fed with a liquid supplement, the feedings are failing to ensure that he is putting weight on. He weighs just over half what he should to be healthy, and faces chronic organ failure and death.

The government, however — or the Civil Division, at least — disagrees, and last week argued against Ba Odah’s lawyers in the District Court in Washington D.C.

A hearing for Tariq Ba Odah

The judge, District Judge Thomas Hogan, is clearly not happy with Tariq Ba Odah’s situation, or with how the government has been dealing with the prisoners’ habeas rights.

That is, perhaps, not surprising. As the Miami Herald noted, Judge Hogan “wrote the guidelines for how the court at 333 Constitution Ave. would handle Guantánamo cases” after the Supreme Court revisited the prisoners’ habeas rights in Boumediene v. Bush in June 2008, and overturned Congressional efforts to erase Rasul v. Bush by denying the prisoners their rights. In Boumediene, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had acted unconstitutionally, and granted the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights.

That decision led to 38 victories for the prisoners, most of whom were released, until the appeals court — the D.C. Circuit Court — intervened for dark ideological reasons, effectively gutting habeas corpus of all meaning for the Guantánamo prisoners by insisting, ludicrously, that every claim, however risible, that was put forward by the government had to be regarded as presumptively accurate, unless the prisoners, generally shorn of resources in Guantánamo, could disprove it.

Adding insult to injury, the Supreme Court then refused to revisit Boumediene, to add necessary safeguards for the prisoners, and since July 2010 no prisoner has had their habeas petition granted, and most have abandoned trying, adding to the gloom of Guantánamo, where it often seems that it is close to impossible to get released, and that the law has completely failed.

As the Miami Herald described it, Judge Hogan, speaking about Boumediene and the prisoners’ right to challenge their detention in federal court, declared that he was “distressed at the failure of Congress and the Executive to effectively provide the legislation to execute that order.”

Instead, he said, prisoners who had been declared to be “no longer a danger to the United States” through executive review processes have been “languishing for years” at Guantánamo.

This indignation is worthy and just, and it is a great shame that the Supreme Court has not embraced the sentiments and decided to act upon them.

Omar Farah, a staff attorney at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents Ba Odah, pointed out that, although the Justice Department opposes his client’s petition for a court order, “the government does not oppose [his] release.” As he explained, “The government is here fighting for a principle” — and a disgraceful one, as Farah proceeded to describe: “the right to ‘warehouse him in a cell,’ force-feed him and then free him ‘in the time and manner of its choosing.’” Farah added that this was an “alarming and bizarre” interpretation of the Obama administration’s detention authority.

Judge Hogan was also not impressed by the government’s failure to release Ba Odah, given that it has had nearly six years to do so. As Human Rights First described it:

Judge Hogan seemed exasperated when he asked the government’s lawyers why Ba Odah hadn’t yet been transferred. While Ba Odah was born in Yemen, he lived in Saudi Arabia since he was two years old. Judge Hogan asked why he hadn’t been transferred there. It was a question very much worth asking, given that the Obama Administration has safely transferred seven detainees to Saudi Arabia already. Here, the administration could transfer a detainee unanimously cleared for release to a country that has proven it can provide the necessary security assurances to ensure his safe resettlement. Judge Hogan was not persuaded by the government’s claim that it is making efforts to find places to resettle all cleared detainees, saying he is “not quite sure what the government is really doing about transferring [Ba Odah].”

Important analysis by Jonathan Hafetz

Turning to the question of whether or not, under Army regulations and the Geneva Convention’s guidelines for the release of gravely ill prisoners of war, Ba Odah should be released because of how ill he is, which is at the heart of the argument, Jonathan Hafetz, Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law, provide a detailed analysis for Just Security. I’m posting passages from this article below, because Hafetz very clearly explained why the government’s case is so weak, and why the Justice Department lawyers involved should be ashamed, and also asked why the Obama administration specifically has spent too much time sitting on its hands.

Hafetz began by stating, “The case raises two overarching questions: First, whether principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing sick prisoners require petitioner Tariq Ba Odah’s immediate repatriation; and second, if they do, whether a federal judge can order this relief.”

As he then explained:

Ba Odah argues that US Army Regulation 190-8 (AR 190-8) requires his release. Chapter 3, section 12(1) of the regulation implements the United States’s obligation under Article 110 of the Third Geneva Convention (GC III) to repatriate prisoners who are seriously ill and unlikely to recover within one year. The government counters that AR 190-8 does not provide any protection here because Ba Odah’s detainee designation is not one to which the regulation’s repatriation provisions apply since he is a ‘former combatant,’ not a prisoner of war (POW) or ‘[o]ther [d]etainee’ awaiting classification. Additionally, the government argues that Ba Odah is not entitled to protection under either AR 190-8 or the Geneva Conventions because his medical condition is the result of his hunger strike and subsequent refusal of treatment. (He has, for example, opposed forced-feeding.) Such self-inflicted injuries, the government argues, citing Article 114 of GC III, are disqualified from protection under IHL.

Neither side cites direct precedent on the application of Article 110 to prisoners whose deteriorating health is due to a hunger strike. Ba Odah nevertheless has the stronger argument on balance. To defeat the applicability of AR 190-8’s repatriation provisions, the government resurrects the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) — the same flawed tribunal that the Supreme Court discredited in Boumediene v. Bush. The CSRT’s purpose was never to determine a prisoner’s status under the Geneva Conventions — POW status, for example, was not an option — but rather to confirm a prior executive branch determination that a prisoner was an enemy combatant. The CSRT, which was arguably part of a larger effort by the Bush administration to circumvent IHL protections rather than implement them, should not preclude application of AR 190-8 in this case.

On the merits of Ba Odah’s claim, the government relies principally on Article 114 of GC III, which, according to the Commentary, was intended to preclude repatriation for prisoners who ‘wilfully inflict injuries on their person.’ But nothing in the Geneva Convention’s text or in the Commentary suggests that this bar should apply to someone like Ba Odah, whose medical condition was not self-inflicted in the common sense meaning of the term — like injuries from a self-inflicted knife or gunshot wound — but rather are the secondary effect of a hunger strike undertaken to protest the illegality of his prolonged indefinite detention.

While the law may not be entirely clear, any doubts should be resolved in Ba Odah’s favor. The Commentary on Article 114 states that the fact of willful self-injury ‘must be clearly established,’ suggesting a presumption in favor of repatriation. Further, if Ba Odah remains at Guantánamo, there is a good possibility that his condition will worsen and that he will die. That possibility is difficult to square with relevant IHL principles. The sole legitimate purpose for continuing to detain uncharged prisoners at Guantánamo is to prevent their return to the armed conflict. But in Ba Odah’s case, that purpose no longer holds because he has provisionally been cleared for release based on a future threat assessment. The government cannot continue to claim legal authority to hold a prisoner after 13 years of imprisonment based on IHL principles when those principles now support his release.

Hafetz also noted, “The government’s final argument — that the court cannot order relief even if Ba Odah is legally entitled to it — is the weakest of all. This argument is a thinly veiled attempt to turn the clock back and re-litigate the basic claim that the US repeatedly fought and lost in a string of Supreme Court rulings: that determinations regarding prisoners at Guantánamo are reserved exclusively to the political branches.”

He explained how the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in Aamer v. Obama, “finding that courts can hear challenges to conditions of confinement in habeas, further underscores that there should be no dispute about the district court’s authority to decide Ba Odah’s motion.” That case, named after Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, ended up being used by Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian prisoner, to embark on a struggle with the government to get videotapes of his force-feeding and abusive cell extractions released — a case that continues, with media organizations seeking public release of those videotapes, while Dhiab himself has been released and resettled in Uruguay.

Judge Hogan was unwilling to order Ba Odah’s release, but he did not sidestep the responsibility to do something. As the Miami Herald put it, he said Ba Odah “might be entitled to a ‘Mixed Medical Commission’ to evaluate his health and, if the Pentagon didn’t order one or release him, the court might do it.” The newspaper added, “Under the commission formula, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter would authorize a three-doctor panel to evaluate whether Ba Odah’s health condition merits release. The military would name one doctor, the captive’s advocates would chose another and the third would come from the International Red Cross.”

Justice Department attorney Ronald Wiltsie was unimpressed. He argued that Ba Odah “was not entitled to the medical repatriation privilege” for prisoners of war that accompanies the medical panel review,” and called Ba Odah “a properly classified member of al-Qaida and the Taliban who is lawfully detained until the United States arranges his release.” He also urged Judge Hogan “to stay out of the case,” warning that the prisoners “might see starvation as a way out,” in the Miami Herald‘s words. “It will greatly hurt the efforts at safety and security at Guantánamo as other detainees look for a way to invoke medical relief,” Wiltsie suggested.

That shows a heartlessness that was not echoed by Judge Hogan, who, while pondering Ba Odah’s state of mind, stated, “I’ve got no question that we have a seriously ill petitioner,” at one point in the proceedings. As the Miami Herald also noted, he also “wondered aloud whether the US government was trying to send him ‘to a state where a government can take care of him properly,’” and “also spent considerable time wondering whether [his] poor health was a ‘self-induced illness,’ and whether if [he] were diagnosed with a mental illness that should influence consideration of his case.”

The government’s lawyers take the position that they “want him to cooperate with the Navy medical team at Guantánamo that conducts the forced-feedings,” but Omar Farah pointed out that Ba Odah, “held in solitary confinement and sometimes tackled and shackled and taken from his cell to the feedings, does not trust the military medical staff and requires independent outside care.”

While we await the government’s presumably inevitable challenge, it is also worth noting that Jonathan Hafetz criticized the Obama administration, not just the Justice Department, for failing to pursue a different course of action.

As Hafetz put it, “what may be most troubling about Ba Odah’s case is that the Obama administration is even fighting it at all. Obama has repeatedly vowed to close Guantánamo and transfer those remaining prisoners whom the US no longer has an interest in detaining. To that end, the administration is still trying to enlist foreign countries to help find homes for the numerous Guantánamo detainees it has cleared for transfer” (currently 54 of the 114 remaining prisoners).

He proceeded to ask, “So why dig in and fight the case of a cleared prisoner, particularly one in such perilous condition? It cannot help the US on the diplomatic front, as the State Department explained in its commendable, but ultimately unsuccessful, effort to persuade the administration not to oppose Ba Odah’s request for relief.

He also stated, “A judicial order directing Ba Odah’s release would have important practical consequences. In addition to aiding resettlement efforts, it would remove Ba Odah from the restrictions Congress has placed on detainee transfers, which exempt judicial orders. Those restrictions are likely to grow more restrictive in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2016, underscoring the imperative of judicial action as a counterweight to deliberate and irresponsible obstruction by Congress.”

In closing, Hafetz wrote that “Ba Odah’s case demonstrates Obama’s conflicted — if not borderline schizophrenic — approach to the prison’s closure, where the president’s lofty statements about needing to shutter Guantánamo are undercut by his administration’s court filings in individual cases designed to extend the confinement of its prisoners for no good reason.”

Here at “Close Guantánamo” we wholeheartedly agree, and call for there to be some grown-up and responsible oversight of the Civil Division, to speed up, rather than slowing down the closure of Guantánamo, as we approach President Obama’s last year in office, and the dwindling time still available to him to fulfill the promise to close Guantánamo that he made on his second day in office back in January 2009.

I wrote the above article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, who also heads the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), referred to the precise and responsible examination of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament) and also the SNSC, and the clearance of this agreement through legal channels, and issued important instructions regarding the observation of and safeguarding the country’s national interests. Enumerating nine-point requirements for the implementation of the JCPOA, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed SNSC Resolution 634, dated August 10, 2015, provided that the following provisions and requirements are observed.

The full text of Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter follows:

In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

Your Excellency, Mr Rouhani,
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Head of the Supreme National Security Council
May God bestow success upon you.
Greetings to You

The agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has already been cleared through legal channels following precise and responsible examinations in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, [parliamentary] ad hoc committees and other committees as well as the Supreme National Security Council. Since the agreement is waiting for my view, I deem it necessary to remind several points so that Your Excellency and other officials directly or indirectly involved in the issue would have enough time to comply with and safeguard national interests and the country’s best interests.

1. Before anything else, I deem it necessary to extend my gratitude to all those involved in this challenging procedure throughout all its periods, including the recent nuclear negotiating team whose members tried their best in explaining the positive points and incorporating all those points [into the agreement], critics who reminded all of us of weak points through their appreciable meticulousness, and particularly the chairman and members of the Majlis ad hoc committee [set up to review the JCPOA] as well as the senior members of the SNSC who covered some voids by including their important considerations, and finally the Speaker of Majlis and Members of Parliament who adopted a cautious bill to show the right way of implementation [of the agreement] to the administration, and also national media and the country’s journalists who despite all their differences of view presented a complete image of this agreement to public opinion. This voluminous collection of activity and endeavors and thoughts [spent] on an issue which is thought to be among the unforgettable and instructive issues of the Islamic Republic, deserves appreciation and is a source of satisfaction. Therefore, one can say with certainty that the divine reward for these responsible contributions will, God willing, include assistance and mercy and guidance by Almighty God because the divine promises of assistance in exchange for assisting His religion are unbreakable.

2. Enjoying decades-long background of presence in the very details of the affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you must have naturally realized that the government of the United States of America, neither in the nuclear issue nor in any other issue, had been pursuing no other approach but hostility and disturbance, and is unlikely to do otherwise in the future either. The remarks by the US President [Barack Obama] in two letters addressed to me on the point that [Washington] has no intention of subverting the Islamic Republic of Iran turned out to be unreal and his open threats of military and even nuclear strike, which can result in a lengthy indictment against him in international courts, laid bare the real intentions of US leaders. Political pundits and public opinion of many nations clearly understand that the case of his never-ending hostility is the nature and identity of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is born out of the Islamic Revolution. Insistence on rightful Islamic stances and opposition to the hegemonic and arrogant system, perseverance against excessive demands and encroachment upon oppressed nations, revelations on the US support for medieval dictators and suppression of independent nations, incessant defense for the Palestinian nation and patriotic resistance groups, rational and globally popular yelling at the usurping Zionist regime constitute the main items which make the US regime’s enmity against the Islamic Republic inevitable, and this enmity will continue as long as the Islamic Republic [continues to] disappoint them with its internal and sustainable strength.

The behavior and words of the US government in the nuclear issue and its prolonged and boring negotiations showed that this (nuclear issue) was also another link in their chain of hostile enmity with the Islamic Republic. Their deception through flip-flopping between their initial remarks that came after Iran accepted to hold direct talks with them and their constant non-compliance with their pledges throughout two-year-long negotiations and their alignment with the demands of the Zionist regime and their bullying diplomacy regarding relations with European governments and bodies involved in the negotiations are all indicative of the fact that the US’s deceitful involvement in the nuclear negotiations has been done not with the intention of a fair settlement [of the case], but with the ill intention of pushing ahead with its hostile objectives about the Islamic Republic.

Doubtlessly, vigilance vis-à-vis the hostile intentions of the US government and instances of resistance on the part of the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran throughout the negotiations managed, in numerous cases, to prevent heavy damage from being inflicted [upon Iran].
However, the outcome of the negotiations, which is enshrined in the JCPOA, has numerous ambiguities and structural weaknesses that could inflict big damage on the present and the future of the country in the absence of meticulous and constant monitoring.

3. The nine-point provisions entailed in the recent bill adopted by the Majlis and the 10-point instructions outlined in the resolution of the Supreme National Security Council carry helpful and effective points which must be taken into consideration. Meantime, there are some other necessary points which are announced here while some of the points mentioned in the two documents are highlighted.

First, since Iran has accepted to negotiate basically for the objective of removal of unjust economic and financial sanctions and its enforcement (the lifting of sanctions) is tied to Iran’s future actions under the JCPOA, it is necessary that solid and sufficient guarantees be arranged to avoid any infraction by the opposite parties. Written declaration by the US president and the European Union for the lifting of the sanctions is among them. In the statements of the EU and the US president, it must be reiterated that these sanctions will be fully lifted. Any declaration that the structure of the sanctions will remain in force shall imply non-compliance with the JCPOA.

Second, throughout the eight-year period, any imposition of sanctions at any level and under any pretext (including repetitive and fabricated pretexts of terrorism and human rights) on the part of any of the countries involved in the negotiations will constitute a violation of the JCPOA and the [Iranian] government would be obligated to take the necessary action as per Clause 3 of the Majlis bill and stop its activities committed under the JCPOA .

Third, the measures related to what is mentioned in the next two clauses will start only after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announces [the conclusion of] the past and future issues (including the so-called Possible Military Dimensions or PMD of Iran’s nuclear program).

Fourth, measures to renovate the Arak plant by preserving its heavy [water] nature will start only after a firm and secure agreement has been signed on an alternative plan, along with sufficient guarantees for its implementation.

Fifth, the deal with a foreign government for swapping enriched uranium with yellow cake will start only after a secure agreement has been clinched to that effect, along with sufficient guarantees [for its implementation]. The aforesaid deal and exchange must be done on a gradual basis and on numerous occasions.

Sixth, by virtue of the Majlis bill, the plan and the necessary preparations for mid-term development of the atomic energy industry, which includes the method of advancement in different periods of time for 15 years for the final objective of 190,000 SWU, must be drawn up and carefully reviewed by the Supreme National Security Council. This plan must allay any concern stemming from some points entailed in the JCPOA appendices.

Seventh, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran must organize research and development in different aspects such that after the end of the eight-year period, there would be no shortage of technology for the level of [uranium] enrichment entailed in the JCPOA.

Eighth, it must be noted that on the ambiguous points in the JCPOA document, the interpretation provided by the opposite party is not acceptable and the reference would be the text of the negotiations.

Ninth, the existence of complications and ambiguities in the text of the JCPOA and the suspicion of breach of promise, infractions and deception by the opposite party, particularly the US, require that a well-informed and smart panel be established to monitor the progress of affairs and [gauge] the opposite party’s commitment and realization of what was mentioned above. The composition and the tasks of this would-be panel should be determined and approved by the Supreme National Security Council.

In witness whereof, Resolution 634, dated August 10, 2015, of the Supreme National Security Council, is endorsed pending the observation of the aforementioned points.

In conclusion, as it has been notified in numerous meetings to you and other government officials and also to our dear people in public gatherings, although the lifting of sanctions is a necessary job in order to remove injustice [imposed on people] and regain the rights of the Iranian nation, economic overture and better livelihood and surmounting the current challenges will not be easy unless the Economy of Resistance is taken seriously and followed up on entirely. It is hoped that this objective will be pursued with full seriousness and special attention would be paid to enhancing national production. You should also watch out so that unbridled imports would not follow the lifting of sanctions, and particularly importing any consumer materials from the US must be seriously avoided.

I pray to Almighty God for your and other contributors’ success.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said directives issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on the implementation of the agreement reached by Iran and the P5+1 group over Tehran’s nuclear program will be fully observed.

In a letter addressed to the Leader, Rouhani expressed gratitude to Ayatollah Khamenei for his guidelines and support regarding the agreement, and reiterated that the Leader’s instructions will be fully taken into account.

“The administration of the Islamic Republic of Iran, by observing Your Excellency’s considerations and requirements as well as the enactments of the Supreme National Security Council and the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Parliament), will move to implement the JCPOA to the letter and with goodwill,” read the President’s letter.

President Rouhani’s letter further reads that the administration will fully monitor the other side’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA and decisions will be made accordingly for an appropriate response.

The letter also noted that the Leader’s “seal of approval on the outcome of the efforts made by the administration and others involved in the [nuclear] talks” will usher in a new era in Iran’s move forward.

Thanks to the Iranian nation’s resistance and efforts by the Iranian nuclear negotiating team, read the letter, the six world powers came to realize that threats and sanctions are nonstarters; they dropped their policies which called for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear activities and accepted to hold talks on an equal footing based on mutual respect and recognition of the Iranian nation’s rights.

The country’s nuclear program, including uranium enrichment work and possession of a heavy water reactor, has been recognized by the whole world as a peaceful program on an industrial scale, read the letter.

English learners are more likely to become proficient English speakers if they enter kindergarten with a strong initial grasp of academic language literacy, either in their primary language or in English, a new analysis from Oregon State University has found.

“This study shows that building literacy skills, in English or the child’s native language, prior to kindergarten can be helpful,” said Karen Thompson, an assistant professor of cultural and linguistic diversity in OSU’s College of Education. “Having those academic language skills – the kind of language used in school to retell a story or explain a math problem – is likely going to set them on a path to success.”

The new study, published recently in the journal Educational Policy, is part of an emerging body of research examining the role that language reclassification plays in a student’s education.

For the study, Thompson reviewed nine years of student data from the Los Angeles Unified School District to better understand how long it takes students to develop English proficiency. The findings could provide new insight as educators re-shape education policy around the language reclassification process, Thompson said.

About one in five children in the United States speak a language other than English at home, and about half of them are not yet considered proficient in English. Students who do not speak English proficiently when they enter school are considered English learners.

When English learners master the language, they are “reclassified” and no longer receive specific services to support their language development. Prior research has found that it takes roughly four to seven years for most students to master a second language.

Students who do not master English in that typical window, generally by the upper elementary grades, are less likely to ever do so. Those who do not master the language and remain English learners tend to score lower on academic tests and graduate high school at lower rates than their native-English speaking peers.

About 25 percent of students do not master English after nine years in school, Thompson found. Of those students, nearly a third are in special education programs. The finding indicates that reclassification rules may need to be adjusted for special education students, so there is a reasonable and sensible plan for them to meet language requirements, Thompson said.

“If a special education student’s language has developed to a point that is comparable to an English speaking student with the same disability, let’s take that into account,” Thompson said.

The research also showed boys, native Spanish speakers and students whose parents had lower levels of education were less likely to be reclassified than their peers. And reclassification varied dramatically based on a child’s initial language skills, in their native language and in English.

The findings highlight a pressing need for new curriculum and professional development for teachers to help students, and English learners in particular, to develop their academic language skills, Thompson said.

Under federal education policy, states must set, and try to meet, targets to ensure that students are becoming proficient in English. There is no uniform standard for determining proficiency and with transitions to new assessments in many states, including Oregon, policymakers are in the midst of changing the criteria for determining whether a student has become proficient.

Understanding how long English mastery actually takes, and factors that influence it, can help states establish appropriate and realistic targets, Thompson said.

“These targets need to be grounded in what’s possible,” she said.

By Tjiurimo Hengari*

After relatively peaceful elections in Guinea-Conakry returned outgoing President Alpha Conde to power last week in the first round of voting, another West African country – Côte d’Ivoire – is heading to watershed presidential elections on 25 October 2015.

With the campaign formally ending on 23 October, seven candidates will be in the running against incumbent President Alassane Dramane Ouattara, whose entry into office was marred by post-electoral tensions and violence in December 2010.

While Ouattara and his administration managed to turn the fortunes of Côte d’Ivoire in his first term, he is not assured of victory in the first round. With former prime minister and political heavyweight, Charles Konan Banny running under the broad Coalition for National Change, a duel between Ouattara and his former ally in the Parti Democratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) is most likely. Beyond these two prominent personalities of Ivorian politics, the presidential elections, and the context in which they take place will determine whether the transition to democracy under Ouattara has been successful. More important, their shade and shape (free and fair) will be crucial in the consolidation of the post-conflict reconstruction phase in Côte d’Ivoire.

Notwithstanding criticism from the opposition about equality of access to state-media and other teething organisational problems, including the national voters roll, and the inadequate number of voting stations, the campaigns have been fairly peaceful. It is less likely that the elections could lead to the violence of the scale witnessed between November 2010 and April 2011.

There are three possible explanations as to why Côte d’Ivoire will not return to the violence of the past. First, after more than a decade of war and conflict since the coup d’état by the late general Robert Guei in 1999, conflict fatigue has been palpable in a country that was for decades an example of successful French decolonisation. Unlike other countries in the sub-region, decolonisation in Côte d’Ivoire was accompanied by robust economic growth, including consequent investments in infrastructure and human development. With a high regional economic profile and a charismatic leader in the founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny the country was able to play a pivotal role in the political economy of West Africa. In light of this glorious past, the country’s political and economic decline has been viewed as inconsistent with the identity of development and progress that Ivorians had forged for themselves.

The second reason explaining why violence is unlikely resides in the nature of the political transition and economic transformation under Ouattara since 2011. Since he assumed office, Côte d’Ivoire has made remarkable progress and witnessed rapid transformation in a number of areas. Apart from creating conditions for the rule of law, fighting corruption and an ambitious reform agenda, Côte d’Ivoire with current Gross Domestic Product annual growth at 9% is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Inflation has also remained subdued at well below 3%. This macro-economic climate is favourable when viewed against a steep decline of -4% growth in 2011. In its recently released Africa Competitiveness Report 2015, the World Economic Forum lists Côte d’Ivoire among the top 15 most competitive economies in Africa. Moreover, the World Bank Doing Business Report ranked Côte d’Ivoire among the top ten reformers for two consecutive years (2014 and 2015). Economic transformation under the 2012-2015 National Development Plan and the 2012 Investment Code aiming to transform Côte d’Ivoire into an emerging economy by 2020 have translated into modest improvements in the lives of ordinary citizens.

Big infrastructure projects such as the Henri Konan Bedie bridge constructed at a cost of US$300 million, a public-private partnership between French construction Bouygues and the government, have created job opportunities and eased traffic congestion. Other infrastructure projects such as the highway connecting the economic and the political capital Abidjan and Yamoussoukro respectively have uplifted the national mood. Moreover, the return of the African Development Bank to Abidjan in 2014 signalled the return of Côte d’Ivoire to the continental scene as a potential financial hub. To a certain degree, progress on the economic front has been possible as a result of a difficult inclusive political dialogue between government and the opposition since 2013. Without doubt, various challenges remain in the processes of national reconciliation, human rights and the reintegration of former combatants.

The third explanation has to do with the successful reintegration of Côte d’Ivoire in regional and international diplomacies. The election of Ouattara as chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 2012 at the height of the conflict in Mali recalibrated the diplomacy of Côte d’Ivoire toward regional problem solving. It was also under Ouattara that the regional body agreed to the introduction of a Common External Tariff by January 2015, which has now come into effect. The visible role played by Côte d’Ivoire during its chairmanship of ECOWAS did not only legitimise Ouattara to his domestic constituency, but also enhanced the prestige of the country. To a certain degree, it normalised Côte d’Ivoire in regional and international politics.

The three explanations offered provide the back-drop against which the current elections will be played out. While Côte d’Ivoire is yet to be a normal country, there are sound bases that have been consolidated during the political transition of the past five years. Alassane Ouattara is contesting the presidency under the slogan of ‘definitive peace’ with the intention to transform the country into an oasis of peace and economic growth. His main rival, Charles Konan Banny is contesting the presidency under the banner ‘Côte d’Ivoire, our passion’. Both slogans speak about an aspirational country, which Côte d’Ivoire used to be in the region.

For the next phase to succeed and for credible presidential elections to take place, regional and international actors, including ECOWAS, the African Union, the United Nations and leading African countries such as South Africa should assist in the political and economic development of Côte d’Ivoire. Doing so will be in the interest of regional peace and development, and the definite return of a pivotal state to the front row of continental politics.

Dr Tjiurimo Hengari is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy programme at SAIIA. This article was first published on AllAfrica.com.

Source: SAIIA

By David W. Murray*

With the recent urgency in the Senate to reform mandatory minimum sentencing, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that these reforms are novel. In reality, sentencing reforms have been enacted in various iterations since 2007, leaving many to wonder when their advocates will consider these “reforms” enough.

On Monday, as part of his written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in consideration of the current sentencing reform legislation, Steve Cook, President of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys (NAAUSA) summarized the results of these previous sentencing reform efforts over the past eight years:

In 2007 the Sentencing Commission reduced the sentencing guidelines for crack dealers and made these changes retroactive to previously convicted traffickers already in prison. As a result, 16,511 convicted crack dealers received reduced sentences. In 2010 Congress reduced the penalties for trafficking in crack cocaine. The Sentencing Commission then implemented these reductions retroactively and the sentences of another 7,748 convicted crack dealers were reduced. In 2014 the Sentencing Commission reduced the sentencing guidelines for all drug traffickers (regardless of the type of drug they distributed, their criminal history or history of violence, ties to gangs, or drug cartels), and again made that change retroactive. As a result, over 46,000 convicted drug traffickers became eligible for early release. Between 6,000 and 8,000 of those offenders will be released nearly simultaneously on November 1, 2015, and another 8,000 will be released within twelve months of the first group.

By any measure, much has been done to lessen the sentences of tens of thousands of convicted drug offenders, initially for those incarcerated for crack offenses, but now expanded to include those convicted for offenses involving all dangerous drugs, including heroin and methamphetamine. As the Senate considers legislation that would yet again, and more aggressively, retroactively reduce mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, it is important to recall who put those sentencing guidelines in place and why they did it.

Those who lived through the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s know the devastation it brought to America, particularly in poor inner-city communities. The crack scourge still reverberates today. The suffering was immense, and the call for justice was immediate and forceful. And in terms of violent crime, the response of law enforcement was broadly successful. We know this history, and should not be condemned to repeat it.

The response to crack’s devastating toll was bipartisan and swift. Led by politicians such as Representative Charlie Rangel, and Senators Patrick Leahy and Joseph Biden, anti-crime measures at the federal level were passed and then signed into law by President Bill Clinton. These measures included the mandatory minimum sentences that are today under attack by many of the same lawmakers who once championed them.

One motivation for enacting the mandatory minimums—that current sentencing reform efforts put at risk—was that they enabled prosecutors to pressure low-level defendants to provide information on drug kingpins in exchange for relief from the stiff penalties. In fact, the “kingpin strategy” became a central feature of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) successful strategy against the Cali and Medellin drug cartels, as well as organizational attacks against cartels in Mexico led by former President Calderon.

According Cook’s senate testimony “In 2013, 48.5 percent of defendants facing mandatory minimums were relieved of the application of those statutory penalties because they provided information to law enforcement—information that was key to apprehending more culpable higher-level participants.”

The results of these efforts are clear and compelling. The violence and addiction associated with crack subsided. Crime rates, including violent crime, dropped in America.

As the crack epidemic began to fade after years of effective, targeted law enforcement efforts, the Clinton Administration’s Justice Department analyzed the impact of crack cocaine on violent crime, particularly homicide. Entitled “Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities: Trends, Contexts, and Policy Implications,” the importance of the report was confirmed by a 1997 story in the New York Times: “Drop in Homicide Rate Linked to Crack’s Decline.”

“What we found is that there was a very strong statistical correlation between changes in crack use in the criminal population and homicide rates,” Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute of Justice, told the Times.

The Times‘ story included prominent professors such as Yale’s Dr. David Musto, who noted, “There is a strong pharmacological effect. When you smoke crack, it gets to your brain very fast, and your judgment is greatly flawed and you easily become paranoid.” When combined with access to handguns, he said, “it is easy to see how homicide and crack are linked.”

Hence, there is major concern that these achievements against violence might be placed in jeopardy by careless and overboard efforts to reform sentencing, now being considered by the Senate. Even more concerning, these efforts come at a time of resurgence in cocaine production in Colombia (the primary U.S. market provider) following a curtailing of long-successful eradication efforts. A recent increase in cocaine overdose deaths could be a harbinger of a new, unwanted trend.

Clearly the intent of the Sentencing Commission and sentencing reform advocates in the Senate is to temper justice with mercy, and releasing federal prisoners may seem like an act with few consequences. But those who have been sentenced to federal prison, particularly drug dealers, are almost never without extensive criminal histories, and further, are highly likely to re-offend. Restarting the crack cocaine fire that burned so many provides neither justice nor mercy, only victims.

About the author:
*David W. Murray is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute where he co-directs the Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research.

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute.