(RFE/RL) — One police officer was killed and two were seriously wounded in an attack on April 20 by a gunman on the city’s Champs-Elysees boulevard that was later claimed by the Islamic State group.

French President Francois Hollande denounced the “terrorist” incident and vowed “absolute vigilance” in the days leading up to a presidential election on April 23. Several presidential candidates suspended campaigning, citing the attack, and one called for suspension of the election.

French prosecutors said they were trying to determine whether the gunmen, who appeared to be working alone and was killed by police, had accomplices.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the attacker was killed during the incident on the French capital’s famed shopping boulevard, which sent tourists and shoppers scurrying.

The assailant parked his car opposite a police vehicle and opened fire with an automatic firearm, killing one policeman, Brandet said. He then tried to flee on foot, still shooting, but was killed by police.

Authorities said a search was under way at the home in the east of Paris of the dead attacker, who was known to security services to be an extremist.

The Islamic State’s Amaq news agency within hours claimed responsibility for the attack “in the heart of Paris,” and identified the gunman as Abu Yousif, a Belgian.

U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking in Washington during a scheduled press conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, said the Paris attack “looks like” terrorism, although he said he had just learned of the incident.

“It looks like another terrorist attack,” he said. “What can you say? It just never ends. We have to be strong and we have to be vigilant, and I have been saying it for a long time.”

Video from the scene on the evening of April 20 show police vehicles and helicopters converging on the boulevard. Police warned people to avoid the area in the French capital.

A witness told Reuters that a man got out of a vehicle and began shooting with a Kalashnikov.

Paris, like most major cities in Europe and elsewhere, has been on high security following a series of terror attacks on the continent.

France is in a state of emergency and at its highest possible level of alert since a string of terror attacks that began in 2015, which have killed over 230 people.

Thousands of troops and armed police have been deployed to guard tourist attractions such as the Champs Elysees or other potential targets like government buildings and religious sites.

The April 20 shooting came the same day as candidates in France’s presidential race made their final appeals to voters ahead of the April 23 election.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right Marine Le Pen are likely to take the top two spots, forcing them into a runoff election on May 7.

While Macron holds just a slight lead over Le Pen going into the election, polls indicate he would win by a large margin against the far-right candidate in the runoff.

By Lisa Ferdinando

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met today in Cairo with Egyptian officials and discussed security threats facing the North African nation and ways to boost bilateral security cooperation.

“We agreed on the need for a renewed and strong security partnership,” Mattis told reporters after arriving in Tel Aviv, Israel, which is the next stop on his trip.

Countering Terrorism

Mattis said he had a good discussion with the Egyptian president, and spoke to the defense minister about “efforts to counter terrorism and secure the borders in this very complex security environment,” he said, adding, “You have seen the threats manifested against Egypt.”

He noted a number of terrorist attacks in Egypt, including in the Sinai, and those targeting the military as well as Christians and Coptic churches.

Mattis said the discussions were a continuation of the talks from earlier this month when the Egyptian president visited the Pentagon.

US-Egyptian Military-to-Military Relationship

“I left Cairo very confident in the avenues we have to advance our military-to-military relationship, which has been a bedrock and has stood solid all these years,” Mattis said.

The secretary visited Saudi Arabia as the first stop of this trip, and after his stop in Israel he’ll travel to Qatar and Djibouti.

In the first ecosystem-wide study of changing sea depths at five large coral reef tracts in Florida, the Caribbean and Hawai’i, researchers found the sea floor is eroding in all five places, and the reefs cannot keep pace with sea level rise. As a result, coastal communities protected by the reefs are facing increased risks from storms, waves and erosion. The study, by the US Geological Survey (USGS), is published today in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.

At two sites in the Florida Keys, two in the US Virgin Islands, and in waters surrounding the Hawaiian island of Maui, coral reef degradation has caused sea floor depths to increase and sand and other sea floor materials to erode over the past few decades, the Biogeosciences study found. In the waters around Maui, the sea floor losses amounted to 81 million cubic meters of sand, rock and other material – about what it would take to fill up the Empire State Building 81 times, or an Olympic swimming pool about 32,000 times, the USGS researchers calculated.

As sea levels rise worldwide due to climate change, each of these ecologically and economically important reef ecosystems is projected to be affected by increasing water depths. The question of whether coral colonies can grow fast enough to keep up with rising seas is the subject of intense scientific research.

But the USGS study, published on April 20, 2017 in the journal Biogeosciences, found the combined effect of rising seas and sea floor erosion has already increased water depths more than what most scientists expected to occur many decades from now. Other studies that do not factor in sea floor erosion have predicted seas will rise by between 0.5 and 1 metre by 2100.

“Our measurements show that seafloor erosion has already caused water depths to increase to levels not predicted to occur until near the year 2100,” said biogeochemist Kimberly Yates of the USGS’ St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, the study’s lead author. “At current rates, by 2100 sea floor erosion could increase water depths by two to eight times more than what has been predicted from sea level rise alone.”

The study did not determine specific causes for the sea floor erosion in these coral reef ecosystems. But the authors pointed out that coral reefs worldwide are declining due to a combination of forces, including natural processes, coastal development, overfishing, pollution, coral bleaching, diseases and ocean acidification (a change in seawater chemistry linked to the oceans’ absorption of more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere).

For each of the five coral reef ecosystems, the team gathered detailed sea floor measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration taken between 1934 and 1982, and also used surveys done from the late 1990s to the 2000s by the USGS Lidar Program and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Until about the 1960s sea floor measurements were done by hand, using lead-weighted lines or sounding poles with depth markings. From approximately the 1960s on, most measurements were based on the time it takes an acoustic pulse to reach the sea floor and return. The USGS researchers converted the old measurements to a format comparable with recent lidar data.

They compared the old and new sets of measurements to find the mean elevation changes at each site. The method has been used by the US Army Corps of Engineers to track other kinds of sea floor changes, such as shifts in shipping channels. This is the first time it has been applied to whole coral reef ecosystems. Next the researchers developed a computer model that used the elevation changes to calculate the volume of sea floor material lost.

They found that, overall, sea floor elevation has decreased at all five sites, in amounts ranging from 0.09 metres to 0.8 metres. All five reef tracts also lost large amounts of coral, sand, and other sea floor materials to erosion.

“We saw lower rates of erosion–and even some localised increases in seafloor elevation–in areas that were protected, near refuges, or distant from human population centers,” Yates said. “But these were not significant enough to offset the ecosystem-wide pattern of erosion at each of our study sites.”

Worldwide, more than 200 million people live in coastal communities protected by coral reefs, which serve as natural barriers against storms, waves and erosion. These ecosystems also support jobs, provide about one-quarter of all fish harvests in the tropical oceans, and are important recreation and tourism sites.

“Coral reef systems have long been recognised for their important economic and ecological value,” said John Haines, Program Coordinator of the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program. “This study tells us that they have a critical role in building and sustaining the physical structure of the coastal seafloor, which supports healthy ecosystems and protects coastal communities. These important ecosystem services may be lost by the end of this century, and nearby communities may need to find ways to compensate for these losses.”

The study brought together ecosystem scientists and coastal engineers, who plan to use the results to assess the risks to coastal communities that rely on coral reefs for protection from storms and other hazards.

By Ion Marandici*

(FPRI) — Russia’s neighbors are on high alert: the unexpected annexation of Crimea, the stealth intervention in eastern Ukraine, and the emergence of the Novorossiya project have heightened the perception of the growing Russian military threat in the region and beyond. Will Moldova be the Kremlin’s next target? When it comes to perceiving Russia as a threat, politicians in Moldova are divided between two extremes: threat inflation and threat deflation. Deflators are situated usually on the Left, while inflators are found generally on the Right. Whereas public perceptions of the Russian threat may be intentionally manipulated by politicians, the increasing dysfunctionality of the Moldovan state is as real as it gets. Three aspects of state weakness in Moldova—the excessive influence of oligarchs, the pervasiveness of Soviet nostalgia among the population, and the Transnistrian issue—may smooth the way for foreign interference by Russia.

Inflating and Deflating the Foreign Threat

Both threat inflators and deflators misrepresent reality. Such distortions may be the result of unconscious cognitive errors and motivated reasoning. Threat inflators cry wolf too often. These politicians amplify the Russian threat and label their political competitors as Russia’s agents in order to deflect the public’s attention from pressing domestic problems. The most prominent example includes Mihai Ghimpu, the leader of the right-wing Liberal Party. In a recent TV show, Ghimpu, with no shred of evidence, suggested that the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) led by Maia Sandu has close ties to Moscow. Many smaller right-wing political parties do not hesitate to label their opponents as Russia’s fifth column. When it is convenient for them, centrist politicians use the same tactics. In October 2016, Andrian Candu, the Speaker of the Parliament, claimed that Russia is financing certain political parties and supporting anti-government protests. Because threat inflators regularly invoke Russia’s interference in domestic politics, the threat itself has become an object of popular ridicule.

By contrast, threat deflators ignore the issue altogether, seeking publicly to legitimize Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s foreign policy more generaly. The Moldovan Socialist (PSRM) and Communist (PCRM) Parties fall into the threat deflator category. What explains the Russian threat deflation among left-wingers? Multiple causes may be at play. First, certain politicians use threat deflation strategically to attract the support of Russian-speaking voters, who often hold extremely positive views of Russia. Take, for instance, Igor Dodon, the current Moldovan president and member of the Socialist Party. During his election campaign, he refused stubbornly to criticize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, triggering a critical diplomatic response from Ukraine. Second, threat deflation may be part of a quid pro quo arrangement for receiving financial support. A recent journalistic investigation revealed that the PSRM accepted funds from Russia via a group of companies registered in the Bahamas. Of course, the third type of threat deflators includes the so-called true believers. Such individuals perceive the political reality largely through the ideological lens of the state-owned Russian media broadcasting in Moldova. Threat deflators are not necessarily peace-loving citizens. They often depict Romania and the West as existential threats. The new president, Dodon, removed the EU flag from the presidential palace, promised to cancel the EU-Moldova Association Agreement, and revoked the Moldovan citizenship of Traian Băsescu, the former Romanian president.

In the cases described above, politicians manipulate intentionally the gravity of the foreign threat in order to influence public opinion for political gain. Undoubtedly, the threat exists. A resurgent Russia annexing territories belonging to neighboring states remains a serious cause for worry, especially for Moldova, a tiny neutral state located beyond the reach of NATO’s security umbrella. Nevertheless, threat inflation and deflation should not divert our attention from Moldova’s central problem: state weakness.

Weak States Attract Bullies

Weak states are more vulnerable to foreign interference. Since its official declaration of independence in August 1991, Moldova has suffered from chronic state deficiency. Symptoms of Moldova’s malaise are an underfinanced army, low tax revenue, extreme poverty, large-scale emigration, competing national identity projects, and lack of sustainable innovation-driven economic growth. In the context of the recent regional turbulence, three other issues—oligarchic state capture, bizarre public opinion trends, and the unresolved Transnistrian conflict—aggravate the problem of foreign interference.

First, in 2009, the state was captured by oligarchs and has been exploited by them ever since. Aided by incompetent bureaucrats and politicians, oligarchs coordinated an epic theft from the Savings Bank of Moldova (BEM), Banca Sociala, and Unibank. Parties controlling the state-owned BEM, the major bank in the system, extracted resources by directing a stream of credits to politically connected firms with ties to offshore jurisdictions. Once the situation at BEM worsened dramatically, the government ceded its control of the bank in favor of a group of minority shareholders backed by Prime Minister Vlad Filat. The new owners, however, continued to syphon off funds. When there was nothing left to steal, they invoked the too-big-too-fail logic forcing the government to bail the banks out. The declassified minutes of the government meetings at which the two bailouts were granted (bailout 1 and bailout 2) reveal that over one billion USD was transferred from the National Bank of Moldova to the three banks to avoid massive bank runs. As a result, the oligarchs left the state heavily indebted, lacking resources to spend funds on defense and security. While the ensuing societal outrage and inter-oligarchic conflicts enabled state institutions to act autonomously and arrest the main culprit, Vlad Filat, the arrest did not free the state from oligarchic influence. Instead, it increased the informal influence over the state of the second major oligarch, Vlad Plahotniuc.

Second, two public opinion trends—high levels of Soviet nostalgia and a high degree of trust in Vladimir Putin—clearly favor outside interference. Survey after survey shows that Moldovans display nostalgia for the Soviet state. In 2009 and 2016, the Barometer of Public Opinion asked respondents whether they regret the demise of the Soviet Union, whether they desire to revive the Soviet state, and whether they would vote in a referendum in favor of the restoration of the USSR. 

The two graphs above indicate that the Moldovan public became more nostalgic for the USSR over time. In 2016, 49.4% would have voted in favor of Soviet restoration, while only 27.9% would have voted against it. Support for an eventual restoration is higher in 2016 compared to support in 2009. While such data should be interpreted with care, they may suggest that some Moldovans are willing to renounce their recently obtained independence. The second inexplicable trend concerns the high trust enjoyed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moldova. In November 2009, 74% of respondents expressed trust in him. In the aftermath of Crimea’s annexation, seven years later, 66% viewed him as trustworthy. Trust in this authoritarian figure is higher than trust in Moldovan politicians (see the Barometers of Public Opinion). Such tendencies among voters are puzzling, and that is why policymakers need to reflect more on whether these persisting inclinations of the public invite foreign interference.

Third, there is Moldova’s Transnistria problem. The current ruling elites in the breakaway Transnistria lack any loyalty whatsoever to the Moldovan state. Instead, public displays of devotion to the Russian state are the norm. Local politicians constantly invoke the 2006 referendum in which, according to Transnistrian authorities, 98% of the participants opted for future unification of the region with Russia. Because the region survives thanks to the generous subsidies flowing from the Russian state, systematic pledges of loyalty became the sole requirement for receiving free “goodies” from Moscow. In December 2016, the main contenders in the last presidential elections, V. Krasnoselsky (the winner) and V. Shevchuk (the incumbent-loser), rejected any future integration with Moldova, emphasizing, instead, Transnistria’s future as a part of Russia.

No Quick Fixes in Sight

There are no easy fixes for Moldova’s domestic problems. The state capture problem could be moderated by adopting state-building reforms, enhancing the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis the oligarchs. Putting in place safeguards against excessive informal oligarchic influence, consolidating the independence of the courts, and insulating the investigative-coercive governmental structures from political interference would increase the state’s ability to resist oligarchic and political pressures. Likewise, the drivers behind the high levels of Soviet nostalgia and the high trust in a foreign authoritarian figure should be properly researched and understood before any meaningful policy recommendations can be proposed. Lastly, keeping the Transnistrian conflict frozen for the next decade and intensifying bilateral cooperation with Ukraine seem more realistic policy options than wasting limited public resources on re-integrating the breakaway region.

The worst-case Ukraine-style scenario could play out in Moldova only if local disaffected groups mobilize against the state, providing a convenient pretext for Russia to intervene militarily.

About the author:
*Ion Marandici works as a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) has shown that people who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as sodas and fruit juices are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volumes and smaller hippocampal volumes–an area of the brain important for memory. Researchers also found that people who drank diet soda daily were almost three times as likely to develop stroke and dementia when compared to those who did not consume diet soda.

These findings appear separately in the journals Alzheimer’s & Dementia and the journal Stroke.

“Our findings indicate an association between higher sugary beverage intake and brain atrophy, including lower brain volume and poorer memory,” explained corresponding author Matthew Pase, PhD, fellow in the department of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and investigator at the FHS.

“We also found that people drinking diet soda daily were almost three times as likely to develop stroke and dementia. This included a higher risk of ischemic stroke, where blood vessels in the brain become obstructed and Alzheimer’s disease dementia, the most common form of dementia,” he said.

Excess sugar is known to have adverse effects on health. Diet soft drinks are often touted as a healthier alternative to regular soda. However both sugar and artificially-sweetened beverage consumption has been linked to cardiometabolic risk factors, which increases the risk of cerebrovascular disease and dementia.

In these studies approximately 4,000 participants over the age of 30 from the community-based FHS were examined using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and cognitive testing to measure the relationship between beverage intake and brain volumes as well as thinking and memory. The researchers then monitored 2,888 participants age 45 and over for the development of a stroke and 1,484 participants age 60 and older for dementia for 10 years.

The researchers point out that preexisting conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure did not completely explain their findings. For example, people who more frequently consumed diet soda were also more likely to be diabetic, which is thought to increase the risk of dementia. However, even after excluding diabetics from the study, diet soda consumption was still associated with the risk of dementia.

Although the researchers suggest that people should be cautious about regularly consuming either diet sodas or sugary beverages, it is premature to say their observations represent cause and effect. Future studies are needed to test whether giving people artificial sweeteners causes adverse effects on the brain.

The President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani stressed the importance of a deal to safeguard people’s rights in the wake of Brexit during a meeting with UK Prime Minister Theresa May Thursday morning.

“The European Parliament’s message is clear: strongly defending their interests is our first priority,” Tajani said. The Parliament President was in London to discuss the institution’s position on the Brexit negotiations, which was adopted in plenary on April 6.

He also invited May to address the Parliament.

In a press conference following the meeting, Tajani underlined the importance of an agreement on the rights of Europeans living in the UK and UK citizens living in the EU: The students, workers and families are valuable members of society and deserve some certainty regarding their future.”

In addition to meeting the Prime Minister, Tajani was also due to meet representatives from NGOs to discuss what people’s main concerns were regarding the Brexit negotiations.

Jakarta’s 2017 Gubernatorial Election is Indonesia’s most discussed political event so far. Marked by tacit competition between oligarchs and the mobilisation of religion-related issues to capture votes, the victory of Anies Baswedan to unseat Ahok as governor has raised questions about the prospects in the 2019 presidential election.

By Emirza Adi Syailendra*

A hard-fought election for Jakarta’s governorship has thrown up a new leadership, dethroning the controversial incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (better known as ‘Ahok’) and his running mate, Djarot Saiful Hidayat. Final quick count results on voting day on 19 April 2017 by three pollsters have shown the winning pair to be former education minister Anies Baswedan and his entrepreneur running mate Sandiago Uno. The margin of victory for Anies-Sandiago was as decisive as a double-digit lead over Ahok-Djarot. Anies won by about 58 percent of the votes versus about 42 percent for Ahok based on several quick count results. Official results will be known in May.

Nonetheless, the Jakarta gubernatorial election has been divisive, indicating a split among Jakartans between those who voted based on performance and others who voted based on identity politics. This polarisation could possibly have deep political consequences going forward; Anies and Sandiago would now have to prove themselves that they can deliver development and change in the capital city.

Anies Baswedan for President?

Anies succeeded to unseat Ahok despite having risked his positive image as a prominent education figure by jumping from a nominee in former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democrat camp to a supporter of President Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi) Democratic Party Struggle (PDIP).

Anies then joined forces with Prabowo Subianto’s Gerindra Party, one that he fiercely criticised when he was in Jokowi’s camp. For Jokowi and PDIP, a victory for Ahok was important to block the possible rise of a new contender leading up to 2019. Now that Anies has won, at least going by unofficial results, it does raise the question of whether he would follow Jokowi’s footsteps and aim for the presidency next.

This would, however, be difficult if his Gerindra chief Prabowo sets his sights on taking on Jokowi in 2019, which would relegate Anies’ prospects to that of being his running mate instead. Anies’ victory on the Gerindra ticket also means that Gerindra’s role as an opposition in parliament and a challenger to the Jokowi administration will be much strengthened.

Mobilisation of Identity Politics

Anies’ victory has also shown that his strategy of tapping into issues related to religion to capture votes, despite disappointing many of his admirers, was an effective political move against Ahok. It helped that Ahok was a controversial figure. Although Ahok was an incumbent with a track-record, supported by the majority coalition in parliament, and enjoying close ties with the mainstream media moguls, he slid into deep controversy when he was captured on video camera making questionable references to a Quranic verse that provoked the Muslim electorate.

After a series of massive rallies against Ahok demanding him to be punished, Ahok’s popularity slumped. He was subsequently charged with blasphemy and is facing trial. Nonetheless, Ahok, who is an ethnic Chinese Christian, still emerged as the leading winner in the first round with 43 percent of total votes.

Indeed, the mobilisation of religious issues has nuanced the election. Some mosques in Jakarta had openly refused to extend burial rites for those who supported or voted a blasphemer, which was an indirect reference to Ahok.

Anies, on his part, is known as a progressive Muslim figure, although he seemed comfortable with a more conservative line during the campaigns. Although one survey by the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) showed that only 16.7 percent of the Jakarta population voted along religious lines, every vote counted. The SMRC survey had revealed that 32.4 percent of Anies’ voters voted for him based on religion in the last election.

Party Patrons Behind Jakarta Election

Given the tight race, all the candidates had resorted to patrons with their political party machineries, particularly to capture the undecided voters.

Ahok had turned to Megawati, chief patron of the PDIP, who openly endorsed him and his running mate Djarot. For Megawati, an Ahok-Djarot victory was important to entrench PDIP’s position as the leading party. Megawati personally ordered PDI-P members to defend Ahok after the controversial video went viral since last September.

Former president Yudhoyono, on his part, had also openly endorsed his son Agus Yudhoyono as a candidate in the first round of election perhaps with a view to building his own political dynasty at the Democrat Party that is going through a decline. His endorsement, however, had backfired as it affected Agus’s electability after high profile social media attacks on Yudhoyono.

As for Prabowo, he had openly declared that he was likely to contest the presidency in 2019. Although Anies might not in the end run in 2019 as his vice-presidential candidate, Prabowo’s support for him was good enough to increase his public presence as a step towards 2019, should he decide to contest. Prabowo has shown that he is not to be discounted when he contributed to 40 percent of Anies and Uno supporters in the first round of election in February.

Having these old political figures actively endorsing each favourite pair of candidates indicated the Jakarta election is as much an avenue for them to advance their respective individual interests.

Jokowi’s Road to 2019

Anies’ victory is earth-shaking for Jokowi’s fluid coalition as it opens the door for another centre of power to emerge. Moving forward, the opposition led by Gerindra will likely start to raise issues to undermine the cohesion of Jokowi’s coalition, as Prabowo lays the groundwork for his presidential election bid in 2019. Jokowi has to drive a hard bargain to keep his coalition members from gravitating towards either Prabowo’s or Yudhoyono’s camp.

*Emirza Adi Syailendra is a Research Analyst with the Indonesia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This is part of a series on the 2017 Jakarta Election.

Coulter is back. Today (Thursday), officials at the University of California, Berkeley, changed their mind about cancelling a planned speech by Ann Coulter. They say they found a safe venue.

Yesterday, in a letter to a campus Republican group that invited Coulter to speak, university officials said that they made the decision to cancel Coulter’s appearance after assessing the violence that flared on campus in February, when the same college Republican group invited right-wing provocateur and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.

It was a grave mistake. I’m glad the university has reversed course.

How can students understand the vapidity of Coulter’s arguments without being allowed to hear her make them, and question her about them?

It’s one thing to cancel an address at the last moment because university and local police are not prepared to contain violence – as occurred, sadly, with Yiannopoulos. It’s another thing entirely to cancel an address before it is given, when police have adequate time to prepare for such eventualities.

Free speech is what universities are all about. If universities don’t do everything possible to foster and protect it, they aren’t universities. They’re playpens.

By William R. Gery, SeYoung Lee, and Jacob Ninas*

In the past week, how many devices have you used that were connected to the Internet or relied on an algorithm to accomplish a task? Likely, the number is upward of 10 to 15, and most of those devices are used daily, if not hourly. Examples may include a Fit-Bit, cell phone, personal computer, work computer, home monitoring system, car, Internet television, printer, scanner, maps, and, if you are really tech savvy, maybe your coffee pot or refrigerator.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is bound by a mesh network that is increasingly connected to every part of our lives, and those devices are becoming increasingly reliant on each other to perform their functions.1 Computing devices, using advanced algorithms, are entering the machine-learning phase, a subset of computer science in which the computer is “learning” about the environment and presenting predictions based on available data and conditions.2 Trends include machine-autonomy and self-learning. The idea of interconnectivity is not only about the IoT but also the information that transits the Internet, and how it influences our daily decisions. The trend toward a worldwide mesh-network is nearing, and with the creation of an information technology (IT)-based domain comes increased understanding of the environment in which we live. There appears to be no deviation from Moore’s law, developed in 1965, and popularized and demonstrated since its inception. If Moore’s law continues to be upheld in the future, more apps, algorithms, and daily functions will link together each part of our lives, providing increased processing capability and a limitless stream of information creating maximum efficiency for humans.

The Westphalian design of society and order contributes to the human need to work within a set of logical models, whereas the principle of international law and orderly division of nations enables sovereignty over territory and domestic affairs. It is possible that globalization, which would be nearly impossible without a relatively high transfer rate of information, will play a critical role and may challenge global order. Assuming an information advantage is required to achieve nation-state and military objectives, and information superiority is not guaranteed because of the complex IoT, how does the U.S. Government present effective and integrated information warfare capability (IW) in the information age? Moreover, if wars are fought in the information space, can they be won with information alone? In other words, can information warfare provide the ways and means to fight wars, as well as the ends? Also, does the U.S. Government need to invest in an organization responsible for the coordination and integration of IW capabilities and effects?

To increase the U.S. Government’s capability and capacity, a new organization should be created within the U.S. Government to focus on information warfare, with a fundamentally different organizational structure than our current governmental hierarchical structures. Specifically, the U.S. Government subscribes to the diplomatic, information, military, and economic (DIME) model but does not have an organization designed to lead the information functions of this model. The Department of State coordinates the diplomatic role, Department of Defense the military role, and Department of Treasury the economic role. Twenty-first-century challenges presented by the IoT require a more innovative organization that promotes adaptability and agility in the information space, akin to models used at Google, Facebook, or Apple.

Winn Schwartau, author of Information Warfare and recognized IW theorist, describes the information age as “computers everywhere.”3 The ultimate fact of the information age is the proliferation of IT, which “incorporates information systems and resources (hardware, software, and wetware) used by military and civilian decisionmakers to send, receive, control, and manipulate information necessary to enable 21st-century decisionmaking.”4 Additionally, the development of IT allows sharing of information in near real time, at an exponential rate, anonymously and securely. These advances can be used as an asset, but also pose a potential vulnerability to the United States, our allies, and our adversaries.5 It takes seconds to upload pictures or comments on social media networks. At the same time, adversaries can use these systems to gain access to critical information. According to a New York Times article, “In July 2015, 21.5 million people were swept up in a colossal breach of government computer systems that was far more damaging than initially thought, resulting in the theft of a vast trove of personal information, including social security numbers and some fingerprints.”6 The following list provides a general summary of the number of times systems have been attacked via cyber.7 The number of attacks on information systems has increased each year, reinforcing the fact that warfare is currently being conducted in the information space via IT.

• The Pentagon reports getting 10 million attempts a day.
• The National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, also records 10 million hacks a day.
• The United Kingdom reports 120,000 cyber incidents a day. That is almost as many as the state of Michigan deals with.
• Utah says it faces 20 million attempts a day—up from 1 million a day 2 years ago.8

To meet the challenge that exists in the information age, organizational changes are required. Modern ideas and incorporating industry concepts may be one way to traverse the information space and create an advantage in future conflicts.

Within the IoT, actions take place in nanoseconds and occur billions of times daily. Big data concepts attempt to harness massive amounts of information and distill that information into something that a human can use to make a decision. In the near future, the information required to win the advantage over an enemy may be determined by who can extract data, identify key centers of gravity in the information space, and automatically take action though rule sets and computational criteria based on defined “rules of engagement.” The ability to harness big data exists now and is only increasing. Consumer product companies are mining Facebook, Google, and other data to understand customer preferences, global trends, and public opinion on matters of interest. From a military standpoint, understanding the information terrain in relation to the potential adversaries is foundational to discerning points for information operations (IO) across the range of military operations. Big data concepts used in business could be advantageous and used in information warfare. It is possible that data-mining and subsequently an information advantage could achieve objectives purely through IW alone.

The United States has used various IW strategies, agencies, and professionals, with varying degrees of success. The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) was created in 1953 and was in service until 1999. USIA was designed to consolidate all information activities:

[USIA] comprised all of the foreign information activities formerly carried out by the Department of State’s International Information Administration (IIA) and Technical Cooperation Administration, and by the Mutual Security Agency. Overseas, existing United States Information Service posts became the field operations offices of the new agency. The exchange of persons program conducted by IIA remained in the Department of State, but USIA administered the program overseas. The Department of State provided foreign policy guidance.9

Historically, information warfare was identified as critical to national security, and USIA was required to erode support for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.10 Today, we usually consider IW as the means, or sometimes a way, to achieve an objective. But currently we rarely think of IW as an end, even though we live in an information age where we are all affected by the information environment every day. Brian Nichiporuk, the author of “U.S. Military Opportunities,” discusses IW concepts and postulates:

The goals of an offensive information-warfare campaign are to deny, corrupt, degrade, or destroy the enemy’s sources of information on the battlefield. Doing so successfully, while maintaining the operational security of your own information sources, is the key to achieving “information superiority”—that is, the ability to see the battlefield while your opponent cannot.11

In current and future warfare, information superiority could be the single most decisive factor. For instance, we could think about the China-Taiwan scenario. China is employing a robust IW strategy targeting the Taiwanese government in order to bring Taiwan under Chinese control, without engaging in kinetic war. They are simultaneously using information operations to delay U.S. involvement to the point where any outside interdiction occurs too late to affect the outcome.12 This concept is fully realized by a dedicated focus on IW strategy, organization, and capabilities. This could be analyzed best by Sun Tzu’s strategy: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”13 In another example, the Russian operations in Crimea provide a modern case study where the outcome of operations was directly attributed to IW principles and capability.

Information Warfare: The Russian Invasion of Crimea

The Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine, and eventual annexation of Crimea in 2014, serves as the current model of a sustained IW campaign and provides examples of successes and failures in these efforts. Russian IW, known as Reflexive Control, has its origins in Soviet doctrine and serves as a key component in their hybrid warfare operations.14 Reflexive Control “relies . . . on Russia’s ability to take advantage of preexisting dispositions among its enemies to choose its preferred courses of action.”15 During operations in Ukraine, Russia’s primary impediments included Western European powers and the United States. Russia took multiple actions to seize the advantage of preexisting dispositions among its enemies in order to conduct successful operations in Ukraine and, at the same time, avoid a large-scale confrontation with the West.

As part of Reflexive Control, Russia utilized a well-coordinated denial-and-deception plan, called maskirovka, through the use of “little green men” to establish checkpoints and secure key terrain in Ukraine. These little green men operated with speed and efficiency, and wore no identifying patches or unit insignia. This lack of identification allowed Russia to deny any association with these forces, which were later acknowledged as Russian troops. By controlling information and being able to deny its involvement in the occupation of Ukraine during the early stages of the conflict, Russia was viewed as an interested party by the international community—as opposed to a belligerent. This fed directly into Russia’s view that Western Europe and the United States did not desire a direct conflict and would not press the issue of Russian involvement, even if discovered.

The ability to operate in relative secrecy also allowed Russia to successfully mask its true desired endstate. By doing so, it allowed for almost any action to potentially be considered a successful mission to enemies and outside observers, due to a lack of understanding of Russian intentions. This also allowed for unchallenged Russian saber rattling and threats against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West as Russia attempted to paint Western Europe and the United States as weak, especially in the eyes of developing nations. In addition to actions on the ground in Ukraine, Russia integrated and utilized television, print media, and social media to deflect and hide its efforts at occupation and annexation while reducing potential Western involvement.16 The successful use of IW allowed Russian forces to occupy eastern Ukraine and annex Crimea without a large-scale response from the West.

As the world continues to move into the information age, the ability of nation-state and nonstate actors to employ successful IO tactics into their overall strategy will undoubtedly increase. To successfully deter and respond to these threats, the United States must innovate and develop organizations with expertise in both preventing and conducting such actions.

Russia’s IW campaign in Ukraine enabled it to achieve the objective of annexing Crimea, but it was not a flawless strategy. One flaw was the effort that Russian leaders took to deny the existence of troops in Ukraine. Even after undeniable proof, including geo-tagged photographs on social media and captured Russian troops inside Ukrainian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to deny involvement. These excessive and continual denials served only to discredit Russian leaders and provide additional reason to believe that Russian forces were in fact operating inside Ukraine.17 In addition, the lack of an overwhelming campaign of offensive cyber actions brings into question the overarching hybrid warfare campaign. Russia is arguably one of the most capable nation-state cyber actors.18 The lack of a comprehensive offensive cyber campaign, such as that observed in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008, raises questions about Russian IW and Reflexive Control strategy. While this may indicate a desire not to aggravate potential adversaries, it may also indicate Russia’s inability to control all aspects of its offensive cyber actions such that it was concerned that actions could produce large-scale unintended consequences.19 These consequences may have resulted in the Russians’ inability to deny their involvement, or brought powerful enemies into the conflict. As discussed, the flaws noted in Reflexive Control doctrine serve as examples of how difficult it is currently, and will be in the future, to control the consequences of offensive actions and conduct information warfare in an information age. In an effort to better understand the capabilities and intentions of potential adversaries, understand their lessons learned, and use them to our advantage, the U.S. Government must ensure that the current organization of IW capabilities and strategic planning enables an integrated and cohesive National Security Strategy.

Strategic Planning Guidance to Tactical Execution?

In the joint planning process, IO planning is typically a supporting effort. If we prescribe to the idea that all wars are fought on the cognitive plane, at least at some point, then it is logical to assume that, at one point or another, IW courses of action (COAs) should be the supported effort. Moreover, “information operations support themes” are sometimes developed after military kinetic COAs are.20 While the current planning process and traditional planning structure provide the formal links between national strategy and the tactical level, they do not prescribe a way in which to gain the information advantage in future conflicts. Arguably, from a national perspective, an information strategy should drive subsequent actions and be integrated from the President to the individual Servicemember. The information strategy should be integrated with strategic communications efforts of the U.S. Government. However, as noted in the 2008 report from the Defense Science Board, “Strategic Communications is a dynamic process with responsibility held by those at the highest levels of government—the President and senior government leaders. . . . But to do so requires a commitment not yet seen, though some steps have been taken.”21 In fact, the report recommends the creation of a nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Global Engagement as a focal point for strategic communication activities.

In 2010, Joseph Biden provided the President a report on strategic communications that urged synchronization and defined the overall concept.22 An interagency policy committee, led by the National Security staff, was a recommended solution; however, a committee is made up of individuals with allegiances to their own organization and likely with other responsibilities, not fully being dedicated to integrated strategic communications. The little IW capability that exists is based on the current and legacy organizational structure, which hinders effective IO planning and execution.

If information space can be considered a way and means to fight and win wars, then a framework is required to assist in prioritization and planning and to present ends that may be achieved through information warfare. Planners must articulate why a specific action is being taken and when it should occur based on commander’s intent, the operational environment, and the operational approach designed to solve the problem. Decades of trial and error in warfare have led to institutional doctrine and rule sets. While there is an argument that these rules should be applied to both kinetic and nonkinetic effects, it is important to realize that there are certain unique factors associated with both. For example, targeting fundamentals are largely agreed upon and accepted for offensive force-on-force operations, but do the theories of targeting need to adjust for information warfare?

Some argue that the center of gravity (COG) for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is the Internet. If we accept this idea, how does the United States target ISIL? Does the U.S. Government shut down Internet Service Providers (ISPs) (that is, the target) that ISIL is using? Does the government conduct a distributed denial-of-service attack against certain Web sites? Does it put influential messages onto ISIL message boards on the Internet? All options are plausible, but many times are not executed due to lengthy and unsynchronized plans. The lack of leadership and a focal point in the U.S. Government who can articulate the second- and third-order effects of information operations often contributes to a lack of action. The ability to understand how the information space will be influenced by the outcome of a U.S. action is not effective because there is no lead organization.

In addition to the tactical-level information effects, how are strategic communications vetted and targeted? Do the processes differ or are they the same? If the view of this process were to change, and targeting were to become a process within which information targets are held at risk (for example, the ISP example or building a strategic weapon to deter an enemy), then it is possible that realistic options could be presented to a combatant commander in a crisis action scenario. To execute a concept where the United States holds information targets at risk, it must have access to the target. Access for information-related effects delivered through the information space is no different than for physical effects delivered by airplanes or ships. The delivery method could be news, a cyber capability, a military action, or even a comment by the President. The path to employ information-related capabilities (IRCs) requires access from the sender to the receiver, and that targeting path must be sustainable. Without sustained access, a target cannot be held at risk because gaining access to the receiver could take an extended amount of time, with relation to the operation.

Additionally, the capability must be attainable. Software development can be a potential strategic advantage. Driving education and training for software development down to the tactical level empowers young Servicemembers to create capabilities linked to the target, reduce cost, and create efficiencies. For example, a Soldier is taught how to use a rifle, the foundations are built in training, and he is able to utilize the weapon through the employment of various tactics, techniques, and procedures on the battlefield as the situation dictates. If the situation changes, he adjusts to the enemy in an instant. From an IW perspective, software is but one tool, as is the rifle. Foundations are built, skills are honed, but it is left to the tactical level to ensure the capability is “tuned” to the target because the tactical-level operator should have the most accurate knowledge of that target. Additionally, as accesses change, the tactical and operational level should ensure consistent and reliable access to the target. Indeed, the Soldier does not develop the strategy; the national security staff, President, and combatant commanders do. But what organization is responsible for coordinating the strategic message throughout the national security apparatus? Furthermore, what organization is responsible for providing information operation COAs for the President, specifically designed as an end?

The contrarian viewpoint to the idea of driving development down to the operator level (that is, the Soldier) is that authorities do not come with capability. This is true. A tactical-level unit should not have authority to execute operations in the information space, just as the Soldier with the rifle would not fire without orders. There should be a strategy with clear and precise guidance for operational and tactical targeting. This does not require “execution authorities,” but it does require guidance from national-level leadership on the issue. In other words, because technical acumen is required, the U.S. Government cannot afford to have a disjointed IW strategy in which progress is slowed due to an overly complicated and bureaucratic hierarchical structure. A lack of unity of effort results, and risk to mission and risk to force increase. Developers, operators, and analysts need flexibility and agility to solve problems quickly with innovative technology and an understanding of the information age, just as a Soldier does when in battle.

Is the World Organizationally Changing?

Military organizations have generally followed hierarchical models as early as the Greeks in 400 BCE for organizing and equipping. It is possible that global IT trends will require a foundationally different way of thinking and organizing IRCs in the U.S. Government to maintain pace with the speed of information. Largely, from the time of the Greeks to that of the current U.S. Government, militaries have been designed around a hierarchical system. As IW becomes increasingly more important during the conduct of government or military operations, a lattice framework and system may be a logical way to organize information warfare–based capabilities and personnel.

This concept prescribes basic guidance and a certain rule set (that is, authorities) but empowers individual members to develop solutions unabated by personnel unfamiliar with the technical situation. The concept capitalizes on meritocracy-based principles and focuses on a federated approach as well as crowd-sourcing solutions internally to the military, or even in the public sector, to arrive at solutions. Within the U.S. Government, it is unlikely that a lattice organization would be wholly integrated; however, a hybrid concept that captures the value of a legal and hierarchical framework along with realizing the potential benefit of a lattice organization would be valuable, as globalization and IT increasingly integrate our world. Additionally, a lattice framework would more closely align conceptually with the mass-network IT environment in which we live. Ideas presented in the corporate world are potential solutions that can be used or modified for complicated IW concepts within the U.S. Government. In a thought piece from business, Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson from Forbes magazine highlight a few key benefits of a lattice organizational structure:

With employees working in geographically dispersed teams, the old ways of communicating [are] no longer served. Lattice ways to participate moved the organization toward more interactive, transparent communication. In one instance, the finance division gave a role traditionally reserved for management—identifying improvement priorities—to employees, by launching a “pain points” portal where they can voice their views of current challenges for everyone to see. The company appoints teams to address the highest priorities.

At Deloitte, our annual employee survey shows that 90% of workers who experience all three lattice ways are engaged. Contrast that with the results of a major global workforce study by Towers Perrin in 2007–2008 that found just over 60% of employees in surveyed companies were engaged.23

Not only does a lattice framework promote internal integration and idea-sharing, the concept also promotes the use of solutions from external sources. In many cases, members of a lattice-type organization are encouraged to look for nonstandard solutions to difficult problems, even if that means branching outside of organizational norms.

Analyzing a recent case, the iPhone encryption issue surrounding the San Bernardino terrorist attack is an example of a federated approach to problem-solving. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was able to crack the iPhone’s encryption, despite Apple’s unwillingness to support. Apple’s fear stemmed from the idea that if it provided the requested support, the government would then own the key to all encryption security measures for iPhones around the world.24 When the international media reported and publically debated the issue, the FBI received calls from individuals and companies claiming to possess the tools necessary to break the encryption. In fact, one company was able to break the encryption and allowed the FBI to retrieve the desired data from the terrorist’s phone. This example shows the power of information in multiple ways; the first is the fact that the government was unable to use traditional methods of gaining support from a private company. Second, media, as the primary driver, brought attention to the problem and forced a public debate, which worked in favor of the government. There were arguments on both sides of the issue, but it should be assumed that the challenge in and of itself was enough to stimulate a solution, whether right or wrong. The key point to this example is that the proliferation of information drove a solution, regardless of Apple’s standpoint, the FBI’s authority, and even despite popular public opinion for or against the FBI. If the power of information can easily dictate the outcome of such an example, what are the long-term implications for warfare? The U.S. Government can take measures now, organizationally, to harness IW concepts and be positioned to maintain the information advantage in a dynamic and unsure information age.

Future IW solutions will also need to involve multidomain skills from individuals with varying backgrounds. In today’s military, once a Servicemember is branded with a specific skill set, it is challenging to break from that community and maneuver effectively between communities, while still maintaining upward mobility. To achieve greater effectiveness in IO planning and execution, cross-domain and diverse IRC careers should become a desired career path option for future leaders.

Amazon Meets the U.S. Government

To harness the information age and enable IW capability toward the success of future U.S. conflicts, a new organization should be created within the U.S. Government. The Cold War has passed, and so has USIA; however, it is possible that a new version of USIA is required as Russia continues to test its limits of power. As in the case of Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia, as well as the need to combat terrorist groups such as ISIL, a renewed effort on U.S. information warfare is required. The dynamic and ever-changing environment requires a fundamentally different organizational structure than that of current government hierarchical structures in order to be flexible and adaptable for 21st-century problems. Additionally, as we move forward in the information age, our lives will be increasingly intertwined and connected with information systems. This information environment will continue to play a critical role in how the U.S. Government and military interact with allies, partners, and adversaries in all of the operational domains.

To shape the environment to meet our desired endstates, we must recognize the importance of information warfare and work to ensure that IO concepts are properly integrated into all actions and operations, if not become an end themselves. We must also search for innovative ways to build and employ IO concepts. Our IO experts must have the required training and expertise necessary to meet these requirements by way of strategic guidance. Operators must have flexibility and agility engrained into their ethos through a lattice-type organizational structure, which honors a multidomain career path. The ability to carry out all IW requirements must be done in a timely and succinct manner that allows for the fastest possible action with the most flexibility. If we are not able to achieve these objectives, we will most definitely fall behind in the fast-paced and constantly changing world of IT and IW, and we will likely be ineffective in identifying and combating enemy COGs, such as ISIL’s reliance on IT. It is time to implement ideas that exist in industry, and force change, before change is unattainable—through a sustainable and repeatable process and organization within the U.S. Government.

*About the authors:
Major William R. Gery, USAF, is Program Manager for the U.S. Air Force Weapon System Evaluation Program at Air Combat Command. Major SeYoung Lee, Republic of Korea (ROK) Army, is a Student in the Military History Institution of ROK Army Headquarters. Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Ninas, USA, is a Branch Chief in the 704th Military Intelligence Brigade.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 85, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:
1 “A mesh network is a Local Area Network (LAN), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), or Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) that employs one of two decentralized connection arrangements: full mesh topology or partial mesh topology. In a full mesh topology, each network node is connected directly to others. In a partial mesh topology, some nodes are connected to all the others, but are only connected to those nodes with which they exchange the most data.” See “Mesh Network Topology (Mesh Network),” IoTAgenda.com, available at <http://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/mesh-network-topology-mesh-network>.

2 Machine-learning is a subfield of computer science that evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence. Machine-learning explores the construction and study of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data.

3 Richard M. Crowell, War in the Information Age: A Primer for Cyberspace Operations in 21st Century Warfare (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 2010).

4 Ibid.

5 Joint Publication (JP) 3-13, Information Operations (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, November 27, 2012), I-1.

6 Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Hacking of Government Computers Exposed 21.5 Million People,” New York Times, July 9, 2015.

7 Brian Fung, “How Many Cyberattacks Hit the United States Last Year?” National Journal, March 8, 2013, available at <www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/03/how-many-cyberattacks-hit-united-states-last-year/61775/>.

8 Ibid.

9 U.S. Information Agency, available at <www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/related-records/rg-306.html>.

10 Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation: American Propaganda, Soviet Lies, and the Winning of the Cold War (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995).

11 Brian Nichiporuk, “U.S. Military Opportunities: Information-Warfare Concepts of Operation,” in The Changing Role of Information in Warfare, ed. Zalmay Khalilzad and John White (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, Project Air Force, 1999), 181.

12 Eric A. McVadon, “Systems Integration in China’s People’s Liberation Army,” in The People’s Liberation Army in the Information Age, ed. James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1999), available at <www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF145/- CF145.chap9.pdf>.

13 Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 77.

14 Maria Snegovaya, Putin’s Information Warfare in Ukraine: Soviet Origins of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare, Russia Report 1 (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, September 2015), 7, available at <http://understandingwar.org/report/putins-information-warfare-ukraine-soviet-origins-russias-hybrid-warfare>.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Dimitry Gorenburg, “Crimea Taught Us a Lesson, But Not How the Russian Military Fights,” War on the Rocks, May 19, 2014, available at <http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/crimea-taught-us-a-lesson-but-not-about-how-the-russian-military-fights/>.

18 LookingGlass Cyber Threat Intelligence Group, Operation Armageddon: Cyber Espionage as a Strategic Component of Russian Modern Warfare, CTIG-20150428-01 (Reston, VA: LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, Inc., April 28, 2015), available at <https://lookingglasscyber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Operation_Armageddon_FINAL.pdf>.

19 David Talbot, “Watching for a Crimean Cyberwar Crisis,” MIT Technology Review, March 4, 2014, available at <www.technologyreview.com/s/525336/watching-for-a-crimean-cyberwar-crisis/>.

20 JP 5-0, Joint Operation Planning (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, August 11, 2012), II-9.

21 Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, January 2008), available at <www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476331.pdf>.

22 National Framework for Strategic Communication (Washington, DC: The White House, 2010).

23 Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson, “The Lattice that Has Replaced the Corporate Ladder,” Forbes.com, March 16, 2011, available at <www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html>.

24 Pierre Thomas and Mike Levine, “How the FBI Cracked the iPhone Encyption and Averted a Legal Showdown with Apple,” ABC News, May 29, 2016, available at <http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-cracked-iphone-encryption-averted-legal-showdown-apple/story?id=38014184>.

Physicists at the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech have discovered the first three-dimensional quantum liquid crystal — a new state of matter that may have applications in ultrafast quantum computers of the future.

“We have detected the existence of a fundamentally new state of matter that can be regarded as a quantum analog of a liquid crystal,” said Caltech assistant professor of physics David Hsieh, principal investigator on a new study describing the findings in the April 21 issue of Science. “There are numerous classes of such quantum liquid crystals that can, in principle, exist; therefore, our finding is likely the tip of an iceberg.”

Liquid crystals fall somewhere in between a liquid and a solid: they are made up of molecules that flow around freely as if they were a liquid but are all oriented in the same direction, as in a solid. Liquid crystals can be found in nature, such as in biological cell membranes. Alternatively, they can be made artificially — such as those found in the liquid crystal displays commonly used in watches, smartphones, televisions, and other items that have display screens.

In a “quantum” liquid crystal, electrons behave like the molecules in classical liquid crystals. That is, the electrons move around freely yet have a preferred direction of flow. The first-ever quantum liquid crystal was discovered in 1999 by Caltech’s Jim Eisenstein, the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics. Eisenstein’s quantum liquid crystal was two-dimensional, meaning that it was confined to a single plane inside the host material — an artificially grown gallium-arsenide-based metal. Such 2-D quantum liquid crystals have since been found in several more materials including high-temperature superconductors — materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance at around -150 degrees Celsius, which is warmer than operating temperatures for traditional superconductors.

John Harter, a postdoctoral scholar in the Hsieh lab and lead author of the new study, explained that 2-D quantum liquid crystals behave in strange ways. “Electrons living in this flatland collectively decide to flow preferentially along the x-axis rather than the y-axis even though there’s nothing to distinguish one direction from the other,” he says.

Now Harter, Hsieh, and their colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee have discovered the first 3-D quantum liquid crystal. Compared to a 2-D quantum liquid crystal, the 3-D version is even more bizarre. Here, the electrons not only make a distinction between the x, y, and z axes, but they also have different magnetic properties depending on whether they flow forward or backward on a given axis.

“Running an electrical current through these materials transforms them from nonmagnets into magnets, which is highly unusual,” said Hsieh. “What’s more, in every direction that you can flow current, the magnetic strength and magnetic orientation changes. Physicists say that the electrons ‘break the symmetry’ of the lattice.”

Harter actually hit upon the discovery serendipitously. He was originally interested in studying the atomic structure of a metal compound based on the element rhenium. In particular, he was trying to characterize the structure of the crystal’s atomic lattice using a technique called optical second-harmonic rotational anisotropy. In these experiments, laser light is fired at a material, and light with twice the frequency is reflected back out. The pattern of emitted light contains information about the symmetry of the crystal. The patterns measured from the rhenium-based metal were very strange–and could not be explained by the known atomic structure of the compound.

“At first, we didn’t know what was going on,” Harter said. The researchers then learned about the concept of 3-D quantum liquid crystals, developed by Liang Fu, a physics professor at MIT. “It explained the patterns perfectly. Everything suddenly made sense,” Harter says.

The researchers say that 3-D quantum liquid crystals could play a role in a field called spintronics, in which the direction that electrons spin may be exploited to create more efficient computer chips. The discovery could also help with some of the challenges of building a quantum computer, which seeks to take advantage of the quantum nature of particles to make even faster calculations, such as those needed to decrypt codes. One of the difficulties in building such a computer is that quantum properties are extremely fragile and can easily be destroyed through interactions with their surrounding environment. A technique called topological quantum computing–developed by Caltech’s Alexei Kitaev, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics–can solve this problem with the help of a special kind of superconductor dubbed a topological superconductor.

“In the same way that 2-D quantum liquid crystals have been proposed to be a precursor to high-temperature superconductors, 3-D quantum liquid crystals could be the precursors to the topological superconductors we’ve been looking for,” said Hsieh.

“Rather than rely on serendipity to find topological superconductors, we may now have a route to rationally creating them using 3-D quantum liquid crystals” said Harter. “That is next on our agenda.”

Let’s say you know someone who wears funny blue suits and doesn’t share your views on politics. So you decide to stick this person in a cage and put him on a diet of bread and water until he agrees to change his wardrobe and adjust his thinking. And when he sits quietly on the cage-floor with his hands folded, you ignore him altogether and deal with other matters. But when he stomps his feet in anger or violently shakes the cage, you throw cold water on him or poke him in the back with a sharp stick.

How long do you think it’ll take before your prisoner changes his clothes and comes around to “exceptional” way of seeing things?

It’s never going to happen, is it, because your whole approach is wrong. People don’t respond positively to hectoring, intimidation and cruelty, in fact, they deeply resent it and fight back. And, yet, this is exactly the way Washington has treated North Korea for the last 64 years. Washington’s policy towards the DPRK is not comprised of “carrots and sticks”; it’s sticks and bigger sticks. It’s entirely based on the assumption that you can persuade people to do what you want them to do through humiliation, intimidation and brute force.

But the policy hasn’t worked, has it, because now the North has nuclear weapons, which is precisely the outcome that Washington wanted to avoid. So we don’t even have to make the case that US policy is a flop, because the North’s nuclear arsenal does that for us. Case closed!

So the question is: What do we do now?

Three things:

First, we have to understand that the current policy failed to achieve what it was supposed to achieve. It was the wrong approach and it produced an outcome that we did not want. We could argue that Washington’s belligerence and threats pushed the North to build nukes, but we’ll save that for some other time. The main thing is to acknowledge that the policy was wrong.

Second, we have to understand that situation has changed in a fundamental way. North Korea now has nuclear weapons, which means that North Korea is a nuclear weapons state. US policy-makers need to repeat that to themselves and let it sink in. It changes the calculus entirely. When one realizes that the North now has the power to reduce Osaka, Tokyo or Seoul to smoldering rubble with one flip of the switch, that has to be taken seriously. In practical terms, it means the so called “military option” is off the table, it’s no longer a viable option. The military option will lead to a nuclear exchange which — by the way– is not the outcome we want.

Third, we need examine the new threats to US national security that have arisen due to our 64 year-long failed policy, and respond accordingly.

What does that mean?

It means that Washington’s idiot policy has put us all at risk because the North is fine-tuning its ballistic missile technology so it can hit targets in the US with nuclear weapons. This didn’t have to happen, but it is happening and we need to deal with it. Fast.

So what do we do?

We do what every civilized country in the world does; we modify our policy, we turbo-charge our diplomatic efforts, we engage the North in constructive dialogue, we agree to provide generous incentives for the North to suspend or abandon its nuclear weapons programs, and we agree to provide the North with written security guarantees including a treaty that formally ends the war, explicitly states that the US will not launch another aggression against the North, and a strict time-frame for the withdrawal of all US occupation forces and weaponry on the Korean peninsula.

That’s what we do. That’s how we put an end to this unfortunate and entirely avoidable geopolitical fiasco.
We sign a treaty that requires both sides to gradually deescalate, meet certain clearly-articulated benchmarks, and peacefully resolve the long-festering situation through focused and results-oriented negotiation.

And what is the Trump administration doing?

The exact opposite. They’ve ratchetted up the incendiary rhetoric, put the troops on high alert, moved a carrier strike-group into Korean waters, and threatened to use the military option. After 64 years of failure, they’ve decided to double-down on the same policy.

Washington is incapable of learning from its mistakes. It keeps stepping on the same rake over and over again.

Vice News recently ran a noteworthy article, Trump hasn’t appointed anyone to keep track of released Guantánamo detainees, highlighting how the Trump administration’s lack of interest in understanding the nature of the prison at Guantánamo Bay is actually endangering national security.

As Alex Thompson reported, although Donald Trump “has vowed to take the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and fill it with ‘some bad dudes,’ … he hasn’t yet filled the top two positions in the federal government specifically tasked with overseeing the over 700 former detainees who’ve already been released to ensure they do not become security threats.”

Under President Obama, the job of monitoring former prisoners and “coordinating their transitions to civilian life” was largely fulfilled by “two small special envoy offices”: “one at the Department of Defense that reviews detainees considered for release and then tracks the intelligence community’s reports on them, and one at the State Department that helps coordinate communication between detainees and their lawyers, host-country governments, US embassies, and the Department of Defense.”

As Thompson noted, Trump has not appointed a leader for either office, to replace Lee Wolosky at the State Department and Paul Lewis at the Pentagon, and, according to current and former State Department officials who spoke to him, “multiple members of the approximately 10-person office at the State Department have been at least temporarily reassigned,” although a representative of the State Department’s envoy office “maintained that, for now, the office has sufficient capacity to deal with released detainees.”

Nevertheless, Azmat Khan, a fellow at New America in Washington, D.C. (formerly the New America Foundation), who studies issues relating to counter-terrorism, told Thompson that the Trump administration is “losing critical intelligence” about where former prisoners “are now and how they are doing,” and Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been at the forefront of the legal struggle against the lawlessness of Guantánamo since the prison opened in January 2002, explained, “Having somebody in place at the State Department is important to help with [released prisoners] reintegrating. That is important for the national security of the United States.”

Just 41 men are left at Guantánamo out of the 779 men held by the military since the prison opened. Nine died, and one was transferred to the US mainland for a trial, meaning that 728 have been released — 532 under George W. Bush, and the other 196 under President Obama. Where possible, prisoners have been repatriated, but when this has not been feasible — because of fears of ill-treatment in their homelands, or, as with Yemen, because of concerns across the entire US establishment regarding the security situation — third countries have had to be found that have been prepared to offer former prisoners new homes.

Of the men released, most, as Alex Thompson noted, “have begun quiet lives” in their homelands or in third countries prepared to offer them a new home, although some have gone on to take up arms against the US, as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicates in a report published twice a year.

Here at Close Guantánamo we have long taken exception to the types of figures bandied about by the DNI without a shred of supporting documentation, and whereas the latest report suggests that 121 former prisoners have reengaged (16.9%), we are more convinced by reporting from New America, which, in 2013, put the reengagement rate at just 4%.

While we dispute the figures, however, and also cannot discuss recidivism without expressing our dismay at the sensationalist manner in which most mainstream media outlets deal with the DNI reports, it is clear that the reengagement rate was much lower under Obama than under Bush — of the alleged 121 cases, only 8 (4.4%) were under Obama, while the other 113 (21.2%) were under Bush — and part of that is undoubtedly because of the role played by the envoys.

Speaking of the two envoy offices, Azmat Khan stated that, “Having that position filled was extraordinarily helpful for released detainees’ lawyers and to make sure the released detainees were being held in safe areas.” She added, as Alex Thompson described it, that “congressional political pressure also made the Obama administration much more cautious than the Bush administration had been,” although, incidentally, this was also “one of the reasons the detention facility remains open.”

Lee Wolosky, who was the special envoy for Guantánamo Closure at the State Department from 2015 until Trump took office, told Thompson that the Obama administration “worked hard to ensure a smooth transition for released detainees so that they could live a life ‘without temptation’ to go to the battlefield.” As Wolosky put it, “There needs to be some mechanism to monitor these people because monitoring security assurances helped us avoid problems.”

Thompson proceeded to explain that the State Department “negotiates with host countries to ensure that released detainees get access to things like employment, health care, and housing to ensure a smoother transition to civilian life,” and that, in addition, “they negotiate security agreements between the U.S. and host countries to restrict travel, arrange surveillance, and ensure the sharing of intelligence information.”

Paul Lewis, who was the Defense Department’s special envoy for Guantánamo Closure from 2013 until Trump took office (and whose recent thoughts on the need to close Guantánamo were posted here), agreed with his State Department counterpart. “Even if the president doesn’t want to close Gitmo,” he said, “his administration still has a responsibility to monitor released detainees.”

Nevertheless, as Thompson also noted, it appears “extremely unlikely” that Donald Trump “will fill the envoy positions,” because he “has yet to fill the vast majority of nearly 4,000 political positions throughout the federal government — he’s called many of them ‘unnecessary’ — and he’s proposing a 28 percent cut at the State Department,” to add to his stated enthusiasm for keeping Guantánamo open, rather than appointing new officials to jobs that contain the words “Guantánamo Closure” in their titles.

And yet, as with so much to do with Trump’s disregard for the administrative machinery of government, there is no indication whatsoever that his blasé or disdainful attitude will make government more efficient and more helpful for the American people, or, in the case of Guantánamo, that abandoning any direct monitoring of, and assistance for former prisoners will do anything to make the US safer.

I wrote the above article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.

The US Federal Reserve has an inflation target of 2% per year. That target appears to be a minimum: They are concerned when inflation falls below their target but appear to be content with inflation above 2%. The current inflation rate from March 2016 to March 2017, measured by the Consumer Price Index, is 2.4%.

Prices provide information about the cost of bringing goods and services to market. Viewed in that way, a price increase should indicate that a good or service is more expensive to produce, and a price decrease should indicate it is less expensive to produce. Deviations from this function lower the informational value of prices and make economic calculation more difficult.

Because advances in technology generally make goods and services less expensive to produce, prices should generally be falling to reflect the falling real cost of production. Even a stable price level is somewhat misleading when productivity increases lower the cost of producing goods and services. Increased productivity would result in falling prices, were it not for the fact that the value of money is falling faster.

Despite arguments about the perils of deflation, the United States had a long-term decline in prices from 1865 until the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, at a time in which the industrializing economy was growing more rapidly than it ever had before. As to the argument that people will wait to purchase goods when they anticipate falling prices, computer prices have been falling for half a century, along with the prices of other high-tech goods, and those markets have seen rapid growth.

Deflation is not bad for the economy, and deflation that represents increases in productivity produces prices that give a more accurate representation of real cost of goods and services. There is no good reason for the Fed to deliberately try to create inflation.

If the Fed just met its target of 2% inflation, prices would double in 36 years. The current inflation rate of 2.4% would lead to a doubling of prices in 30 years, and the Fed does not appear unhappy with the current rate of inflation.

I find it baffling that the Fed is fixated on continual inflation rather than price level stability. A gradual deflation to reflect productivity increases would make prices more closely correspond to the real cost of producing goods and services.

This article was published by The Beacon.

In recent days, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has dropped all diplomatic niceties by adopting an unreconstructed, misleading, and certainly counter-productive language against Iran, wrapped around the Trump administration’s certificate of Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal.  Thus, in both his letter to US Congress as well as his press statement on April 19, Tillerson steamed full force in demonizing Iran and falsely attributing the worst possible vices to Iran.

From attacking the nuclear deal as a failure in deterring Iran’s nuclear ambition, to depicting Iran as an exporter of terror and violence in the region and beyond, to portraying Iran’s domestic scene in the darkest language possible, Tillerson’s full fury against Iran knows no bound and quite despairing for those who had hoped for a voice of reason by Tillerson in Trump’s extremist universe.  The United States’ Secretary of State has now fully reconciled himself with the hawkish members of the administration, who are overjoyed at US’s recent recourse to hard power in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan, not to overlook North Korea.

But, after having issued empty threats to North Korea and embarrassingly making a U-turn on Trump’s public boast of dispatching a “powerful armada” toward North Korea, the White House is desperately looking to de-escalate, in part by shifting focus on Iran and thus deflecting attentions on another target.  At the same time, swallowing the arsenic of its own poisonous language on the nuclear deal, the administration has essentially taken away with one hand what it has offered with the other hand, namely, respect for the nuclear deal and abiding with its terms and obligations.  Clearly, Tillerson is now trying to obfuscate the issues to justify the impending Iran legislation in Congress and the major stab at the nuclear deal which will almost certainly follow when and if the new sanctions bills are enacted, re-introducing some of the sanctions lifted under the nuclear deal.

No wonder, then, that although Tillerson has announced a “review period” for the nuclear deal, the present attacks on the deal signify a major offensive against it, which runs contrary to the attitude of Europeans and others, who praise the agreement and have vowed to stick with it.  Even Mr. Tillerson himself signed to a recent G-7 statement on the nuclear deal that characterizes it as a non-proliferation plus. Yet, excelling in the art of self-reversal without raising an eyebrow, Tillerson has now pretty much condemned the deal with his incendiary rhetoric that is a throwback to Bush’s “axis of evil,” in other words, a giant leap backward.  Should this pattern of policy continue, the end result will be outsourcing the administration’s Iran policy in the hands of hawkish members of Congress, who are on record adamantly opposing the nuclear deal from the outset.  Of course, this does not bode well for the administration and its foreign policy, which was supposed to be about re-entrenchment and non-intervention, now quickly forgotten by the growing addiction of the new administration to hard power, in light of the deep cuts in the budget for US’s diplomatic machinery.

A key problem with Tillerson’s descent to the bosom of a new level of Iranophobia is that it stems from a fundamental misperception about Iran and the nature of Iran’s external behavior.  Suffice to say that contrary to Tillerson, Iran is working extra hard to bring peace to Syria, is a part of troika of Russia-Iran-Turkey sponsoring the on-going Astana peace talks, which have evolved as a subset of the Geneva process.  In both Iraq and Syria, Iran is playing a major anti-terrorism role and it is a pity that Tillerson is unable to come to terms with the reality, instead, resorting to the unbounded vilification of Iran and a perverse logic of Iranophobia.  This is a dysfunctional US foreign policy that has a high probability of greater and greater incoherence and self-contradiction, culminating in a policy quagmire on Iran and, indeed, the whole Middle East.

A big question now is how will the Trump administration deliver on its promise to defeat ISIS when it is focusing all its energy and venom against Iran and Syria?  Fact is that the US has no effective anti-ISIS strategy and is now, in fact, providing indirect support for ISIS and other terrorist groups by targeting the regional states that are fighting those terrorists.  George Orwell must be shivering in his grave now.

This article appeared at Iranian Diplomacy.

Pakistan suddenly announced on April 10 the death sentence for Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav (Retd.) without informing the Indian authorities. It was a step aimed at antagonizing India and vitiating bilateral relations. The Pakistani military,  and not the political establishment, took this decision without informing even the Pakistani Government, who was as astounded as the Indian Government.

Backdrop

In March 2016, the Pakistan military claimed it arresting the alleged Indian Spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav, in Balochistan’s Sarvan area during a counter intelligence operation. According to Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), his trial was conducted through a Field General Court Martial (FGCM) under the Pakistan Army Act (PAA) on charges extending from terrorism, subversion in Baluchistan, blowing up trains, pipelines etc. The charges make even Sylvester Stallones’ Rambo look pale in comparison. After a sham trial he was awarded the death sentence.

Given the state of bilateral relations and the internal developments in Pakistan this whole issue raises many questions – starting with the arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav, and the way the Army hijacked the legal process and prosecuted him in the military court, an institution which itself is facing legal scrutiny over two years extension under Army pressure.

Distorted evidence

On March 24, 2016, ISPR announced that the Army has arrested an Indian spy named Kulbhushan Jadhav from Sarvan area of Baluchistan located near Iran-Pakistan border. Pakistan blamed Indian intelligence agencies for destabilising Baluchistan through its network operating from Iranian soil.

The ISPR claimed that the Army Chief raised this issue with the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who happened to be in Islamabad on State visit. However, President Rouhani denied this claim saying that Pakistan never raised this issue and also categorically denied that India is using Iranian territory to destabilize the insurgency-ridden Baloch province.

The spokesperson of the Iranian Embassy in Pakistan slammed ISPR for spreading disinformation by attributing remarks to the Iranian President, labeling it as “undignified and offensive”.

The facts produced by the Pakistani establishment vis-à-vis the arrest of Cdr Jadhav are both distorted and factually inaccurate. For example, Baluchistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti announced that Jadhav was picked from Chaman, which is 873 km away from Sarvan as claimed by the Pakistan Army.

The German Ambassador to Pakistan and indeed the Indian security agencies have long suspected that Jadhav, a former Indian Naval officer working as businessmen in Iran was abducted by the terrorist group Jaish-e-Adal, which operates on Pakistan-Iranian border. It was this group who sold the former Indian Naval officer to the Pakistan security agencies, in a possible quid pro quo.

The Pakistan army came out with the story of arrest of Cdr Jadhav on March 24, 2016 when they claimed that they had arrested him on March 3. This implies that the Pakistan security agencies interrogated Cdr Jadhav for a full 20 days, extracted confessions from him, and created the so-called videos. Despite such a lengthy and no doubt harsh interrogation the Pakistan deep state has failed to produce any collaborative evidence. A fact admitted by the Pakistani Foreign Policy Advisor Sartaj Aziz regarding the lack of evidence in the Senate that strengthens this argument1.

Sources also indicate that the so-called dossier provided to the UN had hardly any corroborative evidence and was based on generalized claims that made on little or no hard evidence.

Illegal Trial

Even the trial has been a sham. There is no mention of the record of when the case was registered against Cdr Jadhav in the Military Court under Pakistan Army Act (PAA) and when the legal procedure started and when the trial was conducted.

The death sentence awarded by FGCM to Cdr Jadhav was under section 59 of PAA and section 3 of Official Secret Act of 1923. The legal argument of prosecution is supported by Pakistan Army Ordinance in 2015, which gives authority to prosecute Pakistani civilians who are linked with religious and sectarian terrorism under PAA. Cdr Jadhav is not a Pakistani citizen as he a carries valid Indian passport, nor does Pakistan have any corroborative evidence that he is a serving Indian Navy officer. He, as confirmed by the Indian government is a retired service officer and does not fall under the jurisdiction of any military court. Hence his trial by Military Court is both travesty of justice and patently illegal.

The Military Court has rested its judgment on the specious evidence of Cdr Jadhav’s involvement in terrorist activities and that too is based on his own confession, which as mentioned earlier was elicited during 20 days of custodial interrogation.

An interesting facet highlighted by the Pakistani media regarding the state of Military Court trials is that out of the 144 people convicted by the military court 135 had confessed to their crimes. The confession rate is more than 94.5 percent; it is obvious that Pakistan is using harsh interrogation methods against these prisoners and running kangaroo courts under the name of expediency in dealing with terrorist crimes.

The legality of the existence of courts is also questionable. When the term of Military courts expired in January 2017 and they were dysfunctional till the end of March 2017, there was a huge hue and cry within Pakistan, their term was extended for another two year ones under intense military pressure. The International Commission of Jurist (ICJ) has strongly criticized the Pakistan justice system in its paper published in 2016, which reads, “the newly constituted system of “military justice” has placed Pakistan in clear violation of its legal obligations and political commitments to respect the right to life, the right to a fair trial, and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Timing

The death sentence for Jadhav appears to be an attempt by the Pakistani Army to stoke tensions with India under the mistaken belief of its rising strategic relevance on account of the growing partnership with China also as the main arbiter of the Afghanistan peace process under new quad of Russia-China-Pakistan-Afghanistan.

It could also be an attempt by the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Bajwa to showcase his anti-India credentials; particularly as he was generally seen as a moderate in comparison to his predecessors. His attempted reassertion through the Jadhav case also underlines sudden deterioration in civil military relations highlighted by the fact of the PM being kept in the dark.

Possible Rationale

The speedy trial and confirmation of the death sentence is rumored to be linked to the disappearance of Lt Col Mohammed Habib Zahir, from Lumbini in Nepal who was reportedly involved in Jadhav’s kidnapping. It appears that the Pakistani establishment got the wind of the fact that he is purportedly in Indian custody and that India could splash evidence that would prove arrest and detention of Jadhav as a concocted story. Thus the whole exercise is an act of pre-emption, and putting the ball in India’s court.

Second, and equally important, is to curry favor with their Chinese benefactors who have off late been jittery about the security of their personnel (close to 20,000-30,000) on various CPEC related projects. The Pakistani Army thus sees the sentencing of Jadhav as a good and reassuring message of the Army’s determination, to continue the work on CPEC.

Repercussions for Pakistan

The Indian government has taken the issue very seriously; it regards the incident as a deliberate act of provocation. It is willing to escalate to any level without compromise. In the first step all contacts with Pakistan are being cut off even as it hardens its stand on the Pakistan sponsored terrorism in J&K.

In the coming summer India could well respond proactively to any Pakistani attempts at intervention. India is likely to tell the US that limits of tolerance have reached, and unless Pakistani military is not reined there is all likelihood of escalation and deterioration in bilateral relations.

A similar message will also go to China and Russia.

There is a possibility that if enough pressure is not built on Pakistan, India could walk out of the Indus Water Treaty and stop water supply. That it would lead to escalation is known, but the responsibility will that be of Pakistan. There are a number of other measures India can take, the sad part is having lost all wars fought with India, the Pakistani military lives in a cuckoo land. It is imperative that in the evolving scenarios, the Pakistani political establishment asserts itself and prevents that greed vitiates the atmosphere, and which could lead to instability in the sub-continent.

About the author:
*Shreyas Deshmukh is a Research Associate with the National Security Program at Delhi Policy Group, a think tank in New Delhi. Prior to joining DPG, he worked with MitKat Advisory Services as a geopolitical risk analyst. He has also worked as Research Assistant at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi and as South and Central Asia Fellow at PoliTact, Washington D.C.

Notes:
1. Later in March, 2017 Sartaz Aziz backtracked from his earlier statement by saying “it has never been said that there was any lack of evidence against Jadhav”, https://www.dawn.com/news/1318160, Accessed on 17 April 2017.

Immediately after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Start Up India program and organized an inauguration function in his characteristic event management style, there was much euphoria in the country about this program. Many thought that Modi had given a huge opportunity to young persons with enthusiasm and ideas to launch their projects, that would lead to a chain of projects in multiple directions. Liberal schemes and incentive programs were also announced by the Modi government.

Has the scheme run it’s course

Catching up with the mood, several equity funding organizations and rich industrialists like Mr. Tata and Mr. Nilenkeni came forward to invest in such projects by extending equity support. However, the Start Up India scheme now appears to have run its course, leaving disappointment and the loss of hopes about the long-term prospects of Mr. Modi’s initiative. While a few start up projects may be doing well, the ground reality is that the overall scenario is one of despondency.

Primary requisites for success

One of the primary requisites for success in any commercial and industrial venture is the high quality pre-investment studies which should be carried out in a methodical and systematic way, instead of rushing with the ideas to announce the projects. In the absence of carrying out investigation on the challenges and prospects of the project opportunities, costly mistakes would inevitably set in and the project promoters will learn at the cost of the projects.

Many young persons jumped into the Start Up India fray without adequate experience and exposure in chosen field of activity. Nothing is a substitute for experience in launch and management of ventures. The mere possession of investible resources or availability of fund or academic or professional qualification will not by itself ensure success of the venture, in the absence of intimate knowledge of the issues involved and the project promoters having the requisite attributes to face the trials and tribulations .

In any project, taken up for implementation, there will be positive and negative factors . The success can be ensured only by the capability of the project promoter to tackle the negative factors. This is where most of the start up entrepreneurs have failed to measure up to the need.

Choice of soft options

Most of the start up entrepreneurs have chosen the soft options and involved themselves in activities such as distribution and trading or simple service oriented functions, where there is bound to be severe competition. In such activities like retail marketing functions, there are traditional entrepreneurs in India whose families have been involved in the functions over several generations and such persons may not have lofty qualifications but would do extremely well, due to the intimate knowledge of the functions , attained by first hand experience over a period of time. In such competitive conditions, start up entrepreneurs have been found to be wanting and not equal to the traditional competitors involved.

One particularly noteworthy factor is that a very few promoters have entered into manufacturing activities or in fields such as chemical and biotech industries where the challenges may be high but competition much less and profit potentials very attractive.

Abnormal salaries

The absurdity of abnormal salaries offered to the executives by several start up ventures only indicate the lack of care and caution by the promoters. Obviously, they would have done optimistic calculations with regard to the profitability, succumbing to wishful expectations. Before long, they find that they have burnt their fingers. They just do not play according to the business rules due to lack of training and experience and abnormal salary offers clearly prove this.

Need for investigation

What is strange that even experienced persons like Mr. Tata and Mr. Nilenkeni have failed to see the writing on the wall , when extending generous support to the start up entrepreneurs by way of equity.

It is high time that an organized investigation should be carried out by the government of India to clearly find out as to what has gone wrong and why this worthy scheme has failed to match the expectations.

One only hopes that a proper investigation on the state of Start Up India projects would be ordered by government of India that would provide right lessons for the benefit of the future players.

Mr.Modi’s Start Up India project scheme is certainly a good and progressive idea. But, many times we find that good schemes fall out on the way when implementation is done without the needed caution, forward planning and in a great hurry.

(Civil.Ge) — Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili addressed the participants of the fourth South Caucasus Security Forum, the two-day foreign policy and security conference gathering Georgian and international security experts.

In his opening remarks on April 20, PM Kvirikashvili referred to the present times as “challenging … not only for our region, but for a wider region surrounding us” and called for “a common strategic vision and effective security arrangements in order to ensure European and regional security.”

Kvirikashvili highlighted Georgia’s precarious position, with “20 percent of [Georgia’s] territories occupied, with Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation deliberately visiting the occupied territories and with further militarization of occupied territories in full swing.” He, however, was quick to add that despite all this, Georgia was still “an island of… relative stability,” having transformed itself “from a country ravaged by civil war into a dynamic democratic state” in the last 25 years.

The Prime Minister said his vision was to solve the conflict peacefully through the engagement of Georgia’s strategic partners, such as the United States, the European Union, NATO “based on the full respect of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

He also reiterated Georgia’s determination to join the European Union and NATO and welcomed the introduction of “the universally crucial issue of Black Sea security” into NATO’s agenda. “Georgia, as a responsible partner, is committed to making its contribution,” he added.

Kvirikashvili also spoke on Georgia’s transit role, calling the country a “key component of the Great Silk Road” and saying that in Georgia “hardware meets software,” with “physical access through modern transport infrastructure and normative access in terms of free trade agreements.”

“A few years ago we signed a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area Agreement with the EU … we have already finalized negotiations and Georgia will be the first country in the region to have a free trade agreement with China. We also have in place free trade agreements with CIS, Turkey, GSP regimes with the United States, Canada and Japan and plan to launch FTA negotiations with India this year,” PM Kvirikashvili explained.

The Prime Minister went on to highlight Georgia’s strategic position “on the crossroads of practically every vital interest of the West and the East in our region” and stressed its role as “the stronghold of western interests in the region.” “This is what makes us valuable to our neighbors and partners in the context of building the security architecture. Let me assure you that we do recognize the magnitude of our responsibility,” Kvirikashvili noted.

US President Donald Trump does not see a US role in helping its European allies build a government in Libya. Instead, he told reporters, he wants to defeat Islamic State, after which the US can focus on domestic issues.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, DC on Thursday, following a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Trump contradicted his guest’s assessment that the US role in stabilizing Libya would be critical, arguing the US has “enough roles… everywhere.”

“I do not see a role in Libya,” Trump said. “I do see a role in getting rid of ISIS. We’re being very effective in that regard.”

We are effectively ridding the world of ISIS. I see that as the primary role, and that’s what we’re going to do – whether it’s in Iraq, or in Libya, or anywhere else. And that role will come to an end at a certain point, and we’ll be able to go back home and rebuild our country, which is what I want to do,” Trump concluded.

Gentiloni had just finished making a case for US involvement in stabilizing Libya by helping the internationally recognized government in Tripoli establish control over the country’s entire territory.

“We need a stable and unified Libya,” the Italian PM said, noting that US Special Forces had taken part in defeating Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in the port city of Sirte, but that solving the problem of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and beyond would require nation-building. “The US role in this is critical.”

Trump’s rejection of that role is at odds with his recent actions – launching a missile strike in Syria, escalating tensions with North Korea, and authorizing a review of the nuclear deal with Iran – but in line with his promise during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“We’re getting out of the nation-building business,” Trump announced on April 27 of last year, describing his foreign policy as “America first.”

Libya collapsed into chaos and anarchy in 2011, after the Obama administration backed a rebellion in Benghazi against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s leader since 1969. Using UN Security Council resolution 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone in the north of the country, NATO began air strikes in support of the rebels. In October 2011, one such strike hit a convoy carrying Gaddafi, who was then captured and killed by the rebels.

As Libya collapsed, neighboring countries of Tunisia, Egypt and Mali had to deal with a surge in terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, human traffickers exploited tens of thousands of African migrants, who try to reach Italian shores in rickety boats. In a recent report, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) spoke of slave markets in the south of Libya, where Africans are traded for as little as $200.

It requires a little bit of explanation of this title for non-Bengali readers of this column. Tetul is a Bengali word for tamarind, and ‘Hujur’ is used to address a Muslim cleric. Tetul Hujur in English would be something like Mister Tamarind even though it loses its intended flavor in the translation.

Tamarind is a sweet and sour tropical produce that hang from the tree branches. A favorite condiment in the Indian sub-continent which has many applications. One’s mouth would water at the very sight of a tamarind.

Most Islamists believe in the complete segregation of man and woman in the society. They often compare women to tamarind citing men’s tongue would water at the very sight of a woman polluting their mind and soul and hence women must be segregated from men. These types of religious sermons using the example of tamarind goes back a long time in history.

A festive mood descends in the rural Bangladesh in the winter nights, when the weather is mild and comfortable. Loud microphones pierce through the peaceful quiet of the surroundings, and you could hear lectures of the clerics for the most part of the night. Sipping hot tea, the ordinary rural folks relish listening to those tamarind flavored religious sermons.

Initially, the women’s rights groups, the secularists, and the scholars took these sermons of comparing women to tamarind lightly until the head of a group, Hefazat-e-Islam warned men to segregate women in their midst for fear of tamarind effect on their tongues. Women were simply objects of men’s lust and therefore should be veiled to keep their mind clean.

Hefazat-e-Islam is a major provider of religious education having numerous religious schools or Madrassas throughout Bangladesh. Most people were not aware of this organization until they surfaced as a major political force in 2013 when groups of Hefazat supporters from all over Bangladesh descended into Dhaka, the capital city. Terrified by this new power, the government of Sheikh Hasina cut all transportation to obstruct their entry into Dhaka. But the Hefazat followers walked long distances and took the painful trip to loudly declare their fierce opposition to a secular group, the “Shahbagh Movement.” The “Shahbagh Movement” was craftily planted by the government and its allies to counter opposition to the trial of Muslim leaders who were being tried for war crimes.

Hefazat’s aim was to rally support for the Muslim leaders and to oppose the death sentences that was just imposed by the International Crimes Tribunal. The folks of the Shahbagh Movement were chanting “death to the Razakars” and occupied a prominent section of the city for weeks “day and night” blocking all traffic and movement of people including that of critically ill patients who were trying to enter and exit hospitals in the parameters. Such a confrontation was not seen in Bangladesh for a long while.

The Hefazat leaders believed the Shahbagh Movement comprised of bloggers and secularists who were spreading blasphemous ideology and accused them guilty under the strictest Islamic laws. It was a very tense moment in the capital city and especially for the Hasina government. Initially, she wanted to woo Allama Shafi, the head of Hefazat-e-Islam to her orbit and command; and when he declined, Hasina opted to combat Hefazat crowd ruthlessly.

While providing full protection to the Shahbagh Movement, the police opened live fire on the hundreds of thousands of people participating in the Hefazat rally. On May 5 and 6, 2013, the government cracked down on the protesters by using a combined force drawn from police, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to drive the protesters away from Shapla Square. Following the events at Motijheel, there were protests in other parts of the country that morning, which resulted in more than 30 deaths.

Different sources provide different figures about the casualties in this operation. Depending upon sources, reported deaths ranged from 20 to 61. The opposition party BNP initially claimed thousands of Hefazat activists were killed during the operation, which was disputed by the government. Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations put the total death toll at above 50.

Thus a non-political group surfaced into a center stage while Hasina brutally crushed all moderate and secular political opponents. The eyes of the major political parties of the nation swung to this non-political group eager to use it as a vote bank. While this religious group raised a battle cry against the ideals of a dead secular blogger Rajib who was killed by the fanatics, the Hasina government declared Rajib a national hero and the first martyr of the country’s second liberation war. Fighting the religious fanatics was now Hasina’s second liberation war. Prime Minister went to Rajiv’s house to console his parents. Minister Ms. Motia Chowdhury, a former Marxist and a close associate of PM Hasina compared Rajiv to her son and lamented at full volume.

Rajib’s brutal killing shocked the entire nation. While most Bangladeshis detested the way he was murdered, at the same time, they felt their religious feelings were violated by the blogger’s spread of the blasphemous ideology especially his mockery of the beloved prophet.

The anger of the secularist group “Shahbag Movement” descended onto Moulana Shafi, the head of the Hefazat-e-Islam. On a recent Islamic teaching session, Moulana Shafi invoked “tamarind” advising the followers to the immoral sighting and savoring of women. In the past, these preachings were ignored, but now it turned into a battle cry for the secular bloggers. The media also jumped on to Moulana Shafi and accused him of “illogical and odd” utterances that demeaned women.

One senior minister labeled Shafi “Mr. Tamarind” or “Tetul Hujur”. The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called Moulana Shafi a “Tetul Hujur” condemning him strongly in her speeches. In one public address, she forcefully stated; “Yes, Mr. Shafi, you have offended women by comparing them with tamarind which is totally unacceptable. Shame on you. You have forgotten that a woman is your mother, someone is your sister, and someone is your daughter. I am sure you will be tempted with mouthwatering delight (at the age of 90) when you are in the company of your leader Khaleda Zia . ….”

While such malicious utterances are still reverberating in people’s mind, masterful Hasina has now flip-flopped and embraced Moulana Shafi in a big way. Looking at the upcoming elections, Shafi could help her win big with the Islamist followers. Shafi got rewarded in many ways and is now happy with Hasina. Two videos; one where Hasina is ridiculing Moulana Shafi and the other, where Moulana Shafi praying for Shaikh Hasina’s peace and good luck, went viral. In the video, Sheikh Hasina is seen next to Mr. Tamarind (Tetul Hujur) whereas, in the earlier scenarios, Moulana Shafi used to be seen next to Begum Khaleda Zia, the opposition leader.

For some strange reasons, Bangladeshi media and a large number of intellectuals find the tamarind is sweet when he stands by Sheikh Hasina and tastes sour when Shafi is seen with Khaleda Zia. Bangladesh media is well known for flip flopping with news for money and power.

Media that try to be aggressive may lose their license. Keeping their reporting within government’s wishes is the only choice if they want to remain in business.
In 2004, Sheikh Hasina reached an agreement with Shaikhul Hadi’s leader Moulana Azizul Huq as a means to “pick a thorn with another thorn.” But she was not able to pull the thorn as the thorn became stronger and sharper this time.

Bangladeshi politics is terribly intertwined with religion. While she is on the offensive against the opposition parties, Sheikh Hasina takes the liberty to play the religion card in politics. An influential liberal religious party Jamaat has been totally fractured by Hasina on the pretext they were against the liberation of Bangladesh, only because of Jamaat allies itself with the opposition BNP. She also accused ancillary factions of Jamaat as terrorists, so hammering them is seen as a fight against terrorism in the eyes of the Indian and Western nations. Same Jamaat was her ally several times when she ran for elections in the past.

In fact, she has two faces; one is a show of secularism for global display and the other for domestic appearance where she shows Islamic zealotry as a show to appease the religious sentiments of the ordinary people. Like a magician, she fabricates religious terrorists out of the swamp instantly to a “show and tell” demonstration for the international leaders. This is a made to order display tailored to fit Hasina’s part of the story as and when needed to enhance her political ambitions. It is a dangerous game started by Hasina, the end of which is unpredictable. Sheikh Hasina will perform all types of acts just to remain in power and to ride the Bangladesh’s economic growth at least till 2024.

*Minar Rashid is a social thinker and is a columnist in Naya Diganta

Next month’s annual congress of world soccer body FIFA is likely to become the first international forum since US President Donald J. Trump took office to debate Israel’s controversial settlement policy on the occupied West Bank.

Israeli efforts to prevent FIFA from debating and possibly censoring it for allowing soccer teams from Jewish settlements in territory occupied since 1967 to play in Israeli leagues are complicated by the fact that Mr. Trump has called on Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement activity.

Mr. Trump has expressed unconditional support for Israel and has sharply criticized a resolution in December in the United Nations Security Council that condemned with acquiescence of the Obama administration Israeli settlement policy. Mr. Trump, who has made achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace one of his foreign policy goals, nevertheless advised Mr. Netanyahu on an official visit to Washington earlier this year that settlements “don’t help the process.”

The settlement issue is likely to again occupy centre stage when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets Mr. Trump in Washington in early May in advance of the FIFA congress in Bahrain. In a rare official Israeli visit to a Gulf state, representatives of the Israel Football Association (IFA) will be granted visas to Bahrain, a country with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, to attend the congress.

Israel has in recent years succeeded in thwarting repeated Palestinian efforts to get its membership in FIFA suspended. FIFA, in a bid to prevent a situation that would put it in a tight spot at a time that the US Justice Department is prosecuting a number of its senior officials on corruption charges, last year appointed South African anti-apartheid icon Tokyo Sexwale to negotiate a solution.

Mr. Sexwale proposed three options, all of which are unlikely to provide relief. Mr. Sexwale reportedly initially suggested that FIFA could take the legal risk of throwing in the towel, give Israel six months to rectify the status of the disputed clubs, or continue to attempt to achieve a negotiated solution. Mr. Sexwale, under pressure from Israel, dropped any reference to a suspension of Israeli membership. In advance of submission of Mr. Sexwale’s report to FIFA, Israel is seeking to ensure that any references to punitive action against the Jewish state are removed.

The Palestine Football Association (PFA), human rights groups and a coalition of sports associations, trade unions, and faith based groups are pressuring FIFA to act against Israel. The groups charge that the participation of settlement teams in Israeli competitions violates FIFA rules, FIFA’s adoption of United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and international law that sees Israeli settlements as illegal. FIFA’s bylaws bar any country from setting up teams in another country’s territory, or letting such teams play in its own leagues without the other country’s consent.

Israeli Foreign Ministry communications with its embassies abroad suggest that Israel fears that it may be able to avert the Jewish state’s suspension by FIFA but is unlikely to completely avoid punitive measures against it.

“Our growing assessment is that the FIFA Congress is liable to make a decision on suspending six Israeli teams that play over the Green Line, or even on suspending Israel from FIFA. We urge you to contact your countries’ representatives on the FIFA Council as soon as possible to obtain their support for Israel’s position, which rejects mixing politics with sport and calls for reaching an agreed solution between the parties … and to thwart an anti-Israel decision if it is brought before the council,” the Foreign Ministry said in a cable. The Green Line constitutes the line that divides the West Bank from Israel proper and demarks territory occupied in Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

Ironically, the cable spotlights the fundamental problem underlying a lack of integrity in international sports governance: the ungoverned relationship between politics and sports. International sports associations and governments maintain a fiction that sports and politics are separate even if the two are inextricably joined at the hip. The cable serves as evidence of how governments and associations use the fiction of a separation to corrupt the integrity of sports.

The relationship of sports and politics is equally evident in Palestinian soccer. The PFA is headed by Jibril Rajoub, Palestine’s sports czar, secretary of the central council of Mr. Abbas’s ruling Al Fatah group, and a former security chief who spent 17 years in Israeli prison.

Mr. Rajoub recently weakened the PFA’s battle with the IFA by repeatedly refusing in a debate in New York with an Israeli peace negotiator to condemn Palestinian attacks on Israeli Jews. Mr. Rajoub has praised in recent years a wave of knife attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

FIFA may well attempt to buy time by adopting Mr. Sexwale’s option to give Israel six months to rectify the situation. A FIFA congress decision to that effect would however effectively constitute a defeat for Israel because it implicitly acknowledges that allowing West Bank teams to play in Israeli leagues constitutes a violation of FIFA rules as well as international law.

While Israel is certain to reject the notion, a six-month grace period would also buy Israel time to further counter the growing Boycott, Diversification and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to penalize Israel for continued occupation of the West Bank. Israel has made countering BDS one of its foreign policy priorities. The Netanyahu government recently emulated Mr. Trump’s disputed ban on travel to the United States from six majority Muslim country by banning BDS supporters from travel to Israel.

FIFA’s groping with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to serve as a bell weather of international attitudes towards Jewish settlement at a time that many members of the international community are exasperated with the policies of the Netanyahu government, the most right-wing in Israeli history. It is also likely to put the Trump administration’s support for Israel to the test.