By Elizabeth Owen

Breakaway South Ossetia is jumping on board with a Russian crackdown against Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist” organization, with one separatist official suggesting that followers of the US-based religious community act in Tbilisi’s interests.

The October 11 decision by South Ossetia’s de facto Supreme Court to outlaw the group, a self-described Christian organization headquartered in Wallkill, New York, follows roughly three months after Russia’s own ban against Jehovah’s Witnesses came into force.

In explaining their ban, Russian officials, always wary of foreign influences ahead of a presidential election, have focused largely on the group’s rejection of blood transfusions, which Moscow presents as a public-health threat.

The official grounds for South Ossetia’s ban appear to hover around the supposed presence of “extremist” pamphlets at the homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Without an appeal, the South Ossetia decision will become law by October 21, according to the region’s de facto justice minister, Zalina Lalieva.

But the Jehovah’s Witnesses intend to appeal.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses in South Ossetia will appeal this decision because there is no evidence or legal basis for such a ruling,” the Office of Public Information of Jehovah’s Witnesses wrote in response to emailed questions from Tamada Tales.

“As is recognized by governments worldwide that are familiar with our activities, Jehovah’s Witnesses are peaceful citizens that obey the laws of the land,” it said. “We do not protest against the government or participate in any activity that could be considered a ‘threat to the rights of citizens, public order and public security.’”

The group says that it is “clear” that South Ossetia’s decision is “a direct result” of the Russian Supreme Court’s own April 20 decision to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses, now under appeal in the European Court of Human Rights after an earlier petition failed in Russia.

Sonia Khubaevaya, religious advisor to South Ossetia’s de facto president, Anatoly Bibilov, rejects the notion that Tskhinvali is just following Moscow’s lead, however. The territory has its own concerns, she claims.

Its first Jehovah’s Witnesses were ethnic Ossetians who arrived from Georgian-controlled territory during Ossetian separatists’ 1991-1992 fight with Tbilisi, and with a mission to disseminate Georgian followers’ beliefs, she warned in a September interview with Nykhas.ru, a South Ossetian outlet.

Their refusal to bear arms and what she describes as their rejection of government – Jehovah’s Witnesses do not go into politics or vote — means they pose a security threat, she argued.

“This all works against us, against our national identity. . . if in Russia they don’t present a threat by way of percentage [of the population], for South Ossetia their numbering a thousand people presents an enormous danger.” Jehovah’s Witnesses have never been registered in South Ossetia, she added.

Citing concerns for their welfare, the Office of Public Information of Jehovah’s Witnesses declined to say how many followers live in South Ossetia.

South Ossetia has not arrested any alleged Jehovah’s Witnesses yet, but de facto Justice Minister Laliyeva has stated that “the competent organs” have got an eye out for underground activities.

One South Ossetian observer, however, sees explanations for Tskhinvali’s alarm apart from any talk about Tbilisi.

Coordination with Russia’s prosecutor general, informal nudges or just the “hope of big brother’s approval” all could have played a role, wrote Мурат Гукемухов for Ekho Kavkaza this July.

South Ossetia’s de facto officials plan to hold a referendum on joining Russia, which provides the bulk of the region’s budget and stations hundreds of troops there.

Similarly, breakaway Abkhazia, another Moscow-backed region, has had a ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses since 1995, but, this April, also felt the need to raise the alarm about their followers.

Aside from the Jehovah’s Witnesses objection to military service, underlined the Abkhaz State Television and Radio Company,  “[t]he main question is what relationship do the USA and Georgia have to this [group]?” Its literature, it observed, is printed in Brooklyn and in Abkhaz.

The group also has not been registered in breakaway Nagorno Karabakh.

Perceptions of the supposed risks of Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, can change according to the situation.

In August, in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk, Russia-linked de facto authorities also outlawed the group’s activities, claiming they were working with Ukraine’s security service and “neo-Nazis.” Takeovers of Jehovah’s Witnesses meeting spots and harassment and abuse of their members have been reported throughout eastern Ukraine for the past few years.

Meanwhile, in Russia, which has been plagued by attacks by Islamist radicals, police have often responded to Jehovah’s Witnesses as if dealing with terrorists.

Footage from May, aired on national television, shows mega-muscular police in black face masks and bulletproof vests scaling a wooden fence to enter a building in the southwestern town of Oryol and shut down a Jehovah’s Witness service.  A Danish man attending the gathering, Dennis Christensen, now faces a possible ten-year prison sentence for supposed membership in an “extremist organization.”

In August, a woman was arrested in Kursk for allegedly handing out pamphlets in what appears to be the first criminal prosecution of a Jehovah’s Witness under the ban, Forum18 reported.  The unidentified woman faces a potential eight-year prison sentence.

Get-tough measures have also been scattered throughout the North Caucasus and beyond.

Nonetheless, the Jehovah’s Witnesses state that they are “confident” that their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against Russia’s ban will prevail, as did a 2010 case.

After all, they point out, the Kremlin itself has recognized them as exemplary community members.

In May, President Vladimir Putin awarded one Russian couple with his Order of Parental Glory.  They were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This may be one of the cruelest and most cynical moves of Washington in its entire dark “regime change Syria” chapter.

Serbian media sources are reporting, based on quotes from US Embassy Belgrade personnel, that the United States has sought and been given assurances by the Serbian government and military that Serbian de-mining experts will not be deploying to Syria to assist in removing the ubiquitous horrific mines and other explosive devices left behind by a retreating ISIS.

As the rout of ISIS forces continues in Syria, the civilian population begins returning to their homes and their lives that had been disrupted by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups. According to the United Nations, more than 600,000 Syrians have returned to areas liberated by the Syrian government with the assistance of Russia and Iranian forces.

But that is where the tragic problems often begin. As the Economist reported earlier this year, the joy of returning to a life where the scourge of ISIS has been eliminated can be cut short in an instant by what ISIS leaves behind:

‘The first explosion killed our neighbour and his sister-in-law when they entered their house,’ said Ali Hussain Omari, a former fighter from the city. ‘Three days later another mine killed my cousin. His 11-year-old daughter’s leg was amputated and their house was destroyed. A week later another mine in an olive tree exploded. My neighbour lost his leg.’

What a horrible irony to have survived the marauding jihadists only to be blown to pieces by the terrors they left behind.

Which is why it is all the more disturbing that the United States government is so adamant that US-trained Serbian de-mining experts NOT deploy to Syria to help make post-ISIS Syria safe for civilians to return.

The “spat” between US Ambassador to Belgrade Kyle Scott and Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin began when the Serbian side announced that it would participate in the de-mining efforts in Syria in a manner that would have Serbian forces coordinating with Russians. The Americans reminded their Serb allies, through US Embassy spokesman Eric Heyden, that:

…the US government provided significant donations in money, equipment and training to help the Serbian Army get rid of the mines left over from the war, and thus make Serbia a safer place. That is why, over the past 15 years, we have provided more that USD 20 million in aid for mine clearing operations in Serbia. During our last major joint exercise, in April 2017, the US government donated some USD 450,000 in medical and demining equipment to the Serbian Army to improve its capacities…

In other words, “we funded your training in de-mining operations and if you want to continue receiving money from the United States you had better cancel your plans to assist with de-mining in Syria.”

Washington’s concerns over Serb participation in de-mining in Syria was, according to press reports, heeded by Belgrade. Heyden further announced:

Media reports from Russia have stated that deminers from Serbia would be deployed together with Russian forces in Syria. In the last six months, in our numerous conversations with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the VS General Staff, the US government received multiple assurances that this story is incorrect, and that the goal of our bilateral training was to enable members of the Serbian Army to clear the area of the former military airport in Sjenica, and to open it for use…

Once that was settled, the US announced that it “has plans for next year to continue helping to develop the Serbian Army’s capacity in this project.”

And the Syrian victims of ISIS and other (probably US-backed) extremist mines that continue to kill and maim innocent civilians and children? Too bad for them. More innocents will die in the name of the current US Cold War 2.0 psychosis.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

It is almost certain that cities will script the story of our future. If India is to capitalise on this megatrend, it becomes essential for the country to engage in widespread and deep reforms, which go beyond infrastructure and focus on reforming governance mechanisms and empowering local government.

By Akhil Deo

In August this year, the United Nations (UN)-Habitat, the UN’s lead agency on urbanisation, released a report, which recommended wide-ranging reforms to the institution. The significance of this report lies not only in its potential to catalyse solutions for sustainable urbanisation, but also in its recognition that cities are likely to be important actors in shaping global governance and instrumental in domestic growth.

This recognition was fuelled by two developments. The first was the rapid diffusion of power that resulted from the process of globalisation, and the second is the failure of current institutions of global governance to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Unfortunately, these developments have not reinvigorated a conversation on urban governance reforms in India. If India is to emerge as a leading power, policymakers must revitalise the decentralisation agenda and empower local governments.

A changing world order

Ever since the peace of Westphalia in 1648, nation states have been the primary actors in coalescing societies. The institutionalisation of the UN only reinforced this status quo, with primacy accorded to ‘state sovereignty’. In the latter half of the twentieth century, especially following the end of the Cold War, the UN was relatively successful in ensuring peace and economic growth in many parts of the world.

The 21st century, however, has brought with it new developments and this world order is now befuddled by a myriad of challenges. On the one hand, rising inequality, populist politics, technological disruptions, climate change and immigration induced through strife in fractured states are crippling the ability of global governance institutions and nation states to act cohesively. On the other hand, citizens are increasingly frustrated with their lack of representation in these institutions, which often prioritise corporate interests and supra-national policymaking over the domestic aspirations of a nation’s constituents. The election of Donald Trump as American President and the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union has only reinforced how widespread the angst against elite political classes and global governance institutions truly is.

In addition, globalisation has precipitated a rapid diffusion of power from Western countries to a wide constellation of actors. Accordingly, we now find ourselves in a ‘multiplex’ world, where actors at various levels of governance are capable of influencing global decision-making, ranging from nations themselves, powerful multinational corporations, to non-state players like the Islamic State and, perhaps most importantly, cities.

Against this backdrop, it is worth noting that centuries before the birth of the UN, powerful ‘city states’ such as Athens, Vienna and The Hanseatic league were capable of pooling their military, economic and political weight to secure their futures. In today’s world, we are witnessing a resurgence of this trend. The interlocking processes of globalisation, internet-enabled connectivity and rapid urbanisation have given rise to some ‘mega cities’, which are at the centre of commerce, growth, innovation, technology and finance.

Today, technology, economics and politics are diverting power away from the nation state and towards cities, which are likely to script the next phase of globalisation.

The future resides in cities

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than outside them — around 54% of the global population in 2014, according to the UN, a figure that is likely to grow to 60% by 2050. These urban centres are also catalysts of economic growth, with research revealing that just 600 urban centres generate about 60% of global gross domestic product (GDP). New York City’s GDP alone, for example, is just shy of Spain’s and Canada’s at $1.5 trillion, placing it among the world’s 20 largest economies.

This transformation is driving politics and economics in many parts of the world. While trust in national governments in many countries appears to be waning, citizens have consistently reported that they have faith in their local governments. Citizens of global cities such as New York and London are increasingly identifying with their local identities instead of national ones. For example, a poll in 2011 revealed that many Londoners identify with a “city state” more than they did with any national affiliation.

These results are unsurprising, considering that cities are stepping up where governments are failing. When President Trump announced America’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, an effort led by the governors of California and New York culminated in ‘America’s pledge’ — a coalition of several states and over 200 cities, which have reaffirmed their commitment to support the emission reduction goals under the agreement.

Not only are cities increasingly emerging as concentrated centres of growth, they are also likely to be front and centre in facing some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Cities already account for 70% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and many of them are situated in coastal areas, rendering them most vulnerable to rising sea levels and adverse weather events.

Around the world, sub-national governments are responding to these challenges. Cities have taken the lead on climate change since at least 2006, when the C40 initiative brought together more than 60 local governments to promote partnerships in reducing carbon emissions. Today, more than 90 cities make up the partnership, and their commitments often significantly exceed those made by nations under international agreements.

Taking stock of these developments, the then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said in 2012 that “our struggle for global sustainability will be lost or won in cities.” The logic is simple: not only is it the case that more individuals today reside in urban centres, but cities also tend to be less bureaucratic and more flexible in comparison to national governments, allowing them to innovate and share best practices with each other.

Mayors from around the world are going one step further. Local leaders gathered in the Netherlands last September to discuss a new political and civil institution for cities — the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM). A “Global Mayors Call to Action” signed by all delegates promises that participating cities will shape a “global cities rights movement” and will commit to work together in partnership with national governments, the private sector and civil society to advance agendas of international importance such as sustainable development, climate change and urbanisation.

This transformational vision is premised on the fact that cities will eventually be key actors in guaranteeing sustainable lifestyles to citizens. Accordingly, these cities are also demanding a greater voice in institutions of global governance. In 2016, when the UN-Habitat conference in Ecuador organised to discuss the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, mayors from over 500 cities released a manifesto calling for a “seat at the global table”.

Because cities are closest to citizens and more financially and technologically adept at dealing with local challenges, it is only natural that municipal governments integrate with global decision-making processes.

The UN is also responding to these demands. In September this year, a high-level panel was convened to explore how cities could contribute to the global governance agenda. The panel’s report called for a redesign of the UN-Habitat to include membership across all 193 UN states and the constitution of a new governance structure, which includes local governments.

Wither the nation state?

To be clear, the importance of nation states will not diminish overnight. Modern countries were a result of rapid industrialisation in the eighteenth century, where large bureaucracies were instrumental in pooling labour, capital and technology to drive economic growth.

However, technology today is proliferating in a distributed manner, which thrives on decentralisation. To truly benefit from interconnected communities, a rapidly-rising middle class and new forms of production fuelled by transformations in technology, it will be essential to consider a rearrangement of current political structures.

Therefore, cities are likely to supplement and support national governance structures. As former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg writes:

Accordingly, an exciting new form of city politics is reshaping global governance and domestic development. As some commentators note, “glocalists” are at the forefront of negotiating new intercity relationships, charting alternative development pathways and canvassing for finance and resources alongside national governments.

Today, it is almost certain that cities will script the story of our future. If India is to capitalise on this megatrend, it becomes essential for the country to engage in widespread and deep reforms, which go beyond infrastructure and focus on reforming governance mechanisms and empowering local government.

India’s missing reforms

Despite rapid international engagement and a growing network of interconnected cities, India’s urban governance framework has not truly adapted to these transformational changes. This ignores the fact that India’s future is also decidedly urban. In 2011, it was estimated that over 400 million people, that is, 30 per cent of India’s population, lived in urban areas, and it is expected that this number will rise to over 800 million by 2050.

Some of India’s cities — such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru — are poised to become the fastest growing in the world. Alongside these mega cities, patterns of growth suggest that India’s real urbanisation story will take place in smaller cities and towns. Many of these cities are also a part of initiatives like the C40 and the GPM. India, in fact, is currently the president of the UN-Habitat, and has supported calls for restructuring the forum to foster inclusivity of local government.

It is unfortunate then, that India’s cities and towns do not truly govern themselves. While the Indian government unveiled its ambitions ‘smart cities’ mission in late 2015, the official documents and narrative surrounding this programme make it clear that it is primarily an urban infrastructure initiative. What makes a city truly ‘smart’, however, is how effectively it is capable of exercising its powers to improve governance and the level to which it empowers participatory decision-making.

Even though the Seventy-fourth Constitutional Amendment introduced the concept of Urban Local Bodies to decentralise governance as early as 1994, its implementation has widely been acknowledged as a failure.

Stories which reveal the sorry state of affairs in Indian cities are plentiful. Unimaginative urban planning has resulted in urban sprawls, with proliferating slums and insufficient access to essential services like housing and healthcare. From Mumbai coming to a standstill every monsoon, the disappearing lakes in Bengaluru, to the polluted air in Delhi, it is becoming increasingly evident that local governments are failing their citizens.

A large part of the problem lies in the fact that under the current Constitutional framework, states have an undue influence over whether or not to devolve powers to local governments, and many local decisions have to be signed off by the state government. Municipal corporations also continue to remain under-financed, with no ability to raise tax revenue and limited bargaining power for additional financial transfers. Additionally, they continue to lack appropriate human capital, and the position of mayor is practically ceremonial.

Other developing countries have not been so slow. Mexico City, for example, was one of the first countries to adopt a constitution, guaranteeing a ‘right to the city’ to its citizens. The landmark idea, which India opposed, received recognition as a part of the UN-Habitat’s new urban agenda.

However, a note of caution needs to be struck in the Indian context. For one thing, unlike in some other parts of the world, Indians continue to bestow a high degree of trust upon their national government. While some level of paradiplomacy might be desirable, it must respect the primacy of the central government in foreign affairs. It might be useful to consider institutional mechanisms, as some commentators have argued, through which sub-national actors can engage in global governance.

Second, politics in India can often be vindictive, with different tiers of government likely to struggle over power if competing political parties are elected at various levels. Therefore, it will be necessary to create a grassroots consensus on any devolution of power. Citizens must be able to clearly distinguish between the expectations they have from the three tiers of government.

Third, the rising influence of cities has often polarised areas geographically. For example, during Brexit, there was a sharp contrast in the desires of those who resided in the more globalised cities, such as London, and those who resided in the smaller outlying regions. It will be essential to prevent these kinds of division in India, which are capable of further exacerbating inequality and religious and ethnic differences.

Nevertheless, these challenges should not detract from the fact that a failure on the part of Indian policymakers to rationally empower local governments will not only stunt India’s growth in the long run, but it will also prevent India from engaging constructively with developments in global governance.

On the other hand, a strong executive government at the municipal level can catalyse an enormous transformation in India’s politics, economics and international relations. It would result in a truly ‘bottom-up’ approach to democracy, ensuring that governments have an ear to the ground and are receptive to the needs of their citizens.

This article originally appeared in Swarajya.

It becomes increasingly clear that two Soviet spies, Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall, should receive posthumous Nobel Peace Prizes for actions that almost certainly saved millions of innocent lives.

Had these two young Communists, both scientists working on the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II, not provided crucial information about the secret US/British project to develop the atomic bomb, and with key information about the workings of both the atomic bomb, and later, in Fuchs’ case, the hydrogen bomb — information which allowed Soviet physicists and engineers to quickly catch up and develop their own nuclear weapons to match those in the possession of the US military — all the nations of the world that failed to bow to the wishes of a “lone superpower” United States would have become victims of nuclear blackmail or potential targets for annihilation, like the vaporized cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Even after Russia developed its own atomic bomb, which it demonstrated in 1949, there were powerful forces in the US that were pushing for using the weapon — in Vietnam to rescue the trapped French military at Dien Bien Phu, against North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War, against Mao’s China, later again against North Vietnam and on other occasions — perhaps even in Eastern Europe against Russian forces.

Thanks to Fuchs and Hall, and to several lesser figures who acted as messengers for them in their efforts to get plans to the Soviets, the US was held in check and was unable to have free rein to drop nukes in every conflict which it started or in which it found itself.

The mentality of the US, coming out of World War II, was akin to the one we saw on display after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s when we had Neo-Conservatives like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and presidents like George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as Neo-Liberals like the Clintons, seeking to establish the US as the unchallenged lone global superpower, able to impose its will around the world, and to prevent the rise of any new challenger to that power.

We have seen how this effort has failed in this later period, but imagine how close the US was to succeed in its plan during the era of the late ‘40s and the 1950s, had it obtained even for a decade or less a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

In the current era, there is serious talk in some government circles and among the Neocon and Neoliberal think-tank and political circles of the US, of launching wars against Iran and/or North Korea, possibly even using small “useable” nuclear weapons, to destroy the infrastructure of nuclear weapons-making in those countries.

President Trump himself has spoken about using nuclear weapons, and has proposed an expansion of America’s already huge nuclear arsenal, which already is undergoing a $1-trillion “upgrade” ordered by President Obama. The US is also pressing ahead with the emplacement of nuclear-capable anti-missile missiles along Russia’s eastern and western borders — missiles which Russia points out could both be used as actual delivery systems to nuke cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg or its naval base at Kaliningrad, and, if successful in functioning as ABMs, as a means of limiting or destroying Russia’s ability to retaliate against an all-out US first strike against Russian nuclear missiles.

Clearly then, the US remains hell-bent on achieving global military dominance and is not beyond using nuclear weapons to get it.

What saves the world, and that includes us US citizens, from this madness (because really any major nuclear war launched by the US would inevitably be a catastrophe not just for the nation or nations attacked but for the US itself), is the reality of Russia’s and China’s own powerful nuclear weapons and delivery systems, which are sufficient to destroy the US, even if only a fraction of them were to succeed in reaching their targets.

For that we can thank Fuchs and Hall and their associates.

Hall, who had moved to the UK, was very clear about this before he died in 1999. A US citizen who was never actually charged with being a Soviet spy, his role became public with the declassification of key documents in 1995, and he went public himself at that point, explaining that he had acted to provide critical scientific documents to the Soviet Union because “It seemed to me that an American monopoly was dangerous and should be prevented.” Saying he had no regrets or second thoughts about what he had done, he added, “I was not the only scientist to take that view.” How right he was! (My father, a young engineer and Marine who, during World II worked on another top-secret project at MIT called the Radiation Lab that miniaturized radar to fit on planes, and on that job came to know some of those senior scientists who subsequently worked on the Manhattan Project, later felt the same way: that had the US obtained a nuclear monopoly, it would have used it casually in global conflicts.)

The US showed itself willing to murder millions of civilians in mass fire-bombings of cities in Germany and Japan towards the end of World War II, and especially with two nuclear bombs, it dropped on cities that were not even remotely militarily targets. This country then went on to slaughter three million Koreans, mostly civilians, in the 1950s, and 3-4 million Indochinese — peasants and freedom fighters — in the mid-1960s and ‘70s, and more recently to destroy three countries, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, for purely geopolitical reasons, as none posed any threat to the United States. Such a nation clearly would have had no qualms about unleashing its nukes in all those, and in other conflicts, for example, to destroy the Communist government in Cuba, had nuclear-armed Russia and later China not stood in the way.

Now, with the clearly unbalanced and ego-crazed President Trump talking casually about using America’s nukes, it is again critically important that at least the generals in the Pentagon and the people in the president’s National Security Council understand, even if the narcissistic sociopath in the White House doesn’t, that this cannot be done without potentially unleashing a global nuclear holocaust. And again, this is thanks to the courageous work of Fuchs and Hall.

Revisionist historians will claim that the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan “saved American lives,” but the evidence is overwhelming that Japan was trying desperately to surrender, and that no invasion of Japan was going to be necessary to end World War II. Those bombs were dropped on Japan to warn Russia about what the new order would be. (In fact, there was an unseemly rush by the US to drop them before the Japanese decided to wave the white flag, eliminating the opportunity for a couple of live demonstrations of US power.)

Those same revisionists, along with right-wing super-patriots, will no doubt say that because of Fuchs and Hall and other “traitors” giving the Soviet Union America’s atomic secrets the US had to lose 38,000 soldiers in Korea and 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam since it couldn’t use nukes to end those wars. But of course using nuclear weapons in those wars, if the US could have gotten away with it, would have been at the expense of the lives of even more millions of Koreans and Vietnamese in what were two completely unnecessary conflicts in the first place.

The United States in Japan, and later in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria, has made it abundantly clear that nukes or no nukes, it is not and has not been a force for peace, liberation or freedom, but is rather an imperial power desperate to hang on to its dominant geopolitical role even if its economic power is in decline.

We can only be thankful that in that as this nation struggles desperately to cling as long as possible to its alpha-role in the world, it does not have a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

By Rev. Ben Johnson*

Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for describe how even small economic incentives can affect behavior. One of those nudges, high “sin taxes,” has helped finance terrorism and organized crime.

Sin taxes played some role in his winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. The Nobel Committee that awarded Thaler’s prize in economics noted, “The insights of behavioral economics can also be used to inform more traditional policy interventions, for example the taxation of ‘sinful goods,’” adding a fresh layer of argumentation “over and above traditional arguments based on externalities: a tax on cigarettes can make a smoker better off (as judged by himself) by helping him quit or reduce smoking.” (Emphasis added.) This is a fair reading of the Nobel laureate’s work, as he has endorsed and helped implement such policies across the transatlantic sphere.

During an expert panel conducted by University of Chicago’s Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) in 2012, which asked whether soft drink taxes significantly affect obesity, Thaler replied:

Bad question. Taxes unlikely to work if low but big cigarette takes reduce consumption and peoplle don’t substitute other smoke! [sic].

Thaler exhibited a high degree of certainty in his answer (seven on a scale of 10).

Such self-assured advocacy spurred Prime Minister David Cameron to establish “nudge units” within the UK government, with Thaler’s assistance. “The unit was initially focused on public health issues such as obesity, alcohol intake and organ donation The Guardian explains, “although its scope has ballooned to cover everything from pensions and taxes to mobile phone theft and e-cigarettes.”

Has metastasizing, paternalistic government helped stanch the spread of sin? On the contrary, it seems to stimulate even worse social maladies.

The American Enterprise Institute released the latest study documenting the harmful consequences of sin taxes – ironically enough, just as Thaler was preparing to accept his Nobel.

An AEI white paper by Roger Bate, Cody Kallen, and Aparna Mathur found that increasing tobacco taxes increases the market for illegal cigarettes. The scholars conducted surveys and examined discarded cigarette packs in 18 cities across the world, including five in the U.S.

“What we found is that 30 percent of all smokers surveyed essentially said they’re buying illicit whites [cigarettes legal in the country of production, but illegally smuggled into other markets where no tax is paid], and the primary reason was that they were more cheaply priced,” said Mathur.

The study did not examine whether taxes increased or decreased overall consumption. But it found a strong correlation with substituting another form of tobacco.

By increasing the number of illicit whites on the black market, Thaler’s “big cigarette taxes” benefited (in Mathur’s phrase) “big, criminal gangs.” One study the authors cite found that “raising the cigarette tax by €1,” or $1.18 (U.S.), “increases the illicit market share by 5 to 12 percentage points.” And the higher the tax, the more smugglers can charge, further padding their bottom line.

Organized crime is not the only beneficiary of too-high sin taxes. Tobacco smuggling is also a major source of revenue for terrorism. Illegal cigarettes provide up to one-fifth of all terrorist organizations’ funds, according to the Centre for the Analysis of Terrorism in France.

The fact that Islamist terrorists often target victims based on their faith gives Christians, Jewish people, and non-Islamist Muslims a powerful incentive to oppose sin taxes.

Moreover, sin taxes are not very effective at one of their intended goals, getting people to stop smoking. A Gallup survey found that only 14 percent of former smokers quit smoking because of cost. On the other hand, exactly 75 percent of those who successfully quit said they kicked the habit due to health concerns of some variety.

Through the best of intentions, sin taxes subsidize the worst criminals. Further, they are ineffective. They deliver few of the expected benefits and a bevy of negative, unintended consequences. Nonetheless, Church leaders often advocate unlimited sin taxes or other state actions against addictive substances.

That may shed light on one particularly sad statistic in the Gallup survey: Only one percent of successful ex-smokers said they relied upon “spiritual help with quitting.” As clergy turn to the government to stamp out the scourge of addiction, their flock follow – and turn away from their shepherds’ voice.

The fact that Christian sermons inveighing against the vices of alcohol and tobacco became a staple of American history, sprinkled with sometimes jaw-droppingly specious assertions, does not mean that pastors have no valid spiritual advice to offer parishioners. Health concerns, by far the most likely motivator to successfully stop smoking, readily lend themselves to (tactful, pastoral) spiritual investigation. Willfully increasing the odds of contracting a terminal disease constitutes poor stewardship of the body God fashioned for us (Psalm 139:13-15). It shortens someone’s earthly service to the Lord, and to humanity, and robs the remaining years of vitality and productivity. And lifelong addiction to any substance is unbefitting of the inherent dignity conferred upon all human beings, who were created to experience “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1).

Announcing God’s power to break sin and addiction will do more good than promoting economic intervention.

About the author:
Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. His work focuses on the principles necessary to create a free and virtuous society in the transatlantic sphere (the U.S., Canada, and Europe). He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History summa cum laude from Ohio University and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Rev. Johnson was a panelist at the 2016 CPAC. His writings have appeared in The (UK) Guardian, Human Events, The Stream, Real Clear Policy, Aleteia.org, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, and have been cited by National Review, CBS News, and Fox News.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Tho Bishop*

Recently Russia announced that it will be unleashing a CryptoRuble, just a week after Vladimir Putin strongly criticized Bitcoin and other private cryptocurrencies.

When announcing the move, Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov acknowledged that it was in part inspired by the aim of getting ahead of other governments:

I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after two months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will.

In doing so, Russia is following the lead of another country that too has become hostile to private crypto, China. Last July the People’s Bank of China became the first central bank to announce it had developed a crypto-prototype that it plans to offer alongside the traditional renminbi.

That the first forays into state-backed cryptocurrency comes from two countries with a history of restricting a free and open internet is not surprising. While Bitcoin originated as a way to opt out of government control of money supply, increasingly governments see the underlying technology as a way to increase their control of the economy.

As Xiong Yue explained:

For example, if the government plans to subsidize certain farms, say some corn farms, to support this sector of agriculture, they can directly add a certain amount of money to the wallets of some farms, for instance 100 million dollars and program this money to be sent to certain fertilizer merchants at a certain time, and that each can only spend maximum of 10 million dollars per year, and in this way, they can make sure that the farmers won’t squander the windfalls, and that this money won’t flow to other sectors, for instance, the stock market or real estate market.

Even though this kind of monetary policy is bound to fail, from the perspective of government officials, CBDC provides them a better tool. For them, with the help of the CBDC, they can plan and manage the economy better.

Not to be left behind, the IMF – who some analysts, such as Jim Rickards, believe is prepared to step up to replace the US dollar as the next global reserve currency – recently opened the door to issuing their own cryptocurrency in the future. While some crypto-advocates have naively celebrated recent comments by Christine Lagarde on the future potential of digital currency, such praise simply reflects the increasing awareness of technocrats that the finance is changing and they must be prepared for it. Considering central banks around the world have continued to advance their war on cash, it is not surprising to see Lagarde and others come adapt to the concept so quickly.

Exchange Regulation

The usefulness of state-controlled crypto is why we should expect increased scrutiny and regulation on private cryptocurrency exchanges.

It’s been reported that the Chinese government, which shutdown private crypto-exchanges in September, is looking into reopening exchanges with increased regulation. Russia, too, is working on exchange regulation, rather than an outright ban.  This apparent change in direction may be the consequence of China’s exchange ban resulting in an increased use of peer-to-peer platforms in the face of the government crackdown.

For the same reason that government prefers regulated bank accounts to cash and safes, state officials may recognize the benefit to propping up licensed exchanges. Already we have seen numerous cryptoexchanges be willing to collect and hand-over sensitive customer information in exchange for government-issued licenses. Much like banks, these exchanges are increasingly being enlisted as tax collectors for government.

Calm Before the Storm?

While this loss of privacy may outrage Bitcoin’s initial supporters, it’s understandable why many current holders may be perfectly happy with these developments. After all, while much of Bitcoin’s initial appeal was its usefulness in black markets, a major reason for its astronomical rise in value is its increasing appeal among average customers who were never all that concerned with financial services regulation. Not only has it helped its appeal as an investment, but also its daily use. Japan, for example, saw a major surge in retailers accepting Bitcoin once a firm regulatory framework was implemented.

It is worth wondering whether this harmony between government and consumers will continue, however, once state-controlled crypto truly ramps up.

After all, we’ve already seen government rely upon traditional boogeymen of terrorists, drug dealers, and other criminals as justification for their increased control. The increasing use of Bitcoin by hackers and extortionists provides a modern-day twist to these age-old scare tactics. Is it all that difficult to foresee a scenario where governments attempt to freeze all regulated exchanges in the aftermath of some terrorist attack or other scenario? Or go one step further, and legally mandate replacing a privately-held asset for a government-issued currency?

The example of China demonstrates the inherently decentralized nature of Bitcoin will likely always ensure a degree of functionality beyond the reach of government. At the same time however, the increased popular appeal of crypto-currency also means increasing reliance on third-party services, and fewer individuals securing their investments in private wallets.  Since the most popular – and thus most lucrative – exchanges and other services have an inherent incentive to maintain a good relationship with legal authorities, it is easy to see how this easily plays to the benefit of government officials.

Already within the industry debate is raging between those who prioritize “efficiency” and mainstream appeal – even at the expense of crypto’s decentralized-origins. Luckily, Bitcoin’s original Austro-libertarian ethos means that we are likely to see major industry influence pushing back on state-control.

A Preemptive Strike for Monetary Freedom

In the meantime, this is yet another reason why what little political capital libertarians on monetary policy have should not be wasted pursuing moderate reforms such as forcing the Fed to embrace rules-based monetary policy. There is no hope to ever transform the Federal Reserve into a useful – or even non-harmful – institution. That hope does exist, however, in crypto.

As future monetary policy is soon to become a major topic of conversation as President Trump rolls out his Federal Reserve nominations, it would be a major loss for the cause to not see Senator Rand Paul and other Fed-sceptics use the opportunity to push discussion about the need for competition in currencies. Further, the recent surge in states that have legalized the use of gold and silver for the payment of debt means there has never been a stronger political case for the elimination of legal tender laws and the taxes imposed on alternative currencies like Ron Paul proposed when in Congress. Such a move now could help set the stage for America being a true safe haven for private crypto in the future.

Doing so may give the cryptocurrency industry the freedom to give us a fighting chance to truly end the Fed, and their clones around the world.

About the author:
*Tho Bishop directs the Mises Institute’s social media marketing (e.g., twitter, facebook, instagram), and can assist with questions from the press.

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This article was published by the MISES Institute

In mid-September of this year, Saudi security forces detained at least twenty civilians including clerics, activists, academics, and businessman. This was the biggest crackdown in the Saudi kingdom since the Arab Spring in 2011.

The arrests were made briefly after an exiled opposition figure urged Saudi citizens to demonstrate against the government. This demonstration garnered very little support, and as a result, national security forces mobilized throughout the kingdom arresting dozens of dissidents.

One of these dissidents was Sheikh Salman al-Ouda, a popular cleric within Saudi Arabia with around fourteen million twitter followers. Dr. al-Ouda was someone Osama bin Laden praised in the 1990s, but Sheikh al-Ouda was very well known for criticizing the attacks on September 11, 2001, where fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals.

One of the other detainees was Awad al-Qarni, a Saudi preacher who was banned from tweeting on Twitter in March because of close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, and his provocation for swaying public opinion, as well as political order within the kingdom.

The only thing these detainees have in common is their opposition against Mohammad bin Salman becoming the next heir to the throne in Riyadh. They have openly been opposed to MBS’s policies on Qatar, Yemen, as well as bin Salman’s social and economic reforms which include the privatization of state assets and the reduction of subsidies.

Government officials in Saudi Arabia believed that the crackdown was necessary because they wanted to disrupt a foreign intelligence network from developing links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Houthi rebels in Yemen. In truth, the crackdown was a consolidation of power ahead of King Salman’s abdication and the ascendance of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to the throne.

King Salman is eighty-one years old, and although the state of King Salman’s health is confidential. It is widely believed that the current King has suffered from pre-dementia, which is a brain disorder that can result in memory loss, a lack of exercising judgment, and carrying out tasks.

Despite the King’s condition, King Salman has had a busy year. Thus far, he has traveled to Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Japan, and just recently, Russia. He also attended the Arab Summit in Amman, and hosted President Trump, as well as other Muslim leaders in Riyadh. So, despite his conditions, King Salman has still proven himself capable of governing for some time to come.

Yet, King Salman has a demanding position, which is why he transferred power to his son Mohammad bin Salman, who is widely popular within the royal family. Today, bin Salman is the de facto, day to day ruler of Saudi Arabia who oversees the diplomatic, economic, and defense agendas for the government.

Mohammad bin Salman marks the end of the lineage of kings who are direct descendants of the founder and first king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, but he will need to establish his own legacy. Amongst MBS’s many agendas, the Saudi 2030 vision is a signature plan for decreasing the kingdom’s reliance on oil that introduces social, as well as economic reforms. Some of these reforms include bringing more women into the workforce, increasing non-oil exports, increasing foreign direct investment, moving up on global competitiveness, and lowering unemployment. It remains unclear how these revisions will be put into action, but it sounds like any type of reform in Saudi Arabia can drive the kingdom into the 21st century.

Furthermore, economic reform in Saudi Arabia will have to come from a social overhaul. The recent announcement of Saudi women being able to drive motor vehicles was a landmark achievement that can kickstart social reform in Saudi Arabia.

In addition to social and economic change, bin Salman’s signature foreign policy adventure, the War in Yemen, has no end in sight. Fighting between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels has resulted in a stalemate, and the war has brought massive starvation and tragedy for the Yemeni people. Even with the outbreak of cholera, around seven million people are at risk of being contaminated by this epidemic.

MBS has also been behind the Saudi rivalry with Qatar, which has strained the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into hostile camps. He also refined many of the government agencies and centralized the intelligence agencies under his control.

Much of bin Salman’s political and economic reforms have come at the expense of many powerful princes and the religious establishment. Even though MBS has had a significant influence on the domestic and foreign affairs on Saudi Arabia, his policies have been met with mixed opinions. As such, there is significant opposition to bin Salman at a time where the kingdom is in the midst of political and economic uncertainty.

In this context, although there is no factual evidence in the effectiveness Salman’s policies, the recent crackdown has fueled speculation that a greater change is underway.

Some Saudi analysts have concluded that the crackdown has reinforced the Crown Prince’s authority before his father retires and abdicates power to him.

Historically, the sons of the Saudi kings have lost all their power and influence after the death of their fathers. For instance, the sons of the previous monarch King Abdullah lost much of their positions and were assigned to lower functions after their father passed away.

The current monarch King Salman, could seek to avoid this from happening to his son. So far, there is no evidence for this development, but it would be in the interest of King Salman to abdicate and install his son as the new king while he is still alive to guarantee that his offspring will not be marginalized.

King Salman’s abdication will also not be unprecedented. At gunpoint in 1964, King Saud gave up the throne after a decade-long struggle with his brother Faisal. Although no such scenario exists today, peaceful exits of monarchs have transpired in neighboring countries. For example, in 2013, the former King of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad abdicated and installed his son Tamim in his place.

These precedents illustrate that an abdication of power is a feasible option for the Saudis. For now, however, regardless of the anticipation, the transfer of power is unlikely to take place after King Salman’s visit to Washington which is set for early next year. Afterwards, Salman could retire or abdicate his power over to Mohammad bin Salman. In the meantime, as MBS pursues his ambitious goals, more crackdowns could follow.

Donald Trump said the EU would have supported US sanctions on Iran if he was insistent. But, according to the US president, he allowed Germany and France to keep making money with Tehran as America was capable of putting pressure on Iranians on its own.

When asked by Fox News if Europe is going to support his new strategy on Iran, Trump replied by saying that he has really warm relations with French and German leaders.“They’re great friends of mine. They really are. I get along with all of them, whether it’s Emmanuel [Macron] or whether it’s Angela [Merkel]… I really like those people,” he said.

As for the Iranian issue, Trump stressed: “I told them [the EU]: ‘Just keep making money. Don’t worry about it. We don’t need you on this.”

He expressed the belief that Europe was reluctant to back his anti-Iranian push for purely economic reasons.

“When Iran buys things from Germany and from France” it allows them to earn “billions of dollars,” Trump said, adding that “when they [the Iranians] buy those things, it’s a little harder for those countries to do something.”

However, the US president concluded by saying: “Would they [the EU] do it if I really was insistent? I believe they would.”

In mid-October, Trump announced that he wouldn’t certify that Iran was complying with the landmark nuclear deal it reached in 2015 with the administration of then-US President Barack Obama and five other world powers – Russia, France, Germany, China and the UK.

He said that the US Congress had 60 days to decide if the US should reinstate sanctions against Tehran, and warned that the accord may be terminated if “we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies.”

Other restrictions were also introduced, including branding the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. The new US policy on Iran was praised by Saudi Arabia and Israel, but received condemnation from the other signatories to the nuclear accord, including those in Europe.

READ MORE: Iran nuclear deal break-up would jeopardize global security, situation on Korean peninsula – Lavrov

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the Iranian deal was not a “bilateral agreement” and that it could not be terminated by any single country.

The UK, France and Germany issued a joint statement, stressing that the nuclear accord was in their “shared national security interest” and adding that they “stand committed” to the deal and “its full implementation by all sides.”

Thanks to the POTUS the politics in the USA is heating up once again.

Twelve days after four Americans were killed on Oct. 4 in an ambush in Niger, Mr. Trump called the widow of Sergeant La David T. Johnson and said that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” referring to the soldier only as “your guy,” according to Sergeant Johnson’s mother and a Democratic congresswoman, who both listened to the call.

The President’s condolence call exploded into a ruckus that deluged the White House last Wednesday when Cowanda Jones-Johnson, the soldier’s grieving mother, accused the president of disrespecting her family. As he has done many times in the past nine months, Trump angrily disputed that account, insisting that he “had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife, who sounded like a lovely woman”. He accused the congresswoman, Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, of politicizing a sacred ritual after initially saying that she had “fabricated” it. Ms. Cowanda Jones-Johnson backed the congresswoman’s version.

It was a self-inflicted wound. Mr. Trump opened the issue on Monday, Oct. 16, when he deflected a question about why he had not spoken publicly about the deaths of the four soldiers by falsely accusing his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of not contacting the families of fallen troops. The feud with Sergeant Johnson’s family was reminiscent of a public fight Trump began with the parents of a Muslim American soldier, Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in 2004 in Iraq.

The POTUS kept up his feud with the National Football League (NFL) over players who take a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest police brutality against unarmed black men. He ignores that the constitution of the USA gives those players every right to protest. Trump became a catalyst last week when during a campaign rally in Alabama he said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch of the field right now, out, he’s fired.’”

Some football teams chose not to come out onto the field at all, after Trump’s comments, while other teams have allowed their players to protest at their own discretion. Some baseball and basketball players – Black and White – have also joined in the protest.

Trump also revived his unproven charges that the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had lied, leaked information and protected Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election.

Earlier this year, Trump faced criticism after the comments he made following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying there was fault on “both sides” — the white nationalists and the counter-protesters who opposed them — for the violence that led to the death of one counter-protester.

President Trump’s insensitive remarks and kowtowing with the emerging fascist forces around the globe is widening the racial and religious divide within the USA.

Former president George W. Bush on Thursday rebuked President Trump’s divisive policy without mentioning his name. He called on Americans to reject bigotry and white supremacy. In a speech for the Bush Institute’s Spirit of Liberty event in New York, Bush made bold statements criticizing the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party that has rallied around Trump.

“We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil,” McCain said — a reference to the Nazi slogan that the nation was built on the purity of its blood and soil. “We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.”

“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism,” Bush said without directly mentioning Trump. “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

“When we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with protecting and defending democracy,” he said.

Later, Bush added, “We need to recall and recover our own identity. Americans have great advantage. To renew our country, we only need to remember our values.”

Bush said American children need their leaders to be role models of civility. “Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children,” he said.

And he took a clear stand against racism, something Trump’s critics have said he has been unwilling to do. “Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed,” Bush said.

He added that people today are too often “judging groups by their worst examples” and ourselves by our “best intentions.”

Three days ago, GOP Senator John McCain gave a speech similar in tone to Bush’s remarks, calling for a return to American ideals and rejecting bigotry. In his speech, McCain warned against “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that is being perpetuated by Trump and his supporters: “To fear the world, we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

Following Bush’s address, McCain tweeted Thursday morning: “Important speech by my friend, President George W. Bush today, reminding us of the values that have made America a beacon of hope for all.”

If such wise remarks and rebukes were meant to sober up President Trump and his white supremacist supporters those surely failed miserably. Steve Bannon, the former White House adviser, blasted George W Bush depicting him as bumbling and inept, faulting him for presiding over a “destructive” presidency during his time in the White House. Speaking to a capacity crowd at a California Republican party convention on Friday night, Bannon said Bush had embarrassed himself, didn’t know what he was talking about, and had no idea whether “he is coming or going, just like it was when he was president”.

On the other side of the Atlantic, on Oct. 19, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK published a report which showed that police recorded 5.2 million offences in England and Wales in the year to June 2017, up from 4.6 million the previous year, with violent offenses experiencing a 19% rise.

The crime report must have excited Mr. Trump who next day (Friday) tweeted: “Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.’ Not good, we must keep America safe!”

Apparently, when it comes to blaming Muslims, President Trump is all agog to share his obscenity; no one has to wait for weeks to fathom where he stands. However, as before, he got it all wrong.

The crime report, in fact, cover only England and Wales, as opposed to the entire U.K. By way of comparison, while the current homicide rate in England and Wales is 11 homicides per one million of the population, the U.S. has an intentional homicide rate of five homicides per 100,000 people (which is nearly 5 times that of England and Wales), according to the World Bank. Of the 664 recorded homicides in England and Wales (a 2% fall compared with the year before), only 35 (i.e., 5 percent) related to the terrorist attacks by radicalized Muslim extremists.

There’s not only one problem with Trump’s assertion. There are many: More substantially, the 13% rise is not specifically linked to Islam or terrorism. In fact, the increase is largely attributed to a surge in stalking and harassment (up 36% from June 2016 to June 2017) and sexual offenses (up 19%). A jump in robberies (up 25%) and car theft (up 22%) were also to blame.

Overall, the crime in England and Wales is falling long-term despite year-to-year fluctuations. A decade ago, 24 in 100 adults were victims of crime. Today, it’s 14 in 100. In 1995, it was 40 in 100. This fall continues despite an uptick in the number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Britain over the last few years.

As USA TODAY has previously reported, the number of attacks and deaths from terrorism in Western Europe is down significantly from 20 to 40 years ago, when political — rather than religious — extremism was the cause.

As I have noted elsewhere, if Trump and white supremacists and fascists are serious about combating terrorism they need to identify root causes behind such incidents. The home-grown terrorism committed by some Muslims in the West also has its roots in problems that many young Muslims face today. Ignoring such causes from their effects are simply stupid! Consider, for instance, the statistics on hate crimes and racist incidents recorded by the police in the UK, which was published two days before the ONS report that showed a 29% spike in recorded hate crimes (including any crime motivated by religion, race, sexuality, disability or transgender identity) in the 12 months before March 2017 compared to the same period between 2015-16. Arguably, hate crimes can trigger someone to snap and do the unthinkable.

It was not immediately clear who Trump was quoting in his tweet about the ONS report. Now we are told by the Media Matters that Donald Trump’s tweeted claim about crime rates in the UK being linked to “radical Islamic terror” was reportedly sourced from a pro-Trump, conspiracy news network – One America News Network (OANN) that aired such fake news early in the morning Washington DC time.

As we have seen many times, whenever an insane or radicalized Muslim commits mass killings, such events are overblown in the fascist-leaning media, and exploited by the xenophobes and white supremacists to create a public hysteria that, sadly, masks the fact that the number of attacks and deaths from terrorism in Western Europe is down significantly from 20 to 40 years ago, when political radicalism rather than religious fanaticism was the cause.

The region was targeted by 604 terror attacks that killed 383 people in 2015 and 2016, according to the most recent figures compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database.

In 1979 and 1980, by contrast, 1,615 terrorist incidents killed at least 719, the most attacks and deaths since the database began tracking attacks in 1970.

“Terrorism in Western Europe remains less frequent compared to the number of attacks that took place in the region in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s,” said Erin Miller, a researcher who manages the database.

Terrorists in prior decades were political fanatics or agents of state-sponsored attacks, including Northern Ireland’s Irish Republican Army, Spain’s Basque separatists, Italian radicals and Libyan agents’ bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism director, said it is difficult to understand why people become terrorists, whether their cause is religious or political.

“There’s all these different factors involved: poor integration, poor education, discrimination, a difficult neighborhood, the need to be part of a group or to have a sense of purpose,” he said.  “What we do know is that extremists want to conduct many more small-scale attacks,” de Kerchove said.

Although random attacks understandably cause great public alarm, research shows that the chances of being killed by a terrorist in Western Europe are extremely slim compared to terrorist hot spots in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria and Pakistan, according to PeaceTech Lab/Esri Story Maps.

More than 100,000 people were killed in terrorist incidents in the Middle East and Africa since 1970, about a third of the global total. In Europe, the figure is around 6,400.

In 2016, Western Europeans were 85 times more likely to die of a heat wave than from terrorism, 50 times more likely to die in a biking or water-sports accident and 39 times more likely to be killed by consuming a toxic product. They were 433 times more likely to die of suicide and 32 times more likely to die by homicide.

“Our societies in North America and Western Europe have managed over the course of the last century to reduce the risks of a wide range of factors commonly associated with death, ranging from various forms of acute respiratory illness and cancer to heart disease all the way down to car accidents and homicide,” said Robert Muggah, a security specialist and co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank that computed the probability findings.

“We know earthquakes and floods kill far more people than terrorism, but we give a huge amount of attention to terrorism even when it involves small numbers of casualties,” he said. “It whips our society, which is a low-risk society, into a kind of frenzy and augments the perceived risk.”

The Muslim Council of Britain, which represents a number of groups, said in a statement: “Scaremongering based on intentionally misrepresenting data is often associated with the radical right – it is disappointing when such incompetence instead comes from the President of the United States of America.”

Some Britons, including politicians, took to Twitter to vent their frustration at Trump’s erroneous characterization of the report. “Stop misleading and spreading fear. Hate crime is up and it is fueled by the kind of populist xenophobia you peddle,” wrote Jo Swinson, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.

However, with the sources like the Fox News and OANN feeding ‘fake news’ to divide America along the racial and religious lines why would Trump seek out anything else? After all, his ascendancy in politics owes it to such divisions and fear-mongering hysteria.

No wonder that the president has been called a lot of names since entering the White House: ignorant, mentally unstable, an orange orangutan and even a dotard by Kim Jong Un. Now, Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson and conservative member of Parliament, has added another name to that list “daft twerp”.  [Twerp is a common schoolyard nickname, it means a silly, insignificant or annoying person, and daft is an adjective meaning silly or foolish.]

The tweet from the Churchill family member may take Trump by surprise since the president has mentioned in the past how much he likes Churchill. He’s even got a bust of the leader in the Oval Office.

Will this latest epithet from Churchill’s grandson sober up Trump? Fat chance!

By Ghazanfar Ali Khan

US Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin will embark on a four-nation trip to the Middle East including Saudi Arabia on Wednesday with plans to discuss combatting terror financing on top of his agenda.

During his stay in Riyadh, Mnuchin will hold talks with top Saudi officials, including Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, on a range of bilateral, regional and international issues.

According to the itinerary of the US treasury secretary released on Sunday by the US Embassy in Riyadh: “Mnuchin will commemorate the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, and deliver the keynote address at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Summit on Wednesday.” The US secretary will meet top officials of the Kingdom, the UAE, Qatar and Israel during this trip.

“This White House support mission is a follow-up to President Donald J. Trump’s first foreign trip in May, when he visited the region to announce the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC) memorandum of understanding,” said the embassy statement.

Mnuchin, accompanied by Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker, will lead the delegation that includes senior Treasury staff to discuss the TFTC partnership, and other initiatives to combat illicit finance.

“While in Saudi Arabia, Mnuchin will commemorate the opening of the TFTC, and meet with his official government counterparts,” said the statement. “The secretary will then proceed to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss terrorist financing and other national security issues. After Israel, Mnuchin will then hold meetings on terrorist financing with his counterparts in the UAE and Qatar.”

As Japanese voters have given him the fresh endorsement he wanted, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has swept to a comfortable victory in a snap election on Sunday, handing him a mandate to harden his already hawkish stance on North Korea and re-energies the world’s number-three economy.

Split opposition vote helps premier to fifth election victory. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) benefitted from a weak and splintered opposition, with the two main parties facing him created only a matter of weeks ago. The comfortable election win is likely to stiffen Abe’s resolve to tackle North Korea’s nuclear menace, as the key US regional ally seeks to exert maximum pressure on the regime in Pyongyang after it fired two missiles over Japan in the space of a month.

Abe’s conservative coalition was on track to win 311 seats in the 465-seat parliament, according to a projection published by private broadcaster TBS, putting the nationalist blue blood on course to become Japan’s longest-serving leader.

PM Abe’s ruling coalition was forecast to win a convincing majority of the seats in Japan’s lower house in Sunday’s election, easily seeing off a challenge from a divided opposition, exit polls by major news organizations show.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, finds 207 single-seat districts and 55 proportional-representation seats leaning toward or strongly favoring Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, roughly the same as in an Oct. 10-11 poll conducted as campaigning officially began. The party held 290 seats before Abe dissolved the lower house in September for the snap election. Junior coalition partner Komeito looks to reach 35 seats, up one from the earlier survey and an increase of one seat from the party’s previous standing in the lower house.

The poll suggests the coalition may capture 63.9% of the chamber, down from 68.2% before the election. This would leave it just short of the 310 seats — a two-thirds supermajority — needed to advance Abe’s goal of revising Japan’s pacifist constitution to formally acknowledge the role of the country’s Self-Defense Forces. The coalition would be forced to seek opposition support, and how that proceeds would depend on which party gains the upper hand in the opposition.

Millions of Japanese braved torrential rain and driving winds to vote, as a typhoon bears down on the country with many heeding warnings to cast their ballots early. “I support Abe’s stance not to give in to North Korea’s pressure,” said one voter, Yoshihisa Iemori, as he cast his ballot in rain-swept Tokyo.

Support for the Party of Hope founded by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike fizzled after an initial blaze of publicity and was on track to win around 50 seats, the TBS projection suggested.

Speaking from Paris where she was attending an event in her capacity as leader of the world’s biggest city, a sullen-faced Koike told public broadcaster NHK she feared a “very severe result”.

The new centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party fared slightly better than expected but was still far behind Abe. “The LDP’s victory is simply because the opposition couldn’t form a united front,” political scientist Mikitaka Masuyama from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, told AFP.

It was unclear in the immediate aftermath of the vote whether Abe’s coalition would retain its two-thirds “supermajority.” Such a “supermajority” would allow Abe to propose changes to Japan’s US-imposed constitution that forces it to “renounce” war and effectively limits its military to a self-defence role.

The short 12-day campaign was dominated by the economy and the global crisis over North Korea, which has threatened to “sink” Japan into the sea. Nationalist Abe stuck to a hardline stance throughout, stressing that Japan “would not waver” in the face of an increasingly belligerent regime in Pyongyang.

The exit polls for lower house election put Abe’s ruling coalition far ahead of the Party of Hope, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s new party that was once thought to pose a serious challenge to the status quo. Koike’s decision to bar left-leaning opposition members from joining the party is haunting her: The Constitutional Democratic Party, formed by those very rejects, is polling better than the Party of Hope. Explore the Nikkei Asian Review’s in-depth election coverage here.

Although voters turned out in their millions to back Abe, support for the 63-year-old is lukewarm and surveys showed his decision to call a snap election a year earlier than expected was unpopular. Voter Etsuko Nakajima, 84, told AFP: “I totally oppose the current government. Morals collapsed. I’m afraid this country will be broken.” “I think if the LDP takes power, Japan will be in danger. He does not do politics for the people,” added the pensioner.

As the campaign for Sunday’s general election enters its final stretch, new polling shows Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition on track to win around 300 of the 465 seats in the Diet’s lower house, while Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s upstart Party of Hope has lost much of its initial momentum. But The Nikkei Inc. survey indicates that some uncertainty remains on the eve of the Japanese election, with 23% of the 289 single-seat constituencies and 16% of the 176 proportional-representation seats still considered close races.

The campaign was marked by a near-constant drizzle in large parts of the country and rallies frequently took place under shelter and a sea of umbrellas. But this did not dampen the enthusiasm of hundreds of doughty, sash-wearing parliamentary hopefuls, who have driven around in minibuses pleading for votes via loudspeaker and bowing deeply to every potential voter.

Despite the sabre-rattling from North Korea, many voters said reviving the once-mighty Japanese economy was the top priority, with Abe’s trademark “Abenomics” policy failing to trickle down to the general public.

The three-pronged combination of ultra-loose monetary policy, huge government spending and structural reform has catapulted the stock market to a 21-year high but failed to stoke inflation and growth has remained sluggish. “Neither pensions nor are wages getting better. I don’t feel the economy is recovering at all,” said 67-year-old pensioner Hideki Kawasaki.

Koike briefly promised to shake up Japan’s sleepy political scene with her new party but she declined to run herself for a seat, sparking confusion over who would be prime minister if she won. In the end, the 65-year-old former TV presenter was not even in Japan on Election Day. “I thought that I would vote for the Party of Hope if it’s strong enough to beat the Abe administration. But the party has been in confusion … I’m quite disappointed,” said 80-year-old pensioner Kumiko Fujimori.

The Party of Hope — or Kibo no To — which picked up many candidates from the former Democratic Party in an effective merger, was favored in the earlier poll to lead the opposition, with 69 seats. But the party has failed to gain widespread support, owing partly to Koike’s comments about “excluding” Democratic lawmakers deemed too liberal. The governor acknowledged in a news conference Thursday that her phrasing “may have been harsh.” The latest survey shows her party winning just 55 seats — fewer than its individual members held before the election.

The left-leaning Constitutional Democratic Party, which includes many of those former Democrats left out by the Party of Hope, is rapidly catching up. The party’s projected seat total has risen from 45 to 54 as it attracts more of the opposition interest away from the Party of Hope. The Constitutional Democrats, headed by Yukio Edano — who served as chief cabinet secretary in a former Democratic Party of Japan government, could become the second-largest party in the lower house.

The Japanese Communist Party looks set to lose three seats, bringing its total to 18, while the Japan Innovation Party would drop from 14 to 10 amid struggles in its main support base of Osaka. Independents are expected to take 30 seats, up from 28 in the earlier poll. The gains likely owe to growing support for former Democrats who chose not to join the Party of Hope.

In the post poll scenario, Japan-US relations would be watched carefully. Though there are no cracks in the bilateral ties, there seems to develop some albeit small distance between Abe and Trump

ASEAN meetings almost always generate expectations of raising the South China Sea (SCS) disputes to the point where the success of the meeting boils down to how tough the adopted language is in the final official statements. Considering the breadth and depth of issues covered by ASEAN in its annual meetings, such reduction is unfortunate and unfair.

This year, as the Philippines hosted the ASEAN meeting in its historic 50th anniversary, critics were quick to assail the Philippine leadership for failing to shepherd the 10-member association into issuing stronger language in relation to the SCS, especially in the traditional ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting Joint Communique (AFMM JC). However, a review of the evolution of SCS-related terms in AFMM JCs from 2011 (the year the Recto/Reed Bank incident between the Philippines and China took place) to 2017 reveals no major sea-change regarding the importance of the issue and how it is reflected in the official statements.

The SCS remains a critical, but not a determinant, variable in ASEAN-China relations. The jury is still out on whether this equation will sustain. So far, it appears that expanding and deepening economic ties are dampening the relevance of territorial and maritime disputes, especially if coupled with continuing efforts at dispute management and confidence building.

The Joint Communique (JC) provides ASEAN a platform to articulate a common position or consensus, if there is one, or at least reflect emerging concerns. The difference between a consensus and a reflection of concern (by some members) is apparent in the language. For instance, in the 2017 JC, the ASEAN Foreign Ministers stated, “We discussed extensively the matters relating to the South China Sea and took note of the concerns expressed by some Ministers on the land reclamations and activities in the area …” (emphasis my own). This suggests that concerns over SCS land reclamation are not expressed by all Ministers, thus even a claimant host member has his limitations (it must be noted that fellow SCS claimant state Malaysia played host to the 2015 ASEAN meeting).

The emphasis (“expressed by some Ministers”) was also present in the 2015 and 2016 JCs. This said, the fact that other Ministers allowed such concerns to be formally expressed in the final statement demonstrates affinity (passive or active) to the cause, despite not being directly affected by ASEAN members who do not border the SCS. Whether this affinity can graduate to unanimity within the bloc may be possible depending on the circumstances, although ASEAN’s nature and character may not make for a swift transition.

The 2017 JC was seen as softer for adopting the line “took note of the concerns” compared to previous years’ references on the same, notably 2011 JC’s “expressed serious concern over the recent incidents”, 2014’s “[w]e remained seriously concerned over recent developments”, and 2015 and 2016’s identical “remained seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments”. No doubt that “serious concern/seriously concerned” are stronger than “took note of the concerns” and efforts to mitigate the latter’s deficiency, notably with the insertion of “[w]e discussed extensively the matters relating to South China Sea”, may not have achieved the desired results. This insertion, by the way, is an adoption from the 2015 JC, resonates with 2011’s “[w]e discussed in depth” and is certainly firmer than 2013’s “[w]e discussed the situation.”

However, aside from the weaker “took note of the concerns” line, the 2017 JC sustained all other elements from its predecessors. It also described the land reclamations and activities in the SCS as having “eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region”, a passage which appeared in both the 2015 and 2016 JC iterations. Interestingly, landlocked Lao PDR – which has a high trade, investment and aid exposure to China – hosted last year’s ASEAN meeting. This meeting carried over the description from the previous year’s (2015) host, Malaysia, demonstrating that ASEAN host countries do their utmost to balance national interests and commitments with the Association, contrary to some sweeping misconceptions.

It was also in 2016 that “non-militarization” was emphasized, an obvious reference to the recent construction or installation of military facilities in the occupied features by claimants, notably China. This wording was repeated in this year’s JC. Mention of the land reclamations first appeared in 2015, and it was sustained in the succeeding two years. This somehow corresponds to China’s massive land reclamations, which began in 2014 and proceeded until 2016. Moreover, the “reaffirmation of the importance of maintaining peace and stability,” “exercise of self-restraint,” and “peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including UNCLOS,” were all sustained from 2011 to 2017 (except in 2012, the year no JC was released). The importance of “maintaining freedom of navigation and overflight” was also cited in 2011 and has since been repeated consistently from 2014 to 2017.

Notwithstanding, the evolution of the treatment of the SCS in AFMM JCs reveals an interesting mix of sustained increased vocal stance and reverses. For instance, reference to “avoiding actions that would complicate or escalate the situation” was absent in 2011 and 2013 but began to appear in 2014 and is reflected in subsequent JCs. However, reference to refrain from “resort to threat or use of force,” which appeared in 2013 to 2015, was omitted in 2016 and 2017. In 2014, there was also mention of “friendly dialogue, consultations and negotiations” as one of the peaceful approaches of settling the disputes, but this reference would get lost in succeeding JCs, where an apparent premium on a legalist approach (i.e. universally recognized principles of international law, including UNCLOS) began to take precedence.

This said, some notable consistencies can be gleaned: JCs from 2011-17 (except 2012, where no JC was released) seem to recognize the importance of ASEAN-China engagement in addressing the SCS dispute, notably through such mechanisms as the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the SCS (DOC) and the Code of Conduct (COC) negotiations. The 2011 JC “reaffirmed the importance and continued relevance of” the DOC, “stressed the importance of … continued constructive dialogue between ASEAN and China,” and “look forward to intensive discussion of COC”.

Succeeding JCs underscored the importance of the “full and effective implementation of the DOC” in its entirety, a possible reference to some claimants’ selective compliance to the 2002 Declaration. All JCs surveyed also echoed the importance of the early conclusion and adoption of the COC, with the adjective “effective” being inserted in 2015 and carried over to 2016 and 2017. The insertion impresses ASEAN’s desire not only to have an understanding in principle or on paper, but an agreement that will be observed and enforced on the ground by all concerned parties.

However, the lack of reference to an “early conclusion” of the COC and its replacement by a “mutually-agreed timeline” in the 2017 JC iteration suggests a retreat from the fast pace by which the Association had pushed for this much-awaited Code. Whether longer negotiation time will make for a more effective Code remains to be seen. But critics will surely not fail to cite this slowdown in the intensity to push for the COC as one of the key shortcomings of this year’s host.

In sum, the SCS continues to be a major issue in ASEAN-China relations. Except possibly for Cambodia in 2012, much of the key terms in any treatment of the SCS by ASEAN are reflected and sustained in all JCs regardless of whether the host state is a claimant or not and irrespective of how close its relations is with China, as the 2016 hosting of Laos and this year’s hosting by the Philippines (given improving Philippines-China relations) show.

This does not necessarily attest to the strength of the host to resist pressure from multiple sides both at home and abroad, but rather exemplifies more of a growing demonstration among member states to give substance to ASEAN centrality and promotion of shared regional interests instead of just narrow and naked national interests. This is especially so in the context of great power contest or some members’ own differences with one power. As such, while the move was criticized by some, failure to reference the arbitral ruling in the 2017 Chairman’s Statement and AFMM JC may suggest Philippine desire to refrain from turning a bilateral matter into a regional issue involving ASEAN and one of its key dialogue partners, especially at a point where the Association has yet to come up with a solid position. How this decision will impact international law and regional geopolitics remains to be seen.

This article was published at China-US Focus

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis embarked Saturday on a trip to reaffirm the enduring U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, defense officials said.

Mattis will begin his engagements during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers Meeting in the Philippines Oct. 23-25. He will meet with allies and partners from the region to discuss security challenges and shared interests, the officials said.

On Oct. 26, Mattis will lead a U.S. presidential delegation in Bangkok, Thailand, to attend the Royal Cremation Rites of late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Glyn Davies, U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, will also be a member of the delegation, they said.

The secretary concludes his trip with a visit to South Korea to co-chair the 49th annual Security Consultative Meeting with his South Korean counterpart Defense Minister Song Young-moo, defense officials said.

By Die Morina

Kosovo’s Central Electoral Commission is yet to announce preliminary results from local elections. However, some 17 municipalities are set to pass into runoffs.

As Kosovo waits for official results from Sunday’s local elections, some 17 municipalities already seem set for runoffs, according to preliminary data from local NGO Democracy in Action (DIA), which monitored the process.

Pristina’s residents are observing close competition between the current mayor, Shpend Ahmeti, from nationalist party Vetevendosje –which according DIA won 44.27 per cent of the vote – and Arban Abrashi the candidate from the liberal conservative party Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, which garnered 35.7 per cent.

Other municipalities set for runoffs include Kamenica, Rahovec, Malisheva, Prizren, South Mitrovica, Ferizaj/Urosevac, Istog, Vushtrri/ Vucitrna, Gjakova/Djakovica, Gjilan, Dragash, Kacanik, Klina, Obilic, Shtime, and Suhareka/ Suva Reka.

Vetevendosje, which doubled its share of the vote in national elections this summer, is heading for runoffs in seven municipalities, while LDK, the Kosovo Democratic Party, PDK, and Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK have retained some of their strongholds without the need for a second round.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj congratulated “parties and especially citizens for their dignified behavior” on election day. He added that his party, AAK, won three municipalities without runoffs: Junik, Decan, and Obilic. He also said that AAK has taken the lead in Gjakova, and that the party doubled the amount of municipalities it previously held.

Based on preliminary DIA data Bekim Jashari, who is the nephew of late KLA commander Adem Jashari, won Skanderaj, running on an independent ticket. His candidacy was backed by PDK, Initiative for Kosovo, NISMA, and AAK.

As expected, Srpska Lista claimed sweeping victories in several Serb-majority municipalities, such as North Mitrovica, Leposavic, Novoberda/ Novo Brdo, Shterpca/Strpca, Zubin Potok, Gracanica, Ranillug/ Ranilug and Partesh/Partes.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic congratulated the Serbian List on winning local elections in all municipalities with a Serb majority in Kosovo.

“I just want to greet you all, to congratulate you on tremendous success, [and] to say that our people in Kosovo and Metohija have once again shown that they can fight for their survival, but also for their country, Serbia,” Vucic said.

While there were some arrests for activites related to voter fraud, elections were calm, on the whole, with 43.79 per cent voter turnout. Polls closed as planned at 7:00pm local time.

Police arrested two people after BIRN Kosovo reported that some citizens had been offered coffee and food in return for PDK votes in Fushe Kosove/ Kosovo Polje.

A waiter, Dardan Bylykbashi, worked at a cafe owned by a family member of Migjen Kolshi, a PDK candidate for the Fushe Kosova/ Kosovo Polje Municipal Assembly. He was filmed on three separate occasions offering coffee and food to clients and asking them to vote for “number 5” on PDK’s list of assembly members.

During the day border police at the Jarinje crossing in northern Kosovo stopped a truck in which explosives and several hand grenades were found. The truck had been attempting to enter Kosovo from Serbia.

“According to preliminary reports, a truck was stopped for suspicion of transporting explosives and several hand grenades. Three people were arrested,” said Shyqyri Syla, chief prosecutor in Mitrovica.

At the point of publication, no links between the incident and the elections had been established. Runoffs for the necessary areas are set to be held in two weeks.

By Alan Crosby

(RFE/RL) — Guram Kashia, captain of Georgia’s national football team, has fended off many opponents during his career. Now he’s facing one off the pitch.

The 30-year-old defender has been blindsided by criticism from home since he wore a captain’s armband adorned with the rainbow colors in support of LGBT rights during a match on October 15 for his professional team, Vitesse Arnhem, in the Netherlands.

The move, made under the auspices of the Dutch Football Union and its campaign “to promote the awareness of diversity,” touched a nerve in Georgia, a nation at the cultural crossroads of integration with the West and the conservative values of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

“LGBT Kashia must be cut off from the Georgian team!” local journalist Giorgi Gigauri of the Asaval-Dasavali newspaper wrote on October 19.

“Georgia’s football fathers should know that Georgian men will boycott the team if LGBT-Kashia dares to play in the national team jersey,” he added.

On the Facebook page of Movement For Equality, a group dedicated to supporting the LGBT community in Georgia, several fans echoed those sentiments and also questioned whether Kaisha, who has not commented on the furor, wore the armband of his own volition.

“In short, Guram Kaisha, you can no longer play matches with the Georgian team,” wrote a user who identified himself as a male from Tbilisi with the profile name La Uko.

The response comes as little surprise to some.

Georgia, a country of 3.7 million people wedged in between Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, has made little headway in developing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights.

Studies suggest that of all the minority groups in Georgia, homosexuals are under the greatest pressure — with more than 80 percent of survey respondents expressing strong negative attitudes toward homosexuality.

Georgia ranked as the world’s third-most homophobic country in the World Value Survey, with some 93 percent of Georgians saying they would be against the idea of having a gay neighbor.

Social research on homophobia in Georgia shows that attitudes toward gays are strongly influenced by traditional stigmas, taboos, and values promoted by the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Those studies also show that psychological and physical violence often accompany widespread homophobia that is backed by traditional ideologies and a Soviet legacy of condemnation.

Gays in Georgia also often face domestic violence within their own families when they reveal their homosexuality. As a result, many homosexuals in Georgia avoid coming out publicly — impeding their ability to defend their own rights.

In October 2016, a 34-year-old transgender woman died in a Tbilisi clinic after succumbing to injuries she suffered in an attack, one of more than 30 violent assaults carried out against LGBT people.

In 2013, LGBT activists who tried to carry out a gay-pride march in Tbilisi were severely beaten by members of antigay groups.

Not all of the comments over Kashia’s armband have been negative, however.

Former Georgian Football Federation President Domenti Sichinava has come out strongly in defense of the defender, who has made 58 national team appearances since 2009 and twice been named the country’s footballer of the year.

“Guram, for me personally, you are and always [will] be part of Georgian football. You have repeatedly stated that you are honored to play under the flag of Georgia and I am proud to have worked with you for many years,” Sichinava said in a Facebook post.

The furor surrounding Kashia’s armband comes at a time when Georgians are struggling to accept the paradoxes of their modern-day society.

A study published in 2016 by the Heinrich Boll Foundation praised Georgia for making “significant progress” on the “legislative level” against a “background of exacerbating homophobic attitudes.”

Still, the study concluded the new laws protecting the rights of gays in Georgia were a result of “the country’s declared pro-Western course” rather than an “informed choice of the political elite” or a sign of a changing society.

Municipal elections on October 21 will feature the country’s first openly gay candidate for public office.

Nino Bolkvadze, a 40-year-old antidiscrimination lawyer, is running for a seat on the Tbilisi City Council on the ticket of the opposition Republican Party.

Bolkvadze says she understands the isolation the LGBT community faces. She came out publicly in 2015 and her brother has not spoken to her since.

By Paola Tamma

(EurActiv) — Italy’s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni sought member states’ support for stemming migrant flows at this week’s EU summit and called for an EU mission to police Niger’s border with Libya.

Gentiloni also pushed for redistribution of asylum seekers across the bloc.

Migration was on the agenda of the EU summit held in Brussels on 19-20 October.

Gentiloni said he was “touched, satisfied and proud” that Italy went from being the EU’s target of criticism for its treatment of refugees, into a country that “gave an exemplary response to human trafficking, that obtained important results and that must be sustained politically and financially.”

Stemming migrant flows

This was the result of a deal with Libya in which the EU offered Tripoli €200 million to better police its borders, something that other member states laughed at when it was first proposed but “Italy showed by its actions it was possible”, Gentiloni told reporters on Friday after the summit.

Migratory flows to Italy through the central Mediterranean route connecting Libyan port of Agadez to Sicily dropped by 38% in one year, said Gentiloni. The recorded arrivals on Italy’s shores had been rising until July 2017, when they suddenly dropped dramatically.

The deal with Libya raised doubts about whether the African country thorn by in-fighting between different factions would be able to handle a growing mass of migrants stopped at its shore, and how.

In August Associated Press exposed the vexation of migrants by the very human traffickers that now became their wardens.

In a recent letter, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights Nils Muiznieks asked the Italian government to clarify the nature of its operations, worried that “handing over individuals to the Libyan authorities or other groups in Libya would expose them to a real risk of torture or degrading treatment or punishment”., and reminding the Italian government that “the fact that such actions would be carried out in Libyan territorial waters does not absolve Italy.”

Muiznieks also reminded Rome that “the fact that such actions would be carried out in Libyan territorial waters does not absolve Italy.”

EU’s Africa trust fund

EU leaders discussed the need to finance the Africa trust fund – an EU initiative to address the root causes of migration by encouraging growth and employment in source countries.

However, EU leaders made “limited offers”, Gentiloni said. “I hope more offers will be forthcoming without the need to reiterate demands,” he said, referring to the Council in December.

The Africa fund has been criticised for prioritising a reduction in migrant flows over long-term development goals.

Policing the Niger border

Italian PM called for an EU mission on Niger’s border with Libya, an initiative he shares with Germany and hopes to extend to France.

The EU countries are evaluating the opportunity to strengthen the border through “technological measures and extremely limited numbers of personnel on the ground.”

Changing the Dublin regulation

Gentiloni said he spoke with EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on the need to change the Dublin regulation, whereby asylum seekers must apply for asylum in the first safe country – a situation that penalises coastal states like Italy and Greece, which have been bearing the brunt of the migrant crisis.

On Thursday MEPs voted in favour of compulsory migrant quotas, a proposal to share responsibility across the bloc that has so far been opposed by a group of migrant-hostile states led by Hungary.

“The vote [in the LIBE Committee] was an excellent contribution, a step forward. Italy is earning the right to have a decisive vote on this issue.”

Commenting on the vote, Council President Donald Tusk said on Thursday that obligatory migrant quotas “have no future.”

“The discussion is ongoing, but if I said it was near a solution, I would be lying,” concluded Gentiloni.

By Caroline Holmund*

For two years, Qatar had been lobbying hard for its candidate, Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari, to become the next director general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – only to see him lose narrowly to France’s candidate, former culture minister Audrey Azoulay.

His recent defeat is excellent news for an organization that has lost not only much of its funding but also a great deal of its legitimacy in recent years, as member states have been exploiting UNESCO as a platform to hash out longstanding disputes, lay competing claims to sites of cultural significance, and call into question the global legitimacy of their rivals.

And had it not been for the enflamed rivalry between Qatar and a number of other Arab states, al-Kawari would not have lost. But because of the split in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab world failed to rally behind a single candidate to lead UNESCO, despite their lamentations that no one from the Middle East or North Africa had yet had the chance to do so. Cairo, which had fielded its own candidate against Qatar’s, backed Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE in their dispute with Doha, which they accuse of funding terrorist organizations and of growing too close with Iran.

But even faced with this defeat, Qatar has done precious little to cede to the demands of the Saudi-led coalition, which include ending ties with terrorist groups and curbing trade with Iran in line with US and global sanctions. The embargo of Qatar has now been dragging on for more than four months, raising questions of when, if ever, Doha will respond to the concerns of its former allies – concerns that are shared by much of the international community.

Much of the criticism revolves around Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood; its hosting of Taliban officials, al-Qaeda affiliates, and the political leader of Hamas; and its increasingly close ties with Tehran, a proxy funder of terrorism in its own right. Experts like the former US Treasury Under-Secretary for Terrorism David Cohen are also among those who have repeatedly charged that lackadaisical government oversight allows Qatari individuals to easily fundraise for extremist groups like Islamic State.

Rather than taking concrete steps to address these charges, Qatar has been putting far more energy – and cash – towards its global image enhancement campaign, which has included not only its bid to head UNESCO but also associated investment in what it sees as art and culture. Sheikha Al Mayassa, the sister of the ruling emir, has been a driving force behind Doha’s status as one of the world’s biggest art buyers, most recently overseeing the purchase of a Paul Gauguin masterpiece for $210 million – an artwork which has never been displayed for public viewing in the country. She is also the head of Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), which has underwritten ambitious building projects like the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha – one of the many projects that were built on the backs of some of the 2 million underpaid, overworked migrant laborers living in Qatar. Her family’s staggering wealth has allowed it to hire the services of celebrity architects like French star Jean Nouvel, who designed the recently opened $434 million National Museum of Qatar, as well as to sponsor exhibits by acclaimed European artists like Damien Hirst.

The royal family’s attempts to position itself as the world’s biggest patron of the arts mark quite the turnaround for a country that used to be a desert backwater – that is, until natural gas reserves were discovered in the 1970s and Qatar soon found itself flush with cash. For many outside observers, their interest in the arts is incongruous for a country that has little to no culture of its own. But there are several underlying reasons why the royal family has been investing so much of its natural gas revenues into this sector.

In fact, what’s propelling these investments into such “soft” sectors has been the government’s desire to boost Qatar’s international reputation, particularly ahead of the 2022 World Cup – ironic given the fact that the bidding process was tarnished by allegations of bribery and abuse of the migrants workers building stadiums for the tournament. The government also undoubtedly hopes that by building up an image as a patron of the arts, it can help mitigate the persistent claims that Doha is a proxy funder of terrorism. Additionally, Qatar’s extravagant international investments in not only the European art world, but also sports, luxury, and real estate – from French football teams to iconic European fashion brands to landmark London properties – have another ulterior motive. That is, to buy local influence rather than taking the more meaningful route of aligning with the norms and values shared by Europe and most of the international community.

Nevertheless, the billions that Qatar has invested in art over the years were still not enough to convince fellow UNESCO member states that it was ready to lead the UN’s leading cultural organization – let alone enough to wash away the stench of charges that it is far too cozy with extremist groups and regimes. This is because Qatar is still ignoring the simple fact that when it comes to improving its international reputation, it is not appearances that matter so much as facts. Its loss of UNESCO’s leadership was a stark reminder of this.

For now, therefore, UNESCO has been spared a director general who would likely have used his seat mainly to further burnish Qatar’s artistic and cultural credentials and score points against other Arab nations, rather than promoting the agency’s mission of fostering global dialogue, education, and peace. Now, it is up to Audrey Azoulay to do what she can to save what is left of the organization’s legitimacy.

While the breakneck upswing in opioid abuse has leveled off, it remains disturbingly high and does not appear to continue its decline, according to an analysis of national data presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2017 annual meeting.

More than 13 percent of Americans 12 and older – nearly 1 in 7 – have abused prescription opioids at some point in their lives, researchers determined after analyzing the latest data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Additionally, while 8.6 percent of Americans abused opioids in 2000, by 2003 that number jumped to 13.2 percent, and it has remained steady at that level.

“The amount of opioid prescriptions being written in the United States is breathtaking – essentially enough for every American adult to have a bottle of the pain killers in their medicine cabinet,” said Asokumar Buvanendran, M.D., lead author of the study, director of orthopedic anesthesia and vice chair for research at Rush Medical College, Chicago, and chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Committee on Pain Medicine. “This in turn leads to opioid abuse because people may take more than needed, or the pills fall into the wrong hands. That’s got to change.”

Because opioids can produce euphoria, they are highly likely to be abused. Opioid prescriptions are often written for an excessive number of pills, so patients may take more medication than they need and become addicted.

Additionally, medication that is unused can be diverted to another person for illicit use. More than half of the people who misuse prescribed opioids get them from a friend or relative, not a physician, according to NSDUH data.

The NSDUH survey asked Americans if they had taken prescription opioids without a prescription written for them (which constitutes abuse) anytime in their lives. The researchers determined that in 2014 (the last year for which data is available), 13.6 percent of Americans had abused prescription opioids. Use of hydrocodone (including Vicodin, a combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen) increased from 3.2 percent in 2000 to 9.1 percent in 2014. Use of oxycontin increased from less than 1 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2014.

Hydrocodone is the most frequently prescribed and therefore the most frequently abused opioid, researchers noted.

“While the illicit opioid use trend seems to have plateaued, there’s no evidence of a decline yet,” said Mario Moric, M.S., co-author of the study and a biostatistician at Rush Medical College. “Hopefully with increased national attention to the problem we will see a significant drop in abuse.”

“Opioids are still an important tool for dealing with pain, but doctors need to prescribe fewer quantities,” said Dr. Buvanendran. “Also, patients need to be educated about the dangers for overuse and abuse and understand that pain usually can’t be solved solely with a pill, but needs to include exercise, physical therapy, eating right, having a social support system and developing good coping skills.”

New statistical simulations suggest that Northern Hemisphere flu pandemics are most likely to emerge in late spring or early summer at the tail end of the normal flu season, according to a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology by Spencer Fox of The University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues, Lauren Ancel Meyers (also at UT Austin) and Joel C. Miller at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, WA.

Genetic mutations and mixing between different influenza viruses create new viral strains every year, occasionally leading to new pandemics. One might expect that the risk of a new pandemic is highest at the height of the flu season in winter, when viruses are most abundant and most likely to spread. Instead, all six flu pandemics that have occurred since 1889 emerged in spring and summer months.

Fox and his colleagues hypothesized that the late timing of flu pandemics might be caused by two opposing factors: Flu spreads best under winter environmental and social conditions. However, infection by one flu virus can provide temporary immune protection against other flu viruses, so pandemic strains cannot spread well while this temporary immunity is widespread. Together, this leaves a narrow window in the late spring and early summer for new pandemics to emerge.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers developed a computational model that mimics viral spread during flu season, with the built-in assumption that people infected with seasonal flu gain long-term immunity to seasonal flu and short-term immunity to emerging pandemic viruses. The model incorporates real-world data on flu transmission from the 2008-2009 flu season and correctly predicted the timing of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

The scientists used their model to run thousands of simulations in which new pandemic viruses emerged at different points throughout the flu season. They found that the combination of winter conditions and cross-virus immunity indeed led to spring and summer pandemics, supporting their hypothesis.

“We don’t know when or where the next deadly flu pandemic will arise,” says Lauren Ancel Meyers, principal investigator of the study. “However, the typical flu season leaves a wake of immunity that prevents new viruses from spreading. Our study shows that this creates a narrow, predictable window for pandemic emergence in the spring and early summer, which can help public health agencies to detect and respond to new viral threats.”

Future research may focus on more precisely characterizing the cross-strain immunity that impedes pandemic emergence during the normal flu season. Scientists may also explore how these pandemic risk patterns manifest in the Southern Hemisphere and tropical regions.