| US issues warrant for seizure of Iranian tanker in Gibraltar Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:35 PM PDT  The US Justice Department issued a warrant Friday for the seizure of the Iranian oil supertanker Grace 1, one day after a Gibraltar judge allowed the release of the detained vessel. The Justice Department alleged the ship was part of a scheme "to unlawfully access the US financial system to support illicit shipments to Syria from Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," which the US has designated a foreign terrorist organization. There was no immediate word from Britain or Gibraltar over whether they would act on the warrant, as Iran said it was sending a new crew to pilot the tanker and its 2.1 million barrels of oil.
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| Kim expresses 'great satisfaction' over NKorea weapons tests Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:29 PM PDT  North Korea on Saturday said leader Kim Jong Un supervised another test-firing of an unspecified new weapon, seen as an attempt to pressure Washington and Seoul over slow nuclear negotiations and their joint military exercises. Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency said that following Friday's launches, Kim expressed "great satisfaction" over his military's "mysterious and amazing success rates" in recent testing activity and vowed to build up "invincible military capabilities no one dare provoke." The report did not mention any specific comment on the United States or South Korea.
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| UN expert: Executions in Iran among the world's highest Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:03 PM PDT ![UN expert: Executions in Iran among the world's highest]( "UN expert: Executions in Iran among the world's highest") The U.N. expert on human rights in Iran says last year saw increasing restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and continuing violations of the right to life, liberty and a fair trial in the Islamic Republic, including 253 reported executions of adults and children. The significant decline, he said, is attributed to enforcement of a 2017 amendment to Iran's anti-narcotics law that saw the number of executions for drug-related offenses drop from 231 in 2017 to at least 24 in 2018.
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| AP Interview: Pelosi assails 'weakness' of Trump, Netanyahu Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:58 PM PDT  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the U.S.-Israel relationship can withstand the "weakness" of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shook diplomatic norms this week in barring two members of Congress from visiting the country. "We have a deep relationship and long-standing relationship with Israel that can withstand Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu," Pelosi said.
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| Police: Palestinian killed, 2 Israelis hurt in car attack Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:29 PM PDT  Israeli police fatally shot a Palestinian man Friday after he drove his car into two Israeli pedestrians in the West Bank, injuring them, and militants from the Gaza Strip fired at least one rocket toward southern Israel, the Israeli military said. Israel's national rescue service, known as Magen David Adom, said a man was severely hurt by the car and a woman was moderately injured. The incident took place near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, south of Jerusalem, not far from where the body of an off-duty soldier was found stabbed earlier this month.
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| Lawyer: Iranian supertanker captain no longer wants the job Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:23 PM PDT  The captain of an Iranian supertanker at the center of a diplomatic standoff no longer wants to keep command of the ship, which is in need of repairs that could impede its immediate departure from Gibraltar, the sailor's lawyer said Friday. Any delay in the Grace 1's departure could provide a window for the U.S. to mount further legal action in Gibraltar seeking to seize the tanker amid a growing confrontation with Tehran. U.S. authorities announced in Washington late Friday afternoon that they had obtained a warrant to seize the tanker, though Gibraltar court officials said they had not received any claim by the end of the business day in the British overseas territory.
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| The Latest: US unveils seizure warrant for Iranian tanker Posted: 16 Aug 2019 03:40 PM PDT  The U.S. government says it has a warrant to seize an oil tanker at the center of a diplomatic standoff because of violations of U.S. sanctions, money laundering and terrorism statutes. The U.S. attorney's office in Washington says a seizure warrant and forfeiture complaint were unsealed Friday. The U.S. is seeking to take control of the oil tanker Grace 1, along with all of the petroleum aboard and $995,000.
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| Hundreds defy restrictions, join protests in Kashmir Posted: 16 Aug 2019 02:37 PM PDT |
| Trump Wants to Cut $4.3 Billion in Foreign Aid Posted: 16 Aug 2019 01:53 PM PDT  The Trump administration is proposing to eliminate more than $4 billion in unspent foreign assistance funds, Politico reported late Thursday.The White House budget office reportedly sent a proposal to the State Department to cut $2.3 billion in unspent funds at the United States Agency for International Development and another $2 billion in unspent funds at the State Department. The cuts would hit the budget of the United Nations particularly hard and include the cancellation of $522 million in basic funding for the international organization, $787 million for peacekeeping activities, and $364 million for humanitarian and human rights programs.The Trump administration is expected to formally submit the so-called rescission package next week. Congress will have 45 days to approve the rescissions, during which time the funds will be frozen; if lawmakers fail to approve the package, as expected, the money will be released. However, given that the fiscal year ends on September 30, the move could effectively cancel the funding, even if Congress does not approve the rescissions.Can the White House do that?The Trump administration could face legal challenges under a 1974 law governing unspent funds if it proceeds with the rescissions, Politico said, and lawmakers from both parties have asked the White House to reconsider. "Such action would be precedent-setting and a direct affront to the separation of powers principle upon which our nation was built," the bipartisan leadership of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations panels wrote in a letter to the White House.Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said that the "funds were appropriated by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and the lengthy negotiations between the House, the Senate, the White House. And they were signed into law by the president." Lowey also said that cuts to foreign aid have been rejected on a bipartisan basis, and that "these funds are essential for U.S. global leadership and protecting the security of the American people."The White House attempted a similar rescission effort for foreign aid last year but dropped the proposal due to resistance from both Republicans and Democrats.Like what you're reading? Sign up for our free newsletter.
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| Mexico Wants to Run a Tourist Train Through Its Mayan Heartland—Should It? Posted: 16 Aug 2019 01:37 PM PDT  President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has a dream for the Yucatan Peninsula. He wants to build a train that will leverage the tourism economy of Cancun by bringing more visitors inland to the colonial cities, Mayan villages and archaeological sites that dot the region.The Yucatan is a unique Mexican cultural crossroads. Many Maya here continue to farm, live and dress according to indigenous traditions developed millennia before the Spanish colonized the Americas. Travelers also come from across the globe to sunbathe along the modern, highly developed Riviera Maya. Over 16 million foreigners visited the area in 2017; three-quarters of them were American.The Mexican government thinks that a tourist train could turn Maya villages into destinations, too, bringing an infusion of cash and jobs into one of its poorest and most marginalized regions. Commuters would also benefit from rail travel.But there are social and environmental consequences to laying 932 miles of railway tracks across a region of dense jungle, pristine beaches and Maya villages. And in his haste to start construction this year, López Obrador – whose energy policy is focused on increasing fossil fuel production in Mexico and rebuilding the coal industry – has demonstrated little concern for conservation. Pristine forests and Mayan ruins at risk As a landscape architecture scholar who has studied Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, I agree that the Maya Train could bring substantial benefits to this region. But the train must be designed in a way that respects the delicate ecology, indigenous history and social fabric of the region.The Yucatan, a biodiverse peninsula that's geographically isolated from the rest of Mexico and Central America, has already suffered mass deforestation due to careless urban development, massive tourism and, in particular, unsustainable cattle ranching.For stretches, the Maya Train will run on existing tracks. But other parts of its planned route will cut through some of the only unspoiled ancient forests on the Yucatan Peninsula that are not federally protected as nature reserves. That bodes badly for endangered native species like the kanzacam cactus and black howler monkey.Running a train through virgin forest also puts potentially hundreds of undiscovered ruins at risk. New technology has lead archaeologists to believe that the ancient Maya had many more cities, shrines and settlements than have been uncovered and excavated.There is concern, too, that the construction of a new train line may exacerbate a demographic shift already underway in the Yucatan.As young Mexicans have left the small towns of the Yucatan to seek tourism jobs, many traditional Maya villages face abandonment. In 2015, 36% of Yucatec residents lived in traditional towns of fewer than 5,000 people – about 10% fewer than in 1990.A Maya Train with limited stations may spur development of a select few traditional towns. But many more – all those not located within the new rural tourism corridor – will likely see their population dwindle. Building a better Maya TrainI don't believe López Obrador's ambitious signature infrastructure project should be killed. But the rushed construction schedule could be slowed down, giving the government time to study how the environmental and social costs of the Maya Train can be mitigated.Analysts have almost universally pointed out that the government's six-year timeline necessarily precludes a deliberate, comprehensive and careful planning and construction process.Landscape ecology, the study of natural systems, teaches us that simply maintaining green corridors connecting patches of unbroken wilderness can go a long way to protect wildlife, their habitat and the natural drainage patterns of the area.The railway's path could probably be redesigned to avoid severing these ecological arteries, but a sound environmental impact assessment must first be conducted to determine the impact and feasibility of alternative routes. That has not yet been done.The possible negative social consequences of the Maya Train could also be avoided, or at least compensated for, if the communities impacted by the railway could participate fully in the planning process.López Obrador says that Mother Earth granted permission to build the train, but Mexico's Maya Train was approved at a hastily called popular referendum last year with only 1% voter participation. Some indigenous activists have rejected the outcome of the vote, which polled Mexicans nationwide about a project that affects mainly Maya villagers. "We don't accept it," a representative of the Zapatistas, a southern Mexican indigenous insurgency, said of the train on July 23. "We won't allow [the government] to come in and destroy" the land.Other Yucatan residents appear to support the idea of a tourist train but want to be consulted closely about its route, stops and offerings, asked about their concerns and given the chance to make design proposals.This kind of participatory planning process would ensure that Yucatec residents are the beneficiaries, not the victims, of the anticipated economic boom.Done right, the Maya Train could actually trigger an economic conversion with sweeping environmental benefits for the Yucatan. If new ecotourism and agrotourism businesses grow up around the train, some rural residents will naturally move toward those trades and away from the high-impact, low-efficiency ranching that has so damaged the local ecology.Slow DownBig public works like the Maya Train take patience, careful planning, thinking and rethinking.These are not the hallmarks of López Obrador's leadership style. The Mexican president insists the $6 billion train will be completed before the end of his term in 2024 and has mocked journalists who question the train's environmental impact.But the public backlash appears to have forced his government to do some quick course correction.United Nations-Habitat, the U.N.'s urban development agency, began consulting with the Mexico government in May. U.N.-Habitat's interim director, Eduardo López Moreno, has called for a more holistic vision of the Maya Train."This is not 1,525 kilometers of track," he said after joining the project. "It's 1,525 kilometers of opportunities that will improve the quality of life for all inhabitants of southeast Mexico."This story first appeared in The Conversation on August 13.Image: Reuters
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| North Korea's Chemical Weapons: The Real Threat the World Should Fear? Posted: 16 Aug 2019 01:19 PM PDT  After the Kuala Lumpur attack, Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, said that VX fumes would have killed the attackers even if they were wearing gloves.US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clear at a press conference on March 17 in Seoul, South Korea that Washington's "strategic patience" with North Korea has ended after a series of provocative actions and that some sort of military intervention against Pyongyang could be on the cards.Last month's murder by nerve agent of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, however, casts doubt on the ultimate strategic utility of potential US air strikes against the secretive country's many military installations.It would not be difficult for US fighters to hit the bases on North Korea's northeastern coast, from where missiles have been launched in recent provocative test fires, or even to demolish some of its known nuclear facilities at Yongbyon north of the capital Pyongyang or the Punggye-Ri testing site situated in the country's northeast.Last month's murder by nerve agent of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, however, casts doubt on the ultimate strategic utility of potential US air strikes against the secretive country's many military installations.It would not be difficult for US fighters to hit the bases on North Korea's northeastern coast, from where missiles have been launched in recent provocative test fires, or even to demolish some of its known nuclear facilities at Yongbyon north of the capital Pyongyang or the Punggye-Ri testing site situated in the country's northeast.But unlike nuclear reactors and missile launching grounds which can be easily detected by satellites, North Korea's chemical and biological weapons facilities are known to be hidden underground. And Pyongyang's use of the lethal VX nerve agent in a transnational assassination has sent a chilling warning of its apparent willingness to use biological and chemical weapons in a conflict scenario.How the nerve agent was transported to Malaysia is still unclear. Some analysts suspect it could have been moved through a diplomatic pouch which is not checked through during normal customs procedures. The alleged involvement of Kuala Lumpur-based North Korean diplomats in the apparent plot has lent credence to the speculation.What is known is that North Korea has for years produced chemical and biological weapons at factories in Kanggye in Chagang province near the Chinese border in the country's north and at Sakchu in North Pyongan province. Both facilities are known to operate underground.Some chemical weapons have in the past been field tested on islands in the Yellow Sea, off the coast of northwestern North Korea. Causeways link some of those islands with the mainland but no buildings can be seen on them from the air as the facilities are hidden under the earth's surface.North Korea's chemical and biological weapons research began in 1954 when Pyongyang, then in the throes of the Korean War, established a directorate known as the "Central Bureau" to develop defenses against chemical weapons as well as to provide doctrinal provisions for the deployment of chemical warfare-trained troops.Each airfield in North Korea was provided with decontamination equipment and detection systems derived from Soviet and Chinese designs and partly supplied by those two countries. In 1961, then leader Kim Il-sung — Kim Jong-un's grandfather — issued a "Declaration of Chemicalization", which called for greater efforts to develop facilities where chemical weapons would be produced.That declaration is apparently still in effect. Dual-use chemicals such as phosphate, ammonium, fluoride, chloride and sulfur have recently been procured by Pyongyang from abroad. Those chemicals can be obtained easily anywhere in the world and have legitimate civilian uses but those procured by North Korea are known by analysts to have been used to feed the country's chemical weapons factories.North Korea is also believed to have significant stockpiles of different kinds of chemical and biological warfare agents, all produced in its underground installations and then stored at Maram-dong near Pyongyang and at Anbyon in the southern border province of Kangwon. Both facilities consist of mazes of tunnels dug into mountains and cannot be detected from the air.Less is known about the origin of raw materials used in North Korea's biological weapons factories. The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said in an unclassified report in 2007 that "North Korea's resources include a biotechnical infrastructure that could support the production of various biological warfare agents. DIA believes North Korea has a longstanding chemical weapons stockpile of nerve, blister, blood, and choking agents."The nerve agent VX, or "venomous agent X", is a tasteless and odorless liquid that was first developed in Britain in the 1950s. The US began producing it in 1961 at Newport Chemical Depot in the state of Indiana. The UN classifies VX as a weapon of mass destruction.It has been banned by international conventions and cannot be used for anything except in chemical warfare. The US cancelled its chemical weapons program in 1969 and began destroying its stockpiles, first on Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific and later on the US mainland. The last of its chemical weapon stockpile was destroyed in December 2008.It is uncertain when North Korea began its production of VX, but it was most likely in the 1960s when it also began to manufacture other nerve agents such as sarin, soman and tabun. VX, however, is believed to be the deadliest nerve agent ever created, of which even a drop of the lethal substance can kill a human.After the Kuala Lumpur attack, Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, said that VX fumes would have killed the attackers even if they were wearing gloves.He suggested the VX agent used to kill Kim Jong-nam was made up of two non-lethal components that when mixed formed VX on the victim's face. CCTV footage from Kuala Lumpur airport shows two young women touching Kim Jong-nam, apparently on the face, though the images are too hazy to show exactly what they were doing.The nerve agent VX, or "venomous agent X", is a tasteless and odorless liquid that was first developed in Britain in the 1950s. The US began producing it in 1961 at Newport Chemical Depot in the state of Indiana. The UN classifies VX as a weapon of mass destruction.It has been banned by international conventions and cannot be used for anything except in chemical warfare. The US cancelled its chemical weapons program in 1969 and began destroying its stockpiles, first on Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific and later on the US mainland. The last of its chemical weapon stockpile was destroyed in December 2008.It is uncertain when North Korea began its production of VX, but it was most likely in the 1960s when it also began to manufacture other nerve agents such as sarin, soman and tabun. VX, however, is believed to be the deadliest nerve agent ever created, of which even a drop of the lethal substance can kill a human.After the Kuala Lumpur attack, Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, said that VX fumes would have killed the attackers even if they were wearing gloves.He suggested the VX agent used to kill Kim Jong-nam was made up of two non-lethal components that when mixed formed VX on the victim's face. CCTV footage from Kuala Lumpur airport shows two young women touching Kim Jong-nam, apparently on the face, though the images are too hazy to show exactly what they were doing.This first appeared in AsiaTimes here.Image: Flickr.(This article originally appeared in 2017 and is being republished due to reader interest.)
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| UPDATE 3-U.S.'s North Korea envoy to visit Japan, South Korea next week Posted: 16 Aug 2019 01:13 PM PDT |
| Airstrike in Syria rebel area kills 13, including children Posted: 16 Aug 2019 01:00 PM PDT ![Airstrike in Syria rebel area kills 13, including children]( "Airstrike in Syria rebel area kills 13, including children") A suspected Russian airstrike hit a displaced people's gathering in a town in Syria's last rebel enclave Friday, killing at least 13, including a number of children, activists and a war monitor said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike, suspected to have been carried out by Russian aircraft, hit in the town of Hass south of Idlib province, where peopled displaced by the violence had congregated. The monitoring group said the attack killed at least four children.
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| Venezuelan exodus may soon double, triggering a bigger regional crisis | Opinion Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:56 PM PDT  One of the things that surprised me the most during a lengthy interview with Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan National Assembly president who is recognized by the United States and more than 50 countries as Venezuela's legitimate leader, was his forecast that the number of Venezuelan exiles may "easily" reach 8 million by next year. It's a mindboggling figure, because it would be twice the 4 million exiles that, according to a recent United Nations report, have already fled the country since dictator Nicolás Maduro took office five years ago. Eight million people would amount to 25 percent of Venezuela's population.
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| California man convicted of torture of pot dispensary owner Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:39 PM PDT  A California man who previously escaped from jail and was on the run for a week was convicted Friday of kidnapping and torturing a marijuana dispensary owner who he mistakenly believed had buried large sums of money in the desert. A jury in Newport Beach found Hossein Nayeri, 40, guilty of two counts of kidnapping and one count of torture in the 2012 abduction of the dispensary owner and his roommate's girlfriend. Authorities said Nayeri and three others plotted to kidnap and rob the man, who was bound and burned with a blow torch while his captors drove through the desert demanding the money.
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| Tlaib declines to visit West Bank, citing Israeli conditions Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:19 PM PDT  Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Friday she would not visit her grandmother in the occupied West Bank, despite being granted an Israeli permit on humanitarian grounds, saying Israel's "oppressive" conditions aimed to humiliate her. Israel barred Tlaib and another Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, from visiting Jerusalem and the West Bank over their support for the international boycott movement following an unprecedented appeal from President Donald Trump to deny them entry. Israel had said Tlaib could visit relatives in the West Bank on humanitarian grounds.
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| The Latest: Omar disputes Netanyahu's claims about itinerary Posted: 16 Aug 2019 11:43 AM PDT  U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota disputes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan didn't ask to meet with Israeli government or opposition officials before he barred them from visiting Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank next week. Omar tweeted Friday they planned to meet with Jewish and Arab members of the Israeli parliament plus other Israeli officials.
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| Hezbollah shows 'missile arsenal' used against Israeli warship Posted: 16 Aug 2019 11:37 AM PDT  Hezbollah released footage of what it says are anti-ship missiles of the kind it used 13 years ago against Israel before marking on Friday its self-declared "victory" in the 2006 war. Israel has fought several conflicts against the Iran-backed Hezbollah, the last in 2006. More than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, the majority soldiers, died during the last conflict but many in Israel consider the war a failure as Hezbollah was not defeated.
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| Is a global food crisis avoidable? Posted: 16 Aug 2019 11:30 AM PDT  A dire United Nations report warns that humanity may not be able to create enough food in the future. What steps can mankind take to avoid a global food crisis?
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| US says it will comply with new Iraq directive on airspace Posted: 16 Aug 2019 11:13 AM PDT  The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq says it will comply with new orders issued by the country's prime minister regarding unauthorized flights in Iraqi airspace. In a statement Friday, it says that as guests of the Iraqi government, the coalition complies with all Iraqi laws and direction from the government. The statement came after senior leaders from the coalition met with Iraqi defense officials to discuss Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi's guidance regarding airspace usage.
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| UK's Johnson to meet Macron, Merkel next week - Guardian Posted: 16 Aug 2019 11:09 AM PDT ![UK's Johnson to meet Macron, Merkel next week - Guardian]( "UK's Johnson to meet Macron, Merkel next week - Guardian") British leader Boris Johnson will travel to meet his French and German counterparts on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, in his first foreign engagements since becoming prime minister last month, a Guardian reporter said on Friday. Johnson is seeking to persuade European Union leaders to reopen Brexit talks or face the prospect of its second-largest member leaving abruptly on Oct. 31 with no deal in place on their future relations, a move businesses expect would cause major disruption. Germany's government said earlier on Friday that Chancellor Angela Merkel would meet Johnson soon but did not give a date.
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| Indian ambassador to UN slams international interference over Kashmir Posted: 16 Aug 2019 10:49 AM PDT  India's ambassador to the United Nations on Friday slammed international interference over Kashmir, after the Security Council held its first formal meeting on the disputed region in almost 50 years. The discussions, which were requested by Pakistan and China and took place behind closed doors, follow New Delhi's decision to strip its portion of the Muslim-majority territory of its autonomy earlier this month. It is extremely rare for the Security Council to discuss Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947.
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| Yemen's Houthis launch drone attacks on Saudi's Abha airport -military spokesman Posted: 16 Aug 2019 10:21 AM PDT ![Yemen's Houthis launch drone attacks on Saudi's Abha airport -military spokesman]( "Yemen's Houthis launch drone attacks on Saudi's Abha airport -military spokesman") Yemen's Houthis launched more drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's Abha international airport on Friday, the Iran-aligned group's military spokesman said. There was no immediate confirmation of the attacks from the Saudi authorities.
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| UPDATE 2-China says U.N. council members think India, Pakistan should refrain from unilateral action in Kashmir Posted: 16 Aug 2019 10:15 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-China says U.N. council members think India, Pakistan should refrain from unilateral action in Kashmir]( "UPDATE 2-China says U.N. council members think India, Pakistan should refrain from unilateral action in Kashmir") U.N. Security Council members believe India and Pakistan should refrain from taking unilateral action over the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, China's U.N. envoy said on Friday after the council met on the issue for the first time in decades. The 15-member council met behind closed doors at the request of China and Pakistan after India removed the decades-old autonomy the Muslim-majority territory of Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed under the Indian constitution.
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| Trump’s U.N. ambassador confronts ethics questions over climate change Posted: 16 Aug 2019 09:50 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's new ambassador to the United Nations will decide whether to recuse herself from issues involving fossil fuels on a case-by-case basis after a recent briefing with ethics lawyers, State Department officials said.
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| Trump’s U.N. ambassador confronts ethics questions over climate change Posted: 16 Aug 2019 09:50 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's new ambassador to the United Nations will decide whether to recuse herself from issues involving fossil fuels on a case-by-case basis after a recent briefing with ethics lawyers, State Department officials said.
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| Trump’s U.N. ambassador confronts ethics questions over climate change Posted: 16 Aug 2019 09:50 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's new ambassador to the United Nations will decide whether to recuse herself from issues involving fossil fuels on a case-by-case basis after a recent briefing with ethics lawyers, State Department officials said.
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| Trump Held Call With Dimon, Moynihan, Corbat as Markets Plunged Posted: 16 Aug 2019 09:06 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump held a conference call Wednesday amid a plunge in the stock market with three of Wall Street's top executives -- JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America Corp.'s Brian Moynihan and Citigroup Inc.'s Michael Corbat.The three chief executives were in Washington for a previously scheduled meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on banking secrecy and money laundering, according to people familiar with the matter. On a conference call, they briefed the president, who was at his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.The talks came during a tumultuous day in markets as Trump's trade war with China continued to cast a cloud over the global economy. Stocks plummeted as signs appeared in the bond market a recession could be on the horizon.Moynihan, speaking in a Bloomberg Television interview on Friday, said the turmoil has been driven by issues outside the U.S., and that recession risks are low."We have nothing to fear about a recession right now except for the fear of recession," Moynihan said.Back-and-forth posturing by Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping has kept investors on edge amid volatility that's gripped markets for most of August. China called looming U.S. tariffs a violation of accords, while Trump said Thursday that any deal with Beijing must be "on our terms."Spokespeople for JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America declined to comment, as did the Treasury Department.\--With assistance from Katherine Chiglinsky and Michelle F. Davis.To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Jenny Surane in New York at jsurane4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, Justin BlumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Stealth F-22 Raptor Flew Right Under an F-4 Phantom from Iran Posted: 16 Aug 2019 09:00 AM PDT  After this attempted interception, the Pentagon decided to escort drones involved in reconnaissance missions with fighter jets: either F-18 Hornets embarked on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, currently in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility, or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates.Back in 2013, Pentagon press secretary George Little said that an Iranian air force F-4 Phantom combat plane attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone flying through international airspace near Iran.As we reported back then, one of the two F-4 Phantom jets — in service in Iran since the Shah — came to about 16 miles from the Predator, but broke off pursuit after two American planes escorting the drone broadcast a warning message.It was a close call.The March 2013 episode happened only a few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (the informal name of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran.After this attempted interception, the Pentagon decided to escort drones involved in reconnaissance missions with fighter jets: either F-18 Hornets embarked on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, currently in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility, or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates.New details about the latest episode were recently disclosed by Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh at an annual conference of the Air Force Association. On Sept. 17, the general not only confirmed that the escorting fighters were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that: "He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said 'you really ought to go home.'"If the episode went exactly as Welsh described it, it was something more similar to Maverick's close encounter with Russian MiG-28s in Top Gunthan a standard interception.It would be interesting to know how the Raptors managed to remain in stealth. Did the pilots use radar? Were they vectored by an AWACS? Why didn't an E-2 — providing Airborne Early Warning in the area — not broadcast the message to dissuade the F-4 from pursuing the drone before the Iranian Phantoms and the U.S. Raptors came close to a potentially dangerous and tense situation?(This article by Robert Beckhusen originally appeared at War is Boring in 2013.)Anyway, the U.S. pilot scared the Iranian pilots off and saved the drone. A happy ending worthy of an action movie.Image: Reuters.(This first appeared earlier in July 2019 is is being republished due to reader interest.)
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| Turkey: Syria 'safe zone' center to operate next week Posted: 16 Aug 2019 08:53 AM PDT ![Turkey: Syria 'safe zone' center to operate next week]( "Turkey: Syria 'safe zone' center to operate next week") Turkey's defense minister says a Turkish-U.S. coordination center for a so-called "safe zone" in northern Syria will become fully operational next week. Hulusi Akar also said Friday that Turkey and the United States had reached an agreement concerning the control of airspace over the planned safe zone but provided no further detail. Akar spoke during a visit to Sanliurfa province bordering Syria, where Turkey and the United States agreed to establish a Joint Operation Center for the safe zone.
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| Hong Kong activists and British MPs join calls for Boris Johnson to intervene Posted: 16 Aug 2019 08:51 AM PDT  Two British MPs have called on the UK to directly condemn Beijing for failing to hold up its end of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, asking Boris Johnson's government to consider sanctions against Chinese officials and companies. Thousands, dressed in black, gathered in a public square Friday evening in Hong Kong's business district in defiance of showers that had swept through the city. "What is happening in Hong Kong is truly a human rights crisis in the making," said MP Heidi Allen, in a message read to the crowd. "We mustn't allow China to use this as an opportunity to bully us into submission, and relinquish our responsibilities." "This slow erosion of your freedoms is precisely what the Sino-British Joint Declaration was supposed to avoid when Britain signed that agreement in 1984," said Tom Watson in a recorded address. The extradition proposal "clearly breaches that understanding and starts to align Hong Kong's legal system with that of China; this is not acceptable," he added. Demonstrators hold placards and wear eye patches in solidarity with those allegedly injured by police Credit: David Gray/Bloomberg "The UK must not sit idly by as Hong Kongers lose their rights and freedoms," he added as he called on the UK government to show "direct moral support" for city residents and to scope out steps to apply pressure on Chinese officials and companies. Cheers erupted in response to the messages at the peaceful rally. The Union Flag and Hong Kong's British colonial flag have been fixtures at mass protests that have snaked through the city for three months, as protesters have continually called on the UK to express further support to preserve freedoms in the former colony. Mr Johnson and other British officials have already called on China to continue recognising the Joint Declaration as the protests continue. In 2014, China called the agreement a historical document with no present significance, worrying many that the freedoms long enjoyed in the former British colony were gradually disappearing. China, however, has condemned the UK for interfering in domestic affairs, threatening the government to keep out of the political situation in Hong Kong and accusing the government of retaining a colonial mindset. Joshua Wong, a promanent protest leader imprisoned after the Umbrella Revolution of 2014, told The Telegraph: "It's time for the Prime Minister, and I believe Boris Johnson should take a more active role. I know it's hard for him to strongly support Hong Kong democratisation with solid action or legislation, but at least make a phone call to president Xi [Jinping] to remind him not to send troops to Hong Kong - it's not the solution." He added that Mr Johnson wasn't "speaking up enough". "If they do not speak up, they are making the joint declaration into another Munich Agreement." In June, the UK halted further export licenses for crowd control equipment indefinitely until human rights issues were addressed after human rights group Amnesty International said some of the tear gas canisters fired by police to disperse crowds were manufactured by PW Defence, a British defence company. Protesters first came out against a now-suspended extradition proposal, though have stayed in the streets to demand the formal withdrawal of the bill. Calls have also expanded to include broader political reforms including the resignation of the city's chief executive, Carrie Lam, and direct leadership elections.
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| UPDATE 2-Veteran UK politicians asked to lead potential anti-Brexit government Posted: 16 Aug 2019 07:51 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-Veteran UK politicians asked to lead potential anti-Brexit government]( "UPDATE 2-Veteran UK politicians asked to lead potential anti-Brexit government") Veteran British lawmakers from the ruling Conservative and opposition Labour parties have both said they would be willing to lead an emergency government to halt a no-deal Brexit, the leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats said on Friday. The suggestion that either Conservative Ken Clarke or Labour's Harriet Harman - parliament's longest-serving man and woman - could take charge was the latest sign that one group of foes of an abrupt exit from the EU is joining forces to unseat Boris Johnson to stop it.
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| Tokyo Wins World War II?: What If Japan Never Attacked at Pearl Harbor? Posted: 16 Aug 2019 07:42 AM PDT  It doesn't take too much imagination to postulate alternative strategies for Imperial Japan. Indeed, eminent Japanese have themselves postulated alternatives. My favorite: the high naval command should have stuck to its pre-1941 playbook. The Pearl Harbor carrier raid was a latecomer to Japanese naval strategy, and it was the handiwork of one man, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Had Yamamoto declined to press the case for a Hawaiian strike, or had the high command rebuffed his entreaties, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have executed its longstanding strategy of "interceptive operations."Suppose Robert E. Lee had laid hands on a shipment of AK-47s in 1864. How would American history have unfolded? Differently than it did, one imagines.Historians frown on alt-history, and oftentimes for good reason. Change too many variables, and you veer speedily into fiction. The chain connecting cause to effect gets too diffuse to trace, and history loses all power to instruct. Change a major variable, especially in a fanciful way—for instance, positing that machine-gun-toting Confederates took the field against Ulysses S. Grant's army at the Battle of the Wilderness—and the same fate befalls you. Good storytelling may teach little.What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? Now that's a question we can take on without running afoul of historical scruples. As long as we refrain from inserting nuclear-powered aircraft carriers sporting Tomcat fighters into our deliberations, at any rate.RECOMMENDED: How D-Day Could Have Been a Disaster When studying strategy, we commonly undertake a self-disciplined form of alt-history. Indeed, our courses in Newport and kindred educational institutes revolve around it. That's how we learn from historical figures and events. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz recommends—nay, demands—that students of strategy take this approach. Rigor, not whimsy, is the standard that guides ventures in Clausewitzian "critical analysis." Strategists critique the course of action a commander followed while proposing alternatives that may have better advanced operational and strategic goals.Debating strategy and operations in hindsight is how we form the habit of thinking critically about present-day enterprises. Critical analysis, maintains Clausewitz, is "not just an evaluation of the means actually employed, but of all possible means—which first have to be formulated, that is, invented. One can, after all, not condemn a method without being able to suggest a better alternative." The Prussian sage, then, scorns Monday-morning quarterbacking.RECOMMENDED: How Japan Could Have Won World War II That demands intellectual self-discipline. "If the critic wishes to distribute praise or blame," concludes Clausewitz, "he must certainly try to put himself exactly in the position of the commander; in other words, he must assemble everything the commander knew and all the motives that affected his decision, and ignore all that he could not or did not know, especially the outcome." Critics know how a course of action worked out in retrospect. They must restrict themselves to what a commander actually knew in order to project some realistic alternative.RECOMMENDED: Could Russia Have Won the Cold War? It doesn't take too much imagination to postulate alternative strategies for Imperial Japan. Indeed, eminent Japanese have themselves postulated alternatives. My favorite: the high naval command should have stuck to its pre-1941 playbook. The Pearl Harbor carrier raid was a latecomer to Japanese naval strategy, and it was the handiwork of one man, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Had Yamamoto declined to press the case for a Hawaiian strike, or had the high command rebuffed his entreaties, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have executed its longstanding strategy of "interceptive operations."In other words, it would have evicted U.S. forces from the Philippine Islands, seized Pacific islands and built airfields there, and employed air and submarine attacks to cut the U.S. Pacific Fleet down to size on its westward voyage to the Philippines' relief. Interceptive operations would have culminated in a fleet battle somewhere in the Western Pacific. Japan would have stood a better chance of success had it done so. Its navy still would have struck American territory to open the war, but it would have done so in far less provocative fashion. In all likelihood, the American reaction would have proved more muted—and more manageable for Japan.The Hollywood version of Yamamoto puts the result of Pearl Harbor well, prophesying in Tora! Tora! Tora! that "we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." That's a rich—and rather Clausewitzian—way of putting it. Clausewitz defines a combatant's strength as a product of capability and willpower. Yamamoto alludes to the United States' vast industrial and natural resources, depicting America as a giant in waiting. He also foretells that the strike on Battleship Row will enrage that giant—goading him into mobilizing those resources in bulk to smite Japan.Assaulting the Philippines may have awakened the sleeping giant—but it's doubtful it would have left him in such a merciless mood. He would have been groggy. Here's Clausewitz again: the "value of the political object" governs the "magnitude" and "duration" of the effort a belligerent mounts to obtain that political object. How much a belligerent wants its political goals, that is, dictates how many resources—lives, national treasure, military hardware—it invests in an endeavor, and how long it sustains the investment.It pays a heavy price for goals it covets dearly. Lesser goals warrant lesser expenditures.The Philippine Islands constituted a lesser goal. The archipelago constituted American territory, having been annexed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. But the islands also lay on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from American shores. And they had been absent from daily headlines since the days when imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt wrangled publicly with anti-imperialists like Mark Twain about the wisdom of annexation. Americans reportedly had to consult their atlases on December 7 to find out where Pearl Harbor was located. The Philippines barely registered in the popular consciousness—full stop.Regaining the Philippines, then, would have represented a political object commanding mediocre value at best—especially when full-blown war raged in Europe and adjoining waters, beckoning to an America that had been Eurocentric since its founding. Chances are that the U.S. effort in the Pacific would have remained wholly defensive. The U.S. leadership would have concentrated resources and martial energy in the Atlantic theater—keeping its prewar promise to allied leaders in deed as well as in spirit.Bypassing the Hawaiian Islands, in short, would have spared Japan a world of hurt—as Admiral Yamamoto foresaw. Forbearance would have granted Tokyo time to consolidate its gains in the Western Pacific, and perhaps empowered Japan's navy and army to hold those gains against the tepid, belated U.S. counteroffensive that was likely to come.Now, let's give Yamamoto his due as a maritime strategist. His strategy was neither reckless nor stupid. Japanese mariners were avid readers of the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, and going after the enemy fleet represents sound Mahanian doctrine. Crush the enemy fleet and you win "command of the sea." Win maritime command and contested real estate dangles on the vine for you to pluck afterward.And indeed, the Mahanian approach did pay off for the Imperial Japanese Navy—for a time. Japanese warriors ran wild for six months after Pearl Harbor, scooping up conquest after conquest. But a vengeful giant can regenerate strength given adequate time. As Yamamoto himself predicted, Japan could entertain "no expectation of success" if the war dragged on longer than six months or a year.Doing less—or forswearing an effort entirely—always constitutes a viable strategic option. Doing nothing was an option Japan should have exercised rather than assail Pearl Harbor. That's the lesson from alt-history.James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone.Image: Wikimedia Commons.(This article was first published in 2017 and is being republished due to reader interest.)Recommended: The F-22 Is Getting a New Job: SniperWhy North Korea's Air Force is Total Junk Why Doesn't America Kill Kim Jong Un?
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| 1 Million Reasons You Don't Want to Fight a War Against North Korea Posted: 16 Aug 2019 07:15 AM PDT  North Korea's light infantry and special forces are taking on increasing importance as the country's aging mechanized units, starved for technology and fuel, are likely becoming less relevant to the country's war plans.Infantry weapons have long been a pillar of the North Korean People's Army, or KPA for short. The KPA that invaded South Korea was largely an infantry army, and despite significant mechanization in the 1970s the foundation of the army has been its infantry forces. Today, the bulk of the KPA's 1.1 million army is infantry, with approximately 200,000 light infantry and special forces.(This article first appeared last year.)After the Korean War, North Korea followed the Soviet Union's lead in infantry weapons. The oldest gun still in service is the KPA Type 58 assault rifle. A clone of the Soviet AK-47, the Type 58 was produced in two factories, 61 and 65 located near Chongjin, between 1958 and 1968. The Type 58 was a basic AK-pattern rifle with a 30 round magazine and a rate of fire of up to 650 rounds per minute. Approximately 800,000 rifles were produced, and while the 7.62-millimeter assault rifle is no longer in service with frontline units it allegedly still equips reserve units and militia.Recommended: Stealth vs. North Korea's Air Defenses: Who Wins?Recommended: America's Battleships Went to War Against North KoreaRecommended: 5 Places World War III Could Start in 2018A new rifle, the Type 68, was a clone of the Soviet AKM assault rifle and manufactured beginning in 1968. In practical terms the Type 68 had few major improvements over the Type 58, although it did come with a folding stock. The Type 68 was also extensively exported abroad, to El Salvadoran Marxist guerrillas and across Central and South America. These rifles are also likely still in service with reservists and rear-area units, as North Korea is undoubtedly still sitting on a considerable supply of 7.62 rifle ammunition.The KPAGF's main weapon is the Type 88 assault rifle. The weapon is similar to the Soviet AK-74, although at least one report suggests it may be derived more from the Chinese copy of the AK-74 than the original Soviet weapon. The weapon represents a major logistical break for the KPAGF, using 5.45-millimeter ammunition instead of the the 7.62 round utilized by previous rifles. The Type 88 may have started out in special commando units but appears to have gradually spread out into regular army units. North Korean watchers have spotted the Type 88 using helical magazines capable of carrying more than one hundred rounds of ammunition and the rifle also formed the basis for North Korea's version of the U.S. Army's Objective Individual Combat Weapon, a combination gun/grenade launcher weapon equipped with an advanced gunsight.North Korea also maintains a small arsenal of M-16 pattern rifles. Several such rifles were reportedly found on the bodies of infiltrators during the 1996 Gangneung incident. The South Korean military at one time used M-16A1 rifles and the weapon could have been used by agents and saboteurs to impersonate South Korean military personnel. It's not clear where these weapons came from: one report suggests the rifles could have been Chinese Norinco CQ rifles, but North Korea's history suggests that the weapons could have come from Central or South American guerrillas or even Vietnam.North Korea's early squad automatic weapon, the Type 73, was an idiosyncratic weapon: based on the Soviet PKM machine gun, it featured a dual-feed ammunition system allowing it to accept metal belted ammunition but also vertically loaded 30 round magazines similar to the Czechoslovakian Vz. 52 or British Army Bren machine gun. The dual feed system has always been something of a mystery, as the Type 73 uses different ammunition than North Korean assault rifles and as such there is no commonality. Vertical magazines do however allow machine gunners to fire from the prone position and while belted ammo can do the same thing feeding belts can allow the machine gun to ingest debris and jam. Even more intriguingly, the Type 73 can fire rifle grenades.North Korea's follow-on machine gun and their current squad-level support firearm, the Type 82, was introduced in 1982 and is a more orthodox weapon. The Type 82 bears greater similarity to the PK-PKM machine guns, lacks a magazine fed option, and is belt-fed only.North Korea's light infantry and special forces are taking on increasing importance as the country's aging mechanized units, starved for technology and fuel, are likely becoming less relevant to the country's war plans. The guns of the KPA Ground Forces help ensure North Korean sniper, airborne, and marine infantry units remain operationally relevant now and into the near future. Whether this impoverished country with an economy smaller than Panama's can arm their infantrymen as well as their American and South Korean counterparts, while simultaneously affording an expanding nuclear arsenal is another question.Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.Image: Reuters.
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| Myanmar, Bangladesh schedule Rohingya repatriation Posted: 16 Aug 2019 07:02 AM PDT  Myanmar and Bangladesh will soon make a second attempt to start repatriating Rohingya Muslims, 700,000 of whom fled a security crackdown in Myanmar almost two years ago, officials from the two countries and the United Nations said Friday. Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay, speaking in his country's capital, Naypyitaw, said the parties concerned had agreed that the process would begin next Thursday. Bangladesh Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Abul Kalam said the identities of the refugees have been confirmed by Myanmar and they could go back there if they want.
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| India vows to ease Kashmir clampdown as clashes with Pakistan continue Posted: 16 Aug 2019 06:11 AM PDT  India and Pakistan continued to fire across their disputed frontier in Kashmir, as Delhi said it would soon relax a security crackdown and communications blackout in the region. Pakistan said one of its soldiers had been killed, bringing the death toll to six in less than 24 hours. The United Nations Security Council is due to hold rare discussions on the situation in Kashmir later on Friday, after India abolished its special status and enforced the strictest clampdown in the troubled region in years. Telephone and internet links were cut and public assembly banned earlier this months, just before Delhi removed autonomy for the Muslim-majority territory. Hundreds of political leaders and activists remain under detention. As India's Supreme Court heard a petition from a newspaper editor seeking to restore communication links so journalists can work, government lawyer Tushar Mehta said forces planned to lift the curbs over the "next few days," Reuters reported. Indian channel NDTV, citing unnamed sources, said schools will likely open on Monday. Strict curfews remained in place on Friday to prevent protest after prayers. Another brave son of soil laid his life in the line of duty. Sepoy Muhammad Sheeraz embraced shahadat due to Indian firing in Buttal Sector along LOC. pic.twitter.com/BAozVnsuGY— DG ISPR (@OfficialDGISPR) August 16, 2019 Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, has said the abolition of Kashmir's self rule was necessary to speed up its development and ensure its full integration into India. India and Pakistan have clashed over the territory since Independence in 1947, with their two militaries facing off over a heavily militarised line of control dividing the region in two. The information wing of Pakistan's military said on Friday "another brave son of soil lost his life in the line of duty" in Buttal town in an exchange of fire. Pakistan had earlier said three soldiers and two civilians died on Thursday. Islamabad has lobbied the international community to act after Delhi's revocation of Kashmir's status. The UN meeting will be held behind closed doors and stops short of the full emergency meeting Pakistan had hoped for.
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| UK lawmakers opposed to Labour plan should consider no-deal Brexit threat - Corbyn Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:45 AM PDT ![UK lawmakers opposed to Labour plan should consider no-deal Brexit threat - Corbyn]( "UK lawmakers opposed to Labour plan should consider no-deal Brexit threat - Corbyn") The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said lawmakers who oppose his proposal to lead an emergency government should consider the threat posed to Britain by a no-deal exit from the European Union. Given Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to take Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31, with or without a negotiated transition, foes are plotting how to bring him down and stop a no-deal Brexit they say would be disastrous for the economy. Corbyn wants a no-confidence vote, caretaker government with him as head, then an election, while the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats prefer to find alternative leaders for a unity government.
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| German finance minister offers to join party leadership race Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:34 AM PDT ![German finance minister offers to join party leadership race]( "German finance minister offers to join party leadership race") Germany's finance minister is offering to throw his hat in the ring to lead the center-left Social Democratic Party, a traditional powerhouse in German politics that's seen a sharp drop in support in recent years. The weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday that Olaf Scholz told party colleagues this week he's willing to run if they want him to. Scholz would be the highest-profile candidate to join the leadership race for the party that's a junior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.
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| Israel allows Rashida Tlaib to visit relatives in occupied West Bank on ‘humanitarian grounds’ after banning entry to Israel for official trip Posted: 16 Aug 2019 05:14 AM PDT  Israel has granted US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib permission to visit her Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank on humanitarian grounds, after barring an official visit via Israel amid pressure from Donald Trump.On Thursday the Israeli interior ministry said it would not permit Ms Tlaib or fellow Democratic representative Ilhan Omar to enter Israel, citing their alleged "boycott activities".Just hours before the official decision, Mr Trump had tweeted it would show "great weakness" if Israel permitted the pair to visit the country, suggesting that they "hate Israel & all Jewish people".Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the ban, claiming Ms Tlaib's and Ms Omar's itinerary "reveals that the sole purpose of their visit is to harm Israel and increase incitement against it".However, Mr Netanyahu added that if Ms Tlaib submitted a humanitarian request to the interior ministry, it would consider her request on the condition she "pledges not to act to promote boycotts against Israel during her visit".On Friday Israel's interior minister Aryeh Deri said the authorities decided to approve the entry of Ms Tlaib for "a humanitarian visit to her 90-year-old grandmother".In a letter circulated by Israeli media, Ms Tlaib had requested "to visit relatives, and specifically my grandmother, who is in her nineties", adding that it "could be my last opportunity to see her"."I will respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit," she added.The decision to allow Ms Tlaib into Israel only on humanitarian grounds sparked uproar among Arab-Israeli parliamentarians, who said it only highlighted the "repression in Israel".Ahmad Tibi, leader of the Ta'al party faction, said it was "unprecedented" to ban a member of congress on "the basis of non-violent political opinion"."They should be both be allowed in without conditions. It's a huge pity that they have allowed Ms Tlaib in alone with obligations and restrictions. It is the ultimate sign to Americans of the repression many suffer here," he told The Independent."I think it's a genuine translation of the policy of Netanyahu: Trump tweets and Netanyahu obeys," he added.Leftist Israeli MKs had previously criticised the decision to ban the two politicians, calling it "fundamentally wrong and diplomatically foolish".Tamar Zandberg, of the left-wing Democratic Camp party, said: "A democratic country can't deny entry to elected officials of a friendly democracy, let alone the immense damage already caused – not only image-wise, but also to the important relations with the Democratic Party," she said in a statement.The decision was also criticised by powerful Pro-Israeli lobbying groups in America such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which said that while it disagreed with both of the congresswomen's stances on Israel, "every member of congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand".Dylan J Williams, senior vice-president at J Street, a Jewish-American advocacy group, called it "unprecedented" and "anti-democratic", adding that it showed "the reckless disregard for preserving the bilateral relationship beyond their immediate personal political horizons".The move was, however, heralded by right-wing factions with Israel and supporters of Mr Netanyahu. David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, who also lauded the move, echoed the Israeli premier's statement saying the impending trip was "an effort to fuel the [boycott] engine".Mr Netanyahu's Likud Party declined to comment to The Independent, saying the move to bar the visit was diplomatic.The Blue and White, the party of Mr Netanyahu's chief elections rival Benny Gantz, accused the prime minister of "zigzagging" on his decision to bar the congresswomen access to Israel and said the ban would only "fuels the BDS movement".He said it worked "against [Israel's] national interests" and the decision to grant Mrs Tlaib entry on humanitarian grounds was the right step to lessen the tensions in Israel US relations.Ms Tlaib and Ms Omar had planned to visit Jerusalem and several West Bank cities, including occupied Hebron and Bethlehem, from this weekend. They were both due to fly into Tel Aviv. According to a document leaked by Israeli press, they were not planning on visiting any sites in Israel and instead were due to meet rights groups and United Nations bodies in the Palestinian territories. Mr Netanyahu had slammed the trip, saying that it was coordinated by the Palestinian organisation Miftah, which backs the boycott of Israel.Both lawmakers are known as supporters of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), a Palestinian-led global movement. Israel alleges that BDS targets the state's very existence, while the movement's supporters say it is intended as leverage to end more than half a century of Israeli military rule over Palestinians.It had been previously reported that Mr Trump had told advisers he believed Israel should enforce its 2017 law that allows individuals to be denied entry into the country if they have supported boycotting Israel.Mr Trump later defended Israel's decision to bar the visit, adding he didn't "encourage or discourage" the move.
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| German Finance Chief Ready to Lead Push to Revive SPD Fortunes Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:56 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has reversed course and is willing to run for the job of co-leader in his Social Democratic party, according to a person familiar with the decision.Scholz, who is also vice chancellor in the ruling coalition, signaled his willingness to run in a telephone call Monday with interim SPD leaders, Der Spiegel magazine reported earlier Friday. His change of heart was prompted by a lack of heavyweight candidates for the twin positions.Finance Ministry Spokeswoman Helene Bechtle declined to comment when asked about Scholz's decision at a regular government news conference Friday.Scholz's decision reinforces what has been his long-standing ambition to eventually run for the country's top job. What isn't clear is how he plans to boost the party's dismal polling numbers without pulling out of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, a move many in his party support but he opposes. The Social Democrats are to vote on that issue as well as a new leadership later in the year.The SPD has slumped to its lowest approval ratings on record, garnering around 12% or 10 percentage points less than just over two years ago. Regional elections in two states on Sept. 1 could become a tipping point if the SPD performs poorly. In Brandenburg, the party could lose for the first time since reunification in 1990 to the right-wing Alternative for Germany, or AfD, polls suggest.Scholz, 61, is seen as one of the main anchors of Merkel's ruling coalition, which has come under increasing pressure amid a slowing economy and growing demands to boost spending on climate change and infrastructure. Many Social Democrats say their party is performing poorly because it sacrificed its core principles in the partnership with Merkel's center-right CDU.Leftist, anti-coalition candidates have dominated the field of other competitors to lead the SPD, including deputy caucus leader Karl Lauterbach and legislator Nina Speer. Lauterbach has called on the government to ease fiscal discipline so as to finance environmental and educational projects."If Scholz is the only pro-coalition candidate left, he'll have a good chance of winning at the party congress because the anti-coalition candidates would split the vote among themselves," said Ingrid Arndt-Brauer, an SPD legislator on the finance committee in the lower house of parliament.Scholz told interim party leaders Manuela Schwesig, Malu Dreyer and Thorsten Schaefer-Guembel on Monday that he is willing to run if asked to do so, Der Spiegel reported. Since then he has been seeking a female running mate, it said.(Adds detail and background throughout.)To contact the reporter on this story: Birgit Jennen in Berlin at bjennen1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt, Iain RogersFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| How America's European Allies Got Stuck In a Foreign Policy Triangle Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:40 AM PDT  CHINA AND Russia are gaining wealth and influence in Europe with energy, banking, telecommunications and infrastructure deals that may entangle allies in relationships they cannot readily escape. Such moves should be checked, especially on the frontier of Central Europe. To its credit, the Trump administration reversed its predecessor's approach and has re-engaged with this region, emphasizing common values and interests.The challenge is that U.S. foreign policy will need to blunt European Union (EU) policy in order to compete for the loyalties of our erstwhile allies in Central Europe.The problem is four-fold. First, different histories have bequeathed different cultures and perspectives to Central and Western Europe, which will converge only slowly. Second, Brussels requires that EU members adopt the same general domestic policies, which are usually informed by culturally progressive values that are at odds with Central European cultures—what works in Paris may not be suited for Bratislava. Third, clear policy failures by Berlin and Paris, along with the negative electoral reactions these have engendered in both East and West, have undermined confidence in the West and emboldened Central Europe. And fourth, the political elites in Brussels, Berlin and Paris seem oblivious—they do not seem to recognize that Central European nations hold different perspectives, nor do they see any need to change course.To its credit, the EU has been enormously successful in moving the impoverished, formerly captive wards of the Soviet empire—namely, the four members of the Visegrád Group (V4): Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia—from failed command-economies to vibrant free-market economies, resulting in strong economic growth and low unemployment. The V4 countries certainly appreciate this, which explains some positive polling on attitudes towards the EU. Yet, on the other hand, a recent Eurobarometer poll found that only 33 percent of Czechs and 51 percent of Slovaks saw EU membership as "a good thing." Why is this? Perhaps it is because while economic advancement is easy to embrace, EU policies have moved into the social and cultural realms—aspects of daily life in which Central Europeans are more conservative.WHAT SEPARATES Europe's East and West—the opening that China and Russia see as an opportunity—are the different cultural attitudes that lie beneath the surface, perhaps reflecting different stages of development, but resulting from contrasting historical experiences.Absorbed for centuries into a succession of foreign empires—Ottoman, Russian, German or Austro-Hungarian—the V4 countries emerged from those ruins only in 1918. By the late 1930s, more decades of isolation and repression began under Nazi and Soviet regimes, with uprisings crushed in 1956 (Budapest) and 1968 (Prague) and martial law imposed in Poland. Emerging from this fresh hell as late as 1991, and finally joining the eu as recently as 2004, it should not be surprising that Central Europeans have different values. Last exposed to the fullness of European civilization in the 1930s, they are still learning just how much that civilization has changed.Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, for instance, is condemned for blatantly favoring "Christian culture" over multiculturalism, limiting immigration in a rejection of open borders, and supporting what used to be called "traditional family values." Political and cultural progressives in the West may find such views repulsive, but they seem to forget that these views were widespread until only relatively recently. The United States, for example, severely limited immigration from about 1924 to 1965. Likewise, until recently, it was characterized as a Christian, or Judeo-Christian, country, and the traditional "nuclear family" was valued with little criticism or controversy.Orbán's views may seem dated here in the West, but he does not hold office here—and vilifying him will only drive him and his supporters into the arms of our adversaries. Of course, Orbán should be held to account for his embrace of Vladimir Putin and increased friendliness with China, to say nothing of his authoritarian ruling style. But to say that all of his views are an aberration of the contemporary norm is to impose a foreign standard on culturally distinct people.As with Trump, the Orbán challenge is larger than one leader's opinions. Polling confirms that large numbers of Central Europeans perceive an East-West divide in values; 52 percent of Poles and 51 percent of Czechs agree that "[t]here is a conflict between our county's traditional values and those of the West," according to a Pew Research Center poll. Even American democracy scholar Marc F. Plattner, a noted critic of Orbán, concedes that one of the reasons Orbán is successful in convincing his supporters that EU leaders are trying to enforce distinct, progressive views on them is "the fact that the 'Brussels elites' he is so fond of attacking tend to hold views close to those of U.S. liberals on social and cultural issues."Much of this would not matter if the EU focused on its original mission of creating and maintaining a free-trade, travel and currency zone for the aim of economic growth through greater efficiencies and economies of scale. The problem is that the EU has taken on a much more ambitious mission. THIS IS the second issue: an EU doing things it was originally not intended to do. The progressive values embraced in Brussels, combined with ad-hoc and/or unilateral decisionmaking in Berlin and Paris, has shifted the EU agenda away from trade, travel and a common currency and into influencing Europe's social and cultural life—a more personal and intrusive form of politics. Then came the sudden, unprecedented demands in 2015 that a million-plus unvetted migrants be distributed around EU states, seemingly dropped into every town and village. This was never an EU priority, and it certainly was not something that EU members had previously consented to. The Dublin Regulation, which EU members had agreed to, stipulated that asylum seekers must apply for asylum in the first EU country that is entered. Why, asked the V4 countries, should they be obligated to host migrants who didn't enter through their borders, particularly since most of these individuals intended to apply for asylum in Germany or Sweden instead?These sorts of progressive EU initiatives are advocated by people who had the luxury of growing up on the right side of the Iron Curtain. They have known only relative freedom and prosperity, and are so self-assured of their own good intentions that they feel confident they can build a transnational order based on abstract principles—assumed to be universal—that are derived from the application of human reason and the assumption of human goodness. Because these principles are thought to be universal, the resulting EU policies are uniform, taking no account of the harsh and uncertain histories of its eastern members, who rely on skeptical realism—and not utopianism—as their ethos. The West prizes self-expression; the East, self-discipline. Brussels-led EU efforts to unify domestic policies across Europe thus resemble, to those in the East, the foreign policies of an alien power. In fact, it feels eerily familiar; comparisons have been made to the mandates from Moscow during the Soviet Union. This is why the eu's eastern critics invoke domestic sovereignty; indeed, the V4 countries may feel they finally acquired domestic sovereignty—just in time to lose it.Mountains of online reports make clear that Brussels is busily at work on issues, objects or ambitions such as—to quote its documents—social justice, gender-impact, income redistribution, solidarity, social exclusion, prison conditions, anti-Gypsyism, climate change, exploitation, discrimination, a living wage, anti-poverty programs and a participatory economy. There is much more of this, of course, the breadth of which leaves little room for EU members to govern themselves. In resisting a handful of these policies, Central Europe's members are lectured to, threatened with sanctions and hauled into court. Until recently, Washington joined in these sorts of thumpings.There are some examples of note. Until 2008, for instance, EU rules insisted that bananas "must be free from malformation or abnormal curvature" and that cucumbers must be "practically straight." Today, merchants are forbidden to claim that water can prevent dehydration or that prunes can have a laxative effect. In 2019, the EU forced Slovakia to withdraw a 2.5 percent tax on a select category of retailers, and it dragged Czechia into court for failing to post energy-performance certificates in certain buildings. Meanwhile, Russia and China offer Central Europe economic investments and benefits without making anyone submit to such extensive legal and regulatory regimes.More vexing are situations of the kind Latvia has found itself in. Eastern EU members are often accused of tolerating higher levels of corruption but, oddly, Latvia was ordered by the European Court of Justice this year to reinstate a central bank governor—whom Latvian authorities had detained on suspicion of corruption. The EU court ruled Latvia didn't have "sufficient" evidence, though "sufficiency" could have perhaps been weighted in Latvia's favor, since the institution at risk is Latvia's own national bank. Since previous probes of Latvian banks revealed Russian money laundering and illegal dealings with North Korea, it seems the investigators might be trusted with this latest case. Instead, the EU Court of Justice ruling said it cannot "take the place of the national courts having jurisdiction ... nor even ... interfere with the preliminary criminal investigation being conducted ..." and then did just that. Most challenging are demands that reflect values that have yet to gain widespread support in the East. When the EU proposed a treaty on women's rights in 2011, Slovakia signed it, thinking its purpose was to combat violence against women. A closer reading revealed that it redefined "gender" as the "social roles, behaviors, activities and characteristics that a particular society considers appropriate for women and men." Majority-Catholic Slovakia defines marriage in more biological terms as a union of a man and woman. Bratislava amended its constitution in 2014 to reflect this choice, and in March 2019, the Slovak parliament voted 101-28 against ratification of the treaty. Of the seven EU member countries that have not yet ratified the treaty, six are in Central Europe; the seventh is the United Kingdom.Not surprisingly, gun control has become an East-West issue. Firearms manufacturing has long been a staple industry in Czechia, where hunting is popular. The Czechs have a very low murder rate and see little gun violence, which explains why Prague filed a lawsuit in 2017 against an EU directive tightening gun ownership. Still being litigated, the case is pregnant with irony. The Brussels directive, it turns out, was a response to the sharp rise in terrorist attacks in 2015—the year German chancellor Angela Merkel took the unilateral decision to welcome a million-plus migrants into a Europe whose internal borders were unpoliced.In reaction, more Czechs sought guns; 11,000 new firearms permits were issued between 2015 and 2017. Radio Prague reported that "Police say the rising trend of gun ownership has been caused by fears over migration, terrorist attacks, and fear of personal assault." In Germany, firearms offenses were dropping until 2015—then rose more than 25 percent in the following two years, according to The Wall Street Journal, which said, "Gun ownership is rising across Europe . . . spurred in part by insecurity arising from terrorist attacks."In an admission of defeat for Brussels, this EU directive was heavily amended in 2017 after taking Czech criticism, among others, into consideration. The European Commission noted that the newly amended directive has "more flexible rules for hunting and target shooting in order to avoid unnecessary impediments." These changes though were introduced well after the 2015 migrant crisis had abated, and the EU leader primarily responsible for said crisis is only recently being held to account.MERKEL'S OUT-of-control migration crisis erupted just in time to cripple plans by a new French president, Emmanuel Macron, to deepen and strengthen the EU. The worst effects of the migrant crisis were blunted by the leaders of the V4 countries, but the future of the EU is now on hold indefinitely. Such failures undermined the EU and tarnished the reputations of its two most powerful countries, without whom nothing important happens in Europe.Brussels is prone to invoke the "rule of law" and "democracy" whenever it points an accusatory finger eastward, but there was nothing democratic, or lawful, about Merkel's unilateral decision to allow one million-plus migrants into Europe in 2015.Even two years later, a report from the German Bundestag concluded that Merkel's government had offered no legal justification for its decision. Not only did the chancellor not put the issue to an EU vote, but neither did she seek a Bundestag vote; she merely discussed it with a few ministers and aides. According to a detailed report by Der Spiegel in 2016, Merkel also ignored pleas by then-Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Dieter Romann, head of the German Federal Police, that she impose border controls. Merkel also failed to seek permission to suspend Germany's asylum laws, which were aligned with the EU Dublin Regulation that all migrants must be returned to the EU country from which they entered. More to the relevant point, EU treaties do not call for open borders on the frontier.While disregarding the democratic process, Merkel can also be held responsible for further rule-of-law crises—surges in both street crime and terrorism-related arrests, which the V4 countries avoided.After burying the issue for six months, for instance, a leaked police report forced German authorities to concede that about 1,200 women were assaulted by as many as 2,000 men on New Year's Eve 2015 in Cologne, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Stuttgart and other cities. What's more, "There is a connection between the emergence of this phenomenon and the rapid migration of 2015," said Holger Münch, president of the German Federal Crime Police Office. Most of the suspects were said to come from North Africa, and half of them had been in Germany for less than a year.This set the table for anti-immigrant demonstrations that erupted in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in August 2018 after two Middle Eastern men were questioned in the fatal stabbing of a local man. Indeed, according to a government-sponsored study, violent crime rose by 10 percent in the two years following the migrant crisis. More than 90 percent of that has been attributed to young male refugees between the ages of fourteen and thirty. Given that the Merkel government has been accused of covering up the full scale of migrant criminality, these numbers could very well be higher. The Wall Street Journal revealed that in Berlin, organized crime is already dominated by a dozen Arab, Chechen, Lebanese and Kurdish families, who are now recruiting among the refugees who arrived in 2015. While the population of foreign nationals in Germany is 12.8 percent, they account for 28.7 percent of murders and manslaughters and 34.7 percent of all crime.In Central Europe, people are safer. Rates of crime, violence, and vandalism are reaching historic lows in all V4 countries, trending downward for ten years in three of the countries, according to statistics from Eurostat. The ratio of people reporting such incidents in 2017 ranged from 5.4 percent in Poland to 9.3 percent in Czechia. In France and Germany, crime rates are much higher—14.2 percent in Germany and 13.9 in France—which is double the V4 average of 7 percent—and trending higher in Germany.More serious is the spike in terrorism in Western Europe. While worldwide terrorism-related deaths decreased in 2016, that same year terrorist deaths in Europe rose to a historic high. The Institute for Economics & Peace's 2017 Global Terrorism Index ranked France as the number-one country amongst Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for terrorist incidents. Outside of that group, it out-ranked highly unstable countries, such as Ethiopia, Lebanon, Mali and Palestine for terrorism. France was also the only European country to make the list of "50 Worst Terrorist Attacks in 2016," at number seventeen, with the other forty-nine attacks taking place in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The following year, the number of terrorist-related deaths in Western Europe dropped by more than half, but the number of incidents increased by 11.4 percent, while global terrorism was still declining.An EU report illuminates this with data on the arrest of terror suspects. In all four V4 countries, five such suspects were arrested in 2017, or one suspect for every 12.7 million people. German authorities arrested fifty-eight terrorist suspects, on the other hand, a potential terrorist for every 1.4 million citizens, while France detained 411 suspects, or one for every 162,540 people, according to Europol, the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation. The vast majority of those detained were jihadist terror suspects.THE V4 countries arguably saved Europe from worse consequences by resisting the migrant wave. "At the beginning of the 2015–16 crisis," a Carnegie Europe report said, "eu member states divided into sharply opposed camps." While most northern and western European countries—at first—welcomed the migrants, the report said, "The Central European states immediately opted for restrictive policies." The EUobserver reported that "The fiercest opposition has come from eastern European members, notably the Visegrád Four." The V4 group urged strengthened external borders—and initially, they were ignored.An EU Council majority voted September 22, 2015, for a legally binding plan—one its supporters also labeled "voluntary"—to redistribute migrants to member countries via quotas, breaking from the normative rule that "sensitive" decisions be unanimous. Joined by Romania, V4 members Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia voted "no," and even the pro-eu EUobserver said, "The vote marks an unusual EU step, in terms of forcing a minority of EU states to take action on issues of national sovereignty." Poland initially voted for the plan, but Polish parliamentary elections on October 25 unseated the Warsaw government—in part over this EU vote. The election was won by the opposition Law and Justice party, which then joined its V4 colleagues in opposition, just the first of many elections—East and West—that revealed popular opposition to migrant relocation and unguarded internal EU borders.At first critical of the V4 countries, western EU states quickly emulated them. Budapest was widely condemned in 2015 for building a fence along its 110-mile border with Serbia to stop migrants, while Germany still welcomed them. Often unmentioned, however, is that Hungary had more asylum requests than any other EU country in 2015 on a per-capita basis—three times more than Germany and sixteen times more than France. Condemnations aside, within weeks many other EU members followed Hungary's lead.Public opinion began to harden against Merkel's open-door policy that fall—a trend no doubt accelerated on November 13 by the terrorist attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis. With multiple suicide bombings and mass shootings that killed 130 people and wounded 413, it was the deadliest outbreak of violence in France since World War II. By Christmas 2015, EU leaders were discussing how to strengthen external borders—as the V4 countries had originally urged. By March 2016, despite earlier proclamations to the contrary, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and Germany restored internal EU border passport checks and patrols. The EU and Turkey also agreed that month that Ankara would keep migrants that attempted to pass through, or take them back, slowing the flow to Greece, in exchange for about $3.4 billion in aid.Hungary and Slovakia sued the EU over its compulsory relocation quotas, but their arguments were rejected in September 2017 by the European Court of Justice. The EU followed up with legal proceedings against Czechia, Hungary and Poland for refusing to accept migrants according to the quota system. While Slovakia was spared this fate because it agreed to take in a small number of migrants, it made clear its opposition to Brussel's policy.Still, the V4 flipped the focus from unquestioningly welcoming migrants to stemming the tide. Under a 2018 compromise agreement—reached at a European Council summit that some insiders dubbed "Saving Private Merkel"—migrants are to be sent to United Nations centers in North Africa or an EU country-of-entry, as per the Dublin Regulation. Detainees can make asylum claims, but member countries are not required to accept migrants with approved claims, nor to host detention centers. About $570 million was pledged for African countries to manage migration, and to bolster security at the eu's external borders. "These days," The Economist wrote, "Mrs. Merkel talks more about controlling Europe's outer borders than about managing the burden of refugees who cross them—the V4's order of priorities."Despite this, the EU sued Hungary in the European Court of Justice for violating rules on the treatment of asylum-seekers, and the EU Parliament in September 2018 opened disciplinary proceedings against Budapest, exacerbating the East-West divide.Like Merkel, French president Macron wagered Europe's future on grandiose plans. Macron created a new political party, En Marche!, in 2016, ran for president in 2017 and won a triple-digit majority in parliament that May, becoming France's youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte. He immediately became the only EU national leader to dare advocate for greater EU integration and a stronger euro.To launch this effort, Macron scheduled a much-touted speech 120 days into his presidency. Unveiling a sweeping agenda for the EU at the Sorbonne on September 26, 2017, Macron conceded the "ambition" of his plans—a word he used thirty-six times. He was careful to say he would need to partner with Merkel's Germany to enact his plans.Macron was less careful in his choice of a date for this speech. German elections were already scheduled for September 24. That day, Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and allied Christian Social Union lost sixty-five seats in the Bundestag, while her coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, lost another forty seats. In their place, Alternative fur Deutschland, a party opposed to mass migration and founded less than five years earlier, picked up its first ninety-four seats. Deprived of a parliamentary majority, Merkel clung to power, ending talks about a stronger EU. Given that similar electoral eruptions were already sweeping the continent, might Macron have held off on such grand announcements?Local elections on October 29, 2018, saw Merkel's coalition suffer a third defeat. The next day, Merkel announced she would surrender leadership of her party in December 2018 and step down as chancellor in 2021. These rebukes were reinforced in the May 2019 elections to the European Parliament, which saw a significant increase in the size of the "Euro-skeptic" bloc.NOTHING BETTER illustrates the eu's East-West divide than the May 5, 2018, celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx in Trier, his western German birthplace.Had Marx been born in eastern Germany, it is unlikely his birthplace would throw him a party. Yet Trier celebrated with three exhibits at four museums, the unveiling of a huge statue of Marx (18 feet tall and weighing 2.3 tons), conferences, workshops and musical performances—three hundred separate events in all. Why? The statue was a gift from China, which is waging a campaign to breathe life back into the corpse of Marxist ideology.In the East, such behavior is shocking and offensive. "To come from a country that experienced Marxism in practice—as I do, being from Slovakia—is to shudder over such fawning," said Miriam Lexmann, a former Slovak parliamentary representative to the EU. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who hails from Luxembourg in the West, sees it very differently. He not only joined the celebrations in Trier but strongly defended Marx—in remarks delivered in a church—absolving him of any responsibility for the actions of his adherents. "Marx isn't responsible for all the atrocity his alleged heirs have to answer for," he said. Maybe so, but Marx-inspired communism has an ongoing global homicidal record of about 100 million and counting, including the family members and loved ones of eastern Europeans who are EU citizens.In such ways are doubts cast on EU sermons about the sanctity of shared EU values. "What does it mean, or portend," asked Lexmann, "when Juncker honors an architect of collectivist tyranny and oppression at a time when many democracies are struggling?"HOPE FOR change will have to rest with Washington.This is why the Trump administration pivoted to Central Europe. A. Wess Mitchell, former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs; Jakub Grygiel, former senior advisor to the secretary of state; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all focused on building better relations with the V4 countries, in part to wean them away from Russia and China, particularly Hungary, which does business with both.But countering the influence of Russia and China will take time and effort, as well as a carrot-and-stick approach that will of necessity have its ups and downs.The V4's most anti-Russian country received the first carrots. In only his second overseas trip, Trump visited Poland in July 2017, and met with President Andrzej Duda, who was hosted at the White House in September 2018 and June 2019. Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó met Pompeo in Washington in May 2018, then Pompeo visited Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in February 2019—the first time a secretary of state has visited Slovakia alone in twenty years. Pompeo said, "It has been too long since America has been deeply engaged here." The White House then hosted Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, Slovak prime minister Peter Pellegrini, and Hungary's Orbán this past spring.Then Orbán was hit with a very public stick. The day after he visited the White House on May 13, where Trump flattered him repeatedly in a joint news conference, an official leak indicated the United States had prepared anti-corruption sanctions to be directed at Orbán's closest associates—unless Orbán adopts friendlier policies already urged upon him.More could be done: recruit the infrastructure sector to bid against Chinese and Russian firms on Central Europe's projects, perhaps with government support; require U.S. officials to have standing meetings with their counterparts in Central Europe; launch public diplomacy initiatives that drive home messages about our common values and interests. It also would not hurt to speak up—as Trump did in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2017—for the rights of all peoples to live their domestic lives as they wish, as long as minority rights, just laws and democratic values are protected.Kevin J. McNamara is an Associate Scholar of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), a history of the dramatic role of the Czecho-Slovak Legion in World War I, the Russian Revolution and the founding of Czecho-Slovakia in 1918.Image: Reuters
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| Iran Staged a Savage Mock Attack on a U.S. Aircraft Carrier Back in 2015 Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:26 AM PDT  The third phase included a barrage of heavy, shore-launched anti-ship missiles. Iran launched two cruise missiles and two ballistic missiles toward the barge in a coordinated attack.Iran has carried out a massive attack on a mock version of an American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Tehran wanted everyone to know about it—state TV broadcasted the military exercise live.(This first appeared back in 2015.)It's a revealing look at Iranian naval assault tactics, involving several waves of ships backed by helicopters and shore-launched missiles. The timing isn't a coincidence. The United States and Iran are deadlocked over a deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program.The Iranians built the giant, 1:1-scale mock-up of the carrier on top of a barge almost one year ago. Photos released from Iranian news agencies on Feb. 25 now show it as a smoldering wreck. The missiles Iran fired at it are very real.But don't panic. The exercise—known as Great Prophet 9—didn't factor in American escort warships and warplanes responsible for defending real carriers. It was mostly just for show.The exercise occurred near Larak Island near the Strait of Hormuz. On the island, Mohammad Ali Jafari—the chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps—and the head of the conservative parliament watched from stands.First, IRGC navy speedboats performed a mining operation to isolate the "carrier" and limit its maneuverability. Dozens of small speedboats—each armed with an M-08 contact mine—swarmed around the mock up. Iranian state television claimed "a vast area was mined in under 10 minutes."During the second phase, the speedboats attacked the giant ship with 107-millimeter rockets. These are small rockets, and likely couldn't sink a warship the size of an aircraft carrier.But Iran could intend this tactic as a means to disable critical self-defense systems, such as radars, Phalanx CIWS self-defense cannons and missile launchers.Next, speedboats armed with small cruise missiles—likely Chinese-made C-704 anti-ship cruise missiles—attacked the ship. These fast speedboats fired a barrage of 12 cruise missiles toward the mock Nimitz.The third phase included a barrage of heavy, shore-launched anti-ship missiles. Iran launched two cruise missiles and two ballistic missiles toward the barge in a coordinated attack.The shore-launched cruise missiles were Iranian-made Noor missiles, copies of Chinese C-802 missiles produced under license. The ballistic missiles were Fateh-100 variants fitted with target-seeking infrared nose cameras. At least one of those missed its target.The fourth phase was an unconventional attack … even by IRGC standards. A commercial Bell 206 helicopter fired a C-704K anti-ship cruise missile from between its skids.The last phase involved ramming a remotely-controlled suicide boat packed with more than 1,000 kilograms of high explosives into the mock up.Jafari directly threatened the U.S. Navy in an interview after the attack. He said that it only takes five minutes for IRGC missiles to sink American aircraft carriers. Five hundred speed boats made a parade in the Strait of Hormuz following the exercise.But in a real encounter, it's unlikely that such a scenario would succeed. To reach and flank a U.S. aircraft carrier—and mine the surrounding area—Iran's speed boats would also have to fight past the flattop's advanced escort warships.Carriers don't go anywhere without escorts. And that wasn't part of the exercise.Iran also didn't provide any substantial air defenses for its own ships. A defending carrier is unlikely to sit idle when under attack. In a real battle, U.S. Marines with Mark V speedboats armed with Javelin anti-tank missiles could also provide a defense shield for the American fleet.But the use of commercial helicopters is concerning. Iran's military has worked on flying swarms of small aircraft for some time.Another possibility is that Iran doesn't intend to use helicopters in an actual attack on a carrier, but is broadcasting its ability to use helicopters against other targets—such as unprepared U.S. ships abroad, akin to the suicide-boat attack on the destroyer USS Cole more than 14 years ago.The question is—why practice attacking an American carrier right now? Simple. It was an impressive show of force aimed to affect ongoing nuclear talks with Washington.From the negotiations in Geneva to a disastrous war in Syria, the Iranian regime's plans to save its sinking economy and preserve its strategic ally in the Middle East are going down in flames.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently said the U.S. is ready to abandon negotiations aimed at limiting Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. Syrian troops are carrying out a desperate offensive to encircle Aleppo. At least 150 Syrian troops and an IRGC general have died in the offensive.To have any hope of holding the U.S. to the negotiations, Tehran has to remind the world what could happen if talks break down.
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| Rights group demands safe return of abducted Libyan lawmaker Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:25 AM PDT ![Rights group demands safe return of abducted Libyan lawmaker]( "Rights group demands safe return of abducted Libyan lawmaker") Human Rights Watch is urging authorities in eastern Libya to exert "all possible efforts" to ensure the safe return of a female lawmaker abducted from her home last month by armed men. The lawmaker, Seham Sergewa, is a prominent critic of Khalifa Hifter, whose forces are now fighting to take the capital from the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. The New York-based watchdog said Friday that Sergewa's abduction "follows a well-documented pattern of violence, reprisal, and intimidation" by Hifter's self-styled Libyan National Army.
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| Iran must free women held over veil protests: UN experts Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:23 AM PDT  A group of UN human rights experts on Friday called for the immediate release of three Iranian women given long jail terms for protesting laws compelling women to wear veils. The trio were charged after a video posted online showed them handing out flowers on Tehran's metro on March 8, International Women's Day, according to a statement co-signed by five United Nations special rapporteurs and another expert. The women -- named in the statement as Mojgan Keshavarz, Yasaman Aryani and Monireh Arabshahi -- were not wearing veils.
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| Germany expects No Deal and will not renegotiate, says leaked briefing Posted: 16 Aug 2019 04:17 AM PDT  Germany expects a No Deal Brexit and is not prepared to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, according to leaked details of an internal briefing paper for Angela Merkel's government. The leaked paper is the first evidence that Germany may be preparing to let Britain walk away with No Deal rather than back down to Boris Johnson's demand to drop the Irish backstop. The paper was prepared by civil servants for the German finance minister, Olaf Scholz, ahead of face-to-face talks with the chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, in Berlin on Friday. In public, Mr Scholz has said Germany will do everything it can to secure a deal with the UK. But according to details leaked to the usually reliable Handelsblatt newspaper, the briefing paper calls for the European Union to stick to its previous line of refusing to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. It warns that there is now a "high probability" of a No Deal Brexit on October 31, but says the EU must not "lose its nerve". Preparations by Germany and the rest of the EU-27 to manage the impact of No Deal are "largely complete", and the European Commission is not planning any further emergency measures, it says. Mr Javid is the first senior minister from the Johnson government to hold face-to-face talks with his German counterpart Credit: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP The paper says it is "currently unforeseeable that Prime Minister Johnson will change his tough negotiating position" and predicts that he may use next weekend's G7 summit in Biarritz for a "big moment" to announce success or failure in negotiations. "Against this background, it is important from the EU perspective to stick to the previous line" of refusing to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, it says, adding that even if the EU were to agree to drop the Irish backstop, it is not clear that Mr Johnson would be able to win approval for a revised withdrawal agreement in parliament. The UK has made repeated attempts to split the EU side, and "the EU-27's unity in adhering to the negotiated exit agreement" has been "decisive", the paper says. Germany has already passed more than 50 laws and measures to deal with the impact of a No Deal Brexit, and the paper provides details of arrangements in the finance ministry's area of tax and banking. It cites a transitional agreement between the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and BaFin, the German financial regulator on cross-border financial services, and says German customes authorities are prepared for the increased workload expected under No Deal.
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| UN: Migrant deaths in Americas top 500 so far this year Posted: 16 Aug 2019 03:51 AM PDT ![UN: Migrant deaths in Americas top 500 so far this year]( "UN: Migrant deaths in Americas top 500 so far this year") More than 500 migrants have lost their lives in the Americas so far this year, about a 33% increase from a year ago, the U.N. migration agency said Friday. International Organization for Migration spokesman Joel Millman said that "turmoil" in Venezuela may account for "much of 2019's fatality surge." More than 4 million people have left Venezuela since 2015. IOM has confirmed 89 deaths of Venezuelans this year, second only to more than 100 who were of unknown nationalities.
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| Modi’s Kashmir Move Faces UN Test After Top Court Skips Pleas Posted: 16 Aug 2019 03:20 AM PDT ![Modi's Kashmir Move Faces UN Test After Top Court Skips Pleas]( "Modi's Kashmir Move Faces UN Test After Top Court Skips Pleas") (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to scrap autonomy for Kashmir after imposing an unprecedented lockdown across the region will be tested Friday at the United Nations Security Council after India's top court deferred a case calling on the government to lift restrictions that have been in place for the past 12 days.A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi adjourned a petition challenging the information blackout. Another plea questioning the government's move to scrap the constitutional provision, as it was taken without the consent of the state's legislature, was also postponed on grounds of being badly drafted. Both will be taken up at a later date, the court said without giving any details.The United Nations Security Council is expected to hold a closed-door meeting after China backed Pakistan's call to for the international body to discuss India's decision on the disputed Muslim-majority state. The last time the full Security Council met to discuss the Himalayan region was in 1965.The developments are the first concrete steps questioning Modi's decision to convert Jammu and Kashmir into two federally administered regions, separating Buddhist-majority Ladakh along its China border. The surprise move gives Modi's administration control of the local police and allows Indians outside Kashmir to buy land. On its part, New Delhi said it would usher in prosperity for the region where as many as 42,000 people including civilians, army, police and militants have died in violence in the last three decades.Restrictions on movement of people and communications will be gradually eased in the next few days, B. V. R. Subrahmanyam, the chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir, said at a press conference Friday in Srinigar. Telephone lines will start functioning in phases starting Friday night, Subrahmanyam said.Ceasefire ViolationModi's Kashmir decision may have fulfilled a campaign promise made to his Hindu support base, which opposed special treatment for the region but has led to an escalation of tensions with rival and neighbor Pakistan. The state has been the main flashpoint between nuclear armed neighbors, who have fought three wars since the British left the subcontinent in 1947.Pakistan on Aug. 15 accused India of killing its soldiers in what it called "unprovoked ceasefire violations." India denied Pakistan's claim of killing of three soldiers. A spokesman of Indian Army said it's "fictitious."India has called the Kashmir decision an internal matter with no bearings on its international borders with Pakistan and China, however Beijing was quick to criticize the move. It issued a strongly-worded statement last week questioning the impact on the mainly Buddhist region of Ladakh -- an area of strategic importance nestled between Tibet and Pakistan.Still, with Beijing's main focus on its relationship with the U.S. and the trade war, it's not clear how much effort it will devote to pushing the Kashmir issue at the United Nations Security Council, said C. Uday Bhaskar, director at the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi."There is a low probability that China is going invest all its diplomatic energy to support Pakistan to India's discomfiture," Bhaskar said on Friday.The Indian government will reopen Jammu and Kashmir secretariat and other government offices from Friday while easing other restrictions would depend on developments after the Friday prayers, the Press Trust of India reported.(Updates with comment from chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir in fifth paragraph)\--With assistance from N. C. Bipindra and Khalid Qayum.To contact the reporters on this story: Archana Chaudhary in New Delhi at achaudhary2@bloomberg.net;Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi at bpradhan@bloomberg.net;Upmanyu Trivedi in New Delhi at utrivedi2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Unni KrishnanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UPDATE 2-German finance minister Scholz to run for SPD leadership Posted: 16 Aug 2019 03:16 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-German finance minister Scholz to run for SPD leadership]( "UPDATE 2-German finance minister Scholz to run for SPD leadership") German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz will run for the leadership of the Social Democrats, a spokeswoman said on Friday, joining a race to revive the party's popularity sinking since it entered a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives. A successful bid by Scholz to lead the Social Democrats (SPD) would bring more stability to Merkel's shaky right-left coalition, which the SPD entered reluctantly last year after a 2017 election.
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| U.S. Allies Feel Strain of Trump's Friendship Posted: 16 Aug 2019 03:13 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Balance of Power newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's new government is finding that President Donald Trump's friendship tends to come at a price, even for the strongest of U.S. allies.Two U.S. officials told Bloomberg yesterday that Washington was gravely disappointed by a court decision in the autonomous U.K. territory Gibraltar ordering the release of the Iranian oil tanker Grace 1.The U.S. is trying to get the decision reversed and has threatened penalties against any entity that does business with the tanker, which was seized by British commandos on July 4. Gibraltar officials say it was en route with oil to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions. The court ruled that it wasn't.The stakes for Britain are high. Iran still holds a British-flagged tanker and has hinted it may release it if the Grace 1 goes free.And Johnson, who has pledged to take the U.K. out of the EU on Oct. 31, badly needs U.S. support for a post-Brexit trade deal.Trump is increasingly putting pressure on allies on issues ranging from Iran to rejecting cooperation with Chinese technology companies such as Huawei to urging Israel to ban the visit of U.S. lawmakers.That risks creating a tangle of smaller disputes and undermining broader global interests such as security and trade.Global HeadlinesReversing course | Israel announced it will allow Rashida Tlaib to visit her family on a humanitarian trip, a day after it said Tlaib and fellow Muslim U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar would be barred from an official visit this weekend because of their support for a boycott of the country. The travel ban was announced shortly after Trump tweeted that the two Democrats — whom he has targeted in recent weeks — "hate Israel & all Jewish people."Counterpoint | Omar and Dean Phillips are freshman U.S. House Democrats representing districts in Minnesota's Twin Cities region, but that's where the similarities end. Phillips is urging some party lawmakers — including Omar and other members of "the squad" of newly-elected progressive women — to slow down on calls to impeach Trump, stop sniping on Twitter and cut some deals with Republicans. He told Erik Wasson he didn't get to Congress by being a "rabble-rouser."In limbo | Voters in Argentina face at least 10 more weeks of uncertainty to see if the market meltdown in the wake of Sunday's primary had any basis in reality. Campaigning is under way for the first round of the presidential elections on Oct. 27, and few believe incumbent Mauricio Macri or Alberto Fernandez — who led strongly in the primary — will work together to allay the risk of more turmoil. The upshot is no immediate end in sight to Argentina's parlous economic and financial situation.Rescue plan | Facing crippling power cuts and severe food shortages, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has a plan to end Zimbabwe's two-decade stand-off with international creditors in a bid to halt economic collapse. The Cambridge-educated Ncube outlined in an interview ambitious proposals to sell bonds, privatize state companies, and settle its debt.Amazon dispute | Brazil's president rebuffed European criticism of his environmental policies after Norway and Germany froze millions of dollars in financial aid to an Amazon rainforest preservation fund. Jair Bolsonaro accused the global elite of indifference to deforestation, arguing that their interest is motivated by the natural riches of the region, and said Germany should understand that Brazil is under new management.What to WatchHong Kong's protesters will stage new demonstrations this weekend amid growing concern that China will send in troops after state media showed video footage of paramilitary police massing just across the mainland border. The head of Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., the most visible corporate victim of the protest, also resigned. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to scrap Kashmir's autonomy after imposing an unprecedented communications lockdown is set to be tested today at the United Nations Security Council after India's top court deferred a case calling on the government to lift restrictions in place for 12 days. Estonia's prime minister rebuked his nationalist coalition partner after its botched attempt to oust the head of police intensified a dispute that has pushed the squabbling government to the brink of collapse.And finally ... Ever the property developer, Trump may have his eye on his biggest possible acquisition yet: Greenland. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president wants to buy the ice-covered north Atlantic island. Denmark, which owns it, isn't sure whether the offer is a joke, and isn't selling in any case. But the idea is being taken seriously in some corners in the U.S., which has built several military bases on the world's largest island, and it will be in focus when Trump makes his first formal visit to Denmark next month. \--With assistance from Kathleen Hunter.To contact the author of this story: Marc Champion in London at mchampion7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Rosalind MathiesonMichael WinfreyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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