The ‘dossier’ and the uranium deal: A guide to the latest allegations

Fusion GPS is an opposition research firm run by ex-journalists, but how is it connected to the Trump dossier, Donald Trump Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting and the 2016 election? The Fact Checker's Glenn Kessler explains. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Glenn Kessler October 29 at 3:00 AM

As a service to readers bound to be confused by an increasingly complex story, here’s a brief guide to the latest developments in the tangled allegations involving Russia, President Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The Dossier

Background: The “dossier” is a collection of 17 memos concerning President Trump and Russia written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, between June 20 and Dec. 13, 2016. Steele produced his memos under a contract with Fusion GPS, a strategic intelligence firm run by former journalists.

The memos are written as raw intelligence, based on interviews Steele had with unidentified Russian sources (identified, for instance, as “Kremlin insider”), some of whom he paid for information. Raw intelligence is essentially high-grade gossip, without the expectation it would be made public unless it is further verified.

The memos, among other things, allege the Russian government had been seeking to split the Western alliance by cultivating and supporting Trump and also gathering compromising information — “kompromat” — on him in an effort to blackmail him. The memos, among other allegations, claim the Russian government fed the Trump campaign “valuable intelligence” on Clinton.

Why It’s Important: The dossier mirrors a separate conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election in an effort to bolster Trump and harm Clinton, such as through hacking the Democratic National Committee and distributing materials to WikiLeaks to publish at key moments. As the official declassified report stated:

“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin intensely disliked Clinton because he was convinced that when she was secretary of state she had promoted anti-Putin, pro-democracy efforts in his country. The FBI considered the information gathered by Steele to be of sufficient importance that it considered paying him for his research, although it later dropped the idea.

What’s New: The DNC and Clinton campaign were revealed as the “Democratic donors” who paid Fusion GPS for Steele’s research. (Technically, Perkins Coie, the law firm of Marc Elias, an attorney representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, funded the research.)

Separately, a “Republican donor” who had earlier hired Fusion GPS for information on Trump was revealed to be the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website. But that earlier effort is unrelated to the Democratic-funded research that yielded the dossier, as Steele was hired by Fusion GPS after work for the Free Beacon had ended.

We should note that, in another assignment, Fusion had been hired by a U.S. law firm in early 2014 to assist on the defense against a civil action filed by the U.S. government alleging fraud by Prevezon Holdings. Prevezon is owned by Denis Katsyv, the son of a senior Russian government official.

Why is that relevant? Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was also working for the law firm on the Prevezon case, met with Trump campaign officials at the Trump Tower in June 2016, including Donald Trump Jr., campaign manager Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump Jr. agreed to meet with Veselnitskaya after an intermediary promised dirt on Clinton. She arrived with a memo containing talking points that had been previously shared by Yuri Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general who is known as a master of kompromat.

What’s controversial: The Trump White House has tried to use the connection between the dossier and Clinton to claim that this shows that rather than Trump colluding with Russia, Clinton colluded with Russia. (The theory appears to be that because Steele was getting information from Russian officials in part with funds provided by the Clinton campaign, the Russians were helping Clinton.)
But that ignores the fact that DNC emails — as well as the email account of the Clinton campaign chairman — were hacked and then published by WikiLeaks as part of the pro-Trump Russian operation identified by U.S. intelligence agencies. (Wikileaks denies it received the material from Russia.) Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that a prominent Trump donor and the chief executive of a data-analytics firm working for Trump’s presidential campaign in August 2016 discussed how to better organize the Clinton-related emails being released by Wikileaks in order to leverage their impact.

Steele started producing his memos in June 2016, about the same time that intelligence agencies began investigating possible ties between Russia and people close to Trump. The connection between Steele’s research and official government investigations is murky, but for some Republicans it raises questions about whether the official probe begun in the Obama administration was influenced by information gathered by someone being paid by Democrats.

CNN, for instance, reported that the FBI used information in the Steele memos to obtain approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, who Trump had said was a key adviser on national security issues. Presumably, the FBI had verified the information before it could cite it in court. Steele had quoted an “ethnic Russian close associate” of Trump as saying Page was an intermediary in “a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership. Page has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.

Steele, during the campaign, at Fusion’s direction also briefed reporters from some U.S. news organizations, including The Washington Post, on his findings, according to court filings. Only one publication, Mother Jones, published information based on the briefing before the election.

The Uranium deal

Background: In 2010, Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, acquired a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company that had mining licenses for about 20 percent of U.S. uranium extraction capacity. The agreement was approved by the Obama administration when Clinton was secretary of state.

Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier and a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation, had sold a company, UrAsia, to Uranium One in 2007. Individuals related to Uranium One and UrAsia, including Giustra, donated to the Clinton Foundation, totaling about $145 million. Meanwhile, in 2010, Bill Clinton received $500,000 from a Russian bank to give a speech at a conference in Moscow.

Trump, during the campaign, tossed all of these separate facts together to falsely claim that Clinton “gave 20 percent of our uranium — gave Russia for a big payment.” But numerous fact checks have found no evidence for this claim. The original suggestion of wrongdoing was first raised in a book underwritten by an organization headed by Stephen K. Bannon, a key adviser to Trump.

Why It’s Important: Whenever news about the Russia investigation heats up, the Trump White House cites the uranium deal in an effort to muddy the waters and suggest that Russia had gained something from Clinton in exchange for money. Trump himself has claimed the case is “Watergate, modern age.”

But there is no evidence Clinton even was informed about this deal. The Treasury Department was the key agency that headed the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States which approved the investment; Clinton did not participate in the CFIUS decision. The deal was also approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ultimately, only the president could have blocked or suspended the arrangement.

Moreover, no uranium produced at U.S. mines may be exported, except for some uranium yellowcake which is extracted and processed in Canada before being returned to the United States for use in nuclear power plants.

What’s New: The Hill newspaper on Oct. 22 reported the FBI had gathered evidence at the time of the sale that a Russian Rosatom official had conducted a massive bribery scheme, compromising an American trucking company that shipped uranium for Russia. The official eventually was convicted in 2015, but Republicans have said the case should have raised alarms about the Rosatom investment in Uranium One and possibly blocked the deal. But there is no evidence that U.S. officials weighing the transaction knew about the FBI investigation.

The reporting prompted House Republicans to announce they would launch an investigation. With the apparent urging of President Trump, the Justice Department gave a former FBI informant in the case approval to testify before Congress. The informant’s lawyer claimed he would discuss his work “uncovering the Russian nuclear bribery case and the efforts he witnessed by Moscow to gain influence with [former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] in hopes of winning favorable uranium decisions from the Obama administration.”

What’s controversial: Any suggestion that Russian money was directed to influence Clinton’s decisions would be explosive. But the fatal flaw in this allegation is Hillary Clinton, by all accounts, did not participate in any discussions regarding the Uranium One sale which — as we noted — does not actually result in the removal of uranium from the United States.

Why Is the United States in Niger, Anyway?

National security isn’t just about fighting the Islamic State — it’s about building strong partners in Africa.

American soldiers conduct a training exercise with the Senegalese military in 2016. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY DAVID LITT-OCTOBER 25, 2017, 7:00 PM

Many Americans had no idea that the United States had soldiers in Niger, let alone why, until four were killed in an ambush earlier this month. Part of the answer is that U.S. special operations forces have typically been operating in 70 to 80 countries worldwide for two decades. Their task has been mainly to build capacity in the security forces of partner nations, in order to promote both stability and broadly accepted norms in democratic societies. The special operations presence in Niger is only a few years old, and has been tied to U.S. efforts to defeat violent extremists operating with impunity, especially to the north in Mali and to the south in Nigeria.

A larger part of the answer to why U.S. forces are in Niger today lies in Niger’s remarkable development as a relatively stable nation in its region. The United States had much to do with that, and earned the friendship and respect of the Nigerien government and its people.

In the early 1990s Niger took an unusual political step for an African nation in the Saharan region known as the Sahel. Its autocratic president at the time approached the United States and other embassies in Niamey to help create a multi-party democracy in the desperately impoverished nation.

Niger perennially ranked at the bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index and suffered regularly from extreme droughts that sometimes led to famine. Experts often blame political forces for famine, and Niger was no exception. Moreover, in that period the country experienced violent uprisings by Nigerien ethnic Tuareg groups who felt dispossessed and complained that the national government ignored their needs. There was no U.S. military presence in Niger, or anywhere nearby, besides the embassy’s Marine security guard contingent and a one-man security assistance program.

After the Nigerien government request, the U.S. diplomatic mission — the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency, and other governmental entities — collaborated with other embassies in Niamey, U.N. entities, and nongovernmental organizations to help Nigeriens establish the basis for participatory democracy and a more robust civil society, including the basic laws and regulations for multiparty elections.  In 1993 Tuaregs, Nigeriens of Arab descent, and other marginalized groups ran for office alongside majority ethnic groups in the first multiparty elections since independence in 1960.

The transition to a participatory, transparent, and accountable government is long and uneven in any nation, and so it was with Niger. Coup attempts intervened along the way. The country requires substantial international assistance to build the economic and social infrastructure it needs to provide just the basics for its population, particularly in health and agriculture. But today it still enjoys multiparty elections and improved governance. Its prime minister for the past few years has been an ethnic Tuareg.

Of course, another reason for the U.S. military presence in Niger is its strategic location smack in the middle of the Sahara. The desert provides an ungoverned space where terrorists and violent extremists can thrive. From Niger, coalition forces can address several specific threats to regional and global security, especially al Qaida in the Maghreb, Boko Haram, and Islamic State offshoots.

The lesson we can draw from “Why Niger?” is that US government diplomatic and development strategies to build stability, legitimacy, and capacity in fragile nations can be a foundation for American security, even without direct and immediate threats to America present.  In Niger twenty-five years ago, our strategy was not justified by fighting al Qaida or the Islamic State, which did not exist at the time. But we certainly benefit from the consequences of those policies today, where local and international security forces can implement counterterrorism strategies for the entire region.
When many donors assist in building good governance, thereby minimizing ungoverned spaces, we deprive extremists of the territory from which to metastasize into greater threats. Our military,
particularly special operations forces, contributes significantly to building partner capacity and is an inextricable part of U.S. national security strategy, alongside diplomatic and development counterparts.

The fact remains that armed conflict in West Africa represents a threat to the United States and its allies. The tragic deaths of American and Nigerien forces earlier this month remind us that operating in the Sahel region of Africa remains dangerous. But the reason U.S. forces are there at all should be assessed in light of American strategic goals with respect to violent extremism, and the history of U.S. support for an African nation like Niger.

Tibetans should believe that independence possible

Tibetans need to plan their strategies for independent Tibet under the guidance of the Dalai Lama by organizing several brainstorming session in different parts of the world and such strategies should be widely communicated to the Tibetans and friends of Tibet all over the world.

by N.S.Venkataraman-Oct 29, 2017

( October 29, 2017, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Some of the recent observations and comments made in social media by number of Tibetans living as refugees or citizens in other countries give an impression that some of them may be losing confidence that independence of Tibet would happen in their life time. Some of them seem to think that such hope of Tibetan independence is a distant dream or unrealistic dream.

To some extent, the Dalai Lama , the venerable leader of great stature, seem to have given room for such feelings by making observations on more than one occasion in recent times that he would be satisfied if Tibet would be given full autonomy within the overall governance of China and he would not demand complete independence for Tibet.

Of course, some quarters amongst Tibetans have expressed surprise at such stand of the Dalai Lama. It appears that ,as yet, the Dalai Lama has not explained in public the logic or justification for diluting the target of independent Tibet and instead asking for autonomy status for Tibet.

In any case, it is very clear that the present Chinese government has no intention of conceding the demand for independence of Tibet or autonomy status for Tibet.

Apart from the fact that the Dalai Lama seem to have diluted his desire for independence of Tibet by asking for autonomy status for Tibet , the ground reality that no country in the world has shown readiness to condemn openly China’s aggression in Tibet seem to have shaken the confidence of section of the Tibetans living around the world that Tibet’s independence would be possible in the foreseeable future.

Barrack Obama, the earlier President of United States ,also contributed significantly to demolish the confidence of Tibetans by receiving the Dalai Lama through the back door in White House, as if he was doing a mistake or scared of antagonizing the Chinese government.

Nevertheless, one should not miss the fact that Chinese government is aware that there is underlying feeling amongst cross section of world citizens that Tibet has been taken over by China unjustifiably with it’s military might. China is acutely aware that it has virtually destroyed the Tibetan culture and tradition and world knows it and China further knows that this fact cannot be concealed in the world history in future.

Given this ground reality, China clearly has apprehensions about the world’s view on it’s occupation of Tibet and it vehemently protests even if the government of a small country would officially receive the Dalai Lama. China objects strongly to any recognition for the Dalai Lama anywhere in the world, since it knows that the Dalai Lama represents a strong moral force and Tibetan cause and the plight of Tibetans can potentially prick the conscience of the world in future.

In recent times , after Mr. Modi has become the Prime Minister of India , government has exhibited courage of conviction to stand against China as far as the treatment extended to the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in India are concerned. . Certainly, Tibetans across the world should gain confidence from the no nonsense attitude of Narendra Modi government, which is standing upto China with regard to the importance given to the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in India .

It is a fact that most of the Tibetans living around the world today have not seen Tibet or touched the soil of Tibet, as Tibet lost it’s freedom around 60 years back. Quite a number of them are citizens of some other countries. However, it is very important that they should keep the Tibetan pride in their families for all time to come and should continue to cherish the thought of independent Tibet.

The Tibetans should not let China has the last laugh with regard to the occupation of Tibet. Tibetans should keep their belief and faith that independence of Tibet would be possible and should keep their spirit alive and strong, by constantly discussing about the cause of Tibet in several world forums wherever possible.

There is also need for the Dalai Lama to think as to what would happen to Tibetan cause after his time, since today the Dalai Lama represents the voice of Tibetans and has a very strong moral power which China too recognizes.

Tibetans need to plan their strategies for independent Tibet under the guidance of the Dalai Lama by organizing several brainstorming session in different parts of the world and such strategies should be widely communicated to the Tibetans and friends of Tibet all over the world.

Tibetans should remember that faith and belief has historically changed the tide of misfortune and without faith and belief ,no cause can be achieved.

Kurdish leader Barzani resigns after independence vote backfires

Raya Jalabi, Maher Chmaytelli-OCTOBER 29, 2017

ERBIL/BAGHDAD Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said he would give up his position as president on Nov. 1, after an independence referendum he championed backfired and triggered a regional crisis.

There was high drama at the Kurdish parliament, which was stormed by armed protesters as it met to approve the veteran leader’s resignation as Kurdish president. Some MPs were barricaded in their offices on Sunday evening.

In a televised address, his first since Iraqi forces launched a surprise offensive to recapture Kurdish-held territory on Oct. 16, Barzani confirmed that he would not extend his presidential term after Nov. 1 “under any conditions”.

“I am the same Masoud Barzani, I am a Peshmerga (Kurdish fighter) and will continue to help my people in their struggle for independence,” said Barzani, who has campaigned for Kurdish self-determination for nearly four decades.

The address followed a letter he sent to parliament in which he asked members to take measures to fill the resulting power vacuum.

The region’s parliament met in the Kurdish capital Erbil on Sunday to discuss the letter. A majority of 70 Kurdish MPs voted to accept Barzani’s request and 23 opposed it, Kurdish TV channels Rudaw and Kurdistan 24 said.

Demonstrators, some carrying clubs and guns, stormed the parliament building as the session was in progress.

Gunshots were heard. Some protesters outside the building said they wanted to “punish” MPs who they said had “insulted” Barzani. Some attacked journalists at the scene.

A Kurdish official had told Reuters on Saturday that Barzani had decided to hand over the presidency without waiting for elections that had been set for Nov. 1 but which have now been delayed by eight months.

The region, which had enjoyed unprecedented autonomy for years, has been in turmoil since the independence referendum a month ago prompted military and economic retaliation from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad.

In his address, Barzani vigorously defended his decision to hold the Sept. 25 referendum, the results of which “can never be erased”, he said. The vote was overwhelmingly for independence and triggered the military action by the Baghdad government and threats from neighbouring Turkey and Iran.

Iraqi Kurdish president Masoud Barzani speaks during a news conference in Erbil, Iraq September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari/Files

He added that the Iraqi attack on Kirkuk and other Kurdish held territory vindicated his position that Baghdad no longer believed in federalism and instead wanted to curtail Kurdish rights.

U.S. CONDEMNED 

Iraqi Kurdish president Masoud Barzani speaks during a news conference in Erbil, Iraq September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari/Files

Barzani condemned the United States for failing to back the Kurds. “We tried to stop bloodshed but the Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilization Front (Shi‘ite militias) kept advancing, using U.S. weapons,” he said.

“Our people should now question, whether the U.S. was aware of Iraq’s attack and why they did not prevent it.”

Asked for reaction to Barzani’s resignation, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said: “I would refer you to Kurdistan officials for information on President Barzani. Also, we are not going to get into any private diplomatic discussions.”

Barzani has been criticised by Kurdish opponents for the loss of the city of Kirkuk, oil-rich and considered by many Kurds to be their spiritual home.

His resignation could help facilitate a reconciliation between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraq’s central government, whose retaliatory measures since the referendum have transformed the balance of power in the north.

Barzani has led the KRG since it was established in 2005. His second term expired in 2013 but was extended without elections being held as Islamic State militants swept across vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces, Iranian-backed paramilitaries and Kurdish fighters fought alongside each other to defeat Islamic State but the alliance has faltered since the militants were largely defeated in the country.

After the Kurdish vote, Iraqi troops were ordered by the country’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi to take control of areas claimed by both Baghdad and the KRG.

Abadi also wants to take control of the border crossings between the Kurdish region and Turkey, Iran and Syria, including one through which an oil export pipeline crosses into Turkey, carrying Iraqi and Kurdish crude oil.

The fall of Kirkuk - a multi-ethnic city which lies outside the KRG’s official boundaries - to Iraqi forces on Oct. 16 was a major symbolic and financial blow to the Kurds’ independence drive because it halved the region’s oil export revenue.

Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga started a second round of talks on Sunday to resolve a conflict over control of the Kurdistan region’s border crossings, Iraqi state TV said.

A first round was held on Friday and Saturday, with Abadi ordering a 24-hour suspension on Friday of military operations against Kurdish forces.

He demanded on Thursday that the Kurds declare their referendum void, rejecting the KRG offer to suspend its independence push to resolve a crisis through talks, saying in a statement: “We won’t accept anything but its cancellation and the respect of the constitution.”

Revolutions: on-time; premature; overdue

A look back at great revolutions

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by Kumar David-October 29, 2017, 10:29 am 

Revolution is a much used and overused word, but there are two broad categories; political changes of significance and social-cum-economic overturns called structural transformations. Nine out of ten of the latter are preceded by change of ruler and state. Conversely there can be overturns of rulers and states without much change in socio-economic content; best known in modern times is the American War of Independence circa 1775-83. Change that attracts the word revolution but little disturbs the economic and social fabric are a dime a dozen; the expulsion of Marcos, overthrow of military juntas in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Haiti and more), the end of monarchy in Nepal, the breakup of Pakistan and Sudan, and the remnants of the Arab Spring.

No more about these principally political jinxes. This piece, written on the occasion of the centenary of the October revolution, is about the heavy stuff, that is, overturns of architecture (state, class and economic modus) in the post medieval world. Much has been written and I do not have anything add to conventional discourse. Rather I am interested in a comparative look at whether some are premature, some just in time and others overdue. The use of these three terms presupposes that, at some level of abstraction, there is a right time for overturns of social architecture. I subscribe to this view and agree that changes (technology and production, external relations, class and ethnic conflicts) accumulate in the bowels of society which thus becomes pregnant with a new life form. Forgive the lurid association of idioms bowel and pregnant, but it does get the point across.

Today I will chew on England from the Tudors to 1688, France 1780s to 1815 and impact on Europe, Russia from the First World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union and finally China from the 1920s to the present. I will spread things out on either side of the magical date; year 1648, June 1789, October 1917 and October 1948. To judge the maturity or otherwise of a revolution one must take account of its genesis and its progress. The conventional literature can fill a room, allowing me to take a synoptic approach biased to my ‘is it premature, in-time, or delayed’, frame of reference.

The century of revolution in England

The favourite book for the left of the English Civil War and Revolution is Christopher Hill’s Century of Revolution: 1603 to 1714, though R.H. Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is still remembered with affection by (surviving) pupils of Professor ‘Tawney’ Rajaratnam. The period of Tudor absolute monarchies (Henry VIII, 1509-57 and Elizabeth I, 1558-1603) laid the foundations for modern English society; capital accumulation, ascent of mercantile and manufacturing classes and Protestantism. England’s position in the world was transformed by mercantilism and defeat of the Spanish fleet in 1588, more by appalling weather than Gloriana’s plucky sea dog Francis Drake. The break with Catholicism not because of Henry’s concupiscence but a declaration of independence from Europe’s late-feudal Empires and the Papacy. England then prospered as nation state and economy.

There followed a short period of reaction and repression under the second Stuart, Charles I (reigned 1625-48 and lost his head on the block in 1649). A state recognising only parliament took shape during the "Commonwealth" with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector but the race to expunge the English aristocracy and redesign the state was too rapid. The restoration of the wicked Charles II in 1660, after Cromwell’s death in 1658, was a brief course correction after a dizzying epoch. The return of parliamentary supremacy but with Constitutional Monarchy in tow in 1688 in the Glorious Revolution finally squared the circle. A system of state which survives to this day was cemented.

I would argue that history timed the end of absolute monarchy, plucked power from the hands of the landed aristocracy, cemented a compromise model of state and ensured the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie to economic supremacy, pretty nicely. Neither Rome, nor state and economy in modern Britain, were built in a day. It was a pretty efficient job getting the English project completed in the moderate time span to 1688 - after all it was the world’s first such try.

Continental Europe’s age

of revolution

Distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm titled his best known work The Age of Revolution; it spans the 60 years from the French Revolution of 1789 to Europe’s Year of Revolution 1848 much celebrated by young Marx. The focus is France (Marx handed the draft of the Communist Manifesto to Engels in Paris in 1847) but laps the reshaping of Europe; France was the first course on the menu. The literature on the French Revolution is voluminous, it is also the Classic Revolution and hence I need give no background or detail. The question for this essay is ‘did history get the timing right?’ My answer is Yes and No. Mostly Yes - but not entirely - for France, but the overreach into wider Europe was more complicated.

Industry and commerce in France were nowhere near as developed in the 1780s as they were in England a century and a half earlier during the run up to the English Revolution. Intellectually, however, France was in ferment in contrast to England’s dullards. Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, what a star cast! Only Kant among philosophers and pioneer economist Adam Smith were contemporaneous foreigners. (Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke and Baruch Spinoza were a lot earlier). In the early and mid-1800s, urging ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ into Europe, were many celebrted revolutionaries including Auguste Blanqui, Lazare Carnot and Michael Bakunin; the last met Proudhon and Marx in Paris. Politically and intellectually, France was overripe for revolution though its means of production, using England as a yardstick, were not sufficiently mature.

Change could not be consummated without the abolition of feudalism, the intervention of the Jacobins through the Committee of Public Safety, the Terror relieving Louis XVI of his pate, and a Constitution establishing the First Republic. What took England forty years was completed in about five in febrile France. But history abhors haste. All the crowned monarchs, Pope, archdukes and nobility of Europe recoiled in horror; invasions followed. France’s reply was first a string of victories in Revolutionary Wars and then Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon harshly subdued chaos and dissent at home, assumed absolute power in 1799, and then his victorious armies reshaped the face of the European continent. Feudalism was abolished, republics with modern codes of law established, economies prospered, religious and intellectual intolerance was terminated and barriers to thought lifted.

This too was too much, too soon, for hidebound Europe. The backlash climaxed in Napoleons’ defeats at La Rothiere (1814) and Waterloo (1815). Actually this was the last straw of his foolish invasion of Russia’s vast terrain and bitter winter in 1812. This is what finished Napoleon; you can’t fight geography. Ancien regimés seemed to reassert themselves but actually not. Monarchs and dukes returned but social transformations could not be rolled back, nor feudalism restored. This brief paragraph recaps an elaborate story also known as combined and uneven development.

Two steps forward one
and a half back

Revolutions, like puberty, cannot be made to order or delivered on schedule; there are too many known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns augmenting a flood of known-knowns. If you think of known-knowns as Marx’s forces and relations of production, then known-unknowns are accidents of statecraft, politics and international intrusions. To push the figurative further, unknown-unknowns are consciousness and the role of leading persons – those who won (Cromwell, Robespierre, Bolivar, Lenin, Mao) and those vanquished (Wat Tyler, Tipu Sultan, Rosa Luxemburg, Che in Bolivia). And any Chinese Bikyim or Chan worth her/his salt will add: Don’t forget luck, it is like striking gold!

To linger with these figures of speech, both Russia and China, at the time of revolution, were clear cut no-no cases in the known-knowns materialist department. In the mind-and-will department, the subjective factor, Lenin’s indomitable resolve and the role of his party have become the stuff of legend. True also the indefatigable fighting spirit of the Chinese communists come across like myths from folklore. But still, excuse me, lovely ladies and kind gentlemen, it was not these unknown-unknowns but rather a known-unknown, not character but the foreign factor that clinched the deal. Apologies to Donald Rumsfeld for so much verbal legerdemain.

But my point remains; it was international subjugation that was decisive in both Russia and China – material conditions were no way appropriate for rushing off to start a socialist experiment. Begging your pardon Comrades Lenin and Mao, not all your talent would have carried the day if the imperialist bastards had not screwed up the landscape and made just about anything possible. Oh, no wonder I was writing about chaos theory and tipping-points some weeks ago. The straw that broke the camel’s back were the ravages of war, occupation, and burdens of imperialism. I don’t need to push the point; you know about pre-revolutionary conditions in Russia and China. The first of Lenin’s three great slogans (peace, bread, land) was an end to the war. China was cut to pieces, raped and exploited by the four great imperial powers of the day. The Emperor in Beijing was a political eunuch; Chiang Kai Shek was America’s catamite. The air was thick with the fog of revolution.

The Soviet Union expired because Stalinist economics was organisationally and technically inferior to advanced capitalism. Stalin was no Deng; he had no intelligent rear-guard plan. Are you asking me what will become of the Party-State and state-capitalism? Asking what China will be in half a century? Ah, ask not what will become of China; ask what will become of global capitalism; the answer to the China riddle my friend, is blowing in that wind.

So far this essay has been about revolutions in-time and revolutions premature. I have omitted one-third of the goodies promised in the title – revolutions overdue. Oh dear, don’t get me started on Europe and America, or what should social equity and real democracy be like in places that have got nearly half way there? Be patient, await the next thrilling instalment sometime in the future but to whet your appetite here’s a pointer:-

"Marx will have his revenge: Capitalism is undermining itself with technology that makes corporations and the private means of production obsolete. Then what happens? I have no idea". Yanis Varoufakis at University College, London, October 2017.

Saudi Arabia to allow women into sports stadiums as reform push intensifies

Announcement that sporting events will be open to women for first time comes a month after historic decision to allow women to drive

From 2018, Saudi women will be allowed to attend matches at sporting arenas. The kingdom appears to be relaxing some norms as part of its plan for economic and social reforms. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

 A Saudi woman driving in the coastal city of Jeddah. The ban on female motorists will be lifted in June. Photograph: Reem Baeshen/AFP/Getty Images

Agence France-Presse-Monday 30 October 2017 

Saudi Arabia will allow women into sports stadiums for the first time from next year, authorities said Sunday, in a landmark move opening up three previously male-only venues to families.

The ultra-conservative kingdom, which has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on women, has long barred women from sports arenas by strict rules on segregation of the sexes in public.

The announcement is in line with powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious reforms shaking up the kingdom, including the historic decision to allow women to drive from next June.

“Starting the preparation of three stadiums in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam to be ready to accommodate families from early 2018,” the General Sports Authority said on Twitter.

Restaurants, cafes and video screens would be set up inside the venues, the authority added.
Last month hundreds of women were allowed to enter a sports stadium in Riyadh, used mostly for football matches, in a one-off event to celebrate Saudi Arabia’s national day.

Sunday’s announcement implies that women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed for the first time to attend sporting events inside stadiums alongside men.

Under the country’s guardianship system, a male family member – normally the father, husband or brother – must grant permission for a woman’s study, travel and other activities.

But the kingdom appears to be relaxing some norms as part of its sweeping “Vision 2030” plan for economic and social reforms as it prepares for a post-oil era.

Last month a royal decree said women would be allowed to drive. The kingdom is also expected to lift a public ban on cinemas and has encouraged mixed-gender celebrations – something unseen before.

“First women driving, now stadiums. What’s next? Night clubs?” said one Saudi Twitter user,
echoing a deluge of social media comments expressing surprise over the accelerating pace of reforms.
In a rare public appearance last week, Prince Mohammed pledged a “moderate” Saudi Arabia, long seen as an exporter of a brand of puritanical Islam espoused by jihadists worldwide.

MBS, as he is well known, promised his kingdom will return to “what we were before – a country of moderate Islam that is tolerant of all religions and to the world”.

His comment, while unveiling plans for a $500bm development zone, chimes with his public image of a bold liberal reformer in a conservative country where more than half the population is under 25.
But his vision for a new Saudi Arabia is fraught with risks and could trigger a backlash from conservatives, analysts warn.

“Despite the bold statements, it is important to remember that the dominance of conservative thought since the late 1970’s cannot be quickly reversed,” said analysis firm Eurasia Group.

“Ultraconservative and radical elements continue to pose risks.”

The government appears to have clipped the wings of the once-feared religious police – long accused of harassing the public with rigid Islamic mores – who have all but disappeared from big cities.
Some conservative clerics – who for years staunchly opposed more social liberties for women – have backpedalled and come out in favour of the decree allowing them to drive.

‘They shot my two daughters in front of me’: Rohingya tell heartbreaking stories of loss

By The Conversation | 30th October 2017

Rohingya refugees wait in line to receive humanitarian aid in Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, October 29, 2017. Source: Reuters/Hannah McKay

IF THERE’s anything positive about the sprawling Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, it’s that the residents – despite their appalling recent experiences and obvious deprivation – are at least safe here from Myanmar’s military.

I’ve been visiting Rohingya refugee camps close to the Bangladesh/Burma (Myanmar) border, and the scale of the forced migration is truly horrifying. Land unoccupied in late August is now a cramped shanty city of bamboo, tarpaulin and mud that seems to go on forever.

Interviews in the camps paint a desperately sad picture. The details of these interviews are invariably confronting and often distressing, and explain why so many Rohingya fled Burma so quickly.

SEE ALSO: UN appeals for more support for Rohingya in ‘arc of misery’

A farmer becomes understandably emotional when he tells me:

I lost my two sons, and two daughters. At midnight the military come in my house and burnt the house, but first they raped my two daughters and they shot my two daughters in front of me. 

I have no words to express how it was for me to suffer to look at my daughters being raped and killed in front of me. My two sons were also killed by the government. I was not able to get the dead bodies of my daughters, it is a great sorrow for me.

The Honey Stream at Kutupalong Camp. Source: Ronan Lee, Author provided

Background to the refugee crisis

The military’s ongoing “clearance operation” began in late August with the supposed aim of ridding Burma of a recently emerged militant group. But this campaign’s real intent is now widely regarded as being to force the ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority, from their homes, away from their land, and out of Burma.

Burma’s military, the Tatmadaw, has used tactics that are brutal, indiscriminate, and yet sadly familiar to the Rohingya and other groups in Burma such as the ethnic Kachin and Karen.

Witnesses described to me how, when the Tatmadaw arrived at their village, the soldiers fired weapons and killed people inside wooden homes, arrested young men, raped women, told residents to leave, and then burned homes to prevent the residents’ return.

Burma’s Rakhine State, where the Rohingya have mostly lived, remains locked down by the Tatmadaw, preventing media and humanitarian access. But NGO Human Rights Watch has released satellite images showing almost 300 Rohingya villages razed.

SEE ALSO: Religious freedom another casualty of Southeast Asia’s regressive turn

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights describes Myanmar military’s actions as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. French President Emmanuel Macron has called it “genocide”. He is not the first to make this assertion.

In 2015, the International State Crime Initiative published a detailed research report that concluded the Rohingya were victims of a process of genocide, and predicted the ferocity and intent of the current Tatmadaw campaign.

Aid queue at the Kutupalong Camp. Ronan Lee, Author provided

Stories from the ground

The result of this crackdown has been one of the fastest and largest forced migrations in the region since the second world war. Within just eight weeks, and during the monsoon season, a staggering 600,000 people have fled Myanmar on foot.

These new arrivals are not the only Rohingya here. They are joining hundreds of thousands already forced to live in Bangladeshi camps who are victims of previous intensive Burmese military persecutions. This highlights the decades-long discrimination against the Rohingya there.

I conducted interviews with male residents of unregistered camps and at Kutupalong Camp. One elderly man who has recently arrived in Kutupalong Camp explained that ten men were arrested in his village. Their families, he said, had not heard from them since. He said the military told his village’s residents to leave:

The military led us to prayer and some kind of religious work, and they openly told us to go to Bangladesh – otherwise you will be killed.

A Rohingya man, dressed in a traditional Burmese Longyi skirt, said his village was “friendly” and “quiet”:

We were living there, very friendly. At midnight we heard the sound of bullets, we went outside to see what is happening. I think they behaved like this – arresting, torturing, shooting, hitting – because we are Rohingya and Muslim. We’re not at fault, we are really innocent.

When asked if anyone in his village was hurt, he said:

No-one in my family was killed, but some near my home were killed.

SEE ALSO: No simple solution to the Rohingya crisis

A 60-year-old man from Buthidaung explained his village was burnt, showing me a large bandaged leg wound he said was from a bullet injury:

Among my four sons, one was killed by the military in front of me, and one arrested, and one of my daughters – my adult daughter – was arrested but I don’t know where she is.

Explaining how he travelled to Bangladesh, a man in his 20s said:

When our village was burned we moved to another village, and then they came to burn that village, and we moved another village, and when they came to burn that village and we moved, and that’s how we came here at last. They used the helicopter to burn the villages.

I am grateful to camp residents for their courage in sharing still-raw experiences with me in the hope the international community would hear them and help them.

Burma has denied the Rohingya their human rights, so it’s up to the international community to provide the Rohingya with the protections they are entitled to as human beings. They deserve no less.

A Rohingya man in his 20s asked:

I humbly request to you that, we want to be human, live as a human, but Myanmar treats us as animals. We want to go back there as humans.

He should not need to ask.

By Ronan Lee, PhD Candidate, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Yahiya Khan contributed to this article. Originally published on The Conversation.

Indian surgeons separate twins joined at the head

The twins before the surgery to separate them

The twin boys were separated after 16 hours of surgery-AIIMS

27 October 2017

Surgeons in the Indian capital, Delhi, have separated twin boys who were conjoined at the tops of their heads.

Two-year-old Jaga and Kalia underwent 16 hours of surgery, and are now in the intensive care unit, doctors said.

A team of 30 doctors carried out the surgery - the first of its kind in India - at a state-run hospital.

The boys were born with shared blood vessels and brain tissues, a very rare condition that occurs once in about three million births.

The director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Randeep Guleria, told the Press Trust of India that the "next 18 days would be extremely critical to ascertain the success of the surgery".

The twins, hailing from a village in eastern Orissa state, were joined at the head - a condition known as craniopagus.

Even before the operation they had defeated the odds; craniopagus occurs in one in three million births, and 50% of those affected die within 24 hours, doctors say.

Doctors say the condition of the boys remains critical

The twins before the surgery to separate them

"Both the children have other health issues as well. While Jaga has heart issues, Kalia has kidney problems," neurosurgeon A K Mahapatra said.

"Though initially Jaga was healthier, now his condition has deteriorated. Kalia is better," he added.

Doctors said the most challenging job after the separation was to "provide a skin cover on both sides of the brain for the children as the surgery had left large holes on their heads".

"If the twins make it, the next step will be reconstructing their skulls," plastic surgeon Maneesh Singhal said.

The first surgery was performed on 28 August when the doctors created a bypass to separate the shared veins that return blood to the heart from the brain.