But the U.S. president raises new uncertainties over the fate of the trade deal with Mexico and Canada.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and top officials reached a truce in the trade war over dinner at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
BYKEITH JOHNSON-
As widely expected, U.S. President Donald Trump paused his trade war with China at the G-20 summit in Argentina this weekend, halting the imposition of new tariffs for 90 days while the two countries continue talking about the wider irritants in the trade relationship. But Trump also threw a cloud over the future of the new NAFTA, threatening to pull out of the existing three-way North American trade deal altogether if Congress doesn’t ratify the renegotiated accord.
Trump came into the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires threatening China with a massive escalation in the trade war, including hefty new tariffs on practically everything China ships to the United States. But after a congenial dinner between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping Saturday night, both sides agreed to park further hostilities while they continue trying to sort out broader disagreements about their economic relationship.
Those talks will seek to boost Chinese purchases of U.S. goods, especially agricultural products that Beijing boycotted this year in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs. They’ll also aim to sort out more fundamental and long-standing problems such as cybertheft, intellectual property protection, and forced technology transfer.
“This was an amazing and productive meeting with unlimited possibilities for both the United States and China,” Trump said in a statement.
While the framework agreement reached in Buenos Aires doesn’t roll back the existing tariffs, which have already raised costs for many U.S. manufacturers and made life tougher for many Chinese exporters, it at least avoids doing further damage to both economies for the next few months.
“I think from Trump’s standpoint, it’s kicking the can down the road and avoiding the politically uncomfortable need to raise existing tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent, which would be destructive,” said Joel Trachtman, a trade expert and professor of international law at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
The temporary truce doesn’t mean the trade war is over. Much like Trump’s talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore last June, the two sides have presented differing views of what was agreed upon during the dinner. The United States insisted in its statement that China will “immediately” start buying “very substantial” amounts of U.S. goods; the Chinese mention neither an amount nor a timeline. Nor did the Chinese side reference the 90-day deadline for reaching an agreement in the next round of talks. There is no joint document laying out what may have been agreed upon at the meeting.
Another source of uncertainty in the months ahead: Who will lead the talks for the Trump administration, and what will the demands on China ultimately be?
Trade hard-liners such as Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, and Peter Navarro, a White House trade advisor, have advocated a much tougher approach to China, including pushing Beijing for a root-to-branch reform of its entire economic model. Others in the administration, such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic advisor, have tried to chart a more pragmatic approach to getting Beijing to modify trade and economic practices that have long upset U.S. administrations. Those dueling camps inside the White House have repeatedly confused Chinese leaders trying to figure out what exactly the United States wants.
At the very least, Trump bought himself time to sort out the ambiguity with China. But he added to the uncertainty on another front, threatening to withdraw from the existing North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico unless Congress approves the newly modified version of the accord.
The new “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” formally signed by the three countries at the summit, updates the quarter-century-old NAFTA in many ways. But its new provisions on auto manufacturing, labor, and environmental protections raise concerns among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has already said it wants more robust environmental and labor protections in the revised accord, and it made clear that congressional passage is far from assured.
By threatening to tear up the existing accord, Trump is trying to pressure Congress into giving him a much-needed win on trade. But it’s not at all clear the president even has the authority to pull out of a trade pact enshrined in congressional legislation, Trachtman said.
Under the Constitution, Congress has the authority to regulate commerce. And the existing NAFTA became operational through concrete legislation that lowered tariffs and streamlined trade between the three countries. Most experts believe Congress would have to roll back that existing legislation in order to actually scrap the pact.
The only sure outcome from such a move on Trump’s part would be an avalanche of litigation and a messy fight in the courts, Trachtman said, which would only create more uncertainty for businesses with supply chains that snake across international borders.
“If you really did get rid of both” the existing NAFTA and the new agreement, “that would be a disaster,” he said. Without a formal trade deal between the three countries, the current tariff-free trade across borders would disappear, and costs for businesses and consumers would rise.
“If there’s no agreement, then everything made here would become costlier and would be less competitive on global markets,” Trachtman said.
Historically speaking, the process of Christianization of Europe that was used as the justification tool to (either intimidate or corrupt, so to say to) pacify the invading tribes, which demolished the Roman Empire and brought to an end the Antique age, was running parallel on two tracks.
by Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević-
( December 1, 2018, Vienna, Sri Lanka Guardian) Following the latest events in the Black Sea two old questions are reappearing. Both are inviting us for a repeated elaboration:
If a Monroe doctrine (about the hemispheric security exclusivity) is recognised at one corner of the globe, do we have a moral right or legal ground to negate it at the other corner?
Clearly, the ‘might-makes-right’ as a conduct in international relations cannot be selectively accepted. Either it is acknowledged to all who can effectively self-prescribe such a monopoly of coercion, or it is absolutely condemned as contrary to behaviour among the civilised nations.
Next to the first question is a right of pre-emption.
It is apparent that within the Black Sea theatre, Russia acts in a pre-emptive and defensive mood. For the last 25 years, all the NATO interventions were outside its membership zone; none of the few Russian interventions over the same period was outside the parameter of former USSR.
Before closing, let’s take a closer look on the problem from a larger historical perspective.
Una hysteria Importante
Historically speaking, the process of Christianization of Europe that was used as the justification tool to (either intimidate or corrupt, so to say to) pacify the invading tribes, which demolished the Roman Empire and brought to an end the Antique age, was running parallel on two tracks. The Roman Curia/Vatican conducted one of them by its hammer: the Holy Roman Empire. The second was run by the cluster of Rusophone Slavic Kaganates, who receiving (the orthodox or true/authentic, so-called Eastern version of) Christianity from Byzantium, and past its collapse, have taken over a mission of Christianization, while forming its first state of Kiev Russia (and thereafter, its first historic empire). Thus, to the eastern edge of Europe, Russophones have lived in an intact, nearly a hermetic world of universalism for centuries: one empire, one Tsar, one religion and one language.[1]
Everything in between Central Europe and Russia is Eastern Europe, rather a historic novelty on the political map of Europe. Very formation of the Atlantic Europe’s present shape dates back to 14th–15th century, of Central Europe to the mid-late 19th century, while a contemporary Eastern Europe only started emerging between the end of WWI and the collapse of the Soviet Union – meaning, less than 100 years at best, slightly over two decades in the most cases. No wonder that the dominant political culture of the Eastern Europeans resonates residual fears and reflects deeply insecure small nations. Captive and restive, they are short in territorial depth, in demographic projection, in natural resources and in a direct access to open (warm) seas. After all, these are short in historio-cultural verticals, and in the bigger picture-driven long-term policies. Eastern Europeans are exercising the nationhood and sovereignty from quite a recently, thus, too often uncertain over the side and page of history. Therefore, they are often dismissive, hectic and suspectful, nearly neuralgic and xenophobic, with frequent overtones.
Years of Useful Idiot
The latest loss of Russophone Europe in its geopolitical and ideological confrontation with the West meant colossal changes in Eastern Europe. One may look into geopolitical surrounding of at the-time largest eastern European state, Poland, as an illustration of how dramatic was it.[2] All three land neighbors of Poland; Eastern Germany (as the only country to join the EU without any accession procedure, but by pure act of Anschluss), Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union have disappeared overnight. At present, Polish border countries are a two-decade-old novelty on the European political map. Further on, if we wish to compare the number of dissolutions of states worldwide over the last 50 years, the Old continent suffered as many as all other continents combined: American continent – none, Asia – one (Indonesia/ East Timor), Africa – two (Sudan/South Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea), and Europe – three.
Interestingly, each and every dissolution in Europe was primarily related to Slavs (Slavic peo-ples) living in multiethnic and multi-linguistic (not in the Atlantic Europe’s conscripted pure single-nation) state. Additionally, all three European fragmentations – meaning, every second dissolution in the world – were situated exclusively and only in Eastern Europe. That region has witnessed a total dissolution of Czechoslovakia (western Slavs) and Yugoslavia (southern Slavs, in 3 waves), while one state disappeared from Eastern Europe (DDR) as to strengthen and enlarge the front of Central Europe (Western Germany). Finally, countless centripetal turbulences severely affected Eastern Europe following the dissolution of the Soviet Union (eastern Slavs) on its frontiers.
Irredentism in the UK, Spain, Belgium, France and Italy, or Denmark (over Faroe Islands and Greenland) is far elder, stronger and deeper. However, all dissolutions in Eastern Europe took place irreversibly and overnight, while Atlantic Europe remained intact, with Central Europe even enlarging territorially and expanding economically.
Deindustrialized, incapacitated, demoralized, over-indebted, re-feudalized, rarified and de-Slavicized
Finally, East is sharply aged and depopulated –the worst of its kind ever– which in return will make any future prospect of a full and decisive generational interval simply impossible. Honduras-izationof Eastern Europe is full and complete. Hence, is it safe to say that if the post-WWII Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was overt and brutal, this one is subtle but subversive and deeply corrosive?
The key (nonintentional) consequence of the Soviet occupation was that the Eastern European states –as a sort of their tacit, firm but low-tempered rebellion – preserved their sense of nationhood. However, they had essential means at disposal to do so: the right to work was highly illuminated in and protected by the national constitutions, so were other socio-economic rights such as the right to culture, language, arts and similar segments of collective nation’s memory. Today’s East, deprived and deceived, silently witnesses the progressive metastasis of its national tissue.
Ergo, euphemisms such as countries in transition or newEurope cannot hide a disconsolate fact that Eastern Europe has been treated for 25 years as defeated belligerent, as spoils of war which the West won in its war against communist Russia.
It concludes that (self-)fragmented, deindustrialized and re-feudalized, rapidly aged rarified and depopulated, (and de-Slavicized) Eastern Europe is probably the least influential region of the world – one of the very few underachievers. Obediently submissive and therefore, rigid in dynamic environment of the promising 21st century, Eastern Europeans are among last remaining passive downloaders and slow-receivers on the otherwise blossoming stage of the world’s creativity, politics and economy. Seems, Europe still despises its own victims…
Terra nullius
Admittedly, by the early 1990s, the ‘security hole’– Eastern Europe, has been approached in multifold fashion: Besides the (pre-Maastricht EC and post-Maastricht) EU and NATO, there was the Council of Europe, the CSCE (after the 1993 Budapest summit, OSCE), the EBRD and EIB. All of them were sending the political, economic, human dimension, commercial signals, assistance and expertise. These moves were making both sides very nervous; Russia becoming assertive (on its former peripheries) and Eastern Europe defiantly dismissive.[3] Until this very day, each of them is portraying the NATO enterprise as the central security consideration: One as a must-go, and another as a no-go.
No wonder that the absolute pivot of Eastern Europe, and the second largest of all Slavic states – Ukraine, is a grand hostage of that very dilemma: Between the eastern pan-Slavic hegemony and western ‘imperialism of free market’.[4] Additionally, the country suffers from the consolidated Klepto-corporate takeover as well as the rapid re-Nazification.
For Ukraine, Russia is a geographic, socio-historic, cultural and linguistic reality. Presently, this reality is far less reflected upon than the seducing, but rather distant Euro-Atlantic club. Ukraine for Russia; it represents more than a lame western-flank’ geopolitical pivot, or to say, the first collateral in the infamous policy of containment that the West had continuously pursued against Russia ever since the 18th century.[5]
For Moscow, Kiev is an emotional place – an indispensable bond of historio-civilizational attachment – something that makes and sustains Russia both Christian and European. Putin clearly redlined it: Sudden annexation of Crimea (return to its pre-1954 status) was an unpleasant and humiliating surprise that brought a lot of foreign policy hangover for both the NATO and EU.[6]
Nevertheless, for the Atlantist alarmists (incl. the Partition studies participants and those working for the Hate industry), military lobbyists and other cold-war mentality ‘deep-state’ structures on all sides, this situation offers a perfect raison d’etre.
Thus drifting chopped off and away, a failed state beyond rehabilitation,[7] Ukraine itself is a prisoner of this domesticated security drama. Yet again, the false dilemma so tragically imploded within this blue state, of a 50:50 polarized and deterritorialized population, over the question where the country belongs – in space, time and side of history. Conclusively, Eastern Europe is further twisting, while gradually combusted between Ukrainization and Pakistanization.[8] The rest of Europe is already shifting the costs of its own foreign policy journey by ‘fracking’ its households with a considerably (politically) higher energy bills.
Author is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He has authored six books (for American and European publishers) and numerous articles on, mainly, geopolitics energy and technology. For the past decades, he has over 1,200 hours of teaching on the subject International Law and Relations (including lecturing in both Kiev and Moscow universities and Diplomatic Academy).
[1] Annotated from one of my earlier writings, it states as following: “…Early Russian state has ever since expanded north/ northeast and eastward, reaching the physical limits of its outreach by crossing the Bering straits (and the sale of Russian Alaska to the USA in 1867). By the late 17th and early 18th century, Russia had begun to draw systematically into European politico-military theatre. (…) In the meantime, Europe’s universalistic empire dissolved. It was contested by the challengers (like the Richelieu’s France and others–geopolitical, or the Lutheran/Protestant – ideological), and fragmented into the cluster of confronted monarchies, desperately trying to achieve an equilibrium through dynamic balancing. Similar political process will affect Russian universal empire only by late 20th century, following the Soviet dissolution. (…) Not fully accepted into the European collective system before the Metternich’s Holy Alliance, even had its access into the post-Versailles system denied, Russia was still not ignored like other peripheral European power. The Ottomans, conversely, were negated from all of the security systems until the very creation of the NATO (Republic of Turkey). Through the pre-emptive partition of Poland in the eve of WWII, and successful campaigns elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Bolshevik Russia expanded both its territory and its influence westwards. (…) An early Soviet period of Russia was characterized by isolated bilateral security arangements, e.g. with Germans, Fins, Japanese, etc. The post WWII days have brought the regional collective system of Warsaw Pact into existence, as to maintain the communist gains in Europe and to effectively oppose geopolitically and ideologically the similar, earlier formed, US-led block. Besides Nixon’s reapproachment towards China, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the final stage in the progressive fragmentation of the vast Sino-Soviet Communist block (that dominated the Euroasian land mass with its massive size and centrality), letting Russia emerge as the successor. The sudden ideological and territorial Soviet break-up, however, was followed by the cultural shock and civil disorder, painful economic and demographic crisis and rapidly widening disparities. All this coupled with the humiliating wars in Caucasus and elsewhere, since the centripetal and centrifugal forces of integration or fragmentations came into the oscillatory play. Between 1989 and 1991, communist rule ended in country after country and the Warsaw Pact officially dissolved. Subsequently, the Gorbachev-Jeltsin Russia experienced the greatest geopolitical contraction of any major power in the modern era and one of the fastest ever in history. Still, Gorbachev-Jeltsin tandem managed to (re-)brand themselves domestically and internationally – each got its own label of vodka…” (Verticalization of Historical Experiences: Europe’s and Asia’s Security Structures – Structural Similarities and Differences, Crossroads – the Macedonian Foreign Policy Journal, 4 (1), page 111-112, M-MFA 2008)
[2] Ethnically, linguistically and religiously one of the most homogenous countries of Europe, Poland in its post-communist concepts reinvigorates the faith (as being, past the days of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, massively de-Slavicized). No wonder as the Polish-born Karol Józef WojtyÅ‚a served the Roman Curia as Pontifex Maximus from 1978, to be replaced by the German-born Joseph Ratzinger in 2005. Prizing Roman-Catholicism over ethnic and linguistic roots, even harshly denouncing any Slavic sentiment as a dangerous roter russischer Panslawismus, ‘fortress’ Poland effectively isolates itself on a long-run as none of its neighbors is Catholic. To the contrary, the four fifths of its land-borders are shared with other Slavic states. To externally mobilize, the elites (in any Eastern European state) would need an appealing intellectual case – not a mare ethno-religious chauvinism. One of the leading Croatian thinkers, Domagoj Nikolic says: “Austrian Catholicism is not anti-Germanic, but Polish is anti-Slavic. Belgian Catholicism is neither antifascism dismissive nor anti-Francophonic, but our Croatian Catholicism is very anti-Slavic and is antifascism trivializing… That undeniably leads us to conclude that (Slavic) Eastern Europe suffers the authenticity deficit…Only the immature nations can suffer such a historical disorientation.”
[3] Since the end of WWII in the Old Continent, there was no other external military interventions but to the Europe’s East. To be accurate, in the NATO history (nearly as double longer than the history of the Warsaw pact), the only two interventions of that Block ever conducted in Europe were both taking place solely on Eastern European soil. While the two Russian (covert) interventions since the end of the Cold War aimed at its strategic neighborhood (former Soviet republics, heavily inhabited by ethnic Russian; Abkhazia-South Ossetia and Crimea-East Ukraine), and were (unsuccessfully) justified as the encirclement preemption, the US-led NATO intervened overtly. In both NATO cases (Bosnia and Serbia-Kosovo), it was well beyond any membership territory, and short of any UN-endorsed mandate, meaning without a real international legitimacy. “Humanitarian intervention in Kosovo was never exactly what it appeared… It was a use of imperial power to support a self-determination claim by a national minority”– wrote Michael Ignatieff about the 1990s Balkans events, as fresh and accurate as if reporting was from Sevastopol in spring 2014.
[4] This is further burdened by the imperialism in a hurry – an inflammable mix of the Lithuanian-Polish past traumas and German ‘manifest destiny’ of being historically yet again ill-fated; impatient for quick results – simply, unable to capitalize on its previous successes.
[5] Does the declining big power of a lost ideological grip, demoralized, with a disfranchised, ageing and rarified population, of the primary-commodities export driven, but shrinking economy need to be contained? Hence, what is the origin of anxity: facts or confrontational nostaligia? The chief American chief Sovietologies grip, ory-comodity driven economy Sovietologist, George Kennan warned about the NATO expansion already in 1998: “I think it is a tragic mistake. Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies”. In that very interview, Kennan predicted that the NATO Eastern enlargement will provoke a major crisis in Europe with a hawks than ‘arguing’ a self-fulfilling prophecy “you see, we always told you that is how the Russian are”. Apparently, the Russian red-red line is Georgia and Ukraine. Kremlin kept stressing that calmly, but repeatedly for nearly 20 past years. Eventually, Georgia was territorially and politico-economically wrecked as a functioning, viable state before it was allowed to become a Western stronghold in Russia’s backyard. Georgia of that 2008. is an indication enough of how Ukraine – which is even a front-yard for Russia – might end up beyond 2014.
[6] Putin’s “project is national, not imperial…to modernize Russia which, like any other state, has security concerns…” – fairly admits former French Minister of Defense Jean-Pierre Chevènement and confesses: “The pursuit of this conflict may turn Ukraine into a lasting source of conflict between the EU and Russia. Through a widely echoed ideological crusade, the US is attempting both to isolate Russia and to tighten its control over the rest of Europe”. /Chevènement, J-P. (2015), No Need for this Cold War, Le Monde diplomatique July 2015 (page 18)/
[7] By the most scholarly accounts, Ukraine is the world champion in the re-feudalisation of its society. It goes well beyond pure income levels and its rampant systematic distribution inequality (inequality extraction ratio). Unfortunatelly, Ukraine is the world champion in other endemic disproportionality, too – in an asymmetry of wealth disposal and in a speed of acquiring it. The combined wealth of Ukraine’s 50 riches oligarchs equalled 85% of Ukraine’s (pre-war) GDP. Oligarhs needed only 16 years to accumulate it (1991-2007). Even the Economist (a well-informed magazine of a wealthy class-tolerant, neoliberal orientation) questioned these practices, as stretching far beneath a classical criminal activity and representing – in fact – a warfare of elites against its own population (undeclared gerila war). The Magazine concluded: ‘Ukraine today is as our western societies would be without checks-and-balances mechanism’.
[8]Ukrainization could be attributed to eastern and western Slavs– who are fighting distinctions without significant difference. Pakistanization itself should describe the southern Slavs’ scenery: In lieu of truth and reconciliation, guilt is offered as a control mechanism, following the period of an unchecked escalation, ranging from a hysteria-of-a-small-difference to a crime -of-otherness purge. Both models share about the same ending result: a self-trivialization, barbarization and re-feudalization.
HUMAN RESOURCE (HR) is a field that’s often overlooked when we talk about artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, and other emerging technologies.
However, the team is tasked with quite a significant workload — be it recruiting, training, payroll, or appraisals. Of these, recruiting, most HR managers will agree, is quite a challenging task, and could use a bit of help from AI.
The recruitment cycle starts with receiving a request for a new candidate (for a new role), requires the creation of a job description, putting out an ad, receiving CVs, sorting CVs, scheduling interviews, sending out offers, negotiating pay, and finally ends with signing the job contract.
Throughout this cycle, there are many ways in which AI can help HR managers. Some of these are:
1. Improved job adverts
Recruiters can use AI to sort through hundreds of thousands of job adverts in any particular niche that they’re looking to recruit in and find out what sort of jobs already exist, what are the needs and demands of those jobs, and what kind of candidates are other companies looking for.
Once recruiters have that information, it’s easy for them to know how to frame and structure their own advert in order to attract the right talent.
Companies can use chatbots to help answer the frequently asked questions that applicants usually have, saving HR managers a significant amount of time.
In today’s day and age, companies want to come across as helpful and approachable — hence, answering all queries promptly is important — while using a chatbot is most efficient.
HR managers to get candidates to submit videos of themselves explaining why they’re a good fit for the company and the role. Source: Pressmaster/Shutterstock
3. Video interviews
Some companies receive hundreds or even thousands of applications. Physically interviewing each of them is difficult.
However, in order to get the best talent, it might be a good idea for HR managers to get candidates to submit videos of themselves explaining why they’re a good fit for the company and the role.
These videos can then be analysed by AI-powered solutions to examine facial expressions, word choice, speech rate, and several other factors — to find the candidates suitable for personal interviews.
Not all jobs have a formal education requirement. This is especially true in the new age where data scientists and digital marketers come from varying backgrounds and earn their stripes on the job.
AI can help create assessments to understand whether candidates applying for a particular role will be able to succeed in it, helping HR managers save time and money.
5. Improved communications
During the various stages of the recruitment cycle, it’s a good idea to keep candidates informed and in the loop on the progress of their application.
Using AI-powered smart communication tools, HR managers not only save time but also manage to efficiently provide the updates necessary to ensure a great applicant experience.
This article originally appeared on our sister site Tech Wire Asia.
Tour of other countries by MBS overshadowed by murder of Jamal Khashoggi, war in Yemen
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, and Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia at Algiers airport on Sunday (AFP)
Sunday 2 December 2018
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) arrived in the Algerian capital on Sunday night as part of a tour overshadowed by the murder of a dissident journalist.
The powerful prince and his large delegation were seen being greeted on a red carpet at Algiers airport by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and members of his government, AFP reported.
The aim of the trip was to give "new impetus to biliteral cooperation and the realisation of partnerships and investment projects", the Algerian presidency said ahead of the visit.
MBS set off last week on his first foreign tour since the grisly murder of Washington Post and MEE columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate on 2 October. Before participating in the G20 summit in Argentina, the heir to the throne of the world's top oil exporter had visited the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia, Reuters said.
Khashoggi's killing has put mounting pressure on Riyadh and MBS, who Turkish officials - and reportedly the CIA - have concluded was behind Khashoggi’s death. Saudi authorities have vehemently denied the crown prince was involved in the murder, although Riyadh has admitted Khashoggi was killed at the Istanbul consulate.
Still, MBS sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser - who oversaw the team that killed Khashoggi - in the hours before and after the journalist's death, according to a classified CIA assessment seen by the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal also reported on Friday that in August 2017 MBS had told associates if his efforts to persuade Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia were unsuccessful "we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements".
Middle East Eye previously reported that Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general's office in the consulate onto the table of his study next door where it took seven minutes for him to be killed.
The Saudi crown prince's visit to Algeria has drawn criticism from political and academic circles in the North African country. It was jointly denounced by 17 intellectuals, journalists, Muslim scholars and other figures in Algeria in a statement obtained by AFP.
In the statement, they said the "whole world is certain that he ordered a terrible crime against the journalist Jamal Khashoggi".
Political parties also expressed opposition to the visit, among them the Movement for the Society of Peace opposition party.
It said Prince Mohammed was "responsible for the death of a large number of children and civilians in Yemen" as well as that of Khashoggi.
Louisa Hanoune, head of the opposition Workers' Party, described his visit as a "provocation".
Algerian-Saudi investments and trade relations, especially in the oil and petrochemical sectors, will be discussed during the two-day visit, APS said on Saturday.
Algeria is one of the few Arab countries that has good relations with Saudi Arabia and its arch-rival Iran, both fellow OPEC members.
Algiers also has strong ties with Qatar, with which Saudi Arabia and three other Arab states severed trade and transport ties in June 2017, accusing it of supporting terrorism and Iran. Qatar denies the allegations.
Algeria is also on good terms with Turkey, whose relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained by the Khashoggi killing.
Earlier in the day, MBS made a brief visit to Mauritania where he signed a series of agreements with President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
Editor of independent news website Rappler vows to challenge charges of tax fraud that she says are being used to intimidate her Maria Ressa (left) has said she will fight the charges and continue to hold the Philippines government accountable Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images
Maria Ressa, the editor of Philippine online news website Rappler, will turn herself into the authorities on Monday after a warrant was issued for her arrest.
Last month the government announced they were charging Ressa and Rappler with five counts of tax fraud, charges that Ressa said were trumped up in an attempt to “harass and intimidate” the news organisation, which has been highly critical of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
On Sunday night, Ressa confirmed to the Guardian that a warrant for her arrest had been issued and that she would surrender to the authorities first thing on Monday morning and post bail.
The warrant was issued on Ressa’s return to the Philippines after several weeks travelling to receive multiple awards for her work with Rappler, including the 2018 Knight International Journalism award and this year’s prestigious Press Freedom award given by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“I’m going to challenge the process and I’m going to challenge the charges,” Ressa said on Sunday, moments after landing in Manila airport. “I will continue to hold the government accountable.”
The Department of Justice confirmed last week it was charging Rappler with three counts of failure to file returns, and one count of tax evasion, all charges that Ressa denies. The charges carry heavy fines and jail sentences of up to 10 years.
The move to arrest Ressa is the latest in what many have seen as a direct attack by Duterte’s regime on news organisations that have been critical of his government, in particular his war on drugs which has taken an estimated tens of thousands of lives over the past two years.
Rappler was among the main news organisations challenging the extrajudicial killings by the police and subsequently has been the subject of seven government investigations, with their political reporter also banned from the presidential palace.
The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines issued a statement damning the warrant issued for Ressa’s arrest. They stated: “Arresting Maria will send a clear signal that the country’s democracy is fast receding under a feckless administration that cannot abide criticism and free expression and will go to ridiculous lengths to muzzle all those it does not agree with.”
GUY VERHOFSTADT- BRUSSELS – When Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook, appeared before the European Parliament in May, I suggested to him that he had lost control of his company. As one of the few politicians ever to have confronted Zuckerberg in person, I was happy for the opportunity. But, much to my frustration, I did not receive a direct verbal response to any of my questions.
I am not alone. Politicians around the world have grown tired of Facebook’s constant attempts to avoid accountability in the name of profits. With Facebook, the myth of “self-regulation,” long trotted out by high-paid lobbyists, has been laid to rest once and for all. It has been months since Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress and the European Parliament, and the most urgent questions about Facebook’s business practices remain unanswered.
With respect to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is still unclear what Facebook knew, and when it knew it. Equally unclear is the extent to which foreign interference through Facebook contributed to the election of US President Donald Trump, and to the outcome of the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum.
Does the seamless dissemination of targeted propaganda on Facebook still pose a risk to democratic elections? No one knows, owing largely to Facebook’s own dissembling. Facebook claims to have improved its privacy protections. But, given that it has failed to conduct a comprehensive internal audit of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as requested by the European Parliament, there is every reason to fear that the upcoming European Parliament election in May will be subject to still more foreign manipulation.
Though Facebook and many other digital giants have signed on to a European Commission “code of conduct” on policing hate speech and disinformation, much more needs to be done. The code of conduct is too weak and does not include a timeline for when companies need to meet their commitments. In addition, far more resources are needed to enforce the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, so that tech companies can no longer treat penalties for the misuse of personal data as mere costs of doing business.
Europe also lacks a zealous prosecutorial/investigative body that can hold tech companies to account. In the United States, Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, has handed down dozens of indictments, secured multiple convictions, and demonstrated the need for empowered prosecutors in cases involving social media. It is time for Europe to catch up, first by establishing its own special prosecutor to investigate attacks on recent elections, but also by tackling other crimes that arise from the abuse of data.
Moreover, the EU urgently needs to develop a robust mechanism for tracking and analyzing Russian disinformation campaigns across all member states and in every language. Only then will prosecutors and other law-enforcement authorities have what they need to compel testimony and provide an effective check against such attacks. With the right strategy in place, we can prevent social-media platforms from serving as accelerants of disinformation, by identifying and stopping propaganda campaigns as soon as they emerge.
At the EU level, the East StratCom Task Force that the European Council established in 2015 should be expanded and made independent from the EU diplomatic service. Its sole task should be to identify, analyze, expose, and debunk disinformation.
In the long term, though, there is only one surefire way to address the threat that Facebook and other platforms pose to Western democracy: regulation. Just as self-regulation by banks failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis, so self-regulation in the tech sector has failed to make Facebook a responsible actor.
Regulating the tech giants should start with updated competition rules to address the monopoly control of personal data. And we need new regulations to ensure accountability and transparency in the algorithmic processing of data by any actor, private or public. But, ultimately, we should not rule out a break-up of Facebook and some of the other tech giants.
After all, what I told Zuckerberg in May still applies: he does not appear to have control of his creation. But even if he did, we should all be worried about the “more open and connected” world that he has in mind. Just imagine tens of thousands of low-paid Facebook “employees” in India and elsewhere scrutinizing our every word to decide what constitutes fake news and hate speech, and what does not.
As TheNew York Times recently revealed, Facebook is so desperate to protect its business model that it hired a shadowy PR firm to spread anti-Semitic misinformation about one of its leading critics, the financier and philanthropist George Soros. Such outrageous behavior suggests that Facebook has much to hide. And, as it happens, a UK parliamentary committee has just seized internal Facebook emails showing that the company may have known about malicious Russian activity on its platform as far back as 2014.
There can be little doubt that monopoly control over millions of people’s personal data and the flow of news and information online poses a clear and present threat to democracy. Facebook’s management has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted to behave responsibly. There is no reason why we, the people, should put store in any of the company’s promises to manage our data or clean up its act. Self-regulation has failed spectacularly. It’s time for the real thing.
Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and top officials reached a truce in the trade war over dinner at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
BY KEITH JOHNSON-
As widely expected, U.S. President Donald Trump paused his trade war with China at the G-20 summit in Argentina this weekend, halting the imposition of new tariffs for 90 days while the two countries continue talking about the wider irritants in the trade relationship. But Trump also threw a cloud over the future of the new NAFTA, threatening to pull out of the existing three-way North American trade deal altogether if Congress doesn’t ratify the renegotiated accord.
Maria Ressa (left) has said she will fight the charges and continue to hold the Philippines government accountable Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images
