French court overturns “illegal” ban on BDS event

Ali Abunimah-31 May 2016

A court in France struck a blow for free speech when it overturned a government ban on a meeting to support individuals facing trial for their Palestine solidarity activism.

The decision comes as governments and organizations around the world are showing increasing willingness to defend the legitimacy of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights.

On 26 May, the mayor’s office in the banned the gathering scheduled for Tuesday evening at a public facility, featuring Mohammed Khatib of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and writer Eric Hazan.

southern city of Toulouse

The meeting was sponsored by the Support Committee for the BDS Accused of Toulouse, a coalition of dozens of groups backing four activists facing trial next month for handing out leaflets calling for the boycott of Israeli goods.

But on Monday, the Toulouse administrative court overturned the mayor’s ban and ordered the city to provide a space for the meeting to take place.

The court stated that the mayor’s ban on the meeting was “a grave and manifestly illegal infringement of the fundamental freedom of assembly,” according to BDS France and Association France Palestine Solidarité.

A photo posted on the Facebook page of the Support Committee for the BDS Accused of Toulouse shows that the meeting went ahead as planned on 31 May.

“Democratic society”

Activist groups celebrated what they saw as a significant victory in light of France’s draconian crackdown on speech supporting Palestinian rights and the BDS movement.

In March, the Toulouse city council voted by a large majority to condemn BDS and to refuse to provide public facilities to “events that aim to promote the boycott of Israel.”

The measure would appear to be part of the wave of legislation aimed at quashing the BDS movement passed or introduced in legislatures in Europe and North America at Israel’s urging.

The mayor’s letter banning the Tuesday meeting had cited an October 2015 decision by the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court of criminal appeals, which upheld the conviction of a dozen Palestine solidarity activists for publicly calling for the boycott of Israeli goods.

That ruling also made France, in addition to Israel, the only country to penalize appeals not to buy Israeli products.

But France’s mainstream civil liberties group, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, noted that the October decision is currently under appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The group said that the appeal argues that “calls for boycott aimed at products and not persons, ‘and which are part of a nonviolent critique of a state’s policies, fall within the framework of free democratic debate that is at the heart of the notion of a democratic society.’”

Ligue des Droits de l’Homme called for the acquittal of all BDS activists and for an end to the government policy of prosecuting them for the exercise of their democratic rights.

This statement comes as hundreds of organizations in Europe, including trade unions representing millions of workers, are publicly rejecting the Israeli-backed effort to repress Palestine solidarity activism.

The latest organization to do so is FIDH Worldwide Movement for Human Rights, whose international board has “formally recognized and reaffirmed” the right of individuals around the world to participate in the BDS movement to protest Israel’s “longstanding policies of unlawful occupation and discrimination of Palestinians.”

Founded in 1922, FIDH is a federation of 178 human rights organizations operating in 120 countries to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Out of step

In recent months, three EU governments, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ireland, have publicly recognized the legitimacy of the BDS movement and defended boycott advocacy as free speech.

Earlier this month the Ontario parliament handily defeated an anti-BDS bill that civil liberties groups warned would have had a disastrous impact on the democratic rights of people in Canada’s most populous province.

But France, which has professed to champion free speech under the banner “Je Suis Charlie,” appears to be heading in the other direction.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls used a visit to Israel last week as an opportunity to renew his smears against the BDS movement.

Speaking at Tel Aviv University, Valls claimed that “hatred of the Jews as a whole” lay behind the BDS movement.

In another potentially significant development, France’s powerful Israel lobby group CRIF elected a new leader.

Francis Kalifat, born in French-occupied Algeria, will succeed Roger Cukierman and become the organization’s first ever non-Ashkenazi president.

According to the newspaper Le Figaro, Kalifat is a former activist with Betar, “the right-wing Zionist youth movement, sometimes called extremist, which advocates self-defense and which does not hesitate to throw punches in the street.”

The new CRIF president announced that his priority would be to quickly obtain “in a clear manner the prohibition in France of the BDS movement.”

These are indications that the French government and its allies are certain to persist in their repressive policies.

But as it so often does, repression is backfiring as French and European civil society defends the right to call for the boycott of Israel and the institutions complicit in its regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid.

Islamophobia: Why are So Many People So Frightened?

Historically, different social groups in different cultural contexts have been the victim of this projected but ‘socially approved’ fear and hatred. Women, indigenous peoples, Catholics, Afro-Americans, Jews, communists, Palestinians…. The list goes on.

by Robert J. Burrowes

( June 1, 2016, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Islamophobia has become a significant factor driving politics in many western countries.

Islamophobia – fear of Muslims – is now highly visible among European populations concerned about terrorist responses from Islamic groups claiming Jihadi links. However, it is also evident among those same populations in relation to the refugee flow from the Middle East. In addition, Islamophobia is highly evident among sectors of the US population during the presidential race. It is a significant issue in Australia. Outside the West, even the (Muslim) Rohingya in Burma are feared by Buddhist monks and others.

Given that this widespread western fear of Muslims was not the case prior to the US-instigated ‘War on Terror’, do Muslims around the world now pose a greater threat to western interests than previously? Or is something else going on here?

In short, why are so many westerners (and others) now frightened of Muslims? Let me start at the beginning.

Human socialization is essentially a process of terrorizing children into ‘thinking’ and doing what the adults around them want (irrespective of the functionality of this thought and behavior in evolutionary terms). Hence, the attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors that most humans exhibit are driven by fear and the self-hatred that accompanies this fear. For a comprehensive explanation of this point, see ‘Why Violence?’http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/

However, because this fear and self-hatred are so unpleasant to feel consciously, most people suppress these feelings below conscious awareness and then (unconsciously) project them onto ‘legitimized’ victims (that is, those people ‘approved’ for victimization by their parents and/or society generally). In short: the fear and self-hatred are projected as fear of, and hatred for, particular social groups (whether people of another gender, nation, race, religion or class).

This all happens because virtually all adults are (unconsciously) terrified and self-hating, so they unconsciously terrorize children into accepting the attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors that make the adults feel safe. A child who thinks and acts differently is frightening and is not allowed to flourish.

Once the child has been so terrorized however, they will respond to their fear and self-hatred with diminishing adult stimulus. What is important, emotionally speaking, is that the fear and self-hatred have an outlet so that they can be released and acted upon. And because parents do not allow their child to feel and express their fear and hatred in relation to the parents themselves (who, fundamentally, just want obedience without comprehending that obedience is rooted in fear and generates enormous self-hatred because it denies the individual’s Self-will), the child is left with no alternative but to project their fear and hatred in socially approved directions.

Hence, as an adult, their own fear and self-hatred are unconscious to the individual precisely because they were never allowed to feel and express them safely as a child. What they do feel, consciously, is their hatred for ‘legitimized’ victims.

Historically, different social groups in different cultural contexts have been the victim of this projected but ‘socially approved’ fear and hatred. Women, indigenous peoples, Catholics, Afro-Americans, Jews, communists, Palestinians…. The list goes on. The predominant group in this category, of course, is children (whose ‘uncontrollability’ frightens virtually all parents until they are successfully terrorized and tamed).

The groups that are socially approved to be feared and hated are determined by elites. This is because individual members of the elite are themselves terrified and full of self-hatred and they use the various powerful instruments at their disposal – ranging from control of politicians to the corporate media – to trigger the fear and self-hatred of the population at large in order to focus this fear and hatred on what frightens the elite. This makes it easier for the elite to then attack the group that they are projecting frightens them.

For now, of course, Muslims are the primary target for this projected fear and self-hatred, which accounts for the US-led western war on the Middle East. Islamophobia thus allows elites and others to project their fear and self-hatred onto Muslims so that elites can then seek to destroy this fear and self-hatred. Obviously, this cannot work. You cannot destroy fear, whether yours or that of anyone else. However, you can cause phenomenal damage to those onto whom your fear and self-hatred are projected. Of course, there is nothing intelligent about this process. If every Muslim in the world was killed, elites would simply then project their fear and self-hatred onto other groups and set out to destroy those groups too.

In fact, as western elites now demonize Russia and encircle it with nuclear weapons and ABM defense systems, we simply witness another example of these elites projecting their fear and self-hatred.

If you are starting to wonder about the sanity of this, you can rest assured there is none. Elites are insane. If you want to read a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘The Global Elite is Insane’.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1402/S00056/the-global-elite-is-insane.htm

So is there anything we can do? Fundamentally, we need to stop terrorizing our children. As a back up, we can provide safe spaces for children and adults alike to feel their fear and self-hatred consciously (which will allow them to be safely released). By doing this, we can avoid creating more insane individuals who will project their fear and self-hatred in elite-approved directions.

In addition, if you are fearless enough to recognize that elites are manipulating you into fearing Muslims and others whom we do not need to fear, now would be a good time to speak up and to demonstrate your solidarity. You might also like to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Suppressed fear and self-hatred must be projected and they are usually projected in socially approved ways (although mental illnesses and some forms of criminal activity are ways in which this suppressed fear manifests that are not socially approved).

In essence, Islamophobia is a manifestation of the mental illness of elites manipulating us into doing their insane bidding. Unfortunately, many people are easy victims of this manipulation.

About Writer:  Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why 

Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address isflametree@riseup.net and his website is athttp://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Syria air drop plan appears to stall as first medical aid convoy reaches Daraya

Air drops over Syria look increasingly unlikely as the first humanitarian convoy since November 2012 arrives in Daraya

Jamie Merrill-Wednesday 1 June 2016

Medical aid convoys entered the Syrian towns of Daraya and Moadamiyah on Wednesday as concerns grew that a plan to use air drops to get food and medicine to besieged towns in the country has stalled.

The arrival of medical supplies in Daraya, in a convoy organised by the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian

Red Crescent, came as the head of the Russian coordination centre in Syria said a 48-hour truce had been declared in the town to ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered to trapped civilians.

Rebel-held Daraya is only two miles from aid warehouses in the centre of Damascus, but the arrival of vaccines, nutritional items and baby milk - not food - on Wednesday was the first humanitarian aid to arrive since Syrian government forces besieged the town in November 2012. 

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#BREAKING: First humanitarian aid to reach people of #Daraya. We've just entered the city with @UN & @SYRedCrescent.

8:16 AM - 1 Jun 2016

About 8,000 people live in the town, just a 15-minutes drive southwest of Damascus.

Despite intensifying appeals from its residents, the UN and rights groups, Syria's government has so far repeatedly refused to allow food aid into the town and last month turned away a convoy that had reached the town's outskirts, then shelled residents who had gathered to wait for the aid that never arrived.

"The last time, people were filling the streets waiting for the aid to come in," activist Shadi Matar told AFP from inside Daraya. "This time, there was no one. They were afraid the regime would shell them and they knew the convoy only held medical aid."

The arrival of aid comes more than a month after the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) said it would begin air drops on 1 June if President Bashar al-Assad’s government continued to block World Food Programme (WFP) aid and prevent land convoys from reaching besieged areas. The ISSG's 20 members, including the US, Britain and Russia, passed the decision unanimously. 

At the time of the decision, the group highlighted the UN’s inability to provide any assistance to besieged areas including Daraya, Douma, East Harasta and Moadamiyah, but the joint statement on the deadline was hailed as a breakthrough by the British foreign secretary, Phillip Hammond.

Hammond said on 17 May that the decision was a "very important step forward, not only because it will save countless thousands of lives on the ground, but also potentially because it will save the political process".

It is unclear what impact the aid deliveries to Moadamiyeh and Daraya may have on American and British moves towards air drops, but Middle East Eye understands that the project is unlikely to go ahead in the short term because the UN decided the project is too dangerous without cooperation from Damascus and Moscow. 

Bissan Fakih, a senior campaigner with the Syria Campaign, told MEE that she did not think air drops would commence this week. She said: “What we are seeing today is an attempt to get land convoys through. To move towards air drops, we need a strong statement from the UN and the US.”

The arrival of aid comes a day after Gareth Bayley, the UK special representative to Syria, condemned “continued obstruction and withholding of humanitarian aid in Syria” by the Damascus government.

He said: “Air drops to deliver aid to all designated besieged areas remains a last resort. It is an expensive and complex way to deliver aid. But it is vital that we fulfil this commitment. The UK stands ready to do so.”

Chris Doyle, the director of Council for Arab-British Understanding, which has campaigned for urgent aid drops, told MEE that Bayley’s comments reflected “his frustration” with the “failure of the international community to live up to its promises” and failure on Russia’s part to put pressure on Assad - but not a sign that the drops are imminent.

“We must remember the aid drops are an admission of failure as the regime in Damascus should be adhering to international law and allowing overground aid convoys across the county," Doyle said.

"But if we are going to promise to [carry out] air drops, having already failed to lift the sieges, then we should at least deliver them. We have yet again got ourselves into a situation where the international community cannot live up to its commitments.”

Air drops are a tactic of last resort in humanitarian disasters as they are fraught with practical problems, though campaigners say they are the only viable option in some areas of Syria and some air drops have been carried out, mainly in Deir er-Zor with Russian support.

Aid agencies also fear that air drops released from high altitude will either miss their targets or be seized by Syrian government forces, while exposing aircraft to risks of attack by the Syrian military.

However, there was fresh hope on Wednesday as Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko, head of the Russian coordination centre, announced the ceasefire.

He said: “On the initiative of Russia and in agreement with the leadership of Syria and the American side, a 'regime of silence' has been introduced for 48 hours on June 1, 2016, from 00:01am in the settlement of Daraya to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to the population,” Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko said.

Despite the announcement of Wednesday’s ceasefire, critics say experience has shown that the Syrian government may refuse to provide authority for air drops to cities that it has under siege.

Meanwhile also on Wednesday, a top official at Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told the Guardian that the targeting of hospitals and humanitarian workers in Syria and Iraq is becoming a “new normal”.

Michiel Hofman, a senior specialist at the charity, described the fighting in Syria as a “dirty war,” saying both sides have targeted hospitals, while focusing most of his attention on the air forces operating in the region.

“When we talk about the bombing of hospitals, bombing means air forces,” he said. “Rebel groups don’t have air forces, so this is exclusively states that by definition have much larger firepower.”

On Monday night, the national hospital in the opposition-held Idlib city was put out of service when multiple air strikes hit the area, killing at least two dozen civilians in the latest attack on health services in the conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that on Wednesday, government air strikes killed a further 15 civilians in Idlib province, while Russian and government air strikes killed at least 11 civilians in neighbouring Aleppo province. All told, at least 42 civilians died in northern Syria from air strikes conducted by the government, Russia and the US-coalition.

UCLA shooting: Police say two killed in murder-suicide, campus deemed safe after lockdown

Police said the shooting was a murder-suicide.

By Susan Svrluga and Mark Berman-June 1 at 4:40 PM

Two people were killed Wednesday morning in a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles, shootings that led police to lock down the campus for about two hours as officers searched and cleared the area.

“The campus is now safe,” Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “The issue that occurred has been contained.”

Reports of several shots fired at the city campus started coming in at about 10 a.m. local time, and authorities quickly locked down the campus of 43,000 students. Police urged people to stay away as they considered it a possible active-shooter situation, and students barricaded themselves in classrooms and dorms as dozens of local and federal law enforcement officials streamed in.

Some UCLA students were still in class this week as the semester is wrapping up, with the main commencement scheduled for June 10.

Police could not confirm the identities of the two people killed, their relationship or their roles at the school, saying only that they were both men. Beck said they were found in a small office in the engineering building.

“Many, many questions are unanswered at this point,” Beck said, noting that it was possible there was a suicide note at the scene.

Two people were killed in a likely murder-suicide in an office on the UCLA campus, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said on June 1. Students and staff are slowly being released from lockdown. (Reuters)

After a prolonged search involving law enforcement officers on the campus and surrounding areas, police ultimately determined that there were no remaining suspects. The university said the campus reopened a short time after 12 p.m., but classes were canceled for the remainder of the day.

Beck said police would continue to search the building where the shooting occurred even after students were released from lockdown.

An attorney in Orange County, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the situation, was worried when he heard reports of a shooter in the engineering building where his father, a professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, has an office. In a text exchange, his father described having to hold a door closed while shots were fired.

“My dad is now out safe, thankfully,” he said in a telephone interview. “They locked down in their offices ‘til SWAT teams broke down the doors and escorted everyone out of the building.”

The law enforcement response on Wednesday was typical of what is seen after shootings and reports of gunshots at schools. Initial information is often fluid and uncertain, as police work to figure out if they are responding to another mass shooting — like the rampage at Roseburg, Ore., last fall — or a murder-suicide, as occurred at a Phoenix high school this year.

Schools often respond quickly to potential violence, running shelter-in-place drills during the year and locking down facilities when there are reports of gunfire. They also have increasingly become targets for threats of bombs and violence, as callers across the country this year have disrupted classes and stoked fear in dozens of schools.

Due to the lockdown at the university, police across Los Angeles were placed on tactical alert, according to the LAPD.

Due to the lockdown at UCLA Wednesday, police across Los Angeles were placed on tactical alert, according to the LAPD. The LAPD and FBI both responded to the scene, along with agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The President was briefed aboard Air Force One on the shooting, according to the White House.

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Turns Out That Maybe You Shouldn’t Trust the ‘Media’

From Iran to China, repressive governments are posing as journalists to hack into the computers of dissidents and other enemies of the state.


BY ELIAS GROLL-MAY 31, 2016

In December 2013, a journalist named Andrew Dwight emailed Rori Donaghy, a journalist with Middle East Eye and a founder of the Emirates Center for Human Rights, which focuses on abuses in the United Arab Emirates.

“I have been trying to reach you for comment and I am hoping that this e-mail reaches the intended recipient,” Dwight wrote, explaining that he was working on a book about his experiences from the Middle East. “My focus is on human factors and rights issues in seemingly non-authoritarian regimes (that are, in reality, anything but). I was hoping that I might correspond with you and reference some of your work.”

The email concluded with a link to an article Dwight wanted to discuss. Donaghy clicked on it, but it wasn’t an innocent connection to a webpage. That link was instead part of an elaborate Internet infrastructure set up to scan computers for vulnerabilities, allowing hackers to later target them with so-called spyware, software that can be used to monitor a computer and its users.


The email from Dwight was a ruse, one piece of a larger campaign that researchers say went after activists and opposition figures online. In fact, Dwight never existed. He was a persona created to win Donaghy’s trust and get him to click on links that surveilled his computer.

Dwight’s creators — hackers likely working on behalf of the UAE government, according to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — made him a journalist for a reason: It’s a remarkably effective tool for spreading spyware. Around the world, authoritarian governments are increasingly using a basic tool of journalism — unsolicited emails to a source or expert — against their opponents by hiding that kind of malware in emails purportedly coming from both real reporters and fake ones like Dwight.

The Citizen Lab, a research group that has done groundbreaking work on digital surveillance, has documented hacking campaigns tied to the governments of the UAE, Iran, Bahrain, and Latin America’s left-leaning dictators in which their spies have posed as reporters in emails and phone calls in order to convince dissidents to click on links and open documents containing spyware.

The tactic provides an easy ruse for government sleuths. Security experts will tell you to be suspicious of unsolicited emails, but writing an unsolicited email is a basic aspect of reporting. Journalists will write to activists and experts they have never met, seeking interviews and expertise. It is an infinitely adaptable cover story, and the autocrats and monarchs of the world are catching on.

In a report released Sunday, the Citizen Lab documents how an UAE hacking group active from 2012 until the present tried to infect the computers of Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents with spyware via Dwight’s fake persona and other methods.

The Citizen Lab is careful to note that it can’t definitively prove that the hackers, which targeted more than two dozen individuals besides Donaghy, worked on behalf of the UAE, but it lays out compelling circumstantial evidence that the attackers were sponsored by the country.

The hacking group, dubbed “Stealth Falcon,” displayed a level of operational security consistent with a state-sponsored group. Of 27 Twitter accounts targeted by the group, “24 primarily engaged in political activities, or were otherwise critical of the UAE government,” the Citizen Lab found. The group consistently displayed a high level of knowledge about its targets and used that information to write intricate spearfishing emails. Moreover, the Citizen Lab observed a Twitter account tweet a link associated with Stealth Falcon while that account was likely under government control.

Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at the Citizen Lab and the lead author on the UAE report, called the impersonation of journalists “very effective” for government surveillance campaigns. Sharing links and documents is fundamental to the work of journalists and civil society workers. “This is something that’s natural to how you are interacting online,” he told this reporter, who had written himself an unsolicited email seeking to set up an interview.

The Emirati Embassy in Washington didn’t return a request Tuesday for comment on the report.
Other journalists have also found themselves targeted by hackers posing as reporters. In August 2015, Jillian York, the director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, woke up to a call from a man posing as a Reuters journalist. That man told York that he would soon be sending her some materials that he wanted to discuss and checked that he had the right address for her.
That phone call was the first step in a sophisticated campaign to steal Google credentials for members of the Iranian diaspora that the Citizen Lab traced to Iranian hackers. York was targeted likely as a result of her work with Iranian activist groups.

The fake Reuters reporter likely hoped that he could establish his credibility with a phone call and then trick York into providing her Google username and password. Shortly after the call, the fake reporter sent her an email with what looked like a PDF hosted by Google. By clicking on the link, York would have been taken to a spoofed Google login page, which the hackers would have used to steal her username and password.

But hackers aren’t just creating fake journalist personas to spread spyware. In 2012, hackers working in Bahrain impersonated Al Jazeera journalist Melissa Chan to send emails to activists laced with malware that allowed them to take over their computers. It is unclear, Marczak said, whether the email from Chan infected the computers of any activists.

In a seven-year hacking campaign in Latin America that the Citizen Lab named “Packrat,” hackers went a step further: creating fake news outlets complete with fake articles to bolster their perceived credibility.

That hacking campaign succeeded in installing spyware on the phone of Alberto Nisman, the principal investigator of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. He was found dead in his home just hours before he was set to deliver a report on allegations that then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had sought to cover up Iran’s role in the attack.

In China, researchers have observed what is now a strikingly similar pattern of obfuscation in the government’s treatment of Tibetan activists. “We tracked a series of emails designed to trick Tibetan journalists into entering their Google credentials into a phishing page,” said Masashi Crete-Nishihata, the Citizen Lab’s research manager. “One of the messages was made to appear as if it came from the press secretary of the Central Tibetan Administration.”

Just as the Internet has enabled a more free flow of information between journalists and their sources, it has also enabled far greater government surveillance. “This is the flip side of the Internet’s ability to mobilize resources,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab.

But the impersonation of reporters by hackers working on behalf of governments is not limited to authoritarian regimes. In 2007, police in Washington state were trying and failing to identify the source of emailed bomb threats against a local high school when the FBI settled on a novel strategy to identify the suspect.

An agent for the bureau posed as an Associated Press reporter and began exchanging emails with the accounts used to send the threats. The agent sent the suspect a fake AP article about him that contained malware designed to reveal his location.

When the suspect clicked on the link, the software downloaded. Two days after clicking it, police arrested a 10th-grader at Timberline High School, the target of the threats.

Photo credit: Flaticon/Foreign Policy illustration

Referendum: Decision under Uncertainty

Both sides in the debate put forward their assertions about the impact of membership. Those that wish to remain cite the absence of war within the member states which in the past used to engage in periodic violence against each other if not against their own citizens. For them it is an article of faith that the democratic and cooperative ideal of the European Union has contributes to peace in Europe. The anti-EU campaigners disagree. Some prominent members in the Brexit camp claim to be fearful of German hegemony. They have got off on the wrong track.

By S. P. Chakravarty-May 31, 2016, 7:33 am 

(Emeritus Professor of Economics, The University, Bangor, Wales, UK)

(Continued from yesterday)

The Brexit camp refuses to engage with an essential feature of trade amongst EU nations, the single market to which the EU aspires. Government expenditure is around half of the GDP in the prosperous countries of Europe. The single market allows non-discriminatory access to government contracts in all EU countries to companies based in any of the member nations. What is the likelihood that British companies could continue selling to the public sector in the EU without conforming to labour regulations and environmental standards agreed at Brussels? What is the probability that British exporters would be allowed to sell to companies in the EU goods and services which are used in fulfilling public sector contracts there? It is true that Norway is outside the EU but the country enjoys single market access. It has done so by surrendering the Brexit view of sovereignty, agreeing to implement EU regulations including the free movement of labour.

The idea that dispensing with environmental and labour standards would necessarily make British products more attractive outside Europe is questionable. International competitiveness does not necessarily improve by reducing labour rights and embracing polluting technology. For example, sharp reductions in the right of workers in the 1980s did not increase the share of British manufacturing in international trade. In fact, Britain lagged even behind France, one of the most regulated labour markets, as observed by the Adair (now Lord) Turner in his address to the Confederation of British Industry in 1996.

Both sides in the debate put forward their assertions about the impact of membership. Those that wish to remain cite the absence of war within the member states which in the past used to engage in periodic violence against each other if not against their own citizens. For them it is an article of faith that the democratic and cooperative ideal of the European Union has contributes to peace in Europe. The anti-EU campaigners disagree. Some prominent members in the Brexit camp claim to be fearful of German hegemony. They have got off on the wrong track.

It was not German malevolence which caused the Iraq war. It was not too much interference by the EU but, alas, too little influence on British policy of the German Chancellor and the French President that led to one of the worst military adventures, destabilising the Middle East, undertaken by Prime Minister Blair.

It is true that German economic policy aimed at generating relentless year-on-year trade surpluses is a detriment to long term financial stability even in Germany. When good are sold to those who cannot pay and the trade imbalance is not corrected at an early stage, problems develop. The international banking system, following financial liberalisation in the late 20th century, has developed tools of financial engineering to postpone adjustments in trade imbalance, thus creating huge financial bubbles that eventually burst contributing to economic instability. This is a case for the reform of the dysfunctional international banking system which has emerged in recent years. Conflating the spectre of a banking collapse with the spectre of German hegemony as a threat to peace misses the point that modern Germany is a moral force in support of democracy and human rights in Europe and is not to be conflated with the caricature of Germany in post-war British cartoons aimed at children. It is a conservative German Chancellor who has fearlessly urged on a moral stand on the refugee question to her colleagues at home and abroad.

What is more worrying for peace is the resurgence of the kind of identity politics about language and ethnicity which destroyed much of Europe less than a century ago. As explained by Peter S. Goodman (New York Times 20 May 2016) the main appeal for Brexit is angst over British identity "masquerading as an economic debate".

British exit could become a catalyst for reawakening destructive nationalism in countries where pluralist democracy has not yet established deep roots.

A vote in the referendum balancing the arguments of the two sides, according to some, entails forming an informed judgement on the probabilities of potential consequences of exercising the choice to leave or remain. Thus a House of Commons Select Committee has criticised protagonists on both sides for failing to lay down the facts correctly for the voter to make an informed choice. In our view, the Committee has missed the point about the nature of this referendum. Placing correct information in itself does not address the fundamental problem of voting in this referendum. Objective probabilities cannot be computed because Brexit is a unique event. Attempts at calculating subjective probabilities would be frustrated by the problem of infinite regress.

It is not simply that the voter has to decide what type of information that is needed to be collected to judge whether potential outcomes are good or bad, and the probabilities of the outcomes. Before making that decision, she has to know how to make sense of the data. To know how to make sense of the data, the voter has to decide on the relative reliability of different ways of making sense of the data. The point is that we have to collect information to decide what type of information to collect. An arbitrary deadline needs to be imposed cutting off the infinite regress of collection and analysis of evidence.

Whilst this difficulty of rational choice is also present in the selections of representatives to govern in a parliamentary election, ex post realisation of errors can be corrected albeit with some cost. No such opportunity exists in a vote in this referendum. Once a decision, especially a decision to leave, has been made, that is final.

It would be a rational course for the voter to dispense with attempts at weighing up incomplete information, imparting a spurious sense of precision on an exercise in infinite regress which is cut-off at some arbitrary point. It would be prudent instead to heed the principle of caution before disrupting the status quo of membership. There are more pressing problems for the well-being of the nation than a naval gazing angst over identity and sovereignty.

(Concluded)

Thailand: 40 dead tiger cubs found in freezer during ‘Tiger Temple’ operation

The bodies of at least 40 dead tiger cubs, a dead boar, and numerous other animal products found at the 'Tiger Temple'. Image via Khaosod English

1st June 2016 

WILDLIFE authorities carrying out the relocation operation at Thailand’s ‘Tiger Temple’ have made a grim discovery – at least 40 dead tiger cubs were uncovered in a freezer in the temple’s kitchen, along with a dead boar and numerous animal products.

The temple in Kanchanaburi has been closed to the public, and its 137 tigers seized amid allegations of illegal breeding and trafficking.

Authorities are well into their third day of the operation to relocate the tigers to state-owned breeding facilities in Ratchaburi province, and are hoping to be finished by Friday.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: 137 tigers to be relocated from infamous ‘Tiger Temple’

The first photograph of the dead cubs surfaced when Bangkok-based photojournalist Dario Pignatelli posted it on his Twitter account, sparking outrage across the internet.

View image on Twitter

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Dario Pignatelli ‎@dariopignatelli

Thai DNP officers show 40 undeclared dead baby tigers found at#TigerTemple in #Kanchanaburi

11:31 PM - 31 May 2016

Adisorn Nuchdamrong of Thailand’s Department of National Parks told Reuters, published by the BBC, that the cub bodies are probably of value to the temple administration, “but for what is beyond me”.

Khaosod English reports that if it is discovered the tiger cubs were killed recently, it would support accusations launched against the temple that it is knowingly involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the tigers.

SEE ALSO: What will become of the big cats of Thailand’s ‘Tiger Temple’?

Officials also found a dead boar, animal intestines in containers, and a number of deer horns in the freezers where the cubs were kept.

Yanyong Lekavichit, head of Protected Area Regional Office 3, told Khaosod English: “This is abnormal. We will find out who’s responsible for the cubs.”

He added that the dead cubs were found in the same freezer where frozen chickens for the tigers’ food were kept.

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L'EDICOLA ‎@edicolaRT

#Corriere: "RT beamontini: ++ #TigerTemple Durante il trasferimento delle tigri trovati 40 cuccioli morti #Thaila…pic.twitter.com/12CMdFBqao"

The operation, which involves about 1,000 officials, is set to continue throughout the week. Authorities have been struggling to resolve the scandals surrounding the temple for years, deadlocked by the aggressively uncooperative monks who vehemently deny, even now, any misconduct.