Saturday, December 2, 2017

Challenges ahead as our dynamic region rises

2017-12-02

The greatest expansion of prosperity in human history has occurred in the decades following World War II, supported by the international rules-based order that has been steadily built during that time.

This order – a web of alliances, treaties and institutions underpinned by international law – was designed to prevent a repeat of past eras where powerful nations invaded or coerced other nations, leading to conflict that inflicted untold human suffering.

The Australian Government’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper reinforces the importance of that order to our prosperity and security. The White Paper also details how that order has supported the rise of other nations, particularly in our region of the Indo-Pacific.

The majority of regional countries are yet to reach the status of fully industrialised and high-income economies

But the rules-based order is under challenge, including from nations pursuing short-term gain, through selective circumvention or violation of international law, and rising protectionist sentiment in many countries.

It is vital that all nations support and strengthen that order so that the era since World War II, known as the ‘Long Peace’, is maintained. This will allow other developing nations to continue to grow. Globalisation, which has been facilitated by technological advances and the embrace of free trade and open markets, continues to accelerate economic integration between regional countries and the rest of the world.

These foundations and forces have seen hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty.

There is still much potential for the Indo-Pacific region to develop, which also brings great opportunities for Australia. It is worth noting that only three of the top 20 global economies, when measured by GDP per capita terms, are in the Indo-Pacific.

To a large extent, the prospects for continued peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific depend on our capacity to manage the consequences of rising prosperity and wealth – which is overwhelmingly
a blessing

The majority of regional countries are yet to reach the status of fully industrialised and high-income economies. By some estimates, the middle class in our region will increase five-fold from about 600 million currently to three billion by 2035.

In international politics, the conditions for continued peace, stability and prosperity can never be taken for granted and must be reinforced by all nations. North Korea’s illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the use of these to threaten other countries constitute the most direct challenge to the region and world.

Beyond the menace of Pyongyang, we exist in a region where there are unsettled territorial disputes and pre-existing rivalries dating back decades, even centuries.

To a large extent, the prospects for continued peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific depend on our capacity to manage the consequences of rising prosperity and wealth – which is overwhelmingly a blessing. Rising national wealth enables nations to invest more in their military. Defence outlays in the region expanded over 5.5% in the last financial year, which easily outpaced the 1% overall increase in global military spending.

By 2020, the combined military budgets of regional countries will likely match or exceed military spending by the United States for the first time in at least a century.

Even though the US is likely to remain the world’s only superpower in the decade ahead, we have never been in an era where there has been a powerful China, Japan and India at the same time.
Many nations in Southeast and South Asia are just beginning their rise.

The White Paper further explains how Australia will use our domestic capabilities, international standing and strong relationships to pursue our strategic and economic interests, and promote our values in the decade ahead

Australia welcomes the emergence of new powers outside our traditional network of security allies and partners.

This is precisely what a free and open international rules-based order is designed to achieve, by supporting the emergence of increasingly prosperous and powerful nations willingly participating in that system. Our collective challenge is to ensure that all nations use their growing power responsibly – that while benefitting from participation in the rules-based order they respect and strengthen that order at the same time.

Australia is well placed to play a constructive and influential role despite being in a region that is becoming more contested and competitive. We are one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world and we place a high value on our institutions and are mindful of the positive regard in which our successful democracy and pluralistic society is held.

Although we do not seek to impose our values on other countries, Australia will remain a vocal champion of and advocate for respecting international law, free societies and open economies, underpinned by strong independent institutions and the rule of law. We have a long-standing alliance with the only superpower in the world in the foreseeable future in the United States, the roots of which are deep and continue to grow.

Under the Coalition government, Australia’s relationships with Japan, South Korea, India and key ASEAN states such as Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have never been stronger. Australia and China are Comprehensive Strategic Partners with a constructive and respectful relationship.

The White Paper further explains how Australia will use our domestic capabilities, international standing and strong relationships to pursue our strategic and economic interests, and promote our values in the decade ahead. It outlines an ambitious and proactive approach to the way we engage with the region and rest of the world. It is also a practical document to guide policy in a way that is relevant to the daily lives of Australian citizens.

This includes drawing inspiration from existing initiatives such as the New Colombo Plan, which will have enabled more than 30,000 young Australians to live, study and work in our region by the end of next year. They will develop friendships, create networks and gain an understanding of the region that will last a lifetime. We will continue to make long-term investments in our regional relationships which will pay dividends for decades to come. In these uncertain times ahead, Australia will approach the next decade with ambition, confidence and purpose.

The Australian Government’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper is available at https://www.fpwhitepaper.gov.au/

2017_foreign_policy_white_paper.pdf by Thavam on Scribd

Fear of missing out keeps investors in stocks despite risks

Traders react at the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

David Randall-DECEMBER 1, 2017

NEW YORK, (Reuters) - Wall Street’s fear of missing out on a relentless rally appears to be trumping rising political risk in a high-stakes December in Washington.

The ticking clock on the Republican Party’s efforts to cut corporate taxes, alongside the risk that the U.S. government may shut down if a budget deal isn’t reached by December 8, is increasing the levels of political risk for investors - but they have yet to really react.

“Right now the market is assuming that everything will work out, but you’ve got a tremendous number of moving parts,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors (FII.N) in New York.

Alongside the back-and-forth on taxes, Wall Street will be watching a Dec. 8 expiration date for funding needed to keep the U.S. government open alongside the deadline when the U.S. Treasury hits its limit on borrowing; as well as a Dec. 12 Special U.S. Senate election in Alabama.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump warned on Twitter that “I don’t see a deal” to keep the government open and work past Dec. 8, although the White House said Wednesday it did not see such an eventuality.

Typically, the threat of a government shutdown alone would prompt fund managers to move more of their assets into cash. The benchmark S&P 500 lost 2.6 percent in the eight trading days before the last government shutdown in 2013, and has declined an average of 0.6 percent during government shutdowns overall, according to LPL Financial. Debt limit concerns are likely to be put off until 2018 as the U.S. Treasury is expected to take steps to postpone any need for action by Congress.

Yet with the benchmark S&P 500 up nearly 18 percent for the year to date, some portfolio managers see a greater risk in stepping to the sidelines. Throughout the year, the stock market has rallied in the face of standoffs ranging from increasing tensions in North Korea to former FBI director’s James Comey’s testimony to Congress that President Trump fired him to undermine the agency’s Russia investigation.

On Friday, stocks sold off on a report that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to tell investigators that before taking office Trump had directed him to make contact with Russians. However, shares quickly pared those losses.

Despite his skepticism, Orlando has yet to move more of his assets to cash, in large part because corporate earnings keep rising and should continue to do so even if a tax package is not signed, he said.

If the tax bill fails, Orlando said he expected the S&P 500 to fall by as much as 10 percent. He would be a buyer in that case, he said, because he expected the S&P 500 to reach 3000 within the next 18 months.

CROWDED CALENDAR

Brian Peery, a portfolio manager at Novato, California-based Hennessy Funds (HNNA.O), said a government shutdown or the tax bill failing would prompt a swift sell-off, but that rising consumer confidence would ultimately continue to push the market higher over the next year.

“If I‘m looking at a 10 percent correction, I‘m a buyer,” he said.

The inaction is not limited to the stock market.

Christopher Ryon, a municipal bond fund manager at Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Thornburg Investment Management, said that the Republican tax bill could reduce the size of the municipal bond market by 25 to 30 percent by limiting the ability of stadiums, airports and privately-financed toll roads to qualify for tax-exempt status.

At the same time, there could be an increased demand for municipal bonds if residents of high-tax states are no longer able to deduct their full state and local property taxes, leaving tax-free municipal bonds as one of the few ways wealthy investors can reduce their taxable incomes.

As a result, Ryon is largely sitting on his hands, ignoring both lower-rated bonds that have rallied as investors have reached for yield and triple A rated bonds that look “on the rich side,” he said.

“There are a whole lot of unintended consequences attached to this [tax] legislation,” Ryon said.

This is going to be an interesting couple of weeks where we will really see how the sausage gets made.”

Winners and losers in the Senate GOP tax bill: A running list

The Senate on Dec. 2 passed a Republican bill overhauling the tax code. The bill passed by a 51-49 vote.(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post

By Heather Long December 1 at 5:17 PM

Republicans in the Senate just passed a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code, the largest change since Ronald Reagan's presidency. The bill zipped through the process in a mere three weeks (you can get a quick rundown of what's in the bill here). It's still not a totally done deal though, as substantial differences between the House and Senate bills need to be ironed out before President Trump can sign the final piece of legislation into law. But there's little doubt this is a major victory for Trump.

Here's a rundown of the winners and losers so far (you can read the entire 479 page document here):
Winners

President Trump. He promised a "big, beautiful" tax cut by Christmas. It's the centerpiece of his "MAGA-nomics" agenda, and he looks likely to get it (at least by early 2018). Both the House and the Senate have cleared major hurdles. In fact, it might even end up being a tax cut AND a repeal of the individual health care mandate, one of the least popular Affordable Care Act provisions. Most economists also expect the bill will juice economic growth, at least for the next year or two. The economy has been growing around 3 percent for the past two quarters. If it jumps to 4 percent (or more) in coming quarters, Trump can claim an even bigger victory heading into the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 presidential election.

Big corporations. America's largest companies are about to get the biggest tax cut ever. The House and Senate bills slash the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. While few corporations actually pay 35 percent (the average is around 25 percent), most still get a break. Really profitable companies like Apple and Microsoft also get to bring back the piles of cash they have sitting in offshore accounts to the United States at a very low tax rate (14.5 percent in the Senate bill). There are other goodies in the bill for businesses as well, such as the ability to fully deduct the cost of new investments for the next five years. But perhaps the biggest win of all for big business is a change from a worldwide tax system where businesses have to report income earned globally to the IRS to a territorial system where they mainly pay taxes only on what was generated in the United States.

People with money in the stock market. The Dow surged above 24,000 for the first time this week. The stock market is up over 600 points (nearly 3 percent) just this week as investors cheer the tax cuts getting closer to reality. If Trump is able to sign the bill, investors are likely to get a very good deal. Many companies plan to bring cash home from abroad and give a lot of that money to investors in the form of higher dividends and stock buybacks (which increase stock prices). Overall, tax cuts mean larger profits for businesses, which means more money in the pockets of investors.

Many in the middle class (at least for awhile). Republicans have sold the tax plan as a boost to middle class paychecks. According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, 80 percent of Americans earning $50,000 to $75,000 would get a sizable reduction in their taxes by 2019 (the average cut would be about $850, according to the Tax Policy Center). Overall, about 62 percent of Americans would pay at least $100 less in taxes in 2019. But the tax cuts for families don't last forever. The Senate bill has the lower rates for individuals going away after 2025. Republicans argue a future Congress is likely to extend the cuts, but there is no guarantee that will happen.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.). He did it on taxes. The Senate Majority Leader took a huge blow over the summer when the Affordable Care Act repeal failed. Trump appeared to give him the cold shoulder for awhile, but McConnell is the man of the hour now. He managed to rally GOP senators to deliver the biggest priority of all: tax cuts. It turned out to be a surprisingly difficult task with many senators demanding last-minute changes, but McConnell got 51 votes in the end.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.). The Pennsylvania senator was one of the main authors of the Senate tax bill and he defended it vigorously on the floor of the U.S. Senate. As Democrat after Democrat slammed the bill, Toomey calmly stood up and sold the bill as a way to make American companies more competitive and profitable so they will invest more in the United States and hire more workers, hopefully raising wages as well. Toomey played an especially large role in crafting the tax changes for small and large businesses, a very complex tax.

Rich kids. The GOP tax bills make it a lot easier for wealthy parents to pass property and money to their kids. Under current law, up to $5.5 million can be passed down tax-free. After that, there's a 40 percent tax, known as the "estate tax" (or the "death tax" by critics). The House bill eliminates the estate tax entirely. The Senate bill allows rich parents to pass up to $11 million onto their heirs tax free.

Maybe Dreamers? Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says he is voting for the tax bill despite his concerns about what it would do to the national debt because GOP leaders promised him they would pass legislation soon to allow "Dreamers" (young people in the country without documentation who have gone to school in the United States and followed the law) to stay.

Losers

Senate Democrats/Filibustering. Democrats panned the bill as a "tax scam" that gives away a ton to the wealthy and corporations, but they were not able to stop the bill. Republicans were able to pass this massive legislation with just 51 votes. Normally it would take 60 votes, but Republicans side-stepped any trouble from Democrats by using a clever tactic known as reconciliation where they are allowed to tack one major bill a year onto the budget and pass it with a simple majority vote (Vice President Mike Pence was on hand to break a tie -- we know how he was ready to vote).

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) He made a brave last stand Thursday night to try to force Republicans to change the bill so it wouldn't add so much to the deficit. He was upset to learn that even after accounting for economic growth, the bill is still expected to cost $1 trillion. That was too much, Corker said, but in the end, his Republican colleagues had enough votes without him. Corker has already said he's retiring from the Senate after his term expires after the 2018 election. It could be lonely for him in the Senate lunch room for awhile.

People who care about the debt. For years, many Republicans have railed against America's growing debt that ballooned under President George W. Bush and then President Barack Obama because of wars, tax cuts and the Great Recession. The total debt is now $20 trillion (about $15 trillion is actually held by the public). The tax bill is likely to add at least $1 trillion more, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeepers in Congress. In other words, all signs indicate the debt will continue to get worse in the coming years.

The 13 million Americans who won't have health insurance. The Senate bill isn't just a tax bill, it also includes the repeal of the individual mandate that requires all Americans to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty. This provision is not in the House bill, so it might not make it to the president's desk, but if it does, it's expected to cause a spike in health insurance premiums in the United States and 13 million Americans to drop insurance coverage in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The poor. The Senate bill cuts tax rates across all income levels, but 44 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income tax, so it doesn't help them. Some senators -- notably Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) -- pushed to give more money back to lower-income families in the form of refundable tax credits. Rubio and Lee wanted to make a lot of the Child Tax Credit refundable. But that didn't happen, meaning the poor won't get much benefit from the bill. If anything, they might lose a lot -- some won't be able to afford health insurance anymore and some are likely to lose other government benefits as Republicans look for ways to trim the federal budget in the coming months.
Puerto Rico. The island that was devastated by Hurricane Maria this fall now might lose some of the few big businesses that remain on the island if the GOP tax bill gets enacted. The reason is that Puerto Rico would no longer look so advantageous as a place to do business compared to the rest of the United States. Puerto Rico's governor is trying to push for the island to be deemed a "free trade zone," but that was not included in the legislation released before passage.

Harvard. The House and Senate bills create a new 1.4 percent tax on private college endowments worth over $500,000 per student. Only a handful of universities have such large endowments. Most are Ivy League schools like Harvard.

Maybe losers (depends on conference committee)

College students. The House bill scraps many popular deductions for college students and college grads with student loans. The House bill eliminates the popular student loan debt write off, and it forces graduate students who receive tuition waivers (sometimes as much as $20,000 or more) to count that money as income for tax purposes, even though they don't actually receive money in their pockets. It would be a big hit and many universities are saying it could heavily dissuade graduate study. The Senate bill does not make these changes.

Elderly with high medical expenses. The House bill gets rid of the deduction for huge medical expenses, which 8.8 million Americans (mostly elderly) currently use. The Senate keeps this deduction in place, setting up a major conflict to be worked out.

Getting over the authoritarian past – an experience of the Catalan Referendum

Featured image courtesy the author – A slogan written by ‘night commandos’, “Referendum is democracy. Vote 1^st October”

Background of the Catalan Referendum

GARAM KWON-on 12/01/2017

On 28^th June 2010, the Supreme Court of Spain rejected the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, modified and approved by both the Catalan and Spanish parliaments in 2006. An application of the updated Catalan Statute was viewed as the most novel departure of the Spanish democracy since the end of the Francoist dictatorship, as it recognised broader competences for the Catalan government and, above all things, the Catalan people as a nation. Two weeks after the Supreme Court’s verdict, more than a million people of Catalonia went out into the street, under the slogan of ‘We are a nation’ (Sóm una nació), to protest the Court’s decision. Since then, local grassroots movements for independence have continued to grow.

Getting over the authoritarian past – an experience of the Catalan Referendum.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Guns and phones deal 'maximum' carnage to Papua New Guinea's warring tribes

A market in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian- Cathy Mek was unable to flee when a neighbouring tribe attacked her village. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian-An ambulance that was set on fire during tribal violence in Enga province sparked by the national election campaign. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian

Jeffrey Amandi (centre), a community leader in the Southern Highlands province of Uma, brokered a peace deal between warring tribes which often met and fought on Uma land. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian- The ruins of a roadside shop in the Southern Highlands, which was set on fire amid election violence. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian-Uma residents stand outside a medical clinic built by the International Committee of the Red Cross as part of a peace treaty between warring tribes. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian

Helen Davidson in Papua New Guinea-Saturday 2 December 2017 21.20 GMT

Traditional codes of conflict are being torn up as automatic weapons replace bows and arrows, with women and children – future enemies – targeted

“It was in the night, we didn’t see them coming. There was a guy who came in the house, and everybody without disabilities they decided to run off, leaving the place, [but] I couldn’t run.”

Twenty-year-old Cathy Mek speaks in barely more than a whisper. She’s sitting on a thin bamboo bench in a quiet, private clearing above her village of Wapena, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

It’s a region known for inter-tribal violence as much as stunning scenery and Wapena – perched on a hill overlooking the tidy crops and lush valleys of Western province – is no exception for either. But rape, indiscriminate destruction and automatic weapons are changing the face of traditional conflict, and PNG authorities and international non-governmental associations are struggling to get a handle on the deteriorating situation.

On 28 June, the people of Wapena were attacked by a neighbouring tribe over political differences during the national election.

The village’s men were at a counting station in a nearby town. Able-bodied women grabbed their children and fled. Mek, who has a permanently injured foot and deformities in both hands, could not.
“They put a knife to me, they took me out and raped me,” Mek says. “I refused, I argued, but they slept here and ate here and then they continued on.

“After that I started screaming. I was still screaming until a fellow from the other village heard my screams and came into rescue, and other people … came and helped me out.”

Mek’s mother, Elisabeth Yong, and Wapena’s leader, Jerry Rombena, sit with us. As Mek talks Rombena, a former police officer, silently shakes his head in anger and sadness. He says the police know the who the rapists are but won’t make an arrest unless the men leave tribal land, for fear of triggering another battle. Justice for Mek is unlikely.

She suspects the other women feel guilty for leaving her behind but says no one is helping her to overcome the trauma. “I am calling out for help but they don’t want to help.”

Near a collection of huts covered in Red Cross tarpaulins, Mek’s fellow villagers share their stories of 28 June. They gather under the shade of a tree on the edge of the hillcrest, cradling children and phones and machetes. No one mentions Mek.

Asked to raise a hand if their house was destroyed in the attack, nearly everyone does so.

“They came from the other side of the creek,” Rombena recalls. “They walked, they came in groups with all the clansmen, with weapons like bows and arrows and high-powered ammunition.

“We saw them coming from the other side, with their weapons and shouting,” says Susan Dupi, pointing across a field to the one dirt road in.

“They burned the first place there, and we saw them coming in large groups so we decided to run with our children. We went to the other side [of the village]. They didn’t find us.”

As well as assaulting Mek, the attackers burned down 36 homes, slaughtered 32 pigs and destroyed the grain stores, gardens and cash crops, says Gus Kasyaki.

‘Out of control’

Wapena was luckier than many villages in that the attackers brandished their military-grade assault weapons, but did not shoot anyone.

Guns are now a common feature of the increasingly violent tribal fighting, replacing traditional bows and arrows. The region’s extensive stock of high-powered guns are believed to come from over the border, in Indonesian West Papua, illegally traded for PNG-grown marijuana. Some say they can also be bought from police and soldiers.

Marijuana “grows like wildfire” in the highlands regions, and the black-market trade of weapons, including M16s, AK-47s and explosives, has often left police officers outgunned, says the acting provincial police commander for Enga, Epenese Nili.

In a documentary produced by the Red Cross this year, the former PNG defence force commander Jerry Singirok says the use of weapons in the highlands is “out of control”.

“That’s where 80% of the population of Papua New Guineans live. We know for a fact that every tribal fight guns are used, every roadblock guns are used, every murder guns are used, and we know that during elections guns are used to intimidate, to harass, even to murder opposing people, and we are very concerned.”

Last week 11 men were shot dead in a dawn raid on a village in the Eastern Highlands region, the Post-Courier reported. About 30 people were reported to have been killed in election-related violence this year, the worst of which was in Wabag, Enga province, where the dead included two police officers killed outside a hotel.

Hundreds of security forces were deployed to Wabag to control the violence after the contentious defeat of the former opposition leader Don Polye. On the outskirts of town a burnt-out ambulance rusts by the side of the road. More than 120 homes in the electorate were reported to have been destroyed.

“We called troops to move in and camped out in the middle between two warring tribes,” Nili says of the Wabag violence. “Police from day one are still camping there now.”

Nili says the groups agreed to lay down their arms, but during an amnesty they surrendered only homemade weapons, keeping the rest.

“We saw those guns in the battlefield,” says Nili, shrugging. “We have search powers to go and search the premises, but somebody has to come and complain, give us the intel report about a particular house having a high-powered weapon. But who is going to come and talk to police?”

The International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Mount Hagen, says it mostly sees homemade weapons during its fieldwork in the region. For this reason the organisation uses plastic rather than metal pipes when it builds water facilities in villages. But the Red Cross head of office for Mount Hagen, Kakhaber Khasaia, says the high-powered guns are a problem.

“When you talk to the tribal leaders they’ll often mention that those guns are owned by young people who are not really controlled by the leaders, who think they are now the most powerful person, they don’t have much experience and they create problems,” Khasaia says.

‘A lot of lives lost’

Uma, in Southern Highlands province, is surrounded by groups at conflict with one another. The community leader, Jeffrey Amandi, who, other villagers are proud to note, is a Muslim leader in a predominantly Christian country, says the violence was at its worst in 2010-12.

“A lot of lives lost, a lot of damage, as well as bombs being used,” he says. “I don’t know how the guns come but there is a market somewhere in Papua New Guinea, so we trade.

“We take them for marijuana and then use them for tribal fights.”

Asked if his people too had traded drugs for weapons, Amandi only notes they were “the very first people to become like a superpower in this area”.

“But we said, fighting, OK, we experienced very much and it’s not good [so] we better give up with weapons and have peace, become advocates of peace.”

Traditionally, tribal conflict followed rules that spared women, children, religious figures, health workers and community facilities.

“[Now you can] hear someone say, ‘When we are fighting we don’t even want to see a chicken walking,’” says Janet Nakadi Angelei, a Red Cross field delegate.

A local employee adds: “Nowadays in a tribal fight, fighters target everyone and everything on enemy territory and want to bring maximum damage to the enemy community.”

Children – future enemies – are killed. So are health workers, who treat the enemy. Fighters no longer fear the wrath of God when they gun down a pastor.

Khasaia says neutral people are still largely respected because tribal conflicts are still expected to be resolved in traditional ways, and that requires a peacemaker.

“But … with the new weapons, with new technology like phones, they can organise and mobilise large groups much faster than before, and with cars they can attack faster than before.”

A traditional system of peacemaking and compensation after conflicts remains in place, usually comprising cash and pigs, but with more deaths and damage the unaffordable payments can now force entire clan groups from their land.

Conflict in Kagua-Erave escalated to such an extent in 2013 that hundreds of people were reportedly displaced, and an unconfirmed grenade attack on a safe house which contained mainly women and children killed up to 35 people – one of the worst episodes of tribal violence yet.

The ICRC assists those affected by conflict across a number of provinces, beginning in the Southern Highlands in 2012. Tribal fighting “has a few causes”, says Angelei, the most common of which is land disputes, but it can also escalate from resource access issues, accusations of sorcery, adultery or jealousy.

Stories abound of murders and multiple killings sparked by extremely trivial disputes. The clan war sprung from family disapproval of a teenage relationship, the dozen killed after a drunken brawl escalated, the threats of rocket launchers by disgruntled landowners unhappy with resource deals, arrows in eye sockets after an assault at a local market. In Wapena villagers were attacked over an accusation of vote tampering.

“Often the trigger is quite small but has big consequences,” Angelei says.

“The warlords are hunting their enemies, hunting them down,” a former mayor of Tari told Radio NZ after a man was killed in Hela province. “They’re driving around and shooting down people, killing people just like nobody’s business.”

‘We want to stop the suffering’

The ICRC works with communities to re-establish traditional “fighters rules” and discourage the goal of “maximum damage”, while also helping people in the aftermath of violence.

Community representatives are brought together in peacetime to discuss and propose rules for future conflicts. The rules are taken to district governments for potential legislation, before being disseminated among the population.

Provinces are at different stages of progress but Khasaia says people are responding positively to the idea of everyone returning to traditional rules of engagement.

“At least if fighters understand and respect those rules it will reduce the number of women raped, children killed, disabled killed, healthcare facilities destroyed, houses burned,” he says.

The Red Cross helps provide materials to rebuild burned homes and cooking and farming equipment for families whose houses have been looted. In one village, new guttering and tanks collect rainwater so women and girls do not have to travel to a river where a rival village would often attack them.

At the end of the conflict near Uma a peace deal was brokered and the ICRC agreed to build a new health clinic. The clinic is staffed by four local nurses and cares for about 45,000 people from the surround district, Amandi says. The simple structure, built in part from “bush materials”, has not been targeted for five years and will now be replaced by a larger and better equipped facility.

Wapena is rebuilding, and the people there say they have no plans to retaliate. They are still living under tarpaulins because there is none of the long grass they need to make their traditional roofs.
Red Cross officers say there is only so much they can do.

“We don’t have the illusion that we’ll stop the conflict, we don’t have the mandate to stop the conflict,” Khasaia says. “But we want to stop the suffering of individuals who are not part of the conflict.”

• The Guardian travelled to Papua New Guinea with the assistance of the ICRC

Remembering The Balkan Horrors

Britain and France managed to thwart, then delay, multi-national efforts to end the massacres while shedding crocodile tears and secretly aiding Serbia.

by Eric Margolis -Dec 1, 2017

( December 1, 2017, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Memories of the cruel Balkan Wars of 1992-1995 are already slipping away. But the sentence to life in prison for Serb general Ratko Mladic by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing last week shows that justice occasionally prevails.

These crimes in the Balkans were of epic proportion, sadistic, and profoundly sickening, even to a hardened war correspondent like me.

Serbia’s banker-turned demagogue, Slobodan Milosevic, and Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, formulated a strategy to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia, purged of Catholics and Muslims, that would recreate the glory of the medieval Serb kingdom. They rose to power on calls to ‘send the Turks (i.e. Muslims) back to Turkey.’ Ironically, Bosnia’s Muslims were mainly descendants of medieval Christian Bogomil heretics who had been savagely persecuted by Orthodox Christians and converted to Islam for protection.

Mladic led the Bosnian Serb army (along with units from Serbia’s Army) in a multi-year campaign to uproot, expel or kill the Catholic Croat and Muslim population of the ex-Yugoslav republic of Bosnia. The Serb Army then turned its murderous rage to the former Yugoslav region of Kosovo that was 95-98% ethnic Albanian. The world learned the term, ‘ethnic cleansing.’

Gen. Mladic was convicted of engineering the massacre of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, and the bloody siege of Bosnia’s capitol, Sarajevo. Srebrenica was the worst war crime in Europe since World War II. To these atrocities add ethnic massacres across Bosnia and Kosovo, rape camps where Muslim women were routinely violated, and concentration camps where Muslim and Croat prisoners were starved and tortured.

As sadistic Serb paramilitary thugs and the Serb Army rampaged through Bosnia and Kosovo, the world largely averted its eyes, blaming the massacres, rapes, and looting on ‘centuries of hatreds.’ Not true. Modern-day power-thirsty demagogues and the Orthodox Church played the key role.

In truth, the orgy of killing and ethnic uprooting was even quietly welcomed by certain governments, like Greece, France (traditional ally of Serbia), Britain’s Conservatives, Russia, Hungary and Romania.

Britain and France managed to thwart, then delay, multi-national efforts to end the massacres while shedding crocodile tears and secretly aiding Serbia.

Equally contemptible was the reaction of the Muslim world, which averted its eyes while offering bromides and platitudes. The Saudis, self-styled ‘Defenders of Islam,’ were too busy in Europe’s casinos and brothels to care about tortured Bosnia. The Turks, with 600,000 soldiers, were too fearful of angering Europe to do anything. The only peoples to help the Balkan Muslims were some Afghan mujahidin and Iran, which supplied arms to the Bosnians with tacit CIA approval.

As a keynote speaker at a major Islamic Conference, I could not resist telling the delegates from around the globe: ‘if Jews were being persecuted in Bosnia they way Muslims are, I’m sure the Israeli defense forces would have landed and put Mladic and his Serbs in a cage.’ I was never again invited to speak at an Islamic conference.

In the end, the United States, which had no strategic interests in the Balkans, finally took military action to end the Balkan horrors. American Jewish groups, who knew genocide when they saw it, demanded the Clinton administration take action to end the massacres of the Balkan Muslims. Serbia’s crimes became too egregious to ignore. Clinton ordered military intervention in alliance with Croatia. Serbia finally sued for peace and ended ethnic cleansing. Large numbers of Serbs, Muslims and Croats were left refugees.

This was one of America’s proudest moments since WWII. America became a hero to the entire Muslim world – until the dimwitted George W. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. American critics who still decry the Balkan intervention simply don’t understand the region or the issues involved.

Today, little Bosnia remains a shattered country, its people still dazed with horror over the evils that have befallen them. Albanian Kosovo also remains walking wounded. Mladic and Karadzic are in prison; Milosevic died of a heart attack during his trial. Many Serbs insist on their innocence and still claim to be victims of plots by Germany and Muslim nations. They won’t accept guilt and move into the 21st Century. Forward-thinking Serbs have embraced Europe.

But just as the world lays to rest the ghosts of Bosnia and Kosovo, a new genocidal horror emerged in Asia as Myanmar (formerly Burma) used murder and rape to terrorize into flight over 600,000 brown-skinned Muslim Rohingyas. Once again, the world watched passively. While Rohingya children starved, the Saudis were busy building new palaces. And once again it may fall to the United States to end these crimes against humanity.

Anger as India doctor mistakenly declares newborn dead

Doctors declared the infant dead, hours after his still-born twin

1 December 2017

A newborn baby, declared dead by a hospital in the Indian capital Delhi, was found to be alive while they were on their way to his funeral.

Doctors at the privately run Max Hospital had pronounced the baby dead hours after his twin who was stillborn.

The parents said they noticed one of the babies squirming inside the plastic bag that doctors placed the infants in.

The incident has sparked outrage and a debate over the quality of private healthcare which is often costly.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted that he had ordered an inquiry into the matter. The state health minister has also described the incident as "shocking criminal negligence".

According to the twins' grandfather, the stunned family rushed the newborn to a nearby hospital where they were told that their baby was still alive, local media reported.

In a statement to reporters, Max hospital said they were "shaken" and "concerned" over the incident, and added that the doctor has been asked to go on leave, pending an inquiry.

According to ANI news agency, Delhi police have begun to investigate the case and have consulted legal experts.

This is the second instance in recent months where a private hospital in India has been called out for negligent care. Last month, a girl died of dengue fever in another hospital and the parents allege they were overcharged for her treatment.