Saturday, February 24, 2018

Small-scale fisheries in Sri Lanka

Throwing away fish that could feed those in poverty

by Benjamin L. Jones, Leanne Cullen-Unsworth, and Richard K.F. Unsworth-Feb 23, 2018

( February 23, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) At least 7.3m tons of fish (usually dead or dying) are thought to be discarded each year from marine fisheries around the world. But these estimates come mostly from observations of large-scale industrial fisheries. Limited attention has been paid to small-scale fisheries, which are assumed to have low discard rates – some estimate as little as 3.7% total catch, compared to more than 60% for some large-scale shrimp trawlers.

Small-scale or artisanal fisheries – for which there is no universal definition – are generally considered more sustainable than their large-scale industrial counterparts, but there is increasing evidence that shows this is not always the case. They employ more than 99% of the world’s 51m fishers and likely account for more than half of the total global fisheries catches.

One of the biggest problems for both large and small-scale fisheries around the globe is bycatch – fish and other marine organisms caught when the fishers are targeting something else. Powerful images of turtles and dolphins caught in fishing gear have caught the sympathy of the general public, but unintentional landings of fish aren’t as evocative. The truth is, however, that fish bycatch is a big issue.

Progress is being made in Europe within large-scale fisheries thanks to campaigns such as the Fish Fight. But small-scale fisheries – though there is increasing recognition outside that they are “too big to ignore” – are only just beginning to recognise the fish bycatch and discard problem.

Our newly published research has found that artisanal fisheries in Sri Lanka are throwing away more marine species than they keep. For every fishing trip in one of Sri Lanka’s largest lagoons, Puttalam Lagoon, fishermen could be throwing away more than 50 fish. What’s more, of the 62 species recorded in the survey, more than 80% were routinely discarded. The reasons for this practice are unclear but sometimes it is because the individual fish are too small – or they are species without a high market value.

We found that fishers targeting shrimp in particular caught more non-target species and had higher discards than those targeting fish. This is particularly worrying at a time when Sri Lankan shrimp exports are increasing, after the EU granted the country improved access to its market.

Fishers in Puttalam Lagoon discard non-target catch onshore.
Benjamin Jones

Potentially 90% of the world’s fish stocks are threatened by over-fishing – when more fish are caught than the population can replace. And the “tell-tale” signs of over-fishing are now being observed in Sri Lanka and across other research sites in the Indo-Pacific region. Fishers in these locations have told us and other researchers that they are catching much less fish than they were five years ago.

But this is not just an ecological issue, it is a social one too. In this era of increasing food insecurity, our findings highlight a serious concern for Sri Lanka. This unwanted seafood could be used to provide protein for the poorest in society. Instead, we found that fish with high nutritional value is being eaten by feral dogs and birds.

Unwanted fish end up as quick and easy meals for animals.
Benjamin Jones

Billions of people worldwide rely daily on fish for protein, while 50m people also rely on catching fish for work. But, if the levels of bycatch and discard continue, the livelihoods and food security of the people that depend on these fisheries will be under threat. If the problem is not managed, there won’t be any fish left in the waters.

There is one ray of hope for Sri Lanka, however. There are some small-scale fishery cooperatives which maximise long-term community benefits by dealing with the threats of fisheries mismanagement, livelihood insecurity and poverty. Communities with successful and inclusive cooperatives are better off than those without. Cooperatives have the potential to empower small-scale fishers against environmental and socioeconomic shocks, but the problem in Puttalam Lagoon is that these cooperatives are not operating across all levels of society.

If the bycatch and discards issue is going to be solved over the long-term, we need to look at combining sustainable management practices with community schemes to reduce unnecessary seafood waste all over the world. Together the millions of small-scale fishers all over the world have an immense amount of power, they just need to realise it.

Benjamin L. Jones, Research Associate, Cardiff University; Leanne Cullen-Unsworth, Research Fellow, Cardiff University, and Richard K.F. Unsworth, Research Officer, Swansea University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A Digital Demos

Sanjana Hattotuwa-February 24, 2018, 7:04 pm

A dozen years ago, Sri Lanka was a very different place. I was frustrated with mainstream media’s inability and unwillingness to report on the worsening situation in the North and East. The country was in the throes of a humanitarian emergency. The ceasefire agreement had broken down. We didn’t realise and could never guess then what was to come in 2009, but in 2006, the signs were evident we were heading back to war. In November, I published the first article on a web-based platform I created to bear witness to vital accounts no one else would touch, report or focus on. It was a situation report from Vakarai, noting that about twenty-five thousand civilians in the region, close to Batticaloa, needed food, medicines, shelter, water and sanitation facilities urgently. This wasn’t the kind of update newspapers at the time, in any language, carried.

A month later, my son was born.

Since then, I have nurtured two children. One, a physical being not unlike any other child and the required parenting, not unlike what fatherhood usually entails. The other, an unprecedented virtual construct and space. I was new to both roles, but with parenting a child, guidance and advice was more readily available. In creating a pioneering citizen journalism platform, there wasn’t really anyone I could turn to. No one had attempted anything of the sort in the country. This was a time predating social media, so there were no comparable examples, even from the region. Facebook was two years old and still strictly limited to alumni of Universities in the US. WhatsApp and Instagram hadn’t yet been invented. There were no smartphones, and feature-phones were all the rage – with the most rudimentary, largely text based mobile web browsing that took an eternity to render on small, low resolution screens. Many still used dial-up to connect to the web, since broadband (ADSL connections) had only been introduced around three years ago.

I stumbled my way through care-giving for two infants. My progeny aside, the online platform’s timbre, curation and execution – even if it were to fail – needed to set the bar for others to start from. If it was worth doing, it needed to be done well. Ultimately, the platform turned out to be quite resilient even when confronted with my own maddening myopia. In the second half of 2009, guided – nay, blinded - by a desire to bear witness to the horrible, inhuman conditions in what was then the largest Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in the world called Menik Farm, I offered as a prize what was at the time a coveted handheld high-definition video camera to anyone who could send me footage of daily strife and life within its confines. The sheer violence of the request and endeavour, putting at grave risk those already suffering so much, I soon came to realise. Disgraced and ridiculed, my best intentions resulted in the platform taking such a reputational hit, it had nearly to shut down. My son has his mother to protect him from my well-intentioned blunders. There was nothing to inoculate the web platform from the founder’s failings. So I learnt as I went along. What kept me going was a belief in technology’s ability to bear witness to what many others in or with power, sought to deny, decry and destroy.

The platform is now what it is and many things to many people. Through dozen years of managing it every single day without any break, some insights into the flow and nature of online conversations are worth sharing. Nothing goes up on the platform without approval, from original content to comments. This means the worst diatribes and hate, in fact, often directed against the Rajapaksas, never go up. Civility matters, and in creating a safe space for principled disagreement to flourish, community and conversation were enriched. Counter-intuitively, the worst hate faced by site and self came post-war, through comments against the Muslim community and those who were seen to be partial to them, at the height of the BBS violence across the country leading up to Aluthgama in 2014. Commentary and conversation on the platform itself has declined significantly in the past three years. On the other hand, engagement, sharing and readership over social media have grown astronomically and without pause. Technology has played a key role in gathering, shaping, producing and delivering stories. At a time when journalists were being abducted, tortured, murdered, silenced and forced into exile, the platform continued its operations and featured what few others dared to focus on or frame, because the platform was designed to be irrepressible even in an austere, censorious context.

That said, technology itself wasn’t and must never be the end goal. The people and stories were. Communicating realities out of sight, out of mind to many outside the North and East, as well as, post-war, stories from the South rarely covered by mainstream media is extremely tough, because the attention economy is getting harder to capture and retain.

A younger demographic who grew up with social media and the web click, flick and swipe their way through content at a pace that is both disturbing and challenging – the first because one wonders whether despite the sheer volume of content consumed, an entire generation knows and cares far less about the world they live in, and the second because a publisher has to compete with cute cats to place on record stories of far greater value.

It is easy to demonise and devalue what one does not fully understand. Despite recent media headlines and developments, I retain hope through years of direct observation that politics, rights and democracy do matter to a younger generation and that their negotiation of the world, though on the surface cosmetic, is moderated in more complex ways. Friends, peers, social structures, groups and even sometimes the device, platform and app shape worldviews today in ways traditional media hasn’t fully grasped, at least in Sri Lanka. The ability to be agile in the development of content allowed the platform to reach out to and engage with audiences otherwise alienated by other media. We hacked their attention with content that shed light on country and context. Today, I am repeatedly confronted with young adults who say that as undergraduates or A/L students, they learnt often for the first time about things even their parents didn’t know or talk about through the platform I created in 2006. That ages me greatly, but more seriously, is also quite refreshing to hear.

I am now moving on. The best time to give up a good thing is when it is at the peak of its health. The platform is now in the hands of two gifted, young individuals who often speak to each other in a language replete with acronyms, memes, GIFs and hashtags even I don’t comprehend. At the same time, they are both committed to the same values the platform was founded on, and has all these years, championed. They are not alone. For all the hand-wringing and despair of commentators and parents around wasted youth fuelled by social media, these very platforms are now the bedrock of our democracy. It is here Sri Lanka’s future is increasingly farmed, forged and fought. It is here new ideas take root and germinate. True, social media is violent, sexist, patriarchal, misogynistic and often brings out the worst in us by highlighting the worst amongst us. But there is so much more that is positive, helpful, insightful and hopeful. One just has to go beyond headlines.

There’s a lesson there for others in the media, too often engaged in a race to the bottom by comparing numbers, readers and other metrics to the detriment of what journalism is at its core about – the transport of readers to issues they didn’t know they would be interested in, till they encountered it in an immersive, compelling way. My son, precisely the same age as the platform I created, is a digital native – as interested in physical books as he is in virtual content, navigating vibrant Viber groups with as much ease as he interacts with people in person. This is the future. This is our future. Rather than simplistically or disastrously seek to intervene, censor and control, parents and politicians need to focus on ways the best of us and the best in us can be inspired, guided and framed in ways old media, conventional journalists and conservative minds could never even begin to imagine.

I have been part of these discussions for as long as I can remember. I suspect I will continue to be, for many years to come.

Soldier involved in blast was heading for duty – Police

By Leon Berenger-2018-02-25

A grenade explosion inside a packed private operated passenger bus at a location in Kahagolla, Diyathalawa early Wednesday that left 19 persons injured, some critically, has prompted some eerie questions with little or no answers.

At the centre of the bloodied incident is a Staff Sgt. who is alleged to have been in possession of the grenade when it went off prematurely sending shrapnel flying throughout the vehicle and injuring almost every occupant.

The Sergeant is currently in Intensive Care fighting for his life at the Diyatalawa Hospital along with several more of the injured who are being treated at different facilities.

According to the senior officer in charge of the investigations close to the scene, the suspect soldier was heading for duty after home leave which has led to confusion on the motive for his behaviour.
Risk

"It is strange for this particular officer to be transporting an explosive of this nature in his possession prior to reporting for duty simply owing to the risk factors involved," says Bandarawela Police Superintendent (SP) Sudath Marasinghe.

He says there is very little to go on from here since the suspect is in a critical condition and is unable to provide a statement to investigators which would be helpful in the probe.

"However, we have recorded statements of 25 others including fellow passengers, the crew and the suspect's immediate seniors among others," adds SP Marasinghe.

The military for their part are holding a separate inquiry and towards this end it has appointed a high-level six-member team headed by a Major General to carry out a thorough probe and conclude a report with recommendations at the very earliest.

Luggage

Military Spokesman Brigadier Sumith Attapattu said that strict security arrangements will be enhanced in the future when service personnel are leaving a military facility for home leave.

"This includes more intense checks on their person and personal luggage before they are allowed to leave the exit barrier at the military facility they are attached to.

"However all this will be done once the probe is concluded and the necessary recommendations are made in the report,"Brigadier Attapattu added.

However, he was also unable to say if the suspect soldier was heading for the camp or otherwise, adding that the local Police were involved in that aspect of the probe.

The military have also rubbished claims of any terrorist involvement in the incident.

Senior Assistant Government Analyst W.A. Roshan Fernando who visited the scene of the blast confirmed that it had been caused by a grenade explosion.

Survivors later told investigators that the suspect soldier was seated between two other passengers when the grenade slipped on to the floor and exploded.

They said the Sgt. Major may have attempted to conceal the grenade when he apparently lost his grip on the explosive allowing it to slip on to the floor and explode.

The suspect sustained life-threatening injuries to his legs and lower parts of his body while the passengers seated closest to him sustained serious injuries to their legs.

Among the injured were seven soldiers, five Air Force personnel and seven civilians, including two women.

Fourteen of the injured are continuing to receive treatment at hospitals while the remaining were discharged after initial treatment, Superintendent of the Diyatalawa Hospital Dr. Ranjith Amarakone said.

LTTE

And while all this was happening, sections of social media poked fun at the incident sometimes bordering on frightening incidents of the past.

One post had a note on a letterhead of the now defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as saying the group was responsible for the explosion in response to the behaviour of Brigadier Priyankara Fernando outside the Lankan Mission in London on 4 February.

The letter went on to warn of more similar attacks against 'war criminals' while claiming that the North and East of the country was their traditional homeland and so on.

The source of the post is currently under probe and it is currently being treated as a piece of mischievous 'fake news'.

Insurgents kill more than 20 security forces in separate attacks in Afghanistan

Taliban militants have attacked an Afghan army post killing government soldiers. (Reuters)
By Sayed Salahuddin February 24 at 4:53 AM

KABUL — More than 20 security forces were killed in a series of attacks by Taliban militants on Saturday in various parts of Afghanistan, including Kabul, officials reported in a sign of insurgents’ mobility despite a surge of offensives by U.S. and Afghan troops in recent months.

In Kabul, a suicide bomber on foot detonated explosives attached to his body outside an intelligence agency office, near the headquarters of NATO-led troops, Afghan officials said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said three Afghans were killed and six wounded, but he did not identify the victims.

The death toll in Kabul could have been higher, but an official for the intelligence agency threw his arms around the bomber before he could reach an area further up from the site of the blast, where there was a larger group of officials and civilians, the Interior Ministry’s chief spokesman told The Washington Post.

“He did an amazing job, sacrificed his life to save others by embracing the bomber before he could detonate the explosives,” Najib Danesh said, adding that another intelligence official was also among those killed.

The Kabul attack followed two suicide car bomb attacks targeting Afghan security forces on Saturday in two different parts of southern Helmand province, he said. At least four policemen were killed in the two attacks.

The bloodiest incident took place in Bala Boluk district of western Farah province where 18 troops were massacred overnight in their camps, said Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh.
The Taliban militants claimed responsibility for all the attacks on Saturday, except the one in Kabul.

The latest attacks come after a spate of high-profile strikes by the Taliban and the Islamic State in January, when more than 150 people, many of them civilians, were killed in different parts of Kabul.

U.S.-led and Afghan forces in recent months have ratcheted up ground and aerial offensives against the militants as part of Washington’s new strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

Palestinian killed in Jericho was shot in stomach

Yasin al-Saradih

Maureen Clare Murphy- 24 February 2018

The slaying of a Palestinian man by Israeli soldiers on Thursday may amount to a war crime, “giving rise to individual criminal responsibility at the International Criminal Court,” the human rights group Al-Haq statedon Saturday.

Reports on Thursday suggested that Yasin Omar al-Saradih died after he was beaten by Israeli soldiers, but an autopsy on Friday revealed that the 35-year-old man was killed by a bullet wound to the stomach.

Al-Saradih was killed while Israeli forces raided the city of Jericho before dawn on Thursday to arrest wanted Palestinians.

Under the Oslo accords signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s, Jericho is located in Area A of the occupied West Bank, meaning that it is supposedly under full Palestinian Authority control.

During the Thursday raid, Israeli forces fired tear gas and sound grenades at Palestinian youths, according to Al-Haq.

Al-Saradih approached the raiding forces “carrying a metal object comprising a car tire and an iron bar,” Al-Haq stated.

Al-Saradih ran toward the soldiers shortly after the army raided the home of his elderly uncle and searched it for half an hour, interrogating his family members.

What happened next was recorded by nearby security cameras:

The footage “shows [al-Saradih] running towards the [Israeli occupation forces] and then being shot at and assaulted by one of the soldiers,” according to the rights group.

“The soldier is then joined by two more soldiers who are seen kicking [al-Saradih] with their boots and beating him with their rifles.”

Five additional soldiers appear and surround a now incapacitated al-Saradih. The soldiers drag him to a second location approximately five meters away.

Additional security footage obtained by Al-Haq shows that the soldiers “continued to assault [al-Saradih].” The forces gathered around the Palestinian man as he lay on the ground for at least 10 minutes without providing him with first aid.

An eyewitness told Al-Haq that soldiers checked whether al-Saradih was still alive, and then dragged him away and put him into a military jeep before driving away.

Al-Haq stated that security camera footage confirms the eyewitness account. The group said that the video shows soldiers carrying al-Saradih, who is no longer moving, and loading him into the jeep.

Denied medical aid

Immediately following the incident the Israeli military first alleged that al-Saradih had attacked soldiers with a knife and tried to steal one of their guns. They also claimed that army medics treated al-Saradih on the scene – a claim contradicted by the eyewitness testimony and video footage obtained by Al-Haq.

Al-Haq stated that the military’s claim that al-Saradih was evacuated from the scene to receive medical treatment “remains unsubstantiated and does not explain why [al-Saradih] was left lying on the ground, injured, for at least 10 minutes before being transported by an [Israeli occupation forces] vehicle.”

“Failure to call for medical assistance for Yasin al-Saradih, who was left dead or dying for at least 10 minutes, is a violation of Israel’s obligation [to] protect the right to life,” Al-Haq stated on Saturday.
Israeli forces frequently deny first aid to Palestinians injured by soldiers, and often prevent Palestinian medics from accessing them.

Medics weren’t allowed to approach the bodies of two Palestinian boys killed by Israeli shelling in Gaza last Saturday night until the following morning.

Amnesty International has stated that failure to provide medical aid – especially intentional failure – “violates the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” and as such “should be investigated as a criminal offense.”

On Friday, an autopsy was performed at Israel’s Institute of Forensic Medicine in the presence of a Palestinian physician. The examination determined that al-Saradih’s body showed signs of beating but his death was caused by a bullet to the stomach.

Israeli media reported that the soldiers involved in al-Saradih’s death are expected to be questioned on Sunday.

Israeli military probes of the army’s own soldiers’ conduct rarely lead to indictments.

The leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has described the internal investigative unit as a “fig leaf” mechanism that serves to whitewash the occupation.

Impunity

The pretense of a robust internal investigative mechanism has, however, helped Israel evade accountability in international courts.

This impunity has encouraged an environment in which Palestinians are routinely killed without international scrutiny.

Al-Haq noted in late 2015 that “Since 1987, no Israeli soldier or commander has been convicted of willfully causing the death of a Palestinian in the [occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip].”

Elor Azarya, an Israeli army medic who was caught on video shooting at the head of a prone Palestinian as he lay on the ground in March 2016, was exceptionally convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Israel’s military chief later reduced that sentence by four months.

Fourteen Palestinians – four of them children – have been killed by Israeli forces, including settlement security guards, so far this year. Two Israelis in the occupied West Bank were slain by Palestinians during the same period.

Armed man detained ahead of Israel rally in support of migrants

Israel offers African migrants $3,500 and plane ticket to leave, or jail

African migrants and Israeli activists outside Embassy of Rwanda earlier this month (AFP/file photo)

Saturday 24 February 2018

Israeli police said they detained two men, one armed, on Saturday after they allegedly made online threats to disrupt a rally in solidarity with African migrants facing expulsion.

It said the men were "detained for questioning" after a Facebook post apparently calling for a violent counter-protest on Saturday evening as opponents of a government crackdown on the migrants gathered in Tel Aviv.

"Friends it's happening... the battle to throw out the infiltrators," said the post, reproduced in a police statement. "It's time to riot and defend our home."

The term "infiltrators" is used by Israeli authorities and supporters of mass deportation to refer to the migrants, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who began entering Israel illegally through what was then a porous Egyptian border in 2007.

Israel has given many of them until 1 April to leave for an unnamed African destination - known to be Rwanda - in exchange for $3,500 and a plane ticket. Otherwise, they face open-ended incarceration, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli police

Police said comments posted in response to the Facebook entry included "I am armed."

"Israel police immediately located the two suspects, detained them for questioning and at the conclusion confiscated from one of the suspects his weapon," the statement added.

Police said they expected about 5,000 people to take part in the solidarity rally.

Israel considers the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 migrants to be job seekers and says it has no legal obligation to keep them, according to the AP. The Africans say they fled for their lives and face renewed danger if they return.

UN security council votes unanimously for month-long Syria ceasefire

United Nations votes to allow humanitarian access and evacuations
Moscow mired in Syria as Putin’s gameplan becomes bogged down

Members of the United Nations security council vote on a resolution demanding a 30-day humanitarian ceasefire across Syria. Photograph: Craig Ruttle/AP

Julian Borger World affairs editor Sat 24 Feb 2018 21.35 GMT

The UN security council voted unanimously on Saturday for a month-long ceasefire across Syria to allow for humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuation.

The demand for a 30-day ceasefire was made effective immediately but it was far from clear what impact, if any, the resolution would have on Syria’s battlefields. Minutes after the vote, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Syrian regime warplanes had bombed eastern Ghouta, a besieged rebel enclave of 400,000 people.

The Syrian regime’s envoy to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, appeared to shrug off the authority of the resolution, insisting his government had a right to defend its territory and would continue to “fight terrorism, wherever it is”.

The vote on the resolution, proposed by Kuwait and Sweden, had been put off for three days in the face of Russian objections but the version that was approved on Saturday was little changed from the original. The vote was postponed for two hours on Saturday as Russia made a last-ditch attempt to water down its language.

Throughout the week, regime forces kept up their bombardment of eastern Ghouta. The medical aid agency MSF said hospitals and clinics it supported in the Damascus suburb had reported more than 520 deaths and more than 2,500 wounded in just the past five days.

“It has taken us far too long to agree this resolution,” said the senior diplomat representing the UK in the council, Stephen Hickey. “While we have been arguing over commas, Assad’s planes have been killing more civilians in their homes and in their hospitals imposing unbearable suffering.”

Under the terms of the new resolution, the UN “demands that all parties cease hostilities without delay and engage immediately to ensure full and comprehensive implementation of this demand by all parties, for a durable humanitarian pause for at least 30 consecutive days throughout Syria, to enable the safe, unimpeded and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and services and medical evacuations of the critically sick and wounded, in accordance with applicable international law”.

The truce does not apply to military operations against Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Nusra Front “and other terrorist groups as designated by the security council”.

The resolution demands access for humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuation, in particular to the 5.6 million people in 1,244 communities described as being in acute need, of which almost 3 million are in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.

Previous ceasefires in Syria, over more than seven years of conflict, have not fared well. The last major ceasefire negotiated on a high level with Russia, in eastern Aleppo in late 2016, collapsed on the day it was due to take effect. The rebel enclave there was overrun by pro-regime forces, many of them Iranian-controlled militias.

A clause in Saturday’s resolution called for the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, to report back to the council in 15 days on its implementation.

That is likely to be subject to as much dispute as the resolution itself. The Russian UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, warned: “We will not countenance any subjective interpretation of the resolution that has just been adopted.”

The French envoy, François Delattre, said his government would hold regional powers with forces in Syria – Russia, Iran and Turkey – to account in upholding the ceasefire.

“Nothing would be worse that to see this resolution remain a dead letter,” Delattre said. “For this reason France will be extremely vigilant on all of these points in the hours to come and in the days to come.”

The Syrian teenager tweeting the horror of life in Ghouta – video

He added: “Our generation will be judged on whether or not we manage to put an end to the Syrian tragedy.”

The defeat of Isis strongholds has sharpened competition for control of Syrian territories between regime forces and their Iranian and Russian backers, and rebel groups with US, Turkish and Arab support.

Since launching cruise missiles at a Syrian regime airbase last year in retaliation for the use of nerve gas, the Trump administration has shown little interest in intervening to protect civilians and has wavered over how much effort and resources it wants to invest in protect its interests and allies.

In January, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, appeared to unveil an ambitious set of new war aims that included establishing a bulwark against Iranian influence, ensuring the departure of the Assad regime and creating conditions for the return of refugees.

On Friday, Trump contradicted Tillerson, insisting the US was only in Syria to fight terrorist groups.
“What Russia and what Iran and what Syria has done recently is a humanitarian disgrace, I will tell you that,” Trump told reporters at the White House while hosting the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

But he made it clear the US was not going to intervene: “We are there for one reason. We are there to get rid of Isis and go home. We are not there for any other reason, and we’ve largely accomplished our goal.”

Mueller is about to take a big step closer to Trump

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III filed new charges on Feb. 22 against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates.(Melissa Macaya, Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

By Philip Bump February 23

To date, four people have pleaded guilty to charges brought against them by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team. Two were ancillary characters: a businessman who apparently sold bank account numbers to Russian trolls; and a lawyer who had worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime partner Rick Gates.

Two were closer to the campaign. One is campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose connections to Russia-linked characters helped spur the initial investigation in July 2016 into whether President Trump’s campaign had aided Russian interference efforts. And then there’s Michael Flynn, a campaign aide who wound up as Trump’s national security adviser. Both Papadopoulos and Flynn have apparently agreed to work with Mueller’s team in its investigation, but it’s not clear how much either knew about what the campaign was doing. Flynn’s role was the same on paper as Papadopoulos’s, but he was clearly closer to Trump.

Neither, though, is known to have had intimate familiarity with what the Trump campaign effort looked like. Which makes Friday’s news of an intent by Gates — both a campaign staffer and, before that, a Manafort partner — to cooperate with Mueller potentially very significant.

Mueller’s team dug deep on Gates and Manafort and uncovered a slew of questionable business practices. Between the two, they face 58 criminal counts, including conspiracy charges, bank fraud, lying to federal officials, income tax charges and more. Gates faces more charges than Manafort, giving him all the more reason to try to reduce the burden of any criminal penalty.

Remember that Mueller’s mandate isn’t only to suss out what Russian interference in 2016 looked like. It’s specifically to determine the answer to the question first prompted by Papadopoulos: Did anyone from Trump’s campaign help? While Gates was involved in the campaign more directly than Papadopoulos — he was deputy chairman — his work almost certainly paled next to how significant Manafort’s was.

That’s the clear utility for Mueller in Gates cooperating. Gates was privy to a big chunk of Manafort’s financial transactions that are being questioned by prosecutors, and his willingness to aid their cause makes it much, much more possible that they’ll be able to convict Manafort. Just as the admission of guilt by that attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, may have made it more possible that Gates would be convicted, upping the pressure on him to flip, knowing that Gates would take the witness stand against him would give Manafort a lot of incentive to figure out a deal with Mueller’s team, too.

And getting Manafort to agree to cooperate would be huge. Save flipping a member of Trump’s family, like son-in-law Jared Kushner, there are few people who were higher in the Trump campaign infrastructure during 2016. Manafort is much more likely to be aware of efforts to shift the direction of the campaign, including any ways in which those shifts crossed ethical or legal lines.
We hasten to note that there is no public evidence at this time that Trump campaign staff directly sought to aid Russian interference efforts. But significant moments at which the campaign drifted close to that point involve Manafort directly.

Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17, 2016. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Most notably, there’s that meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower, which included Donald Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort. This is the meeting with the Kremlin-linked attorney and the Russian lobbyist that was predicated on the promise of incriminating information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton delivered by the Russian government. (“I love it,” Trump Jr. said when it was offered.) Manafort has reportedly denied knowing what the meeting was about, skimming past an email subject line from Trump Jr. that read “FW: Russia — Clinton — private and confidential” before seeing his invitation to attend the meeting. Trump Jr. has said that Manafort spent the whole meeting looking at his phone, implying that the meeting was so useless and boring that Manafort could barely be bothered to pay attention. We later learned, though, that Manafort was taking assiduous notes.

So that’s one question: What would Manafort who’s cooperating with Mueller’s team say about that meeting? About Trump Jr.’s efforts to set it up? About whether Trump knew it was happening, which he’s denied? The evening after the meeting was set, Trump gave a speech in which he pledged “a major speech on probably Monday of next week, and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” That speech didn’t happen — nor did the promised dirt on Clinton materialize.

Manafort is also believed to have tried to leverage his position with the campaign to bolster his relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Manafort offered private briefings on the campaign to Deripaska, who’s close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Emails obtained by Mueller suggest that Manafort saw his prominent position as a way to “get whole” with Deripaska, opening up a number of questions about how Manafort’s position may in fact have been used.

With Gates cooperating, Mueller’s team gains important leverage over someone who certainly can answer a number of outstanding questions about the campaign and the people working on it. It’s still very much the case that Trump himself may never be implicated in aiding the Russian effort and exonerated of having had any knowledge about it. But Manafort is one of the few people who might know what Trump knew — or Manafort might be able to himself put pressure on people, like Kushner or Trump Jr., who are even closer to the president.

“Collusion” has not been proved. Manafort is innocent until proved guilty. But moving Gates from hostile to friendly certainly puts a lot more pressure on Trump and his senior team than existed 24 hours ago.

Europe’s Sanctions-Blocking Threats Are Empty

When it comes to Iran sanctions, the EU must satisfy Trump’s demands. Access to the U.S. financial system hangs in the balance.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, speak to the media following talks in Berlin on June 27, 2017. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

BY RICHARD GOLDBERG-

FEBRUARY 20, 2018, 3:50 PM

A European Union official’s threat this month that Europe would block any attempt by the United States to reimpose sanctions on Iran showed a new level of desperation to deter President Donald Trump from leaving the Iran nuclear deal in May. But with their access to the U.S. financial system hanging in the balance, European banks know that, in the end, the EU must satisfy Trump’s demands to fix the deal or be prepared to fully comply when U.S. sanctions return.

The latest salvo from Denis Chaibi, the head of the Iranian task force at the European External Action Service, echoed previous threats from David O’Sullivan, the EU ambassador to the United States, that if America tried to reimpose its secondary sanctions on Iran, the EU would revive 1990s-era blocking regulations ordering European businesses not to comply.

Unsurprisingly, supporters of the Iran deal in the United States use these threats as evidence that the accord, along with Euro-Iranian commerce, could survive regardless of a U.S. decision to exit it.

They point to a recent survey of international business managers as proof that blocking legislation could work.

When first asked what European and Asian companies would do if Trump brought back U.S. sanctions on Iran, only 4 percent of respondents thought businesses would ignore U.S. sanctions. But when asked whether European regulations to “prevent U.S. authorities from penalizing your company over Iran business” would positively affect their decision to invest in Iran, 54 percent said yes.

If such an antidote to America’s secondary financial sanctions existed, European threats to ignore U.S. sanctions might be credible. But these threats are based on outdated understandings of America’s Iran sanctions policy.

In 1996, Congress passed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which in part threatened a menu of U.S. sanctions against any foreign entity that invested in Iran’s energy sector. Europe responded by issuing blocking regulations and threatening action against the United States at the World Trade Organization.

Back then, the United States took Europe’s threats seriously because of how the U.S. law was drafted. It required then-President Bill Clinton to impose meager sanctions that a foreign company could painlessly ignore. At the time, the upside of trade with Iran far outweighed the downside of U.S. sanctions. Facing certain embarrassment, Clinton backed down.

But this changed in 2010 when Congress passed a new law leveraging America’s greatest strength against the fulcrum of global commerce with Iran: financial transactions.

After years of blacklisting most financial institutions in Iran for their involvement in various illicit activities, Congress recognized that it also needed to punish third parties for doing business with these criminal enterprises. Thus, it declared that any foreign bank that maintained a correspondent banking relationship with a designated Iranian bank would forfeit its banking relationships in the United States.

In 2011, the United States extended this prohibition to transactions conducted with the Central Bank of Iran and, in 2012, to transactions conducted in connection with a wide range of Iranian economic sectors and activities.

If Trump decided to enforce these sanctions again, banks around the world would immediately be at risk of losing their correspondent accounts in the United States.

Blocking regulations might shield a company from American-levied fines, but they cannot shield a British bank from losing its access to the U.S. financial system. This time around, the downside of U.S. sanctions would far outweigh the upside of Iranian trade.

This raises serious questions about what would happen if Trump’s deadline arrived and Europe remained unwilling to fix the nuclear deal by eliminating its sunset provisions, requiring inspections of Iranian military sites, and prohibiting Iran from further developing or testing any ballistic missiles.

If Trump leaves the deal, America’s toughest sanctions could snap back immediately. And while diplomats in Brussels may want to stare Trump down and see if he flinches, banks will not want to take that risk.

The British, French, and German governments could help avoid this potential crisis by taking a more thoughtful approach on the Iran deal. Agreeing to repudiate its sunsets would avoid a transatlantic train wreck today without violating the agreement for years to come. Demanding verification of the agreement with visits to Iranian military sites would be a step toward enforcing the deal, not breaking it.

Furthermore, nothing in the Iran deal prohibits Europe or the United States from reimposing sanctions related to any Iranian entity — even the central bank — if it is connected to non-nuclear activities such as ballistic missile development and terrorism. That’s a view shared by both Democrats and Republicans in the United States — and given Europe’s direct security interest in curbing Iran’s missile program and regional expansion, it’s a view that European diplomats should adopt as well. If they do, they just might avoid the consequences of a U.S. reimposition of secondary financial sanctions.

China says new U.S. sanctions threaten cooperation over North Korea

A soldier unfurls the Chinese national flag as it is raised in front of the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing's Tiananmen Square October 15, 2007. REUTERS/David Gray/Files

Ben Blanchard-FEBRUARY 24, 2018

BEIJING (Reuters) - China reacted with anger on Saturday to new U.S. sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on nuclear-equipped North Korea, saying the unilateral targeting of Chinese firms and people risked harming cooperation on the problem.

The United States said on Friday it was imposing its largest package of sanctions aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programmes, and President Donald Trump warned of a “phase two” that could be “very, very unfortunate for the world” if the steps did not work.

In addressing the Trump administration’s biggest national security challenge, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.

The sanctions’ targets include a Taiwan passport holder, as well as shipping and energy firms in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. The actions block assets held by the firms and individuals in the United States and prohibit U.S. citizens from dealing with them.

In a terse statement, China’s Foreign Ministry said the government had always fully and thoroughly enforced United Nations resolutions on North Korea, and absolutely did not allow any of its citizens or companies to contravene them.

China will “seriously handle” in accordance with the law those found to have done so, it added.

“China resolutely opposes the U.S. side enacting unilateral sanctions and ‘long-armed jurisdiction’ in accordance with its domestic law against Chinese entities or individuals,” the ministry said.

“We have already lodged stern representations with the U.S. side about this issue, and demand the U.S. side immediately stops such relevant mistaken actions to avoid harming bilateral cooperation in the relevant area,” it added, without elaborating.

China has repeatedly expressed opposition to any sanctions against North Korea not done within the framework of the United Nations, and insisted it is fully enforcing the existing - and already very tough - sanctions.

China’s January trade with North Korea fell to the lowest level since at least June 2014, the latest sign that China has kept up pressure on its isolated neighbour in line with United Nations trade sanctions.

China remains North Korea’s largest trading partner and sole major ally, though overall trade has fallen in recent months as the sanctions take effect.

The latest U.S. sanctions name two Chinese shipping firms - Shandong province-based Weihai World-Shipping Freight and Shanghai-based Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping Co Ltd.

Reuters was unable to locate contact details for the Chinese companies.

The United States also named Taiwan citizen Tsang Yung Yuan and designated two of his companies in the sanctions list.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it was in touch with the United States and would investigate its citizens and entities suspected of helping North Korea. It also called on Taiwan firms and citizens not to break U.N. sanctions.

Reuters was unable to reach Tsang or his companies, Pro-Gain Group Corporation and Kingly Won International Company Ltd, for comment. Tsang declined to talk to a reporter from Taiwan’s Apple Daily on Saturday morning, according to video footage from the newspaper.

The self-ruled island’s Justice Ministry said authorities have launched a probe into Tsang and his two companies, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported.