Where the streets have no name: Israel leaves Palestinians in postal 'dark age'

Hundreds of Umm al-Fahm's streets remain nameless as Israel refuses to allow the town's Palestinians to honour their national icons

A man walks past an Umm al-Fahm mural that reads: "My country, you gave us love and light which revealed paths for the lost" (Reuters)

Jonathan Cook-Saturday 17 March 2018

UMM Al-FAHM, Israel - In the town of Umm al-Fahm, more than a third of all letters never reach their destination. Identity cards, passports and drivers' licences go missing, welfare cheques are lost, appointments expire, and penalties mount up over unpaid fines.

GPS navigation apps like Waze fail, taxis struggle to find customers, and private delivery companies have to be met at the town's entrance and escorted in.

It is scene of administrative chaos more appropriate for a village in remotest rural Africa than a town of 60,000 residents in central Israel, one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world.

For decades, Umm al-Fahm's 301 streets have lacked any names or house numbers. Five years after the municipality submitted a list of names for every street, Israeli government officials are still dragging their feet.

They have not yet given an official reason, but there seems little doubt about the cause of the interminable delay. The names of some 40 streets – including a Yasser Arafat Street – have enraged Israel's right-wing government.

Umm al-Fahm is the second-largest Palestinian community in Israel, after Nazareth.

Palestinians take to the unnamed streets of Umm al-Fahm during a 2015 protest over the banning by Israel of the Islamic Movement (AFP)

'Denial of identity and history'

About a fifth of Israel's population are Palestinians, remnants of communities that were not expelled during the Nakba – Arabic for "catastrophe," the word Palestinians use to describe the creation of Israel on the ruins of their homeland in 1948.

For decades, many Palestinian communities in Israel have been left in a kind of bureaucratic "dark ages," noted Yousef Jabareen, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament who lives in Umm al-Fahm.

The cause, he said, was a combination of a lack of budgets and the interior ministry's refusal to countenance street names for Palestinian political and cultural icons.

 Yousef Jabareen, Palestinian politician

This goes well beyond a technical matter ... of sending mail. We need cultural and national icons just like everybody else

"This goes well beyond a technical matter of problems finding where people live and sending mail," Jabareen told Middle East Eye.

"As a minority, we don't have control over our education system or the wider public and cultural space, so it is important that in our own communities we are able to reflect our identity, narrative and history. We need cultural and national icons just like everybody else."

Last year, the village of Jatt, near Umm al-Fahm, ran into similar difficulties. The municipality was forced to take down signs on a street it had named for Yasser Arafat after Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared he would not allow any street to bear the late Palestinian leader's name.  

Netanyahu threatened to pass legislation to outlaw such names, if necessary, saying: "We can't have streets named after Israel's enemies." 

Matan Peleg, head of Im Tirzu, a far-right group that originally raised the matter with the government, argued that "Arafat's hands are stained with blood" and called the street signs a "disgrace". 

But Jabareen countered: "Yasser Arafat was a partner in the [Oslo] peace process, he won a Nobel peace prize, and he was the internationally recognised leader of the Palestinian people.

"It is entirely reasonable for Umm al-Fahm and other communities to name a street in his honour."

No Mahmoud Darwish Street

Among the other 40 proposed names that have been rejected for Umm al-Fahm are Mahmoud Darwish Street, for the Palestinians' most famous poet; streets honouring previous mayors of the town; and a handful of streets named for villages razed by the Israeli army during the Nakba and from which many of Umm al-Fahm's families were displaced.

An objection has been raised too against a street commemorating 30 March, the anniversary of Land Day in 1976, when Israeli soldiers shot dead six unarmed Palestinian demonstrators during protests against the state's confiscation of their lands. Land Day is marked by Palestinians around the world.

Although other Palestinian communities lack street names, the situation in Umm al-Fahm is especially acute, noted Jabareen.

 Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli PM

We can't have streets named after Israel's enemies

Almost all residents belong to one of only four extended families: Aghbariyeh, Mahajneh, Mahamid and Jabareen. With potentially hundreds of Mohammeds, Mahmouds and Ahmeds in each family, finding the right person without an address often proves impossible.

In response, Adalah, a legal centre for Israel's Palestinian minority, sent a letter last month to the Aryeh Deri, the interior minister, as well as Israel's chief law officer, Avichai Mandelblit, demanding that the street names be approved.

According to Adalah, the interior minister has exceeded his legal authority by blocking the names, effectively holding the town to ransom. 

Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, told MEE: "Municipalities are required to inform the interior ministry of the street names they have selected, but the law does not authorise the interior ministry to veto them."

She said the ministry was able to exploit its position because municipalities were dependent on the government for part of their budgets and for services.

The interior ministry, however, denied that it was overstepping its authority. "The ministry is allowed to examine, and in some cases even to intervene, in a decision by a local authority to decide on street names," it said in a statement.

Kochav Yair, Israel - a town named after Avraham Stern, a terrorist to the British and a 'freedom fighter' for the Israelis (AFP)

Jewish 'terrorists' honoured

Without addresses, Umm al-Fahm's residents have had to rely on postal boxes. But the Israeli authorities have failed to provide enough boxes, leaving thousands of families without an address.

In Israel's largest Palestinian city, Nazareth, most street also lack names. It has avoided the interior ministry's stranglehold by issuing many streets with numbers instead.

Palestinian leaders in Israel have accused the interior ministry of a double standard, noting that a large number of streets in Jewish communities bear the names of controversial historic figures.

Some were viewed as "terrorists" either by British Mandate authorities that ruled the area before Israel's creation or by Israel's founders themselves.

The towns of Or Akiva and Ashkelon have named streets for Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose vehemently anti-Arab Kach party was listed as a terrorist organisation by the FBI. One of his prominent followers, Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli army doctor, massacred 29 Muslims at worship in Hebron in 1994.

Many streets bear the name of two pre-state paramilitary groups responsible for killing civilians: the Lehi and the Irgun, also known by the Hebrew acronym "Etzel".

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The Irgun famously blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, and carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, the most notorious single attack on a Palestinian community during the Nakba. It led to mass flight by Palestinians from their homes.

Lehi, meanwhile, regularly mounted lethal attacks on British soldiers and had a history of killing Jewish women who dated them.

Its leader, Avraham Stern, known by the nickname "Yair" was the inspiration for a new town dedicated in the early 1980s, Kochav Yair. Stern also has streets in his honour in many towns, including Petah Tikva and Kefar Sava.

Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who has streets, schools and medical centres named after him, was commander of the Lehi in 1948 when it killed Folke Bernadotte, a mediator in Palestine for the United Nations.

And when an elevated road to Nazareth was opened a few years ago, Israeli officials named it "Rafael Eitan" bridge, despite vehement objection from city leaders. Eitan, an Israeli general, famously advocated treating Palestinians like "drugged cockroaches" and founded an anti-Arab party.

Rafael Eitan bridge in Nazareth, named after an Israeli general who called Palestinians 'drugged cockroaches' (MEE/Jonathan Cook)

'Linguistic cleansing'

Like the residents of Umm al-Fahm, some 330,000 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem have faced a series of battles over street signs.

Israel has been gradually replacing road signs using the Arabic term for Jerusalem, "al Quds," with the Hebrew name "Yerushalayim" transliterated into Arabic.

Writing on the Israeli website Haokets, a Palestinian researcher of the Nakba, Umar al-Ghubari, observed that the Israeli authorities had erased Palestinian signs to make Palestinians "feel foreign" in their homeland.

"This is not your country, this is the country of the Jews – the signs report to us," he wrote. "The process of linguistic cleansing … complements the acts of ethnic cleansing [of the Nakba]."

It has taken more than 40 years of struggle to get street names for East Jerusalem

- Nisreen Alyan,  lawyer for ACRI

In recent years East Jerusalem has started being issued with its first street names after a leading human rights group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), petitioned the Israeli supreme court over the lack of postal services there.

But Nisreen Alyan, a lawyer for ACRI, said East Jerusalem's Palestinians had been forced to restrict the names to flowers, animals and stars to get them approved.

"It has taken more than 40 years of struggle to get street names for East Jerusalem," she told MEE.

Even so, observed Alyan, 30 streets were awarded Hebrew names by the Jerusalem municipality, highlighting Biblical and Jewish connections. These were mostly in Palestinian areas such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers are trying illegally to take over homes and land.

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, warned at the time that the measure was part of "ongoing efforts to Judaise al-Quds and falsify history".

A Palestinian boy walks through Silwan, a Palestinian area of East Jerusalem where the Israeli government has renamed many streets in Hebrew (AFP)

Bill to downgrade Arabic

Alyan said it was important to put the problems over signs into a wider context.

Most Jewish communities and public institutions had avoided translating Hebrew signs or documents into Arabic, even though Arabic is an official language and the mother tongue of a fifth of the population.

She noted that there had been a storm of protest recently after a popular TV show, Fauda, about Israeli soldiers operating undercover in Palestinian areas, put up billboards in Jewish communities promoting the programme in Arabic. The posters had to be taken down.

"Right now there is a struggle over the status of the Arabic language in Israel," she said, referring to a Basic Law the government is drafting to declare Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

"The government wants to downgrade Arabic from its position as an official language. It would prefer to exclude Arabic from all public space."

Andrew McCabe, Trump’s foil at the FBI, is fired hours before he could retire

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on March 16, shortly before McCabe was set to retire. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

By Matt Zapotosky March 17 at 12:52 AM

Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night fired former FBI deputy director Andrew Mc­Cabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to slander him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign.

Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department inspector general and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

He said based on those findings and the recommendation of the department’s senior career official, “I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.”

The move will likely cost Mc­Cabe a significant portion of his retirement benefits, though it is possible he could bring a legal challenge. He responded on Friday night with a lengthy statement, claiming he was being targeted because he was a witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia and asserting that his actions were appropriate. He also alleged former FBI Director James B. Comey knew about the media disclosure about which the inspector general has raised questions.

“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 15 said former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe “has had some very troubling behavior.” (Reuters)

[Five reasons Trump would have wanted Andrew McCabe fired]

Trump tweeted early Saturday morning, “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”

An email notifying McCabe of the move was sent to his work account and his lawyers just minutes before Sessions’s statement was made public, though McCabe learned of the firing from press accounts, his spokeswoman said. McCabe has been fighting vigorously to keep his job, and on Thursday, he spent nearly four hours inside the Justice Department pleading his case.

Michael R. Bromwich, Mc­Cabe’s attorney, said that he had “never before seen the type of rush to judgment — and rush to summary punishment — that we have witnessed in this case.” He cited in particular President Trump’s attacks on McCabe on Twitter and the White House press secretary’s comments about him on Thursday — which he said were “quite clearly designed to put inappropriate pressure on the Attorney General to act accordingly.”

“This intervention by the White House in the DOJ disciplinary process is unprecedented, deeply unfair, and dangerous,” Bromwich said.

McCabe has become a lightning rod in the political battles over the FBI’s most high-profile cases, including the Russia investigation and the probe of Hillary Clinton’s email practices. He has been a frequent target of criticism from Trump.

His firing — which was recommended by the FBI office that handles discipline — stems from a Justice Department inspector general investigation that found McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about a Clinton-related case, then misled investigators about his actions in the matter, people familiar with the matter have said. He stepped down earlier this year from the No. 2 job in the bureau after FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was briefed on the inspector general’s findings, though he technically was still an employee.

How many days has it been since a high-profile White House departure? VIEW GRAPHIC 

McCabe, who conducted interviews with several media outlets in advance of his firing but declined to do so with The Washington Post, said in his statement he was “being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed” when the president fired Comey as FBI director. Mueller is looking at that termination as part of his examination into whether Trump was attempting to obstruct justice.

McCabe said in the statement that his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee — which he believed accelerated the process against him — revealed he “would corroborate” Comey’s accounts of his interactions with Trump. Comey has said previously the president asked him for loyalty and, referring to the probe of the president’s former national security adviser, asked whether Comey would “let this go”

“The big picture,” McCabe said, “is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.”

Bromwich, himself a former Justice Department inspector general, suggested that office treated McCabe unfairly, cleaving from a larger investigation its findings on McCabe and not giving McCabe an adequate chance to respond to the allegations he faced. In his statement, Bromwich said McCabe and his lawyers were given limited access to the inspector general’s draft report late last month, saw a final report and evidence a week ago and were “receiving relevant exculpatory evidence as recently as two days ago.”

“With so much at stake, this process has fallen far short of what Mr. McCabe deserved,” Brom­wich said. “This concerted effort to accelerate the process in order to beat the ticking clock of his scheduled retirement violates any sense of decency and basic principles of fairness.”

[FBI disciplinary office recommends firing former deputy director Andrew McCabe]

A spokesman for the inspector general’s office declined to comment.

Some in the bureau might view McCabe’s termination so close to retirement as an unnecessarily harsh and politically influenced punishment for a man who spent more than 20 years at the FBI. The White House had seemed to support such an outcome, though a spokeswoman said the decision was up to Sessions.

“We do think that it is well-documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.

Trump and McCabe’s relationship has long been fraught. The president has previously suggested that McCabe was biased in favor of Clinton, his political opponent, pointing out that McCabe’s wife, who ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Virginia legislature, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the political action committee of Terry McAuliffe, then the state’s governor and a noted Clinton ally. During an Oval Office meeting in May, Trump is said to have asked McCabe whom he voted for in the presidential election and vented about the donations.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz put McCabe in his crosshairs during a broad look at alleged improprieties in the handling of the Clinton email case. In the course of that review, Horowitz found that McCabe had authorized two FBI officials to talk to then-Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett for a story about the case and another investigation into Clinton’s family foundation. Barrett now works for The Washington Post.

Background conversations with reporters are commonplace in Washington, though McCabe’s authorizing such a talk was viewed as inappropriate because the matter being discussed was an ongoing criminal investigation. The story ultimately presented McCabe as a somewhat complicated figure — one who some FBI officials thought was standing in the way of the Clinton Foundation investigation, but who also seemed to be pushing back against Justice Department officials who did not believe there was a case to be made.

McCabe said in his statement that he, as the FBI’s deputy director, had the authority to do what he did. He said he was simply trying to “set the record straight” and “make clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed” after the bureau was “portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes.”

“It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter,” he said. “It was the type of exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per week. In fact, it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director Wray, at his request.”

In an interview with CNN, McCabe alleged that in December, he had a “long conversation with the editor of a major national newspaper at Chris Wray’s request and engaged with this editor in an effort to get them to back off a story that we thought would be harmful to our operational equities.”

An FBI spokesman and a lawyer for Comey declined to comment. McCabe also said he answered questions about the matter “truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that surrounded me,” acknowledging only that he had clarified his account.

“And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted investigators to correct them,” he said.

McCabe, who turns 50 on Sunday and would have then been eligible for his full retirement benefits, had quickly ascended through senior roles to the No. 2 leadership post. He briefly served in an interim capacity as the FBI director, in the months between when Trump fired Comey from the post and Wray was confirmed by the Senate.

McCabe’s team on Friday night released a bevy of statements from former national security officials supporting the former deputy director, including from former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.; former National Security Agency Deputy Director Richard H. Ledgett Jr.; former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg; former FBI national security official Michael B. Steinbach; and former Justice Department national security official Mary B. McCord.

Steinbach said McCabe had “become a convenient scapegoat so that narrow political objectives can be achieved.” McCord said she “never doubted his honesty or motivations, and can say without hesitation that he was one of the finest FBI agents with whom I ever worked.” Notably absent was a statement from Comey, McCabe’s former boss, though Comey did say after McCabe stepped down as deputy director that he “stood tall over the last 8 months, when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all depend on.”

Comey is still considered a key subject in Horowitz’s probe of how the FBI handled the Clinton email case.

Could Australia join Asean?

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull shakes hands with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the start of the Small-and-Medium sized Enterprises (SME) conference being held during the one-off summit of 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Sydney, Australia, March 16, 2018. Source: Reuters/David Gray

By Max Walden | 16th March 2018

AS AUSTRALIA has geared up to host a so-called Special Summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) this weekend, the suggestion it may one day join the regional bloc has come up for debate.

Australia was the first country to establish a multilateral relationship with Asean in 1974 and has had a free trade agreement with the grouping along with New Zealand since 2008. With the Summit focused on Australia deepening its strategic and economic ties with its fourth largest trading partner, a decades’ old question has reemerged: could it one day become a full member?

Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told the Sydney Morning Herald this week that he thought Australia joining the regional bloc was a “good idea” because “our region will be better, [for] stability, economic stability, and also political stability. Sure, it will be better.”

SEE ALSO: Asean-Australia Special Summit marks step toward a deeper relationship

But in a region where losing face and open confrontation are avoided, Jokowi was “most likely either being polite or he meant Australia should be engaged with Asean rather than actual full membership,” said A. Ibrahim Almuttaqi, Head of the Asean Studies Program at The Habibie Center in Jakarta.

“Jokowi always gives these non-committal responses which can be misconstrued by people who haven’t spent much time in Indonesia,” Aaron Connelly, Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney told Asian Correspondent. “It’s a very Javanese way of saying ‘Inshallah’ (God willing).”

Indeed, Jokowi – an enthusiastic proponent of harsh anti-drug policies involving the death penalty – has previously said to a Western audience that Indonesia would abolish capital punishment if his citizens wished it, knowing full well that a majority of the population is in support.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo (C) makes a statement on the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, at the Presidential Palace in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia December 7, 2017 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. President Widodo is accompanied by Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Wiranto (L) and Deputy Foreign Minister AM Fachir (R). Source: Antara Foto/Puspa Perwitasari/ via Reuters

A “new form” of membership

Australia and New Zealand are not geographically part of what is considered Southeast Asia. The sub region – home to almost 650,000 million people – is comprised of the 10 Asean member states as well as Timor Leste.

Timor Leste – which was formerly part of Indonesia until 2002 – is undeniably part of the region, however has not yet succeeded in achieving Asean membership because of staunch opposition from Singapore. Burma (Myanmar) and Laos have also expressed concerns.

Asean is fundamentally based upon consensus, making it notoriously slow and conservative in its collective decision making.

Despite this, a report released last month by the influential Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) made the case that “Australia’s future in Southeast Asia lies in joining Asean”.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia is brightest hope for democracy in Asean say parliamentarians, experts

From left: Indonesian Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu; Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi; Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop; Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne attend a 2 + 2 meeting ahead of the Asean-Australia Special Summit in Sydney, Australia 16 March 2018. Source: Twitter / @JulieBishopMP

It argues that Australia should push for the establishment of a “new form” of Asean membership which would allow it and New Zealand to be part of the community. In lieu of achieving this, argues its author Graeme Dobell, Australia should aim for observer status as is currently enjoyed by Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea.

“In the defence realm, Australia seeks a united, stable Southeast Asia that acts as a strategic shield across the north of the continent,” said the report. “Economically, the Australia – New Zealand – Asean Free Trade Agreement can be the departure point for further Oz–Kiwi integration in the new Economic Community.”

“Asean membership seems a long way off only if you ignore the distance Australia and Asean have travelled in the past 50 years,” concluded Dobell.

To many in the region, however, it is an impossibility. “Australia cannot be a member of Asean,” said Dr Sanchita Basu Das, a research fellow at the Asean Studies Centre at the National University of Singapore. “Including Australia as an Asean member is a dream.”

Unlikely soon, if ever

The likelihood of Australia joining Asean is “zero”, said Connelly of the Lowy Institute. Jokowi’s comments are belied by the fact that there is “no support for it within the Indonesian system” and that a number of member states, like Singapore, might well be “deeply opposed” to the idea, he said.

Ibrahim agreed, saying Indonesia would be very reluctant to give up its leadership of the organisation. “I think it would be highly unlikely for this to happen anytime soon,” he said.

“While there are benefits and opportunities that Canberra would bring to the organisation, its membership would significantly disrupt the dynamics of Asean in a way that I don’t think any of the member states will be willing to accept.”

SEE ALSO: Experts call for greater education integration across Asean

Optimism around the prospect remains strong in Australia, however.

“I will look forward to discussing that with President Jokowi if he raises it with me,” Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull told Fairfax when told about the Indonesian leader’s comments. “We would wait to be invited … we treat Asean and the centrality of Asean in the region with the greatest respect.”

Australia’s former Prime Minister Paul Keating has long called for Australia to be included in the regional bloc. In 2012, he declared that Australia’s “former sphere of influence” in the Anglosphere was declining and that it was “natural” that it belongs in Asean. Keating told Fairfax this week that “I am very gratified to hear that President Jokowi has said what he has said.”

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull shakes hands with Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen before their bilateral meeting during the one-off summit of 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Sydney, Australia, March 16, 2018. Source: Reuters/David Gray

SEE ALSO: Australia must do more to hold Burma, Cambodia to account at Asean summit

Filipino political scientist Richard Heydarian recently told ABC News that “there are certain huge cultural barriers or concerns about Australia being part of Asean.”

“For sure there are even people that scoffed at the idea of Australia being in Asean,” he said. “But I think some sort of special partnership … is something that could be discussed.”

Nevertheless, the debate has more to do with Australian identity than a genuine possibility of becoming an Asean member, said Connelly. It concerns “whether Australia is a part of Asia or remains an outpost of the British Empire,” he said. “That is a really terrible way to make foreign policy. Foreign policy should be formed according to Australian interests: rule of law, good governance, non-coercion.”

“Australia should think how they can strengthen their economic ties with Asean,” Dr Sanchita told Asian Correspondent. “At this moment much of the limelight over economic ties is taken by China and Japan. Australia needs to think of a concrete economic plan to strengthen Asean’s integration.”

The Asean-Australia Special Summit is being held in Sydney from March 16 to 18.

Putin Is Poisoning Prague

Russian corruption starts small but quickly spreads.

Investigators collate forensic samples near the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury, England, on March 16, as investigations continue after a former Russian spy and his daughter were apparently poisoned in a nerve agent attack on March 4. (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY KRISTOFER HARRISON

 | MARCH 16, 2018, 4:33 PM

In President Vladimir Putin’s zero-sum worldview, elevating Russia to the status of a superpower doesn’t require strengthening his own country but rather by weakening the West’s post-Cold War order. The West needs to be more attuned to all aspects of Putin’s troublemaking — specifically his strategic deployment of corruption.

Take the case of his years-long, methodical campaign to enfeeble the Czech Republic with corruption. As a result, this stalwart member of NATO has become an embarrassing pro-Russia mouthpiece that excuses China’s antics in the South China Sea and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More importantly, it radiates Kremlin-sponsored corruption across Europe.

Putin’s corruption starts small but quickly spreads. For example, Czech media has questioned the source of funds that spurred the rapid growth of the Strnad family from humble scrap dealers a few years ago to one of the Czech Republic’s largest arms dealers with a near-monopoly on the sector. One of the Strnads’ main investors, Alexej Beljajev, is a friend of Vladimir Yakunin, a vociferous Russian nationalist, Orthodox extremist, and close advisor to Vladimir Putin.

Jaroslav Strnad is the primary financial backer of another friend of Vladimir Yakunin: pro-Russian Czech President Milos Zeman, a foul-mouthed, drunken apparatchik who used Russian covert and overt help to win the presidency. Unfortunately, the United States has never taken the threat represented by Zeman seriously. (President Barack Obama did little more than deny Zeman a White House visit. President Donald Trump likes Zeman because the Czech president flatters him.)

The Strnads, for their part, should have caught U.S. attention when they appeared to violatea European Union arms embargo and NATO policy by selling weapons to Azerbaijan for use against Armenia; the Azeris exposed the sale by helpfully putting the weapons in a military parade. Czech officials implausibly claimed the weapons were intended for Israel. The bright if brief international scandal didn’t spur U.S. action against the Czech government.

More flags should have gone up when First Czech-Russian Bank, a bank with reported linksto the Kremlin — and an institution that previously gave a $10 million loan to France’s National Front, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, defends the Vichy government’s participation in the Holocaust — extended massive credit to Strnad’s company, Czechoslovak Group (CSG), helping make him a billionaire. Not long thereafter, First Czech-Russian conveniently collapsed, obscuring any paper trail connecting Strnad to Putin and either to France’s National Front.

Prague should not be considered an insignificant place easily sacrificed to a strategy of “America First” or “strategic retrenchment.” The Czech Republic is a crucial front-line NATO ally that suffered in World War II, suffered under Stalin, got crushed by Leonid Brezhnev in 1968, and whose brave revolutionaries helped bring a peaceful end to Soviet communism. Moscow’s ultimate goal is not a Czech government with a Kremlin mandate. It is to convert Prague into an amplifier of Russian mischief.

Since the First Defenestration of Prague in 1419, Prague’s predicaments have become others’ predicaments. It matters now like then or in 1968, if for different reasons. Already, the tentacles of just this one case of corruption stretch from Yerevan to Paris (andWashington).

There is no deal that will halt the Kremlin’s behavior because the goal is not to achieve any policy aim in Prague — or Kiev or wherever else it aims its hybrid war. The goal is chaos, because that means a weaker West. And Putin is leveraging people like the Strnads to that end.

The West must confront Putin’s nonsense before its knock on effects grow. Unfortunately, Washington is distracted — whether in the form of Trump’s bizarre refusal to criticize Putin, out-of-control Republican partisanship hell-bent on defending Trump, or Democrats’ obsession with the Trump/Russia collusion narrative — and thus not paying attention to how Putin is attacking the United States.

Putin’s recent rhetoric about Russia’s new nuclear weapons notwithstanding, Russia is not a superpower. But Russia can cause trouble that festers, and it is doing so already in places like the Czech Republic. Washington needs to stop waiting for the big Russian strategic threats because they will never materialize. Instead, it is the little stuff like the Strnads that matter. When Washington detects such sparks, it needs to extinguish them before they spread.

Russia expels 23 British diplomats as crisis over nerve toxin attack deepens

Andrew Osborn, Polina Devitt-MARCH 17, 2018 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expelled 23 British diplomats on Saturday in a carefully calibrated retaliatory move against London, which has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating a nerve toxin attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in southern England.

Escalating a crisis in relations, Russia said it was also shutting down the activities of the British Council, which fosters cultural links between the two countries, and Britain’s consulate-general in St. Petersburg.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the 23 British diplomats had one week to leave the country.

The move followed Britain’s decision on Wednesday to expel 23 Russian diplomats over the attack in the English city of Salisbury which left former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, critically ill in hospital.

Moscow announced the measures on the eve of a presidential election which incumbent Vladimir Putin should comfortably win. Putin has cast his country as a fortress besieged by hostile Western powers with him as its defender, and state media is likely to portray the anti-British move in that context.

The Foreign Ministry said Moscow’s measures were a response to what it called Britain’s “provocative actions and unsubstantiated accusations”. It warned London it stood ready to take further measures in the event of more “unfriendly steps”.

Relations between London and Moscow have crashed to a post-Cold War low over the Salisbury attack, the first known offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War Two.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain would consider its next steps with its allies in the coming days.

“We will never tolerate a threat to the life of British citizens and others on British soil from the Russian Government. We can be reassured by the strong support we have received from our friends and allies around the world,” May told her Conservative Party’s spring forum in London.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador, Laurie Bristow, to its headquarters on Saturday morning to inform him of the retaliatory measures.

Bristow told reporters afterwards that Britain had only expelled the Russian diplomats after Moscow had failed to explain how the nerve toxin had got to Salisbury.

Britain’s foreign ministry said it had anticipated Russia’s response and that its priority was to look after its staff in Russia and assist those returning home.

“Russia’s response doesn’t change the facts of the matter - the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable,” it said in a statement.

Britain’s National Security Council is due to meet early next week to consider London’s next steps.

A Russian policeman walks outside the British embassy in Moscow, Russia, March 17, 2018. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili

WAR OF WORDS

Russia’s response was more robust than expected. The closure of the British Council’s Moscow office will sever cultural ties, while that of the consulate-general in St Petersburg will end Britain’s diplomatic presence in Russia’s second city.

Russian news agencies cited politicians in Russia’s upper house of parliament as welcoming the move to close the British Council, alleging it had been used as a cover by British spies.

The British Council said it was profoundly disappointed by Russia’s decision and remained committed to developing long-term people-to-people links with Russia despite the closure.

Russia has complained that Britain has failed to provide any evidence of its involvement in the Salisbury attack and has said it is shocked and bemused by the allegations.

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Britain has escalated a war of words with Russia over the incident in recent days. On Friday, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was overwhelmingly likely that Russian President Putin himself had made the decision to use a military-grade nerve toxin to strike down Skripal.

Britain, the United States, Germany and France have jointly called on Russia to explain the attack and U.S. President Donald Trump has said it looks as if the Russians were behind it.

Russia has said is open to cooperation with Britain, but has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet military, was used against the Skripals.

Skripal, a former colonel in the GRU who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence, and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4, when they were found unconscious on a bench.

A British policeman was also poisoned when he went to help them and remains in a serious but stable condition.