Blossom is not giving up on this peacemaking malarky in a hurry.
Jared Kushner, the American president’s son-in-law, may be a diplomatic novice (who would have noticed?) but he is not afraid of innovating. As his quest for the Ultimate Deal™ has shown, there is an agility of mind and ability to adapt that is truly mind-boggling.
He has been quick to identify obstacles to peace.
First he blamed Mahmoud Abbas. The increasingly hapless Palestinian Authority leader – whose unflinching support for the peace process has seen him isolated from traditional allies, political rivals, his own people and now finally from his US sponsor – was not willing to “lean into” a final deal.
But since the plan takes the salient points – infrastructure development, the building of a seaport and opening of the airport in Gaza – of a previous US-brokered plan, the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, and basically moves it all to Egypt, that too has gained little traction.
The White House “senior advisor” blamed Hamas, which as everyone knows is simply an anagram of “something, something, something, terrorists.” And who could argue with him about that?
It has left a problem, however. Since Palestinian leaders of all persuasions are clearly unfit for the purpose of the Ultimate Deal™, how to proceed?
It’s a kind of magic
Luckily, there is Ludwig Wittgenstein and his (poorly remembered) assertion that philosophical problems are always a confusion of language.
Indeed, Immanuel Kushner has gone one better than the old Austrian beer swiller and reduced the problem to a confusion about a single word: refugees.
It’s simple really: 750,000 people and their millions of descendants are actually under the misapprehension that they are refugees and therefore have rights that need to be addressed. Redefine their status, do away with the UN agency that caters to their needs, pay host countries to settle them and convince them that they are actually not Palestinians at all (another confusion of language) and, hey presto!
They may still be poor, disempowered, dispossessed and unwanted, but they are no longer an issue to be grappled with under the Ultimate Deal™. With the deftest of diplomatic sleights of hand, a thorny problem disappears.
Screw your eyes shut, stick your fingers in your ears, sing loudly to yourself as much as you like. The refugees – and their legitimate claims – will not go away.
Pursuing a deal by trying to define root-cause problems out of existence may seem like trailblazing diplomacy. It isn’t. It’s just a waste of time.
Can a series of far-flung, high-level conferences bring peace to the Middle East by applying lessons from 17th-century Europe?
An engraving at the French National Library shows the ratification of the Peace of Westphalia in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 16, 1650. (Roger Viollet/Getty Images)
BYBORZOU DARAGAHI-
AUGUST 10, 2018, 3:46 PMSecretary of State Mike Pompeo is running late, but word has it he’s on his way. Tehran couldn’t decide who to send but ended up dispatching Ali Akbar Velayati, who has the ear of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. At the opposite end of the convention center, Israel’s foreign minister talks with his aides, and Baghdad’s and Damascus’s foreign ministers chat amicably with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Rumors swirl that the top Saudi diplomat was going to be a no-show, but he ultimately agreed to attend after pleading from the European Union foreign relations chief, Federica Mogherini, on the condition that he not have contact with the Houthi delegation or the Qataris.
It will not be a surprise that the above description is fictional. With wars raging in the Middle East from Syria to Iraq to Yemen, and a cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia that shows no signs of thawing, any sort of grand peace meeting seems far-fetched.
But a group of scholars, mostly affiliated with University of Cambridge and acting with the encouragement of the German government, have quietly gained traction at producing just such a conference by drawing on lessons from 17th-century Europe. Their goal is to organize a contemporary Peace of Westphalia for the Middle East, on the model of the series of diplomatic meetings that ended the Thirty Years’ War that ravaged what was then Germany.
The project has already held eight workshops and conferences in Cambridge, London, Berlin, Munich, and Amman, Jordan, with stakeholders and policymakers involved in the Middle East’s conflicts; the hope is these meetings will eventually pave the way for a final series of conferences that can produce a grand bargain. Among those who have endorsed the project and taken part in its formal discussions are former CIA Director David Petraeus, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, and former Iran nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian. The government of Jordan has been involved in the discussions, and both Royal Court chief Fayez Tarawneh and Prince Faisal, the king’s brother, have taken part in the conferences. Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly endorsed the project.
But if the idea of a grand bargain appeals in the abstract to many Middle Eastern players, the conference organizers are very aware that the original Peace of Westphalia offers reminders that achieving it in practice will be far more difficult. Goodwill isn’t sufficient; in Europe, exhaustion of bloodshed served as the ultimate midwife of peace. Simultaneously arriving at that stage in places as diverse as Iran, Syria, Yemen, the United States, and Israel will be a painstaking process. But the scholars organizing today’s Westphalian conferences are certain the process is underway.
**
Scholars and journalists over the years have repeatedly likened the tangle of crisscrossing, overlapping conflicts afflicting the Middle East to the Thirty Years’ War, when the patchwork of Europe’s Protestant and Catholic German states descended into a chaotic conflict abetted by the rival regional powers of the time.
Then it was France, Spain, and Sweden battling for leverage and influence. Now, it’s Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the United States competing, via Sunni and Shiite proxy forces, over a volatile region that stretches from the Bab el-Mandeb to the eastern Mediterranean. Within that that arc of crisis, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in airstrikes and by gunfire and millions have been displaced. Many more are suffering through deprivation and disease caused by wars that have drained public coffers; ruined hospitals, roads, and schools; and traumatized entire generations.
It was that type of devastation during the Thirty Years’ War—exacerbated by the use of mercenary armies—that ultimately prompted diplomats from the Holy Roman Empire, France, Sweden, and some of the German states to convene the talks that ultimately led to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. “The more you look at what’s happening in the Middle East now, the more parallels there are to the Thirty Years’ War,” said Michael Axworthy, a scholar and Iran specialist working on the contemporary Westphalian project. “The sectarian nature of the conflict, the use of proxies. How instability in one country led to instability in other countries and states.”
The Westphalian peace talks went on for several years, with an alternating cast of characters, convening in two locations—predominantly Protestant Osnabruck and mostly Catholic Munster—using the local city halls as conference centers. The organizers of the contemporary Westphalian conference have taken the same approach, moving between various cities in Europe and the Middle East. (If it came to holding a series of final conferences, Istanbul or Amman, cities that are in the region but maintain ties to all the main actors, have been proposed as potential sites.)
Beyond choosing a suitable location, the original Peace of Westphalia offers other lessons on how to organize such an event. The first is the importance of ensuring that all the disparate parties be physically brought together. Critics of a contemporary conference cite precisely this requirement as a nonstarter. Presumably, invitees would include official delegations from the United States, the EU, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq; delegates from the Syrian regime and opposition; and perhaps the Kurds and Yemeni parties. “There are too many groups that don’t want to sit with each other,” said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa director at the Crisis Group. “Saudi Arabia will not sit with Qatar. Iran will not sit with Israel. You cannot exclude anyone, because they will become spoilers. The grand bargain, though attractive, is not possible at this stage.”
But the group of scholars pushing the idea say similar, and arguably trickier, dynamics played out during the series of conferences in the Westphalian cities of Munster and Osnabruck that ultimately led to the 1648 peace. For one thing, the Holy Roman emperor, the youngish Ferdinand III, didn’t like the optics of being seen negotiating with his subjects. This was resolved, first, by negotiating through intermediaries. Emperors, kings, and princes rarely attended the 17th-century peace talks, and today’s heads of states can stay away as well. “It could be at the ambassadorial level, with expert consultants appended,” said Patrick Milton, a Berlin-based scholar specializing in 17th-century Germany who is among those spearheading the project. “The top guys need not attend but would need to approve their ambassadors signing off.”
The original Westphalian organizers also dispersed the meeting places, never forcing any two parties to be in the same room at the same time. Already today, arch-enemies Iran and Israel communicate via intermediaries in Moscow, while Oman serves as a mediator between Iran and the U.S. and Kuwait passes on messages between Saudi and Qatar.
The Westphalian conference also ensured the participants had adequate time, focus, and autonomy. Without mobile phones or constant media scrutiny, and often locked up together for weeks, the delegates were forced to come to terms. “The diplomats didn’t have a lot of opportunities to contact their foreign ministers, so they had quite a lot of diplomatic flexibility,” said Elisabeth von Hammerstein, program director at the Körber Foundation, a German think tank that has supported the project. “They were able to compromise. Personal ties were quite important.”
It helped, of course, that the French brought some 30,000 liters of wine, eager to avoid having to drink the local swill—though one Dutch delegate could only negotiate in the mornings, because he was drunk from lunchtime on. Alcohol is unlikely to be a universally accepted icebreaker at a contemporary Middle Eastern conference—but shisha tents or lavish buffets could serve the same function.
**
The conference’s organizers understand that in today’s Middle East, just as in 17th-century Europe, the conflicts are not fundamentally about doctrinal differences. “A lot of tensions are not purely religious,” said Brendan Simms, a professor of the history of international relations at Cambridge and one of the scholars behind the peace push. In the European wars, Sims says, the fights were partly “a cover for a battle for access to resources: land, education, civil service positions.”
Over the course of contemporary negotiations, diplomats would have to figure out the precise scope of conflicts in need of resolution. The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia would be at the core of the Middle East’s tensions. Would the Kurdish issue have to be addressed? The Israeli-Arab conflict? The growing tension between Iran and Israel? Simms said the discussions so far had concluded that it would be more useful to keep peripheral conflicts—such as the war in Afghanistan or the civil conflict in Libya—outside of discussions until absolutely necessary.
The original Peace of Westphalia also offers hints of what the outlines of an enduring peace might look like in today’s Middle East. A grand settlement for the Middle East along Westphalian lines would include no redrawing of borders and preferably no transfer of populations, but a reshaping of rules within the space of troubles running from the western border of Iran to the Indian Ocean and to the eastern border of Egypt and the Mediterranean.
Europe’s sectarian and political troubles were exacerbated by constant foreign meddling, just as is the case now in the Middle East. But the architects of the Westphalia peace took a realistic view of intervention by foreign powers; rather than try to bar it, they formalized it, giving Catholic and Protestant powers the right to protect co-religionists in other countries in exchange, with superpowers gaining the rights and responsibilities as guarantors. “It actually codified intervention,” Simms said. “It permitted intervention in defense of minority rights, and thus set up an effective system of deterrence. Outside intervention was regulated by international law.”
The contemporary conferences have encouraged brainstorming about conceivable analogues today. Perhaps the rights of Shiite minorities would be guaranteed by a combination of Russia and Iran, and the rights of Sunnis would be guaranteed by the Americans and Saudi Arabia, with the EU in charge of the rights of Christians. It’s also possible the major actors would agree on more elaborate arrangements. “The ‘failed states’ of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen could be remodeled as a guaranteed and neutralized security zone to remove it from ongoing geopolitical competition,” Milton said. “All signatory powers could mutually and reciprocally guarantee each and every aspect of the whole settlement, making them empowered and indeed obliged to intervene if any aspect of the treaty is violated.”
The initial talks that led to the Peace of Westphalia began soon after the start of the Thirty Years’ War, though they picked up steam as Germany fell to ruin and the combatants began to grow exhausted. Hiltermann, who has been involved in some of the discussions about the Westphalia project, wondered if the belligerents in the Middle East’s conflicts even want peace—or ever will at the same time. “There will be a time when people will be exhausted, but in different phases and different times,” he said. The contemporary talks have so far suggested that while the United States and Europe would like the conflicts to end, the other players in the Middle East—such as Iran or the United Arab Emirates—have more of an appetite for a longer fight. Countries such as Jordan and Turkey, dealing with the fallout of the wars, are more eager for a general peace than those that have already paid blood and treasure, such as Saudi Arabia.
But that needn’t be an impediment to talks. France and Spain continued their rivalry for another decade after the Peace of Westphalia, though not within the Holy Roman Empire. “Some historians say it was peace of exhaustion, but I don’t think it’s true,” said von Hammerstein. “A large part of population had died. There were diseases, famines. There was a great desire for peace. But what was important was to create a situation where everyone got something out of the peace. The peace was more about great power interests than about humanitarian or altruistic motives.”
The question is whether today’s organizers can convince the relevant powers, in the Middle East and abroad, that they have a shared interest in peace. They admit that they are still in the early stages. But as the original Westphalian peace proved, merely talking about peace, even in the early stages of a conflict, can eventually reap big rewards.
Borzou Daragahi is an Istanbul-based journalist who has covered the Middle East for more than 16 years.
Major new analysis shows most constituencies now have majority who want to Remain The constituencies of Leavers Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have changed sides to back remain, polling shows. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
More than 100 Westminster constituencies that voted to leave the EU have now switched their support to Remain, according to a stark new analysis seen by the Observer.
In findings that could have a significant impact on the parliamentary battle of Brexit later this year, the study concludes that most seats in Britain now contain a majority of voters who want to stay in the EU.
The analysis, one of the most comprehensive assessments of Brexit sentiment since the referendum, suggests the shift has been driven by doubts among Labour voters who backed Leave.
As a result, the trend is starkest in the north of England and Wales – Labour heartlands in which Brexit sentiment appears to be changing. The development will heap further pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to soften the party’s opposition to reconsidering Britain’s EU departure.
Researchers at the Focaldata consumer analytics company compiled the breakdown by modelling two YouGov polls of more than 15,000 people in total, conducted before and after Theresa May published her proposed Brexit deal on 6 July.
It combined the polling with detailed census information and data from the Office for National Statistics. The study was jointly commissioned by Best for Britain, which is campaigning against Brexit, and the anti-racist Hope Not Hate group.
The 632 seats in England, Scotland and Wales were examined for the study. It found that 112 had switched from Leave to Remain. The new analysis suggests there are now 341 seats with majority Remain support, up from 229 seats at the referendum.
One seat has switched support in Scotland and 97 have switched in England, while 14 of the 40 seats in Wales have changed from Leave to Remain. Overall, the model puts Remain on 53% support, with 47% backing Leave.
It suggests that there is now a majority for Remain in Scotland and Wales – meaning greater pressure on the union following the UK’s departure. Young voters and those from ethnic minorities have also driven the switch to Remain.
It comes with the prime minister still having to negotiate Commons votes over Brexit later this year and also the prospect of a parliamentary vote over the final Brexit deal. Plans are already being drawn up by May’s opponents to try to force a new referendum or election.
On Saturday Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said those opponents had to work together to bring about a chance for people to have another say. “We have to work across party frontiers,” he said, speaking in Bristol at the first of a series of regional rallies in a planned summer of action by the People’s Vote campaign.
Data scientists compiling the study used a technique known as multi-level regression and post-stratification, similar to that used by YouGov in its pre-election model, which proved far more accurate than conventional opinion polls. However, the polling sample used by YouGov for its election model was much bigger, covering some 50,000 people.
Among the constituencies to switch from Leave to Remain is that of Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and face of the Leave campaign. Support for Remain in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency has risen from 43.6% to 51.4%, according to the new model.
Surrey Heath, the constituency of the other Leave figurehead, Michael Gove, also emerged as having a pro-Remain majority. Support for Remain increased from 48% in 2016 to 50.2%. There was also a 12.8-point swing to Remain in shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s seat of Hayes and Harlington.
The Birkenhead constituency of Leave-supporting Labour MP Frank Field now has a 58% majority in favour of remain. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PAThe seats of three pro-Leave Labour MPs switched to Remain. Birkenhead, Frank Field’s constituency, now has a 58.4% majority in favour of Remain. Graham Stringer’s Blackley and Broughton constituency now has a 59% in favour of Remain. Kelvin Hopkins’s Luton North seat now has 53.1% backing Remain.
The doubts among Labour Leave voters have been accompanied by a less dramatic hardening of Brexit support among Tory voters. While no constituencies saw a switch from Remain to Leave, support for Brexit went up in some constituencies.
Of the seats that have switched to Remain since the referendum, some of the most dramatic swings have taken place in Liverpool Walton, where support for Remain has risen from 46.2% to 60.5%, Knowsley on Merseyside, where Remain has increased from 47.6% to 61%, and Swansea East, where Remain has risen from 37.9% to 50.7%.
Remain campaigners said that the findings should give more MPs the confidence to back a Brexit rethink. However, some pro-Remain MPs are still doubtful that there has been a significant shift and think a second vote would be a huge risk.
Eloise Todd, the chief executive of Best for Britain, said: “This groundbreaking research shows that Brexit is still not inevitable. People across the UK have witnessed the last two years of uncertainty with dismay and are thinking differently – 112 constituencies have switched to majorities that back staying in our current bespoke deal with the EU.
“The sands of public opinion are shifting and politicians risk falling behind. Our research shows that the deal must be put to the people. Westminster should legislate for a people’s vote on the Brexit terms, giving the public the option to stay and build our future on our current deal with the EU.”
Nick Lowles, head of Hope not Hate, said: “Our data shows a clear shift in public opinion against Brexit and people’s growing anxiety over how leaving the EU will affect themselves and their families. This cannot be ignored.
“The rate of change appears to be quickening as the realities of what Brexit would mean become more apparent and the fears of a no-deal Brexit grow, especially for Labour Leave voters who initially believed that leaving the EU would improve their economic prospects. Brexit is failing these voters and the country as a whole. Politicians need to understand that public opinion has changed.”
Top to bottom, left to right: Pavlo Lazarenko, Ukraine (1996 – 1997);
Arnoldo Alemán, Nicaragua (1997 – 2002); Sani Abacha, Nigeria (1993 – 1998), Alberto Fujimori, Peru (1990 – 2000),
Jean-Claude Duvalier, Papa Doc, Haiti (1971 – 1986); Ben Ali, Tunisia (1987 - 2011); Suharto, Indonesia (1967 – 1998);
Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines (1965 – 1986); Mobutu, Zaire now DRC (1965 – 1997)
Kumar David
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
Immanuel Kant in 1784
The real money cannot flourish without power and in modern times, whether in democratic or non-democratic states, power resides in politics. In rich countries great captains of finance, business and industry adorn the top of the dollar rankings; but they are circuitously beholden to political connections, Congressional lobbyists and old fashioned payoffs. Nevertheless, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D Rockefeller and the Rothschilds - to take the American case – were not politicians. Money and politics were not seamlessly fused in the great capitalist citadels in the last century. (Donald Trump, a mix of shoddy showman and shady businessman, and a self-obsessed politician who values appearance over substance, is an odd if not unique decoction. I will have more to say about him anon).
In post Second World War Africa and Asia, the Middle East and Russia, and in South and Central America, politics is where the real money was and is. The examples are so many they will bore you but the crème de la crème is the Middle East where power and wealth (oil) are synonymous in Kingdoms and Emirates, and Africa where military dictatorship or presidency is open-sesame to robbery. In Nigeria oil wealth, in Congo’ minerals, in Zimbabwe mines and land in Mugabe’s time are prime examples; and Sudan, Somalia, the list goes on. There are men who love power and ones who love money, the two are connected, but often in Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Central America the two are fused inextricably. It is true that religion is a bigger business but much of it is retail trade. Religious bodies have gigantic inherited assets and a steady income-flow thanks to the credulous offerings of the faithful, but most of this wealth is dispersed into retail holdings – individual temples, mosques and churches.
The great paradox of modern democracy is that people know how venal, lecherous or criminal their leaders are, but nevertheless thrust power upon them again and again. I have heard many learned discourses purporting to explain this paradox, but as the Persian versifier moaned:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great
argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where
in I went.
Research has revealed that despite the rise of Alt-Right and Alt-Left revolts there has been no push back in income inequality. The real household income of the poorest 25% of the population has continued to fall in the West despite the neo-populist surge. The rich have continued to grow richer. Their access to influence has not diminished; for example Lebanese born Ahmad Khawaja met Trump at a $5,000-per-person fundraiser after his election – then donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee earning himself a photo with the president inside the Oval Office. On average 80% of campaign finance is contributed by 0.01% of the population (in Sri Lanka that translates to just 2120 mega contributors).
The wealthy buy control of the media, push legislation on "law and order", or sell narratives on race and immigrants to the exclusion of measures to alleviate inequality and poverty and diffuse racial tension. Neo-populism will fall apart as it does not build institutions, raise productivity, or sooth racial wrath and it erodes social harmony. But what will follow; social-democracy, a variant of fascism or anarchy? That’s not a topic for today.
Sri Lanka
A child is abducted and sold into prostitution or slave labour every eight minutes in India. Gangsters have the police on the inside, but without umbrella protection from state and national ministers and MPs – big beneficiaries – business will collapse. Thankfully in India and Lanka the power-apex and sleaze were not wedded in early post-independence decades. (Below head of state/government that is with Ministers and corporate/departmental heads, it was endemic). My recollection is that prior to Bofors (late 1980s) in India and the diesel power contracts of the 1990s in Lanka, there weren’t mega corruption allegations against apex leaders. It has since subsided in India – Manmohan Singh and Modi are uncontaminated - but in Lanka horrendous corrosion accompanied the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency.
Website (http://michitimes.com/2017-top-10-richest-people-in-sri-lanka-according-to-forbes/10/), says the wealth of the Rajapaksa family is $18 billion – bollocks, flying peacock chariots and walking on water! Equally nonsensical is an entry in Wikipedia which reads:-
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahinda_Rajapaksa)
"On 7 May 2015, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera received intelligence reports from four foreign nations involved in tracing the billions of dollars stashed aboard stating that the Rajapaksa family hold $18 billion (Rs. 2.8 trillion) worth of assets in foreign countries. Minister Samaraweera didn’t name the countries in this investigation. The government asserted that it only traced $2 billion (Rs 320 billion) and is seeking access to bank accounts held by the Rajapaksa family".
More reliable is Forbes: Dhammika Perera is the richest man in Sri Lanka, his wealth estimated at $550 million. He is a big supporter of Rajapaksa but that’s another matter. Keeping relative scales in mind, it is unlikely that the total wealth of the Rajapaksa clan, including monies stashed away in ghost and offshore accounts and the value of overseas properties, exceeds one hundred million dollars. One must not be misled by hundreds of millions of rupees injected by China Harbour Engineering and similar amounts from other sources. Ten million dollars is Rs 1.6 billion! And the aforesaid kickbacks are unlikely to have been accumulated; more likely they are squandered on corrupt election practices. Old DA and DM Rajapaksa were men of means only in domestic reckoning and Medamulana is no Windsor Castle. But one hundred million dollars dwarfs the loot of Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves. The point I am making is that the way to sustained accumulation in countries at our stage of development is via political power, not inheritance, honest business or election fraud.
Maestro Putin and grovelling Trump
Putin has consistently denied sitting on a fortune, declaring in April 2015 that his annual income was £95,000 made up of a Presidential salary and income from his ownership of two apartments and a car park. His alleged access to 58 planes and helicopters and 20 palaces and country retreats, a Russian wag mocked "Is like calling Airforce One and the White House, Trump’s private property". The most oft cited contrarian estimate is from KGB defector Stanislav Belkovsky who implausibly claimed that Putin had a fortune of "at least $40 billion". The UK’s bigoted Sun paper wrote "Putin owns a Black Sea palace thought to be worth £800million and a £28m superyacht and is said by scholars and insiders to be an expert at hoarding huge sums of money". Responding, Putin sneered "They have picked their noses and smeared the mucilage across the paper".
Propaganda denigration misses the point. Putin has no need to be a billionaire; he is the most powerful man in the world; imagine the president of the United States crawling at your feet; imagine an approval rating of 80%; imagine a corpus of servile oligarchs trembling at your every word. Politics is where power is and power commands the ship on which money sails. My point has nothing to do with sanitising Putin the authoritarian as Putin the saviour. I remain focussed on the topic of this essay; the relationship of political power to money in movement.
A friend who is obsessed with conspiracy theories posed the question "Is Trump inadvertently playing Russia’s game or is he being instructed by Moscow to serve Russian interests? If the latter, it will be the greatest espionage tale of history!" I usually shun conspiracy theories and plumb for conventional explanations. Trump is not a Russian ‘agent’ in the usual way the word agent is used, but Putin holds the whip and is extracting value.
He would prefer not to let Trump be impeached; that would terminate the latter’s usefulness. He may have evidence of Trump’s money laundering, shady financial transactions such a loans from Russian Banks unreported to IRS (Trump is fighting tooth and nail to conceal tax returns), or Moscow real estate deals with Russian oligarchs. Not sordid videos I think; Trump’s Base and Melania are immune to the salacious and the scandalous. Impressive Q2-2018 economic growth stats will further sanitise criticism from the Base for a while.
Trump and war
It would be improper to sign off without warning that Trump poses a war threat. Iranian president Rouhani reacted to Trump’s call to European allies to embargo Iran and cut economic ties if they wish to continue trading with America. Rouhani declared: "America should know that war with Iran will be the mother of all wars". Trump’s tweeted all-caps response was in effect to threaten World War III.
To Iranian President Rouhani: "NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH".
It is risky to read this only as bombast like his empty threats at North Korea, or as an attempt to divert attention from kow-towing to Putin, or distract the public from embarrassing revelations by his former lawyers. It could be an atttempt to divert attention from the Muller Probe which is sniffing ever closer. (It is amazing that a sitting president publicly refers to an ongoing investigation into his alleged misdeeds as "The totally conflicted and discredited Mueller Witch Hunt!") The risk in such presumptions is that this aberrant loudmouth may really unleash war unless the deep-state sees him off first. To muddy the waters, a few days later Trump tweeted he was ready to meet Rouhani with "no preconditions"!
In the United States, left-wing Democrats backed by former Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders have suffered a setback overnight, after voters in the mid-term primary races favoured traditional candidates over their more liberal challengers.
The Democratic establishment says sticking to the centre is the best way to win over Trump supporters. But, as Kiran Moodley reports, others continue to call for a radical agenda, arguing that ‘democratic socialism’ is the best way to take down the President in 2020.
Omarosa Manigault Newman, the fired White House aide seeking publicity for her new memoir about her time in the Trump administration, said in an interview Sunday that the way Chief of Staff John F. Kelly dismissed her involved a “threat” and shared an audio recording of Kelly she said she made in the Situation Room.
The recording was played on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” where Manigault Newman was interviewed by Chuck Todd.
In the purported recording, which would constitute a serious breach of White House security, Kelly is heard complaining about her “significant integrity issues” and saying he wants to make her departure “friendly” and without “any difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.”
In a statement Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “the very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security — and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee.”
The Washington Post reported Friday that after being fired, Manigault Newman declined a $15,000-a-month job offer with President Trump’s campaign, which came with a “companion agreement” including nondisclosure and nondisparagement provisions. Copies of both documentswere obtained by The Post.
The “consulting agreement” describes Manigault Newman’s proposed services as “speaking appearances,” “fundraising appearances” and “diversity outreach.”
At a Bikers for Trump event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Trump called former White House aide Omarosa Manigault a "lowlife."(The Washington Post)
The “companion agreement” states that she could not make disparaging comments about “the campaign, Mr. Trump, [Vice President] Mr. Pence, any Trump or Pence Company, any Trump or Pence Family Member, or any Trump or Pence Family Member Company or any asset any of the forgoing own.” Another provision states that the agreement would survive even if Manigault Newman’s contract expired, was canceled or she was fired.
In her interview with Todd, Manigault Newman said she considered the offer an attempt to buy her silence. “They were not offering a real job,” she said. “They told me I could work from home, if I wanted to work. They didn’t care if I showed up.”
On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump, said the job offer was not “hush money.”
“Everybody signs an NDA,” Conway said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the nondisclosure agreement. “It sounds like she didn’t want to sign it and didn’t want to go back to the campaign because she had a book on her mind.”
President Trump condemned "all types of racism" in a tweet on the first anniversary of the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.(Video: Elyse Samuels /Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Manigault Newman, who starred on Trump’s show “The Apprentice,” was fired from her administration position in December amid allegations of misconduct, including trying to stage her wedding photos on White House grounds.
Her purported recordings inside the White House — especially the Situation Room, which is supposed to be one of the most secure locations on Earth — represent a serious breach of security, said Ned Price, who was a National Security Council spokesman for the Obama administration.
The Situation Room “is the inner sanctum within an already-secure facility where the most sensitive of the most sensitive information is discussed,” Price said. “It’s where negotiations with Iran were hashed out. It’s where contingency plans for nuclear launches have been developed. The fact that she was recording a conversation in there really raises alarm bells in the minds of people who have worked in that room.”
Price said cellphones and recording devices are not allowed in the room, although his experience was that aides are not screened before entering.
“It’s a system based on honor and integrity, and there’s a sign outside that says, ‘Place your phones here,’ ” he said.
On Sunday, Manigault Newman did not address those issues.
She repeated what she asserts in the book: that Trump is a “racist, misogynist and bigot,” a realization that she said dawned on her only as her rocky White House tenure came to an end.
Todd asked why she did not come to this conclusion sooner, noting that Trump had said many things over the years that people considered racist, including calling Mexicans “rapists” or saying “both sides” were to blame for bloodshed during the white nationalist march in Charlottesville last year.
Trump launched his political career advancing the birther conspiracy about President Barack Obama.
“Yes, I was complicit.” said Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking black employee in the White House. “. . . I had a blind spot when it came to Donald Trump. I wanted to see the best in him. Obviously, I failed miserably.”
White House aides are exploring what punishment she could face for the purported recordings in the Situation Room and in the building, according to a senior administration official.
Privately, many are wondering how many tapes she might have — and whether they are heard speaking on them.
Manigault has tapes of Trump speaking, a person familiar with the tapes said.
SEWARD, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska fishermen are used to coping with fickle weather and wild ocean waves. Now they face a new challenge: the United States’ trade war with China, which buys $1 billion in Alaskan fish annually, making it the state’s top seafood export market.
Beijing, in response to the Trump administration’s move to implement extra levies on Chinese goods, last month imposed a 25 percent tariff on Pacific Northwest seafood, including Alaskan fish, in a tit-for-tat that has engulfed the world’s two largest countries in a trade war.
The results could be “devastating” to Alaska’s seafood industry, the state’s biggest private-sector employer, said Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing trade group.
“This isn’t an easily replaced market,” she said. If the tariff war continues, she said, “What’s going to happen is China is just going to stop buying Alaska fish.”
For Alaska’s seafood industry, the timing could not be worse. The state has worked for years to attract the Chinese market, and just two months ago, Governor Bill Walker led a week-long trade mission to China in which the seafood industry was heavily represented.
Fisherman Alan Noreide is pictured on his boat, the Lorelei II, in Seward, Alaska, U.S., August 4, 2018. REUTERS/Yereth Rosen
Walker’s trade mission was a follow-up to an Alaska visit a year earlier by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his cabinet.
Fishermen are worried, said Alan Noreide, a fisherman in the Alaska port town of Seward, where he delivers some of his catch to the local Icicle Seafoods plant, an Alaska-based seafood processing company whose representatives accompanied Walker to China.
“We’d rather be left to our own challenges that we have. We don’t need any more,” said Noreide, who focuses on Gulf of Alaska black cod and halibut.
Marketers have found that middle-class Chinese customers view Alaska fish, particularly wild Alaskan salmon as a superior product from unspoiled waters.
Chinese buyers are interested in “clean, natural, organic” products, said Zoi Maroudas, founder of an Anchorage-based baby food company that sells products like pureed salmon bisque. Maroudas was part of the Alaska trade mission, and said the pitch about Alaskan food “resonated with the people.”
But higher prices due to tariffs could nudge Chinese consumers to products from competing countries such as Russia and Norway, closing Alaska’s emerging opportunity, said Jeremy Woodrow of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, a state agency.
Boats docked at the marina are pictured in Kodiak, Alaska, U.S., February 23, 2018. REUTERS/Yereth Rosen
Farmers in the U.S. Midwest are expected to receive a $12 billion agricultural-aid package as a result of tariffs that are hitting soybean and other farmers. Walker and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski have argued that Alaska’s seafood industry also deserves aid.
The precise effects in Alaska have yet to be quantified and are likely to be uneven. A bit over half of the fish sent to China is processed there and re-exported, Woodrow said. While the Chinese government has exempted those products from tariffs, the Trump administration has proposed levies of up to 25 percent on the Alaska products shipped back from China to the United States.
Exports of fish that go straight into the Chinese consumer market, such as king crab, are most vulnerable, said Garrett Evridge, an Alaska seafood analyst.
YOU wouldn’t think the release of a new stamp would cause much excitement, regardless of the situation. But the latest commemorative new year offering from the Chinese government has got people talking. Why? Because the happy family of pigs shown on the stamp includes three children.
Social media users have been speculating that the stamps are a subtle signal from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that there could soon be a change to the restrictive two-child policy.
The stamp commotion follows a Bloomberg report from May that found the State Council had plans to scrap population controls completely and were looking into the likely impacts of a nationwide reversal.
An end to the four-decade-old policy would remove a major source of international criticism. And the leadership hopes it will also slow down the country’s rapid pace of aging.
While it will certainly achieve the first objective, whether it will lead to a baby boom is far from certain.
China has changed dramatically since 1979 when the one-child policy was first implemented. In today’s more affluent, more educated society, Chinese people are showing little sign of wanting kids.
The CCP first changed its restricted birth policy in 2015. Suffering one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and a diminishing working-age population, the leadership scrapped the one-child system in favour of a still-strict two-child approach.
Billboard advocating birth control part of Chinese government “one-child policy” in Heifei in the Anhui province, October 11, 1986. Designated a “temporary measure,” China’s one child policy was established by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to limit communist China’s population growth. Source: Michel Hermann/AFP
The following year, once the change had taken effect, China did indeed see a baby boom with an 11.5 percent increase from the previous year. A total of 18.46 million live births took place in 2016, nearly half of whom had an older sibling.
The leadership hoped that the new policy would bring three million additional births a year by 2020 and add more than 30 million workers to the shrinking labour force by 2050.
But the frantic procreating didn’t last. The birth rate fell by 3.5 percent the following year, suggesting the one-child policy may not have been the only thing standing in the way of Chinese families growing.
Despite having every opportunity to marry – given China’s surplus of 30 million men – it seems women just aren’t that interested. In particular, urban, educated women, just the demographic the CCP wants to produce the next generation.
Women are increasingly delaying marriage and pregnancy, despite government discouraging conceiving past the age of 29. Instead, they are turning their focus to work and refusing to settle for the unfair cultural norm of being burdened with childcare and caring for elderly family members.
In a 2017 survey of more than 40,000 working women by Zhaopin, one of China’s largest online recruitment websites, about 40 percent of respondents said they did not want to have any children, and nearly 63 percent of working mothers with one child said they did not want to have a second.
The main reasons given were the expense of raising a child, lack of time and energy, and concerns over career development.
The declining marriage rates also mean people are less likely to have children.
Across the country, 3 million couples registered their marriages with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (as reported by SCMP) in the first quarter of 2018, down from nearly 4.3 million in the same period of 2013 – a substantial decline of 30 percent.
Couples kissing each other during a mass wedding ceremony at Northeastern University in Shenyang in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. May 20, 2018. Source: AFP
The government has actively worked to discourage unmarried women having children, imposing fines and restricting access to social welfare if they do fall pregnant.
But all are not created equal in the eyes of the CCP and, while they have been firing pro-baby propaganda campaigns at educated Han women, ethnic minorities in the rural areas still face restrictions.
The predominantly-Muslim Uighur community in the northwestern region of Xinjiang face coercion to stop their high birth rates.
But urban women have a new found autonomy that shows no signs of reversing as people grow more affluent and China’s middle class continues to boom.
China’s middle class is on fire. According to a study by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, 76 percent of China’s urban population will be considered middle class by 2022.
Given the shift in mentality, removing the two-child policy will likely prove an ineffectual means of promoting the government’s population-growth agenda. But it will finally put an end to one of the biggest social experiments in human history.
An engraving at the French National Library shows the ratification of the Peace of Westphalia in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 16, 1650. (Roger Viollet/Getty Images)
The constituencies of Leavers Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have changed sides to back remain, polling shows. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
