PAKISTAN
TTP forging nexus with Baloch separatists, militant groups: experts

Iftikhar A. Khan

DAWN

Published May 6, 2023 

ISLAMABAD: Experts at a discussion warned that banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was forging nexus with Baloch separatists and local militant groups based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, a development which will likely exacerbate the already precarious security situation in the country.

Unlike the past, this is for the first time that TTP has started carrying out terrorist attacks in Pashtoon areas of Balochistan, which is very disturbing, they said.

There is no clarity about Pakistan’s policy for Afghanistan and the ruling coalition in the centre is also unclear how to deal with the TTP since talks with the proscribed group failed last year, they added.

The consultation on “Afghan peace and reconciliation: Pakistan’s interests and policy options” was organised by Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).


The representatives of political parties and civil society, academics, and journalists, among others, participated in the discussion. The main themes of the consultation included “Pak-Afghan bilateral relations: challenges and way forward” and “Emerging Afghan situation and its implications for the region.”

The speakers said TTP and other local militant groups were filling the space left by mainstream and nationalist political parties in KP as they were no longer only jihadi-religious groups. They said these militant groups now promoted political and nationalist thoughts to achieve their vested interests.

The Islamite militants, including TTP, and separatists have increased their attacks in Balochistan since Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, said Adnan Aamir, a Quetta-based journalist who writes for international media.

He said the group for the first time has started carrying out attacks in the Pashtoon areas of the province.

“TTP has increased its footprints in the province as at least three local Baloch militant groups have recently joined it,” added Mr Aamir. He said the banned group was promoting its political agenda in the province by showing its sympathies for the people of Balochistan, which demonstrated that it wanted to increase its presence in the province.

Aqeel Yousafzai, Peshawar-based expert on Afghan affairs, said recent statements of TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud were political in nature and there was no mention of jihad in these. He added that the group had been introducing itself as a Pashtoon nationalist group for the last four years.

“The rhetoric of nationalist parties and militant groups like TTP is now the same,” he said, adding that this should be very alarming for the policymakers.

Mr Yousafzai said local militant and separatist groups had entered into some sort of understanding with TTP. He argued that the government should open its door for talks with all militant groups.

President International Research Council for Religious Affairs Mohammad Israr Madani said they would have to enhance people-to people contacts and trade to decrease hostility of Afghans towards Pakistan.

“There is a need for religious diplomacy and involvement of religious scholars in this regard,” he said.

Mr Madani said Pakistan should hold talks with Afghanistan continuously on different issues and these should not be limited to a single sitting. He also said Pakistan should make its border management policy people-friendly to facilitate the Afghan people.

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) leader Hafiz Munir Ahmed opined that Pakistan’s Afghan policy should be led by civilian set-up and parliament. “Political parties should be given an opportunity to make such a policy.”

Director News and Current Affairs Pakistan Television (PTV) Aoun Sahi said there was confusion in Pakistan who would make a new Afghan policy as the previous one failed to produce results. “It is also unclear who is now leading any Afghan policy.”

Programme Adviser at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Pakistan Hamayoun Khan added that there was an issue of mistrust between the two countries. He said Central Asia was a huge potential for Pakistan and Afghanistan and both countries could benefit from it if they improve their bilateral relations.

PIPS Joint Director Safdar Sial said that Pakistan’s engagement with Taliban-led interim government in Kabul was the ultimate solution to all problems. He suggested that the civilian government in Pakistan should take the ownership of Afghan policy, which should be led by parliament. He added that security agencies must have their input in it.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2023

EMOTIONAL PLAGUE
‘All to blame’: Serbia takes stock after mass shootings

By AFP
Published May 6, 2023

People waited Friday to sign a condolence book near the Belgrade school where a 13-year-old shot and killed eight fellow students and a guard - Copyright AFP Oliver Bunic
Miodrag SOVILJ

The arrival of spring is usually a festive, carefree affair in Serbia’s capital Belgrade.

But on Saturday, the onset of the warm season was met with confusion, fear and shock as people wrestled with back-to-back shootings this week that left the country stunned.

People were mulling many questions that ultimately boiled down to a single word — Why?

On Wednesday, the first shooting saw a 13-year-old gun down eight fellow classmates and a beloved security guard at an elementary school in an upscale neighbourhood in downtown Belgrade.

Less than 48 later, it was followed by another shooting spree when a 21-year-old armed with an automatic rifle murdered eight people and injured 14 others in a melee some 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of the capital.

As the weekend began, the trauma wrought by the violence was still palpable.

People continued to queue outside the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school, where they held calla lilies and waited to sign a condolence book near the school’s entrance, which remains sealed off by police.

The pavement has been transformed into a makeshift shrine with mounds of flowers, toys and letters surrounded by pools of melted candle wax.

“I came here with my son, who wanted to pay his last respects to his friends. I think the reality has started to catch up to them,” Zoran Radojicic, a 51-year-old pharmacist, told AFP.

The usually bustling neighbourhood was eerily silent, except for the occasional sound of muffled sobs and shuffling feet.

“We are all to blame for what happened… parents, the government and the education system. It’s our fault that we did not address the issues,” said Todor Dragicevic, a 28-year-old doctor.

– Gun culture –

Serbia has the highest level of civilian gun ownership in Europe, with roughly 39 out of 100 people owning firearms, according to the latest study by the Small Arms Survey research group.

Weapons feature heavily in the Balkan country’s culture, where centuries of occupation, rebellion and war have instilled a martial spirit in the fabric of the nation.

Yet despite the high levels of gun ownership, mass shootings have been rare in Serbia, with school shootings in particular almost nonexistent in the country’s recent history.

President Aleksandar Vucic promised immediate action on Friday, vowing just hours after the second shooting to “disarm” Serbia and crack down on gun ownership.

“We know there will be big problems with this, but less barrels means less danger for our children and our citizens,” Vucic said during a live address to the country.

But even as the president promised to act, some wondered what other underlying issues may have led to the week’s shocking outburst of violence.

“There is much more aggression in society than ever before,” Tamara Dzamonja Ignjatovic, president of the Serbian Psychological Society, told AFP.

– ‘Soften the blow’ –

Pro-government media outlets regularly glorify criminal lifestyles, with convicted gangsters starring in hugely popular TV programmes that are infamous for showcasing gratuitous displays of violence.

During a live interview in 2021, Vucic showed the audience a series of grisly images featuring dismembered bodies, saying it was important for citizens to “see what kind of monsters we’re dealing with”.

The president himself routinely takes to the airways to upbraid his opponents — whether they be rival politicians, other countries or Western powers — with aggressive language and threats.

“Unfortunately, the scandalous manner of behaviour aimed at one human from another is being promoted –- from reality shows to the parliament,” Ignjatovic said.

But even if violence has become the norm on the nation’s airways, the tragedy proved that a gentler character still remains in Serbia.

In the wake of the shootings, people lined up to donate blood while others flocked to memorial services and took to social media to mourn the dead.

“A lot of people have shown solidarity, empathy and readiness to volunteer, which is the most important thing now… to mitigate the consequences of what happened,” Ignjatovic said.

“We can’t turn back time… but we can use all our powers to soften the blow.”

‘We Can’t Believe That’s Happening Here’: Serbia Reflects After Shootings

Back-to-back massacres have forced the country, still in mourning, to grapple with its complicated and long gun tradition.

A funeral on Saturday in a village south of Belgrade, Serbia, for some of the victims of a shooting days earlier.

Credit...Vladimir Zivojinovic for The New York Times


By Constant Méheut

The New York Times
Reporting from Malo Orasje, Serbia
May 6, 2023

Serbia on Saturday mourned the loss of 17 people in two mass shootings in two days, as the nation grappled with its own culture of guns.

The funerals of several victims took place on Saturday, the second of three official days of mourning for the consecutive killings at a school in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, and in nearby farming villages.

Thousands of Belgrade residents have already paid their respects to the victims of the first shooting on Wednesday, laying flowers and lighting candles that now cover much of a street leading to the school, where a 13-year-old killed eight classmates and a security guard and wounded seven others. A day later, another gunman raced through villages in a car with an assault rifle, killing eight people and wounding at least 14 others.

“We can’t believe that’s happening here,” Milana Vanovac, 56, said as she looked at the impromptu memorials on Saturday. “We thought mass shootings were a problem for other countries, not for us.”

Serbia is grappling with a gun issue that has long been poorly addressed, experts say. The nation ranks third in the world for gun ownership along with Montenegro, with an estimated 39 firearms per 100 people, trailing the United States with 121 and Yemen with 53, according to the 2018 Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group.

Promising to directly address the issue, President Aleksandar Vucic vowed sweeping changes to Serbia’s gun laws on Friday, saying he was aiming for the “almost complete disarmament” of the country. Mr. Vucic said the authorities would aim to decrease the number of people who legally own guns, excluding hunting weapons, to up to 40,000 from around 400,000.

Stefan Markovic, a construction worker who lost several friends in one of the shootings, said the rate of gun ownership in Serbia was too high to be significantly reduced.Credit...Vladimir Zivojinovic for The New York Times

It was an ambitious promise, but one that might be difficult to fulfill in a country with a tradition of owning guns and with vast quantities of illegal weapons that are difficult to track.

The high rate of gun ownership is largely a legacy of the wars that came after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as well as a “tough guy” culture, said Bojan Elek, the deputy director at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy. In Serbia, especially in the countryside, he said, guns are used to celebrate weddings and birthdays and are considered a means of self-protection.

“We’re very skeptical about these newly announced measures,” Mr. Elek said, noting that those affected would primarily be legal gun owners who were already ready to turn in their firearms. “Those who illegally own weapons won’t be affected.”

In Dubona, one of two farming villages south of Belgrade where shootings occurred, residents expressed doubts about the possible disarmament of the country — and their own willingness to participate.

“There’s no way he can implement this,” Stefan Markovic, 29, a construction worker from Dubona, said of the Serbian president’s promises. “Nobody can do anything about this.”

Mr. Markovic, who lost several friends in the shooting, said the rate of gun ownership was too high to be significantly reduced. He estimated that the bulk of Dubona residents have a gun, although few have licenses. Asked if he had a gun, he smiled approvingly.

Forensic investigators searching for evidence near the village of Dubona, Serbia, after a shooting.

Credit...Vladimir Zivojinovic for The New York Times

Several weapons were found during searches of houses associated with the gunman accused of carrying out the shootings on Thursday, the police said. They included an automatic rifle that was not registered, a carbine with optics, a pistol and four hand grenades. Mr. Markovic, who lives near the suspect’s family home, said the suspect’s father, a deputy colonel in the Serbian Army, had “a whole arsenal” of weapons.

The exact number of guns in Serbia, a small country of 6.8 million people, has been difficult to determine. Mr. Elek of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy said the number had decreased over the years. But there were still approximately 2.7 million firearms in civilian hands at the end of 2017, with fewer than half that were registered with the government, according to the Small Arms Survey.

Mr. Vucic, the president, promised a full audit for gun owners that would include drug and psychological tests, enhanced surveillance of shooting ranges and a two-year moratorium on new licenses. He also called for a one-month amnesty for gun owners to surrender illegal weapons without penalty, ahead of more stringent measures.

In Dubona, residents seemed hesitant about turning in their weapons at all. Some said the gunman’s rampage had instead persuaded them to keep their guns for self-protection.

“Imagine if he had come to our house and we didn’t have a gun to protect ourselves,” said Milos Todorovic, who lives with his family down the main street of the village, where bloodstains from the shooting were still visible on Friday. “He comes to your door and kills you.”

Sitting around a garden table, strewn with pastries and small glasses of rakija, a fruit spirit popular in the Balkans, his father nodded in agreement.

In Dubona, residents seemed hesitant about turning in their weapons at all. Some said the gunman’s rampage had instead persuaded them to keep their guns for self-protection.

Credit...Vladimir Zivojinovic for The New York Times

Mr. Elek said the culture of gun ownership for self-protection dated hundreds of years, when populations in the region tried to resist the Ottoman Empire. It has been further entrenched by the legacy of two world wars and the conflicts surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia.

He added that guns were also part of longtime traditions that have disappeared in big cities but remain in the countryside, with people firing into the air to commemorate special occasions. Mr. Elek said one such tradition, during weddings, consisted of putting an apple on the top of a house and shooting it with a gun.

In Dubona, Maria Todorovic, Mr. Todorovic’s sister, acknowledged the need for changes. “Something has to be done regarding the guns,” she said. “Otherwise, where will it lead us?”

But she added that guns were so ingrained in their culture that she sometimes tended to forget how dangerous they could be.

Ms. Todorovic said she was in the family’s home garden when the gunman started shooting a few yards away. She said she was not worried at first. “When we heard the gunshots, we thought it was somebody celebrating a birthday.”

More about Constant Méheut

Will Serbia clamp down on gun ownership?

Two deadly mass shootings have left Serbia reeling. Will Serbian authorities crack down on legal and illegal gun ownership in the country?

Sanja Kljajic
DW

After Serbia witnessed two deadly mass shootings in just two days, discussions about restricting gun ownership are heating up. And with good reason. According to 2018 estimates by Swiss research project Small Arms Survey, Serbia ranks third in the world in terms of civilian gun ownership per capita, after Yemen and the US. According to the Swiss study, in Serbia there are 39.1 light weapons per hundred persons.

"According to other estimates, at least as many weapons are also in illegal possession," Predrag Petrovic, research director at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCBP), tells DW. "According to official Serbian police data from 2021, there were 920,000 weapons in Serbia at the time — although between 50,000 and 60,000 have since been returned."

Gun culture

Whatever the estimates say, it is believed that many Serbian households possess guns. Security expert Petrovic says the reason for this "gun culture" primarily stems from the numerous wars that were fought on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.

"Some of the weapons from the 1990s were never returned because citizens of the post-Yugoslavian states still do not feel safe today," Petrovic says. "In addition, in the Western Balkans, weapons have traditionally been symbols of power and status; showing one is able to protect oneself and one's family."

In 2021, Serbian police estimated there were almost one million privately owned guns in the country

Getty Images/AFP/C. Bouroncle

"People here do not associate safety with government institutions, like the police doing their jobs well, but with having good neighbors and being able to protect themselves," he explains.

Tighter checks announced

Serbia has now announced it will drastically reduce the number of guns in the country. "All people who own weapons — I'm not talking about the roughly 400,000 people with hunting weapons — will be subject to an audit, and then no more than 30,000 to 40,000 guns will be left," Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said after the recent shootings. "We will almost completely disarm Serbia."

The Serbian government also announced that over the next six months, checks will be conducted to ensure gun owners are storing their arms safely and keeping weapons and ammunition in a place inaccessible to minors and other unauthorized persons.

Serbian President Vucic addresses the media after the May 3 shooting

Darko Vojinovic/AP/picture alliance

The procedure for issuing new firearms licenses will be tightened as well. Serbia's Interior Ministry will impose a two-year moratorium on new permits. "We know this will not happen without causing friction — but the fewer rifles there are, the less danger there is for our children and citizens," Vucic said at a press conference after the shooting.
Time for an outright ban?

While tighter controls are appropriate in light of the situation, an outright gun ban makes no sense, argues Dejan Milutinovic of the Professional Association of the Security Sector. "We already have overly strict rules," says Milutinovic. "Weapons are permanently confiscated if there is even the slightest neighborhood dispute. But it is not possible to know in advance whether someone will actually use their weapon."

Private gun ownership rules were last tightened in 2015, says security expert Petrovic. At the time, re-registering weapons became mandatory. Gun owners had to pass tests and justify why they want to keep their guns. But while these rules sound strict on paper, this has not been borne out in practice, and the deadline for registering guns was postponed several times — most recently in 2022 by another two years.

Mourners placed flowers near the scene of the school shooting, commemorating the victims

Antonio Bronic/REUTERS

"The responsibility [to better regulate gun ownership] does not lie with Serbian citizens, but state institutions," says Petrovic. These have, however, been quite inconsistent in their approach. "While some weapons were confiscated because the police thought their owners had no reason to keep them, in other cases, gun owners were issued new gun licenses even though they had not given any reasons for owning them," Petrovic says.
Illegal weapons

Registered weapons are one problem. The other are large numbers of unregistered, illegal weapons in Serbia dating back to the wars of the 1990s. "Back then, weapons were distributed en masse to the population, but no one can trace their whereabouts," says Petrovic. The only major effort made to take back some of these guns occurred after the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. At the time, around 50,000 weapons were either confiscated or returned.

Long-time opposition politician Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in 2003

picture-alliance/dpa

"What is needed now is a determined campaign to convince citizens they can trust the institutions of the Serbian state to guarantee security — and that they therefore no longer need weapons," says Petrovic.

Dejan Milutinovic of the Professional Association of the Security Sector, meanwhile, believes that most illegal weapons are owned by criminals. He says guns like the automatic rifle used in the shooting on May 4 near the small town of Mladenovac are not ordinarily available for purchase.

"Automatic weapons are only found in military and police barracks. They end up elsewhere either through the negligent actions of soldiers or police officers, or through illegal arms trafficking," says Milutinovic.

Serbians who own illegal weapons now have one month to turn in their guns without facing consequences. President Vucic has threatened those holding on to their weapons, saying "we will find them — and the consequences will be terrible."

This article was translated from German.

BOURGEOIS INDIVIDUALISM
‘I’m no LGBT crusader’: China’s transgender star Jin Xing

Transgender celebrity Jin Xing will be performing in Singapore in June. 

ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

Chin Soo Fang
Senior Correspondent
UPDATED
MAY 6, 2023

SINGAPORE – China’s transgender star Jin Xing prefers to focus on her art, but when the inevitable questions on her preferred pronouns surface, the 56-year-old is quick to say she is no LGBT crusader.

“I don’t raise a flag to champion any issue. It’s a personal choice and I don’t live for anybody but myself,” she tells The Straits Times in a mix of Mandarin and English. “As long as people can see my passion and positivity in life, I’m setting a good example.”

She adds: ”This world likes to label and categorise people. It’s terrible. We’re really all the same.”

The charismatic multi-talented dancer, actress and television host underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1995, making her a national sensation as she was the first celebrity in China to do so openly.

She was in Singapore on Wednesday to promote her upcoming performances at the Esplanade – a stage play called Sunrise which she stars in and directs, as well as a modern dance offering, Wildflowers, presented by the Shanghai-based Jin Xing Dance Theatre, of which she is the founder and artistic director.

Sunrise is a three-hour stage production based on the classic play by the late Chinese playwright Cao Yu, known as “Shakespeare of the Orient”. Jin plays two characters – Chen Bailu, a Shanghai courtesan and kept woman, and Cui Xi, a prostitute. The 1936 play depicts people from all walks of life and their struggles and confusions.

Wildflowers, a 75-minute modern dance collaboration with Dutch avant-garde choreographer Arthur Kuggeleyn, is an invitation to “bloom with freedom” fearlessly, says Jin, much like her personal journey.

Singapore is her top destination for performing outside of China, she says, because of her big fan and friend base here. However, she finds the arts scene here “relatively quiet” and the local audiences “reserved”.

“Singapore has done very well in many areas, but as South-east Asia’s hub, you can do with more vibrancy in the arts too,” she says, observing that there is no lack of talent or investment in arts education here.

Her dream is to set up a performing arts school in Singapore or even helm a talk show here if the opportunity arises.

“I will be the best talk-show host you can find, and I can speak both Mandarin and English and more,” promises Jin, who also speaks Korean, Japanese, Italian and French.

Born in 1967 in Shenyang, in China’s north-east, to an army officer father and translator mother, she was recruited by a military dance troupe at age nine and won a dance scholarship to New York in her teens. The former male ballet dancer and army colonel founded Jin Xing Dance Theatre – China’s first private modern dance troupe – in 1999. She also adopted three children before she married her German husband Heinz Gerd Oidtmann in 2005. They are now based in Shanghai.

She rose to stardom on the first season of the Chinese version of So You Think You Can Dance in 2013, in which her refreshing honesty and “poison tongue” drew comparisons with English talent show judge Simon Cowell. She also hosted a chat show, The Jin Xing Show (2015 to 2017), which earned her the moniker “Oprah of China”.

In 2021, she became the face of French luxury brand Dior’s fragrance J’adore.

“Besides talent, luck and patience, curiosity is my key driving force,” she says. “I am always curious to know what I can do next. I am never content.

“To me, the good show hasn’t even started, and I haven’t even reached my peak.”
Sunrise and Wildflowers

ANOTHER BOURGEOIS ELITIST

https://www.newsweek.com/caitlyn-jenner-trans-community-oversaturated-1795397

Caitlyn Jenner Says Trans Community Is 'Oversaturated... 

Apr 19, 2023 ... To Caitlyn Jenner, the "indoctrination" of America's youth has led to an "oversaturation" of the transgender community. Jenner, a media&nbs...

S’pore studying how the Swiss research and collaborate in built environment sector

The Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies research institute, near Zurich, which Minister for National Development Desmond Lee visited during his trip to Switzerland. 

PHOTO: MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Jean Iau

ST GALLEN, Switzerland – Singapore is studying ways in which the Swiss bring together researchers, the construction industry and the private and public sector to innovate in the built environment.

Following his four-day trip to Switzerland, Minister for National Development Desmond Lee told The Sunday Times in an exclusive interview on Friday that his visit to the Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies (Nest) research institute, near Zurich, had been very exciting.

The institute, part of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, tests technologies, materials and systems under real conditions using “modules”

These units “plug” into a building that has a central “spine” and platforms with heavy-loading capacity, with different modules piloting different materials and technologies such as various construction robotics or drone technology for buildings.

Mr Lee visited some of these modules, including a 3D-printed apartment. Another was made with mass-engineered timber, and others had partitions made from old books and recycled denim. People lived in some of these modules to test their liveability.

“These are very exciting things, and we spent a good amount of time talking to the people who run the facility,” he said.

Noting that his ministry has experimented with 3D-printed HDB rooms, he added: “We want to study whether more can be done, whether it’s in material science, robotics or new forms of construction, to continue to push the boundaries.”

Yet it was not necessarily the products or technologies the Swiss had come up with, but the way researchers collaborated with the construction industry, that piqued Mr Lee’s interest.

“We want to see how we can continually improve the way we strengthen collaboration in the construction sector with research institutions. It may not be innovation in the form of new technology or new intellectual property, but innovation in the way we do things – the mindset.

“To improve construction productivity, we may need to have some change in mindset, change in processes. In a way, collaborative contracting, what we’ve been pushing in Singapore, is one step in the right direction.”

He said this is in line with the revamped Industry Transformation Map 2025 for the built environment, which involves clustering construction, real estate facility management, security, landscaping and environmental services.

The built environment refers to man-made, urban environments where people live, work and interact.

The element linking these themes together is a “digital spine”, which is building information modelling and advanced construction technologies.

Mr Lee visited the research institute on Wednesday before attending the 52nd St Gallen Symposium, where he spoke in a plenary session on Thursday.

He said he appreciated the theme of the symposium, “A New Generational Contract”, as business leaders, activists and government officials from all over the world had open conversations with students not only in the sessions but also during the breaks.

“There’s that almost egalitarian approach where students and established individuals freely exchange knowledge and ask questions of each other,” he said of the student-run symposium.

He added that the business leaders and established individuals either benefited or would have benefited from being mentored or coached themselves. “I was young once too and benefited from people who were prepared to talk to me, teach me, guide me, coach me and correct me.”

Of the topics discussed at the symposium, which included climate change, geopolitics, and the use of artificial intelligence, Mr Lee said: “There’s a lot of hope, excitement and uncertainty, some pessimism. But all in, a sense that conversations like these need to intensify.”

MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Jobs in built environment should be redesigned to attract young talent, study finds

Are retail consumers protected enough in the crypto world?

Thomas Kalafatis
Richard Nesbitt
May 6th, 2023

Since November 2022, three ventures related to cryptocurrencies have filed for bankruptcy, raising the issue of regulatory protection for retail consumers. Thomas Kalafatis and Richard Nesbitt write that cryptographically enhanced commerce is here to stay and keeping externalities under control is the best we can hope for. They say regulators will become more aggressive not just with coins but also with the programming code that creates them.

We have been concerned that retail consumers are not protected in an environment of cryptographically enhanced commerce, even though they may have a legitimate need for an alternative currency. While we may trust our banking system, many people in this world have very real reasons for not trusting their own systems and hope for an alternative that deals with risks. These are often the consumers that have not been able to fully participate in the nation’s economy or financial systems or people from parts of society that are excluded from sharing economic success. Smartphone technology has made it possible for a much larger part of society to participate in alternative crypto currency vehicles, even though they receive none of the protections provided to traditional financial markets. This imposes a disproportionate cost of failure onto these disadvantaged consumers who often can afford it the least.

Since our last publication, here is a short list of follow-on debacles:

FTX – November 11, 2022 bankruptcy filing

BlockFI – November 28, 2022 bankruptcy filing

Genesis/Gemini – January 20, 2023 bankruptcy filing

The cascading problems with centralised exchanges have even started to create stress with US federally chartered banks – Silvergate and Signature. Meanwhile, some “legacy” coins and newer coins such as Solana are having record returns since January. This juxtaposition of debacle and continued frenzy begs us to try to answer the obvious question, “where do we go from here?”

Firstly, cryptographically enhanced commerce is here to stay. The supply of the technology is too widespread, and its demand too pervasive to be reversed. As cryptographic technology inexorably moves forward and is intertwined with other technologies, the best that can be hoped for is that its negative externalities are kept under a measure of control.

Secondly, as the impact of these failures and negative externalities on investors is in the multiple billions of dollars, it will take years to know the actual impact on markets and public policy. In contrast to our calls for more regulation, some people argue that what is needed is not more regulation, but more enforcement, or more clarity of regulation. To this end, we retort, the policies, where they exist, are clear, and enforcement is part and parcel of regulation. Most important, it is not the regulators’ role to be a department of “pre-crime”. Just as it is not the justice system’s role to tell us whether it is “ok” to do something before we do it. The regulators do not have the resources to vet and opine on every financial instrument and transaction. This is the role of responsible intermediaries, who ideally are regulated with the interests of the public in mind.

Thirdly, regulations are quite clear. Market participants simply need to ask whether their stablecoins such as FTT (whose insolvency contributed to the downfall of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX) are deposits or securities. They are either one or the other to the extent they are exchangeable for other financial instruments. In either case, they need to be subject to the same regulation as other traditional forms of deposits or securities. And those purporting to put themselves out as exchanges need to be regulated as such and should not custody assets on behalf of counterparties. Broker dealers or custodians, not exchanges, should hold assets. They are each subject to different regulations and inspection, given the operating risk of their activities.

Despite the current chaotic situation, we have learned nothing that we did not know before. Financial markets are prone to fraud by a small number of unscrupulous actors whenever they are left unregulated. Even with the best of regulation, financial services organisations are still prone to the actions of people who seek to cheat when incentives to do so are high. Of course, we teach business students that leverage is the most feared excess in business. In fact, overleverage, or borrowing short and lending long, has been partly responsible for every single financial market debacle since Roman times.

Unfortunately, our fourth prediction is that there will continue to be more and new frauds until the general public’s latent demand for the benefit of cryptographically enhanced commerce is met by honest actors and through more uniform and less arbitrageable regulation. For example, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently led the charge on stablecoins being a security. Why is this not happening in other jurisdictions with similar regulations?

So, who is getting hurt? Why not let the markets sort themselves out and punish the offenders through bankruptcy and reduced future business prospects? Unfortunately, it is not that simple. These are lessons we learned the hard way in other organised markets such as stock exchanges. The unprotected in society suffer disproportionately in the case of large financial frauds. The Brooking Institute has a comprehensive article discussing the challenges of offering crypto assets to retail investors. Here is one of their concluding comments:


“When examined closely, crypto’s current capabilities do not match the needs of the groups it purports to serve, and it carries a host of risks and drawbacks that undermine its benefits. More alarming, we can observe parallels between crypto and other predatory products, which highlights crypto’s potential to exacerbate unequal financial services to historically excluded groups.“

Previously, (see here, here and here) we proposed that private stablecoins would be permanently troubled by their inherent risks that cannot be remedied, no matter how hard promoters try. If you re-examine the list of failed private exchanges above, you will see some or all of these factors contributing to their demise.

This leads to our final prediction. We believe that another question needs to be asked when investing in, intermediating or promoting crypto, or applications which intermediate crypto: Does crypto-enhanced commerce, in the way it is currently used, promote money laundering or the avoidance of know-your-client (KYC) requirements? We believe regulation and enforcement may intertwine with national security and political interests. This will lead to the regulation of “code” itself, including how it is used and whether it can be used at all.

The US government, via the US Treasury, set precedent in its sanctioning of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. Historically, code has been protected based on case precedent as free speech. But in this instance, where Tornado cash was an application which “tumbled” and “reprocessed” coins with the purpose of making senders and recipients unrecognisable, the code was arguably malicious. There were allegations that North Korean hackers laundered some $100 million via the tool. The coders were sent to jail while they await trial.

Decentralised finance (DeFi), which is often an attempt to bypass regulated finance through the lack of intermediation, regulation, administration and corporate governance via distributed servers is still coded by individuals. It may be that DeFi is targeted by future legislation to regulate code. Its current structure may be treated as malicious. There is much legislation that already exists where malicious code and their coders are treated criminally. DeFi may literally find itself on the wrong side of cybersecurity law.

So, where do we go from here? The world cannot pack it all up and declare cryptocurrency a failed experiment even if it wanted to! In many countries there is strong public demand for alternative currencies instead of their own, given the level of mistrust they have for their governments and banking systems. After all bitcoin still exists at a price greater than zero, meaning many hundreds of thousands of people ascribe a utility value to this instrument. We suggest that the analogy is that crypto-currency is in the early stages of being a high-utility technology, but with clear negative externalities whose costs need to be managed (much like carbon–based energy, which had massive utility, but whose externalities were understood much later). We believe the pursuit of controlling these societal costs will become more aggressive and involve regulating not just the coins themselves but also the very programming code that creates them.

This blog post first appeared at LSE Business Review.

Featured image by André François McKenzie on Unsplash

Note: The post gives the views of its authors, not the position USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: https://bit.ly/41a0ciX

About the authors

Thomas Kalafatis is founder and CEO of Aegis Sports Labs.

Richard Nesbitt is chair of the Inclusion Initiative at LSE and former CEO of the Toronto Stock Exchange.

 

Amnesty: Khader Adnan’s Death Highlights Israel’s Cruel Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners

B.M | DOP - 6 May, 2023

Amnesty International said that the death of hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan reflects Israel’s brutality against Palestinian prisoners.

In a report, Amnesty pointed out that Adnan’s death Khader Adnan is a reminder of the deadly cost that Palestinians pay for challenging Israel’s apartheid and a military justice system rigged against them.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, stated that when Adnan’s life was at risk, Israeli authorities refused his access to the specialized care he needed in a civilian hospital and instead left him to die alone in his cell.

“The appalling treatment of such a high-profile detainee is the latest alarming sign that Israeli authorities are growing increasingly brazen in their contempt for Palestinians’ rights and lives, and increasingly reckless in their cruelty towards Palestinians,” said Heba Morayef.

The report indicated that Adnan is the first Palestinian detainee to die as a result of a hunger strike since 1992, adding that the appalling treatment against him is the latest alarming sign that Israel is growing increasingly brazen in their contempt for Palestinians’ rights and lives.

Khader Adnan, 45, a father of 9 children, died in Israeli prisons after 86 days of hunger strike in Israeli prisons. He spent in Israeli prisons a total of 8 years, during which he went through five hunger strikes.

'Nationalism’ redefines the American right

Analysis by Fuzz Hogan, CNN
Sat May 6, 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene greets former President Donald Trump during a rally in Commerce, Georgia, in March 2022.Alyssa Pointer/Reuters

CNN —

The American right wing, long identified with the conservative movement, is increasingly latching onto something very different – nationalism – which frightens some students of history but is inspiring to a new breed of Republicans.

Some recent examples:

Laying out his platform in a series of videos, former President Donald Trump accuses a “globalist class” of not putting America first.

Amid the wreckage of ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s cable career lies a journey from garden-variety conservative to explicit White nationalist.

An up-and-coming congressional backbencher calls for the GOP to be “the party of nationalism.”

These moments, which seem unremarkable to a regular consumer of news, remind us that the Republican Party has been struggling for decades to reconcile its internal partnership of nationalists and conservatives. If you just woke up to American politics in the past 30 years, the two terms seem synonymous, but they haven’t always been.

Nationalism is identity over philosophy

So what is a nationalist and what is a conservative? And does it matter if we use these terms interchangeably?

First, a quick definition: When academics use “nationalism” by itself, it’s the concept that some kind of identity matters more than philosophy. That can be a place, an ethnicity or a religion. In current US politics, we typically see that identity with Christian nationalism or White nationalism.

Defining conservatism is tricky

Whether you throw all the way back to the philosopher Edmund Burke or start with former President Ronald Reagan, conservatism has typically meant a resistance to radical change and a faith in caution, especially when it comes to government’s role in a citizen’s life.

Many conservatives bristle at being lumped in with the very idea of nationalism, even without add-ons like “Christian” or “White.” Their version of conservatism is irrespective of place.

Former Heritage Foundation Executive Vice President Kim Holmes argued in 2019 that “American conservatives have argued that one of the great things about America was that it was different from all other countries. Different from all other nationalisms.”

Embracing nationalism under Trump

Trump flipped that more open principle of conservatism around when he declared himself to be a “nationalist” in 2018. Most of his policy proposals as president were focused on putting “America First.”

For Holmes, American identity is “based on a universal creed … grounded in America’s founding principles.” Holmes sees kindred spirits and a shared struggle with conservatives elsewhere in the world who might share those principles.

It wasn’t always partisan

Conservativism as a concept wasn’t even partisan in the 20th century. Joe Biden embraced the term during his first term in the US Senate, telling Kitty Kelley of the Washingtonian in 1974, “When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties, I’m a liberal but that’s it. I’m really quite conservative on most other issues.”

Over time, the term has evolved. As Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the think tank New America and author of “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America,” told me, “Once upon a time, there was a consistent meaning, but now you can be a national security conservative, an economic conservative, a social conservative. It’s become more of an identity.”

Holmes said when conservatives lose confidence in the strength of their philosophy, it risks becoming an identity. “They think that traditional fusionist conservatism and the American exceptionalism idea are not strong enough. These ideas are not muscular enough. They want something stronger to stand up to the universal claims of globalism and progressivism that they believe are anti-American.”
A partnership is forged

Such a partnership between nationalism and conservatism, argues Angie Maxwell, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas, was forged in the middle of the 20th century when the Republican Party worked to break the hold the Democratic Party had on the South since the Reconstruction to the late 20th century.

“We see the Republican Party try to adopt the specific brand of Southern White conservatism,” she said.

Maxwell said while the party was divided over the strategy, various Republican campaigns noted they could pick up voters by emphasizing Christian values, anti-feminism and racial resentment. In the 1960s, she noted, sentiments on those three dynamics would split evenly among members of both parties, while today those views are disproportionately felt by Republican voters.

Which leads us to today, where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, says plainly, “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

“There’s nothing conservative about Marjorie Taylor Greene, if conservative means we should tread with caution, we should not blow things up, we should have restraint and humility,” argued Drutman, harkening back to Burke, who many consider the founder of modern conservatism. “In some ways, (former President Barack) Obama is much more of a Burkean conservative.”
What lies ahead

Drutman noted that some forms of nationalism are benign: “You can argue that’s what’s great about America – that we have a diverse and pluralist society, (that) America is the greatest nation in the world because we welcome everyone.”

What concerns Drutman is Greene’s kind of identity-driven nationalism.

“What is changed in our politics is the extent to which our political divisions have led us to see competing viewpoints as illegitimate. For half the country to treat the other half as if they were a threat to the country,” Drutman said. “Maybe there are some issues where we should be more conservative. They become dangerous when their adherents deny that there is legitimate opposition.”

That also concerned Holmes, writing in 2019 before Taylor-Greene was elected, when he warned, “Nationalism is devoid of a common idea or principle of government except that a people or a nation-state can be almost anything. It can be fascist, it can be authoritarian, it can be totalitarian, or it can be democratic.”

See how tough it is: Ukrainian mud engulfs T64 tanks and M113 APCs

By Boyko Nikolov On May 6, 2023

According to experts we often quote, one of the main reasons for the delay in the spring offensive in Ukraine is the conditions on the battlefield. We have repeatedly written that spring in Ukraine comes with mud. Lots of mud, heavy and sticky mud.

Video screenshot

• 24/7 BulgarianMilitary.com – all you need to know about Ukrainian – Russian war

Heavy combat vehicles such as tanks, self-propelled howitzers, and armored personnel carriers would easily get bogged down. The mud will stick to their chains and when it dries it is even more difficult to remove it.

The last video we received shows exactly these conditions. What’s more – it literally visualizes the difficulty of the terrain, the impassable conditions. Literally a standstill.

Engulfed in mud

We don’t know which part of Ukraine the video comes from. But one can see the impossibility of at least two t-64 tanks and two M133 armored personnel carriers “to peel off the mud”. The terrain is so heavy that there is a big risk – the machine that will have to pull them can also be “swallowed” by the Ukrainian mud.

This is an unfavorable development of circumstances. Such a position exposes the entire column to the risk of an instant air attack. The downside is that the column will not be able to defend itself even against a ground attack. In reality, the video shows that it is not American equipment that has problems with Ukrainian mud, as some Russian media claim, but Soviet equipment as well.

The Russian army is also hampered

In such conditions, it is understandable if Ukraine postpones the offensive. There is a reason for Kyiv to wait until warmer weather, when the pavement, including bridges, will be dry for a difficult and long trek.

The picture also shows something else – one of the reasons why Russia does not launch a counter-offensive on land. The Russian tanks will follow the same fate as those in the video. That is why Russia is currently conducting air missile strikes.

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

On 21 February 2022, Russia claimed that Ukrainian shelling had destroyed an FSB border facility. Russia claimed that it had killed 5 Ukrainian soldiers. They tried to cross into Russian territory. Ukraine denied being involved in both incidents and called them a false flag.

Photo credit: Twitter

On the same day, the Russian government formally recognized the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. According to Putin not only in their de-facto controlled areas, but the Ukrainian Oblasts as a whole. Putin ordered Russian troops, including tanks, to enter the regions.

On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine by Russian Armed Forces previously concentrated along the border. The invasion followed by targeted airstrikes of military buildings in the country, as well as tanks entering via the Belarus border.

Russia has so far not recognized the invasion of Ukraine as a “war”, although that is exactly what it is, claiming that it is a “special military operation”. According to the UN, a “special military operation” can only take place after a UN resolution. There is no such resolution. So this is an invasion and war against Ukraine.

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Massive US embassy compound in Lebanon goes viral, sparks conspiracy theories

Does this large embassy compound reflect 2023 thinking or thinking from the last decade?

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Updated: MAY 7, 2023 

A Lebanese protester holds an anti-US banner behind razor wire during a protest in front of the US embassy near Beirut, March 15, 2005
(photo credit: REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ/FILE PHOTO)

Photos posted on Twitter Friday by the US Embassy in Beirut showing the progress of construction on the new compound for the embassy have received an unusual amount of interest in the region and globally.

As of Saturday, there were some 1.5 million views of the photos and hundreds of comments, quoted tweets and bookmarks of the post. The reason is the photos show the huge mass of the new multi-building compound. The US has said it will sit on a 43-acre site. Other posts by the embassy get far fewer replies or interactions

The US Embassy's post on Twitter was relatively short in terms of description. It simply said, “things are progressing at our new compound” and a follow-up tweet noted the visit of the Lebanese foreign minister. The compound, when completed will become one of the largest of its kind and it will have been an expensive project.

Does US investment in Middle East illustrate its feelings on security?

The US has done this before in the region, investing in large embassy compounds. It has a large compound in Baghdad and the embassy in Kabul was built on 36 acres of land before Kabul fell to the Taliban. A new consulate in Erbil is also of massive size, sitting on some 50 acres of land. These are expensive projects too, running into the hundreds of millions and billions to build and maintain.

The decision to invest heavily in Beirut and Erbil would appear to illustrate where the US feels the future and security of the region are going. While in the 1980s, the US embassy was targeted in Beirut by terrorists, today the sense is that Beirut is a good choice. There aren’t a lot of other options. There is hostility to the US in Baghdad, generally driven by Iranian-backed militias.

Lebanese anti-US protesters wave a big Lebanese flag during a protest in front of the US embassy near Beirut, April 1, 2005 

(credit: REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ/FILE PHOTO)

What’s interesting about the photos of the Beirut compound construction is the replies it has received and the attention it is getting. This is because there are a lot of commentators who sense a shift in US policy in the region or are critical of the US. They see the images and they see a symbol...some of the comments wondered when the next “color revolution” would be set off in Lebanon.

Apparently, this is a reference to the US backing various pro-democracy revolutions in other places, but these “color” revolutions are also critiqued by those who see them as some kind of US conspiracy. Some comments wondered if the US would plant trees around the compound, which currently has a kind of brutalist feel to it. “Let them eat concrete,” one reply said.

Others had more comedic replies, such as wondering how many bags of Cheetos could fit in the massive compound. The quote tweets of the images included references to it looking like the “Death Star” from Star Wars. Another person wondered how the US could accuse Lebanon of being under Iranian influence if it was building such a massive compound.

Embassy construction sparks Israel conspiracy theories

Of course, some had the usual claims of the embassy somehow serving as a center for “spies” or being linked to US support for Israel. And then there were the cynics who wondered if the place has enough helicopter pads for when it needs to be evacuated as the US has evacuated diplomats in Kabul, Iraq, or Sudan.

The overall symbol of the massive investment in places like Beirut and Erbil is that the US is not withdrawing from the region, but it is shifting focus. It takes a long time to build an embassy or massive consulate on dozens of acres of land. One needs to find the land and set aside the funding in Washington. Then there are the inevitable cost overruns and construction delays. This means that from the point of deciding to do something, it might take 10 or 20 years.

That means the current investment in Beirut or Erbil was decided upon long ago at a different time when the region was different before it became normal to see the US as withdrawing and shifting priorities to deal with Russia and China. These compounds are the results of 2015 thinking when the US was involved in the war against ISIS and the Iran deal had just been concluded, and while Kabul was still safe.

It is worth considering that reality when thinking about whether this large embassy compound reflects 2023 thinking or thinking from the last decade. Either way, the US embassy has had its photos and post go viral.

The Exploitation Of Hollywood’s Writers Is Just Another Symptom Of Digital Feudalism

LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 02: People picket outside of FOX Studios on the first day of the Hollywood writers strike on May 2, 2023 in Los Angeles. Scripted TV series, late-night talk shows, film and streaming productions.

By David Arditi
May 6, 2023
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The current Hollywood writers strike has drawn international attention to the plight of TV and film writers in the streaming era.

Much has been made of television’s golden age, during which streaming platforms have offered audiences an abundance of well-written, highly produced television shows, often called “prestige TV.”

Whereas older television shows tended to be formulaic sitcoms or crime dramas, newer shows more closely mimic the serialized novels of the 19th century, with cliff-hangers that encourage binge-watching.

But not everyone in the industry has equally reaped the rewards. While there are certainly more writing jobs to go around, these roles often pay less and place writers on short-order contracts.

Furthermore, the unyielding demand for content, as more and more platforms compete for subscriptions, has trapped writers in what I call “digital feudalism.”

Echoes from medieval Europe

I use the phrase digital feudalism because today’s version of capitalism increasingly mirrors the transition from feudalism to capitalism in 16th-century England.

Beginning in the 16th century, the English Parliament passed a number of enclosure acts, which abolished common land and defined it as private property that the government reallocated to the elites.

These laws kicked peasants, known as serfs, off the land where they had lived and worked for generations. Many of them ended up heading to cities in order to find work. The ensuing oversupply of workers drove down wages, and many ex-serfs couldn’t find jobs or housing, becoming vagabonds.

In other words, serfs lost stability in their everyday lives as they were thrust into a new economic system.

Precarity, debt and a lack of stability are again the dominant themes in today’s digital economy.

The gig economy, in which people can juggle two or three part-time roles to make ends meet, is largely to blame. These jobs usually don’t offer full-time benefits, livable wages or job security. The roles – whether they’re working as an Uber driver, delivering food for DoorDash or cleaning homes through Task Rabbit – are often managed through digital platforms owned by powerful corporations that give their workers a pittance in exchange for their labor.

The serfs of Hollywood

So, why are TV writers feeling the pinch of digital feudalism if this is the golden age of television?

Streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max brought about the golden age. But the gold prospecting has slowed, as the number of prestige TV shows seems to have hit a saturation point.

Starting in the 2010s, streaming platforms began hiring more and more writers. To lure customers, platforms needed quality content – otherwise, viewers wouldn’t continue paying the US$8 to $15 monthly cost of a subscription.

Platforms couldn’t market their content like network sitcoms, so they had to constantly develop new ideas for shows. Large stables of creative writers ended up forming the core of studio strategy.

Yet, as TV writers flocked to Los Angeles and New York City, entertainment companies took a page from the gig economy playbook in ways that worked against writers’ livelihoods.

The contracts were short and the pay lower. The formats of streaming shows – more one-off miniseries rather than sitcoms that could run for as long as a decade – rarely guaranteed work for any lengthy period of time.

Furthermore, streaming shows tend to have fewer episodes per season, with larger gaps between seasons, known as “short order.” An eight-episode season of a popular show that has a two-year gap between seasons leaves TV writers scrambling to figure out ways to pay the bills in between seasons.

Then came COVID-19. While people were stuck at home binge-watching TV, it became difficult to produce television. There was a major backlog in TV production because of the difficulties shooting TV shows in studios while complying with COVID-19 health regulations.

This created a major slowdown in TV production. At the height of the pandemic, TV studios closed to limit the number of people inside. With the slowdown of production, there wasn’t the demand for writers. As a result, many of the TV writers who had recently moved to Log Angeles and other big cities with high costs of living were faced with challenges finding jobs.

Core demands

Writers want to fix this by raising their minimum wage; they want writers for streaming platforms to receive the same royalties that theatrical film writers get; and they want to end the practice of mini rooms, where small groups of writers hash out scripts but often receive less compensation for a series that may not even get ordered.

Another key demand is to limit the use of artificial intelligence in television production.

Writers fear that studios will use AI to hire workers, select which shows to produce and, in the worst-case scenario, replace writers altogether. Interestingly, limits on AI have been the one point of contention that studios have been unwilling to even discuss.

It will be interesting to see whether the writers will be able to claw back some of the financial security that’s vanished across many industries, or if the larger economic forces that have powered the gig economy will work in studio executives’ favor.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.