The U.S. increases tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods as Trump threatens to add levies on everything else China sells to the U.S. https://t.co/p2cRyPgMbf
Russian Air defence forces have tracked and intercepted literally thousands of NATO fighter planes, bombers, spy planes and drones flying along Russia's borders in recent years, with fighters scrambled repeatedly to intercept some of these errant aircraft to force them to change course.
Maxmpower, an Instagram channel dedicated to Russian military aviation, has posted what appears to be footage of a Russian combat jet approaching to within just several hundred yards of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Russian servicewomen march during the Victory Day parade, which marks the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia May 9, 2019. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
WNU Editor: The above picture comes from this photo-gallery .... Russia marks Victory Day (Reuters).
* The US has decided to end its search for the missing Japanese F-35 that disappeared in the Pacific a month ago. * The US sent a destroyer, maritime patrol aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, and a salvage team to search for the fifth-generation stealth fighter. * While US support has ended, Japan intends to continue looking for the missing aircraft and its pilot.
The US military announced it is calling off its search for an F-35 stealth fighter that disappeared in the Pacific this time last month.
A Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) F-35A Joint Strike Fighter piloted by Maj. Akinori Hosomi mysteriously vanished from radar on April 9, the first time this version of the F-35 has crashed. The US sent the destroyer USS Stethem, P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and a U-2 spy plane to assist Japan in its search for the fifth-generation fighter and its pilot. Later, a US Navy salvage team joined the hunt.
U.S. President Donald Trump waits to welcome Slovakia's Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 3, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of Americans who said President Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points to 45 percent since mid-April, while more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered with important government business, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.
The opinion poll, conducted on Monday, did not make clear whether investigation-fatigued Americans wanted House of Representatives Democrats to pull back on their probes or press forward aggressively and just get impeachment over with.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Less than half of Americans (47%) say they would vote for a qualified presidential candidate who is a socialist -- the same percentage Gallup found in 2015. A socialist candidate is the only one among a dozen hypothetical candidates about whom a minority of Americans say they are willing to give their vote.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stands next to his airplane before boarding it to Beirut at Ben Gurion airport near Lod, Israel March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Young/Pool
US secretary of state had better things to do than go to Germany, and it hasn't gone down well.
BERLIN — Everyone knows Germans hate tardiness. But if you want to really push a Teuton over the edge, cancel a meeting at the last minute.
Just ask U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who canceled a trip to Berlin Tuesday, jilting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
"This is difficult to excuse," the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the daily bulletin of Germany's bobo elite, seethed. What could be more "pressing" than what would have been Pompeo's first official visit to Berlin as secretary of state, the paper wondered.
That the answer to that question, at least in Pompeo's view, was Iran, only enraged the Germans more. Berlin continues to cling to the illusion that Europe can save the nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. abandoned a year ago and regards U.S. policy toward Tehran as belligerent.
The fact that Pompeo skipped Berlin to indulge in some serious saber-rattling vis-à-vis Iran from Baghdad only added insult to injury.
WNU Editor: Washington and Berlin do not see eye-to-eye on many issues. But quite frankly the U.S. is not alone. Many countries in Europe have an unfavourable view of the German government right now and its policies .... from immigration, economics, military spending, and being too cosy with Moscow.
* President Donald Trump plans to nominate acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to formally take over the top spot at the Pentagon, the president's spokeswoman said Thursday. * Shanahan, a former longtime executive at the aerospace giant Boeing, needs Senate confirmation for the post most recently held by James Mattis. * "Acting Secretary Shanahan has proven over the last several months that he is beyond qualified to lead the Department of Defense, and he will continue to do an excellent job," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to nominate acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to formally take over the top spot at the Pentagon, the president's spokeswoman said Thursday.
Shanahan, a former longtime executive at aerospace giant Boeing, needs Senate confirmation for the post most recently held by James Mattis.
"Based upon his outstanding service to the Country and his demonstrated ability, President Trump intends to nominated Patrick M. Shanahan to be the Secretary of Defense," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in a tweet.
Beijing's trade tussle and brazen technology theft stunts are part of an overlooked war that has been going on for decades.
Five decades ago my father Richard Whalen published a book entitled Trade Warriors: The Guide to the Politics of Trade and Foreign Investment. Trade was a big deal in Washington in the 1970s, mostly focused on Japan. The resurgent Japanese economy and enormous flows on investment fueled by trade deficits were seen as a threat to American sovereignty. Many members of Congress, who were profiled in the book, had very specific concerns about trade, but the White House was generally the defender of free trade and capital flows that rebuilt the world after World War II.
Trump's strategy of maximum pressure is working, and Europe shouldn't stand in the way.
There are two ways to view Wednesday's threats from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to abandon the 2015 nuclear bargain with his country.
The first is through the lens of Europe's establishment and President Donald Trump's opposition: Look what you've done! After a year of maximum pressure, Iran has finally been pushed to start breaking its commitments to limit its stocks of enriched uranium. As an EU foreign policy official tweeted, Trump's Iran policy "has now triggered Rouhani's move towards less for less."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday urged Iran's leadership to sit down and talk with him about giving up Tehran's nuclear program and said he could not rule out a military confrontation given the heightened tensions between the two countries.
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Trump declined to say what prompted him to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group to the region over what was described as unspecified threats.
The ruling ANC party was beleaguered by corruption. Twenty-five years after the fall of apartheid, the party is set to win — but likely with less support.
South Africans voted Wednesday in the country's sixth national election since the formation of its democratic government 25 years ago.
This election was seen as a test for President Cyril Ramaphosa and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), which has led South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Ramaphosa and the ANC were expected to prevail, and early results, which started trickling in Thursday, suggest they will do so — but likely with a reduced majority.
* Trump's Justice Department said it has seized the Wise Honest, which was detained in Indonesia last month with two dozen crew on board * U.S. officials say payments for maintenance and equipment for the ship were made unwittingly in American dollars through U.S. banks - a sanctions breach * It came hours after North Korea fired two suspected short-range missiles in its second weapons launch in five days * The two projectiles were launched from a base in North Korea's north-west and aimed toward the east, Seoul defense officials said * At the White House Trump said he thought Kim's regime was 'not ready to negotiate' but played down the launch, saying 'we'll see what happens'
The Trump administration says it has seized a North Korean cargo ship that U.S. officials say was used to transport coal in violation of international sanctions - as the president said he now doubts Kim Jong-Un wants to negotiate.
The Justice Department announced the seizure Thursday of the Wise Honest. The ship was detained by Indonesia last month with two dozen crew members on board.
U.S. officials say payments for maintenance and equipment for the ship were made unwittingly in American dollars through U.S. banks.
The move came hours after Kim's regime launched new missiles - and at the White House Donald Trump said the U.S was looking very seriously at North Korea's latest launch,and that while North Korea wants to negotiate with the United States, he does not think it is ready to do so.
Intelligence revealed Iran told some proxies and surrogates they could go after American military targets in the region, say 3 U.S. officials.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. decision to surge additional military forces into the Middle East was based in part on intelligence that the Iranian regime has told some of its proxy forces and surrogates that they can now go after American military personnel and assets in the region, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence.
The intelligence shows that an Iranian official discussed activating Iranian-backed groups to target Americans, but did not mention targeting the militaries of other nations, the officials said.
Among the specific threats the U.S. military is now tracking, officials say, are possible missile attacks by Iranian dhows, or small ships, in the Persian Gulf; attacks in Iraq by Iranian-trained Shiite militia groups; and attacks against U.S. ships by the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Daniel Hale faces five criminal counts for allegedly providing information about U.S. counterterrorism operations.
A former U.S. intelligence analyst was arrested and charged with providing classified information to a reporter at the Intercept in 2014 about U.S. counterterrorism operations including against al Qaeda, amid a widening U.S. crackdown on media leaks.
Daniel Hale, who is 31 years old, provided the reporter with 17 documents he obtained while working for Leidos, a defense contractor, prosecutors alleged in an indictment obtained in March and unsealed Thursday. The information Mr. Hale shared included documents about terrorism suspects, a presentation outlining U.S. military technical capabilities, and the effects of a U.S. military campaign targeting al Qaeda, the indictment alleged.
An attorney for Mr. Hale couldn't be reached for comment. A representative for Leidos said the company "is deeply committed to protecting customer information" and that it will continue to fully support the investigation.
Anyone remember those weird strikes, probably by US forces, mostly on cars, where there didn't seem to have been an explosive payload, but everything inside the car was very dead?
The Pentagon and CIA have developed a new missile designed to minimize civilian casualties when targeting terrorists.
A modified Hellfire missile, it is called the R9X and carries 100 pounds of metal designed to cut through the tops of cars and buildings with "a halo of six long blades" that shred through anything in its path, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The R9X was used to kill Ahmad Hasan Abu Khayr al-Masr, al Qaeda's second in command, in 2017 and, Jamal al-Badawi, implicated in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, on New Year's Day 2019.
Current and former officials said it is extremely rare for senior White House officials or cabinet members to attend a meeting at CIA headquarters.
WASHINGTON — In a highly unusual move, National Security Adviser John Bolton convened a meeting at CIA headquarters last week with the Trump administration's top intelligence, diplomatic and military advisers to discuss Iran, according to six current U.S. officials.
The meeting was held at 7:00 a.m. on Monday, April 29, and included CIA Director Gina Haspel, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, five of the officials said.
National security meetings are typically held in the White House Situation Room. The six current officials, as well as multiple former officials, said it is extremely rare for senior White House officials or cabinet members to attend a meeting at CIA headquarters.
* Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the contempt vote on Attorney General Bill Barr will come to the full House for a vote 'when we're ready' * She warned President Trump there could be more contempt of Congress issues * President Trump is fighting off the six House committees investigating him * House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said the country is in a 'constitutional crisis' after Democrats voted to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt * Pelosi agreed with Nadler on the constitutional crisis * The Barr vote came after President Trump exerted executive privilege over the full, unredacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report * The move sets up a court battle between the executive and legislative branches
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday warned that the country is in a constitutional crisis and that more contempt charges against Trump administration officials could come as Attorney General Bill Barr waits for the House to vote on his reprimand.
Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol that the contempt citation against Barr will come to the full House for a vote 'when we're ready' and warned President Donald Trump this may not be the end of his war with Congress.
'When we're ready we'll come to the floor,' Pelosi said.
WNU Editor: There is no constitutional crisis. But as predicted this is all fall-out from the Mueller report and its admission that there is no Russian collusion, and growing fears that the Department of Justice's investigation on how the entire Russian probe was launched may implicate key former Obama officials. Here is an easy prediction .... expect more political fireworks in the weeks to come.
More News On U.S. Democrats Declaring The Nation Is In A 'Constitutional Crisis'
White House national Security Advisor John Bolton listens as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Trump is questioning his administration's aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.
The president's dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.
Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him "into a war" — a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said.
WNU Editor: Here is the Washington Post using anonymous sources again. And (of course) buried near the end of the WaPo article is the admission that national security adviser John Bolton's position in the administration is safe. Bottom line, if President Trump was not happy with his administration's strategies and the advice that he was receiving, these people would have been gone a long time ago.
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range missiles on Thursday in its second such test in less than a week, and the United States announced it had seized a North Korean cargo ship as tensions again mounted between the two countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump said "nobody is happy" at the missile launches, which South Korea said were likely a protest by Pyongyang against Trump refusing to ease economic sanctions on the North.
* Vladimir Putin forced to cancel military flypast over Red Square at the last minute over fears of bad weather * Threat of thunder and cloud over Moscow saw the huge Victory Day display of military power grounded * Despite cancellation Russian president pledged to 'guarantee the high capabilities of our armed forces'
Russian President Vladimir Putin took a defiant tone at Moscow's annual military Victory Day parade in Red Square, declaring that the country will continue to strengthen its armed forces.
The Kremlin strongman watched on as 13,000 troops and more than 130 pieces of weaponry were paraded through the capital as a show of Russian military strength.
Referring to his country's battle with Nazi Germany, Putin then warned 'the lessons of the past war are relevant once again' as he made his case for 'guaranteeing the high capabilities of our armed forces'.
Russia's ties with the West soured following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and Moscow has continued to challenge the United States through its staunch support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuelan security forces have detained opposition leader Juan Guaido's deputy, a week after Mr Guaido tried to spark a military uprising to bring down President Nicolas Maduro's government.
Edgar Zambrano, vice-president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly said on Twitter that agents from the SEBIN intelligence agency were using a tow truck to drag his vehicle, with him inside, to one of their Caracas bases.
"The regime has kidnapped the first vice president," Mr Guaido said on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Venezuela's pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly ruled to strip Mr Zambrano and six other opposition politicians of their parliamentary immunity to allow their future prosecution.
WNU Editor: Venezuela's prisons are already overflowing with opposition leaders. Arresting the First Vice-President of the opposition controlled national assembly is not going to stop the growing unrest in Venezuela. It is only going to intensify it.
More News On The Arrest Of A Senior Venezuelan Opposition Leader Allied With Guaidó
Iranian President Hassan Rohani delivers a speech during the annual military parade marking in Tehran, Iran, September 22, 2018.Tasnim News Agency/REUTERS
Iran is laying trip-wires for a violent, costly escalation. America's response will be determined by a besieged president, an administration led by anti-Iran hawks and a pre-occupied Congress
There are growing signs that there could be escalation at the edge – provocative attacks by pro-Iranian Shia forces operating in the Wild West of Iraq. How will America handle this form of escalation with Iran?
Will a direct, premeditated attack on U.S. troops by Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria draw the United States into a conflict at the core: a major, all-out U.S. war against Iran?
It's becoming more conceivable by the day. Indeed, there's potentially a lot more than just good old-fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" and deterrence-posturing going on when it comes to recent, very loud and very visible moves by the Trump administration, which this week cited intelligence pointing to a threat to U.S. forces from Iranian proxies.
WNU Editor: Many Western commentators blame President Trump for this increase in tensions. But I do not see it that way. Iran has been in conflict with the U.S. and its Sunni neighbours for as long as I can remember. Supporting groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, while sending assassination squads to Europe also does not help .... Europe Contemplating New Sanctions Against Iran After Terror Plots Uncovered In Denmark And Paris (November 4, 2018).
* Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Wednesday his country would end its compliance with two particular conditions of the nuclear deal if Europe did not step in to protect the country from U.S. sanctions. * Rouhani essentially gave Europe an ultimatum: Choose Iran over the U.S. by resuming Iranian trade in violation of sanctions, or see Iran return to higher levels of uranium enrichment.
The EU has responded firmly to Iran's threat to roll back its 2015 nuclear deal commitments, saying in a statement Thursday that it rejects any ultimatums but remained committed to the multilateral pact.
"We reject any ultimatums and will assess Iran's compliance on the basis of Iran's performance regarding its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA and the NPT," the joint statement from the EU high representative and the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the U.K. read, referring to the deal itself — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — and the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Weapons, respectively.
A year on from the extraordinary Panmunjom Summit—the first meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—which raised so many hopes, the inter-Korean march toward peace has ground to a halt. Already this year the North had slowed the pace. And now Kim Jong Un has stomped off the field in a post-Hanoi huff.
A mercurial US President Donald Trump and a scheming National Security Advisor John Bolton are hardly Moon Jae-in's fault. But Kim seems minded to shoot the middleman. His hard-line policy speech on April 12 to the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) included criticism of the "south Korean authorities" for "pos[ing] as a meddlesome 'mediator' and 'facilitator' as they busy themselves with foreign trips." Moon was not named, but this mean snark was uttered the same day he returned from Washington, after yet another noble attempt to promote peace and dialogue on the peninsula.
WNU Editor: This is a good analysis on South Korea's many failed attempts to reconcile with the North. And while tensions on the Korean peninsula have gone down appreciably in the past year (even with recent North Korean missile tests), this is a process that is going to take years (if not decades) to work itself out. The best thing to do is keep the door open. Keep on enforcing sanctions. And help when help is needed .... Donald Trump supports donation of food to North Korea despite nuclear stand-off, Seoul claims (SCMP/Bloomberg).
* The South Korean and U.S. authorities were conducting analysis for more detailed information and NBC News also said that the chief national security advisor in South Korea is monitoring the situation. * Last week, North Korea launched a number of rockets and at least one short range missile from its east coast into the ocean. * The two launches in quick succession will likely accentuate tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
North Korea fired unidentified projectiles on Thursday, according to the South Korean military, less than a week after leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test-firing of multiple rockets and missiles.
"We confirmed that North Korea fired two rounds of missiles towards (an) eastern direction from Northern Pyongan Province at 16:29 p.m. and 16:49 p.m. (local time). Estimated travel distances were 420 km, 270 km, respectively," a South Korean military official told NBC News. The Northern Pyongan Province is an area located to the west of the country.
WNU Editor: The North Korean leadership is signalling their frustration on the stalled nuclear talks. But they have no one to blame but themselves. Kim Jong Un has a choice. Keeping his nuclear arsenal, or trying something new. He cannot have both.
More News On North Korea Conducting Another Missile Test
DONALD Trump has taken the gloves off in his rapidly escalating trade war with China by increasing tariffs to 25 percent on $200billion worth of Chinese goods - with Beijing vowing to retaliate as the situation threatens to spiral out of control.
TAIWAN's president Tsai Ing-Wen has accused bitter rivals China of infiltrating and attempting to gain influence on the island amid South China Sea tensions.
IVANKA TRUMP and Jared Kushner "must be dealt with", but the US First Lady Melania is "wonderful", former White House chief of staff John Kelly has claimed.
SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo issued a chilling warning to Iran that the US would take "swift and decisive" action to any attack from the Middle Eastern country.
TED BUNDY, the infamous American serial killer, was arrested several times for fluke minor infractions before he was brought to justice, and was even reported to police early on in his murderous spree.
(TOKYO) — The three new missiles North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has tested over the past week are eerily familiar to military experts: They look just like a controversial and widely copied missile the Russian military has deployed to Syria and has been actively trying to sell abroad for years.
Ending a pause in ballistic missile launches that began in late 2017, and alarming North Korea’s neighbors, Kim personally supervised the launch of the first missile from the country’s east coast on Saturday and two more from the west on Thursday. All splashed down in the Pacific.
The missiles were short-range and the launches do not mean Kim has decided to end his self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range missiles that could reach the United States mainland. They do indicate, however, that Kim is methodically expanding the battle readiness of his missile forces and that could have a major impact on the safety of American allies and U.S. forces in the region.
The missiles bear a strong resemblance to the Russian-designed Iskander, a short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile that has been in the Russian arsenal for more than a decade.
“There are Russian technology fingerprints all over it,” said Marcus Schiller, a leading expert on North Korean missiles who is based in Germany.
He added that short of actually procuring the missiles from Russia, the North could have had key parts delivered from somewhere else, perhaps not directly from Russia, while making components such as the outer shell, or airframe, domestically.
The Iskander, or something like it, would be of particular interest to North Korea.
It’s designed to fly at a flattened-out altitude of around 40 kilometers (25 miles) and to make in-flight guidance adjustments. Both capabilities exploit weaknesses in the U.S. and South Korean missile defenses that are now in place, primarily Patriot missile batteries and the THAAD anti-missile defense system.
The Iskander is also quicker to launch, and thus harder to destroy on the ground, because of its solid fuel engine and more accurate because of its advanced guidance system.
Despite claims by senior members of the Trump administration that the missiles aren’t a threat to the United States, in a battle scenario they would likely be used to attack targets well behind the front-lines, such as the U.S. military bases in South Korea. There are roughly 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and tens of thousands more family members and civilian Department of Defense employees.
The North first displayed a mock-up of an Iskander-like missile at a military parade in 2018. This week’s launches mark its first known flight tests.
Michael Elleman, director of the Nonproliferation and Nuclear Policy Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said further analysis of the missiles’ performance will provide clues as to whether it was produced by Russia.
“If its flight path and accuracy were marginal or inconsistent with known Iskander trajectories and performance, then I think some form of local development with external technical assistance is more likely,” he said. “The key here is that one cannot make a new system without undertaking certain development steps. I have seen no evidence of such activity.”
Initial reports suggested at least one of the tests did involve an Iskander-like trajectory.
The Iskander missile system has been part of the Russian arsenal since 2006. The Iskander-M version used by the Russian military is more than 7 meters (yards) long, can weigh more than 4,000 kilograms (9,000 pounds) and has a range of about 400 to 500 kilometers (250 to 310 miles).
Russia first tested the Iskander in combat in 2008, against Georgia.
The Iskander missiles have long been a source of tension in Europe and were cited by President Donald Trump as a key reason behind his decision in February to break with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which bans production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,410 miles).
Such missiles only take a few minutes to reach their targets, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning. Moscow claims the Iskander-M’s range is just below the operational limit and should not be considered a treaty violation.
From the start, Russia has seen the Iskander missile as a potential export.
To avoid running afoul of international non-proliferation restrictions, Russia produces a less-formidable version that has a reduced range and is designed to carry a smaller payload for sales abroad.
So far, it has sold that missile — called Iskander-E — to Algeria and Armenia. It has reportedly discussed exports to Iran, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
According to Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks the global arms trade, Russia has used the Iskander missile in Syria. He said Syria has expressed interest in buying its own Iskanders, but Russia has declined.
Wezeman stressed Russia cannot legally sell Iskanders of any variety to North Korea.
A United Nations embargo in place since 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test, prohibits supplying the North with major arms, including ground-to-ground missiles, and U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer of ballistic missiles and related technology.
If North Korea is producing an Iskander clone, it would not be the first country to do so.
South Korea has what many believe is its own Iskander-inspired missile — the Hyunmoo-2. China also has a similar missile, called the DF-12 or M20 that was also configured with exports in mind. One of its buyers, Qatar, put them on display at a parade in 2017.
The beach made famous by the film The Beach will remain closed until 2021 to recover from an overflow of tourists which damaged its coral reefs.
The idyllic Maya Bay on the island of Phi Phi Leh shut its doors to visitors temporarily in June last year. National park officials said it would re-open in a few months, but officials have decided to ban tourists until 2021 to give the environment more time to recuperate, according to the BBC.
Tourists have flocked to the beach en masse since the 2000 moving starting Leonardo DiCaprio made it famous. Before its closure, the small beach strip received as many as 5,000 sightseers a day, according to the BBC. National park officials say when the park eventually re-opens, visitor numbers will be restricted and boats will not be allowed to moor in the bay, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP), according to the BBC.
Although the environment seems to be slowly recovering – blacktip reef sharks have returned to the bay – some locals are not happy about its closure.
Wattana Rerngsamut, head of the local tourism association, told AFP that public hearings should be held to decide the fate of the beach “so that local people can earn a living,” reports the BBC.
A park in Berlin has designated areas for drug dealers to do business.
The manager of Görlitzer Park in the Kreuzburg area of Berlin spray painted pink poxes on the ground to indicate areas where dealers will be allowed to operate, according to the Guardian.
Police have repeatedly made failed attempts to push the drug sellers out of the park, and implemented a zero tolerance policy for drug dealers, but it hasn’t worked. So the park manager took matters into his own hands, with the hopes of keeping dealers that might intimidate visitors away from the park entrance.
“This method has purely practical reasoning behind it,” Cengiz Demirci told local radio station RBB, according to the Guardian. “It’s not that we’re legalizing the selling of drugs.” Demirci said that many of the drug dealers are migrants who cannot work, and suggested that the problem might be solved if the government gave them work permits instead, according to the Guardian.
“What is needed to ensure that the park is drug and crime free, is a constant police presence and judicial resolve,” Benjamin Jendro, a representative of the police trade union GdP, told Bild.
According according to the Guardian drug dealers were not abiding by the new rules on Thursday.
(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking new church law Thursday requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities, in a new effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for failing to protect their flocks.
The law provides whistleblower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. And it outlines internal procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.
Abuse victims and their advocates said the law was a step forward, but not enough since it doesn’t require the crimes to be reported to police and essentially tasks discredited bishops who have mishandled abuse for decades with policing their own.
It’s the latest effort by Francis to respond to the global sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has devastated the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy and his own papacy. And it provides a new legal framework for U.S. bishops as they prepare to adopt accountability measures next month to respond to the scandal there.
“People must know that bishops are at the service of the people,” said Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s longtime sex crimes prosecutor. “They are not above the law, and if they do wrong, they must be reported.”
The decree requires the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 nuns to tell church authorities when they learn or have “well-founded motives to believe” a cleric or sister has engaged in sexual abuse of a minor, sexual misconduct with an adult, possession of child pornography — or that a superior has covered up any of those crimes.
It doesn’t require them to report to police, however. The Vatican has long argued that different legal systems make a universal reporting law impossible, and that imposing one could endanger the church in places where Catholics are a persecuted minority. But the procedures do for the first time put into universal law that victims cannot be silenced, that clergy must obey civil reporting requirements where they live, and that their obligation to report to the church in no way interferes with that.
The global victims group Ending Clergy Abuse, or ECA, said the Vatican shouldn’t hide behind the argument that mandatory reporting to police is a problem in some countries.
“The church should establish the law for reporting and justify the exception,” said ECA’s Peter Iseley. “Instead, they are using the exception as a pretext for not reporting sexual abuse to civil authorities and to keep abuse secret.”
If implemented fully, though, the Vatican could well see an avalanche of abuse and cover-up reports. The decree can be applied retroactively, meaning priests and nuns are now required to report even old cases of sexual wrongdoing and cover-ups — and enjoy whistleblower protections for doing so.
Previously such reporting was left to the conscience of individual priests and nuns.
Canon lawyer Kurt Martens called the new law “revolutionary” by making sex abuse of minors and adults, as well as official cover-ups, subject to mandatory reporting.
“We owe gratitude to Pope Francis for this universal law of the Church, ensuring that a victim who wishes to tell his or her story cannot be silenced,” Martens tweeted.
Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability praised some of the provisions but said they weren’t enough, primarily because there were no sanctions envisaged for violations, and because the process remained entirely internal.
“Bishops watching bishops does not work,” she said.
While there are no punitive measures foreseen for noncompliance, bishops and religious superiors could be accused of cover-up or negligence if they fail to implement the provisions or retaliate against priests and nuns who make reports against them.
The law defines the crimes that must be reported as: performing sexual acts with a minor or vulnerable person; forcing an adult “by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts”; and the production, possession or distribution of child pornography. Cover-up is defined as “actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid” civil or canonical investigations.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican’s bishops’ office, said the inclusion of sex crimes involving adults was a clear reference to cases of sexual abuse of nuns and seminarians by their superiors — a scandal that has exploded recently following reports, including by The Associated Press and the Vatican’s own women’s magazine, of sisters being sexually assaulted by priests.
The pope mandated that victims reporting abuse must be welcomed, listened to and supported by the hierarchy, as well as offered spiritual, medical and psychological assistance.
The law says victims can’t be forced to keep quiet, even though the investigation itself is still conducted under pontifical secret. And in a novelty, the law requires that if victims request it, they must be told of the outcome of the investigation — again a response to complaints that victims are kept in the dark about how their claims were handled.
Victims and their advocates have long complained that bishops and religious superiors have escaped justice for having engaged in sexual misconduct themselves, or failed to protect their flocks from predator priests. Bishops and religious superiors are accountable only to the pope, and only a handful have ever been sanctioned or removed for sex abuse or cover-up, and usually only after particularly egregious misbehavior became public.
Last summer, the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick epitomized the trend: McCarrick rose to the heights of the Catholic hierarchy even though he had credible allegations of sexual misconduct with adults against him that the Vatican had received. Francis defrocked McCarrick this year after a U.S. church investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adult seminarians.
The new procedures call for any claim of sexual misconduct or cover-up against a bishop, religious superior or Eastern Rite patriarch to be reported to the Holy See and the metropolitan bishop, who is a regular diocesan bishop also responsible for a broader geographic area than his dioceses alone.
Unless the metropolitan bishop finds the claim “manifestly unfounded,” he must immediately ask permission from the Vatican to open a preliminary investigation and must hear back from Rome within 30 days — a remarkably fast turnaround for the lethargic Holy See. The metropolitan bishop then has an initial 90 days to conduct the investigation, though extensions are possible.
The law makes clear he can use lay experts to help, a key provision that is already used in many dioceses. And it recommends that a special fund be set up to pay for the investigations, particularly in poorer parts of the world.
Once the investigation is over, the metropolitan sends the results to the Vatican for a decision on how to proceed.
The new law requires Vatican offices to share information throughout the process, since an untold number of cases have fallen through the cracks, thanks to the silo-like nature of the Holy See bureaucracy.
The procedures published Thursday are likely to form a key legal framework for U.S. bishops when they meet in Baltimore June 11-13 to adopt new accountability procedures, though it will certainly force them to scrap their existing proposals and make them conform to the new law.
The head of the U.S. conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, said the law was a “blessing” and that the conference was already working on how to implement it.
But the law is essentially a variation of a counterproposal to DiNardo’s planned measures made last year by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, envisaging using the metropolitan bishop aided by lay experts to investigate bishops.
The law takes effect June 1 for an initial three years. Dioceses must establish the reporting system and confirm it is in place to the local Vatican embassy by June 1, 2020.
Few presidents have bragged as much about the stock market as Donald Trump. From the early days of his Administration, Trump has sought to boost Wall Street and take credit for any gains in the Dow.
Now, as the President considers what would be his most significant escalation in trade tensions with China, experts say that he may be emboldened by the strength of the stock market, jobs numbers and other economic indicators.
“At least part of the story is that economic and market strength has reduced both sides incentives’ to compromise,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a research note this week.
Trump’s latest threat to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods first came May 5 via Twitter and rattled observers who had expected positive news after weeks of what seemed like encouraging reports from the White House. The Administration has said tariffs on $200 billion in goods will increase from 10% to 25% just after midnight Friday if significant progress isn’t made in trade talks, and analysts don’t think Trump is bluffing.
For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results. The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars….
….of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!
The view that Trump is relying on the strength of the U.S. economy to outlast China in a trade war is shared by a range of banks and analysts and comes in large part from Trump’s own public remarks. The President has frequently cited the U.S. economy as a reason the country can endure a trade war. The U.S. experienced nearly 3% GDP growth last year while the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for instance, has expanded more than 30% since Trump took office. News last week that the U.S. unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since 1969 only bolsters the view of a strong economy.
“We could have made a quickie, but we’re in a very good position,” Trump said in April, one of several times he has touted the U.S. economy as leverage for a deal. “Our economy is way up. China is not way up.”
Trump has also referenced the economy in behind-the-scenes conversations with aides, pointing to its strength as evidence that they were wrong to condemn his trade policy from the start, according to a Republican official with knowledge of trade conversations.
While Chinese economic indicators can be less reliable than those in the U.S., the country’s economic growth slowed to the lowest level in nearly three decades last year, and some analysts believe the country could be facing an impending debt crisis that the country’s leaders would want to avoid at all costs.
Politically, the possibility of allowing for slower GDP growth to fight a trade war with China represents a gamble for Trump, but the risk may not be as dramatic as it seems at first glance. While members of Congress and business leaders have loudly decried a whole range of Trump’s trade moves, from threatening to pull out of NAFTA to leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they have offered a more nuanced response to his aggressive stance on China, with Republican and Democrats alike condemning China’s trade practices.
At the heart of that dynamic is the deep frustration in many U.S. firms with China’s support for local industry, which they condemn as uncompetitive, and a lack of a protection for intellectual property, among a laundry list of other complaints. Myron Brilliant, head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, described China’s trade policies as “a threat to our economy, to our competitiveness and to our global trading system” late last week while calling for a strong deal.
“The business community, because it’s disaffected from China, is not playing its traditional role of supporting efforts to have a constructive relationship with China or for a short-hand engagement,” says Susan Shirk, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton Administration.
Trump’s recent threats have undoubtedly hurt the market with the Dow falling more than 2% this week and economists warning that U.S. consumers will pay if the tensions continue or escalate.
Still, the market fallout has been far from a free fall, with stocks at times regaining a significant share of their losses. That may be in part because many are still holding out for the possibility of a deal, probably not this week but perhaps sometime in the coming weeks or months, and it may also reflect that the market has already priced in the potential for new tariffs.
Regardless, a strong contingent among the President’s supporters in Washington remains insistent that no deal is better than a weak deal. And Trump is counting on that group to back his move.
The CIA and foreign security services are warning friends and colleagues of Jamal Khashoggi that their efforts to continue the pro-democracy work of the slain Saudi journalist has made them and their families the targets of potential retaliation from Saudi Arabia, according to individuals appraised of the threats and security sources in two countries.
Three of those who were given security briefings in recent weeks––democracy advocates Iyad El-Baghdadi of Oslo, Norway; Omar Abdulaziz of Montreal, Canada; and a person in the U.S. who asked not to be named––were working closely with Khashoggi on politically sensitive media and human rights projects at the time of his killing inside a Saudi diplomatic facility in Turkey last October. Based on the security briefings, the advocates say they have been targeted because they have become especially vocal and influential critics of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, accusing him of ordering Khashoggi’s murder as part of a broader crackdown on Saudi dissidents worldwide.
The CIA was the source of the threat warning, according to an overseas intelligence official, Baghdadi and others involved with the briefings. A CIA spokesperson declined to comment, but the agency has a legal “duty to warn” potential victims of specific threats including murder, kidnapping and serious bodily harm, according to a 2015 directive signed by the Director of National Intelligence. After Khashoggi was killed, the CIA faced criticism for failing to warn him after reportedly learning that the Crown Prince, known as MBS, had issued an earlier order to capture the journalist, who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post. The CIA later assessed with “medium-to-high confidence” that the Crown Prince ordered his death.
The nature of the new threat was not specified. Neither Baghdadi nor Abdulaziz were told that they or their families were in physical danger, either now or in the future, according to people familiar with briefings. But Baghdadi said he was instructed to take a wide range of precautions, including preventive measures to make it harder to hack their electronic devices in order to leak and weaponize the information against them. That tactic was used by Saudi Arabia against Abdulaziz, who is suing an Israeli security company, NSO Group, for selling Saudi Arabia the malware that compromised his cell phone, a breach documented by the University of Toronto watchdog Citizenlab.
NurPhoto—NurPhoto via Getty ImagesIyad El-Baghdadi, Arab Spring activist and one of the leading voices on Islamic libertarianism, speaks at the panel discussion on Islam and Liberty at the 2017 Oslo Freedom Forum on May 21, 2017.
The advocates were also advised to avoid travel to a wide swath of countries in Europe and Asia where Saudi Arabia has particular influence, and to move family members out of at least one particular country, Malaysia.
The three men whose warnings were confirmed to TIME all work to influence public opinion both about and within Saudi Arabia, an arena that MBS has aggressively sought to control.
Palestinian-born Baghdadi is renowned for his activism in the Arab Spring. He was granted political asylum in 2015 to Norway, where he edits the website Arab Tyrant Manual and has been working with investigators hired by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, to probe Saudi Arabia’s suspected role in a breach of Bezos’ cell phone. (The investigators concluded it did.)
Abdulaziz is a Saudi dissident who was granted asylum in Canada. He has so substantial a following on Twitter that a McKinsey & Company report concluded that in 2015 he was one of the three people driving the conversation about a Saudi policy on the platform, which carries great weight in the kingdom. In 2017 Abdulaziz and Khashoggi collaborated on an effort to secretly undermine the Saudi crown’s grip on Twitter. Dubbed “cyber bees”, it involved providing foreign SIM cards to Saudi dissidents to post tweets without being tracked by the state.
The third advocate resides in the U.S. and, like Baghdadi and Abdulaziz, worked closely with Khashoggi on projects that focused on providing more transparency in the Arab media and on social media platforms.
Each of the men redoubled those efforts after Khashoggi’s death, using projects that the journalist had been working on to try and hold the government of Saudi Arabia, and the Crown Prince himself, accountable for his death.
Agents from the Norwegian Police Security Service, or PST, first approached Baghdadi on April 25 at his home and took him to a secure location for a two-hour briefing, Baghdadi says. That warning, first reported by the Guardian, came about the same time as the warnings to Abdulaziz and the U.S.-based advocate, which have not been previously reported.
The Washington Post—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesOmar Abdulaziz poses for a portrait in Montreal. Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi opposition activist, is a close associate of the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“They did not describe the nature of the threat except to say that I had crosshairs on my back, that I shouldn’t travel and that I should warn my family immediately,” Baghdadi tells TIME. “But my entire conversation with the PST from beginning to end was about the Saudis. And from the initial moment on, the fact the Norwegians have taken it so seriously is that it was the CIA” that passed along the threat information.
Abdulaziz, who has permanent resident status in Canada, told TIME he could not comment on his situation on orders from authorities there. Friends and associates, however, confirmed that Canadian security officials visited Abdulaziz at his Montreal home recently and provided a similar threat briefing, prompting him to go into hiding for at least several days.
“You can say that the Canadian authorities are taking care of the situation,” said one person familiar with Abdulaziz’s situation.
The U.S.-based associate of Khashoggi is also a pro-democracy advocate. He said his warning came from a U.S. security official who advised him not to undertake planned imminent business trips to Tunisia, Greece, Cyprus and several other countries because “there is chatter with your name on it, from the Saudis.”
The recent threat warnings coincide with a flurry of violent, repressive activity in Saudi Arabia after a brief charm offensive by MBS that Saudi watchers said was aimed at bolstering his support in Washington and other Western capitals. He retains the support of President Donald Trump who, arguing that arm sales to Saudi Arabia are more important, has discounted the CIA report on Khashoggi’s death, and in April vetoed a bill that would have cut off U.S. assistance to the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
The embassy of Saudi Arabia did not return calls requesting comment. Canadian officials in Washington declined to comment on Abdulaziz’s case. As for Baghdadi’s briefing, Annett Aamodt, senior advisor to the Norwegian Police Security Service, said, “The PST is not in a position to comment on contact we have with individuals or assessments we do around the security of individuals.”
One indication of how seriously Norway is taking the case is the involvement of the PST. Most threats against individuals are handled by local police, while the PST handles those rare cases in which people granted political asylum, like Baghdadi, are threatened by a foreign government with hostile intent, according to a source familiar with its operations.
Baghdadi said that while he was alarmed by his initial visit from the PST, he wasn’t completely surprised. In an interview the day before its plainclothes agents knocked on his door, he told TIME that Saudi insiders had warned him that MBS had become particularly enraged by his public criticism and that he had passed that information along to the PST.
“The reason I was told is that [MBS believes] I’m hurting his reputation internationally, within the English language public sphere just as Khashoggi had been,” he said at the time. “I was warned that they have their eyes on you.”
The next day, Baghdadi sent TIME an encrypted message saying only that, “Police showed up at my house and took me in for protection, there’s been a threat. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. Keep private.” Baghdadi went into hiding, and after surfacing lifted his request for discretion and described to TIME how two PST officers flashed badges and told him he needed to go with them immediately to a secure and sound-proofed facility to discuss an urgent and sensitive matter. They also said another team of security officials was trailing in a second car “to make sure that no one was following us.”
Baghdadi, who has had subsequent briefings by Norwegian authorities, also believes he has been targeted because he and other activists have been quietly investigating efforts by MBS to silence critics through an escalating campaign of murder, blackmail and coordinated online smear tactics. Part of that effort became public in February when Baghdadi wrote a Daily Beast column disclosing how MBS was behind a smear campaign against Bezos in retaliation for the Post’s aggressive coverage of the killing of its columnist Khashoggi.
In his article, Baghdadi (who said he has no financial or contractual relationship with the billionaire), described how he and members of Bezos’ security team have been investigating MBS for possible connections to an effort by the National Enquirer tabloid to blackmail Bezos with publication of graphic “below the belt” message exchanges. Although much of that investigative work remains secret, Baghdadi told TIME that he understands he and his family have been targeted because the activists have shared their findings with Twitter executives in an effort to shut down abuse on the platform by an online army of trolls controlled by MBS.
Over the past few days, several dozen Saudis have been arrested over the past few days and “severely tortured,” Abdulaziz said. “And you can also see that Saudi trolls on social media are attacking Saudi dissidents and threatening them.”
“I can confirm that the machine is still working,” he said, of the Saudi efforts to suppress free debate and punish dissenters. “The machine never stopped.”
Corrections, May 9
The original version of this story misstated the name of a country in the eastern Mediterranean. It is Cyprus, not Cypress.
This story has been updated to remove a sentence which indicated Omar Abdulaziz confirmed to TIME that he received a warning from intelligence officials. As the original story said, Abdulaziz told TIME he could not comment on his situation on orders from authorities in Canada, and the warning to him was confirmed to TIME by friends and associates of Abdulaziz.
The new father left his newborn royal baby boy Archie and wife Meghan Markle for a day trip that was for a very good cause— promoting the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style event for veterans and serving armed forces members who have been injured or wounded. It’s one of Harry’s favorite causes, and probably one of the few events that could get him to leave his family for the day.
The Duke of Sussex arrived at the Hague early Thursday morning to help raise awareness for the upcoming fifth annual Invictus Games, which will be held in the Netherlands from May 9 through May 16, 2020.
According to People, Harry spent the day meeting potential competitors and their families and hearing about the preparations that were already underway for next year’s event.
Harry was originally scheduled to be in Amsterdam on Wednesday, but he instead he arranged his plans in light of his new son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor and introducing the newborn to his great grandmother, The Queen at Windsor Castle.
To acknowledge the fact that Prince Harry had a new job in addition to the Invictus Games, the organizers presented him with a present—an Invictus Games onesie—which paired perfectly with the jacket he wore that said, “I am Daddy”.
Here’s an adorable photo of The Duke given a baby grow and wearing a Jacket saying “I am Daddy” as he attend the launch of The Netherlands countdown to 2020 Invictus Games. 💕 pic.twitter.com/A9Tby1xsFU
— The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@PHarry_Meghan) May 9, 2019
(LONDON) — A BBC DJ was fired Thursday after using a picture of a chimpanzee in a tweet about the royal baby born to Meghan the Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry.
Danny Baker, who had a weekly show on BBC Radio 5 Live, tweeted Thursday that he has been fired after posting an image of a couple holding hands with a chimpanzee dressed in clothes and the caption: “Royal baby leaves hospital.”
The tweet came on Wednesday, the same day Harry and Meghan posed for photos with their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The tweet was seen as a racist reference to baby Archie’s heritage. His grandmother Doria Ragland is African American.
Baker, 61, said the posting had been meant as a gag, tweeting late Wednesday that it was “supposed to be (a) joke about royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race.” The post has since been deleted.
“Enormous mistake, for sure. Grotesque. Anyway, here’s to ya Archie, Sorry mate,” he tweeted.
BBC Radio 5 Live controller Jonathan Wall said in an email to staff that Baker had shown poor judgment.
“This was a serious error of judgment and goes against the values we as a station aim to embody. Danny’s a brilliant broadcaster but will no longer be presenting a weekly show with us,” Wall said.
On Thursday, Baker insisted he is not racist and attacked the BBC for its handling of the situation. He said the call to fire him “was a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity.”
When Harry was first dating Meghan, his office released a scathing letter in which he complained about sexist and racist coverage of Meghan, who at the time was starring in the TV show “Suits.”
The flap over Baker’s tweet came as Harry took a break from parental duties to travel to the Netherlands to promote the 2020 Invictus Games, an international competition he founded for injured service personnel and veterans.
Harry grinned and made funny faces for the cameras as he held up a tiny baby outfit given to him by Prince Margriet of the Netherlands.
Baby Archie was introduced to his great-grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Wednesday.
To win a fresh mandate for himself and his party in India’s upcoming elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made extravagant promises and worrisome threats. He can fairly be accused of fanning flames of hostility toward India’s Muslim population of up to 200 million, and when terrorists killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary troops in the disputed province of Kashmir earlier this year, Modi ordered airstrikes into Pakistani territory, a dangerous escalation by one nuclear-armed power against another.
His economic record is mixed. Although India has become the world’s fastest-growing large economy, in January a leaked government survey (after the Modi government refused to release the data) showed the unemployment rate hit a 45-year high (6.1%) in 2017. To create a governing majority following the announcement of national election results later this month, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will probably have to find coalition partners. That, in turn, would water down some of his second-term plans.
Yet, India still needs change, and Modi remains the person most likely to deliver. He has improved relations with China, the U.S. and Japan, but it’s his domestic development agenda that has done the most to improve the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of people. Consider what he’s already accomplished during five years in charge.
First, he’s ensured that the government has more revenue to spend. Thanks to the Goods and Services Tax enacted in 2017, Modi has streamlined an enormously complex system of state and federal tax collection, broadening the tax base and sharply reducing the amount of money lost to fraud. That’s a historic accomplishment in a country with so many development needs.
Modi has directed unprecedented amounts of money toward the country’s seemingly endless need for new infrastructure. Construction of roads, highways, public transport and airports have sharply increased the country’s long-term economic potential. Although the process remains unfinished, the government has also brought electricity to remote villages that have never had it, a boon for economic potential, public safety and basic quality of life.
The BJP-led government has also expanded a biometric identification system, begun under the previous Congress Party–led government, that has already taken iris scans and fingerprints from well over a billion people to help citizens prove who they are so they can receive services. It has provided bank accounts for 300 million people who have never had them, creating new opportunities for these people to access credit and state subsidies. It also brings them into the formal economy to potentially make the government more responsive to their needs. The government says these measures have cut sharply into waste and fraud within India’s welfare system, allowing the state to provide more and better services at a much lower cost.
Health care reform could help half a billion poor people afford treatment for cancer and heart disease. A program known as Ujjwala Yojana has helped women in the countryside gain access to cooking gas for the first time. The Swachh Bharat program has built tens of millions of toilets for hundreds of millions of people. Modi’s commitment to renewable energy is part of his plan to make India a leader on climate change. None of these projects are complete, but all of them will help the vast majority of India’s people lead safer, healthier, more productive and more prosperous lives.
What does it take to bring that scale of change in a country with 1.34 billion people who speak dozens of different languages and hundreds of dialects spread across states with differing customs and political cultures while competing for votes against dozens of national and local political parties? Thanks to his reform accomplishments, but also in part to his tough line on Pakistan and his appeal to Hindu pride, Modi is even more popular now than when he was first elected five years ago. Voters in states hit by past terrorist attacks, especially those along the border with Pakistan, want a forceful Prime Minister they believe will protect them.
Modi also benefits from a lack of a credible alternative. The opposition Congress Party’s election platform centers on a program that would provide direct cash payments to 50 million poor families. But a promise is not a plan, the BJP controls enough states to block a Congress government’s projects and Modi has already delivered for many people.
Modi has the instinct to dominate and the thin skin of other strongmen, but he also has a genuine track record in providing the kind of reform that developing India urgently needs.
Of the great democracies to fall to populism, India was the first.
In 2014, Narendra Modi, then the longtime chief minister of the western state of Gujarat and leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was elected to power by the greatest mandate the country had seen in 30 years. India until then had been ruled primarily by one party–the Congress, the party of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru–for 54 of the 67 years that the country had been free.
Now, India is voting to determine if Modi and the BJP will continue to control its destiny. It is a massive seven-phase exercise spread over 5½ weeks in which the largest electorate on earth–some 900 million–goes to the polls. To understand the deeper promptings of this enormous expression of franchise–not just the politics, but the underlying cultural fissures–we need to go back to the first season of the Modi story. It is only then that we can see why the advent of Modi is at once an inevitability and a calamity for India. The country offers a unique glimpse into both the validity and the fantasy of populism. It forces us to reckon with how in India, as well as in societies as far apart as Turkey and Brazil, Britain and the U.S., populism has given voice to a sense of grievance among majorities that is too widespread to be ignored, while at the same time bringing into being a world that is neither more just, nor more appealing.
Illustration by Nigel Buchanan for TIME
The story starts at independence. In 1947, British India was split in two. Pakistan was founded as a homeland for Indian Muslims. But India, under the leadership of its Cambridge-educated Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, chose not to be symmetrically Hindu. The country had a substantial Muslim population (then around 35 million, now more than 172 million), and the ideology Nehru bequeathed to the newly independent nation was secularism. This secularism was more than merely a separation between religion and state; in India, it means the equal treatment of all religions by the state, although to many of its critics, that could translate into Orwell’s maxim of some being more equal than others. Indian Muslims were allowed to keep Shari’a-based family law, while Hindus were subject to the law of the land. Arcane practices–such as the man’s right to divorce a woman by repudiating her three times and paying a minuscule compensation–were allowed for Indian Muslims, while Hindus were bound by reformed family law and often found their places of worship taken over by the Indian state. (Modi made the so-called Triple Talaq instant divorce a punishable offense through an executive order in 2018.)
Nehru’s political heirs, who ruled India for the great majority of those post-independence years, established a feudal dynasty, while outwardly proclaiming democratic norms and principles. India, under their rule, was clubbish, anglicized and fearful of the rabble at the gates. In May 2014 those gates were breached when the BJP, under Modi, won 282 of the 543 available seats in Parliament, reducing the Congress to 44 seats, a number so small that India’s oldest party no longer even had the right to lead the opposition.
Populists come in two stripes: those who are of the people they represent (Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil), and those who are merely exploiting the passions of those they are not actually part of (the champagne neo-fascists: the Brexiteers, Donald Trump, Imran Khan in Pakistan). Narendra Modi belongs very firmly to the first camp. He is the son of a tea seller, and his election was nothing short of a class revolt at the ballot box. It exposed what American historian Anne Applebaum has described as “unresolvable divisions between people who had previously not known that they disagreed with one another.” There had, of course, been political differences before, but what Modi’s election revealed was a cultural chasm. It was no longer about left, or right, but something more fundamental.
The nation’s most basic norms, such as the character of the Indian state, its founding fathers, the place of minorities and its institutions, from universities to corporate houses to the media, were shown to be severely distrusted. The cherished achievements of independent India–secularism, liberalism, a free press–came to be seen in the eyes of many as part of a grand conspiracy in which a deracinated Hindu elite, in cahoots with minorities from the monotheistic faiths, such as Christianity and Islam, maintained its dominion over India’s Hindu majority.
Modi’s victory was an expression of that distrust. He attacked once unassailable founding fathers, such as Nehru, then sacred state ideologies, such as Nehruvian secularism and socialism; he spoke of a “Congress-free” India; he demonstrated no desire to foster brotherly feeling between Hindus and Muslims. Most of all, his ascension showed that beneath the surface of what the elite had believed was a liberal syncretic culture, India was indeed a cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry. The country had a long history of politically instigated sectarian riots, most notably the killing of at least 2,733 Sikhs in the streets of Delhi after the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress leadership, though hardly blameless, was able, even through the selective profession of secular ideals, to separate itself from the actions of the mob. Modi, by his deafening silences after more recent atrocities, such as the killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, proved himself a friend of the mob. He made one yearn for the hypocrisies of the past, for, as Aldous Huxley writes, at least “the political hypocrite admits the existence of values higher than those of immediate national, party or economic interest.” Modi, without offering an alternative moral compass, rubbished the standards India had, and made all moral judgment seem subject to conditions of class and culture warfare. The high ideals of the past have come under his reign to seem like nothing but the hollow affectations of an entrenched power elite. When, in 2019, Modi tweets, “You know what is my crime for them? That a person born to a poor family is challenging their Sultunate [sic],” he is trying to resurrect the spirit of 2014, which was the spirit of revolution. Them is India’s English-speaking elite, as represented by the Congress party; sultanate is a dog whistle to suggest that all the heirs of foreign rule in India–the country had centuries of Muslim rule before the British took over in 1858–are working in tandem to prevent the rise of a proud Hindu nation.
Atul Loke—The New York Times/ReduxAn Ikea customer in Hyderabad
In 2014, Modi converted cultural anger into economic promise. He spoke of jobs and development. Taking a swipe at the socialist state, he famously said, “Government has no business being in business.” That election, though it is hard to believe now, was an election of hope. When the Delhi press tried to bait the Modi voter with questions about building a temple in Ayodhya, a place where Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992 had destroyed a 16th century mosque, said to stand at the birthplace of the Hindu epic hero Ram, they stoutly responded with: “Why are you talking to us of temples, when we are telling you that we’re voting for him because we want development.” Sabka saath, sabka vikas–“Together with all, development for all”–was Modi’s slogan in 2014.
As India votes this month, the irony of those words is not lost on anyone. Not only has Modi’s economic miracle failed to materialize, he has also helped create an atmosphere of poisonous religious nationalism in India. One of his young party men, Tejasvi Surya, put it baldly in a speech in March 2019, “If you are with Modi, you are with India. If you are not with Modi, then you are strengthening anti-India forces.” India’s Muslims, who make up some 14% of the population, have been subjected to episode after violent episode, in which Hindu mobs, often with what seems to be the state’s tacit support, have carried out a series of public lynchings in the name of the holy cow, that ready symbol of Hindu piety. Hardly a month goes by without the nation watching agog on their smartphones as yet another enraged Hindu mob falls upon a defenseless Muslim. The most enduring image of Modi’s tenure is the sight of Mohammad Naeem in a blood-soaked undershirt in 2017, eyes white and enlarged, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of leadership in every instance is the same: virtual silence. Basic norms and civility have been so completely vitiated that Modi can no longer control the direction of the violence. Once hatred has been sanctioned, it is not always easy to isolate its target, and what the BJP has discovered to its dismay is that the same people who are willing to attack Muslims are only too willing to attack lower-caste Hindus as well. The party cannot afford to lose the lower-caste vote, but one of the ugliest incidents occurred in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, in July 2016, when upper-caste men stripped four lower-caste tanners, paraded them in the streets and beat them with iron rods for allegedly skinning a cow.
Modi’s record on women’s issues is spotty. On the one hand, he made opportunity for women and their safety a key election issue (a 2018 report ranked the country the most dangerous place on earth for women); on the other hand, his attitude and that of his party men feels paternalistic. He caused outrage in 2015 when he said Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, had a good record on terrorism, “despite being a woman”; Modi’s deputy, Amit Shah, speaks of women as having the status of deities, ever the refuge of the religious chauvinist who is only too happy to revere women into silence. Yet Modi also appointed a woman Defense Minister.
If these contradictions are part of the unevenness of a society assimilating Western freedoms, it must be said that under Modi minorities of every stripe–from liberals and lower castes to Muslims and Christians–have come under assault. Far from his promise of development for all, he has achieved a state in which Indians are increasingly obsessed with their differences. If in 2014 he was able to exploit difference in order to create a climate of hope, in 2019 he is asking people to stave off their desperation by living for their differences alone. The incumbent may win again–the opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, an unteachable mediocrity and a descendant of Nehru, is in disarray–but Modi will never again represent the myriad dreams and aspirations of 2014. Then he was a messiah, ushering in a future too bright to behold, one part Hindu renaissance, one part South Korea’s economic program. Now he is merely a politician who has failed to deliver, seeking re-election. Whatever else might be said about the election, hope is off the menu.
I covered the 2014 election from the holy city of Varanasi, which Modi had chosen as his constituency, repurposing its power over the Hindu imagination, akin to that of Jerusalem, Rome or Mecca, to fit his politics of revival. That election split me in two: on the one hand, I knew, as someone of Muslim parentage (my father was a Pakistani Muslim) and a member of India’s English-speaking elite, that the country Modi would bring into being would have no place for me; on the other hand, I was in sympathy with Modi’s cultural diagnosis of what power looked and felt like in India. In the West, the charge that liberalism, or leftism, corresponds to the power of an entitled elite is relatively new and still contestable. In India, for decades to be left-wing or liberal was to belong to a monstrously privileged minority. Until recently, there was no equivalent group on the right, no New England Republicans, no old-fashioned Tories. It was easy to feel that being left-wing was the province of a privileged few who had gone to university abroad, where they had picked up the latest political and intellectual fashions.
Atul Loke—The New York Times/ReduxSardar Singh Jatav recovers after an attack by higher-caste Hindu men in September 2018
Modi in 2014 was able to make the cultural isolation of the Indian elite seem political–part of a foreign-led conspiracy to undermine the “real” India. He revealed that a powerful segment of the country was living in a bubble. It was an effective political tactic, but it also obscured the fact that “real” India was living in a bubble of its own. Nehru had always been clear: India was not going to become a modern country by being more authentically itself. It needed the West; it needed science and technology; it needed, above all, to embrace “the scientific temper” and to eschew the obscurantism and magic that was at the heart of its traditional life. Modi, inadvertently or deliberately, has created a bewildering mental atmosphere in which India now believes that the road to becoming South Korea runs through the glories of ancient India. In 2014 Modi suggested at a gathering of doctors and medical professionals in Mumbai that ancient Indians knew the secrets of genetic science and plastic surgery. “We worship Lord Ganesha,” he said of the Hindu deity. “There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”
He has in every field, from politics and economics to Indology itself, privileged authenticity over ability, leading India down the road to a profound anti-intellectualism. He appointed Swaminathan Gurumurthy, Hindu nationalist ideologue, to the board of the Reserve Bank of India–a man of whom the renowned Columbia economist Jagdish Bhagwati said, “If he’s an economist, I’m a Bharatanatyam dancer.” It was Gurumurthy who, in a quest to deal with the menace of “black money,” is thought to have advised Modi to put 86% of India’s banknotes out of commission overnight in 2016, causing huge economic havoc from which the country is yet to recover. Modi now finds himself seeking to hold power in a climate of febrile nationalism, with a platform whose themes have much more to do with national security and profiting from recent tensions between India and Pakistan than with economic growth.
In 2017, after winning state elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, which happens also to have its largest Muslim population, the BJP appointed a hate-mongering priest in robes of saffron, the color of Hindu nationalism, to run that state. Yogi Adityanath had not been the face of the campaign. If he was known at all, it was for vile rhetoric, here imploring crowds to kill a hundred Muslims for every Hindu killed, there sharing the stage with a man who wanted to dig up the bodies of Muslim women and rape them. Modi has presided over a continuous assault on the grove of academe, where the unqualified and semiliterate have been encouraged to build their shanties. Academia in India was dogmatically left-wing, but rather than change its politics, Modi attacked the idea of qualification itself. From the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which produced a roll call of politicians and intellectuals, India’s places of learning have been hollowed out, the administration and professors chosen for their political ideology rather than basic levels of proficiency.
Modi is right to criticize an India in which modernity came to be synonymous with Westernization, so that all those ideas and principles that might have had universal valence became the preserve of those who were exposed to European and American culture. What Modi cannot–or will not–do is tell India the hard truth that if she wishes to be a great power, and not a Hindu theocracy, the medieval Indian past, mired in superstition and magic, must go under. It is not enough to be more truly oneself. “In India, as in Europe,” wrote the great Sri Lankan historian A.K. Coomaraswamy, “the vestiges of ancient civilization must be renounced: we are called from the past and must make our home in the future. But to understand, to endorse with passionate conviction, and to love what we have left behind us is the only possible foundation for power.” The desperation that underlies Modi’s India is that of people clinging to the past, ill-equipped for the modern world, people in whom the zealous love of country stands in for real confidence.
Atul Loke—Panos/ReduxCows are sacred to Hindus. Cow-protection mobs have killed at least 46 people since 2015. Most targets were Muslim
The question of what is hers, and what has come from the outside, is a constant source of anxiety in India. The same process that made the Indian elite “foreigners in their own land”–in Mahatma Gandhi’s phrasing–is repeating, albeit unevenly, throughout the country across classes and groups never exposed to Western norms and culture in the past. “Our culture is being decimated,” one young member of the ABVP–the most powerful Hindu nationalist youth organization in the country–told me in Varanasi. “Many in my family have received degrees in commerce; but I chose to be nearer my culture. A great civilization, like ours, cannot be subdued without the complicity of men on the inside, working against us. Someone–I cannot say who–is controlling us, and there is but the difference of a syllable between vikas [development] and vinasha [ruin].”
This young Hindu nationalist is part of a new generation of Indians, untouched by colonization, but not spared globalization. They live with a profound sense of being trifled with. They feel their culture and religion has been demeaned; they entertain fantasies of “Hinduphobia” and speak with contempt of “sickluars,” “libtards” and the “New Yuck Times.” One has the feeling they are converting their sense of cultural loss into a political ideology. It produces in them a rage for the Other–Muslims, lower castes, the Indian elite–“the men on the inside,” who have more generations of Westernization behind them. Last month, Amit Shah compared Muslim immigrants to “termites,” and the BJP’s official Twitter handle no longer bothers with dog whistles: “We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha [sic], Hindus and Sikhs.” If this wasn’t bad enough, the BJP’s candidate for the central Indian city of Bhopal, with its rich Muslim history and a Muslim population of over 25%, is a saffron-clad female saint, who stands accused of masterminding a terrorist attack in which six people were killed near a mosque. Currently out on bail, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s candidacy marks that all-too-familiar turn when the specter of extreme nationalism and criminality become inseparable.
Modi’s India feels like a place where the existing order of things has passed away, without any credible new order having come into being. Modi has won–and may yet win again–but to what end? His brand of populism has certainly served as a convincing critique of Indian society, of which there could be no better symbol than the Congress Party. They have little to offer other than the dynastic principle, yet another member of the Nehru-Gandhi family. India’s oldest party has no more political imagination than to send Priyanka Gandhi–Rahul’s sister–to join her brother’s side. It would be the equivalent of the Democrat’s fielding Hillary Clinton again in 2020, with the added enticement of Chelsea as VP.
Modi is lucky to be blessed with so weak an opposition–a ragtag coalition of parties, led by the Congress, with no agenda other than to defeat him. Even so, doubts assail him, for he must know he has not delivered on the promise of 2014. It is why he has resorted to looking for enemies within. Like other populists, he sits in his white house tweeting out his resentment against the sultanate of “them.” And, as India gets ready to give this willful provincial, so emblematic of her own limitations, a second term, one cannot help but tremble at what he might yet do to punish the world for his own failures.
Taseer, a novelist and journalist, is the author, most recently, of The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges
This appears in the May 20, 2019 issue of TIME.
You are subscribed to email updates from World – TIME. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.
Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States
Mayawati hits back at PM Modi, says BJP has realised it will not win Lok Sabha election 2019 In a tweet, Mayawati said the allegation that "our alliance is casteist is not only laughable but immature also.
Morning digest: Amit Shah says BJP will add to its 2014 tally, SC to hear Ayodhya title appeals today, and more A select list of stories to read before you start your day.
Polls push business, not hope, for vendors in Ambala Big promises by parties don't mean much for street traders who set up stalls outside rally venues every election
From village sabhas to cricket match, Jyotiraditya Scindia pitches for Guna again Sidhu joins incumbent MP's campaign in constituency, urges crowd to elect him by record margin
No one can dislodge the govt., says Thambi Durai AIADMK senior leader and Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker M. Thambi Durai said no one can destabilise or dislodge the (AIADMK) government.When asked about AMM
