'We Could See More and More Divisions'

In an exclusive interview with German public broadcaster ARD and DER SPIEGEL, outgoing US President Barack Obama discusses the legacy he has built and his worries about the future of democracy, as well as Donald Trump, the man who will succeed him in office.
 by Klaus Brinkbäumer and Sonia Seymour Mikich

 It's not easy landing an interview with Barack Obama, particularly since he seldom speaks to the foreign media. Leading German public broadcaster ARD and DER SPIEGEL decided to team up and request a joint interview with the American president on the occasion of his final visit to Berlin this week. The following is a longer version of the interview ARD broadcast in primetime on Thursday evening. The English-language video from that broadcast is embedded in this article.

 ARD/SPIEGEL: Mr. President, Donald Trump won the election, revealing massive discontent and rifts within American society. Did the amount of anger actually surprise you?

Obama: I think it's important not to overstate what happened. The truth is that America has been closely divided politically for quite some time. That was reflected in some of the challenges I had with the Republican Congress. What was unusual in this election is that my approval in the United States is as high as it has been since I was elected. And the economy is going relatively well. I think what is true is that there's been an underlying division in the United States. Some of it has to do with the fact that economic growth and recovery tends to be stronger in the cities and in urban areas. In some rural areas, particularly those that were reliant on manufacturing, there has been weaker growth, stagnation, people feeling as if their children won't do as well as they will.

There are cultural, social and demographic issues that came into play. They're not that different from some of the issues that Europe faces with immigration, the changing face of the American population. I think some reacted there, and Trump was able to tap into some of those anxieties.

American politics is always somewhat fluid. In this age of social media, it means that voters can swing back and forth. I mean, there were probably millions of voters who voted for me and supported me and this time also voted for Donald Trump, and it just indicates that some of this is less ideological and more just an impulse towards some sort of change.

And the question now, going forward, is whether the president-elect is able to move on those elements of his agenda that I think can garner broad support, like rebuilding our infrastructure. And if he can lessen some of the more controversial rhetoric that could divide the country more. That's going to be the test for him in the years to come.


ARD/SPIEGEL: When you took office, you sent a message of hope and reconciliation to the American people, and yet today the USA seems to be completely divided. I think we can call it a 50-50 nation, with one half not really understanding or knowing the other side. Have you missed your goals?

Obama: Well, it's interesting. We're not actually a 50-50 nation. We're probably more like a 60-40 nation. The problem is that we're 50-50 when it comes to voting. If you look at the new generation of Americans, they reflect the vision that I spoke about. They're diverse. They believe in tolerance. They're accepting of things like same-sex marriage. They believe in integration. The problem, though, is that young people are less likely to vote than older people. What results is a situation in which sometimes the elections don't fully reflect the views of the American population. Essentially, the president-elect was supported by about 27 percent of the American population. One of our challenges, historically, is that we have very low voting rates, even during presidential elections.

But what is true, and I think that we can't deny it, is that some of the same concerns about globalization, about technology, rapid social change that were reflected in Brexit, that's been reflected in some of the debates in Germany and France and other places, that those exist in the United States as well. My view is that over the long term, over the next 10, 15, 20 years, if we are able to address the legitimate economic concerns of those who feel left behind by globalization, then many of these tensions will be reduced. And we will see a world that is less divided. But if the global economy is unresponsive to people who feel left behind, if inequality continues to grow, then we could end up seeing more and more of these divisions arise throughout advanced economies around the world.

ARD/SPIEGEL: During your presidency, you were confronted with a very hostile Congress. Donald Trump now is going to enjoy Republican majorities (in both the House and the Senate). Do you fear that your reforms like Obamacare, the nuclear deal with Iran and the Paris climate change agreement will be overturned or, as Donald Trump has put it, "cancelled"? What remains of your legacy?

Obama: First and foremost, it's important to remember that, from my perspective at least, my most important legacy was making sure that the world didn't go into a Great Depression. Keep in mind that, when I came in, we had had a crisis that was the worst we've seen since the 1930s, and working with people like Chancellor Merkel, working with the G-20 and other institutions internationally, we were able to stabilize the financial system, stabilize the US economy and return to growth.
We've now had 73 consecutive months of job growth. It's the longest period of job growth in the United States in our history.

Unemployment is low, incomes are up, poverty is down -- and that's going to be a lasting change. When I turn over the keys to the president-elect, the country will be much stronger than it was when I came into office.

With respect to some of the specific legislation or initiatives that I've made, it's true that Republicans often opposed these things. Sometimes they opposed them because I proposed them. Now that they are responsible for governing, I think they'll find that reversing them would be counterproductive.
Let's take the example of the Iran deal. There was a vigorous debate around this issue. There were many who were very skeptical of the deal. They believed Iran would not fulfill its commitments. Of course, now we have a year of proof that, in fact, Iran has done everything that they said they were going to do. And without engaging in a war, through diplomacy, we've been able to dismantle much of Iran's nuclear weapons-making capabilities. And it has the broad support of the international community. It would be unwise -- and, I think, ultimately the president-elect will recognize this -- to do that.

With respect to healthcare, 20 million people now have health insurance who didn't have it before. He says that he can improve on that system, and my view is that if, in fact, he can provide the same amount of people with health care in a better way than I could, then I would support such efforts. Of course, I think when you actually try to do it, he may discover that the system we put in place is the best one that we can design. I always say that campaigning and governing are two different things. My hope and expectation is that regardless of what the president-elect said during the campaign, he's going to have to look carefully at the realities when he moves forward.

ARD/SPIEGEL: Let us dwell on the Paris climate agreement a bit more. It's an issue that doesn't really directly touch the daily lives of many American people. But it is urgent and definitely not a No. 1 priority for Mr. Trump. Do you fear it might be dead before it even takes off?

Obama: You are absolutely right that climate change is one of the issues I worry most about because its impacts are enormous. But they're gradual, they're not immediate. One of the hardest things in politics is to convince people to do things now that will have a good effect 20 or 30 years from now because politicians tend to have a short-term view. They are more attentive to things that people care about today.

The good news is that the Paris Agreement is not just a bilateral agreement between the United States and some other country. You have 200 countries who came together. It's an international agreement. Historically, when a previous US administration enters into an agreement, it carries forward into the future administration. I've always viewed the Paris Agreement as a starting point. If you look at all the commitments that have been made by all the countries, it's still not sufficient to deal with the very dangerous situation we face. What it has done is that it created an architecture whereby as technology improves, as we find new clean sources of energy, as we make our economies more efficient, then gradually we can turn up the dial and improve the outcomes of Paris.

I don't want to sound too optimistic. It is true that the president-elect and many of his supporters are less interested in this issue than I am, but I think that it can survive -- even if for the next two or three or four years, they are not as active as I was.

What has happened, because of some of the regulations we put in place, for example, is that US automakers make much more efficient cars now. US utilities find that it's more efficient to produce energy differently than they used to. Many of the initiatives that we've put forward are now embedded in the economy and give us a chance to continue on this progress -- probably not as fast as I would like but, as I've said before, history doesn't always move in a straight line. Sometimes it zigs and zags.

ARD/SPIEGEL: In many Western societies, there is a groundswell of alienation between politicians and the citizens, and people are asking: "Are politicians at all in touch with everyday life?" People are anxious. We're talking about populism, of course. Is this a pivotal moment for leadership?

Obama: I think it is. Look, I was elected because I believed in what we call "grassroots politics," politics from the bottom up, not the top down. And I was able to excite and engage people who previously hadn't been involved in politics, and part of the reason that I was able to be re-elected and stay relatively popular in the United States was because even when the economy was bad or we had problems, people sensed that I listened to them and I was on their side.

I do think that all politicians today have to be more attentive to people wanting to be heard, wanting to have more control over their lives. The more we can encourage participation, I think the better off we are. Here in Europe, for example, some of the challenges have to do with structures that are so complicated. You've got Brussels, and you've got parliament, you've got councils and then you've got national governments. So people sometimes don't feel as if they know who's making decisions, and the more that we can bring people in and engage them, the better. Some of it is also cultural and social, people's sense of identity. You have social media and the Internet and immigration and so, suddenly, cultures are clashing and people feel as if they're less familiar with the people around them. That causes social anxieties.

ARD/SPIEGEL: What was the darkest moment of your presidency? Here in Europe, of course, people will talk about drone attacks, Guantanamo and, of course, about terrorist attacks and shootings.

Obama: Look, early on, I think people didn't fully appreciate how severe the economic crisis was, partly because we took smart steps, and we were able to avert complete disaster. But there were weeks where I wasn't sure whether we were going to be able to pull out of the crisis. For me, personally, the most difficult moments had to do with not just terrorist attacks, but also shootings.
You will recall that there was an event at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 six- and seven-year-old children were shot by a troubled young man, and I had to meet with the parents just two days after they had lost their child. The pain that they feel is hard to describe and will always haunt me.

Internationally, I have obviously been deeply concerned about how we fight the terrorist threat. How do we make sure that we don't change, even as we protect our people? I'm very proud of the fact that we ended torture. It's true that I have not been able to completely close Guantanamo, but we've drastically reduced the population from 700 or so to around 60 now, and I am going to continue in these two months to make every effort.

We have created a legal structure that is much more disciplined and consistent with rule of law and international norms. I know that drones have been a source of concern for a lot of people, understandably, but if you look at how we have constrained their use, we've created a framework that is consistent with how all of us going into the future should be thinking about minimizing the loss of life, but also being able to reach terrorist organizations in countries that sometimes don't have the ability to capture them. The alternative in some cases is to invade these countries where there would be much greater loss of life, and so we have to make difficult choices in these situations.

The good news is we've had very strong allies. In Europe, where the terrorist threat is probably greatest at the moment, the amount of information-sharing that's been taking place, the effectiveness of law enforcement across borders gives us the ability to protect ourselves while still being true to the basic precepts of our liberal democracies. I hope that that continues, and it is something that I think we should be worried about.

ARD/SPIEGEL: You have praised Angela Merkel, but you also said there is a free-ride mentality among American partners, that a large amount of the work is left to the Americans. Donald Trump has said that American engagement has to be reduced. Is this the moment for Western leaders like Angela Merkel to step up and assume more leadership?

Obama: Angela Merkel has been an extraordinary partner for me and for the United States throughout my presidency. One of the great qualities of Chancellor Merkel is that she is steady. She analyzes a situation. She's honest. Sometimes we've had disagreements, but when we do, it's very constructive. And we are consistently open with each other about how we should approach these issues.

But I do believe that Chancellor Merkel and Germany are a lynchpin in protecting the basic tenets of a liberal, market-based democratic order that has created unprecedented prosperity and security for Europe, but also for the world. I think sometimes Europe may take for granted the extraordinary progress that's been made over the last 40, 50 years. I recognize that sometimes there is great frustration that arises out of the euro zone or out of the EU.

Probably at no time in human history has there been as much prosperity and security as has existed in Europe during this period. The reason is because the values that we share -- freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, freedom for civil society, free and fair elections, all the innovation that's been created through a market-based economy -- those things are ultimately going to be the path for us to continue into a better future. I hope that, despite some of the challenges we have, that people appreciate that. And I hope people appreciate Chancellor Merkel because, although she traditionally is considered center-right and I'm considered center-left, the truth is that we share those core values, and those are worth protecting. As the senior leader in Europe, as the leader who's been longest lasting, I think she has great credibility, and she is willing to fight for those values. I'm glad that she's there, and I think the German people should appreciate her. Certainly, I have appreciated her as a partner.

ARD/SPIEGEL: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?

Obama: I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point. I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.

At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I've tried to suggest -- both to the American people, but also to the world -- is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there's no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don't recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways.

And those who think that security is the only thing and don't care about privacy also have it wrong.
We have to find ways in which, collectively, we agree there's some things that government needs to do to help protect us, that in this age of non-state actors who can amass great power, I want my government -- and I think the German people should want their government -- to be able to find out if a terrorist organization has access to a weapon of mass destruction that might go off in the middle of Berlin.

That may mean that, as long as they do it carefully and narrowly, that they're going to have to find ways to identify an email address or a cell phone of a network. On the other hand, it's important to make sure that governments have some checks on what they do, that people can oversee what's being done so the government doesn't abuse it. But we shouldn't assume that government is always trying to do the wrong thing.

My experience is that our intelligence officials try to do the right thing, but even with good intentions, sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes they can be overzealous. Our lives are now in a telephone, all our data, all our finances, all our personal information, and so it's proper that we have some constraints on that. But it's not going to be 100 percent. If it is 100 percent, then we're not going to be able to protect ourselves and our societies from some people who are trying to hurt us.

ARD/SPIEGEL: Mr. President, we thank you for this interview.

Study: Election Coverage Skewed By “Journalistic Bias”

by Sarah Childress Senior Digital Reporter, FRONTLINE

An analysis of news coverage from the 2016 primary races found that mainstream media outlets engaged in “journalistic bias” that led to over-coverage of the Donald Trump campaign and under-coverage of Democratic candidates, in particular Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The report, from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, underscores the role that the press can play in anointing — or sinking — a candidate, as well as keeping voters under-informed by focusing only on the horse race instead of the candidates or relevant issues.

It also highlights how the press helped to elevate Trump while contributing to the downfall of rival candidates, and paid relatively little attention to the Democratic nominating contest.

For the report, a content analysis firm, Media Tenor, examined statements from CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC,The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

“Game-centered reporting has consequences,” the report said. “The media’s tendency to allocate coverage based on winning and losing affects voters’ decisions. The press’s attention to early winners, and its tendency to afford them more positive coverage than their competitors, is not designed to boost their chances, but that’s a predictable effect.”

Why the Bias?

The press doesn’t favor certain candidates because it’s engaged in a vast conspiracy, according to the report. It’s a lot simpler: reporters like a good story. It’s what their business is based on. And this year, Trump’s narrative seemed more novel than that of Clinton or Sanders.

This isn’t the first time the press has fallen for a candidate. Barack Obama received “outsized coverage” when he first ran in 2008, as did Sen. John McCain in 2000, when he invited reporters aboard his campaign bus, the “Straight Talk Express.” Trump, the report said, is now on that list.

The press’s extensive focus on the horse race also leaves less time for substantive coverage, the report said. It found that mainstream media primary coverage was almost entirely about the competition or the campaign process.

By comparison, only 11 percent of the primary coverage focused on the candidates’ policy positions, leadership abilities or personal and professional histories. “Substantive concerns got the least amount of attention,” the report found — on both sides of the aisle.

Trump’s “Press Advantage”

Even before the primaries began, Trump dominated media coverage. For the bulk of the campaign, Trump has received more press attention than any other candidate from either major party, the report found.

As he continued to win primaries, his story became about gaining momentum, a narrative that held fast. “Victory for Trump was also his path to positive coverage,” the report said. Sen. Marco Rubio, by contrast, was portrayed as consistently losing ground after he failed to win an early contest. Rubio never had, the report said, “a single week where his positive press outpaced his negative press.”

11%

 

Only 11 percent of coverage focused on candidates’ policy positions, leadership abilities or personal and professional histories.

 

-- Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

Trump did receive more substantive coverage in the final month of the campaign, when there were no other competitors in the Republican race, the report said. References to his character and policies rose from 10 percent to 19 percent, and the tone was overwhelmingly negative.

Ultimately, the report attributed Trump’s candidacy in part to the coverage. “He might have won the Republican nomination in any case, given the confluence of factors working in his favor,” it said. “But one of his assets, certainly, was his press advantage.”

Clinton and Sanders, Overshadowed by Republican Race

On the Democratic side, the candidates generally received coverage on par with their primary results: Clinton received 54 percent of the press attention, versus Sanders’ 46 percent, until the middle stage of the campaign — mid-March to early May — when Clinton pulled ahead.

Sanders also received more positive media attention — the largest favorable margin of any candidate, 59 percent good press to 41 percent bad press — until the middle stage of the campaign, the report found.

At the same time, reports on Clinton were more critical because as the presumptive nominee, she was expected by the press to dominate the early contests. By the middle stage of the campaign, however, Clinton was eking out more favorable press, 51 percent positive to 49 percent negative.

But once she clinched the nomination, she received more criticism, with 49 percent positive statements to 51 percent negative, in part because Trump began to target her in speeches.

But no matter what the Democratic candidates did, the Republican contest continued to dominate the press coverage, even when Trump became the presumptive nominee. “Although Trump no longer had active opposition, he received more news coverage in the last month than did either Clinton or Sanders,” the report said, “a development that has no possible explanation other than journalistic bias.”

America is ALREADY great

Fareed Zakaria, GPS

While Donald Trump wants to "make America great again," Fareed argues it still is the world's leading economic, technological, military and political power.

Denmark Ranks as Happiest Country; Burundi, Not So Much

By SEWELL CHAN
Source :The New York Times 

LONDON — Denmark has reclaimed its place as the world’s happiest country, while Burundi ranks as the least happy nation, according to the fourth World Happiness Report, released on Wednesday.

The report found that inequality was strongly associated with unhappiness — a stark finding for rich countries like the United States, where rising disparities in income, wealth, health and well-being have fueled political discontent.

Denmark topped the list in the first report, in 2012, and again in 2013, but it was displaced by Switzerland last year. In this year’s ranking, Denmark was back at No. 1, followed by Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. Most are fairly homogeneous nations with strong social safety nets.

At the bottom of the list of more than 150 countries was Burundi, where a violent political crisis broke out last year. Burundi was preceded by Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar. All of those nations are poor, and many have been destabilized by war, disease or both.

Of the world’s most populous nations, China came in at No. 83, India at No. 118, the United States at No. 13, Indonesia at No. 79, Brazil at No. 17, Pakistan at No. 92, Nigeria at No. 103, Bangladesh at No. 110, Russia at No. 56, Japan at No. 53 and Mexico at No. 21. The United States rose two spots, from No. 15 in 2015.

From 2005 to 2015, Greece saw the largest drop in happiness of any country, a reflection of the economic crisis that began there in 2007.

The happiness ranking was based on individual responses to a global poll conducted by Gallup. The poll included a question, known as the Cantril Ladder: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

The scholars found that three-quarters of the variation across countries could be explained by six variables: gross domestic product per capita (the rawest measure of a nation’s wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations).

The report was prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an international panel of social scientists that includes economists, psychologists and public health experts convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

Though the findings do not represent the formal views of the United Nations, the network is closely tied to the Sustainable Development Goals, which the organization adopted in September, aiming, among other things, to end poverty and hunger by 2030, while saving the planet from the most destructive effects of climate change.

The field of happiness research has grown in recent years, but there is significant disagreement about how to measure happiness. Some scholars find people’s subjective assessments of their well-being to be unreliable, and they prefer objective indicators like economic and health data. The scholars behind the World Happiness Report said they tried to take both types of data into account.

In a chapter of the report on the distribution of happiness around the world, three economists — John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia; Haifang Huang of the University of Alberta; and Shun Wang of the Korea Development Institute — argued against a widely held view that changes in people’s assessments of their lives are largely transitory. Under this view, people have a baseline level of contentment and rapidly adapt to changing circumstances.

The three economists noted research showing that people’s evaluations of their lives “differ significantly and systematically among countries”; that within countries, subgroups differ widely in their levels of happiness; that unemployment and major disabilities have lasting influences on well-being; and that the happiness of migrants approximates that of their new country, instead of their country of origin.

The three economists noted that crises can prompt vastly different responses based on the underlying social fabric. In Greece, where the economy began to plummet in 2007, setting off a crisis in the eurozone that has resulted in three financial bailouts, widespread corruption and mistrust were associated with the diminishing sense of happiness over the past decade.

In contrast, trust and “social capital” are so high in Japan that scholars found, to their surprise, that happiness actually increased in Fukushima, which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, because an outpouring of generosity and cooperation contributed to the community’s resilience and rebuilding.

“A crisis imposed on a weak institutional structure can actually further damage the quality of the supporting social fabric if the crisis triggers blame and strife rather than cooperation and repair,” the economists wrote. “On the other hand, economic crises and natural disasters can, if the underlying institutions are of sufficient quality, lead to improvements rather than damage to the social fabric.”

The report, which was released in Rome, included a chapter analyzing Pope Francis’ influential encyclical last year, called “Laudato Si’,” or “Praise Be to You,” which included a cutting assessment of a world in which continuous technological progress was accompanied by environmental degradation, growing anxieties about the future and persistent injustice and violence.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University economist who edited the report with Dr. Helliwell and Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, praised Pope Francis’ admonition against hedonism and consumerism.

He also forcefully rejected the notion that happiness and freedom — especially when narrowly defined as economic liberty — are interchangeable.

“The libertarian argument that economic freedom should be championed above all other values decisively fails the happiness test: There is no evidence that economic freedom per se is a major direct contributor of human well-being above and beyond what it might contribute towards per-capita income and employment,” Dr. Sachs wrote. “Individual freedom matters for happiness, but among many objectives and values, not to the exclusion of those other considerations.”

Inequality as a Predictor of Civil War

As the gap grows between rich and poor, so do the chances for violent conflicts 

Source:University of Tübingen  published on   World Future Society

Author: Keturah Hetrick

Ethnic and religious schisms, poverty, political extremism…. There are many factors that can be used to predict the likelihood of a country’s descent into civil war. Researchers at Germany’s University of Tübingen now add income inequality to the list of early signals.

Lack of reliable data during certain periods in history, as well as in developing countries (which are more prone to civil war), has made it difficult to assess a possible correlation between civil war and income inequality. To compensate for missing or inadequate data, University of Tübingen professors Jörg Baten and Christina Mumme estimated Gini coefficients by supplementing established economic datasets with other types of information.

The Gini coefficient is commonly used to measure and compare income inequality on a scale from zero to one. A score of zero represents total economic equality (a society in which each person has exactly the same amount of money), while a score of one represents total inequality (a society in which all wealth belongs to one person). Most countries’ scores fall between 0.30 and 0.60.
Baten and Mumme first looked at changes to the relationship between GDP per capita and wages of unskilled laborers.

“If wages lag behind income per capita, inequality is probably increasing,” they reason. “Conversely, if wages grow faster than GDP per capita, this points to a decline in income inequality.”

While GDP per capita and other economic information provided the researchers with sufficient data in most cases, the study compensated for data scarcity by calculating a less conventional measure of equality: adult male height. A population’s height distribution correlates to its food and health-care access. Lower heights tend to signal greater health inequality, used by the researchers as a proxy for economic inequality.

The researchers examined the Gini coefficients (both commonly accepted and estimated) from 30 diverse countries over a 200-year span. They considered only civil wars that were fought against a state’s government and that also had at least 1,000 battle-related casualties.

Regardless of actual income and poverty levels, higher inequality corresponds to increased risk for civil war, the study found. High inequality in sub-Saharan Africa corresponds to a spate of uprisings in the 1960s through 1980s. Meanwhile, civil war prevalence and inequality have remained relatively low in Asian countries and high in Latin American countries.

Inequality in western and eastern Europe and in North America gradually decreased until about 1990. While equality remains relatively high in western Europe, inequality has recently increased across eastern Europe and North America, suggesting that civil trouble may be ahead.

While the study shows a correlation between wealth and conflict, it’s unproven that income inequality causes civil war. High inequality can be a symptom of or coexist with discriminatory government policies, oppressive institutions, or other factors that increase the likelihood of civil conflict.
Nonetheless, growing income inequality in the United States could be cause for concern—and this time, the results could bring more violence than 2011’s Occupy Wall Street protests.

“If this development continues for a long time, it could provide fertile ground for conflict,” warns Baten.

 

Fate of lawsuit brought by Trump model to be decided this month

By Michelle Conlin and Ryan McNeill
Source: Reuters

A judge will decide by the end of this month whether to proceed with a proposed class action lawsuit filed by a Jamaican fashion model against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's modeling agency, the judge's office said.

Alexia Palmer accuses Trump Model Management LLC of lying to the federal government in its work-visa application that said she would be paid a $75,000-a-year salary while living in the United States, according to court documents.


Instead, according to court papers, Palmer received a total of $3,880.75 during the three years she was under contract with the agency. The complaint alleges “fraudulent misrepresentation” and violations of U.S. immigration and labor laws. It asks for $225,000 in back pay.

The suit was originally filed in October 2014. A decision on a pending motion by Trump Model Management to dismiss is expected by the end of March, the clerk for Judge Analisa Torres, who is presiding over the case in the U.S District Court, Southern District, told Reuters.

If Torres rules the case can proceed, it could revive attention on Trump’s foreign labor practices at a time when the celebrity billionaire's rise in American politics has riveted the world’s attention.
Trump’s lawyers have called the case "frivolous" and "without merit." In court documents, they said Palmer wasn’t an employee and was more than adequately compensated for a “very brief stint as a fashion model,” which they say amounted to less than 10 days of work over three years.
Reuters could not independently confirm that assertion.


“At the end of the day, this model just didn’t have a successful career, and we fully expect to win,” said Lawrence Rosen, a lawyer for Trump Model Management.

Although Trump owns the modeling agency, the suit does not name him. Trump's campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement that Trump Model Management's treatment of Palmer was in line with "standard practice in the modeling industry."

Palmer's lawyer, Naresh Gehi, says his client was cheated of earnings and seduced by a life of glamour that never materialized. "The visa application the company filed with the government requires that people are paid the full amount," Gehi said. "It’s a requirement.”


Palmer, who was 17 when she came to New York in 2011, was not available to comment.

TOP JAMAICAN MODEL

Sylvia Ayass, a lawyer who has worked with models on visas like Palmer's, said agencies typically pay what they state on visa applications.

Trump has won Republican frontrunner status in the 2016 election in large part by positioning himself as a champion of the American worker who will deport illegal immigrants, build a wall with Mexico and do away with the off shoring of U.S. jobs.

This is not the first time Trump's labor practices have drawn criticism. A Reuters story published in August revealed that Trump's companies sought to import at least 1,100 workers on temporary visas since 2000. Of those, 250 were filed for foreign fashion models, according to the Reuters analysis of federal Department of Labor data.

Using a federal visa program called H-1B that allows U.S. employers to hire "specialized" foreign labor, Trump's modeling agency offered Palmer "at least $75,000 per year" for three years. It listed that salary on her H-1B visa application in 2011, according to the court documents reviewed by Reuters.

Rosen, the lawyer for Trump Model Management, said the $75,000 a year figure was simply a guess, not a guarantee.

Under that contract, Palmer agreed "to promptly reimburse" Trump Model Management "for any and all costs and expenses" that the agency incurred relating to her modeling.

According to the suit, the agreement stipulated that Trump Model Management would take a 20 percent cut of Palmer’s earnings but instead took 80 percent by deducting charges for everything from postage to walking lessons to mobile phone costs and limousine rides, as well as $4,000 in "administrative fees," according to court documents.

The suit said it was seeking class-action status to represent other models who believe they were misled and underpaid after coming to the United States with sponsorship from Trump’s modeling agency.

Why Donald Trump is so politically dangerous

Marc Ambinder of THE WEEK

One candidate for president of the United States has devoted decades of her life to the goal — a never-ending 30-years-long campaign for power and respect. Another adheres so strongly to a set of beliefs that he calls himself a socialist long after it's lost its cool. Another fashions himself as a redeemer of a lifetime’s worth of conservative grievances, risking social isolation and the faith and credit of the United States to make a point.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who more or less has nothing to lose. Trump, who started the race as a rich man’s lark, who probably never thought he had a strong chance to win, place, or show, who doesn’t have to spend much money to keep going, can more or less say anything he wants because he has nothing to fear. He has the least to lose and the most to gain.

More than his showman’s instinct for working a room, more than his ability to disrupt narratives with a single tweet, and even more than his unique New York patter, the most dangerous thing about him, from the perspective of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or Ted Cruz, is that he alone can run as if he has nothing lose, because he doesn’t, and they cannot. He can say whatever is on his mind, Bullworth-esque, because the risks are minimal. The others must still calibrate their messages carefully, because they’ve invested their lives in a cause.

The following thought experiment comes courtesy of Penn Jillette, whose insight about Trump’s fearlessness (in a non-boozy, real-food fueled conversation I had with him and director Andy Lerner last week), prompted this post. (Jillette discussed our thoughts on his Penn's Sunday School podcast yesterday).

Let’s say you were part of the tiny cabal that controls American politics, and you were to come to Hillary Clinton and propose, in exchange for dropping her candidate’s mask, she’d have a 50 percent greater chance of becoming president if she were to admit that, of all the people involved in her husband’s Oval Office affair, Monica Lewinsky has handled herself with the most grace and courage and deserves a lot better than she’s gotten.

Let’s say that the cabal proposed to Bernie Sanders that it could guarantee he’d become president if only he would agree to ease up on Wall Street.

Let’s say that the cabal proposed to Trump that it would make him president if only he agreed to drop his proposal to build a wall around the United States and instead focus on creating an immediate pathway to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already living here.

Trump would take the deal. The others would not.

And that tells you all you need to know about the presidential race after the nomination.
On the one side there's a candidate who intuitively understands the currency of power now. We are living in the era of Douglas Rushkoff’s “present shock,” where moments are worth more than narrative. This candidate, again, has not a thing to lose by shooting off at the mouth.

On the other, there are candidate with everything to lose. One has a narrative, but no mastery of the present moment. Another is searching for a narrative, and can’t find one. They still calibrate Tweets. They still think they deserve the presidency based on merit and qualification.

One of these candidates is going to win the infinitely iterative virtual news cycle, and it’s not going to be the Democratic nominee.

If Trump’s popularity turns out to be more than just a big in-joke, a prank played by a frustrated electorate on the elites, then the best way to run against him would be to undercut his core appeal. As he tells the truth in the moment, so should you. As Trump has nothing to lose, act as if you has nothing to lose.

Right now, I don’t see either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders changing so fundamentally.
I do see another billionaire begin to leak word that he might be interested in the presidency, a guy who has Trump’s fascinating combination of fearlessness and pettiness, but who inhabits the role of a billionaire philanthropist so thoroughly that he masks guilelessness with a charming indifference. This is a guy who can tell the truth (as he sees it) and who has nothing to lose.

And now I’m beginning to understand why Michael Bloomberg might suddenly think that, in this age of moments, his moment is now.

Why we fight about Iran

source: VOX

The debates are so vicious because they're not really about Iran — they're about much deeper disputes.

Updated by Max Fisher @Max_Fisher

We've rarely admitted it, but the debate in the United States over the Iran nuclear deal, which formally began this Saturday as the world lifted many sanctions on Iran, was never really about nuclear weapons. Not primarily, anyway.

Sure, the nuclear deal itself has a lot to do with nuclear weapons. But it should tell you something that America's debate over the deal is still raging even after Iran has disassembled the bulk of its nuclear program, and that we're now having nearly identical arguments about the US-Iran prisoner swap and the US-Iran boat incident.

"The Iranian nuclear program is not really what opponents and proponents of the recent deal are arguing about," Jeremy Shapiro, of Brookings, wrote nearly a year ago, and it's still true. It's never been about nukes or boats or prisoners but rather whether America should deal with Iran at all. Is this, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher's famous quote about Mikhail Gorbachev, a country that we can do business with? And that question itself hits on divisions in US foreign policy that go way beyond this one county and are much older than this one issue.

Iran has become the subject of America's most heated and divisive foreign policy debate in perhaps a decade. But the vitriol is driven not just by competing readings of Iran, or even by partisanship, but by a confluence of deep and long-running disagreements over fundamental questions of America's place in the world.

There are, to my eye, three distinct and separate divisions in American foreign policy that are playing out here. If you'll forgive a bit of jargon coinage — an ancient and glorious tradition among pundit types — we might term those divisions: pragmatists versus hegemonists, diplomats versus militarists, and Middle East reformists versus Middle East status quo-ists.

Those debates have been raging, in one form or another, for years or decades. In the past, sometimes they've overlapped and sometimes not; the distinctions were sometimes clear and sometimes fuzzy. But Iran is bringing out all three, more sharply and clearly, than has any issue in years.

Because we're really having these three arguments at the same time, and because they are all long-held disputes now playing out simultaneously, everyone is talking past one another — and because it's not even remotely just about Iran, none of these disputes are about to settled. But once you see them, this debate and its vitriol start to make a lot more sense.

Pragmatists versus hegemonists

The pragmatists see compromise and conciliation, toward Iran and more broadly in the world, as the most responsible way to maximize America's interests while minimizing risks and costs. They are averse to overextension and willing to write off some problems as too costly for the US to wade into. They include President Obama as well as former President George H.W. Bush, both realists willing to use or threaten limited force but only when it can achieve clear, specific aims.

In this view, if Iranian and American interests can be made to coincide, whether through diplomacy or coercion or both, then dealing with even an adversary like Iran can achieve American interests while also minimizing risks such as war.

The hegemonists tend to see any challenge to American primacy in the world as a threat to the American-led liberal international order itself. In this view, American dominance promotes peace and makes the world safe for democracy — allowing that dominance to wane thus risks inviting chaos and tyranny. This existential battle between America and those who threaten its hegemony animates, in their eyes, nearly every international crisis. The hegemonists include Ronald Reagan but also, at many points, Jimmy Carter, whose 1980 "Carter Doctrine" declared the US would use military force to protect its economic interests in the Persian Gulf.

In this view, hegemony is about perception as much as about hard tools like tanks or missiles. Therefore, it is necessary to stand down every challenger, not for simple reasons of ego or pride but because even appearing to waver is a de facto surrender that imperils America's not-at-all-guaranteed dominance. Iran isn't just one middling country, but potentially the start of a global anti-American uprising that could overturn the world as we know it. Whether America happens to come out ahead in specific negotiations is not the point; negotiating in itself legitimizes Iran's challenge to American dominance.

Pragmatists see American power as a tool, sometimes useful and sometimes not, whereas hegemonists see American power as a good within itself, something to be protected and promoted however possible, and that by disuse will erode.

The Iran-US sailors incident is a perfect example of this division.

To pragmatists, the incident was defused and deescalated quickly and relatively painlessly: All 10 sailors were freed within a few hours, and the only cost was that Iran released embarrassing photos of the sailors being detained. That trade-off, on balance, seems great for the US. But, to hegemonists, that embarrassment did real-world damage to US interests by giving the appearance of Iranian strength overpowering American weakness, which thus invites more such challenges that could eventually see the entire Middle East turned against us.

On Iran more broadly, pragmatists see decades of enmity that has been costly for the US and brought little benefit, whereas a smidge more compromise and even cooperation will not just serve US interests but also reduce the costly risk of war. But hegemonists see an Iran that has always been, and always will be, an imminent threat to America's hegemony over the Middle East that can only ever be countered with all American tools of power, including the credible threat of war.

Diplomats versus militarists

Every administration uses some combination of diplomacy and militarism, whether it's the threat of force or its actual use, to achieve its aims. The disagreement here isn't about which to privilege.

Rather, it's a disagreement over how adversarial regimes like Iran are likely to respond to those tools.
And it's a disagreement about what kind of global power America is supposed to be: a power that guides through consensus and coalition building, versus a power that leads unilaterally and, if necessary, dominates through strength.

For the diplomats, the US can best achieve its goals by making sure other countries' interests line up with its own, whether those countries are allies or not. They're not just willing to work with adversaries but often desire it, seeing it as a way to decrease hostilities. And it often means working within other countries' domestic politics, trying to shape them such that they'll be more likely to bend their countries in our direction.

Presidents who've thought this way include Bill Clinton, who famously intervened in Israeli politics to promote candidates who'd be more sympathetic to American goals; and George W. Bush, who tried to establish personal bonds with foreign leaders from Nicolas Sarkozy to Vladimir Putin. Most famous, of course, was Richard Nixon, who was more than happy to align the US with adversaries, even communist China, when they could find mutual interests.

The militarists, on the other hand, see a world neatly divided between allies and adversaries in a zero-sum contest for influence. America's role is strengthening itself and its allies at the cost of its enemies. In their views, enemy states' overwhelming goal in the world is to counter and reduce American influence. Therefore, any negotiation is folly because enemies will never compromise on their ultimate agenda of weakening America and its allies. Because enemies are innately hostile and everything is a zero-sum competition, military strength is America's greatest asset.

Famous militarists include Dwight Eisenhower, who saw communism as a monolithic force bent on world domination, leading him to intervene in Vietnam rather than work with the revolutionary communist leaders who had in fact reached out to the Americans; as well as Ronald Reagan, for whom the Soviet Union was not motivated by complex interests or domestic politics so much as by the twisted ideology of an "evil empire."

The diplomat-militarist divide is widest on Iran. Diplomats see a country with complex and noisy internal politics that could be on the verge of a major shift; they also see a rational state whose interests can be shaped to clash less severely with America's. Militarists, however, see an innately and implacably hostile enemy at best, and at worst an irrational "death cult" akin to Nazi Germany. For militarists, it is essential to not only confront Iran as directly as possible, but to provide unflinching assistance to American allies who also oppose Iran, to demonstrate a unified front.

This is the divide, in particular, that has had much of the Washington foreign policy community at one another's throats over the past year. Diplomats are aghast at the militarists who would refuse a rare opening to peacefully reduce hostility with Iran. Militarists cannot believe how naive the diplomats are to believe that Iran could ever be driven by anything other than an unquenchable anti-Americanism; they see Iran's internal politics as a nation-size ruse meant to trick Americans.
It's an argument that neither side can ever win, because it's not really about the intricacies of Iranian politics or the merits of the nuclear deal. It's about the way in which you see the world and America's role in it.

Middle East reformists versus Middle East status quo-ists

America's obsession with the Middle East goes back decades: to the oil crisis, to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, to the 1990 Gulf War; starting in the 1980s, the religious right developed a preoccupation with Israel and thus the Israel-Arab conflict. The 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion guaranteed at least a generation of heavy American involvement in the region.

So there is a real sense in the US, and indeed in Middle Eastern capitals, that America owns this mess of a region and that it's America's responsibility to deal with it. For a few years after the Iraq invasion, it was hard to have an open debate about this because those who'd advocated for the invasion felt compelled to argue that everything was fine. Now that we've had two successive administrations oversee the region's deterioration, it is finally a bipartisan consensus that the region is in severe crisis.

In the rare moments when people can put aside arguments over which American president is more to blame, their disagreements often boil down to one core issue: Is it better to rebuild and reinforce the status quo in the Middle East or to reform the regional order in some new way that will make it more likely to survive?

For the status quo-ists, this often comes down in part to Israel. America's closest ally in the region is well-served by the status quo, in which the Middle East is dominated by secular dictators whose countries once waged war on Israel but have mostly come to make peace with it. Those dictators are the heart of this worldview: Status quo-ists appreciate their reliability and fear that a democratic Middle East will empower Islamists and populists who oppose the United States.

The reformists don't really have a specific plan for how to change the Middle East so much as a sense that it has to happen. Dictatorships are unstable and can topple suddenly and violently; the region's division between Saudi-backed Sunni powers and Iran-backed Shia powers has fueled much of the last decade's violence. The reformists tend to be skeptical of America's most powerful Mideast ally, Saudi Arabia, and to suspect that Iran is going to rise in power whether we like or not, so it's better to shape that rise as best we can.

There is a lot of mutual suspicion here. Reformists see the status quo-ists as trying to build American strategy on a foundation of quicksand, and wonder why they're so eager to embrace Saudi monarchs who behead dissidents and an Israeli right that has long defied American presidents of both parties. Status quo-ists, meanwhile, suspect that the reformists are at best seeking America's total surrender from the region and at worst trying to engineer a Middle East dominated by our enemies.

Iran is at the center of this argument: Everyone agrees that Iran is ascendant and America's Sunni-dictator allies are struggling. The question becomes: Should America throw itself into reversing those trends, or accept them as inevitable and try rather to shape them in a way that will be tolerable?
The reformists, to be clear, don't want to ally with Iran, but rather to minimize hostilities and try to shape Iran's behavior to be more productive, while also building up America's allies. But status quo-ists see this as tantamount to surrender, and believe the US should be wholly focused on stopping or reversing that rise.

This is a relatively new debate; it has only really opened under George W. Bush and, to a much greater extent, under Obama. Both have approached the Middle East as reformists, seeing the status quo as untenable. Though whereas Bush sought to deliberately spark the region's complete transformation by toppling Saddam and promoting democracy, Obama's view is that the Middle East is changing under forces and pressures beyond American control.

Today you can see this division playing out among the presidential candidates, and it's not along partisan lines. Status quo-ists Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders have both stated strong support for America's authoritarian allies in the region.

Meanwhile, reformist Hillary Clinton supported the nuclear deal with Iran and has warned that Middle East dictatorships can't last. Marco Rubio has challenged those dictatorships as well, though he is more akin to second-term George W. Bush in wanting to see Middle Eastern politics transform but preserve its regional power balance.

The Iran debate will never, ever be settled

Looking over these three disagreements and how they are playing out over Iran, the point is that none of them is remotely partisan. And none of them is about to be resolved; they are differences in philosophy that can be argued for or against but will probably always be part of the American foreign policy conversation.

This is why you have seen, over the past year, many members of Washington's foreign policy community argue themselves red in the face. They can cite as many facts about Iranian nuclear cuts, or about Iranian funding for terror groups, as they want. They can debate the nature of Iran's moderates or the likely fate of its supreme leader all day. Such narrow questions are simply not what these arguments are really about.

Rather, it's an argument about conflicting worldviews and readings of American power and ambitions for the Middle East. Even if we were to fully acknowledge that's what we're arguing about, those disagreements are fundamentally irresolvable, which is why they've been with us for decades. And they'll continue to be with us for decades.

Iran will not always be at the center of those debates, but it will probably feature heavily in them for as long as the Middle East is in chaos, which is likely to last decades. So you can expect to hear the same arguments over Iran for, if not the rest of your life, at least a big chunk of it. Just know that while people might refer to Iran a lot in those debates, they're really talking about something much bigger.

Evicted and Abandoned: The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor

Children Suffer as World Bank’s Borrowers Upend Their Lives

 By Jocelyn C. Zuckerman and Michael Hudson 

Source: The Center for Public Integrity®

In the disappearing rainforests of Indonesia, a 9-year-old boy copes with the trauma of eviction

Revan Pragustiawan loved his home by the river. The little boy’s ancestors built the place in a rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, using local bark and leaves in the traditional style of the Batin Sembilan tribe. Over the years, his dad had improved the house with wood and a metal roof.
Revan felt safe there, sleeping on a plastic mat huddled up with his family, and spending his days playing with his sister and helping with chores. By the summer of 2011, he was 5 years old, big enough to help his mother fetch drinking water from the river and look forward to helping with a new garden his dad and some neighbors were planning to sow along the riverbank. 

Everything changed for Revan on the morning of August 10, 2011.

He was at home when he heard the crack of gunfire. Soon after, as many as two dozen police officers and 20 employees of the palm oil company PT Asiatic Persada pulled up in heavy vehicles.

Tensions had been running high between the company and the residents, who lived on land that Asiatic Persada had leased from the government so it could develop an industrial-scale palm oil plantation. Now the company intended to take action. The men fired shots in the air, called the people in Revan’s hamlet “pigs” and “animals” and ordered them to “run,” residents later claimed.

Revan fled with his family through the woods and down to the river, turning back to catch glimpses of bulldozers moving in. As the machines reduced his home to a pile of sheet metal and wood, Revan cried uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face. He was so terrorized by seeing his home destroyed, his dad recalls, he began speaking gibberish.

By day’s end, the men had destroyed all of the hamlet’s 35 homes. Revan’s community was gone, swept aside amid Asiatic Persada’s drive to satisfy its parent company’s growing appetite for palm oil. It was a demand fueled in part by more than $145 million in loans and guarantees from the World Bank Group that helped the corporate parent expand its planting and processing operations.

Revan’s story is a worst-case example of the trauma that children can suffer when they live in the path of initiatives sustained by money from the World Bank Group, the multinational financial giant that styles itself as an anti-poverty champion. 

Evictions, loss of family income and other hardships associated with dams, roads and other projects can be especially harmful to young people. Studies show that children whose families have been forced to relocate are at greater risk of disease, hunger and loss of education.

The bank’s social and environmental safeguards forbid sudden, strong-arm evictions. Families targeted for “involuntary resettlement” must be installed in new homes or compensated so their living conditions are as good or better than they were before.

But as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The Huffington Post and other media partners revealed in April, the bank is failing to enforce those rules, with devastating consequences for adults and children who live on or near land targeted for development.

Along India’s Gulf of Kutch, a study by human rights activists found, pollution from a coal-burning power plant backed by the World Bank Group damaged farms and fishing grounds, forcing many families to pull children from school so they could work to make up for lost income. This left adolescent girls who had to go to work as domestic servants vulnerable to sexual exploitation, the study said.

In Cambodia, children watched as their homes were demolished by a wave of evictions in an area of Phnom Penh that was supposed to be protected by a World Bank–financed land management program. As part of a presentation organized by children’s rights advocates, one child whose home was destroyed wrote to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, asking him not to “sit quietly while there are human rights violations with World Bank funds.” Another young evictee, a preteen girl, wrote: “They beat me even though I am a child! I lost all chance of education.”
The World Bank Group declined repeated requests for comment for this story.

“[Children] frequently develop post-traumatic syndromes, including nightmares, anxiety, apathy and withdrawal.” – U.N. report on forced evictions 

In public statements, it says its work in Cambodia, India, Indonesia and other countries has helped children by improving education, boosting health care for newborns and reducing child mortality. From 2003 to 2013, the bank’s fund for the poorest countries ensured immunizations for nearly 600 million children.

Yet the bank is also increasing its financial support for dams and other big-ticket initiatives that are the most likely to displace large numbers of people—even as it has acknowledged that it often fails to track the repercussions for people on the ground.

The World Bank’s 468-page guidebook on handling resettlements includes a page and a half outlining “good practices”—such as monitoring school enrollment—that borrowers can embrace to help reduce harm to children.

Human rights groups say guidelines aren’t enough—they want clear rules about what steps the bank and its borrowers should take to protect children. A 2012 letter from more than 75 advocacy groups around the world urged the bank to strengthen its safeguard rules by requiring that project planners do detailed assessments of likely impacts on children, “including the potential for violence and exploitation.”

Advocates were disappointed in July when bank officials released a new draft of a planned overhaul of safeguard policies covering loans to government-sponsored projects. The draft says the safeguard standards aspire to “remove barriers against those who are often excluded from the development process, such as women, children, youth and minorities.” But it includes no specifics about how children are to be protected if their families are relocated.

“Just considering children isn’t enough to solve any problems,” says Elana Berger, manager of the Child Rights Program at the Bank Information Center, a human rights group that monitors the World Bank’s practices. “You have to have a plan to address their needs.”

‘Still afraid’

 

It is a sweltering afternoon in May. Revan and his father sit in the cramped shack where the family now lives. Revan’s dad, a goateed 35-year-old named Irsan Saiful, built the structure from planks salvaged from the wreckage of their old home. After a flurry of bad publicity about the 2011 evictions, the company allowed the family and other community members to rebuild in an area about a mile away from their previous homes inside the 68,000-acre palm oil concession.

Revan is now 9 years old. But he seems far younger. His shorts, safety-pinned at the waist and falling to his knees, threaten to swallow his spindly body, and the lid of his baseball cap obscures his round, watchful face. Revan’s dad raises his hand to his heart as he talks about the evictions’ emotional toll.
For three days, the family had nothing to eat. Along with Revan’s home, the wrecking crew destroyed clothing, food, cooking utensils, marriage records, even the little boy’s birth certificate.

In the weeks after they were evicted, Revan and his family lived under a tarp provided by the government. Humanitarian groups contributed clothing and food. Some of the families were compensated for the damage—Revan’s family received roughly $1,000—in exchange for agreeing to rebuild farther from the river. Police remained in the area for weeks, firing guns into the air daily and harassing the evictees, the Batin Sembilan say.

As his dad talks, Revan is sitting so close he’s nearly in his father’s lap. It’s been four years, and he is still a worried, fearful child, unable to get over the shock of watching his home get demolished. He misses the hours he would spend playing alongside the river with his friends, and he still mutters words like “evil” and “evictors” whenever he sees a security guard or policeman.

“My son is abnormal,” Irsan says sadly. “If someone snaps a little, he is still afraid.”

The evictions have taken a toll on all the children of the Batin Sembilan community. Asked about the events of August 2011, a 12-year-old named Aldi says he can’t remember a thing.

“Trauma,” his aunt offers by way of explanation.

The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights says forced evictions can have long-lasting psychological impacts on children: “They frequently develop post-traumatic syndromes, including nightmares, anxiety, apathy and withdrawal.”

Along with psychological damage, relocations and big industrial projects can affect children’s physical health and educational progress, research shows.

In the Akosombo region of Ghana, for example, the infection rate among schoolchildren for “snail fever”—a water-borne disease that can cause anemia, learning disabilities and colon damage—was 5 percent before construction of a World Bank–backed dam but grew to 90 percent after the dam was finished in the 1960s, according to environmental scientists who studied the project.

Michael Cernea, a former World Bank official who developed the bank’s first resettlement safeguards, has noted that relocation “often interrupts schooling and for some of these children it means that they never return to school.”

One survey found that nearly half of displaced families in the Indian state of West Bengal had pulled their children out of school because they needed them to work to make up for the economic blows from the loss of their land.

Berger, the children’s rights advocate, says even temporary disruptions in schooling, family income and living conditions can have devastating effects on a child’s development.
“Every year a child loses, you can’t get it back,” she says.

Before and after

 

On Sumatra, Revan’s parents and other adults who grew up before the proliferation of industrial plantations recall childhoods that were different from those that Revan and other young Batin Sembilan are now experiencing. “I played in the forest,” says the area’s tribal chief, a 38-year-old named Damsi (Indonesians often go by a single name). “I used to find wood and do farming. I collected sap that we used for paint. We used to collect rattan for building.”

The rainforest was lush with coconut palms, papaya trees, jackfruit, wild mango. The Batin Sembilan hunted deer, cultivated vegetables and caught catfish and crabs in the river. As a teenager, Revan’s dad grew cocoa, coffee and chilies.

Things began changing dramatically for the Batin Sembilan in the early 1980s. The semi-nomadic tribe lost tens of thousands of acres to a World Bank–funded “transmigration” scheme that resettled millions of Indonesians from the archipelago’s crowded islands to less-populated ones like Sumatra. New farms were created and given to the settlers, encroaching on lands where tribal people had lived, hunted and planted for generations. “Transmigration had a major negative and probably irreversible impact on indigenous people,” a World Bank internal review later concluded.

In the early 1990s the bank advised and financed Indonesia’s forest policy, which over the past quarter century has resulted in the loss of roughly one third of the country’s forest cover to timber, palm oil and other industries. Two-thirds of the forested area of Jambi—the province where the Batin Sembilan are primarily located—was signed over to forestry and agribusiness interests.

In recent years, Wilmar International Limited, Asia’s largest agribusiness, has become a big player in Sumatra’s palm oil fields. The company controls roughly 40 percent of the world’s trade in palm oil, which is used in cookies, toothpaste, lipstick, ice cream and countless other goods—at least half of all products on U.S. grocery shelves.

Between 2003 and 2008, the World Bank Group’s business-lending unit, the International Finance Corporation, supported Wilmar’s palm oil business with four investments—two loans totaling $62.5 million and two financial guarantees totaling $83.33 million. In 2006, amid that infusion of support from the IFC, Wilmar bought Asiatic Persada.

After the purchase, Wilmar backed out of a promise by Asiatic Persada that it would set aside more than 1,500 acres within its concession for use by the Batin Sembilan. Wilmar instead proposed to establish a cooperative on what would remain company-managed land 18 miles away from Revan’s village, to be shared with other indigenous groups. The Batin Sembilan rejected the offer, in part because of fears that they’d face conflicts trying to share limited territory with other groups.

Tensions between Wilmar and residents escalated, with the company eventually forbidding the Batin Sembilan from collecting fallen oil-palm fruits—the sale of which had been among the few sources of income left to them. In July 2011, the company called in government police. A month later, after a tussle with a resident accused of stealing fruit, the bulldozers rolled in. Work crews flattened Revan’s village and two other settlements, evicting 83 families in all, including dozens of children.

Wilmar declined to answer questions about the evictions or other issues relating to its operations, explaining “it is no longer our place to comment on this case” since it sold Asiatic Persada two years ago. In a statement released two weeks after the 2011 evictions, the company referred to the residents of the hamlets as “illegal occupants” and asserted that “no one has been forcibly removed from their land.”

“These incidents are unfortunate,” the statement added, “but we firmly believe that just as the local communities are entitled to human rights, law enforcement personnel must enforce law and order to underpin those rights, as well as protect themselves. Similarly, Wilmar has a duty to protect our employees from risk and harm.”

No sanctuary

 

The landscape that Revan and many other Batin Sembilan kids now call home amounts to an endless sea of oil palm. The native flora is all but gone. Everything here, including the dump trucks that ply the rutted roads around the clock, is dwarfed by the massive fronds that hang over the place like the wings of some giant, prehistoric bird. The rumble of the trucks and other equipment used for transport and maintenance often scares the children, a reminder of the bulldozers that destroyed their homes.
Amid the nutmeg-hued soil and the muted green of the trees, the only contrast in color comes from the shiny orange oil-palm fruits themselves, which glow from within the spiky palm bunches piled at intervals along the side of the road.

The area’s once-temperate weather is a thing of the past. The oil-palm tree, which consumes roughly 80 gallons of water a day, soaks up moisture from the ground like a giant sponge. The practice of clearing plantation land leads to warmer local water temperatures, according to a 2014 study by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Minnesota. The lack of forest canopy means that air temperatures do the same, locals say.

During the evictions four years ago, the few fruit trees that remained in Revan’s village, which had been planted by the community’s ancestors, were dug up and tossed in the dirt.

Now Revan and other children eat mostly cassava leaves and government-issued rice. The single shop that operates near the communities inside the concession rarely has fruits or vegetables. Instead, brightly colored packages of candy and fried snacks share the shelves with multiple brands of clove cigarettes.

Revan’s mom occasionally gets fish from the river. Locals say that one hardy species manages to survive in the tea-colored water, thick with runoff from the plantation and contaminated, they claim, with fertilizer and pesticides. Once a month or so the family cobbles together enough cash to buy meat or eggs.

Revan’s family continues to use the river for bathing, and to wash their clothes. Getting there means spending money on fuel for their motorbike—it’s too far to walk—and driving past the site where their house once stood, now overgrown with tall grass. A sign nearby warns that “damage to this land” will result in five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to 5 billion rupiah, or more than $350,000.

Downplaying risks

 

Indigenous peoples who have been forced from their homes because of the expansion of Wilmar’s plantations turned to the World Bank Group for help, filing a series of complaints with its Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, which deals with issues involving loans to corporate clients.

The complaints charged that the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, the IFC, had ignored its own social safeguard rules, allowing the company to take indigenous peoples’ traditional lands without due process or consultation. This has created social conflicts that triggered “repressive actions” by corporate and government security forces, a 2007 complaint said.

The ombudsman unit later found that IFC officials had downplayed the risks of their investments in Wilmar. The IFC was aware for more than 20 years that Indonesia’s palm oil sector was damaging the environment and disrupting the lives of local populations, but it gave in to “commercial pressures” to ignore problems on plantations within Wilmar’s supply chain, according to a 2009 report.

By early 2012, the ombudsman unit had helped negotiate a series of agreements that reduced police presence on the Sumatran concession and arranged for compensation to be paid to Revan’s family and others who had lost their homes. In April 2013, however, Wilmar sold off its stake in Asiatic Persada to a pair of companies, one of them owned by the younger brother of Wilmar’s co-founder. The new owners withdrew from the negotiations, effectively voiding all agreements.

The ombudsman later issued a report asserting that the sale “had direct and indirect adverse consequences for the affected communities.” The case, which opened the IFC to criticism that its safeguards could be evaded by a change of ownership in any offending parties, remains under investigation.

Asiatic Persada has resumed its aggressive tactics within the concession. In December 2013, it evicted 150 families and destroyed their homes, in a scene reminiscent of the 2011 evictions, according to reports by local and international news organizations. In March 2014, one resident was beaten to death and five injured during another clash with security personnel on the Jambi concession.

Repeated attempts to get a reply for this story from Asiatic Persada or its new owners were unsuccessful.

‘We belong here’

 

 Some families have moved off the Jambi concession, tired of the fights and the locked-down atmosphere on the inside. “We have more peace of mind outside the gates,” said a woman named Rogaya, who relocated with her husband and three children to a relative’s home in a nearby village. Revan’s family has stayed close to its old home place with the hope of maintaining the tribe’s—and children’s—traditional connections to the land.

For centuries, the Batin Sembilan have raised their sons and daughters to revere the soil, water and plants and to pay respect to the spirits of ancestors believed to inhabit the tribe’s territory.

Revan’s dad, Irsan, worries his son and daughters are losing their identities as indigenous children. Moving away would only make that worse. He says that even if the company offered what for him would be a fortune—200 million rupiah (roughly $15,000)—it wouldn’t be enough to drive him from the lands where the Batin Sembilan have given birth and died for as long as anyone can remember.
“I don’t care about how much the house costs. I care about the fact that our ancestors left this for us,” the father says. “We belong here.”

They are no longer alone. The company’s security guards are a constant presence on the maze-like roads that snake through the rows of oil-palm trees. Residents are jittery about engaging with visitors. As the sun begins to set, they nervously shoo people off company property. They suggest that a reporter and photographer leave immediately, fearing that all might be in physical danger if the guards were to catch them talking.

“There is a lot of intimidation,” Revan’s dad says. “I feel frightened and confused.”

His son hopes one day that he and his parents and sisters can regain their land and reestablish their lives by the river. As soon as it’s safe, Revan intends to help his dad dismantle the worn, mismatched planks of their new home in the relocation settlement so they can nail them back together on the place where his mother was born.

Yes, Revan says softly, he’s still angry with the palm oil company. But he knows his options for the future are limited. So he hopes one day to get a job working at the plantation.

Maybe as a guard.

“If I am security,” he says, “I will feel less scared. I might be able to carry a gun.”

The West's Dilemma: Why Assad Is Uninterested in Defeating Islamic State

By Christoph Reuter
Source: Der Spiegel

In the fight against Islamic State, the West is considering cooperating with the Syrian army. There's a hitch though: Assad's troops aren't just too weak to defeat IS -- they also have no interest in doing so.

Sunday, Nov. 29, was market day in Ariha, a small city located in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. In May, various rebel groups had taken control of the town, which is legendary for its deep-red cherries. Ariha is located far from the front, and even further away from areas under the control of Islamic State (IS). But the Russian air force bombed it anyway.

The people shopping at the market didn't stand a chance. Just seconds after the roar of the approaching Russian Sukhoi fighter jet first became audible, the first bombs struck. They killed passersby, vegetable sellers and entire families. "I saw torn up bodies flying around and children calling for their parents," said a civil defense rescuer hours after the attack. One day prior, just before 10 a.m., it was the turn of Safarana, a small city northeast of Homs. A first barrel bomb, dropped out of a Syrian regime helicopter, killed a man and a young girl and injured more than a dozen others. The victims had hardly been delivered to the clinic when two more barrel bombs exploded in front of the hospital, operated by Doctors without Borders, killing patients and paramedics who were caring for those who had just arrived.

Such attacks are nothing new in Syria. Jets from both Syria and Russia continue unhindered to bomb markets, hospitals, bakeries and pretty much any other place where people gather in the provinces that are under rebel control. Two years ago, Russia voted in favor of United Nations Resolution 2139, which was supposed to bring an end to attacks on Syrian civilians. But that hasn't prevented Russia from flying hundreds of exactly those kinds of bombing raids itself since the end of September. And that, in turn, hasn't prevented France from talking to Russia about the possibility of conducting coordinated air strikes and joining together in the fight against Islamic State.

Just three weeks after the terror attacks in Paris, Europe has prepared itself for entry into this war against Islamic State. But it is a war that unites many radically divergent elements -- and one for which there is no strategy. French jets, joined recently by British warplanes, are now flying sorties against IS in Syria. And Germany will soon join them. German Tornado jets, equipped with high-resolution imaging technology, are to help identify targets while A-310 aircraft will refuel warplanes in the air. In addition, a German frigate is to provide protection to a French aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

Partnership with the Dictator
 
But beyond Germany's limited contribution to the air war, Berlin and Paris are discussing a vastly more sensitive and extremely uncertain engagement on the ground. Meanwhile, the French government -- which had long been a vocal opponent of Syrian President Bashar Assad -- recently introduced the idea of a possible partnership with the dictator and his troops in a joint alliance to fight IS.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen recently said somewhat awkwardly of Syria: "There are parts of the troops, that one could very well -- like in the Iraq example, where the training of local troops was very successful -- emulate here too." Her spokesperson quickly made it clear that such a concept doesn't apply to troops under Assad's command. But the idea of cooperating with Assad is one under discussion: Islamic State terror in Europe would seem to have partially rehabilitated the dictator.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even proposed that fighting between the Syrian opposition and regime troops could be "discontinued, for a start." Steinmeier's words reveal his frustration at the fact that the two sides are engaging each other in a war of attrition instead of joining forces against IS. But the reality on the ground refuses to conform to his aspirations.

Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to identify such a potential partner for Europe on the Syrian battlegrounds. Assad's official army is now just one of many fighting forces on the side of the regime -- and is also suffering from poor morale and a lack of soldiers. For many young Syrians from areas under government control, forced conscription has become the most significant motivator for embarking on the refugee trail to Europe. 

This is also one reason why Russia's initial strategy for Syria is not finding success. Moscow had been hoping that massive air strikes would force rebel fighters in opposition-held areas to abandon the fight. That would then pave the way for Assad's ground forces to advance and take back those regions. But in October, when Assad's tank units rolled into those areas that Russian jets had previously bombed, they didn't get very far. Instead of fleeing, rebels there had dug in instead.

Syrian Fighting Force?
 
Using TOW anti-tank missiles supplied by the US, in addition to Russian anti-tank weapons that had been captured or acquired from corrupt officers, the rebels struck some 20 tanks before the others turned back. The army's ground offensive south of Aleppo likewise quickly ground to a halt. Meanwhile, rebels near Hama were able to finally take control of a long-contested city.

Assad's army isn't just vulnerable, it also isn't strictly a Syrian force anymore. For the last two years, the forces on his side have increasingly been made up of foreigners, including Revolutionary Guards from Iran, members of Iraqi militias and Hezbollah units from Lebanon. They are joined at the front by Shiite Afghans from the Hazara people, up to 2 million of whom live in Iran, mostly as illegal immigrants. They are forcibly conscripted in Iranian prisons and sent to Syria -- according to internal Iranian estimates, there are between 10,000 and 20,000 of them fighting in the country. The situation leads to absurd scenes: In the southern Syrian town of Daraa, rebels began desperately searching for Persian interpreters after an offensive of 2,500 Afghans suddenly began approaching.

It is the first international Shiite jihad in history, one which has been compensating for the demographic inferiority of Assad's troops since 2012. The alliance has prevented Assad's defeat, but it hasn't been enough for victory either. Furthermore, the orders are no longer coming exclusively from the Syrian officer corps. Iranian officers control their own troops in addition to the Afghan units, and they plan offensives that also involve Syrian soldiers. Hezbollah commanders coordinate small elite units under their control. Iraqis give orders to Iraqi and Pakistani militia groups. And the Russians don't let anyone tell them what to do.

The odd alliances aren't just limited to the Shiite fighters. Anti-Assad rebels were recently surprised to see American Humvees -- a vehicle that quickly became a symbol of IS attacks after the Islamists captured hundreds of them in Iraq in summer 2014 -- rolling towards them from government-controlled territory. "We thought only IS had captured Humvees, but the Shiite militias fighting alongside Assad use them too," said Osama Abu Zaid, a local legal advisor to various groups belonging to the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Elsewhere, attacks by Assad supporters and by Islamic State have likewise taken place with astonishing temporal and geographic proximity to each other. Near the northern Syrian city of Tal Rifaat in early November, for example, an IS suicide attacker detonated his car bomb at an FSA base, though without causing much damage. Just half an hour later, two witnesses say, Russian jets attacked the same base for the first time.

Unsurprising Cooperation
 
Was it a coincidence? Likely not. There have been dozens of cases since 2014 in which Assad's troops and IS have apparently been coordinating attacks on rebel groups, with the air force bombing them from above and IS firing at them from the ground. In early June, the US State Department announced that the regime wasn't just avoiding IS positions, but was actively reinforcing them.

Such cooperation isn't surprising. The rebels -- in all their variety, from nationalists to radical Islamists -- represent the greatest danger to both Assad and IS. And if the two sides want to survive in the long term, the Syrian dictator and the jihadists are useful to each other. From Assad's perspective, if the rebels were to be vanquished, the world would no longer see an alternative to the Syrian dictator. But the rebels are also primarily Sunni, as are two-thirds of the Syrian populace -- meaning that, from the IS perspective, once the rebels were defeated, the populace would be faced either with submission and exile, or they would join IS.

In short, a Syria free of rebels would put both Assad and Islamic State in powerful positions, though not powerful enough to defeat the other. Still, such a situation would be vastly preferable to the alternatives: Being toppled from power (Assad), or being destroyed (IS).

Relative to those two camps, the Syrian opposition in the West is hardly being paid attention to anymore. That is in part a function of their confusing structure: There are dozens of larger rebel groups and hundreds of smaller units, mostly at a local level. They cooperate, but alliances often crumble due to the ideological differences of their foreign supporters.

British Prime Minister David Cameron presented numbers last week indicating the existence of some 70,000 moderate rebels. In addition, he said, there were two large Islamist groups: Ahrar al-Sham in the north, with 15,000 fighters; and Jaish al-Islam north of Damascus, with 12,500 militiamen -- and the al-Qaida-allied group Nusra Front, with its 6,000 to 10,000 men. Cameron had hardly finished reciting the numbers before questions were raised as to whether the 70,000 he cited were prepared to partner with the West in the battle against Islamic State. They have, though, been fighting against Islamic State since January 2014 -- but have primarily focused their fight on Assad.

Significant Moral Question
 
Sending ground troops into such a situation, or even lending legitimacy to the Russian-Syrian offensive, would unwittingly transform Europe into Assad's vassals. Beyond that, the dictator would have to be given troop reinforcements so that he could halfway successfully advance against the enemy.

Even if one were to ignore all of the military problems, there is also a significant moral question: Would the West really want to go into battle with a regime that has used, aside from nuclear weapons, pretty much every weapon imaginable against its own populace in an effort to cling to power? And once Islamic State is defeated and driven away, what should happen with the cities -- such as Raqqa, Deir el-Zour, al-Bab, Manbij and Abu Kamal -- that they now hold? All those cities had been take over by local rebels long before Islamic State moved in. Who should such areas be given to?
Certainly not to Assad. That would merely turn the clock back on this war by three years. Rebel groups would once again try to throw out Assad's troops -- and ultimately Islamic State would strike again.

Making matters even more complicated is the fact that IS, the declared enemy-number-one of international efforts, is receding from the focus of two major foreign actors in Syria. Ever since Turkey shot down the Russian jet, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin have been engaged in a proxy war in the Aleppo province, a conflict which has seen Kurdish IS-opponents exchanging fire with Sunni IS-opponents in recent days. Furthermore, Russian jets have stepped up their bombing campaign against Syrian settlements along the border with Turkey while the Turkish secret service is sending weapons and ammunition into the fight against the Kurds. Both presidents have fragile egos, and Syria has emerged as the perfect playing field for them to get Kurdish YPG units and rebel groups -- both of which had thus far focused their efforts on Islamic State -- to fight against each other.

And Islamic State? The jihadists had been facing significant pressure in recent months from ongoing air strikes launched by the US-led coalition. Not because it had lost ground, but because it had been unable to continue its advance. The group's exploitative economy and its propaganda image both make a steady stream of victories necessary. The "caliphate" is facing financial difficulties and is also having trouble recruiting more foreign fighters. An expansion of allied air strikes could likely increase the pressure, while cooperation with Assad would put Islamic State in a perfect strategic position.

But for as long as Islamic State's enemies are busy fighting each other, the Islamists can carry on as before. Like last Wednesday, when the jihadists took over the small city of Kafra north of Aleppo -- not long after it had been bombed by Russian jets.