Lebanon Protests: Hezbollah’s Losses and Advantages

U.S. Democrats Draw Conflicting Lessons from UK Elections

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Lebanon Protests: Hezbollah’s Losses and Advantages

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More than two months into the Lebanon Protests, and after many attempts by Hezbollah to bring back their favorite candidate – Saad Hariri – to form a government, Hezbollah finally decided to take the risky route and nominate Hassan Diab the next prime minister.

Thousands protested against the country’s new leader, saying he should abandon the post because he is a member of the ruling elite. In this week’s cover story, Hanin Ghaddar writes that his appointment leads to two problems: dividing the protestors, and planting the seeds of a Sunni-Shia rift, as the Sunni community. She also explains how Hezbollah’s latest maneuver and the violent and aggressive methods it used against the protestors will lead to major losses.

US senators who control the fate of President Donald Trump left Washington, DC, for a holiday break on last week with no agreement over how they will handle the Senate trial to consider his impeachment charges in January.

Joseph Braude writes about the continuing partisan conflict over the impeachment in which congressional leaders remain at loggerheads and Democrats renew call for witnesses and documents in impeachment trial.

Also, this week, Braude takes a look what Labour’s historic defeat in the UK elections does and doesn’t teach U.S. Democrats on the other side of the Atlantic and the electoral challenge they face with the 2020 White House contest.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

22 Modi Pushes India Into Revolt

Issue 1780- December- 27/12/2019

18 NATO Is Not Brain Dead

16 Trump’s Impeachment Battle Remains at an Impasse

08 Iraqi President Threatens to Quit in Defiance of Iran›s Allies in Parliament

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Palestinian artisans make Christmas toys at Zeina Association and Cooperative for Handicraft in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip on December 24, 2019. (Getty)

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A protester holds up a flare during a demonstration in Lyon, France. Hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country staged a show of force against the government’s controversial pension reform plans. (AP) 7

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militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, had nominated Basra Governor Asaad al-Edani to be the next prime minister following weeks of political deadlock. But Salih said in a statement that appointing Edani would not placate protesters demanding an independent prime minister with no party affiliation or help calm the unrest that has rocked the country. He said that because the constitution does not give him the right to reject nominees for the premiership, he was ready to quit.

Netanyahu Wins Landslide in Battle for Likud Party Leadership

Turkey to Send Troops to Libya at Tripoli›s Request Turkey will send troops to Libya at the request of Tripoli as soon as next month, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, putting the North African country’s conflict at the centre of wider regional frictions. Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli has been struggling to fend off General Khalifa Haftar’s forces, which have been supported by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan. An official in Tripoli confirmed a formal request had been made for Turkish military support in the air,

on the ground and at sea. The official, who asked not to be named, spoke after the GNA’s interior minister, Fathi Bashagha, suggested in comments to reporters in Tunis that no such request had yet been made.

Iraqi President Threatens to Quit in Defiance of Iran›s Allies in Parliament Iraqi President Barham Salih refused on Thursday to designate the nominee of an Iranbacked parliamentary bloc for prime minister, saying he would rather resign than appoint someone to the position who would be rejected by protesters. The Bina bloc, led by Iran-backed

Benjamin Netanyahu has won a landslide victory in a primary election for leadership of the ruling Likud party in Israel. Official results announced early on Friday showed Netanyahu capturing %72 of the votes, compared with %28 for challenger Gideon Saar. Earlier, Netanyahu had declared a huge victory following an exit poll that put him on course for more than %70 of the vote. The prime minister, head of Likud for the past 14 years, retained the famously loyal rightwing party’s leadership in the internal ballot, despite battling three damning corruption indictments.

Saudi Arabia Sentences Five to Death Over Khashoggi Murder Saudi Arabia on Monday sentenced five people to death and three to jail over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A Saudi

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festive celebrations, has killed 28 people and left at least another 12 missing. Typhoon Phanfone, known locally as Typhoon Ursula, slammed into Eastern Samar province on Christmas Eve. The storm tore roofs off houses and toppled electric posts with winds of 195km (120 miles) per hour as it cut across the cluster of islands of the Eastern Visayas region, southern Luzon and Western Visayas on Christmas Day. Several islands were severely flooded, houses were torn apart and washed away and trees were blown down, while disaster agencies reported that many major roads had become impassable. court rejected the findings of a U.N. inquiry by ruling that the killing was not premeditated, but carried out “at the spur of the moment”.

Saudi Deputy Public Prosecutor and spokesman Shalaan al-Shalaan said the court dismissed charges against three of the 11 people tried, finding them not guilty. A Saudi prosecutor said there was no evidence connecting one of those senior officials, Saud al-Qahtani, to the killing and the court dismissed charges against Ahmed al-Asiri, a former deputy intelligence chief.

Russia, China, Iran Start Joint Naval Drills in Indian Ocean Iran, China and Russia began joint naval drills on Friday in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman, in what Moscow said was an unprecedented exercise in naval cooperation and training.

Waters around Iran have become a focus for international tensions, with the United States

exerting pressure for Iranian crude oil sales and other trade ties to be cut off.

“The message of this exercise is peace, friendship and lasting security through cooperation and unity... and its result will be to show that Iran cannot be isolated,” Iranian flotilla admiral Gholamreza Tahani said on state television. The broadcaster said the drills included rescuing ships on fire or vessels under attack by pirates and shooting exercises. The Gulf of Oman is a particularly sensitive waterway as it connects to the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes and which in turn connects to the Gulf.

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28 Typhoon Phanfone Kills at Least in Philippines A typhoon that ripped across central Philippines on Christmas Day, uprooting houses, wreaking havoc in popular tourist areas and devastating

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The White House on Sunday signalled comfort with plans by Senate Republicans to avoid new witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, while a top Democrat seized on a newly released email on the withholding of U.S. aid to Ukraine to press his case for testimony. The Democratic-led House of Representatives approved two impeachment charges against Trump on Wednesday over his pressuring of Ukraine to investigate a political rival. There is little chance he will be convicted and removed from office through a trial in a Senate controlled by fellow Republicans.

Democrats are pushing to call top Trump aides to testify, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants the Senate to consider the case without hearing from new witnesses.

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Lebanon Protests: Hezbollah’s Losses and Advantages

Hezbollah Will Continue to Make Compromises if International Pressure and Consensus Continue 10

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by Hanin Ghaddar More than two months into the Lebanon Protests, and after many attempts by Hezbollah to bring back their favorite candidate – Saad Hariri – to form a government, Hezbollah finally decided to take the risky route and nominate Hassan Diab the next prime minister.

Diab came by the votes of Hezbollah and allies only, signaling a very radical move to the international community, the day that US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale arrived in Beirut.

HEZBOLLAH’S MANEUVERS

Supporters of Lebanon›s Shiite Hezbollah and Amal groups hurl fireworks at security forces early on December 2019 ,17 in central Beirut. (Getty)

Hale reportedly told officials in Lebanon that his country is going to withhold aid to Lebanon if Hezbollah gets ministerial seats or indirectly controls the new government. He also relayed a firm message to officials regarding the position of Lebanon in the region, and reiterated persistence of US sanctions against Hezbollah and Iran and that the Lebanese state must distance itself from the party.

During his two-day visit to Beirut last week, the US diplomat said Washington is ready to help Lebanon “but can do so only when Lebanon›s leaders undertake a credible, visible and demonstrable commitment to reform.”

Despite the controversy of his meeting with foreign minister Gebran Bassil, Hale’s message remained firm and consistent: Lebanon will not be bailed out by the international community unless a credible government is formed and reforms are implemented.

So why did Hezbollah decide to take the controversial route?

Some believe that Hariri is still Hezbollah’s favorite candidate, and that nominating Diab was a maneuver to scare both the Lebanese street and the international community of what an alternative to Hariri would look like. Eventually, Hezbollah will drop Diab – when everyone starts feeling the economic and security consequences of his nomination – and eventually accept Hariri as a compromise to maintain stability and hope for financial assistance.

For Hezbollah, Diab’s nomination, which came without any substantial Sunni cover, will lead to two problems: dividing the protestors, and planting the seeds of a Sunni-Shia rift, as the Sunni community will take to the street with a sectarian rhetoric against the nomination of Diab. And that’s exactly what happened, threatening the non-sectarian and peaceful rhetoric of the Lebanese

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For Hezbollah, Diab’s nomination, which came without any substantial Sunni cover, will lead to two problems: dividing the protestors, and planting the seeds of a Sunni-Shia rift, as the Sunni community will take to the street with a sectarian rhetoric against the nomination of Diab. protests.

It is too early to judge whether this plan will work or not, but it is clear that Hezbollah has suffered many losses along the way.

WHAT DID HEZBOLLAH LOSE? First, Hezbollah lost credibility.

In his first speech after the October 17 revolution, Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah promised his audience that the government will never resign. A few days later, the government resigned. Nasrallah also instead that Bassil’s party – The Free Patriotic Movement - will be represented in the next government.

A few days later, Bassil was asked to withdraw, which he did, but also refused to nominate Hariri. Hariri could not get the nomination – as Hezbollah desired – so he withdrew, and Hezbollah was forced to name Hassan Diab, who can never gain the trust of the street and the international community.

Hezbollah has been insisting on a government that combines politicians and technocrats. However, and based on Diab’s recent statements, the next government will include only technocrats and specialists. Of course these do not have to be independent technocrats and specialists, and they can still – in a technocratic manner - serve Hezbollah’s agenda, but it is still a step back from Hezbollah’s original ask.

Second, Hezbollah lost popular support.

In a matter of two months, Hezbollah’s image shifted from being the protector of Lebanon to the enemy of Lebanon. These protests are about economic reforms

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and against corruption. All Hezbollah did was protect its corrupt political allies, such as Gebran Bassil and Speaker Nabih Berri, in addition to fight the formation of any credible and capable government that can save Lebanon rom the upcoming financial meltdown and bankruptcy.

The Lebanese, including many within the Shia community, today see Hezbollah as the main hindrance that is blocking Lebanon from moving forward and in the right directions.

Third, Hezbollah isolated itself further.

Despite Gulf and US pressure on Hezbollah and its access into Lebanon’s state institutions, Hezbollah managed to keep a more or less friendly relationship with European states, mainly France and Germany, where Hezbollah has not been completely designated as a terrorist organization.

However, with its latest maneuver and the violent and aggressive methods it used against the protestors, Hezbollah managed to lose on two fronts: One, the international community reached a consensus during the Paris meeting. This consensus certainly does not suit Hezbollah and its allies as they realized that the meeting called for reforms and anti-corruption measures that can only be achieved by an independent and credible government.

Two, Germany’s parliament adopted a motion last Thursday urging the government to ban Hezbollah from operating in the country. According to the Wall Street Journal, the motion was initiated by lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc and backed by the center-left Social Democrats—the junior

Eventually, as the economy deteriorates and the people start feeling its repercussion on their daily life and living standards, Hezbollah will be at the core of people’s complaints and anger.

There is no going back from there.

partner in her coalition—with support from some opposition representatives. Government officials said the broad backing made it likely the government would act on the motion early next year.

Accordingly, all Hezbollah’s activities, including fundraising, will be banned in Germany. The motion also called on Berlin to lobby other European countries to no longer treat Hezbollah separately from its military wing, which is already mostly banned from operating in Europe.

Fourth, Hezbollah will be blamed for the economic collapse of the State.

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Lebanese outgoing prime minister Saad Hariri meets with Prime Ministerdesignate Hassan Diab (L) in Beirut on December 2019 ,20.

(Getty)

Hezbollah had the choice to step back and make compromises, allow for a new government to be formed to deal with the economic disaster and reforms, gain the trust of the international community, and save Lebanon from total bankruptcy.

However, Hezbollah decided to hang on to power and refuse to let go. Instead of listening to the streets, it preferred to listen to its corrupt political allies, and its sponsors in Tehran.

Eventually, as the economy deteriorates and the people start feeling its repercussion on their daily life and living standards, Hezbollah will be at the core of

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people’s complaints and anger. There is no going back from there.

Looking forward, there are a number of scenarios, but one thing remains clear: Lebanon is heading towards real collapse and no one will save it. And Hezbollah knows that. Another thing that is clear is that Hezbollah has already made many compromises and they will continue to make compromises if international pressure and consensus continue.

Hanin Ghaddar is the inaugural Friedmann Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute.

U.S. Democrats Draw Conflicting Lessons from UK Elections Moderate Candidates Point to Labour’s Defeat as a Cautionary Tale of the Perils of Moving Too Far to the Left 14

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by Joseph Braude As the dust settles on the UK parliamentary elections, American political analysts are seeking to draw lessons for the tumult ahead in Washington. Rival factions of the Democratic party are pointing to the outcome in Britain to bolster their case in this year’s primary elections, with centrists contending that Corbyn’s defeat should prompt Democrats to adopt a moderate platform while progressives have sought to downplay or resist a move to the right.

CENTRIST DEMOCRATS SEEK LESSONS IN LABOUR’S LOSS As the Democratic party moves toward holding primary elections in February for selecting its 2020 presidential nominee, moderate candidates have pointed to Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s defeat as a cautionary tale of the perils of moving too far to the left. “Boris Johnson is winning in a walk,” Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, told those attending one of his campaign’s fundraisers in San Francisco. “Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left. It comes up with ideas that are not able to be contained within a rational basis quickly.” Biden went on to make explicit the dangers awaiting Democrats of a potentially similar outcome in the U.S.: “You’re also going to see people saying, ‘My God, Boris Johnson, who is kind of a physical and emotional clone of the president, is able to win.›”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrive for the state opening of parliament at the Houses of Parliament on December 2019 ,19 in London, England.

(Getty)

Another veteran of the Obama administration, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, called Corbyn’s defeat “a lesson for all Democrats who are eager to replace Trump.” Emanuel, who served as President Obama’s chief of staff for the first two years of his administration, located the driver of Labour’s defeat in a mixture of indiscipline and ideological excess: “There was no skimping on the progressive agenda and it was the worst performance in two decades. It’s not just economics. You have to have a candidate and a message that’s close to the zeitgeist of the moment — not just a grab bag of giveaways.”

Several American analysts on the left side of the spectrum have similarly attributed Labour’s poor showing to a lack of discipline in messaging. David Leonhardt of the New York Times argued that Corbyn was defeated by the failings of “intellectual leftism,” which “isn’t a winning message in many places.” In Leonhardt’s assessment, “voters, in Britain and the

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Several American analysts on the left side of the spectrum have similarly attributed Labour’s poor showing to a lack of discipline in messaging.

United States, remain progressive on most economic issues (which explains Johnson’s campaign promises of more government spending), but progressive economic policies aren’t enough. Candidates need a more instinctual way to make frustrated voters hear: I get it, and I’m on your side.”

PROGRESSIVE CAMPAIGNS PUSH BACK Within the progressive wing of the Democratic party, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign attempted to deflect the fallout onto Bernie Sanders, her main rival to consolidating leadership over the most left flank of the party. Campaign surrogate Murshed Zaheed, a partner at Megaphone Strategies, said, «Corbyn was basically a satellite project for Bernie world. If there is one lesson to be gleaned from the devastating loss across the pond, it›s that we need more than just soaring rhetoric backed up by bravado of organizing. … We need to have leaders who have crystal-clear analysis of how to solve problems and leverage power to achieve those solutions. Corbyn never appeared to be a candidate with any sound plans on how to move the U.K. forward.”

Within Sanders’ orbit, the primary response has been to maintain a discrete silence over the election outcome. Some of Sanders’ stalwarts have argued that the Conservative victory should drive Democrats to adopt more progressive policies, rather than less.

Congressman Ro Khanna, a Sanders surrogate and campaign co-chair, disputed that Corbyn’s loss should cause voters to question Sanders’ viability, arguing instead that “What the U.K. elections show is that the technology revolution and globalization has led to deindustrialization and stagnation of wages for the working class … The task of the left is to offer an aspirational vision instead — how can we bring new, good paying jobs to people and communities left behind.”

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Trump’s Impeachment Battle Remains at an Impasse While Congress Remains at Loggerheads, Democrats Renew Call for Impeachment Witnesses and Documents

by Joseph Braude

A PROCESS STALLED IN THE HOUSE

Partisan conflict over the impeachment of President Trump remains the central preoccupation of Washington and the American public discussion.

House Speaker Pelosi, having passed two articles of impeachment through the House of Representatives, has refrained from sending them to the Senate for trial in an apparent bid to extract concessions from Senate Majority Leader McConnell on the conduct of the trial.

As 2019 draws to a close, the impeachment process, which has impeded much of the government’s business in Washington, has come to loggerheads. In theory, once the House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment, the only obligations left to them were to notify the Senate of their conclusions, appoint “impeachment managers,” and allow the higher chamber to reach a verdict. Since Republicans hold the Senate by a

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47-53 majority, and 67 votes are required to convict a President and remove him from office, it is widely believed that President Trump’s acquittal at a Senate trial is a foregone conclusion.

But the Democratic-led House has refrained from naming impeachment managers and handing off the impeachment file to the Senate, and shows no sign of doing so in the immediate future. Explaining the decision, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, «The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct. President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process.»

THE POSSIBILITY OF NEW EVIDENCE, AND NEW ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media following a Christmas Eve video teleconference with members of the military at his Mara-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Dec. 2019 ,24. (Getty)

Other Democratic leaders have expanded on this complaint, in an apparent bid to extract concessions from Republican leaders as to the nature of the upcoming Senate trial — in the form of additional witness testimony and release of privileged White House documents. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer elaborated yesterday, “What are Senator McConnell and President Trump so afraid will happen if we get all the facts out? Release the emails. Let the witnesses testify.” Schumer subsequently tweeted out a list of documents which Senate Democrats are demanding the White House release before the trial commences.

Shortly afterward, the Democratic legal counsel for the House Judiciary, writing in a court filing on Monday, demanded that White House chief counsel Don McGahn testify before the House held out the possibility of new articles of impeachment, arguing, “If McGahn’s testimony produces new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the Articles

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Other Democratic leaders have expanded on this complaint, in an apparent bid to extract concessions from Republican leaders as to the nature of the upcoming Senate trial — in the form of additional witness testimony and release of privileged White House documents. approved by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly — including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment.”

REPUBLICAN REJOINDERS Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the putative target of this pressure campaign, has been unmoved by the complaints of his Democratic rivals. «If we go down the witness path, we›re going to want the whistleblower. We›re going to want Hunter Biden. You can see here that this would be kind of a mutual assured destruction,» McConnell warned in an interview with Fox News. «We know how it›s going to end. The president is not going to be removed from office.” Responding to complaints about the impartiality of the Republican Senators soon to try Donald Trump, he asked, “Do you think Chuck Schumer is impartial? Do you think Elizabeth Warren is impartial?

Bernie Sanders is impartial? So let’s quit the charade. This is a political exercise.”

For his part, President Trump dismissed Democratic demands with characteristic finality: “Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that Republicans in the Senate should handle the Impeachment Hoax in the exact same manner as Democrats in the House handled their recent partisan scam? Why would it be different for Republicans than it was for the Radical Left Democrats?”

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NATO Is Not Brain Dead The Alliance Is Transforming Faster Than Most People Think

by Rose Gottemoelle In November, French President Emmanuel Macron told The Economist that NATO so lacked direction that it was suffering “brain death.” The remark drew criticism from both European and U.S. officials, but when the leaders of NATO member states met in London on December 4, Macron’s words served as a catalyst. Indeed, as Macron said after the summit, his comments were like a giant “icebreaker,” making a lot of noise but clearing the way for the alliance to plow forward.

The alliance has much to grapple with. It must contend

with a resurgent Russia, a rising China, continuing terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the imperative to keep up with advances in military technology. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, took the occasion of the London meeting to begin a review process, in which the alliance would determine how it will confront the new realities of the twenty-first century.

The moment recalls a similar one in 1966. That year, the French “icebreaker” came from Charles de Gaulle, who withdrew France from the military command structure of NATO, claiming that obligations to NATO impinged on France’s national sovereignty. Pierre Harmel, the Belgian

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foreign minister, subsequently undertook a consultative review and submitted its findings to NATO’s council of ministers. The Harmel Report of 1967 produced the philosophy that would guide NATO for the next fifty years: the alliance would pursue a “two-track” approach, combining strong military deterrence with a willingness to embrace détente and dialogue with the Soviet Union.

The alliance has faced growing challenges in recent years.

In 2014, NATO responded simultaneously to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and to the emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq by putting in place quick-response capabilities for Europe and providing airborne warning and control near Syrian air space. But to be nimble in handling today’s threats is not enough. NATO must prepare for the threats of tomorrow, when dynamics may be more complex than those between superpowers in the twentieth century. To plan for such a world will signal that the alliance is far from brain dead.

TALK WITH RUSSIA? Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, NATO has had to adapt to the possibility of future aggression from Moscow.

At a 2016 summit in Warsaw, NATO devised four multinational battlegroups totaling around 4,500 soldiers.

Just one year later, the alliance deployed these groups to the Baltic states and Poland. The leaders at the London summit agreed to continue building military capabilities that would put the Kremlin on notice that NATO intends to defend itself from any incursion.

NATO leaders listen to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (centre right) while attending their summit at the Grove Hotel on December 2019 ,4 in Watford, England.

(Getty)

In the years following Russia’s seizure of Crimea, NATO has emphasized such deterrence, while dialogue with Moscow has taken a back seat. “No business as usual” with Russia has become the alliance’s strict policy. The NATO-Russia Council presents one of a few exceptions.

Under the aegis of that body, NATO leaders continue to meet with Russian officials, but mostly with the goal of reminding Russia of the gravity of its actions in Ukraine.

The meetings are infrequent and do not address immediate problems.

Some NATO members, including Macron, believe that the time has come for greater détente. Russia is one of the big geostrategic players, the French president asserts, and it cannot be kept away from the table. But not all NATO allies agree. Among the dissenters are Poland, the Baltic states, and—at least up till now—the United States. U.S.-Russian diplomacy shows signs of warming, however. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Washington on December 10 was a possible harbinger of a new American readiness to work with Moscow.

If NATO chooses Macron’s route and tries to renew

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If NATO chooses Macron’s route and tries to renew relations with Russia, the alliance must be careful lest its actions be construed as rewarding Moscow for aggressive behavior. relations with Russia, the alliance must be careful lest its actions be construed as rewarding Moscow for aggressive behavior. It will also need to bring its reluctant members on board. The best way to achieve these ends is for NATO to focus its efforts on arms control. After all, every NATO member state has an interest in reducing the nuclear threat.

Earlier this year, for instance, NATO allies consulted closely over Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. After months of hard work and careful consideration of intelligence, member states unanimously agreed that the Russian 9M729 missile was not in compliance with the terms of the treaty. An alliance capable of reaching such a consensus can also develop a shared, positive agenda on arms control policy.

NATO could then play a crucial part in future negotiations between Washington and Moscow over tactical nuclear warheads—a long-term goal of the Trump administration.

These discussions will need to include NATO allies because some tactical warheads are deployed in member states, and Russia and the United States will need the cooperation of those states in implementing verification measures at nuclear facilities.

CHINA ON THE HORIZON At the London summit, leaders recognized that China’s growing power presents both challenges and opportunities for the alliance. China is not an active military player in NATO’s area of operation, but neither is it a benign Asian partner with which NATO can easily work (like, say, Japan or South Korea). NATO must be ready to coordinate with China when doing so will be mutually beneficial, but it must also weigh the interests of member states against China’s growing global power.

NATO countries have reason to be ambivalent about China’s rise. On the one hand, Beijing has played a stabilizing role in some areas of international conflict and tension. For example, China helped suppress piracy off the coast of Somalia in 2015, and it was a crucial signatory to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. On the other hand, China has

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purchased port facilities within NATO’s European member states, and Huawei, a Chinese firm, dominates Europe’s 5G telecommunications market. In the event of a crisis, what might Chinese control over such infrastructure imply for Europe? China is a power that has already entered the alliance’s space, and it deserves NATO’s attention as such.

With regard to China, as with Russia, NATO has a constructive role to play for the benefit of all. For example, China is becoming more involved in international peacekeeping operations. All concerned will benefit if NATO helps train Chinese peacekeepers to protect civilians in armed conflict zones in accordance with the highest international standards.

CHANGES IN AFGHANISTAN No plan for NATO’s future would be complete without a vision for peace in Afghanistan. The alliance leads a mission in that country called Resolute Support, in order to train, advise, and assist Afghan forces. Just in the last month, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the country, has taken up negotiations with the Taliban that had earlier stalled. NATO can expect the situation on the ground in Afghanistan to change as a result.

Successful negotiations between the United States and the Taliban could pave the way for a full-fledged peace and reconciliation process. But to get there, the country will first need to hold intra-Afghan talks that bring the Afghan government and the Taliban to the table, and which include minorities and women. NATO has been consulting with Khalilzad and his team, and vice versa, in the effort to reach such a point.

Climate change will create resource scarcity and drive migration. Economic stagnation and lack of jobs in developing countries will bring young people to the street and fuel political radicalization, leading to extremism and terrorism in some cases.

NATO should define the role it intends to play both in the fight against terrorist groups and in the peace and reconciliation process that will follow the intra-Afghan talks. NATO military leaders are already planning for various eventualities, whether the peace process ends with a drawdown in troop numbers or the continuation of the train, advise, and assist mission. Whatever the terms of the peace, the alliance must consider how it will check the growing strength of the Islamic State in Afghanistan and prevent its spread into new territory such as Central Asia. If NATO is asked to be a guarantor of the peace, it will have to coordinate with interested regional powers— China, Pakistan, Russia, and the Central Asian states—to ensure that the peace deal is implemented. As guarantor, NATO may also have to help build a stable environment for the flow of development assistance from organizations such as the World Bank and the European Union.

UPGRADE OR PERISH For most of its existence, NATO has enjoyed nearly unrivaled global superiority in military technology. The

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US President Donald Trump (R) and France›s President Emmanuel Macron react as they talk during their meeting at Winfield House, London on December 2019 ,3.

(Getty)

allows member states to learn by doing in the hightechnology arena.

NATO planners will have to assess new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to determine what military advantages they may offer, and at what risk. And the alliance will need to devise acquisition procedures that are efficient enough that allies can acquire technology before it becomes obsolete (software is particularly problematic in this regard). Member states bear the brunt of the burden of updating their militaries, but NATO does have the responsibility to bring all allies forward together.

A NEW CONCEPT At the heart of the Harmel Report, more than 50 years ago, was a core belief about NATO’s responsibility: as a defensive alliance, NATO existed not just to maintain the status quo but also, as circumstances permitted, to change it. At that time, such an imperative meant that NATO would pursue strong deterrence and defense even while remaining ready for dialogue and détente. The alliance stood prepared to adapt swiftly to changing circumstances.

alliance always sought the cutting edge, staying well ahead of its competitors. The United States, with heavy investment, led the way. But that advantage is now in danger, with figures such as Jeff Bezos telling Pentagon leaders that the United States risks falling behind China in the field of space technology.

How can NATO retain the edge that it now risks losing?

Member states must take it upon themselves, at the national level, to keep up with innovations. But NATO should nevertheless be prepared to ensure that no member state is left behind. That commitment is most difficult to meet with the smallest NATO countries, some of which don’t have the resources to stay abreast of the latest military advances.

But NATO invests in evening out these differences. The Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, convenes all allies in discussing the development and use of new military technologies. Joint weapons acquisition programs developed at NATO headquarters also help member states to acquire new weapons and participate in new technology trends. NATO should continue to drive forward in including as many allies as possible in joint acquisition projects, because that process

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The Harmel Report is just as relevant today and NATO must view its mission similarly. Among the priorities discussed in London, to which NATO must respond and adapt, are Russia, China, Afghanistan, and technological competition. But the alliance should consider other priorities that were not discussed in London as well.

Climate change will create resource scarcity and drive migration. Economic stagnation and lack of jobs in developing countries will bring young people to the street and fuel political radicalization, leading to extremism and terrorism in some cases.

The demands of each day often cloud the long-term view from NATO headquarters. The strategic review process launched in London holds out the promise of cutting through that fog with authoritative priorities for the alliance’s near future. Member states should use the review to help devise a new Strategic Concept, the official document that outlines NATO’s purpose and goals.

The last Strategic Concept is nearly a decade old, drafted before Russia seized Crimea and ISIS set up its caliphate.

The task of getting member states to agree to a new one may be arduous, but NATO can draw from the daily experience of consensus-making, which will help it to forge a new Strategic Concept. With a new document settled, NATO allies can begin to focus on the work ahead.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Modi Pushes India Into Revolt A New Law Upends What It Means to Be Indian

by Pratap Bhanu Mehta

in several areas (including in New Delhi), the government has not been able to contain the sheer scale of the protest.

For the past week, Indians have flooded the streets in cities and towns across the country to protest a controversial new citizenship law. They have marched in droves despite the imposition of colonialera prohibitory orders to prevent public assembly. The agitation started in dozens of universities across India, provoking a violent crackdown by the government and the detention of thousands. But demonstrations still spread to give rise to one of the largest panIndia protest movements the country has seen in several decades.

Though it has resorted to shutting down Internet and mobile service

Since its reelection in May, the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pursued a more strident and divisive series of policy measures, including stripping Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status. Modi’s government has also become more authoritarian, leading even India’s normally reticent business community to complain of a contentious and toxic atmosphere brewing in the country. But the seemingly benign Citizenship Amendment Act, passed by the Indian Parliament on December 11,

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was one step too far.

According to the new law, members of minority groups— Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Parsis— from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who came to India illegally will be granted a fast track to Indian citizenship. But through this simple provision, the government has also redefined Indian national identity in terms of religion and spawned a crisis for India’s secular constitution. In conjunction with the proposed nationwide extension of the National Register for Citizens—a survey of the citizenship status of all individuals in India that until now has only been implemented in the state of Assam—the citizenship law has created a pervasive sense of fear. In turn, the ensuing protests have sparked the most potent challenge to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to date.

Students and demonstrators hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against India›s new citizenship law in Chennai on December 2019 ,19. (Getty)

The passage of the citizenship act has woken India to the dangers that threaten its core constitutional values. The road to recover and protect those values will be long, arduous, and full of conflict. Many Indians are finally saying, ‹Enough is enough.’

REDEFINING INDIA

as Hindu. It has the second-largest population of Muslims in the world and a significant presence of almost every other religion. It has never defined its identity in terms of religion or ethnicity.

The Citizenship Amendment Act is a challenge to India’s secularism. Yes, the groups named in the act should have the ability to become naturalized citizens. And yes, any country can choose to prioritize which refugees or illegal migrants it will naturalize based on a variety of factors: risk assessment, the demands of international law, historical ties, and the practical realities of migration. But for the first time since India’s constitution was adopted in 1949, Parliament has explicitly linked religious identity to citizenship.

But Hindu nationalists have long wanted to remake India as a homeland for Hindus, embracing an idea of nationhood similar to the Israeli model. The citizenship act, by excluding Muslims, takes a step in that direction. The unfinished business of partition that Hindu nationalists want to complete involves not just granting refuge to minorities from neighboring Muslim-majority countries but signalling to Muslims inside India that they don’t have an equal claim to belonging there.

The government insists that these minorities are at risk in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and are also unlikely to find refuge elsewhere. But this is an argument in bad faith twice over. First, it overlooks Muslim groups that are persecuted in those countries, such as Ahmadis in Pakistan.

Second, only Muslim-majority countries have been named in the Act, excluding other potential sources of refugees and illegal migrants, such as neighboring Myanmar and Sri Lanka. The law excludes Rohingyas, for example, from future citizenship. The government claims that, in principle, groups not covered by the act can always apply under existing naturalization mechanisms. But that argument cuts both ways. Why shouldn’t members of all persecuted groups have access to the same legal mechanism? In light of these considerations, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn.

The purpose of the new law is not just to protect the named groups; it is to exclude Muslims from equal consideration.

This makes the act potentially unconstitutional.

A REGISTER OF CITIZENS

The act also redefines Indian national identity, moving the country emphatically in the direction of becoming an ethnocracy. In 1947, the British partitioned colonial India into two independent countries: Pakistan, conceived as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims, and India, a secular and pluralist state. India is only a Hindu nation in the trivial sense that a majority of its inhabitants are classed

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The government claims that the new act won’t impact the rights of any existing Muslim citizens of India. In a formal, legal sense, that is true. But to grasp the full insidiousness of the citizenship act, one has to consider it alongside another proposed measure: a National Register of Citizens, a sweeping nationwide catalog of the legal status of all individuals in India. Again, it is difficult to contest the idea that a country should be allowed to draft a register of its citizens. But how will authorities determine who is a citizen in a country where many poor Indians lack identifying documentation?

If the experience of the state of Assam—where the government has carried out a limited form of this exercise—is any guide, the verification process itself will be Kafkaseque. Millions of poor people with no birth certificates or other documentary history (birth certificates only became widespread in India in the last 30 years) struggled to prove that they are citizens.

The process is bureaucratic and arbitrary, leaving many to languish in camps. At the moment, 1.9 million individuals face the prospect of statelessness in Assam.

But here is the real catch. Suppose two individuals,

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one Hindu and one Muslim, were asked to prove their claims to citizenship. Suppose for a moment that officials determine both are in India illegally. After the enactment of the citizenship law, the Hindu will have a fast track to naturalization. It is likely that the Muslim will not.

Combined with the citizenship law, a National Register of Citizens is bound to create millions of stateless people as a result of administrative errors as well. Even if one assumes the Indian state has a high capacity for bureaucratic performance and won’t arbitrarily discriminate between different religious groups (both of these are contestable assumptions), an error rate of just five percent would render tens of millions of people potentially stateless, as the scholar Shruti Rajagopalan has pointed out. But the risks that Muslims face will be considerably higher, even if the state does not explicitly target them.

The government is speaking with two voices about the link between the citizenship law and the register of citizens.

But the link is obvious. The law enables the government to reassure any Hindus who are found to be illegal that they will not be rendered stateless. It gives no corresponding assurance to Muslims. In other words, it creates a legally sanctioned system of discrimination, one that is an affront to India’s secular democracy.

SEASON OF DISCONTENT The citizenship law has provoked unprecedented resistance across the country. The resistance comes in two rather different forms. The first is regionally specific opposition in the state of Assam, which has seen rolling protests since the law passed earlier this month. Opposition to the law there is rooted in the state’s local ethnonationalist politics.

For decades, many Assamese activists and politicians have

It’s clear that the purpose of India’s new Citizenship Amendment Act is not just to protect certain minority groups, but to exclude Muslims from equal consideration. In doing so, the law is redefining Indian national identity.

argued that the migration of Bengalis from Bangladesh (and from its pre1971- incarnation of East Pakistan) threatens Assam’s identity. In 1985, the government of India signed the Assam Accord, which pledged to put in place a process to identify illegal migrants in the state. Authorities finally published their findings for Assam this year, and not surprisingly, the majority of those identified as illegally settled in Assam were Bengali Hindus. The new citizenship law now potentially grants them citizenship in violation of the Assam Accord. So protests have erupted across the state, with demonstrators decrying the new law as a betrayal by the central government and a threat to the demography of Assam.

Elsewhere in India, protests against the citizenship law have been more in consonance with the country’s constitution and its principles of equality. India has seen the largest eruption of student protests since the period of dictatorial “emergency rule” in the 1970s under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Protests have shaken literally every major university. And across the country, demonstrators from across the broad

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Protesters hold placards at a demonstration against Indias new citizenship law in Mumbai on December 2019 ,19.

(Getty)

range of Indian religious and social groups have marched in favour of repealing the law. Many state governments, including some allied with the BJP, have pledged not to implement the National Register of Citizens.

These protests have the potential to plunge India into a deep crisis. Already, the Indian state is using its arsenal of prohibitory orders to contain these legitimate protests.

The scale of this suppression of dissent is extraordinary: Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, two large states ruled by the BJP with a combined population of over 260 million people, have issued statewide colonial-era prohibitions that prevent the assembly of more than five persons. Several districts in India have been subject to Internet shutdowns. These measures are reminiscent of India’s heavy-handed tactics in Kashmir.

The burgeoning movement against the citizenship act is a refreshing sign of possible constitutional regeneration. But it may struggle against the headwinds of Modi’s assertive Hindu nationalism. The BJP’s policy priorities in recent

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months reflect a hard ideological turn: the shredding of Kashmir’s nominal autonomy and the ensuing crackdown in the restive territory; the triumphant exultation over the Supreme Court decision to allow the building of the powerfully symbolic Ram Temple in Ayodhya; and talk of anti-conversion and population control legislation. Even in public discourse, the baiting and demonization of minorities is more palpable. In a recent speech in the central state of Jharkhand, Modi made a sly reference to the fact that those protesting the citizenship law could be “recognized by their clothes,” a clear dog whistle for Muslims.

Modi’s robust combination of Hindu majoritarianism and authoritarianism will not be defeated easily. But the passage of the citizenship act has woken India to the dangers that threaten its core constitutional values. The road to recover and protect those values will be long, arduous, and full of conflict. Many Indians are finally saying, “Enough is enough.”

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Women Under Attack The Backlash Against Female Politicians

by Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein In recent years, a rising tide of women’s activism has swept across the world. Online and on the streets, millions of women have raised their voices and called for action

against systemic abuse, harassment, and discrimination.

This activism has translated to the ballot box, with higher numbers of women running for office than ever before.

In 2018, women in war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq brought

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Politically motivated attacks on women have been on the rise in nearly every region of the world, reaching a record high in 2019. the seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

In Brazil, a historic number of female candidates in the 2018 election produced a 35 percent increase in women’s representation in state legislatures compared with four years earlier and a 50 percent improvement in the lower house of the National Congress. In Sri Lanka, following a 2016 electoral quota law that reserved 25 percent of local councils seats for women, 2,000 were elected countrywide, compared with 82 in 2011. Similarly, in Tunisia, a 2016 law demanding the alternation of women and men on political parties’ candidate lists dramatically increased the number of women in local council positions; as a result, women now hold nearly 50 percent of local government positions, compared with 27 percent in 2010. And in Mexico, a record number of nearly 3,000 women ran in the election in 2018, leading to full gender parity in Congress and the first elected female mayor of Mexico City. The largest percentage increase in female parliamentarians as a result of an election in 2018 took place in Djibouti, where women’s representation rose from a meager 11 percent in 2013 to 26 percent.

Left to right: Marielle Franco, Jo Cox, Caroline Spelman, and Diane Rwigara (Reuters)

their fight for equal rights to the political arena, with unprecedented numbers of female candidates running in parliamentary elections: 417 in Afghanistan and 2,011 in Iraq. From 2005 to 2018, Lebanon saw more than a -27fold increase in the number of female parliamentary candidates, from only four to 111. In the United States, over 500 women—a record number—ran for Congress or for statewide office in 2018. And this past spring, local elections in Ireland and national elections in India and Japan featured more female candidates running for office than in any prior election in those countries.

The result has been more women in power. For the first time in U.S. history, women hold close to 25 percent of

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There have been setbacks in some places—such as in Iceland, where women’s parliamentary representation fell from 47 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2017, the lowest it had been since 2007. Overall, however, women’s global parliamentary representation has vastly improved: as of September 2019, women held 24 percent of all seats in national parliaments around the world, nearly double their representation 20 years ago. Although women’s representation remains far from equal to that of men, the rate of change is increasing.

Female representation is not simply a matter of fairness.

Research shows that gender diversity in leadership correlates with better governance. Women are more likely than men to advocate laws supporting children and social welfare. In India, a study by the scholars Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo found that village councils led by women were more likely to support investing in clean drinking water, childhood immunizations, and education. And in Norway, women’s representation in municipal councils has been linked to greater childcare coverage, which has improved women’s ability to participate in the workplace.

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Gender diversity in governments has also been associated with decreased corruption: an analysis by the economists Chandan Jha and Sudipta Sarangi of over 125 countries found that corruption levels are lower in countries with a higher percentage of female legislators.

Women are also more likely to reach across political divides: a 2015 study of the U.S. Senate found that female senators more frequently worked across the aisle than did their male counterparts. Research from Uppsala University, in Sweden, has shown that women’s political participation is associated with a lower risk of civil war and a lower incidence of state-perpetrated political violence, such as killings, forced disappearances, torture, and political imprisonment. A quantitative analysis by the political scientist Mary Caprioli found that when women’s parliamentary representation increased by five percent, a country was one-fifth as likely to respond to an international crisis with violence.

Yet as the number of women seeking political office has grown, so, too, has the backlash. This hostility is far from unexpected. Whenever underrepresented groups gain power and rights, they are met with opposition—and, frequently, violence. As women enter politics, they face a disproportionate number of attacks, many of which take on specifically gender-based forms. To protect the progress of recent decades, governments, civil society organizations, and activists must work together to make it easier for women to participate in politics—and harder for others to block their rise.

TAKE COVER Politically motivated attacks on women have been on the rise in nearly every region of the world, reaching a record

Violence should not be the cost of women entering politics.

Governance suffers when women are harassed into leaving politics or are too intimidated to get involved in the first place.

high in 2019, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Even women who are merely exercising their right to vote fall victim to violence at nearly four times the rate of men, especially in rural areas and at polling locations and voter-registration drives. As women have shifted from voting to seeking elected office, the violence has followed them. Surveys conducted in 2017 in Côte d’Ivoire, Honduras, Tanzania, and Tunisia found that 55 percent of female officials were subjected to violence while carrying out political party functions. In Kenya’s 2017 parliamentary election, a record number of women ran for office, thanks in part to a rule requiring that no more than two-thirds of the seats in a governing body be controlled by one gender. But during the campaign, many of those candidates faced targeted forms of violence, including threats of public stripping. Many of these threats explicitly demanded that the women quit politics, hoping to discourage women from accessing male-dominated political spheres. Similar violence against female candidates and officials has marred the political sphere in Bolivia in recent years. “Women [are close to parity] now, and men cannot easily accept this,” remarked Katia Uriona, the former president of Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Female participants in politics are disproportionately targeted online as well, where they confront an onslaught

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A man paints a mural depicting Brazilian slain human rights activist and politician Marielle Franco as Wonder Woman as about 2,000 people march in her memory through the Mare favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 2018 ,18. (Getty)

only female presidential candidate in the 2017 election.

Harassers also threaten female politicians’ loved ones: in 2018, researchers at the University of Bradford found that an astonishing 62 percent of female parliamentarians in the United Kingdom had received physical threats to their friends and family, compared with only six percent of their male counterparts.

At its most extreme, violence against female political leaders has become lethal. Last year in Brazil, Marielle Franco—a black, gay, feminist city councilor in Rio de Janeiro—was assassinated by militia members opposed to her political positions. Similarly, a series of violent attacks against elected female leaders across Bolivia in 2012 culminated in the assassination of Juana Quispe, a councilor in Ancoraimes who had come under fire for assisting female colleagues in filing harassment complaints.

And in 2016, an assassin motivated by a toxic mix of white supremacy, xenophobia, and misogyny took the life of Jo Cox, an outspoken feminist British parliamentarian.

of harassment on social media. A 2016 survey of female politicians from 39 countries around the world found that 82 percent had experienced some form of psychological violence, with 44 percent facing violent threats. Similarly, a 2018 survey of European female parliamentarians and staffers found that 58 percent had experienced threats of violence online, with nearly half being threatened with death or rape. In Afghanistan, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems has uncovered widespread harassment of female candidates, often at the hands of party leaders, police officers, or election administrators. And in the United States, according to a study conducted by the Australian artificial intelligence research company Max Kelsen, Hillary Clinton received close to twice as much abuse on Twitter as did Bernie Sanders, her main opponent in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary election.

A particularly pernicious element of the abuse that female political participants endure is its sexual or gender-specific quality. Whereas abuse against men in politics largely relates to their professional duties, the online harassment of female candidates is far more likely to include comments about their physical appearance or threats of sexual assault.

In some instances, harassers distribute sexual photos of female politicians, as was the case in Rwanda, when harassers posted fake nude photos of Diane Rwigara, the

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Also distressing is the way that such violence threatens to undermine the credibility and limit the electoral success of female politicians. According to the National Democratic Institute, violence against female politicians in Asian and Latin American democracies has led them to serve fewer terms, on average, than their male colleagues. In the United Kingdom, several female members of Parliament decided not to run for reelection in December 2019 in large part owing to the abuse they experienced. Caroline Spelman, one such member, wrote in The Times of London that “sexually charged rhetoric has been prevalent in the online abuse of female MPs, with threats to rape us and referring to us by our genitalia. It is therefore not surprising that so many good female colleagues have decided to stand down at this election.”

And this abuse prevents women from running for office in the first place. In a 2014 survey in Australia by the YWCA and the University of Adelaide, two-thirds of the women polled who expressed interest in running for office said that threats against female politicians made them hesitant to do so. In Afghanistan, women reported to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in 2019 that pervasive sexual harassment was one of the primary factors discouraging them from running for higher office. And in Iraq in 2018, one woman entirely withdrew her candidacy for parliament after a fabricated video surfaced online showing her in bed with a man.

These forms of harassment and violence not only damage a woman personally; they also hinder her ability to govern effectively. In a 2016 survey by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, almost 40 percent of the female parliamentarians

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interviewed who had experienced violence said that those acts undermined their ability to speak freely and uphold their mandates. Consider, for example, the financial burden female candidates and officials face in requiring unusually high levels of security in the form of paid guards and protected facilities. In Kenya in 2017, some female candidates chose not to hold meetings at night, thereby putting themselves at a severe disadvantage as compared to their male opponents. And in the United Kingdom, nearly 100 percent of female legislators have increased their security at home, compared with 75 percent of the men.

BLANKETING THE BACKLASH Much of this violence is driven by misogyny, a deepseated pathology in most societies and cultures that won’t be eliminated anytime soon. But it is overly fatalistic to conclude that policy changes would be useless. In fact, governments, international organizations, and technology companies can enact reforms that would help blunt the corrosive violence.

In 2011, the UN General Assembly issued a declaration calling for zero tolerance of violence against female candidates and elected officials; an investigation by Dubravka Simonovic, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women, followed in 2018. Regional bodies have also taken up the issue: in 2015, the state parties to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women endorsed a proclamation that committed political parties, trade unions, and social organizations to “create their own internal instruments and mechanisms to prevent, punish and eradicate political violence and/or harassment against women.” In response, several Mexican state agencies developed a protocol to coordinate their efforts on combating such violence, which has supported survivors in

Washington, for its part, should use foreign aid as a lever to drive reform.

Particularly in conflict areas, the United States should earmark assistance for the physical protection of female candidates.

bringing and winning claims.

A growing number of countries have also taken steps to criminalize violence against women in politics. Latin American countries have taken up this issue, passing standalone laws and amending electoral codes. In 2012, for example, Bolivia passed a law criminalizing political harassment and violence against women; since then, the law has increased consciousness and accountability on the issue. Other countries around the world should follow suit; new legislation is needed to recognize the specific threats that female politicians and candidates face.

But legal reform is worth little if governments don’t enforce the laws. Bolivia’s landmark legislation is a case in point: despite nearly 300 prosecutions, there has been just one conviction. Countries like Bolivia can increase enforcement by providing judicial and law enforcement training to the local authorities processing prosecutions.

As a start, authorities should better track violence against female politicians. The hidden nature of the problem is exacerbated by underreporting: many women remain silent so as not to feed the stereotype that they are ill equipped for politics. Another problem is the lack of data that would allow analysts to compare rates of violence suffered by women to those suffered by men. Governments, nonprofits, and academic institutions should fund research that fills this gap. Additionally, governments can look to civil society

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Flowers surround a picture of Jo Cox during a vigil in Parliament Square on June ,16 2016 in London, United Kingdom. (Getty)

Governments can also combat harassment in parties by ratifying the Convention Concerning the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work, which was adopted in Geneva in 2019 by the International Labor Organization and obligates governments to monitor, prevent, and resolve workplace harassment.

organizations that have developed ways to measure violence against women in politics. The National Democratic Institute, for example, has created a risk-assessment tool that helps identify the personal, professional, and political risks that women face; shape response plans; and report incidents to the relevant governing entity.

Simonovic, the UN’s special rapporteur, has urged governments to train observers and authorities to monitor and report attacks against female voters and candidates and submit their findings to treaty-monitoring bodies, such as the UN Human Rights Committee. States should hold election administrators accountable if they fail to take measures to prevent the harassment of female politicians.

Countries could also establish independent observational bodies responsible for identifying and reporting violence against female members of political parties.

Meanwhile, only a few parliaments have internal mechanisms for handling harassment within their ranks. The 2016 Inter-Parliamentary Union survey found that fewer than ten of the 42 parliaments investigated had policies on sexual harassment against parliamentarians, and fewer than half had policies designed to protect female staff. Even where these mechanisms do exist, parliamentarians and their staff often don’t realize it. Political parties also have a role to play, by adopting codes of conduct, introducing zerotolerance policies, monitoring social media accounts for abusive speech, and providing training to party members.

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The prominence of online abuse demands action from technology firms. Social media companies have done far too little to address abuse and harassment of female public figures. Platforms such as Facebook should automatically identify and remove intimidating content—including threats of rape—and enable users to alert police to illegal online activity. And if corporations continue to delay making such reforms, governments should enact legislation to hold them liable. The French government is taking steps to require technology companies to remove hateful content within 24 hours or suffer financial penalties, such as multimillion-dollar fines. (France encouraged other governments to follow suit during its presidency of the G7- in 2019, and the United States should broaden the call when it assumes that leadership in 2020.) Governments could also classify gender-based attacks on public figures online as hate speech and regulate it accordingly. To address concerns over the effect such a move would have on freedom of expression, legal scholars have outlined changes to communications laws and judicial procedures that would help shut down online abuse without infringing unduly on free speech. For example, Danielle Citron has proposed that social media platforms ban only those threats that name specific individuals, not those targeting unspecified groups.

Washington, for its part, should use foreign aid as a lever to drive reform. Particularly in conflict areas, the United States should earmark assistance for the physical protection of female candidates. U.S. programs that train criminal justice officials and media professionals in other countries also ought to emphasize the issue.

Violence should not be the cost of women entering politics.

Governance suffers when women are harassed into leaving politics or are too intimidated to get involved in the first place. As women around the world raise their voices and step into the political arena, countries committed to representative democracy must do more to ensure that the playing field is level—and safe.

JAMILLE BIGIO is a Senior Fellow in the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs Magazine.

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Big Tech Still Doesn’t Have a Handle on its Growing Role in Campaigns There’s No Simple Way to Balance Free-Speech Values and Free and Fair Elections 32

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But these Big Tech companies are finding that there’s no simple way to balance two important but competing interests: our society’s free-speech values and our interest in free and fair elections. to run an ad saying he has proof that former Vice President Joe Biden is a Ukrainian spy, he’s free to do so. And if Biden wanted to respond with an ad showing a faked Kenyan birth certificate for Trump, he can do that too.

We’re all for candidates speaking freely to the public. But we’re not comfortable with the way Facebook and other tech companies enable candidates and campaigns to turn their speech into something more manipulative and powerful than it would otherwise be.

by The Editorial Board Over the last year and a half, politicians and activists have spent more than 900$ million pumping 5.7 million ads through Facebook’s network. Is there any wonder the company is reluctant to crimp that pipeline?

In late September, Facebook took off one of the few restrictions it had placed on political advertisers, exempting candidates and political parties from the fact-checking process it had instituted to slow the virus-like spread of fake news on the platform. If President Trump wanted

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Facebook’s move was such an alarming renunciation of responsibility, politicians and good-government advocates were aghast.

They’ve been pressing for change ever since Facebook’s see-no-evil approach to political ads became official in September. The company appears to be responding; according to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook executives are exploring ways to reduce the power political advertisers have to manipulate Facebook users. In particular, they’re discussing ways to limit how precisely political ads can be targeted to specific audiences.

These discussions come as Twitter and Google are also adjusting the tools they offer political advertisers. But these Big Tech companies are finding that there’s no simple way to balance two important but competing interests: our society’s free-speech values and our interest in free and fair elections.

Along with Google’s sister company YouTube, the three companies dominate online advertising

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as well as play a central role in the flow of information on the internet. It’s more than just their near-ubiquitous reach; it’s also the tools they offer to deliver messages tailored to individual leanings and susceptibilities, and the algorithms that some of them use to decide which posts to favor and which ones to bury.

Combined, these factors have the potential not just to amplify deceit, but to deliver it to the audiences most likely to believe it. As Twitter chief Jack Dorsey put it, “Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”

We don’t want Big Tech companies to be a gatekeeper, picking and choosing which political speech is allowable. But we don’t want them to make their amplifiers and their vulnerabilityseeking targeting tools available to candidates seeking to deceive either, especially not when these companies have a financial incentive to turn a blind eye to abuses of their platforms.

Otherwise, there will be no boundaries, and we will truly be a post-truth society.

It’s more than just their nearubiquitous reach; it’s also the tools they offer to deliver messages tailored to individual leanings and susceptibilities, and the algorithms that some of them use to decide which posts to favor and which ones to bury.

So now Facebook is reportedly pursuing what you might call a light-touch approach, even as it refuses to impose the same standards on political ads that it does on all other advertisers.

Yet even its restrictions on targeting seem weak; according to the Wall Street Journal, candidates will be able to use any of the profile information Facebook collects on its users to target ads, as long as at least a few thousand people are in that group. Call it not-so-micro micro-targeting.

Google appears to be heading in a more promising direction. Last week, the company announced that it will bar election-related ads from including “doctored or manipulated media” or “making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.” It also will bar political advertisers from accessing the personality profiles Google builds from users’ web browsing. Instead, those advertisers will be

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Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 2018 ,10 in Washington. (Getty)

allowed to tailor their messages only according to general demographic information, such as a viewer’s gender, age and ZIP Code.

Nevertheless, Google is inserting itself into an uncomfortable place. If the National Rifle Assn. wants to run an ad a month before an election criticizing a member of Congress for voting for a gun-control bill, is that “election-related”?

How much does a video have to be edited to be considered “doctored”? Does taking something that’s demonstrably true and presenting it in a different context make it demonstrably false?

These are all judgment calls, and not always easy ones. Facebook eventually assembled an independent team to handle appeals of the judgments it was making about advertisements — and even then, it wasn’t willing to apply that team’s work to candidates’ ads.

Twitter’s Dorsey believed he had a simpler

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and less controversial solution to the problem: He announced last month that Twitter would not carry any political ads. That eliminated the thorny issue of fact-checking, but it created a new problem: What, exactly, constituted a political ad? The company has been backpedaling since then, allowing ads related to causes — but only if they don’t push for a specific bill, candidate or regulation, and with limits on targeting.

That’s going to make Twitter a lot less useful to people trying to challenge the governmental status quo.

The lesson here isn’t that these companies shouldn’t be trying to make their platforms both open and trustworthy. It’s that the two qualities aren’t well matched, and there’s no easy way to overcome that problem.

This article was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

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ook Reviews

Paths to Power The Rise and Fall of Dictators

by Anna Grzymala-Busse How Dictatorships Work. Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, Erica Frantz. Cambridge University Press, .2018 270pp.

The world is in an illiberal phase. In recent years, dictators have strengthened their grip on many countries. Several democracies have witnessed the rise of authoritarianminded leaders and movements. These trends make the task of understanding dictatorial rule all the more important.

The research on autocracy is vast: the term “authoritarian� garners more than 800,000 citations on Google Scholar.

But most analyses of the subject tend to either focus on the emergence and fall of dictatorships or examine their internal workings. Few examine both the rise of autocracies and how they rule.

In How Dictatorships Work, the political scientists Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz offer a corrective, revealing not only how autocrats win and lose power but also how they wield it. They bring a wealth of new data to the table, following autocracies from

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cradle to grave and meticulously testing the received wisdom against hard numbers. How Dictatorships Work masterfully illustrates the paths autocrats take to power and the ways in which they keep it. Few dictators have a clear strategy, but the ones who seize control of a country’s security forces or build ruling political parties tend to stay on top.

Few dictators have a clear strategy, but the ones who seize control of a country’s security forces or build ruling political parties tend to stay on top.

THE ANATOMY OF DICTATORSHIP Geddes, Wright, and Frantz define autocracies as regimes in which elections do not determine who leads or in which democratically elected leaders change the rules of the game to eliminate the competition. In their view, a regime either is or is not an autocracy. To compose their study, the authors drew on a database of 280 autocratic regimes that took power between 1945 and 2010. The data were first collected by Geddes and then greatly expanded by Wright and Frantz.

Their first major finding is that 45 percent of authoritarian regimes in this period were the result of coups. (Dictatorships also tend to emerge when foreign powers prop up an unelected ruler or when elected parties change the rules to preclude further free elections—a move that Geddes, Wright, and Frantz term “authoritarianization.”) Militaries and political parties are the groups most likely to seize power. But for all their professional experience, these elites frequently have no detailed plans for how to exercise the power they have seized.

Fidel Castro observes the May Day parade at the Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba May 1998 ,1. (Getty)

Contrary to what one might expect, coups rarely defend the interests of economic elites, nor do they generally emerge from popular movements. Instead, Geddes, Wright, and Frantz find that many coups grow out of the grievances of military officers—those who have been excluded from promotion on the basis of their ethnicity, for example. It doesn’t take many conspirators to carry out a coup: in 1969, for instance, Muammar al-Qaddafi took over the Libyan state with help from a small number of allies and 48 rounds of ammunition.

One key lesson that emerges from How Dictatorships Work is that an aspiring autocrat would do well to establish a hegemonic political party. (Consider the late Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro’s Communist Party, which was founded in 1965 and has endured to the present day.) Parties mobilize society and provide citizens with benefits, creating the kind of dependence that encourages popular support— and, perhaps as important, complicity. Once schooling, jobs, and travel depend on one’s party affiliation, most members of society remain loyal or at least quiescent.

This partisan patronage does have the unintended result of filling the party’s ranks with opportunists who are far more interested in tangible benefits than in the regime’s putative ideology. But Geddes, Wright, and Frantz point out that even so, autocracies run through hegemonic political parties last twice as long as those that do not. (It would have been interesting to hear more about how leaders create and manage parties—for example, how they carry out purges without overreaching and provoking a backlash.)

Once in power, a dictator and his inner circle must balance cooperation and conflict. Autocrats must collaborate with subordinates to create a political base on which to rest their rule, but they also want to keep their crews loyal.

How Dictatorships Work also makes clear why fraudulent elections and weak legislatures are useful to autocrats: less because they provide a veneer of legitimacy than because they offer a way for dictators to monitor their own regimes and their subjects. Local elections reveal the competence of lower party officials—low turnout, for example, indicates that a local leader is unable to mobilize the population in his or her favor. National elections signal the government’s strength to would-be challengers. Legislatures exist less to create laws than to divvy up ill-gotten gains.

The dictator’s dilemma consists of giving his immediate supporters enough benefits to secure their loyalty but not so many that any one supporter can become a viable challenger. And the dictator has to deliver a continuous stream of benefits—promises alone cannot suffice, because the autocrat’s promises are not credible. After all, there are no institutions to enforce them, such as independent courts or parliaments. So rulers often survive by delegating authority and patronage or by redistributing land and other resources.

But sometimes it all comes crashing down. Around a third of autocracies end with a coup; around a fourth end with an election. Economic crises often hasten the fall of dictators, but patron-client networks can cushion the autocrats as they fall. Take, for instance, Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, buffeted by the collapse of oil prices but still clinging to power. Ultimately, however, patronage and political clout can do only so much. The Soviet Union stands out as a spectacular example of how economic decay, elite

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ook Reviews

misperceptions of reform and its consequences, and the withdrawal of international support can result in a rapid and decisive collapse.

MISSION CREEP How Dictatorships Work is an impressive accomplishment, especially since autocracies restrict information about themselves. Marshaling a great deal of data, the authors uncover deep-seated patterns that observers might otherwise miss. But Geddes, Wright, and Frantz too readily discount studies based on “impressive local expertise” as lacking “evidence.” And in using crisp categories such as “democracy” and “autocracy,” they provide analytic clarity but overlook hybrid regimes in which the playing field is slanted toward incumbents even if the outcome of any particular election is not predetermined. Also, because the book’s database ends in 2010, just as democratic erosion began to quicken, the authors aren’t able to shed much light on one of the most urgent phenomena in contemporary politics—the creeping authoritarianism that follows democratic decay.

Today, in established democracies across the world, the slow but steady undermining of norms and institutions poses a greater threat than sudden coups. After all, it’s risky and costly to try to overthrow an established government. Few people or organizations have the means to carry out such a plot. But a wide range of actors can undermine democracy gradually under the cover of law, prompting international concern and domestic protest but few real challenges.

That is why today’s would-be dictators do not rely simply on censorship, repression, and patronage. Instead, they follow

Around a third of autocracies end with a coup; around a fourth end with an election. Economic crises often hasten the fall of dictators, but patron-client networks can cushion the autocrats as they fall.

a course similar to those charted by democratically elected strongmen in countries such as Hungary and Turkey: go after the courts, intimidate the press, hamper civil society, and use parliamentary majorities to push through new laws and constitutions. If one squints, things look normal: elections take place, people can travel in and out of the country, the cafés are full, and the secret police’s dungeons are (nearly) empty. But underneath the surface, checks and balances that had once prevented dictatorship are falling away.

Even in places where formal institutions are more robust, such as the United States, the informal norms that uphold democracy have become fragile. The political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have identified forbearance (not using the law to entrench the incumbent) and toleration (accepting opposition and criticism) as critical to the health of democracies. One might also add equality before the law: the idea that neither the government nor the law can make distinctions that favor some groups over others. These norms are breaking down, and not just in young democracies.

Informal norms also keep autocracies afloat. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz give little attention to the world’s most important dictatorship in this regard: the People’s Republic of China,

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Venezuela›s President Nicolas Maduro delivers a speech during the ceremony of recognition by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), at the Fuerte Tiuna Military Complex, in Caracas on January 2019 ,10.

(Getty)

In recent years, dictators have strengthened their grip on many countries, and several democracies have witnessed the rise of authoritarian-minded leaders and movements.

an autocracy that has not only endured but thrived by adapting. The authors’ model would account for the regime’s stability, since it is governed by a hegemonic communist party. But other communist parties around the world have failed. How, then, was the Chinese Communist Party able to renegotiate its relationship with capitalism and society? What gave it the ability to shift course after Mao and open up China’s economy without opening up its political system? Scholars have argued that informal norms and institutions played a significant role, ensuring good governance and economic growth, on the one hand, and maintaining party control over society, on the other. This careful balance allowed the party to shift course without destabilizing the regime.

stop someplace along the way.

How Dictatorships Work is reassuring, in a way: the book demonstrates that even the most outlandish tyrants act according to familiar patterns. But understanding the current wave of democratic erosion requires closer attention to informal norms, how they contribute to a regime’s durability, and how they shape the path by which democracies can become autocracies or are able to

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ANNA GRZYMALA-BUSSE is Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs Magazine.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1780- December- 27/12/2019

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Algeria’s 8 th President Abdelmejid Tebboune: Regime Insider Vows to Appease Protesters www.majalla.com

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Is Plastic a Threat to Your Health?

Heating Plastics in the Microwave May Cause Chemicals to Leach into Your Foods Harvard Health Plastic is everywhere. It›s in bowls, wraps, and a host of bottles and bags used to store foods and beverages. But in recent years more people have been asking whether exposing our food (and ourselves) to all of this plastic is safe.

Studies have found that certain chemicals in plastic can leach out of the plastic and into the food and beverages we eat. Some of these chemicals have been linked to health problems such as metabolic disorders (including obesity) and reduced fertility. This leaching can occur even faster and to a greater degree when plastic is exposed to heat.

This means you might be getting an even higher dose of

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Environmental Health and the Frederick Lee Hisaw Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to help us sort through this issue and give us some advice on how to reduce any potential risks.

UNDERSTANDING PLASTICS The first thing to know, says Dr. Hauser, is that plastic is not one thing. «There are many different types of plastics,» he says. Different types of plastic have different names based on their composition -- such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, and polycarbonate -- and contain a variety of chemicals with different properties, such as plasticizers, antioxidants, and colorants.

Generally, there are several chemicals in plastics that are considered worrisome because they have been shown to be harmful to people who are exposed over the long term.

«We›re talking about very low-dose chemical exposures,» says Dr. Hauser. «But even though single exposures to a specific chemical are small, if they occur repeatedly over long periods of time, their effects may add up, leading to a variety of adverse health outcomes down the road.

Furthermore, and most importantly, we are exposed to many chemicals simultaneously (i.e., chemical mixtures) that may have additive adverse effects.» At particular risk are pregnant women and their fetuses. Many of these chemicals cross the placenta, so the fetus is exposed.

Experts say childhood exposure is also of high concern.

Among the more troubling chemicals are phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA). Both are endocrine disrupters, which are substances that interfere with the actions of human hormones, says Dr. Hauser.

PHTHALATES

potentially harmful chemicals simply by microwaving your leftovers in a plastic container.

The question is, should you be concerned? And if so, can you do anything to reduce your exposure?

We asked Dr. Russ Hauser, chair of the Department of

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Phthalates are known to toxicologists as male reproductive toxicants (harmful substances). But this group of chemicals is also known to have ill effects in females. Phthalates, sometimes referred to as plasticizers, are often used to make vinyl plastics soft and flexible. They are widely used in baby toys, food processing equipment and materials, medical devices, and vinyl building products, in addition to other items.

A 04-2003 analysis by the CDC and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that exposure to phthalates was widespread in the U.S. population. Adult women had higher exposure than men, likely because some phthalates are also found in many cosmetics as well as personal care products such as soaps, shampoo, and body washes.

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BISPHENOL A BPA has gotten a lot of attention in recent years because studies have shown it has reproductive and other health effects in both humans and rodents. It›s most often used to make a hard type of plastic called polycarbonate, which is found in products like DVDs. It›s also a component of epoxy resins, which are used for numerous purposes, such as lining the inside of food storage cans. While there has been some controversy about how harmful BPA may be, says Dr. Hauser, there›s little question that there is widespread general exposure to the chemical. That same 04-2003 CDC/NHANES report estimated that %93 of people in the United States ages 6 and older had the chemical in their urine.

While these two chemicals get the most attention, there are many other chemicals in plastics that may be related to health problems, including processing aids, antioxidants, and colorants, says Dr. Hauser.

IS IT SAFE TO MICROWAVE PLASTIC? Depending on the type of plastics you are using, heating them in the microwave can release various chemicals into the foods or liquids that you are cooking, says Dr. Hauser.

Fatty foods, particularly meats and cheeses, seem more prone to absorbing high amounts of these chemicals.

Some plastics are deemed by the FDA to be microwavesafe. To get the FDA›s designation, manufacturers must test the containers, estimating how long the container will be in the microwave, how much a person is likely to eat from the container, and the anticipated temperature of the food inside. Provided the amount of chemicals leaching from the container into the food is estimated to be lower than the maximum allowable amount, the container is considered microwave-safe. But that doesn›t necessarily guarantee safety.

«It›s hard to say without knowing the exact structure of the plastics and any additives in the plastic,» says Dr. Hauser. So, sometimes it›s better to err on the side of caution. «I think a good recommendation is to try to avoid heating foods in plastic,» says Dr. Hauser.

MORE QUESTIONS REMAIN While microwaves accelerate chemical leaching from plastic, this isn›t the only way that chemicals from plastic can wind up in your food or drinks. «Even if it›s

not microwaved, chemicals can still enter food stored in plastic containers or bags,» says Dr. Hauser. «There were studies done a few years ago in Japan that show that plastics used to store foods and liquids allowed chemicals to leach into the foods and liquids.»

Dr. Hauser was involved in another study that found liquids stored in plastic bottles that are subject to heat and sunlight passed chemicals into the liquids. And acidic foods, like tomatoes, can also absorb chemicals from the linings of food cans. Even vinyls or plastics used in homes or offices can release gases, putting measurable amounts of chemicals, such as phthalates, into the air over time.

In the same way, plastic vapors can introduce chemicals to food, even if the plastic isn›t touching the food, albeit in smaller amounts than would occur with direct contact.

This might happen if you use a plastic splatter lid over a bowl in the microwave.

REGULATORY CHANGES Even the most diligent efforts won›t totally eliminate your exposure to harmful chemicals in plastics. That

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chemicals before they come to market.

«But the manufacturer may only test a chemical for limited health effects,» says Dr. Hauser. For example, he says, it might not test for subtle effects on fetal brain development. By contrast, the European Union has made steps toward more aggressively regulating chemicals through a program called REACH -- short for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals -- which began more than a decade ago.

«Before they put a new chemical on the market, they subject it to more rigorous testing than is required in the United States,» says Dr. Hauser.

CHEMICAL-FREE PRODUCTS Are you safe if you use plastics that are free of problematic chemicals such as phthalates and BPA?

won›t happen without changes in manufacturing, says Dr. Russ Hauser, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

There are groups moving toward that goal. The Food Packaging Forum, a charitable foundation based in Zurich, Switzerland, works with experts to better understand scientific information that potentially affects the safety of food packaging. The group is working with manufacturers and others to make food packaging safer for consumers and to reduce plastic waste for environmental reasons, says Dr. Hauser, who sits on the organization›s scientific advisory board. But the problem won›t be instantly solved.

Packaging is designed to promote safety by preventing microbial growth and spoilage. «It›s hard to completely replace plastic because of the ease and also the protection that it does afford,» says Dr. Hauser. Finding safe and suitable alternatives is a challenge. Dr. Hauser believes the government should step in and create policies regarding chemicals in food packaging. The Environmental Protection Agency requires some toxicological testing of

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Again, it›s hard to say whether plastics that don›t contain such chemicals are risk-free, says Dr. Hauser. Often what happens when a manufacturer removes a problematic ingredient from plastic is that it substitutes another chemical that we know little about, he says. For example, if a manufacturer takes phthalates out of its vinyl plastic recipe, it still needs something that will make the plastic soft, so it replaces the phthalates with another softening chemical. The problem is that often the new chemical hasn›t been shown to be safer; there is just little or no evidence about its risk. «Initially, companies looking to avoid using BPA in products switched to a different chemical called bisphenol S, or BPS,» he says. «Much less was known about it at the time. But more recently it›s been shown to be harmful as well.»

A 2011 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives reported that when scientists tested commercially available plastic products labeled as BPAfree, almost all of them leached out chemicals known to have estrogenic activity, meaning that they mimicked human estrogen. Some of the chemicals had even more estrogenic activity than the BPA they replaced.

PROTECTING YOURSELF So, is there anything you can do to protect yourself and cut down on exposure? Here are two good practices: Use heat wisely. Plastics release more chemicals when heated, so avoid heating foods in plastic containers in the microwave.

Skip packaging. When possible, opt against buying products that are stored in plastics.

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Algeria’s 8th President Abdelmejid Tebboune: Regime Insider Vows to Appease Protesters Majalla - London Abdelmejid Tebboune was born on 17 November 1945, in Mishriah (Naama province), southwest of the Algerian Republic.

He graduated from the National School of Administration (Algeria). His entire career was in the public service and all the positions he held were through appointments, from an employee in the administration to a secretarygeneral in several provinces, to the governor of more than one region, then a minister and finally a prime minister.

He began his career in 1969 as a trainee administrator, then administrator in 1972 in the province of Saoura. He occupied the post of secretary-general of the province of Djelfa in 1975, before being transferred in 1977 to the province of Adrar, then to the province of Batna in 1979, and at the province of M’Sila in 1982. From 1983 to 1989, Tebboune held the post of Governor in several provinces: Adrar, Tiaret, and Tizi-Ou The first ministry Tebboune headed was as the acting Minister of Local Communities in

1991, as a deputy of the Minister of Interior General Larbi Belkhir. He left this position on 19 July 1992, after Ali Kafi was appointed the head of the Supreme State Council, after the assassination of President Mohammed Boudiaf, on 29 June 1992.

Later, he served in the government as Minister of Communication and Culture from 1999 to 2000 under President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and then from 2000 to 2001 served as MinisterDelegate for Local Government. From 2001 to 2002, he was Minister of Housing and Urban Planning. Ten years later, in 2012, Tebboune returned to the post of Minister of Housing in the government of Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal.

Following the May 2017 parliamentary election, Tebboune was appointed on 24 May 2017 by President Bouteflika to succeed Sellal as Prime Minister. Tebboune’s appointment was considered as a surprise by Algerian political elites, who had expected Sellal to be reappointed. The new government headed by Tebboune was appointed on 25 May. Tebboune served as Prime Minister for less than three

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months before he was dismissed by Bouteflika and appointed Ahmed Ouyahia to succeed him on 15 August 2017; Ouyahia, who is currently in prison, took office the next day. He represented Algeria in several missions abroad (in Iran, in Syria) after his departure from the government.

On 12 December 2019, Tebboune was elected president following the 2019 Algerian presidential election, after taking %58 of the votes, against candidates from both main parties, the National Liberation Front, and the Democratic National Rally). On 19 December, he assumed office and received the National Order of Merit from the acting President Abdelkader Bensalah. Upon his inauguration, Tebboune extended his hand to the protesters, stressing he was ready to meet with protest leaders to “listen to them (and) respond to their concerns.” He said that his priority is to revise the constitution to establish a “new Algeria” that corresponds to the aspirations of the movement, a project that would be put to a referendum. He promised to include “young men and young women” in his new government.