Category Archives: Globalization

14th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum

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On 20 June 2019 Congressman Robert Pittenger and Hon. Sonia Krimi hosted the 14th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum in Paris France. This forum has provided the opportunity for Members of Parliament throughout the world to learn from experts and each other about issues of national security particularly in reference to counter-terrorism efforts. These forums have not only shared critical information but encouraged co-operation between governments, private, and public sector organizations.

The 14th forum aimed to address the growing concern about the relationship between countering terrorism and the financing of terrorism. The conference discussed where terrorism currently stands, how it functions, and how the international community can counter terrorist financing methods. While this forum highlighted several terrorist organizations, for the purposes of this article, the focus will be on the discussion surrounding Jihadist terrorist movements.

The terrorism threat has changed dramatically over the last several decades. With huge population growth in areas without access to markets and vulnerability of states in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, the rifts in the Jihadist nebula have primed areas to recruit and act. There is no longer one state, but insurgencies in previously nonimpacted areas all which create a larger global network and establish roots in strategy. While the aims of the different fissures in this network differ, they are beginning to develop new strategic priorities to determine to focus on close or remote enemies.

Women also act as perpetrators and supporters of terrorism, as we have seen recently that there has been an increase in attention to female foreign terrorists fighters traveling to (and returning from) conflict zones. This radicalization of the role of women in spreading this terrorist network, while under-studied, is a crucial component to the spread of global jihadist network and changes in strategic movements in the variety of groups and networks.

This shift has come with new approaches to the tactics of terrorist groups. There has been a rise in the myth of the Caliphate in the Middle Eastern region, perpetuated by leaders who allow this myth to expand. Alongside the growing reliance on social media, terrorist groups are able to reach more individuals, create a larger network, increase visibility, and dissolve information with ease. This larger global system is then bolstered by a marriage of convenience between terrorist groups and gangs, mafias, and other crime organizations. This convergence has increased the amount of illicit money and terrorist financing (through money laundering and other illegal methods).

Women have played a key role in this new type of terrorism and the justification of illegal financing in these groups. As these groups tend to have a foundation in purity, through the twisting of the Quran they are able to make trafficking and laundering acceptable to support their efforts. Women have served as a compliment to this system and used to support this financing process providing both practical support and justification in these financing methods.

The rate of terrorism and the illegal funding of these organizations can be worsened by economic exclusion which weaken states and make them vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Further, there are new methods of warfare which can be quicker, larger scale, and of greater intensity than previous terrorist methods. The international community must act swiftly to address these new risks and rely on coordination between governments and the private sector.

To fight this terrorism, we cannot rely on conventional warfare. There is a significant difference in the strength of states and terrorist groups benefit from over-reaction from states. Therefore, lethal methods must be a last resort and we should first aim to stifle terrorism at its start- specifically in terms of financing. The international community should emphasis AFL/CFT regulations to reduce reliance on money laundry and create strong financial structures in states to monitor money laundering. Women’s unique roles in societies can serve as an important role in order to enhance the effectiveness of these type of policies. In order for this defense style to work, we must reduce disunity between democracies to ensure clear communication and collaboration to end terrorist financing.

When addressing counter terrorism financing rules, it is crucial to consider the impact which these laws may have on women. For example, research has demonstrated that counter-terrorism financial laws can impact women more severely in places where access to the formal banking sector is limited and the rely on alternative remittance system. These areas may also be more highly susceptible to terrorism and counter terrorism laws as weaker states with less access to economic inclusion may be vulnerable. These rules may also increase risks for women’s rights organizations and undermine peace work according to Women’s International League for Freedom.

The 14th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum was an excellent convergence of government representatives and members of the private sector to address this important and rapidly changing nature of terrorism and terrorist organization’s financing. There was an emphasis on the relationship between organizations and governments to create a coordinated approach to stifling the sources of financing in terrorist cases. We must learn from this conference and encourage strong structures AFL/CFT, greater coordination between different groups, and a renewed focus on the nature of counter terrorist financing methods.

Below is a video summary report of the 14th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum in Paris on June 20, 2019 held at the French National Assembly with 180 delegates from 32 countries. We have provided twelve brief interviews of the thirty officials and experts who addressed the forum.

Arend van Dam
https://www.w-t-w.org/en/arend-van-dam/

To Brexit or Not to Brexit?

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Will Great Britain exit the EU?  The mood of Trump and Sanders supporters in the US is to pull back from the world.   This is dominated by issues of employment which the candidates tie to trade.  If we make trade agreements which favor manufacture offshore, they ask, are we depriving able-bodied Americans of work?  The answer to the question isn’t in, but on the face of it, it is an argument that many voters buy.  Add to this immigrants, who Trump argues get treated better than US veterans of foreign wars, and you find a sizable group that supports “America for America>”

In Britain, the same issues, the relationship of jobs and the pressure of immigrants, pushing people to vote for Brexit.

New Guardian/ICM polls show public opinion swinging towards Leave.

Talkwalker, a social media data intelligence group, has bad news for the Remain camp: “Across all U.K. social media, 60.7 percent of Brexit-related conversations and hashtags advocate Leave and 39.3 percent advocate Remain.” The famous “youth,” who is presumably more active on social media is believed to skew towards staying, so this poll is interesting.

The pound has dropped to $1.4546, down 0.64 per cent, as the polls, which were carried out both online and by telephone, showed a 52-48 split in favor of breaking ties with the EU.  According to broker Knight Frank, not even price cuts of 10 percent are attracting buyers in the poshest areas.

Deutsche Bank would move some trading activities from London if the U.K. decides to leave the EU, according to its chief John Cryan. “It would be ‘counterintuitive’ to trade eurozone products such as Italian government bonds out of London if Britain was no longer part of the EU,”

Brexit?

 

 

Is Vietnam the New China?

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John West writes: Vietnam began its transition from central planning towards a market economy in the mid-1980s with reforms known as “Doi Moi” or “Renovation“. This was not a philosophical choice. With famines ravaging the country, and the loss of Cold War support from the former USSR, the government had to do something to get the country moving.

A long series of policy changes have included opening to international trade and investment, and allowing private property rights and private enterprise. Reform is an ongoing process, with important milestones being a free trade agreement with the US in 2000, and membership of ASEAN in 2004, the World Trade Organisation in 2007, and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2015.

Vietnam also has an education system that delivers impressive results, at least until the high school level, according to the OECD.

Policy reforms have stimulated large flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Vietnam’s stock of FDI (foreign direct investment) surged from $243 million in 1990 to $82 billion in 2012, representing some 47% of GDP — around the same rate as Malaysia and Thailand, which both started the period at higher levels.

Investors have been attracted by Vietnam’s strategic location near global value chains (GVCs), its lower cost structure than China, and its political and economic stability. Japanese companies have been the leading investors in Vietnam, supported by the Japanese government. Singapore, Korea and Taiwan have also been important sources of FDI. In 2014, Vietnam attracted FDI from world class companies like Samsung, Nokia and LG.

These inflows of FDI have enabled Vietnam to join GVCs for products like garments, shoes, and electronics. The FDI sector contributed 62% of exports in 2014, up from 47% in 2000, and some 18% of GDP in 2014, an increase from 13% over the same period. Trade has doubled to 160% of GDP over the past two decades, reflecting the active trade in parts and components that characterise GVCs.

But despite this excellent performance, Vietnam’s exports are dominated by unsophisticated products with low domestic value added, and limited technological spillover from foreign to domestic enterprises. Domestic manufacturers have proved unable to move along the supply chain to capture higher value. And the potential benefits of FDI have been greatly compromised by widespread tax cheating by multinational companies.

There are good prospects for continued high inflows of FDI in light of Vietnam’s membership of the TPP.  Vietnam

Vietnam

 

Can A World Trade Agreement Be Made?

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A rare note of optimism at Davos this year comes from the trade ministers, who will gather for the first time since the World Trade Organization (WTO) closed the lid on 14 years of increasingly toxic stalemate.  About 30 governments will be represented, forming a potential coalition willing to forge new WTO deals and move on from deadlocked talks that grew from a meeting in Doha in 2001.  The WTO’s 162 members, meeting last month in Nairobi, agreed to disagree about the Doha round, effectively giving license to any country that wants to get the ball rolling on new reforms.

Tom Miles writes:  The Doha round originally aimed to bolster developing countries, but the economic rise of China, India and Brazil, and the deepening negotiating quagmire led to Washington and Brussels losing interest and all but giving up on meeting the demands of Beijing and New Delhi.

None of the “BRIC” economies’ trade ministers will take part in Saturday’s meeting, which is to be hosted by Switzerland.

In the end, the Doha round went out with a whimper rather than a bang, the WTO acknowledging “different views on how to address the negotiations”.

That admission turned the tables on India and others who hoped to veto any move away from Doha, and gave the advantage to the U.S.-led camp who favor new avenues of trade reform.

“(Doha) may be a zombie, but the WTO negotiating arm, in its new dress, is alive and well,” wrote Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute thinktank.

After 14 years of being stuck, nobody is rushing back into grand negotiations, but there is scope for a subset of members to pursue smaller deals in areas that are not covered by the original 1995 WTO rulebook, diplomats say.

“Anybody who has an issue that they are seeking a solution for should start having conversations and testing ideas and reaching out to potential allies and beginning to understand the concerns of opponents,” said U.S. Ambassador to the WTO Michael Punke.

Bringing talks to the WTO could reopen the risk of a veto by Doha die-hards, but trade experts say the alternative — seeing all trading rules being written outside the WTO, in deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership — might be even less palatable.

Trade

 

Iran’s Go-To Expert on Natural Gas, a Woman

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A women is natural gases leading expert in Iran.

Iran is ready to rebuild its energy industry. The West has been salivating since the July 2015 breakthrough on lifting the sanctions. At a conference in Tehran in late November, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh tantalized more than 300 foreign energy executives with 70 exploration and development projects up for bid, targeting $30 billion in new investments. Ministry officials are promising better terms for foreign producers than found in Iran’s previous oil contracts, which allotted companies a fixed fee regardless of how much oil they produced and paid nothing to companies that spent more than was budgeted to develop a field. The new contracts will be valid for as long as 25 years, compared with seven before. Iran, which says it will disclose more details in February, wants to sign its first deal as soon as this spring.  Hassanzadeh, Iran’s Go-To Businesswoman for Natural Gas

  Elham Hassanzadeh

VW Truth and Consequences

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Head of VW has a bumpy, awkward US tour at the auto show in Detroit, with California emissions’ experts and in Washington, DC.

Matthias Mueller proposes a fix to bring the German automaker’s hundreds of thousands of tainted diesel models into compliance with US pollution standards.

The company’s proposed solution in the EU was approved by authorities weeks ago. That fix includes software changes and the installation of a simple plastic tube and mesh device meant to better aim air toward emissions sensors.

“It was a much simpler solution to the one that they will be able to use in the US, because the emission limits for diesel (nitrogen oxides) emissions in Europe are about four times higher than the US limits are,” said Greg Archer, head of the clean vehicles program at the Brussels-based non-profit Transport and Environment.

To meet US clean air standards, VW’s options include selective catalytic reduction, in which the automaker would inject a nitrogen-oxide-trapping chemical called urea into the exhaust pipe to reduce emissions. Archer said VW would be the first to retrofit that type of system in a diesel car, and it would undoubtedly be expensive.

Another option, which VW is reportedly considering, is installing a catalytic converter to trap the nitrogen oxides. Archer said that would be an easier fix but less effective at reducing emissions.

A practical challenge to either option is finding the room within the vehicle to install either a selective catalytic reduction device or a catalytic converter.

“There isn’t a great deal of space on a lot of vehicles, so physically it’s quite difficult to do,” Archer said.

US is not persuaded.   VW’s sales down.

VW Emissions Deceit

China’s Emergence Plagues the West

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joseph E.Stiglitz writes:  Last year was a memorable one for the global economy. Not only was overall performance disappointing, but profound changes – both for better and for worse – occurred in the global economic system.

On the positive side are the Paris climate agreement and the impending end of fossil fuels as the mina source of energy.  Trade is more complicated as is China’s continued growth in power and population.  Nobelist Joseph E. Steiglitz on the state of the globe

China's Reform?

 

Is Portugal the New Greece?

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Is Portugall the new Greece?

F Willliam Engdah writes:  The illusion that all is well in the Euroland following the brutal Greek austerity agreement this summer is soon to be rudely disrupted by a new Eurozone crisis, this in what was hailed as the IMF and ECB “success story”–Portugal. Very soon, perhaps in a matter of weeks, it will become clear again, as in Greece, or in Germany in 1931, that austerity, spending cuts and tax increases are not a way out of a national economic crisis.

The October 4 national parliament elections have blown the pretty facade off of a game of statistical manipulation, financial tricks and outright fraud that allowed a conservative free market government to claim success in ending Portugal’s severe economic crisis.

The government of Prime Minister Passos Coelho, a free market neo-liberal, lost the majority. His right-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the most votes of any party, but his austerity coalition lost their majority, winning only 38.5% of the vote. Almost two-third, 62% of all voters voted for one of the anti-austerity parties of the left socialist coalition. Coehlo has been in power since June 2011 when the Euro crisis caused panic exit of high-debt Eurozone countries by international investors.

The decisive campaign issue this time was the severe austerity Coehlo’s coalition had followed since 2011. Calling for easing of austerity and even a rethink of Portugal’s relation to the Euro, much as in Greece last January when Alexei Tsipras and his leftist anti-austerity propelled Syriza into power.  Is Portugal the New Greece

Portugal the Next Greece?

How Much Does Good Health Care Cost?

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Does being poor mean being less healthy? In the United States, the answer is generally yes: Income and health are intertwined, and the richer you are, the healthier you’re likely to be.

Still, the link between poverty and poor health isn’t ironclad. Take Costa Rica, where the poorest 25 percent of people live longer than their counterparts in the U.S., according to ananalysis published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Costa Rica punches above its weight on many measures of health and social welfare. It’s a middle-income democracy with a population of 4.8 million—about the size of Alabama—and a per-capita gross domestic product about one-fifth that of the U.S. In other words, it’s much less wealthy than the U.S. As you would expect, the rich in America enjoy lower mortality rates than do the rich in Costa Rica. But when you look at the other end of the socio-economic scale, the reverse is true.

Why are the poor in one of the world’s wealthiest countries more likely to die at an earlier age than the poor in a small, middle-income country? Lifestyle factors have a lot to do with it. In the U.S., smoking and obesity are far more common at the bottom of the income scale. That’s not the case in Costa Rica.

“Poor people or lower socioeconomic-status people are thinner and less prone to obesity than rich people, while in the U.S., the inverse of that situation is true,” said Luis Rosero-Bixby, a demographer at the Universidad de Costa Rica and lead author of the study. Costa Ricans are more likely to adhere to traditional diets and lifestyles that don’t include junk food or cigarettes. Costa Rica’s health care system is not better than that of the U.S., according to Rosero-Bixby, but it manages to ensure that “the very basic needs are covered.”

While Costa Rica outperforms the U.S. on the health of its poorest, it’s not because the country has greater equality than America. Indeed, the income distribution in Costa Rica concentrates a greater share of wealth at the top, according to the paper. Somehow, though, skewed income doesn’t translate to skewed health outcomes.

The analysis linked census records in both countries with death registries from the 1990s. Matching that kind of data isn’t possible in many places, Rosero-Bixby said, so it’s hard to tell whether the pattern is similar elsewhere. Both countries are, to some extent, outliers. While Costa Ricans are generally healthier and live longer than the country’s income and health spending would predict, the reverse is true in the U.S..

 

Scalebacks in British Business Spending

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Scalebacks in British business spending.

Worries about the eurozone and shaky prospects for the wider global economy have dented confidence among bosses of the UK’s biggest companies, according to a survey.

There is growing uncertainty among business leaders over the UK’s planned referendum on EU membership, with support for staying in the bloc waning significantly over the past six months.

Confidence back to 2012 levels

CFO optimism was at its lowest level since the second quarter of 2012, Deloitte said.

Almost a third of the 137 CFOs surveyed, or 30%, said they were less optimistic about the prospects for their companies compared with three months ago. That was up from 20% feeling more downbeat when asked six months earlier. Just 12% said they were more optimistic in the latest poll, down from 36% six months earlier.

As a result, risk appetite was also down and the pace of hiring and capital spending was likely to slow in coming months, said Deloitte’s chief economist Ian Stewart.

Growth prospects

Growth prospects
 Illustration: Deloitte

Finance chiefs were broadly optimistic about the UK’s economic prospects in 2016 as well as for the US, the world’s largest economy. But despite stronger than expected growth in the euro area last year, CFOs remained pessimistic about prospects for the region. Levels of confidence about growth in the single currency bloc were lower than for emerging market economies.

The survey also signalled a drop in support among business leaders for the UK to remain in the EU ahead of a referendum on the issue.

Attitudes to EU membership
 Illustration: Deloitte

Deloitte asked CFOs whether it was in the interests of British business for the UK to remain a member of the EU. In the latest survey, 62% agreed that continued membership was beneficial, down from 74% when the question was asked six months earlier. There was also an increase in the number of those saying that UK business would benefit from leaving, to 6% now compared with just 2% before.

Just over a quarter, or 28%, said their decision depended on the outcome of the prime minister’s renegotiation of UK membership, up from 23% six months earlier. The remaining 4% said they were uncertain of their position.

After almost seven years of interest rates being held at a record low of 0,5%, a potential increase from Bank of England policymakers in coming months represents yet another uncertainty for businesses as they enter 2016.

With low oil prices helping to keep inflation low, financial markets do not point to a rate rise until late 2016 or early 2017.