Month: November 2019

The dispatch of two Philippine coast guard ships to the Sulu Sea might normally register as a quick blip on the radar of world maritime movement. But shipments of illegal drugs and support for violent Muslim rebels cross that sea from other countries into the Philippines, which struggles to contain both. The Chinese navy is growing stronger not far away, too, and China disputes tracts of sea with the Philippines.

The Philippines has historically had a weak defense, especially at sea. Research database GlobalFirePower.com ranks the Philippine armed forces 64th strongest in the world. Neighbors China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam all rank higher.
 
Manila’s Sulu Sea patrol, which started November 18 and will also cover the adjacent South China Sea, shows the country is accelerating its defense buildup because of the offshore threats, , analysts believe. The severity of problems that reach the archipelago from abroad are giving officials extra willpower now, they say.
 
“If it’s not done fast, we won’t have a very potent, a very credible deterrent armed forces or coast guard, so we have to put our money where our mouth is,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization.
 
Drugs and rebels
 
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said in March that illegal drug use had worsened in part because supplies were being smuggled in, domestic news website Philstar Global reported. He swore when elected in 2016 to eradicate drugs, and his critics say thousands of drug suspects have already been killed without trial.
 

“Maybe Duterte realized his war on drugs cannot be won without stopping the inflow of drugs coming from Latin America and coming from the Mekong region, because a lot of drugs have been shipped in the back door and it’s quite difficult to police,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “So, fighting the drug war requires upgrading the coastal capabilities of the coast guard.”
 
The coast guard said on its website it helped last week detain the captain and crew of a merchant ship carrying 53,000 metric tons of a “toxic substance” from South Korea.
 
Sympathizers of the Middle Eastern terrorist group Islamic State use the Sulu Sea to reach Muslim antigovernment rebels in the southern Philippines, Duterte said last year. Violence there since the 1960s has killed more than 120,000 people.
 
Despite a 2014 peace accord with one dominant rebel group and the later creation of a semiautonomous Muslim region, terrorist attacks still flare up around the southernmost major Philippine island, Mindanao. In June, for example, suspected suicide bombers hit a military camp and killed three soldiers.
 
Checking China
 
And in the South China Sea, known in Manila as the West Philippine Sea, hundreds of Chinese vessels gathered near a Philippine-held islet in waters the two sides contest. A Philippine fishing vessel capsized in June after colliding with a Chinese ship. The Philippines holds 10 islets in disputed tracts of the sea.
 
“The fact they put priority into the Sulu Sea is important because it really is probably second only to the West Philippine Sea in importance when you look at it from the perspective of maritime activity,” said Jay Batongbacal: international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines. “There’s a lot of activity there, so it’s good that they’re pouring resources into it.”
 
Long-term modernization
 
Philippine officials have pledged military modernization since 1995 with an act of Congress approved that year, but budgeting has always been inconsistent.  Duterte’s predecessor used arbitration rather than a stronger defense to resist China at sea, Rabena said.
 
The  threats from offshore are giving those pledges extra impetus now, experts say. A three-way deal to patrol the Sulu Sea together with neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia should add to that momentum, Rabena said.

Last year Duterte earmarked $5.6 billion for defense modernization through 2022. Earlier this month an Armed Forces of the Philippines official told a House of Representatives briefing the country should raise defense spending to 2% of GDP, which was $331 billion last year. Its current 1.1% lags the regional average.
 
An expanding tax base is expected to help fund military improvements, Araral said.
 
Defense has been “accelerated” further by hardware donations from abroad, he said. Washington has donated military equipment in the past. Japan, another country that  wants to hold off China at sea, has pledged to send the Philippines two patrol vessels and lend it five surveillance planes.
 
The United States is helping the coast guard now develop a training center in several phases. There’s already a classroom, engine maintenance laboratory and barracks for outboard motor maintenance.  The U.S. Embassy in Manila said in October. U.S. Coast Guard teams will offer training.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump learned about a whistleblower complaint regarding his relations with Ukraine before he decided to unfreeze nearly $400 million in military aid, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday.

The Times cited two people familiar with the matter, saying White House lawyers told Trump about the complaint in late August as they worked to determine whether they were required to send it to Congress.

That battle formed the early stages of what has become the focus of the impeachment inquiry now playing out in the House of Representatives.  Lawmakers received the complaint in late September and made a version of it public.  

Since then, the Democrat-led House Intelligence committee has held both private and public sessions to hear testimony from current and former diplomats and other officials to examine allegations Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to commit to an investigation of one of Trump’s potential opponents in the 2020 election, Democrat Joe Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to send articles of impeachment to the full House for a vote, announced Tuesday it would hold its first hearing December 4 and invited Trump to attend.

The hearing will look into what the committee calls the “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment.”

The guidelines established by Democratic leaders say Trump and his lawyers would be given the chance to question the panel of still-to-be-named legal experts who will appear as witnesses.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to the White House inviting Trump to attend, calling it “not a right, but a privilege or a courtesy.”

“The president has a choice he can make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process,” Nadler said in a separate statement. “I hope that he chooses to participate in the inquiry, directly or through counsel as other presidents have done before him.”

Nadler assured Trump that he “remains committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”

Nadler is giving the White House until Sunday night to respond.

U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland testified last week that a number of senior Trump administration officials were “in the loop” about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine.

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Sondland Insists ‘Everyone Was in the Loop’ on Ukraine

The legion of top US officials well aware of President Donald Trump’s efforts this summer to get Ukraine to carry out investigations that would help Trump politically ranged from Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney

They include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

They have balked at testifying. A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump does not have the power to stop former White House counsel Don McGahn from complying with a subpoena to appear before the House committees.

Trump, who insists he did nothing wrong, tweeted Tuesday that he “would love to have Mike Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney and many others to testify about the phony impeachment hoax,” calling it a “Democratic scam that is going nowhere.”

Trump’s Republican defenders say no matter what the president did, it does not rise to the level of impeachment.

Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Kyiv fired a prosecutor investigating the Burisma gas company, on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has ever surfaced. Charges of Ukrainian election interference are based on a debunked conspiracy theory that originated in Russia.

…

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Tuesday asked lawmakers to allow troops back on the streets to defend key public infrastructure, even as a human rights group reported “grave” abuses by security forces over five weeks of sometimes violent riots.

The continuing protests in Chile over inequality and a shortfall in some social services have left at least 26 dead and thousands injured. They have also hobbled the capital’s public transport system, once the envy of Latin America, and caused billions in losses for private business.

Riots have erupted in countries across Latin America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia in recent weeks as regional unrest has spiraled into violence and demands for broad-based reforms.

Pinera sent a bill to Congress Tuesday morning to allow the military to protect transmission lines, electric plants, airports, hospitals and other public infrastructure in order to assure “basic services.”

He said the move would “free up the police force … to protect the security of our citizens.”

Pinera’s announcement came shortly after international rights group Human Rights Watch said in a report that police had brutally beat protesters, shot teargas cartridges directly at them, and ran over some with official vehicles or motorcycles.

“There are hundreds of worrying reports of excessive force on the streets and abuse of detainees,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division, after meeting with Pinera on Tuesday.

The group stopped short of alleging the abuses had been systematic, but its conclusions were in line with a report last week by Amnesty International on the seriousness of many violations. More than 200 Chileans have suffered severe eye injuries alone in clashes with police using rubber bullets.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recommended an immediate overhaul of police protocols and accountability measures to address the mounting allegations of abuse.

Police and military officials have said any cases of alleged abuse are under investigation by civilian courts.

New clashes

Roadblocks snarled traffic around the Chilean capital Santiago on Tuesday around midday, as protesters set up burning barricades on major streets and highways around the city.

Police used water cannons to disperse protesters in front of the La Moneda presidential palace shortly after Pinera’s speech there. Many took to the city’s main boulevard afterward, bringing traffic to a standstill.

“This never ends,” Rosa Olarce, a pharmacy worker, told Reuters as she waited for a bus. “We’ll see what comes of it.”

Pinera in his speech Tuesday morning ticked off a list of reforms, from boosting the minimum wage to slashing the prices of medicines and public transportation, aimed at quelling the protests.

The country’s normally fractious political parties have also agreed to work together on a new constitution.

However, protests continue, in smaller numbers but with intense violence at their fringes, driven by mistrust that politicians will keep their promises to bring significant change, and enduring fury over the police handling of demonstrators.

…

Thanksgiving came early for a group of New York City commuters who enjoyed a holiday feast on a subway train.      

Video footage shows riders standing behind a white-clothed table covered with plates of turkey, mashed potatoes and cornbread in the middle of a Brooklyn-bound L train on Sunday.      

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Wintry Weather Threatens to Snarl US Holiday Travel

Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal under the best of circumstances, and a one-two punch of bad weather threatens to make it even more exhausting

Stand-up comedian Jodell “Joe Show” Lewis tells the New York Post he organized the Thanksgiving dinner to “bring a little excitement to commuters” and feed any New Yorkers who might be hungry.
       
Lewis says he chose the L train after he saw how “dreary and upset” riders were at the inconvenience of a construction project that has cut service on the line.

…

In September 1789, members of America’s first Congress approached the nation’s first president, George Washington, and asked him to call for a national Thanksgiving.

That seemingly benign request ignited a furor in Congress over presidential powers and states’ rights. Critics had two main concerns with the idea of a presidential proclamation to declare a national Thanksgiving. 

First, some viewed Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, which put it outside of the purview of the president. Secondly, opponents of the measure believed the president did not have the authority to call a national Thanksgiving because that was a matter for governors.

It was a challenging time for the young nation. America had won the Revolutionary War but the country — made up of the 13 former colonies — was not fully unified yet. Calling a national Thanksgiving was a way to bring Americans together. 

In the end, Washington did issue a proclamation, the first presidential proclamation ever, calling for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” He also came up with a solution designed to appease the opposition. 

“When he issued the proclamation, he sent copies of that to governors of each of the states, 13 at the time, and asked them to call a national Thanksgiving on the day that Washington specified, the last Thursday of November,” says Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of “Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience,” and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “And, of course, Washington’s prestige being what it was, every governor did.”

Yet the battle over a national Thanksgiving did not end there. 

As president, Thomas Jefferson refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, even though he had done so as governor of Virginia. John Adams and James Madison did issue proclamations calling for days of “fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving.”

However, after Madison, no U.S. president issued a Thanksgiving proclamation until Abraham Lincoln. He did so in the middle of the U.S. Civil War in 1863 in an effort to unify the country.

“The Battle of Gettysburg had been fought a few months earlier. It was becoming clear that the Union was going to win,” Kirkpatrick says. “Every family in America was deeply affected by that terrible war. In the midst of all that, he was talking about the blessings of the country and what we had to be grateful for. And then he asks the people to come together as one, with one heart and one voice, to celebrate the holiday.”

Since then, every president has called for a national Thanksgiving. 

It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who stirred the pot again in 1939, by moving Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November. Up until then, Americans had marked the holiday on the last Thursday in November, a date first specified by Lincoln.

The new date was Roosevelt’s bid to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the nation’s economic recovery after the Great Depression.

“It was very annoying to some businesses. For example, the calendar industry, which had printed its calendars for the next year already,” Kirkpatrick says. “But one of the most vocal groups were colleges and universities, specifically the football coaches, because a tradition had developed of having Thanksgiving football championship games on Thanksgiving weekend.”

The divide over when to celebrate the holiday was so deep that half of the states adopted the new day, while the other half stuck to the traditional day. Roosevelt eventually reversed his decision, and Congress ended the long national debate over Thanksgiving in 1941 by passing a law making the fourth Thursday in November a legal holiday.

Today, Thanksgiving continues to unify millions of Americans who gather to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. Many will serve traditional foods like turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. 

George Washington made a point of declaring that Thanksgiving should be celebrated by people of all faiths, a distinction that still resonates for Americans, including immigrants marking their first Thanksgiving. 

“It’s 398 years since the so-called first Thanksgiving. It’s America’s oldest tradition,” Kirkpatrick says. “It’s tied up with a lot of seminal events in our history, such as the Revolution and the Civil War, and it’s also a rite of passage for new Americans. The idea is that once you celebrate Thanksgiving, you know you are truly participating in a national festival that cements your position as an American.”

…

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order creating a White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives.
       
The task force will be overseen by Attorney General William Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. It is tasked with developing protocols to apply to new and unsolved cases and creating a multi-jurisdictional team to review cold cases.

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Alaska Natives: Expand Violence Against Women Act

Trump administration has shown little support for granting broader jurisdictions to tribal courts

       
Trump on Tuesday called the scourge of violence facing Native American women and girls “sobering and heartbreaking.”
       
The National Institute of Justice estimates that 1.5 million Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including many who are victims of sexual violence. On some reservations, federal studies have shown women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average.

…

On this episode of Healthy Living, what is autism and how does it affect the brain’s normal development of social and communication skills? Dr. Usifo Edward Asikhia, Clinical Director of the International Training Center for Applied Behavior Analysis, tells us more. Also, we head to the Democratic Republic of Congo for a look at how one school is providing care for children with disabilities, a recent study has the answer to how humans get infected with Malaria, and in our “What’s New?” segment, bioengineers are working to create human organs from a 3D printer. Tune in for these topics and more this week on Healthy Living.

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More than 60 doctors have written to British authorities asserting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urgently needs medical treatment at a university hospital.

The doctors said in a letter published Monday that Assange suffers from psychological problems including depression as well as dental issues and a serious shoulder ailment.

Assange is in Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London in advance of an extradition hearing set for February. He is sought by the U.S. on espionage charges relating to his WikiLeaks work.

The letter was sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel.

Dr. Lissa Johnson of Australia said an independent medical assessment is needed to determine if Assange is “medically fit” to face legal proceedings.

The letter was distributed by WikiLeaks.
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday offered another conflicting account of a leadership shakeup at the Pentagon, while defending his decision to intervene on behalf of a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct during the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Iraq.

Asked about Sunday’s firing of the U.S. Navy’s top civilian, Secretary Richard Spencer, Trump told White House reporters, “We’ve been thinking about that for a long time.”

“That didn’t just happen,” he added during an appearance in the Oval Office with the Bulgarian prime minister. “I have to protect my war fighters.”

Trump also defended ordering Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday to cancel a review board hearing for Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.

Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury earlier this year of charges he murdered a wounded Islamic State terror group fighter during his deployment to Iraq in 2017. But he was found guilty of posing with the teenager’s body and demoted.

Earlier this month, Trump intervened, restoring Gallagher’s rank and pay. But some Navy officials, including Spencer, had said Gallagher would still need to appear before a review board, which would decide whether he could still retire as a SEAL and keep the Trident pin awarded to members of the elite unit.

“They wanted to take his pin away, and I said, No,'” the president told reporters Monday, calling Gallagher a “tough guy” and “one of the ultimate fighters.”

Hours earlier, Esper defended Trump’s order to abort the review board hearing for Gallagher.

“The president is the commander-in-chief. He has every right, authority and privilege to do what he wants to do,” Esper told reporters at the Pentagon.

But Esper’s account of the events that led to Spencer’s dismissal as Navy secretary appears to differ from Trump’s characterization that the firing had been under consideration “for a long time.”

Specifically, Esper alleged he learned after a White House meeting on Friday that Spencer had gone behind his back and tried to make a deal regarding the Gallagher case with White House officials.

“We learned that several days prior Secretary Spencer had proposed a deal whereby if president allowed the Navy to handle the case, he [Spencer] would guarantee that Eddie Gallagher would be restored a rank allowed to retain his trident and permitted to retire,” Esper told reporters.

“I spoke with the president late Saturday informed him that I lost trust and confidence in Secretary Spencer and I was going to ask for Spencer’s resignation,” the defense secretary added. “The president supported this decision.”

The White House late Monday pushed back against the idea that the president’s version of events and the Pentagon’s version were not aligned.

“Both of those things are true,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told VOA, regarding Trump’s assertion that there had been plans to fire Spencer prior to his conduct in the Gallagher matter.

Yet other discrepancies remain.

In a letter acknowledging his termination Sunday, Spencer made no mention of the Pentagon’s allegations that he tired to broker a deal with the White House.Instead, he argued he could not abide by the president’s desire to bypass the review board process as required by the military justice system.

“The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries,” he wrote. “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believes violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Spencer kept to that account late Monday in an interview with CBS News, his first since his firing.

“What message does that send to the troops?” Spencer said of the president’s interfence, answering, “That you can get away with things.”

“We have to have good order and discipline. It’s the backbone of what we do,” he added.

But, Esper on Monday insisted Spencer’s assertions did not match with what the former Navy secretary had told him directly.

Esper also contradicted claims made by Spencer on Saturday that he had never threatened to resign.

I would like to further state that in no way, shape, or form did I ever threaten to resign. That has been incorrectly reported in the press. I serve at the pleasure of the President.

— SECNAV76 (@secnav76) November 23, 2019

“Secretary Spencer had said to me that … he was likely, probably going to resign if he was forced to work to try to retain the Trident [pin for Gallagher],” Esper said. “I had every reason to believe that he was going to resign, that it was a threat to resign.”

“I cannot reconcile the personal statements with the public statements with the written word,” the defense secretary added.

Already, the president’s intervention in the Gallagher case and the firing of the Navy secretary have some Democratic lawmakers calling for an investigation.

“Throughout my work with Secretary Spencer, I’ve known him to be a good man, a patriotic American, and an effective leader,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday.

“We have many unanswered questions,” Kaine said, calling Spencer one of several officials who “served our country well despite having to work under an unethical commander-in-chief.”

“We’re working to get the facts,” the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed, added in a separate statement. “Clearly, Spencer’s forced resignation is another consequence of the disarray brought about by President Trump’s inappropriate involvement in the military justice system and the disorder and dysfunction that has been a constant presence in this Administration.”

But the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, indicated late Sunday he was ready to move on.

The president and defense secretary “deserve to have a leadership team who has their trust and confidence,” Inhofe said, acknowledging, “It is no secret that I had my own disagreements with Secretary Spencer over the management of specific Navy programs.”

Trump has nominated Ken Braithwaite, a former admiral and the current U.S. ambassador to Norway, to become the next Navy secretary.

White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

…

Turkey and the United States are seemingly closer to a collision course as Turkish media report Ankara testing a Russian anti-aircraft weapon system, despite threats of Washington sanctions.

Turkish F-16 jets flew low Monday across the Turkish capital, in a two-day exercise reportedly to test the radar system newly acquired Russian S-400 missile system.

Ankara’s purchase of the S-400s is a significant point of tension with Washington, which claims the system poses a threat to NATO’s defenses.

“There is room for Turkey to come back to the table. They know that to make this work, they need to either destroy or return or somehow get rid of the S-400,” a senior State Department official told reporters at a briefing Wednesday.

The official added that sanctions could follow if Ankara went ahead and activated the system.

Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 system violated U.S. Congress’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Despite September’s delivery of the S-400s, Washington appeared to step back, indicating that sanctions would only be imposed if Ankara activated the system.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reiterated Ankara’s stance, however, that the S-400 poses no threat to NATO systems.

“That’s what we have been saying since the beginning [of the dispute with the [U.S.]. [S-400s] will definitely be a ‘stand-alone’ system. We are not going to integrate this with the NATO systems in any way. It will operate independently,” Akar said Monday.

There is mounting frustration in Ankara with Washington over its stance, given President Barack Obama’s failure to sell U.S. Patriot missiles to Turkey.

“Russia has missiles, so do Iraq, Iran, Syria. So why doesn’t the U.S. doesn’t give us the patriot missile,” said Professor Mesut Casin, a Turkish presidential foreign policy adviser.

“Then we buy Russian S-400, and then you say you are the bad guy, you don’t obey the regulations, NATO principles, you buy Russian missiles.”

Congress called ‘anti-Turkish’

Monday’s testing of the S-400 radar system is widely seen as a challenge to Washington. Analysts claim it will likely add to calls in Congress to impose CAATSA sanctions and other measures against Turkey.

Sweeping new economic and political sanctions against Turkey are currently in Congress awaiting ratification.

“Congress is somehow has become so anti-Turkish. We have only a few friends remaining in the Congress,” said former Turkish ambassador Mithat Rende. “It so difficult to understand how they become so anti-Turkish so emotional.”

“CAATSA sanctions are waiting, and they are fundamentally important for the Turkish economy,” warned Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The Turkish economy is still recovering from a currency crash two years ago, triggered by previous U.S. sanctions.

Trump, Erdogan

Ankara will likely be looking to President Donald Trump to blunt any new efforts to impose sanctions against Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen to have built a good relationship with Trump.

Earlier this month, Trump hosted Erdogan in the White House for what he called a “wonderful meeting.”

“Turkish relations is so reduced to these two guys [Erdogan and Trump],” said Aydintasbas. “The entire relationship is built on this relationship and will rely on Trump to restrict Congress’s authority and make those bills go away.”

However, Ankara’s test Monday of S-400 components will make it unlikely Washington will end a freeze on the sale of the F-35 jet.

Trump blocked the Turkish sale, over concerns the fighter jet’s stealth technology could be compromised by the Russian missile’s advanced radar system.

The F-35 sale is set to replace Turkey’s aging fleet of F-16s. Ankara is warning it could turn to Russia’s SU 35 as an alternative.

“All should be aware that Turkey will have to look for alternatives if F-35s [fighter jets] cannot be acquired for any reason,” Akar said.

Role of Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin is courting Erdogan in a move widely seen as attempting to undermine NATO.

The two presidents are closely cooperating in Syria despite backing rival sides in the Syrian civil war. Bilateral trading ties are also deepening primarily around energy.

Analysts point out a large-scale purchase of Russian jets will likely have far-reaching consequences beyond Ankara’s S-400 procurement.

Training of Turkish pilots for the SU 35 would be in Moscow, as opposed to decades of U.S. training, while Turkey could find itself excluded from joint air exercises with its NATO partners.

Ankara, too, is warning Washington of severe consequences if it has to turn to Moscow to meet its defense requirements.

“Turkey will buy Russian aircraft if the F-35 freeze is not lifted,” said Casin. “If this happens, Turkey will not buy any more U.S. combat aircraft. This will be the end of the Turkish-U.S. relationship. I think like this; I am very serious.”

Putin is due to meet Erdogan in Turkey in January, an opportunity the Russian president is expected to use to try and confirm the SU 35 sale.
 

…

Indiana University’s South Bend campus is home to 5,000 students  almost 10 percent of whom are international. For the past decade, the school has put on a Thanksgiving dinner to bring international students and Indiana residents together. Esha Sarai has more.

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A summit this week between leaders of Pacific Rim allies South Korea and the Philippines is expected to show that both lean toward the West rather than China despite their efforts to get along with Asia’s superpower, analysts say.

A swing toward the West by either country would put Beijing further on the back foot in Asia, where its military expansion alarms multiple governments, and give the United States a new opening to get involved in the region, scholars believe.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on his office’s website November 20 he will meet his Korean counterpart at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations-South Korea summit in Busan Monday through Wednesday. Asian security issues will lead discussion, it said.

“The Philippines and Korea both have been fairly accommodating of China, because Korea given its proximity and Duterte because he wanted to make the best deals,” said Jeffrey Kingston, history instructor at Temple University’s Japan campus.

Now, he said, “both of them are countries that feel concerned about the rise of China. Both feel threatened.”

Ties with China

Duterte broke ice with China in 2016 by setting aside a maritime sovereignty dispute and accepting pledges of $24 billion in Chinese aid, key to his country’s infrastructure renewal effort. But Chinese activity in the disputed South China Sea including a boat collision earlier this year is worrying Filipinos again.

South Korea spars with China over ties with North Korea. The north, a Chinese ally, periodically tests missiles near the south, and in 2017 Beijing condemned the south for installing an advanced antimissile system. Chinese officials feared the U.S.-backed system could monitor activity in China.

China and South Korea separately dispute sovereignty over a tiny island, and South Korea’s coast guard has fired on Chinese fishing boats. However, the two sides, separated by just a few hundred kilometers, agreed last month to improve relations and pursue denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

“Although Korea has its own problems with China, especially with fishing and some islands, they’re handling it very, very differently from us,” Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines.

US alliances

The two leaders are expected to talk about China this week.

“The equilibrium of geopolitics will be high on the agenda including issues such as the tension in the Korean Peninsula and the Spratly Islands,” Manila’s presidential website quotes Duterte saying. Beijing and Manila dispute sovereignty over the Spratlys, an archipelago in the South China Sea.

South Korea and the Philippines, though both historic U.S. military allies in Asia, lack the clout on their own to take any action, said Fabrizio Bozzato, Taiwan Strategy Research Association fellow who specializes in Asia and the Pacific. They might instead jointly support a broader alliance, he said.

“I believe that they can be part of a regional U.S.-centric and Japan-centric regional architecture to resist China, but they cannot be the initiator of that,” Bozzato said. “What they have in common really is that they are both allies to the United States and that they are facing China’s pressure.”

A top U.S. defense official pledged in June more military cooperation in Asia — and criticized China’s military expansion. Washington regularly sends naval ships to the region as warnings to China.

Last month the Philippines joined U.S. and Japanese forces for annual military exercises that news reports from Manila said were designed to keep Asia “free and open,” wording that Washington uses to ask that China quit expanding. Duterte had resisted U.S. help in 2016 and 2017.

South Korea answered U.S. lobbying this month by saying it would stay in an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan despite a trade spat with the Japanese government.

South Korea still looks to China and the United States for help on North Korea issues, said Steven Kim, visiting research fellow at the Jeju Peace Institute.

“It will have to carefully calibrate its relations between the two great powers while occasionally hewing closer to one over the other depending on which of its interests are on the line or at stake,” he said.

Korean aid to the Philippines

Since 2017, South Korea has already emerged as a benefactor to the Philippines and their leaders are due to sign four economy-related deals at the summit.

Two years ago it offered $1.7 billion in credit and other financial aid to help the Philippines improve transportation and energy. Analysts told VOA Seoul hoped to offset Chinese influence in the developing Southeast Asian country.

South Korean companies also build ships for the Philippines as Manila seeks to upgrade its navy. Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries started work this month on a Philippine frigate, news website Navaltoday.com reported. Another frigate is due for delivery in May.

“The Philippines is getting a lot of its modernization requirements like ships from Korea,” Batongbacal said.

…

Jessye Norman was remembered as a force of nature as thousands filled the Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday for a celebration of the soprano, who died Sept. 30 at age 74.

Sopranos Renee Fleming, Latonia Moore, Lise Davidsen and Leah Hawkins sang tributes along with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and bass-baritone Eric Owens that were mixed among remembrances of family and friends, dance performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and video of Norman’s career.

“Yankee Stadium is the house that Babe Ruth built and welcome to this house that Jessye Norman built,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “Of course Jessye wasn’t alone in filling this hallowed hall with her glorious voice. She was joined by rather important voices, from Leontyne Price to Luciano Pavarotti, but in her operatic prime in the ’80s and the 90s, her majestic vocal chords reigned supreme in the dramatic soprano and the mezzo range. Like Babe Ruth, who swung for the fences, Jessye swung for standing room in the family circle, and she always connected.”

Norman’s celebration took place shortly after a memorial to actress Diahann Carroll at the Helen Hayes Theater, about a mile south. On Thursday, author Toni Morrison was memorialized at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, a trio of black Americans who were leaders in their fields.

“Three monumental women who carried through and offered a bounty of gifts to the world,” actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith said.

Smith recalled signing letters “Little Sis” to Norman’s “Big Sis.” She remembered traveling to Norman’s performances around the world, focusing on one at the Festival de Musique de Menton on the French Riviera, near the Italian border. Organizers had arranged to stop traffic to clear the air for Norman but fretted over a train, asking whether Norman preferred they slow it down to lower the noise level in exchange for a lengthier time the noise would be audible.

“When the train came through Menton and Jessye was hitting the high note, I heard Jessye. She sang through it,” Smith said. “Until this morning, this very morning, I thought Jessye’s voice simply overrode that train. I don’t think so anymore. Now I understand that Jessye Norman had the ear, the timing, the love of song, the risk to share and the will to sing through – and with – the roaring train. In the same way, she integrated several musical histories to grace the world with the power of her voice.”

Speakers included Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Gloria Steinem.

Younger sister Elaine Norman Sturkey and brother James Howard Norman told stories of their youth in Augusta, Georgia, and later travels together.

“Travel with Jessye was no small feat,” Norman Sturkey said with humor in her voice. “These Louis Vuittons that she bought were so heavy before you could even put anything in them. Then she would pack them to capacity, so that when we got to the airport, they were all going to be too heavy. We’re not going to have two maybe big suitcases or even three, we were going to have 10. And she’s not lifting anything. That’s somebody else’s problem. And she’s carrying everything from a humidifier to a teapot. And we’re going to be back in less than two weeks, sometimes a week.”

Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson spoke of summoning the courage to ask Norman to curate a festival, which she readily agreed to and became “Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy” in March 2009.

“Clive, this is the project I’ve been waiting my entire life to do,” he quoted her as responding.

Former French Culture Minister spoke of the controversy over his decision to hire Norman rather than a French singer to perform “La Marseillaise” at the Place de la Concorde in 1989 to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His remembrance was followed by a video of Norman’s iconic, blazing rendition.

Fleming received a huge ovation after “Beim Schlafengehen (When Falling Asleep)” from Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” accompanied by pianist Gerald Martin Moore and Met concertmaster David Chan. Hawkins and Moore began and ended the program with traditionals, “Great Day” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand.” Bridges sang Duke Ellington’s “Heaven” and Owen performed Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walkuere.” Davidson, who is to make her Met debut Friday, sang Strauss’ “Morgen!”

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The voting process Sunday of Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election was “peaceful, calm and orderly,” said Oldemiro Baloi, who heads international observers of the Community of Portuguese speaking countries. Results of the balloting are expected Thursday.

The West African country has seen hardly any political stability since independence from Portugal 45 years ago.

President Jose Mario Vaz, who is seeking a second five-year term, is the only president since independence to survive a full term without a coup or assassination.

“The people of Guinea-Bissau are sovereign and I will respect the verdict of the ballot box,” Vaz said after voting in the capital, Bissau.  “I have accomplished my mission of restoring peace and tranquillity.”

The president’s chief competitor was former Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, one of six prime ministers Vaz fired during his presidency.  

Pereira also vowed to “respect” the results of the election.  “These elections are crucial for future of the country,” he said.  

Twelve candidates – all men – were running for president.

Vaz fired Prime Minister Aristides Gomes in late October and named a new head of government. But Gomes refused to step down. The regional bloc ECOWAS intervened to prevent the country from exploding into violence.

Whoever becomes the country’s next president will face numerous challenges in one of the world’s poorest countries, including poverty, corruption, drug trafficking, and badly needed improvements in health care and education.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff December 29.

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Despite a significant decrease in recent years of the number of deaths caused by terrorism, terror groups remain a major threat to peace and stability around the world, according to a new report on terrorism.

According to the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), deaths from terrorism fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2018, after reaching a peak in 2014. Since that time, the number of deaths has fallen by 52%, to 15,952 in 2018.

The annual report, published last week by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), focused on terror trends and activities around the world.  

Steve Killelea, executive chairman of IEP, said that “IEP’s research finds that conflict and state-sponsored terror are the key causes of terrorism.”

In 2018, more than 95% of deaths caused by terror-related activities occurred in countries that were already in conflict, he said.

“When combined with countries with high levels of political terror the number jumps to over 99%. Of the 10 countries most impacted by terrorism, all were involved in at least one violent conflict last year,” Killelea said in a statement to reporters.

IS down but not out

The GTI finds that the number of deaths from terrorism in Iraq fell by 75% between 2017 and 2018, with 3,217 fewer people being killed.

Major military gains against the Islamic State terror (IS) group, such as recapturing its strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in those two years, have resulted in less deaths caused by the terror group.

Following the declared defeat of IS’s so-called caliphate in March of this year by U.S.-backed forces in Syria, IS has lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.

“ISIL’s decline continued for the second successive year. Deaths attributed to the group declined 69%, with attacks declining 63 per cent in 2018,” the GTI said, using another acronym for IS.    

IS “now has an estimated 18,000 fighters left in Iraq and Syria, down from over 70,000 in 2014,” it reported.

Despite these significant successes, the terror group remains capable of carrying out terrorist attacks, experts said.

“It has not even been a year out from the fall of Baghuz [IS’s last pocket of control in eastern Syria], and IS is likely to reestablish areas of governance elsewhere in and around parts of Syria,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center in New York.

Clarke told VOA that while IS might not have the ability to make territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, it still represents a major terror threat worldwide.  

“Even if [IS] won’t be there as a state, it will certainly be there in the form of a low-level insurgency for the better part of next decade,” he predicted.

IS “may begin to seek a foothold elsewhere [and] shift resources to some of its affiliate franchise groups in places like the Sinai, Afghanistan or the Philippines,” Clarke said.

Turkey’s Syria invasion

The Pentagon’s Inspector General last week said in a report that Turkey’s military operation last month against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and the U.S. administration’s subsequent withdrawal has allowed IS to restructure itself and has increased its ability to launch attacks abroad.

The Defense Intelligence Agency said in the report that IS “has exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to reconstitute its capabilities and resources both within Syria in the short term and globally in the longer term.”

Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance that has U.S. backing, said it is holding nearly 11,000 IS fighters in at least 30 prisons across northeast Syria.

Some experts said failing to deal with these prisoners is yet another factor that could increase threats posed by IS in the future.

“The U.S. withdrawal, coupled with the Turkish invasion and the inability to deal with people that are in detention camps in Syria, all that together has breathed new life into the Islamic State, where it should have been on life support,” analyst Clarke said.

Taliban in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has replaced Iraq as the country most affected by terrorism, according to the 2019 GTI. The territorial defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq has resulted in the Taliban overtaking IS as the world’s deadliest terror group in 2018.

The study said terror activity by the Taliban rose sharply in 2018, as the militant group carried out attacks across the country.

The Taliban was responsible for 6,103 deaths in 2018, a 71% increase from 2017, the report found.

Experts estimate that approximately half the population of Afghanistan lives in areas either controlled or contested by the Taliban.

The number of deaths attributed to the Taliban rose by nearly 71%, to 6,103, and accounting for 38% of all deaths globally.

In addition to the Taliban, some IS-affiliated groups have had increased levels of terrorist activity in Afghanistan.

IS’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) was the fourth-deadliest terrorist group in 2018, with more than 1,000 recorded deaths, the majority of which occurred in Afghanistan. 

…

Hong Kong pro-democracy forces scored a sweeping victory in local elections Sunday that saw a record number of voters deliver a stunning rebuke to Beijing.

Opposition candidates won nearly 90 percent of contested seats, according to public broadcaster RTHK. The democrats will now control 17 of 18 district councils, after having previously controlled zero.

The vote was a major symbolic blow to pro-China forces that dominate Hong Kong politics, and the latest evidence of continued public support for a five-month-old pro-democracy movement that has become increasingly aggressive.

“Hong Kongers have spoken out, loud and clear. The international community must acknowledge that, almost six months in, public opinion has NOT turned against the movement,” student activist Joshua Wong said on Twitter.

This is historic. Early returns suggest a landslide victory for the opposition camp. Hong Kongers have spoken out, loud and clear. The international community must acknowledge that, almost six months in, public opinion has NOT turned against the movement. https://t.co/zHFfC85YgC

— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 ? (@joshuawongcf) November 24, 2019

“This is a sweeping victory, far beyond people’s expectations,” David Zweig, professor emeritus at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said.

The vote will not significantly change the balance of power in Hong Kong’s quasi-democratic political system. District council members have no power to pass legislation; they deal mainly with hyperlocal issues, such as noise complaints and bus stop locations.

However, the district council vote is seen as one of the most reliable indicators of public opinion, since it is the only fully democratic election in Hong Kong.

Massive turnout

Nearly 3 million people voted in the election — a record high for Hong Kong, and more than double the turnout of the previous district council election in 2015.

Voters formed long lines that snaked around city blocks outside polling stations across the territory, many waiting more than an hour to vote.

“This amount of people I’ve never seen. There are so many people,” said Felix, who works in the real estate industry and voted in the central business district.

By nighttime, most of the long lines at voting stations had tapered off, but nearby sidewalks remained filled with candidates and their supporters who held signs and chanted slogans in an attempt to persuade passersby to cast last-minute votes.

“I’m tired, but I think it’s more important to fight,” said Elvis Yam, who waited in line for an hour to vote in the morning and then volunteered to hold a campaign sign for a pro-democracy candidate in the University District.

Police promised a heavy security presence at voting locations. But outside many polling stations, there was no visible police presence. At others, teams of riot police waited in nearby vans. There were no reports of major clashes.

Hong Kong has seen five months of pro-democracy protests. The protests have escalated in recent weeks, with smaller groups of hard-core protesters engaging in fierce clashes with police.

The vote shows that, despite the violence, Hong Kong society continues to support the push for democratic reforms, said Zweig, who heads Transnational China Consulting.

“If the government itself doesn’t respond in some significant way, you’re going to get your million man march again. You’re going to get people back on the streets,” he said.

Wider impact?

Even though district councils have little power, the vote could affect how the territory’s more influential Legislative Council and chief executive are selected in the future.

District councilors are able to select a small number of people to the 1,200-member election committee that chooses Hong Kong’s chief executive. They also have the ability to select or run for certain seats in the Legislative Council.

“That’s a big deal,” said Emily Lau, a former Legislative Council member and prominent member of the pro-democracy camp. “Because of this constitutional linkage, it makes the significance of the district council much bigger than its powers show you.”

Hong Kong saw a major surge in voter registration, particularly among young people. Nearly 386,000 people have registered to vote in the past year, the most since at least 2003.

Many Hong Kongers are concerned about what they see as an erosion of the “one country, two systems” policy that Beijing has used to govern Hong Kong since it was returned by Britain in 1997.

China said it is committed to the “one country, two systems” principle, but has slammed the protesters as rioters. In some cases, Chinese state media have compared the protesters to the terror groups Taliban or Islamic State.

In an apparent response to the Hong Kong elections, the People’s Daily, a Communist Party-controlled paper, posted a video on Twitter documenting what it said was the U.S. history of intervention in foreign elections, including in Hong Kong.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been inconsistent when talking about the protests, in some cases calling them riots and in other cases saying he supports them.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for all sides to refrain from violence, but said the Hong Kong government “bears primary responsibility” for the conflict. 

…

A French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Gulf waters that will be operational soon, France’s defense minister said on Sunday.

France is the main proponent of a plan to build a European-led maritime force to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after tanker attacks earlier this year that Washington blamed on Iran.

Tehran has denied being behind the attacks on tankers and other vessels in major global shipping lanes off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in May and which increased tensions between the United States, Iran and Gulf Arab states.

“This morning we formalized that the command post will be based on Emirati territory,” Defense Minister Florence Parly told reporters at a French naval base in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

The command center will host around a dozen officials representing the countries involved, she said. In a speech to French military personnel, she said the next time she visited the base she hoped the mission would be operational and thanked the UAE for supporting it.

The UAE has tempered its reaction to the attacks and has called for de-escalation and dialogue with Iran.
On Saturday, Parly said the initiative could start early next year and around 10 European and non-European governments would join, pending parliamentary approval.

First announced in July, the plan is independent of a U.S-led maritime initiative which some European countries feared would make U.S.-Iranian tensions worse.

Parly said the two missions would coordinate in order to ensure safety of navigation in an already tense area.

“We hope … to contribute to a navigation that is as safe as possible in a zone which we know is disputed and where there has already been a certain number of serious incidents,” she said. She also condemned Iran’s latest violations of a 2015 nuclear deal.

On Saturday, Parly said Paris was sending Saudi Arabia defense equipment to confront low-altitude attacks after Riyadh requested help following a September assault on the kingdom’s oil facilities which Washington and Riyadh have also blamed on Iran. Tehran has denied involvement.

“We have not had an equivalent request from the UAE,” she said on Sunday.
 

…

Security forces opened fire on protesters in southern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding dozens others, police and medical sources said, as weeks of unrest in Baghdad and some southern cities continue.

Protesters had gathered overnight on three bridges in the city, and security forces used live ammunition and tear gas canisters to disperse them, killing three, police and hospital sources said.

More than 50 others were wounded, mainly by live bullets and tear gas canisters, in clashes in the city, they added.

Two more people were killed and over 70 wounded on Sunday after  security forces used live fire to disperse protesters near the  country’s main Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, police and medical sources said.

Hospital sources said the cause of death was live fire, adding that some of the wounded are in critical condition.

The protesters had gathered to demand security forces open roads around the port town blocked by government forces in an attempt to prevent protesters from reaching the port’s entrance.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces dispersed by force protesters who had been blocking the entrance to the port and reopened it, port officials said.

Umm Qasr is Iraq’s largest commodities port and it receives imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar shipments that feed a country largely dependent on imported food.

At least 330 people have been killed since the start of mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Protesters are demanding the overthrow of a political class seen as corrupt and serving foreign powers while many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, healthcare or education.

The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

Medical authorities evacuated infants and children from a hospital in central Nassiriya overnight after tear gas spread inside hospital courtyards, two hospital sources said.

Protests continued in Nassiriya on Sunday, with some government offices set on fire, sources said.

Elsewhere in southern Iraq, hundreds of protesters burned tyres and blocked some roads on Sunday in Basra, preventing government employees from reaching offices, police said.

Iraqi security forces also wounded at least 24 people in the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala overnight after opening fire on demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the local government headquarters, medical and security sources said.

…