Two weeks ago, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued a decree calling for the commemoration in his country of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation in order to call attention to and reaffirm “the enormous contribution of Protestant churches and religious organizations … and to express respect for their role in Ukrainian history.”

That decree “opens enormous possibilities for the mission of Evangelical churches in Ukraine,” Mikhail Cherenkov of the Baznica religious affairs portal says. But even more than that, it highlights the differences between Ukraine and Russia where Protestants are treated as little more than detested “sectarians” (baznica.info/article/reformaciya-kak-missiya/).

By choosing to commemorate the anniversary of Protestantism, Cherenkov says, Ukrainian officials are showing that they are seeking “the spiritual resources which could help them reform the country” as “everyone understands” that Russian Orthodox will not do that but rather will pull the country backwards.

At one point, the Orthodox Church sought to destroy the spread of the Reformation in Ukraine, just as it fought the spread of Catholicism both pure and in its Uniate form. The consequences of that, Cherenkov continues, are still having an impact and retarding change there.

As most people now recognize, “the Reformation concerns not only Protestant churches but Christianity as a whole and even more all of society, its culture, economics and politics. Ukrainian Protestants can provide a good example but for this they themselves must recall the heritage of the Reformation.” By his actions, Poroshenko is helping them to do so.

“During the years of Soviet power, Protestants weren’t given the chance to study and occupy any influential posts,” he continues. “Now everything is changing before our eyes as since independence, many thousands of young Evangelical Christians have received a higher education and begun successful careers.”

Such a generation, he says, “can be that force which will bring changes to society beginning in the workplace, the family, the church and via civic initiatives.” They need to recall the power of the Reformation and the way in which Protestantism as Max Weber observed contributed to the rise of capitalism and the modern world.

Chernenkov is the author of a 2008 book in Ukrainian, “The European Reformation and Ukrainian Evangelical Protestantism.” That book, although published in only 300 copies is essential reading for those concerned with the role of Protestantism in Ukraine especially since 1991 (bogoslov.ru/es/biblio/text/538842/index.html).

Stagnant wages are the dominant theme of this year’s presidential election. Appropriately so. According to the (pro-labor) Economic Policy Institute, the median wage has risen only 6 percent in real terms over the past three decades. Low-wage workers have actually seen a 5 percent decline.

So what are the candidates promising to do about that? Although they often talk about wages, political candidates almost never advocate policies that would credibly make them higher. This year, Donald Trump is an exception. He is advocating a policy change that will increase the income of the average family by an estimated $4,000 a year within the next four years.

And here is a surprise: That policy change has nothing to do with immigration. Or foreign trade. In fact, it is something Trump almost never talks about. For that matter, Hillary Clinton doesn’t talk about it either.

The issue is corporate taxation. At a top rate of 35 percent, the United States has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world. But because of deductions, exemptions, credits and other loopholes, the tax doesn’t raise much money. In the process, it is encouraging capital and jobs to go off shore.

Both Trump and Clinton have talked about companies relocating abroad (“inversions” they are sometimes called) and both have gone out of their way to deplore those actions. But deploring is easy. Is there anything that would stop that trend and reverse it?

Buried in arcane policy papers that the average voter rarely sees, Trump has a proposal to replace our complicated, convoluted corporate income tax with a simple, 15 percent “flat tax” on corporate profits. And according to the best economic analysis, that one change will have a huge impact on the American economy.

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, in a study for the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research, has analyzed the Trump proposal and reports three findings.

First, the lowering of the corporate tax rate will lead to an enormous flow of capital into the United States, amounting to trillions of dollars. This inflow will substantially boost worker productivity and that will lead to a substantial increase in employee wages.

Second, the proposal doesn’t cost anything in terms of lost government revenue. The loss of revenue from the lower tax rate is made up by the broadening of the tax base (no more loopholes) and by the additional taxes collected due to a larger economy. More capital means more output which means more income and more taxes paid. In contrast to the frequently heard Trump criticism on the left, this is not a tax cut for the rich. It’s not a tax cut at all.

Third, the real beneficiaries of corporate tax reform are not shareholders. Almost all the gains are realized by workers. The rich don’t gain much at all. Or, to reverse the analysis, the burden of today’s inefficient corporate income tax is not falling on capitalists – whose after tax rate of return tends to be determined in the international capital market. The burden of the tax falls almost exclusively on workers.

Who bears the burden of the corporate income tax has been an unresolved question for economists – almost since the beginning of the science of economics. To answer the question definitively, Kotlikoff and his colleagues had to build a first-of-its-kind model to understand how international capital flows in response to taxes in all of the major economies. With that model in hand, they were then able to analyze the effects of variations in the U.S. tax. (See the full results of that effort here.)

In general, U.S. corporations don’t pay taxes on capital accumulated abroad until those funds are “repatriated,” or brought back into the country. Currently there is about $2 trillion of untaxed earnings sitting off shore. As an example of the power of taxes to affect such funds, in 2005 the federal government created a “tax holiday”—allowing repatriated funds to be taxed at a rate of 5.25 percent, rather than 35 percent. In response, about $300 billion flowed into the U.S.

Instead of viewing this experiment as a great success, however, The New York Times editorial page and many Democrats in Congress view it as a failure. The reason? Much of the money, they say, was used to pay dividends or buyback shares of stock rather than create jobs.

This is a freshman level mistake in economic reasoning. When companies pay dividends or buy back stock, the funds don’t disappear into the stratosphere. They are transferred from one holder of capital to another. And that’s a good thing! We don’t want jobs to be created by whoever happens to be holding capital. We want jobs to be created by companies that have the best prospects for productive job creation. To get funds from those who hold them to those who can make the best use of them, we need a fully developed capital market where funds can easily pass form one investor to another.

Corporate tax reform is not Trump’s only economic proposal. He has other ideas on business taxes and personal income tax reform – some of which, quite frankly, need fine-tuning. (See here.) On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has indicated no desire to reform the corporate income tax and virtually all of her ideas on taxing the rich would take money out of the capital market and use it to subsidize consumption. Such “consumption of capital” will surely lower wages in future years. Similarly, her many proposals to regulate the labor market (e.g., paid parental leave) will almost certainly lower wages—especially the wages of women.

I’ll write more about these issues in the future.

PS: Although the Kotlikoff study is very favorable to Trump’s proposal, Kotlikoff is not planning on voting for Trump. To the contrary, he is running against Trump as a write-in candidate.

This article was also published in TownHall.com and is reprinted with permission.

The artificial fog—called “smoke” (dyma) in some reports—is said to be an aerosol that Russian armed forces were testing to assess its effectiveness in concealing military (in this case, naval) assets.

By John R. Haines*

(FPRI) —“The fog comes on little cat feet.
It sits looking over harbor and city
on silent haunches and then moves on.” — Carl Sandburg, Fog

Russian armed forces caused the closed city of Severomorsk[1] to “plunge into the fog” for three days (10-12 August), reported Novosti Kratko and other Russian language news portals.[2] Special-purpose “stationary and mobile smoke screening (dymopuska)” devices[3] operated by the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops[4] generated the chemical fog that blanketed the Northern Fleet’s homeport.

Severomorsk, Murmansk Oblast (Source: Wikipedia)

The artificial fog—called “smoke” (dyma) in some reports—is said to be an aerosol that Russian armed forces were testing to assess its effectiveness in concealing military (in this case, naval) assets. Other reports reference “radiation, chemical and biological protection,” implying the aerosol may have some unspecified prophylactic quality.

The Russian media portal Vesti published this screenshot from a broadcast on the Russian government-owned Rossiya-24, which carried the caption “Chemical defense troops make the Northern Fleet’s naval base disappear.”[5]

Broadcast on the Russian government-owned Rossiya-24. Source: Rossiya-24

The report continued:

“Assessments of aerosol masking continue in Severomorosk. For a few hours, all ships in the floating base led by the heavy missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy disappeared into an impenetrable fog.”[6]

Russia’s TV21 broadcast footage of Russian troops “putting up a smokescreen and camouflaging the base” from which these screenshots were taken:[7]

Russia’s TV21 broadcast footage of Russian troops. Source: TV21

An accompanying commentary claimed the Russian troops were capable of putting up a cloud one kilometer in radius, which they could sustain for up to fourteen hours.

So what is happening? Reports that “the Russian armed forces will conceal the whole city for three days” and “the Northern Fleet at Severomorsk will be hidden”[8] imply the use of an obscurant smoke, the literal “fog of war” (tuman voyny). Obscurant smoke is an aerosol cloud brought into the line of sight between an observer and a target. Obscurants are not considered chemical weapons. Rather, they are classified as military chemical compounds even though some have toxic effects. These toxic smokes (sometimes called combination smoke) include tear gas or other chemical agents that can degrade electro-optical devices in the visual and infrared wavebands.[9]

Obscurants function as a combat multiplier, the purpose of which is to screen or blind, and, sometimes, to deceive (a decoy screen).[10] Obscurants are useful, for example, to counter an adversary’s asymmetric advantages in an urban battlespace by concealing a ground unit as it moves through terrain. The United States Marine Corps concluded from its study of Russian combat operations in Chechnya that “Obscurants are especially useful when fighting in cities.”[11] The most common obscurant generators vaporize low viscosity petroleum distillates to produce a stable petroleum smoke cloud of extremely small diameter droplets that scatter light rays. Modern obscurants such as synthetic graphite flakes can screen electromagnetic tracking and targeting systems, and frustrate sensors in the near-, mid- and far-infrared bands.

There is nothing novel about the use of obscurants. For thousands of years, military forces have used smoke screens to conceal movement and to frustrate enemy targeting. A century ago, white phosphorus and other types of smoke were the focal point of experiments by the Army’s new Chemical Warfare Service, which was formed in June 1918. In World War II, the United States deployed some 40 smoke generator units that were used to defend sites against air attacks—for example, concealing Allied naval formations around Bizerte, Tunisia, from Axis aircraft—and experimentally to conceal aircraft inflight at assembly areas from ground-based anti-aircraft defenses.[12] Smoke generators were deployed during the Korean War to form a defensive screen over Pusan’s port facilities, and to screen the amphibious landing at Inchon. While the use of obscurants was much reduced in Vietnam, three decades later during Operation Desert Shield, the United States Army 59th Chemical Company conducted a large area-screening mission around Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd International Airport.

Modern multi-spectral obscurants are used to defeat enemy reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition systems that operate in the visual, infrared, and millimeter wave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is possible for a force to achieve full dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum by means of full-spectrum obscuration and other signature reduction methods. The United States deploys several systems, including the M56/M56E Smoke Generator Set (SGS) [NATO reporting name: Coyote],[13] the M58 Mechanized Smoke Obscurant System [NATO reporting name: Wolf],[14] the M157/M157A2 SGS [NATO reporting name: Lynx],[15] and the M1059/M1059A3 Smoke Generator Carrier (SGC).

Exercise Pandarra Fog (2014) U.S. Navy 7th Fleet and the Navy Warfare Development Command Test Radar-Absorbing Carbon-Fiber Obscurant Technology (Source:United States Navy[18])

That is not to say obscurants have no role in concealing preparations for offensive action. A provocative February l955 article by Marshal Pavel Rotmistrov published in the Soviet journal Voyennaya misl’ (“Military Thought”) addressed the question of surprise (the context was nuclear weapons, but the principle holds as a general rule). “While surprise cannot yield conclusive results,” he wrote, it is “one of the decisive conditions for attaining success, in battle and operations as well as the war as a whole.”[19] Here the role of obscurants is to conceal preparations for a preemptive strike:

“[Surprise] is achieved by confusing the enemy about your intentions for battle, and by keeping secret your intentions, and by concealing your preparations for battle.”

The Russian word maskirovka is usually translated as “deception”[20] (and sometimes, as “camouflage”) although the Sovetskaya Voyennaya Entsiklopediya (“Soviet Military Encyclopedia”) defined it as voyennyy khitrost’ (“strategems”). The second word of this definitional term—khitrost’—means cunning, in the sense Clausewitz used it when he wrote, “the term ‘cunning’ implies secret purpose.”[21] Soviet doctrine employed maskirovka-as-camouflage “to conceal the true position of our troops from the enemy and to mislead him about it, and by so doing, to lead him to commit mistakes and to make erroneous conclusions about the situation.”[22] It is multi-dimensional—time, scope, scale, and the character of military operations. Maskirovka-as-camouflage employs three types of obscurants—concealing, blinding, and decoying smoke.[23]

According to the Reagan-era National Security Decision Directive Number 108 dated 12 October 1983, the “doctrine of maskirovka” calls for “the use of camoflage [sic], concealment and deception (CC&D),” the “measures” of which are “concealment, simulation, diversionary actions and disinformation.”[24] The recent conflict in eastern Ukraine illustrates their application in the post-Soviet era in conjunction with military force and non-military means of influence:

“Moscow concentrated forces, waged deception operations, conducted alert exercises and snap inspections in various military districts to disorient neighboring states, to divert their attention, and, often, to conceal the direction of the main effort.”[25]

This, of course, is nothing new: the use of obscurants long was a basic tenet of Soviet urban warfare doctrine:

“Smoke agents are used to conceal the maneuver of men and weapons between strong points, defensive areas, and separate buildings not having concealed or underground routes between them and also to prevent the enemy from observing and conducting aimed fire.”[26]

A 1978 United States Defense Intelligence Agency report noted a more ominous use: the use of protecting smoke—which attenuates energy weapons on the battlefield—to reduce battlefield levels of thermal radiation after a nuclear detonation.[27] The United States Marine Corps Fleet Marine Force Manual No. 11-9 states much the same:

“In an active nuclear environment or when the threat of nuclear weapons use is high, smoke can be used to attenuate the thermal energy effects from nuclear detonations. Chemical smoke units can provide this asset to a commander if they are available.”[28]

So, too, the United States Army publication Mechanized Infantry Squad Operations: “Fog or heavy battlefield smoke can reduce the effects of thermal radiation.”[29] Protective and obscurant smoke can both be used to degrade the effect of directed energy weapons such as lasers, high-power microwaves, particle beams, and non-nuclear directed electromagnetic pulse.[30]

While Severomorsk’s three-day “fog” was most likely a simple obscurant, the use of protective and obscurant smoke for radiation, chemical and biological protection is an intriguing—and if true—far more troubling explanation. The containment and neutralization of chemical and biological agents released in an explosive detonation[31] presents significant technical challenges. Most chemical (CWA) and biological (BWA) warfare agents are in the form of a liquid or vapor that is dispersed into the environment as an aerosol or gas.[32] These agents can be anti-personnel—both lethal ones and incapacitants (which include non-CWA toxic smoke)—and anti-material—corrosive chemicals, for example, or microbes capable of degrading material such as carbon fiber, cement or fuel. CWA and BWA defense involves thermal and chemical destructive methods to contain and neutralize agent(s). One of the biggest challenges to counter the effect of a CWA or BWA detonation is to contain and/or neutralize large fractions of the released agent(s). Concealment, the United States Army Field Manual states, is key to a force’s “ability to protect itself against NBC [nuclear, biological and chemical] weapons and to operate in contaminated environments.”[33] While obscurants are not CWA, the availability of both “toxic and neutral smokes” is useful as an offensive measure “to force the enemy to use chemical protection systems, thus lowering its effectiveness.” Moreover, “Camouflage, blinding, and decoy smokescreens are useful in concealing the direction and time of attack.”

Russia: Blowing Smoke in Whose Eyes?[34]

The deployment of an aerosol obscurant over the Northern Fleet’s Severomorsk base occurred at the same time that Voyska RKHBZ [Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense] forces conducted a radiological and chemical decontamination exercise with Baltic Fleet forces around Kursk.[35] In early August, Voyska RKHBZ forces were visibly present in Armenia, reportedly engaged in “testing new sensors”:[36]

“in the mountainous terrain in the highlands in order to detect signs of a chemical or biological attack at a distance of 6 kilometers and to identify radioactive contamination over an area of 10 square kilometers, while remotely transmitting information about the weather and any detected back to the command post.”[37]

Russian TDA-3 Smoke Vehicle (Source: Vitaly Kuzmin)

And in Transnistria, Voyska RKHBZ trainers were part of a 500 person training exercise in July “on protecting against the damaging effects of weapons of mass destruction.”[38]

It is of course customary for specialized units like Voyska RKHBZ to train with other units, but their appearance in chronic hotspots like Armenia and Transnistria is attention getting nonetheless. A recent profile in RussiaToday News discussed the TDA-3 Smoke Vehicle:

“The TDA-3 is used for the production of aerosol curtains. It can do so to camouflage major military installations and military equipment as well as military personnel engaged in fording rivers. A key feature is the aerosol curtain’s ability to work effectively not only in the visible range but also the infrared range, and to provide not only ground cover but also an elevated veil that can cover bridges and oversized objects.”[39]

Given the place of obscurant and protective smoke in Russian (and earlier, Soviet) military doctrine, and Russia’s demonstrated willingness today to intervene militarily in its near abroad, the cumulative weight of recent events—the large-scale test of obscurants over the Northern Fleet’s homeport, radiological and chemical weapon decontamination exercises with the Baltic Fleet, the visible presence of specialized troops in place like Transnistria and Armenia—send an intentional signal to Ukraine and other neighboring countries in addition to serving a practical purpose.

Maxim Trudolyubov wrote in a recent Moscow Times commentary:

“Putin is a proven master at manipulating emergencies—real or imagined—to reach his political end. […] What has changed is the scale. Moscow has been demonstrating lately that it can keep most of its immediate region and its partners and opponents in a state of alarm.”[40]

Especially given Russia’s past use of “training exercises” to mask offensive action, each of these events—from dramatic ones like hiding the Northern Fleet to the appearance of specialized troops in known hotspots—merits close and continuous scrutiny going forward.

The translation of all source material is by the author unless noted otherwise.

About the author:
*John R. Haines is Co-Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s new Eurasia Program and Executive Director of FPRI’s Princeton Committee. Much of his current research is focused on Russia and its near abroad, with a special interest in nationalist and separatist movements. As a private investor and entrepreneur, he is currently focused on the question of nuclear smuggling and terrorism, and the development of technologies to discover, detect, and characterize concealed fissile material. He is also a Trustee of FPRI.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1] Severomorsk is a ZATO [the transliterated acronym of zakrytyye administrativno-territorial’nyye obrazovaniya] or “closed administrative-territorial formation.” Part of the Murmansk Oblast, it is located on the Barents Sea’s Kola Bay about 26 km from the city of Murmansk. The city is home to the Russian Northern Fleet’s main administrative base. In 1933 it was a small sparsely inhabited settlement known as Vayenga when it was designated a forward base for the newly created Northern Fleet. Its name is a portmanteau word formed from sever [Russian: север. English: north] and more [Russian: море. English: sea] and was adopted as the city’s name in 1951.

[2] “Severomorsk zamaskiruyut: tselyy gorod na tri dnya pogruzyat v tuman.” Novosti Kratko [published online in Russian 10 August 2016]. http://novostikratko.ru/murmansk/2016/08/10/324375-severomorsk-zamaskiruyut-tselyj-gorod-na-tri-dnya-pogruzyat-v-tuman.html. Last accessed 11 August 2016.

[3] MK.ru (9 August 2016), op cit.

[4] The responsibilities of the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops of the Armed Forces [Russian transl.: Voyska radiatsionnoy, khimicheskoy i biologicheskoy zashchity or Voyska RKHBZ] include the deployment of aerosols to camouflage troops and facilities and to frustrate precision-guided weapons and reconnaissance; and radiological, chemical and biological containment and decontamination.

[5] “Pogoda 24: tuman voyny.” Vesti.ru [published online in Russian 13 August 2016]. http://www.vesti.ru/videos/show/vid/688749/cid/7/#. Last accessed 14 August 2016.

[6] Ibid. The Pyotr Velikiy (“Peter the Great”) is a Project 1144.2 battlecruiser NATO designation: Kirov-class commissioned in 1995 and the Northern Fleet’s flagship. It is not the submarine shown in the screenshot but instead this one shown in as RIA-Novosti photograph:

The Pyotr Velikiy

[7] “Ushli v tuma.” TV21 [published online in Russian 12 August 2016]. http://www.tv21.ru/news/2016/08/12/ushli-v-tuman. Last accessed 13 August 2016.

[8] Novosti Kratko (10 August 2016), op cit.

[9] United States Army (2011). TC 7-100.2. Opposing Force Tactics. Chapter 13. CBRN and Smoke.

[10] Ernst-Christian Koch (2008). “Special Material in Pyrotechnics: V. Military Applications of Phosphorus and its Compounds.” Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics. 33:3 (June 2008) 165. There are hygroscopic (e.g., red and white phosphorus, hexachloroethane) obscurant aerosols, which means they absorb water from the atmosphere; and non-hygroscopic (e.g., carbonaceous soot and brass particles) obscurant aerosols. The performance of hygroscopic aerosols is always dependent on the relative humidity which itself is a function of the ambient temperature.

[11] United States Department of the Army (2002). Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain. FM 3-06.11 (FM 90-10-1) H-3. See: APPENDIX H. Lessons Learned From Modern Urban Combat, H-1. Russia and the War in Chechnya, b. US Marine Corps Analysis, (3) Tactical Lessons, subheading (g). http://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/fm3-06.11(02).pdf. Last accessed 15 August 2016.

[12] The United States War Department’s Military Intelligence Division prepared multiple assessments of German, Italian and Japanese experimental and operational uses of defensive and offensive smoke, smoke weapons, and smoke generators. See for example: United States War Department Military Intelligence Division (1943). Tactical and Technical Trends. Nos. 7, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32, 35, 36, 38, and 40.

[13] The M56/M56E is the United States Army’s first visual and infrared large area smoke generating system. It works by means of “Fog oil pumped into the exhaust gas of a turbine engine to produce visual obscuration and graphite pellets are pulverized to 5 micron particles and disseminated through a separate ejector to produce infrared obscuration.” Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (2009). CBRN Handbook. (Rock Island, IL: Edgewood Chemical Biological Center) 152.

[14] Ibid., 153.

[15] ” The M157A2 uses dual pulse jet engines, operating on standard Army fuels, to produce large white clouds of fog oil vapor which defeat visual-range observation and tracking methods, including lasers.” Ibid., 154.

[16] Thomas J. Culora (2010). “The Strategic Implications of Obscurants.” Naval War College Review. 63:3 (Summer 2010) 74.

[17] Ibid.

[18] http://www.navy.mil/view_imagex.asp?id=180261&t=1. Last accessed 9 August 2016.

[19] Pavel A. Rotmistrov (1955). “O roli Neozhidannosti v sovremennoy voyne.” Voyennaya misl’. 2 (February 1955).

[20] See for example: U.S. Department of Defense (1983). Lexicon of Selected Soviet Terms Relating to Maskirovka (Deception). Intelligence Document No. DDB-2460-3-83 (Washington, D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency) 4.

[21] Carl von Clausewitz (1832; 1976). On War, Michael Howard & Peter Paret, eds. & transls. (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 202.

[22] General-Major Vasiliĭ Gerasimovich Reznichanko (1966). Taktika. (Moskva: Voyennoye Izdatel’stvo hinisterstva Oborony, SSSR) 148. Later editions of the book were translated and published by the United States State Department Translation Bureau and the United States Air Force, respectively.

[23] A. A. Beketov, A. P. Belekon & S. G. Chermashentsev (1976). Maskirovka Deystviy Podrazdeleniy Sukhoputnykh Voysk. (Moskva: Voyennoye izdte’ stvo Ministerstva Oborony, SSSR) 82-83.

[24] https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-108.pdf. Last accessed 16 August 2016.

[25] Dmitry Adamsky (2015). “Cross-Domain Coercion: The Current Russian Art of Strategy.” Proliferation Papers 54, The Institut Français des Relations Internationales. 37. http://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/pp54adamsky.pdf. Last accessed 16 August 2016.

[26] A.K. Shovkolovich, F.I. Konasov, and S.I. Tkach (1971). Boyevyye deystviya motostrelkovoy batal’ona v gorode. (Moskva: Voyennoye izdte’ stvo Ministerstva Oborony, SSSR).

[27] United States Defense Intelligence Agency (1978). Soviet/Warsaw Pact Ground Force Camouflage and Concealment Techniques. DDI-1100-161-78 (January 1978). (Washington, D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency) 24.

[28] United States Marine Corps (1992). Fleet Marine Force Manual No. 11-9 (29 May 1992), “Nuclear Protection.” http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/army/fm/3-4/Ch4.htm. Last accessed 16 August 2016. See also United States Army (1994). Field Manual 3-101-1. Smoke Squad/Platoon Operations (23 September 1994)1-4.

[29] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/accp/in0202/le2k.htm. Last accessed 16 August 2016.

[30] United States Army (1990). Smoke Operations. Field Manual 3-50 (4 December 1990)13. http://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/fm3-50(90).pdf. Last accessed 16 August 2016.

[31] The United Nations has used the term weapon of mass destruction since 1947, which it defines as “atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above.” Its first documented use precedes the earliest nuclear weapons and modern bioweapons, dating to a December 1937 radio broadcast by William Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he condemned the aerial bombing of Spanish and Chinese cities. Parts of his broadcast were reprinted as a commentary in The Times, including this one: “Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?”

[32] There is some indication that the People’s Liberation Army has assessed the use of protective or obscurant smoke for CWA protection.

[33] United States Army (1998). FM 100-61. Armor- and Mechanized-Based Opposing Force Operational Art. (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army). See: Chapter 14, “NBC and Smoke Support.” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-61/index.html. Last accessed 15 August 2016.

[34] From the traditional Russian saying Puskat’ dym v glaza (“Let smoke blow in his eyes”).

[35] “Podrazdeleniye RKHBZ Baltiyskogo flota na uchenii v Kurskoy oblasti otrabatyvayet deystviya pri likvidatsii posledstviy tekhnogennykh avariy.” Minoborony Rossii [published online 11 August 2016]. http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12092613@egNews&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter. Last accessed 13 August 2016.

[36] “Podrazdeleniye RKHBZ rossiyskoy voyennoy bazy v Armenii pristupili k zanyatiyam na vysokogornom poligone Kamkhud.” Minoborony Rossii [published online 1 August 2016]. http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12091330@egNews. Last accessed 13 August 2016.

[37] “V Armenii nachalsya polevoy vykhod podrazdeleniya RKHBZ Yuzhnogo voyennogo okruga.” Novosti-Armeniya [published online in Russian 1 August 2016]. http://newsarmenia.am/news/armenia/v-armenii-nachalsya-polevoy-vykhod-podrazdeleniya-rkhbz-yuzhnogo-voennogo-okruga/. Last accessed 13 August 2016.

[38] “V OGRV nachalis’ ucheniya po biologicheskoy i khimicheskoy zashchite.” Novosti Pridnestrov’ya [published online in Russian 7 July 2016]. http://novostipmr.com/ru/news/16-07-07/v-ogrv-nachalis-ucheniya-po-biologicheskoy-i-himicheskoy-zashchite. Last accessed 14 August 2016].

[39] “Perspektivy razvitiya voysk RKHBZ Rossii.” RussiaToday News [published online in Russian 9 August 2016]. http://russiatodaynews.ru/2016/08/09/perspektivy-razvitija-vojsk-rhbz-rossii/. Last accessed 14 August 2016.

[40] Maxim Trudolyubov (2016). “It’s Security, Stupid: How Putin Manipulates National Emergencies.” The Moscow Times [published online 15 August 2016]. https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/its-the-security-stupid-54982. Last accessed 17 August 2016.

Unless some unforeseen miracle happens for Donald Trump, Hawkish Hillary (at least as accurate a nickname as Crooked Hillary) is likely to be the next president of the United States. Although Hillary has run legitimate political ads implying that Trump’s temperament is too volatile to be left with command of the military, especially nuclear weapons, Americans may not be all that safe with Hillary either.

Throughout her career, Hillary supported her husband’s bombing of Serbia and Kosovo and George W. Bush’s aggressive invasion of Iraq, as well as pushing Barack Obama to attack Libya and overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. As Secretary of State, Hillary looked at the chaos caused by removing a dictator in a fractured developing country—Iraq—and then pressured Obama to do the same in Libya. So Trump’s accusation that Hillary has poor judgment is not far off the mark.

More important for the future, Secretary Clinton also unsuccessfully urged Obama to get more deeply involved in Syria’s complicated, multi-sided, and bloody civil war. She advocated augmenting lethal aid to the Syrian opposition and creating a no fly zone to protect these forces and civilians. So if she wins power in the election, she may very well go farther down the road to enmeshing the U.S. military in another unwinnable quagmire, much like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the 400,000 deaths already, Syria’s civil strife is likely to continue for long while, because everyone seems to be fighting everybody else in the multi-sided bloodbath and because outside forces—such as the Russia, Iran, the militant group Hezbollah, Turkey, the Persian Gulf Arab states, and the United States—are stoking the conflict by assisting either the inherently weak Syrian government or its many lackluster opposition groups.

The United States recently got its wish as the powerful Turkish military took a greater role in the neighboring civil war by invading Syria. However, it seems that the Turks have been more interested in throwing back the advancing Syrian Kurds, the United States’ most effective ally against the brutal ISIS opposition group, than in destroying ISIS. The fact that two of the most effective U.S. allies are fighting each other should give Barack Obama and any incoming American administration pause.

The main U.S. problem in the conflict is its pursuit of incompatible objectives. The United States is trying to overthrow the Assad government in Syria, while decimating or destroying the opposition ISIS group, keeping its Turkish ally happy, staying friends with the rival Kurds, and avoiding getting sucked more deeply into the quicksand.

The top U.S. priority has changed from overthrowing Assad to weakening his ISIS opposition. However, even if the United States and its allies take most of ISIS’s territory in Iraq and Syria, the group likely will continue to fight on using guerilla and terrorist tactics. The problem is that the other parties in the conflict have higher priorities than weakening ISIS. Although Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah are no friends of the heinous Sunni group, they have as their top priority keeping Assad in power and in charge of as much Syrian territory as possible; they want to weaken other opposition groups first, including those supported by the United States, so they can then say “its Assad or ISIS.” In contrast, U.S. allies—Turkey and the Sunni Gulf states—place a high priority on getting rid of Assad and thus weakening his ally Shi’i Iran. Also, the Turks, despite recent ISIS attacks on their soil, seem to be more concerned about the Syrian Kurds (allied with the opposition Kurds in Turkey) consolidating territory held along the Turkish border.

With the Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah Shi’i militants assisting Assad, the likelihood that he will leave power is very low. And any increase in arms or assistance that United States or the Gulf states give moderate Syrian opposition groups ultimately might fall into the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria or other nefarious Islamist groups, which fight intermingled with more moderate opposition forces; in warfare, the most brutal and aggressive factions usually end up with the provisions. In the past, the United States has had a knack for creating (or strengthening) future enemies—for example, al Qaeda by assisting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ISIS by invading Iraq in 2003. Aiding opposition forces in Syria may already be doing this again. Furthermore, a “no fly zone” likely could put U.S. aircraft in conflict with Russian and Syrian aircraft and ground-based anti-aircraft missiles, thus possibly turning a civil war into something much bigger and nastier.

The smart policy for any incoming president would be to use the opportunity of an administration change to study the state of the Syrian mayhem and then end all U.S. involvement. ISIS was a threat only to the Middle East region until the U.S. coalition, which includes European countries, began bombing ISIS, which then retaliated by increasing attacks on European targets. Regional threats are best left to regional countries to counter, and when your enemies are fighting (ISIS and al Qaeda versus Assad, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah), don’t get in the way—especially in a non-strategic place such as Syria. Russia may get more influence in the region, but it is still fairly weak and severely stretched with a slack oil-dominated economy and its bog in Ukraine. Letting it preside over an intractable civil war in Syria for many years will complete the overstretch. In the meantime, the United States can concentrate on renewing its own sluggish economy and power—instead of further dissipating it in Syria—and keeping its powder dry for more important threats—perhaps a rising China?

This article was published at Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.

“If we require a shield [against people smugglers] we should leave that up to Australian Border Force, our Navy, the AFP and our intelligence services.” – Paris Aristotle, Lateline, Sep 5, 2016.

Unthinkable, that is, in Australia. Unthinkable to finally accept that the international pathways of asylum seekers and refugees can know no discrimination, and that each country duly receiving them should do all within their powers to facilitate their rapid process and exit into the community. Unthinkable to not shift the burden of processing and settlement to impoverished, or poorer countries.

Several outstanding features of international refugee law somehow taper out by the time Australian officials come to the party. That, for instance, of non-refoulement, explicitly prohibited by Article 33 of the UN Refugee Convention.

Officials in Canberra have for some years shown a certain indifference to returning refugees or those being determined as refugees to a place where they might fear persecution, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or arbitrarily deprived of life.

As pointed out by Jane McAdam, “Australia is the only country whose law explicitly says it is ‘irrelevant’ whether or not our non-refoulement obligations are engaged when removing an asylum seeker” (Guardian, Sep 6).

The corpus of international refugee law, in fact, has trouble getting a look in when it comes to Australia’s domestic legislation, which insists on designating “irregular arrivals” persona non grata. This sets the tone for the distinctly punitive approach towards those who end up in such legal lacunae such as Nauru and Manus Island. (The latter will, in due course, be mercifully closed as illegal under Papua New Guinea’s laws.)

The Migration Act 1958 (Cth) remains a poor excuse on that score, feeble in its nods to international precedents. That said, the odd provision does guide ministerial discretion, which is not tyrannically absolute.

This was the case when the sordid exercise known as the Malaysia Solution came to a dramatic halt in the Australian High Court’s M70 2011 decision, which found the immigration minister’s decision to deem Malaysia a safe relocation destination for Australia’s refugees questionable.

Offshore detention became the obscene moral incentive to combat the idea of “people smuggling” when it was merely a political move to give the electorate the muscular impression that Canberra was regaining control of its borders. The language in combating such illegal arrivals became packed with military metaphors.

The camp solution was packaged by political spin experts as a moral conversion of the left faction in the Australian Labor Party then in power, after the deaths of 50 arrivals on the rocks of Christmas Island in December 2010.

Targeting an abstract market supposedly populated by ruthless criminals, Australia proceeded to attack those deemed beneficiaries of it. It could hardly be those making money from it. After all, Canberra occasionally sponsors smugglers to move refugee arrivals to Indonesia in atrocious conditions. As always, it was those essentially placed outside the protective frameworks of states that have long abandoned them who would continue to suffer.

On Monday, one of the architects of the ghastly program, Paris Aristotle of the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, made the trite point that terrible miscalculations had taken place. It was evident that he lacked that worthiness of the Greek philosopher of his name, described by Dante Alighieri as being, “Il maestro di color che sanno” (The master of those who know).

Portrayed in Australian media as a gritty visionary with oodles of compassion (another convert to the Christmas Island deaths in 2010), his perspectives have shown a distinct lack of imagination, making much hay from the notion that offshore processing in poorer states would somehow be a good idea. And it would save lives.

“It was never envisaged,” he claimed gravely, “that we would leave people there for long, long periods of time without giving them a sense that we were working towards providing them with a decent resettlement outcome.”

Aristotle reminded the interviewer on ABC’s Lateline program that there was a necessary priority in dealing “with people smuggling… we also then can’t resort to strategies ultimately that enable children, women and men to be used as some form of a human shield against people smuggling.”

Aristotle has, it would seem, been re-converted. Or he simply made a mistake. A closer look at it reveals otherwise: Aristotle remains, for all his grief, convinced that some form of processing in such theatres is permissible as long as it is done quickly. The line parrots that of the ALP, which has no desire to relinquish the “turn back the boats” policy or outsourcing Australia’s refugee obligations. Do not, in other words, come to Australia.

More shocks to the system will be needed; more successful legal challenges mounted against the offshore idea; a spate of gruesome whistleblowing revelations that further reveal the conditions of camp brutality and human degradation. A return to the normality of onshore processing and settlement is required; in other words, a return to what has become the unthinkable.

Last Friday, prior to a football game in Scottsdale, Arizona between a Catholic and public school—Notre Dame Prep and Desert Mountain High School—a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Notre Dame Prep campus was desecrated. A sex toy was attached to the statue’s lower half, and a Hillary Clinton mask was put over its head.

Then during the game, a student dressed up as Jesus romped up and down the sidelines dancing. Parents asked a security guard to get the student to stop, but the “dancing Jesus” returned to the sidelines and continued his act throughout the game’s second half.

Some might dismiss these as harmless student pranks, but a number of parents were rightly offended by what in other contexts—say, the sacred icons of any other religion being similarly mocked and desecrated—would be regarded as hate crimes. Imagine the outcry if a “dancing Mohammed” had made an appearance on the sideline.

Rick Hinshaw, Catholic League director of communications, contacted officials at both schools. While what he learned is not definitive, we are pleased that a spokeswoman for the Scottsdale Unified School District said the incidents are being investigated. If it is found that any students of the district were involved, she promised, “appropriate action will be taken.” We will continue to monitor this situation to be sure that they follow through.

Contact Kristine Harrington, School District Officer: kharrington@susd.org

A fossilised remnant of the early Milky Way harbouring stars of hugely different ages has been revealed by an international team of astronomers. This stellar system resembles a globular cluster, but is like no other cluster known. It contains stars remarkably similar to the most ancient stars in the Milky Way and bridges the gap in understanding between our galaxy’s past and its present.

Terzan 5, 19 000 light-years from Earth, has been classified as a globular cluster for the forty-odd years since its detection. Now, an Italian-led team of astronomers have discovered that Terzan 5 is like no other globular cluster known.

The team scoured data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 on board Hubble, as well as from a suite of other ground-based telescopes [1]. They found compelling evidence that there are two distinct kinds of stars in Terzan 5 which not only differ in the elements they contain, but have an age-gap of roughly 7 billion years [2].

The ages of the two populations indicate that the star formation process in Terzan 5 was not continuous, but was dominated by two distinct bursts of star formation. “This requires the Terzan 5 ancestor to have large amounts of gas for a second generation of stars and to be quite massive. At least 100 million times the mass of the Sun,” explains Davide Massari, co-author of the study, from INAF, Italy, and the University of Gröningen, Netherlands.

Its unusual properties make Terzan 5 the ideal candidate for a living fossil from the early days of the Milky Way. Current theories on galaxy formation assume that vast clumps of gas and stars interacted to form the primordial bulge of the Milky Way, merging and dissolving in the process.

“We think that some remnants of these gaseous clumps could remain relatively undisrupted and keep existing embedded within the galaxy,” explains Francesco Ferraro from the University of Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the study. “Such galactic fossils allow astronomers to reconstruct an important piece of the history of our Milky Way.”

While the properties of Terzan 5 are uncommon for a globular cluster, they are very similar to the stellar population which can be found in the galactic bulge, the tightly packed central region of the Milky Way. These similarities could make Terzan 5 a fossilised relic of galaxy formation, representing one of the earliest building blocks of the Milky Way.

This assumption is strengthened by the original mass of Terzan 5 necessary to create two stellar populations: a mass similar to the huge clumps which are assumed to have formed the bulge during galaxy assembly around 12 billion years ago. Somehow Terzan 5 has managed to survive being disrupted for billions of years, and has been preserved as a remnant of the distant past of the Milky Way.

“Some characteristics of Terzan 5 resemble those detected in the giant clumps we see in star-forming galaxies at high-redshift, suggesting that similar assembling processes occurred in the local and in the distant Universe at the epoch of galaxy formation,” continues Ferraro.

Hence, this discovery paves the way for a better and more complete understanding of galaxy assembly. “Terzan 5 could represent an intriguing link between the local and the distant Universe, a surviving witness of the Galactic bulge assembly process,” explains Ferraro while commenting on the importance of the discovery. The research presents a possible route for astronomers to unravel the mysteries of galaxy formation, and offers an unrivaled view into the complicated history of the Milky Way.

Notes

[1] The researchers also used data from the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator at ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Near Infrared Camera 2 at the W. M. Keck Observatory (http://www.keckobservatory.org/).

[2] The two detected stellar populations have ages of 12 billion years and 4.5 billion years respectively.

The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, in the 1960s.

But a meticulous new study of the codex has yielded a startling conclusion: The codex is both genuine and likely the most ancient of all surviving manuscripts from ancient America.

Stephen Houston, the Dupee Family Professor of Social Science and co-director of the Program in Early Cultures at Brown University, worked with Michael Coe, professor emeritus of archeology and anthropology at Harvard and leader of the research team, along with Mary Miller of Yale and Karl Taube of the University of California-Riverside. They reviewed “all known research on the manuscript,” analyzing it “without regard to the politics, academic and otherwise, that have enveloped the Grolier,” the team wrote in its study “The Fourth Maya Codex.”

The paper, published in the journal Maya Archaeology, fills a special section of the publication and includes a lavish facsimile of the codex.

The study, Houston said, “is a confirmation that the manuscript, counter to some claims, is quite real. The manuscript was sitting unremarked in a basement of the National Museum in Mexico City, and its history is cloaked in great drama. It was found in a cave in Mexico, and a wealthy Mexican collector, Josué Sáenz, had sent it abroad before its eventual return to the Mexican authorities.”

Controversial from the outset

For years, academics and specialists have argued about the legitimacy of the Grolier Codex, a legacy the authors trace in the paper. Some asserted that it must have been a forgery, speculating that modern forgers had enough knowledge of Maya writing and materials to create a fake codex at the time the Grolier came to light.

The codex was reportedly found in the cave with a cache of six other items, including a small wooden mask and a sacrificial knife with a handle shaped like a clenched fist, the authors write. They add that although all the objects found with the codex have been proven authentic, the fact that looters, rather than archeologists, found the artifacts made specialists in the field reluctant to accept that the document was genuine.

Some ridiculed as fantastical Sáenz’s account of being contacted about the codex by two looters who took him–in an airplane whose compass was hidden from view by a cloth–to a remote airstrip near Tortuguero, Mexico, to show him their discovery.

And there were questions, the authors note, about Sáenz’s actions once he possessed the codex. Why did he ship it to the United States, where it was displayed in the spring of 1971 at New York City’s Grolier Club, the private club and society of bibliophiles that gives the codex its name, rather than keep it in Mexico? As for the manuscript itself, it differed from authenticated codices in several marked ways, including its relative lack of hieroglyphic text and the prominence of its illustrations.

“It became a kind of dogma that this was a fake,” Houston continued. “We decided to return and look at it very carefully, to check criticisms one at a time. Now we are issuing a definitive facsimile of the book. There can’t be the slightest doubt that the Grolier is genuine.”

Digging in

Houston and his co-authors analyzed the origins of the manuscript, the nature of its style and iconography, the nature and meaning of its Venus tables, scientific data — including carbon dating — of the manuscript, and the craftsmanship of the codex, from the way the paper was made to the known practices of Maya painters.

Over the course of a 50-page analysis, the authors take up the questions and criticisms leveled by scholars over the last 45 years and describes how the Grolier Codex differs from the three other known ancient Maya manuscripts but nonetheless joins their ranks.

Those codices, the Dresden, Madrid and Paris, all named for the cities in which they are now housed, were regarded from the start as genuine, the authors note. All of the codices have calendrical and astronomical elements that track the passage of time via heavenly bodies, assist priests with divination and inform ritualistic practice as well as decisions about such things as when to wage war.

Variations among the codices, as well as the assumption that because manuscripts such as the Dresden were authenticated first made them canonical, fed scholars’ doubts about the Grolier, according to the study. The Grolier, however, was dated by radiocarbon and predates those codices, according to the authors.

The Grolier’s composition, from its 13th-century amatl paper, to the thin red sketch lines underlying the paintings and the Maya blue pigments used in them, are fully persuasive, the authors assert. Houston and his coauthors outline what a 20th century forger would have had to know or guess to create the Grolier, and the list is prohibitive: he or she would have to intuit the existence of and then perfectly render deities that had not been discovered in 1964, when any modern forgery would have to have been completed; correctly guess how to create Maya blue, which was not synthesized in a laboratory until Mexican conservation scientists did so in the 1980s; and have a wealth and range of resources at their fingertips that would, in some cases, require knowledge unavailable until recently.

Use and appearance of the Grolier Codex

The Grolier Codex is a fragment, consisting of 10 painted pages decorated with ritual Maya iconography and a calendar that charts the movement of the planet Venus. Mesoamerican peoples, Houston said, linked the perceived cycles of Venus to particular gods and believed that time was associated with deities.

The Venus calendars counted the number of days that lapsed between one heliacal rising of Venus and the next, or days when Venus, the morning star, appeared in the sky before the sun rose. This was important, the authors note, because measuring the planet’s cycles could help Maya people create ritual cycles based on astronomical phenomena.

The gods depicted in the codex are described by Houston and his colleagues as “workaday gods, deities who must be invoked for the simplest of life’s needs: sun, death, K’awiil — a lordly patron and personified lightning — even as they carry out the demands of the ‘star’ we call Venus. Dresden and Madrid both elucidate a wide range of Maya gods, but in Grolier, all is stripped down to fundamentals.”

The codex is also, according to the paper’s authors, not a markedly beautiful book. “In my view, it isn’t a high-end production,” Houston said, “not one that would be used in the most literate royal court. The book is more closely focused on images and the meanings they convey.”

The Grolier Codex, the team argues, is also a “predetermined rather than observational” guide, meaning it declares what “should occur rather than what could be seen through the variable cloud cover of eastern Mesoamerica. With its span of 104 years, the Grolier would have been usable for at least three generations of calendar priest or day-keeper,” the authors write.

That places the Grolier in a different tradition than the Dresden Codex, which is known for its elaborate notations and calculations, and makes the Grolier suitable for a particular kind of readership, one of moderately high literacy. It may also have served an ethnically and linguistically mixed group, in part Maya, in part linked to the Toltec civilization centered on the ancient city of Tula in Central Mexico.

Beyond its useful life as a calendar, the Grolier Codex “retained its value as a sacred work, a desirable target for Spanish inquisitors intent on destroying such manuscripts,” the authors wrote in the paper.

Created around the time when both Chichen Itza in Yucatán and Tula fell into decline, the codex was created by a scribe working in “difficult times,” wrote Houston and his co-authors. Despite his circumstances, the scribe “expressed aspects of weaponry with roots in the pre-classic era, simplified and captured Toltec elements that would be deployed by later artists of Oaxaca and Central Mexico” and did so in such a manner that “not a single detail fails to ring true.”

“A reasoned weighing of evidence leaves only one possible conclusion: four intact Mayan codices survive from the Precolumbian period, and one of them,” Houston and his colleagues wrote, “is the Grolier.”

By Mohammed Rasooldeen

Domestic pilgrims from some parts of Saudi Arabia will leave for Makkah on Thursday.

The Ministry of Health has advised them to take care of personal hygiene and ensure that they have all the needed vaccinations and carry medicines with them, in case of need.

More than 300,000 Saudis are expected to join the foreign pilgrims this year.

According to the General Directorate of Passports, until Tuesday, 1,310,408 pilgrims had entered the Kingdom.

The directorate said 1,233,029 pilgrims arrived by air, 64,656 over land, and 12,723 by sea.

This year, Saudi pilgrims were able to obtain permits to perform the Haj through online applications; payments were made according to the package chosen by the pilgrims.

The directorate had warned people not to attempt to do the pilgrimage without a permit given by the authorities.

Most of the pilgrims from distant places such as Dammam and Riyadh chose to leave for the pilgrimage on Thursday so that they can join Friday prayers.

Seventy-seven Haj operators from 200 companies work to serve pilgrims.

The Haj and Umrah Ministry earlier advised people to deal only with registered companies.

Offers for Haj came out in three packages ranging from SR3,000 to SR11,980; SR5,892 to SR11,890; SR3,000 to SR5,250 and the most economical fare (“moyassur“) SR3,000.

Mohammed Saraff, a pilgrim from Riyadh, said he paid SR9,250, which includes full board and lodging in Makkah, Mina and internal transport between the Haj ritual sites.

“I only have to pay for the sacrificial lamb and the bus transport to and from Makkah,” he said.

A pilgrim from the Eastern Province said he will be starting the pilgrimage on Thursday, since it is a long journey from Dammam, while another from Jeddah said that he will start his pilgrimage on Saturday.

The “meeqat” points include Dhul Hulayfah, 9 km from Madinah; Juhfah, 190 km to the northwest of Makkah; Qarn Al-Manazil, 90 km to the east of Makkah; Dhat Irq, 85 km northeast of Makkah; Yalamlam, 50 km southeast of Makkah and Taif.

The famous Ayesha Mosque near Makkah is also considered as “meeqat” point that helps pilgrims perform Umrah again once they complete the obligatory pilgrimage.

Dr. Nazreen Sherbini, specialist in infectious diseases and influenza, said that in addition to vaccination against meningitis, it is advisable to take a flu shot before the pilgrims depart for Makkah.

“Pilgrims should wear a protective mask that covers the nose and their mouth in crowded places, and follow the basic health etiquette while sneezing or coughing,” Sherbini said, warning that they should keep away from people who have incessant coughing, sneezing and a body temperature of more than 38 degrees Celsius, and runny nose.

Sherbini said that all pilgrims should have taken the vaccination in time as advised by the doctors.

The flu vaccine helps prevent all types of flu, she said, adding that pilgrims do not require antibiotics for seasonal flu.

She said more liquids help the patients recover soon, except for those who suffer from renal, respiratory and cardiac diseases.

After years of environmental destruction, China has spent billions of dollars on the world’s largest reforestation program, converting a combined area nearly the size of New York and Pennsylvania back to forest.

The government-backed effort, known as the Grain-for-Green Program, has transformed 28 million hectares (69.2 million acres) of cropland and barren scrubland back to forest in an effort to prevent erosion and alleviate rural poverty. While researchers around the world have studied the program, little attention has been paid to understanding how the program has affected biodiversity until now.

New research led by Princeton University and published in the journal Nature Communications finds that China’s Grain-for-Green Program overwhelmingly plants monoculture forests and therefore falls dramatically short of restoring the biodiversity of China’s native forests, which contain many tree species. In its current form, the program fails to benefit, protect and promote biodiversity.

Following a literature review, two years of fieldwork and rigorous economic analyses, the researchers found the vast majority of new forests contain only one tree species. While these monocultures may be a simpler route for China’s rural residents — who receive cash and food payments, as well as technical support to reforest land — the single-species approach brings very limited biodiversity benefits, and, in some cases, even harms wildlife.

The researchers conclude that restoring the full complement of native trees that once grew on the land would provide the best outcome for biodiversity. If native forests are unachievable within the current scope of the program, the researchers recommend mixed forests — which contain multiple tree species and more closely resemble natural forests — as a second option. Mixed forests better protect wildlife than monoculture forests, and would not financially burden farmers participating in the program. Both native and mixed forests also help to mitigate climate change.

“Around the world, people are leaving rural areas and moving into cities, potentially creating new opportunities to restore forests on abandoned farmland,” said co-author David Wilcove, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Princeton Environmental Institute.

“In many places, we’re seeing efforts to reforest areas that have once been cleared, and China is the first country to do it on this large of a scale,” he said. “The critical policy question is how to restore forests that provide multiple benefits to society, including preventing soil erosion, providing timber and sustaining wildlife. China has an opportunity to do it right and turn these monocultures into mixed or native forests that will be more valuable for wildlife in future years.”

“If the Chinese government is willing to expand the scope of the program, restoring native forests is, without doubt, the best approach for biodiversity,” said lead author Fangyuan Hua, a postdoctoral research associate in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. “But even within the current scope of the program, our analysis shows there are economically feasible ways to restore forests while also improving biodiversity.”

During the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, China converted millions of hectares of native forest to cropland. The country’s unprotected forests continued to be heavily exploited in the decades that followed, but without an effective conservation system in place. After a series of powerful floods in the late 1990s, China’s government launched a series of landmark ecological initiatives aimed at controlling soil erosion, including the Grain-for-Green Program.

The program is in place in 26 of China’s 31 mainland provinces and, while its central goal is to prevent erosion, most of the reestablished forest is now used for the production of timber, fiber, tree fruits and other cash crops. Rural residents are encouraged with cash and food incentives to plant forests, shrubs and grasslands, but there seems to be little consideration for biodiversity in determining what is planted.

The research team — which included scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sichuan University, the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and the University of Vermont — wanted to investigate how these approaches to planting influenced biodiversity. They examined four specific questions.

“We asked: What types of forest are being established by the program across China?” Hua said. “Then, focusing on a particular region, we asked: How does the biodiversity of the new forests compare to the biodiversity of the croplands they are replacing? How do the new forests compare to native forests? And, would planting more diverse forests result in any biodiversity benefits while also being economically feasible?”

The team examined 258 publications, most of which were written in Mandarin, to determine the current tree composition within forests planted by the program. Although the program included a large number of species across China as a whole, they found that the majority of individual forests were planted with only one tree species, such as bamboo, eucalyptus or Japanese cedar. Only three locations actually planted forest native to the area.

“To our knowledge, this is the first nationwide synthesis of the tree-species composition of forests reestablished under the program,” Hua said. “This is essential to understanding the program’s biodiversity implications.”

Next, the team zeroed in on Sichuan Province in south-central China and conducted fieldwork on bird and bee diversity across all seasons. Birds and bees are good indicators of the overall biodiversity of a particular area, the researchers noted.

“Birds are sensitive to the types of trees, the overall age of the forest and the insects within the forest, and bees depend more on resources like pollen or nectar from the understory. Together, these two taxa provide a well-rounded picture of biodiversity within a forest,” Hua said.

Birds were surveyed using point counts. This measurement entails counting the birds seen and heard from a grid of points placed in the forests and cropland that are separated by certain distances. The bee species were collected and identified using DNA barcoding. All fieldwork was conducted across different types of land including monocultures, mixed forests, cropland and native forest.

The researchers found that reforesting land with monocultures resulted in more harm than good for birds. In regions with monocultures, there were fewer bird species, and birds tended to be less abundant. Mixed forests, however, harbored more bird species and similar overall numbers of birds compared with cropland. The bees suffered from reforestation regardless, which was likely caused by the lack of floral resources in replanted forests. Overall, the best environment for birds and bees is native forest, the researchers found, as opposed to the forests reestablished under the Green-for-Grain Program.

“Together, our findings point to the enormous potential of biodiversity benefits that China’s Green-for-Green Program has yet to realize,” Hua said.

In the final part of the study, the researchers conducted economic analyses in order to understand the economic impacts of reforestation. They interviewed 166 households and asked what percentage of household income came from forest production. The researchers also calculated the average annual cost of — and income from — forest production per hectare across different types of forests.

The median and mean percentages of annual household income contributed by forest production were 5 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively. The net annual profits were not that high, hovering around $400 per hectare (roughly $160 per acre). In terms of profit, mixed forests yielded gains similar to those derived from monocultures. Therefore, switching to a mixed forest, which would improve biodiversity, is unlikely to pose economic risks to households, the researchers concluded.

“The work done by Fangyuan and her team is an enormous task,” Wilcove said. “These data are crucial. Restoring forests is a tremendously positive thing to do for the world, but you can get a lot more bang for the buck in terms of benefits to society if you know how to do it right based on sound biological and economic data. Fangyuan’s work provides this type of keen analysis.”

US spy planes have twice tried to approach the Russian border over the Black Sea with their transponders off, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that SU-27 fighter jets were scrambled in response.

“On September 7, the US P-8 Poseidon surveillance airplanes tried to approach the Russian border twice… with their transponders off,” Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

The SU-27 fighter jets that intercepted the US aircraft were acting “in strict accordance with international flight rules,” the statement reads.

Two unnamed US defense officials earlier accused Russian jets of carrying out an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept of the US spy aircraft, which was on a “regular patrol” over the Black Sea. The officials were speaking of the incident with Reuters.

They said the Russian SU-27 came within about 3 meters of the US plane, and the standoff lasted for about 19 minutes.

“They’re up there for 12 hours and there are lots of interactions. But only one of the incidents was what the pilot determined was unsafe,” a US official told Reuters.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that after the Russian jets approached the US spy planes close enough to visually identify them, the American aircraft sharply changed direction and flew away from the border. The ministry added that it was just the latest attempt by US aircraft to approach the Russian border close to the region where the massive Caucasus-2016 drills are being held.

The ministry stressed that there is no need for such actions, as it already officially invited military attaches from 60 countries, including NATO members, as well as more than 100 foreign journalists, to attend the final stage of the drills.

The Pentagon has told RT that its Navy P-8A Poseidon was conducting “routine operations in international airspace” when “a Russian SU-27 Flanker made an unsafe close-range intercept” at about 11:20 a.m.

“These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident which results in serious injury or death,” the US Defense Department said, stressing that most interactions US Navy aircraft and ships have with Russian units are “safe and professional.”

“We have concerns when there is an unsafe maneuver,” the Pentagon said.

What can be done to deter pharmaceutical companies from jacking up prices of critical drugs? To prevent Wall Street banks from excessive gambling? To nudge CEOs into taking a longer-term view? To restrain runaway CEO pay?

Answer to all four: Fulfill Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign pledge.

When he ran for president, Bill Clinton said he’d bar companies from deducting executive pay above $1 million. Once elected, he asked his economic advisors (among them, yours truly) to put the measure into his first budget.

My colleagues weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the new president’s campaign promise. “Maybe there’s some way we can do this without actually limiting executive pay,” one said.

“Look, we’re not limiting executive pay,” I argued. “Companies could still pay their executives whatever they wanted to pay them. We’re just saying society shouldn’t subsidize through the tax code any pay over a million bucks.”

They weren’t convinced.

“Why not require that pay over a million dollars be linked to company performance?” said another. “Executives have to receive it in shares of stock or stock options, that sort of thing. If no linkage, no deduction.”

“Good idea,” a third chimed in. “It’s consistent with what the President promised, and it won’t create flak in the business community.”

“But,” I objected, “we’re not just talking about shareholders. The pay gap is widening in this country, and it affects everybody.”

“Look, Bob,” said the first one. “We shouldn’t do social engineering through the tax code And there’s no reason to declare class warfare. I think we’ve arrived at a good compromise. I propose that we recommend it to the President.”

The vote was four to one. The measure became section 162(m) of the IRS tax code. It was supposed to cap executive pay. But it just shifted executive pay from salaries to stock options.

After that, not surprisingly, stock options soared – becoming by far the largest portion of CEO pay.

When Bill Clinton first proposed his plan, compensation for CEOs at America’s 350 largest corporations averaged $4.9 million. By the end of the Clinton administration, it had ballooned to $20.3 million. Since then, it’s gone into the stratosphere.

And because corporations can deduct all this from their corporate income taxes, you and I and other taxpayers have been subsidizing this growing bonanza.

Hillary Clinton understands this. “When you see that you’ve got CEO’s making 300 times what the average worker’s making you know the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top,” she’s said in her presidential campaign.

And she’s taken direct aim at executive stock options.

“Many stock-heavy pay packages have created a perverse incentive for executives to seek the big payouts that could come from a temporary rise in share price,” she said in July. “And we ended up encouraging some of the same short-term thinking we meant to discourage.”

Yes, we did. Specifically, her husband and his economic team did.

Case in point: In 2014, pharmaceutical company Mylan put in place a one-time stock grant worth as much as $82 million to the company’s top five executives if Mylan’s earnings and stock price met certain goals by the end of 2018.

But the executives would get nothing if the company – whose star product is the EpiPen allergy treatment – failed to meet the target. Almost immediately, Mylan began stepping up the pace of EpiPen price increases. The price of an EpiPen two-back doubled to $600 – a move Hillary Clinton has rightfully called “outrageous.”

Stock options doled out to Wall Street executives in the early 2000s didn’t exactly encourage good behavior, either. They contributed to the near meltdown of the Street and a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Now that Wall Street is no longer restrained by the terms of the bailout, it’s back issuing stock options with a vengeance.

According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the top 20 banks paid their executives over $2 billion in performance bonuses between 2012 and 2015. That translates into a taxpayer subsidy of $1.7 million per executive per year.

Hillary Clinton has proposed penalizing pharmaceutical companies like Mylan that suddenly jack up the prices of crucial drugs. And she’s promised to go after big banks that make excessively risky bets.

These are useful steps. But she should also consider a more basic measure, which would better align executive incentives with what’s good for the public.

It’s doing what her husband pledged to do in 1992, if elected president – but which his economic advisors then sabotaged: Bar corporations from deducting all executive pay in excess of $1 million. Period.

Singapore-Malaysia relations have reached the best-ever period in their history. While the current generation of leaders has helped to improve relations institutional norms of diplomacy and mutual respect for each other’s interests are necessary to ensure strengthening of bilateral ties.

By David Han*

In his National Day Rally speech on 21 August 2016 Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mentioned that although Singapore-Malaysia relations are “sensitive” and “complex”, ties between both countries remain good. He cited the settlement of the Points of Agreement (POA) on the Railway land with his Malaysian counterpart Prime Minister Najib Razak and the signing of the Memorandum (MOU) on the High Speed Railway as examples of excellent relations between both countries.

These positive developments symbolise the marked improvement of bilateral ties since 2003. Indeed, strong political will and a new generation of leaders who are not weighed down by historical baggage have led to the best-ever period in the history of Singapore-Malaysia relations. While top leadership and personalities play a major role in shaping bilateral ties, established institutional norms of diplomacy and mutual respect for each other’s interests are necessary to ensure the continued improvement of bilateral ties.

Improved Relations and Uncertainties

After a painful separation in 1965, bilateral relations have experienced multiple ups and downs because of complicated differences in political ideologies and approaches to handling communalism. Singapore-Malaysia ties reached its lowest point during the second half of the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, both countries had many unresolved issues, such as the Pedra Branca dispute, the impasse on the implementation of the POA, the problems over the Central Provident Funds (CPF) of Malaysians, Johor water agreements, and the construction of a “scenic bridge” to replace the Causeway.

Remarkably, many of these long-standing bones of contention were swiftly and amicably resolved during the leaderships of Abdullah Badawi of Malaysia and Goh Chok Tong of Singapore, and subsequently during the tenures of their successors, Najib Razak and Lee Hsien Loong. The new generation leadership have come to realise that bilateral ties should not be held back by historical legacies.

Many observers of Singapore-Malaysia relations have highlighted that the change in political leadership from Dr Mahathir to Abdullah Badawi had fundamentally altered Malaysia’s foreign policy towards Singapore. In contrast to Dr Mahathir, Badawi and Najib presented a more moderate and pragmatic posture in their foreign policy approach towards Singapore. Consequently, such a posture helped to warm bilateral ties.

As changes in political leadership have been paramount in enabling bilateral ties to progress positively, some concerns have been raised whether this period of good relations would outlast the current leaders. Factors such as drastic changes in the domestic political scene, religious and political radicalisation, and deeply embedded ethnic sensitivities could derail bilateral ties.

Optimistic Future

In spite of such concerns on the future of Singapore-Malaysia relations, three mitigating factors could help continue the improvement of ties in the future. First, both countries can enhance the stability of bilateral engagements through closer observance of international norms and rules. Since the transition to the new generation of leaders on both sides of the causeway, foreign policy engagements have shifted away from dominance by strong personalities towards greater emphasis on established institutional norms of diplomacy and mechanisms of international law.

For example, through international arbitration, both countries were able to reach amicable settlements of the Pedra Branca disputes, the issue of land reclamation in the Straits of Johor, and development costs of the Malayan Railway land returned under the POA. As ties between both countries are increasingly normalised along institutional norms, this could reduce the possibility of dominating personalities steering bilateral ties in unpredictable ways as witnessed in the past.

Second, both countries must recognise and respect their different interests. Over the past 50 years, Singapore and Malaysia have taken decidedly different paths in their national development, both in political ideologies and management of ethnic issues. It would be unrealistic for each side to demand changes in the domestic and foreign policies of the other.

Some observers have argued that the differences in the foreign policies of Singapore and Malaysia have made it difficult to resolve past bones of contention. For example, it is commonly perceived that Malaysia’s foreign policy tends to emphasise flexibility and accommodation when necessary in its relations with other countries. Singapore’s foreign policy, on the other hand, focuses strongly on observance of international law and rules to ensure predictability in agreements and treaties with other countries.

Commonalities for Stronger Ties

However, there are important commonalities in the foreign policies of both countries. Malaysia’s foreign policy is built upon principles and pragmatism centred on international law, which converges with Singapore’s own foreign policy emphasis on observing international norms and laws. In addition, Singapore and Malaysia are co-members of ASEAN.

They share common ASEAN norms of multilateralism, particularly that of peaceful co-existence and consensus-based diplomacy. If both countries could focus on these similarities, it would help to forge common ground to resolve disputes which could arise in the future.

Thirdly, both Singapore and Malaysia have greater mutual interests at stake, particularly in the economic sphere. In ASEAN, Singapore is Malaysia’s largest trading partner, and Singapore has made significant economic ventures with Malaysia in areas such as the Iskandar Development Region. By strengthening economic cooperation, this would promote the “prosper thy neighbour” mentality, and reinforce the close and symbiotic relations of both nations.

These approaches by no means ensure that no disputes will ever arise again between Singapore and Malaysia. The key is how such disputes are resolved. Indeed, the foreign policies of both countries are still largely elite-driven. As such, rational political leadership is required to ensure that bilateral relations are premised on recognising the differences between both countries, and their willingness to co-exist peacefully through observance of rules-based interactions.

*David Han is a Research Analyst with the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Finally, Morocco has formally adhered to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This accession to the treaty is the positive result of Morocco’s Royal strategic vision aiming at diversifying and reinforcing its partnerships at all levels, the Moroccan Minister Delegate to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Nasser Bourita was quoted as saying.

According to Moroccan local media, the Moroccan Minister Delegate to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Nasser Bourita, signed on the sidelines of the 28th and 29th ASEAN Summits, which is being held in Vientiane, Laos on Sept 6-8, on the instruments of Morocco’s accession to the treaty.

The adherence is the outcome of an official request made by Morocco on April 28, 2014. Therefore, Morocco has become the first African and Arab country to join the Treaty.
Three countries, Morocco, Egypt and Chile have officially joined 32 other countries in signing the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). This is the initial procedure for any country seeking to build stronger relations with Southeast Asia.

Morocco’s minister delegate to the foreign affairs and cooperation minister Nasser Bourita said Morocco’s accession to the TAC reflected the good bilateral relations it had with each of the 10 ASEAN member states.

“We believe the principles in the TAC are in conformity with our foreign policy — peaceful settlement of agreements, noninterferrence of internal affairs and the settlement of disputes through diplomatic ways,” Bourita told The Jakarta Post after the accession ceremony.

He added that the move was in line with Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s plan to diversify the partnerships that Rabat had formed as part of its foreign policy.

“We used to have strong relations with Europe and within the Arab world and that was it. Last year, the King pushed our diplomacy to be open to other spaces,” Bourita said.

Morocco’s accession to the TAC, the first for a North African nation, also strengthened the opinion that ASEAN was considered as one of the “stabilizing factors” in the region, the Moroccan official said.

“Together we are facing the same challenges, […] we have our experiences we can share and learn from our partners [in ASEAN],” he added.

Bourita said further that one of the sectors likely to be pushed for closer collaboration between Morocco and ASEAN was climate change — Morocco is to host the UN Conference of Parties ( COP22 ) on Climate Change in 2017.

Bourita met with Laos’ Foreign Minister, Saleumxay Kommasith, and their talks focused on bilateral and Morocco-ASEAN relations.

Morocco will certainly be a great asset to the ASEAN community thanks to its positive presence in Africa and its strong policy to reinforce south-south cooperation to contribute to the development of the African continent and collaborate with American and European allies to bring peace and stability to this continent.

Committed defender of African integration, Morocco is an regional economic and financial hub, a hotspot for international investment in Africa. But South-South dialogue isn’t enough in itself. African development can only prosper with a triangular co-operation model, North-South-South.

Morocco is strengthening its political, economic and spiritual presence in Africa. This royal vision will certainly contribute efficiently to a stable and prosperous africa that will become more and more economically attractive to foreign investors.

Morocco’ s political influence is growing and so is the trust of the states it is working with. The kingdom keeps defending African’s cause, either directly, thanks to its participation in different operations to maintain peace or either indirectly, supporting, in all of the international summits, sustained efforts for human and social development in the sub-Saharan area.

Morocco has taken an engagement not just on security issues in Africa, but on environmental issues, economic issues, social issues and education issues. Morocco will certainly become a key member in the ASEAN bloc.
The TAC which came into force in 1976, was forged by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and aims at promoting regional and international peace and stability between countries within the code of conduct. The TAC’s ultimate goal is to promote peace, everlasting amity and cooperation among the people of Southeast Asia and countries seeking to build strategic relations with ASEAN.

At its Apple Keynote event on September 7, Apple unveiled the next generation of iPhone. It’s “the best iPhone we’ve ever created,” CEO Tim Cook said on stage.

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus comes with 10 major new features, as senior vice president of hardware engineering Phil Schiller put it.

1. Slick new design

The new phone has a high-gloss finish, with seamless lines all around. The camera is more smoothly enclosed and protected.

2. The home button has changed

The home button has changed in a major way: it is no longer a button you click, which is what you’re used to. The home button is now “force-sensitive, solid-state” and runs on a “taptic engine.” It feels more like the trackpad on a laptop. This change was widely rumored ahead of time.

3. Smoother, stronger phone enclosure

The iPhone is now water and dust-resistant. To illustrate, Apple showed a photograph of a kid falling into a pool, holding his iPhone.

4. It’s all about the camera

The camera, Schiller said, “is perhaps the most beloved feature” of iPhone for many customers, and it’s why this part of the phone got more time than any other.

The iPhone 7 camera is a “huge advancement in photography for cell phones,” Schiller said. The new camera has: an optical image stabilizer that steadies shaky hands; a wider, six-element lens to allow more light to the sensor; a 12-megapixel sensor that is 30% more energy-efficient; the flash now has 4 LEDs and puts out 50% more light for taking a photo in dark environments. The new camera also uses machine learning to detect people and faces.

The new camera “can take a beautiful selfie,” Schiller said. “We are not saying to throw out all your DSLRs…. but we are saying this is the best camera ever on any phone.”

5. The retina HD display

The display is 25% brighter than the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and displays cinema standard “wide color gamut” range of colors. To demonstrate the significance of the new color range, Instagram’s head of design Ian Spalter came on stage in a colorful shirt and had someone snap a photo of him, live, and convert it to a GIF-style Instagram boomerang.

6. The speakers are stereo-quality

The new speakers are of much higher quality, with one at top and one at bottom. They have an increased range and, Schiller said, “will really blow you away.”

7. The headphone jack is gone; headphones connect through the USB port

As was rumored, Apple removed the headphone jack, and will connect its earbuds over its lightning USB port. Schiller acknowledged that many people have headphones that connect through a headphone jack, so Apple is offering an adapter.

Removing the headphone jack, Schiller said, really comes down to “courage,” a statement many critics of removing the jack might pick apart.

8. New wireless earbuds: Apple AirBuds

As part of removing the headphone jack, Apple unveiled a completely new product: Airbuds, wireless earbuds that connect using Apple’s W1 chip and can access Siri with a double-tap. “We believe in a wireless future,” design head Jony Ive said in a video. A single step connects Airbuds to iPhone 7 or to Apple Watch 2. Apple AirBuds do not come with the phone; they’ll cost $159.

9. Advances to ApplePay

On the new iPhone 7, ApplePay will work with FeliCa, the NFC technology in Japan; thus Apple can launch ApplePay in Japan in October. The iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and Apple Watch 2 will all have this new version of ApplePay.

10. Better performance all around

Apple’s chip team, Schiller said, “is killing it in performance.” The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus has a new generation chip: A10 Fusion. The new chip is 120 times faster than the chip in the first iPhone, and it is 50% faster than the graphics-loading of the previous A9 chip.

The new chip will enable “console-level gaming” on the iPhone.

“There is absolutely no question,” Schiller said, “A10 Fusion is the fastest chip ever in a smartphone.”

Finally: The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus has the longest battery life yet, Apple says.

The iPhone 7 starts at $649. iPhone 7 Plus starts at $769. Oh, and there is no longer a 16GB iPhone size; the options now begin at 32GB of storage.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter met with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman today on the margins of the U.K.-hosted U.N. Peacekeeping Defense Ministerial in London, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a readout of the meeting.

Carter is in London as part of a three-day trip to the U.K. and Norway.

The two leaders discussed regional security challenges in the Middle East, including the threats posed by Iran and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ways to expand and accelerate cyber coordination and other areas of mutual defense cooperation, the press secretary said.

“The secretary reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge and to strong U.S.-Israel defense relations,” Cook said, noting that Carter told Lieberman he looks forward to visiting Israel later this year.

By Somar Wijayadasa*

At a time when United States-Russia relations continue to deteriorate, Russia has blacklisted seven U.S.-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as being “undesirable” on its territory.

This cannot be ruled as another manifestation of President Vladimir Putin’s Cold War-style paranoia as this happens in hundreds of countries around the world.

In the past year, Armenia, India, Egypt, Cambodia, Russia, China and Uganda are among the countries that enforced draconian laws to regulate NGO activities – mostly on suspicion of foreign governments interfering in their internal affairs.

Recently, Israel passed laws targeting NGOs that receive funding from abroad. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said the public needed to know when foreign states were “meddling” in its internal affairs. He said that “the law’s approval will increase transparency, contribute to creating a discourse that reflects Israeli public opinion, and will strengthen democracy”.

The most notable ouster from Russia was the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in 2012, on charges of trying to “influence the political process through the distribution of grants” to anti-Putin political groups.

This probably came as retribution after a wave of massive anti-Putin political protests before and after his presidential election, and also the infamous “Pussy Riot” that caused a world-wide anti-Putin propaganda campaign.

Raising concern about outside political interference, Putin said: “I object categorically to foreign funding of political activity in the Russian Federation … not a single self-respecting country allows that and neither will we.”

Russia adopted NGO legislation, in April 2008, as it feared that foreign-funded NGO’s are fomenting revolution in Russia, just as many believe they did successfully in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Another so-called “foreign agents” law passed in 2012, requires NGOs to register as foreign agents if they receive funding from abroad and engage in political activities.

Before signing that law, Putin told the Russian legislators: “Don’t be afraid of democracy. We must understand that democracy is different from a state of anarchy. Of course democracy implies a rule of law. [If we] fail to comply with existing national laws, democracy cannot exist.”

Last year, Putin tightened the noose further by signing the “Undesirable NGOs” Law which empowers the Russian government to sanction any group as “undesirable” if it is deemed to undermine Russia’s constitution, defence and national security.

Twisting Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I asked my erstwhile UN colleague who later became a member of the Russian Parliament: “Do you agree that passing all these stringent NGO laws as punishment fit the crime committed by foreign governments funding and involvement in NGOs?”

His agitated response was a resounding “Absolutely yes”. He added: “Did you forget the Arab Spring revolutions, Maidan in Ukraine, the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, ethnic tensions in China? And who is causing all these in the name of democracy and freedom of speech?”

He further reiterated, “Russians and Chinese don’t need foreign funding to develop their countries”. “These foreign fundings,” he said,“are covert operations to brainwash our people to revolt against democratically elected governments to cause regime changes.”

It is precisely for this reason that more than one hundred countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe have already ratified legislation to register and monitor NGOs – thereby, to prevent foreign funding to domestic NGOs that exert undue influence on domestic policy.

These countries accuse the United States and European countries of using NGOs to support political unrest in the guise of supporting democracy, rule of law and human rights protection.

At a time of advanced communication capabilities when a political agitator can momentarily summon tens of thousands of people to stage a mass demonstration, Governments have every right to regulate NGO’s, and be vigilant at all times to ensure that they only engage in legitimate activities, and not violate the country’s national security.

The purpose of rigid NGO legislation is quite explicit: it is to prevent foreign subversion of domestic politics.

In 1945, Article 71 of the United Nations Charter provided for the formation of NGOs in consultation with the Members of the United Nations concerned. And, since then, the UN has been a staunch supporter of NGOs.

NGOs proliferated after the second World War as most countries needed humanitarian assistance to uplift the masses from unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, health issues and repair war-damaged infrastructures.

The World Bank defines NGOs as private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development.

In keeping with the noble mission of the United Nations, millions of NGOs around the world continue to deliver humanitarian services in emergency situations, promote grassroots economic development, and provide much needed assistance in health, education and poverty alleviation.

UN accreditation rules theoretically require a “democratically adopted constitution”, “representative structure” and an “appropriate mechanism of accountability” but are largely devoid of timely enforcement powers.

Many countries find that some NGOs are highly problematic in their conduct, funding, and connection to governments, program mission and methods of work.

Some dubious NGOs have been front groups, weapons promoters and corporate lobby associations. It is now evident that western donors have historically used NGOs to exploit economic opportunities in poor countries, to counter hostile political ideologies and to aid terrorism against legitimately elected democratic regimes – as Norway was accused of doing in Sri Lanka.

The global crackdown on NGOs unfortunately is coming at a time when many parts of the world are beleaguered with wars, refugees, hunger, unemployment, economic and health crises.

Since it is usually the NGOs that provide first-line assistance to the needy, any legal implications and decreased resources could be an impediment to providing these vitally needed humanitarian services.

NGOs raise billions of dollars each year but they function without budgetary and governance oversight, and there is no accepted benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of NGOs in their stated missions.

For example, the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) and the deadly earthquake in Haiti (2010) generated over $8 billion and $10 billion dollars, respectively – for disaster relief activities including medical care, shelter, food, and clothing for survivors.

But many unscrupulous NGOs, individuals and politicians reportedly pocketed billions of dollars because these countries lacked regulatory, legal and enforcement procedures.

For example, Colombo Telegraph of 26 December 2014 wrote that according to “Mahinda Rajapaksa (the former President of Sri Lanka) Who Stole 83 Million Rupees Of Tsunami Funds Is A Callous Thief”.

To avoid misappropriation of funds and also to avoid suspicion of subversive activities, foreign governments can provide funding through a Government established department or through a watchdog group to collect and channel foreign funding to NGO’s as it is effectively done now in several countries.

All NGOs should adapt ways to avoid suspicion and prosecution by strictly adhering to the mandates they have provided to the donors and clients, and above all maintain transparency and accountability.

It is time for both the NGOs and foreign governments to take a hard look at their mandates, their core values, and change how they operate. If not, these restrictive NGO laws taking hold around the world would have a profoundly detrimental impact on their legitimate services on behalf of the needy.

*Somar Wijayadasa, an international lawyer, was a UNESCO delegate to the UN General Assembly for ten consecutive years from 1985-1995, and was Representative of UNAIDS at the United Nations from 1995-2000.

Declines in the cost of Internet access and innovations in computer technology have made video blogs, a phenomenon almost unknown in Russia five years ago, an influential force that may rival television as the most important channel of influence as soon as the presidential elections in 2018, according to Fyodor Krasheninnikov.

In a comment in “Vedomosti” yesterday, the Yekaterinburg political analyst says that few expected that video blogs would become so popular so quickly, but they are attracting enormous audiences, ones that are in some cases “comparable with the audience of regional TV if not exceeding it” (vedomosti.ru/opinion/columns/2016/09/06/655949-videoblogi-vibori).

One Russian video blogger, Ruslan Sokolovsky, not only has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers but, as a result of his detention by the authorities, has become the subject of massive Youtube viewing; and Vyacheslav Maltsev, a former deputy from Saratov, has used his video blog to catapult himself into the top leadership of PARNAS.

The audiences of Russian video bloggers, Krasheninnikov says, “are qualitatively different from the audiences of traditional suppliers of visual content: it is active and easily mobilized.” Even better for those who run them, “video bloggers can monetarize their success and what is no less important, their audiences are prepared to finance them.”

It is that last quality which makes it possible for video bloggers to exist and operate “autonomously from the state and from big business.”

Video blogs, unlike traditional media, often changes its format and costs its viewers relatively little. It can thus respond more quickly to changing circumstances and to political developments than can traditional television. And not unimportantly, such video blogs can pass from the non-political to the political to the non-political at will.

That has “a curious effect” both immediately and potentially that will be difficult “to predict or prevent,” Krasheninnikov says. In the event of a crisis, political or otherwise, “such leaders of public opinion immediately and without censorship appealing to their large audience of millions may sharply change their format and begin to talk about politics.”

“And that will be the very moment,” the Yekaterinburg analyst says, “when the Internet will defeat the television,” something many have long predicted but that has not happened so far. In his opinion, this isn’t going to happen in the current elections. But by 2018, when Russians are to elect a president, “the new media could become a real force to reckon with.”

By K. P. Fabian

As President Obama approaches the end of his eight-year tenure, it is time to assess his foreign policy. Any reasonable assessment should take into account two considerations. One, Obama inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, a toxic legacy. The much bruited about Global War on Terror (GWOT), including the eminently avoidable military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, which terminated ‘the unipolar moment’ over-celebrated by Charles Krauthammer following the collapse of the Soviet Union, only globalized terror and made the world more vulnerable to terror and in the process abridged civil liberties in the US and elsewhere. The second consideration is that many IR (International Relations) scholars in the US and some outside still believe that the international system resembles the solar system, with the US occupying the place of the sun and others orbiting around it. They believe that the acts of commission and omission by the US alone provide a complete account of what happens or does not happen in a crisis situation. For instance, the ongoing, seemingly unstoppable, carnage in Syria is Obama’s fault according to some scholars who exaggerate what the US can do to influence the rest of the world.

Keeping these considerations in mind, this article evaluates Obama’s foreign policy on eight major issues likely to shape his legacy.

Reconciliation with Cuba

Economic sanctions were imposed on Cuba first in 1960 when Fidel Castro, who overthrew the US-supported dictator Batista, started asserting Cuba’s right over its economic resources by nationalising the properties of US companies. Under Batista, the US Ambassador was even more powerful than the Cuban President. In 1960, the CIA sent 1,500 Cuban exiles to dislodge Castro, a disastrous failure known as the Bay of Pigs. Yet, the US persisted by replacing pigs with mongooses, with Operation Mongoose including assassination attempts on Castro. Castro, in turn, sought missiles from the USSR which led to the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the world got very close to a nuclear war. In all fairness, the US should have ended the sanctions when the crisis was resolved. It is to Obama’s credit that he exerted his utmost and accomplished a reconciliation with Cuba in 2015. Sanctions have, however, not been fully lifted yet, as the Republicans control Congress.

Score: 9 out of 10.

The Iran Deal

In December 2007, US intelligence concluded “with a high level of confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon programme in 2003, and “with a moderate degree of confidence” that the programme remained “frozen in 2007.” Instead of engaging with Iran, President Bush continued with confrontation, and used the US clout with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Security Council to impose asphyxiating sanctions. Resenting the sanctions, Iran started a uranium enrichment programme that could have given it enough fissile material for bombs. A disinformation campaign made sure that hardly any attention was paid to the fact the enrichment stopped at the industrial level, far below what is required to make a bomb. In other words, Iran was punished not for what it was doing but for what its foes alleged it might do in the future.

Obama, in contrast, demonstrated a singular tenacity of purpose and superb diplomatic skill in engaging with Iran and signing a deal in July 2015. He withstood pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel, and prevented the latter from starting a dangerous war by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. As Congress is standing in the way, some US sanctions remain.

Score: 8.5 out of 10.

Moving towards a nuclear-weapon-free and more peaceful world

Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after assuming office and without having done anything in particular to merit it. But he did promise to respect multilateralism and to restrict the use of the US military as the first option when confronted with a crisis. In a famous address in Prague in 2009, Obama said, “To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy… begin the work of reducing our arsenal.” A new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with Russia was signed in Prague in 2010 setting the following aggregate limits:

• 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments;
• 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (each such heavy bomber is counted as one warhead toward this limit);
• 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

The treaty marked progress towards a limited reduction of nuclear weapons, but it obviously does not take us to the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world. But the fault is not Obama’s. States holding nuclear weapons are not willing to give up their weapons. However, under pressure from hardliners in the Pentagon and Congress, Obama did approve a modernisation project for more accurate weapons with lesser yield (B 61 Mod12). The project might cost up to USD one trillion over three decades. Obviously, Russia and China will respond and Obama has inaugurated a new arms race. His refusal to send troops to Syria and arms to Ukraine is sensible as will be explained below.

Score: 8 out of 10.

The Arab Spring

When Tunisia’s Ben Ali fell from power in January 2011 and Egypt’s Mubarak the next month, Obama sent out signals supporting the aspirations of the people to move towards democracy. But on Libya, Obama let France and Britain persuade him to make a ‘humanitarian military intervention’. Russia and China agreed to a loosely worded Security Council resolution enabling NATO to effect regime change in a crude manner and the result is Libya in a ‘state of nature’ with a war of ‘all against all’ as Thomas Hobbes would have put it. Obama has publicly admitted that it was a mistake, but the harm done to Libya is enormous and he could have prevented it by exercising better judgment.

In Syria, Obama has been without a clear policy. In August 2011, he publicly asked President Assad to leave office. But the US has been reluctant to give effective weapons such as Stinger missiles (man-portable air defence system) to the rebels supported by it because of worries about foes getting hold of them. In 2013, Obama drew a ‘red line’ over the use of chemical weapons and the Pentagon got ready to carry out bombing after Assad reportedly used such weapons. But subsequently Obama reversed his decision, thus inflicting a degree of damage on his credibility as leader. And after spending USD 500 million to train 5,000 so-called moderate rebels fighting against Assad, the US managed to train only a handful. Russia stepped in by starting a bombing campaign and as of now, Russia has the military and diplomatic advantage.

However, Obama acted with wise restraint by not sending troops to Syria as it could have been a new ‘Vietnam’ or ‘Iraq’. In any case, he did not have that option as the US had become war weary after Bush’s misadventures. But, Obama need not have drawn a ‘red line’ if he was not ready to use his military power to take consequential action. Inconsequential words are best avoided. Obama could have prevented the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) from taking Mosul in June 2014, but he unwisely used the situation only to put pressure on Prime Minister Al Maliki to resign. Earlier, Obama had misjudged the ISIL and called it a “J V team” (junior varsity team) of not much consequence.

Score: 5.5 out of 10.

Relations with Russia

The new START (referred to earlier) followed a decision by the newly elected Obama to ‘reset’ the rather frosty relations that had developed with Russia during the Bush years. The reset ran into problems from time to time, but it worked until the onset of the crisis in Ukraine. The Ukraine crisis was practically the creation of the US, which supported a popular agitation started in November 2013 to unseat the elected president Victor Yanukovych, who later fled to Russia in February 2014. Putin had reason to conclude that the new government would move rapidly towards joining NATO as well as EU and make it difficult for Russia to maintain its hold on the naval base in the Crimea established as far back as 1783. As a majority of the people in the eastern part of Ukraine are of Russian stock, a separatist movement arose supported by Putin. In March 2014, Putin staged a referendum after annexing the Crimea. Of course, what Putin did was illegal. But, keeping in mind his national security imperative, Putin had few options.

Obama personalized bilateral relations and nursed a personal hatred towards Putin, publicly demonstrated at a lunch given by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the 70th anniversary of the founding of the UN. Putin smiled as he raised his glass while Obama looked stern. As we all know, anger does not lead to good policy. Obama’s reset has boomeranged and relations with Russia can improve only under a new president. But, Obama wisely chose not to send weapons or troops to Ukraine.

Score: 4 out of 10.

Relations with China

Obama has more or less accepted the inevitability of the rise of China as the only power that can pose a challenge to the US. He also realises that the US and Chinese economies are virtually Siamese twins. In this context the ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to Asia announced in 2011 entailed plans to divert some of the military resources available with the winding down of the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘Asia’. The main purpose of the ‘rebalance’ was to reassure allies that the US intends to remain in the area and will be able to render them protection, if needed, against an assertive China.

Five years after the announcement, it is doubtful whether the allies feel confident that they can count on the US if China moves from assertiveness to aggression. The ASEAN has repeatedly failed to take a stand against China in support of Vietnam in the matter of the South China Sea. China has rejected the verdict of an international tribunal against its claims and has not stopped creating ‘facts on the ground’. The pivot appears weak for now.

Score: 4 out of 10.

The Palestine Question

Despite numerous shuttles by Secretary of State John Kerry, there has been no progress. By taking on Prime Minister Netanyahu on the question of settlements in his first term, Obama made an avoidable mistake.

Score: 4 out of 10

Relations with India

Obama succeeded in bringing India into a closer defence cooperation relationship marked by the signing of LEMOA (Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement) in August 2016. Critics have unfairly faulted him for not getting India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). A comparison with what Bush did in 2008 in getting an NSG waiver for the Indo-US nuclear agreement does not hold as China’s clout has grown considerably in the intervening years. Closer defence cooperation with India is part of the ‘pivot’.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Overall score: 62.5 percent

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) had said that world history is the world’s court of justice. History will rate Obama, the 44th President of the United States, among the top ten of the holders of that high office.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/assessment-president-obama-foreign-policy_kpfabian_080916

(EurActiv) — Denmark’s prime minister on Wednesday (7 September) said his minority government would push ahead with a bill to reject asylum seekers at the borders in times of crisis even though such a move might breach the EU’s Dublin System.

Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he wanted to guard against a situation like last year when 21,300 asylum seekers entered the country and the rules that say people must stay and claim asylum in the first EU country they reach were discarded.

“The proposal is aimed at a situation like the one last year, when it was very obvious that Dublin rules had been de facto sidelined,” Lars Lokke Rasmussen told Reuters in an interview last night (6 September).

He said the proposal was inspired by a similar law adopted in June by neighbouring Norway, which is not a member of the EU but adheres to the Dublin rules, and acknowledged that the change could be “problematic in relation to the Dublin rules”.

“Like Norway sent a signal to us, we would like to send a signal to others that we must find a solution in Europe where we take care of our external borders,” Rasmussen said.

EU states are at loggerheads over how to manage migration after 1.3 million refugees and migrants reached the bloc last year. Frictions intensified after Italy and Greece, frustrated by a lack of help from other countries, let migrants travel north to richer states in defiance of the rules.

While that eased pressure on the “frontline” states, the northern reaction to last year’s huge surge in arrivals from Syria, Africa and beyond led to new border controls across Europe, including in Denmark.

The proposed law has yet to be adopted by the parliament, where Rasmussen’s Liberals hold only 34 out of 179 seats and need the support of others, including the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, to govern.

The European Commission has said it will only be able to comment on the issue once precise draft legislation is put on the table.

Around 250,000 people sought asylum in the Nordic region last year, most of them in Sweden, straining tolerance and pressuring government budgets.