The Thai junta’s decision not to bring new military trials of civilians is a limited step that appears intended to deflect international criticism of Thailand at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The action by the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is undercut by ongoing military trials of civilians and the military’s retention of expansive police powers.

“No one should be fooled by the Thai junta’s sleight of hand just before the Human Rights Council begins meeting in Geneva,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The decision will spare many Thai civilians the injustice of a military trial, but repressive military rule is still a reality in Thailand.”

On September 12, Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha revoked three NCPO orders that empowered military courts to try civilians for national security offenses, including sedition and lese majeste (insulting the monarchy). However, the action is not retroactive and does not affect the more than 1,000 cases already brought against civilians in military courts. The military also retains authority to arrest, detain, and interrogate civilians without safeguards against abuse or accountability for human rights violations.

Fundamental rights and freedoms that have been repressed since the May 2014 coup remain curtailed. Expression of dissenting opinions against the junta, peaceful opposition to military rule, criticism of the monarchy, and public assembly of more than five people are still criminal offenses. Since May 2014, at least 1,811 civilians have been brought before military courts across Thailand.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly stated that Thailand, as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), is obligated to take measures to ensure and uphold basic fair trial rights. Governments are prohibited from using military courts to try civilians when civilian courts can still function. During the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Thailand in May 2016, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as many foreign governments and human rights groups, expressed concern that the rules governing Thailand’s military courts violate the basic fair trial rights protected under the ICCPR. In particular, many parties urged the Thai government to move all civilian cases out of military courts, drop cases that deal with restrictions of fundamental rights, and end the military’s unaccountable power to arrest, detain, and interrogate civilians.

“General Prayut should demonstrate that he is sincere about ending military trials of civilians by dropping all pending cases or transferring them to civilian courts,” Adams said. “This would be a long overdue and meaningful step toward ending repression, respecting basic rights, and returning the country to democratic civilian rule.”

Located nearly 11 000 light years away, a recently discovered star could provide EU-funded astronomers with new clues as to how the universe’s most massive stars are formed.

Although it’s already 30 times the size of our own sun, a recently discovered star is, in the grand-scheme of astronomy, surprisingly young. As a young star, it’s still in the early stages of gathering material from its parent molecular cloud, and scientists from the EU-funded DISCSIM project believe it will become even more massive as it reaches astronomical adulthood. Since massive stars are created in a similar fashion as much smaller stars, being able to actually observe a young one grow via a rotating disc of gas and dust is a unique opportunity to see how our own sun was created.

Researchers stress how rare an opportunity this is. At least in our galaxy, massive young stars are more difficult to study as, being the James Dean of stars, they tend to ‘live fast and die young’. In other words, these stars are a rare find amongst the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars. In fact, as DISCSIM researchers point out, an average star like our sun is formed over the course of a few million years. Massive stars, on the other hand, are much faster – taking a mere 100 000 years to form. But this speed comes with a price, namely that these stars burn through their fuel quicker, making them, as one researcher puts it, ‘harder to catch when they are infants’.

Inside a stellar nursery

So how did the DISCSIM team stumble upon this astronomical rarity? The star was discovered within the cold and dense region of space known as an infrared dark cloud, which happens to make for an ideal stellar nursery. The downside to these regions is that, due to a thick cloud of gas and dust that surrounds it, it is extremely difficult to observe what happens inside using conventional telescopes.

To circumvent this obstacle, researches made use of the Submillimetre Array (SMA), located in Hawaii, and the New Mexico (USA) based Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Both of these instruments use relatively long wavelengths of light, essentially giving users x-ray vision to see through the cloud and into where the young stars are formed. Next, using unique fingerprints of various different molecules in the gas, researchers measured the amount of radiation emitted by the cold dust around the star. This allowed them to identify a ‘Keplerian’ disc, or a disc that rotates more quickly at its centre than at its edge – similar to the rotation found in the solar system. This disc suggest that massive stars in fact form in a similar way to such lower mass stars as the sun.

DISCSIM researchers say this is important information to know in their quest for definitive answers about whether planet formation is able to start during this early, self-gravitating phase of disc evolution. As the topic of gravitational disc fragmentation as a route to planet formation is currently in what researchers call ‘a state of crisis’ due to recent simulations undermining what had been considered the consensus view, a carefully-constructed and conclusive approach such as the one being conducted here is needed.

The universal heavyweight

As a next step, researchers plan to observe the same region using the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), a key objective of the DISCSIM project. These powerful instruments, which are expected to become available during the project’s lifespan, will allow more companions to be viewed – and researchers are confident these observations will provide even more insight into the early lives of our galaxy’s heavyweight stars.

By David Patrikarakos

(RFE/RL) — Another week, another cease-fire in Syria. Following a U.S and Russia-brokered deal, a “cessation of hostilities” between Bashar al-Assad’s forces and opposition groups was set to go into force on September 12. This, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, would allow for cooperation to defeat the extremist group Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist groups.

The cease-fire deal, timed for the start of Eid al-Adha, comes in the wake of an intense round of fighting over the divided city of Aleppo. Optimists hope that it will at least enable aid to be brought into the beleaguered city. No one seems to think it will last for any serious length of time.

But while all eyes have focused on IS in Syria, developments in Iraq are proving equally, if not more instructive, in illuminating the group’s changing fortunes and — critically — its changing strategy in response to them.

Iraq has been consistently central to IS’s pursuit of its ideological goals. It was only when it captured the country’s third-largest city, Mosul, in the summer of 2014, that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi felt finally able to declare the accomplishment of the group’s long-stated objective: the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that stretched across Syria and Iraq — demolishing the colonial-era Sykes-Picot border between the two countries in the process.

Back in 2014, IS controlled an area larger than Great Britain. Two years on, things look very different indeed. As the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces –as well as Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias — have fought back, IS has lost about half the territory it held at its peak, including control of vital oil fields. According to Reuters, by the end of July IS had lost access to three of the five Iraqi oil fields it once controlled. The article further reports that IS used to be able to sell at least 50 tanker truckloads of oil a day from the Qayara and Najma oil fields, south of Mosul. In the face of Baghdad’s fight to restore control, this has dropped to around five small tankers. That analysis was written before Turkey’s ground forces crossed into northern Syria on August 24 and captured 770 square kilometers of territory in just two weeks.

Financially weakened and under siege, IS now faces the imminent threat of losing Mosul to the Iraqi military, which, along with Raqqa in Syria, is one of the twin symbols of its claimed caliphate. Government forces and militia scored a big victory over IS when they recaptured the Qayyara air base just 65 kilometers south of Mosul this summer. According to commanders, a “big push” against the city could come as soon as late next month.

Vicious Sectarianism

But all is not as well as it might seem in the fight against IS. Part of the reason for the growth of IS in Iraq was the vicious sectarianism of former Shi’ite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which pushed many persecuted Sunnis, reluctantly, into the arms of IS. This is a problem that remains. As Rashad Ali, a resident senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, observes: “A major problem in defeating IS is that the Hashd al-Shabi [an umbrella group of around 40, mainly Shi’ite, militias] play a leading role in the fight against it, and have, upon defeating IS forces, committed atrocities against local Sunni communities in towns and cities they have ‘liberated’ from IS. These are not just problematic in themselves, but have also led to a greater level of grievance against Baghdad and pushed the population toward supporting more Sunni resistance and terror groups in the region.”

Put simply: the forces battling IS often act as both its enemies and its recruiters — continuing at a military level the persecution of Sunnis that Maliki conducted at the political level.

The second point of interest is IS’s changing strategy in response to its increasing military defeats. As Ali observes: “Even the CIA have commented IS’s military defeats actually create a larger likelihood of terror attacks both in the region and outside as fighters disperse and the organization seeks to continue to try to project power.”

Islamic State 2.0

In essence, as it suffers more defeats Islamic State is changing its tactics accordingly; as it loses at home in Iraq, it has tried to “win” abroad in Europe. The IS attacks in Paris, Nice, and Brussels over the past year are a testament to a group that may be in the process of morphing essentially from a statelet with its own standing army into, once again, a more traditional terrorist group that employs guerrilla and insurgent-style activities on the battlefield, and urban terror attacks in the cities of the West.

Syria and Iraq have always been distinct arenas for IS. The strategic vacuum the civil war created in Syria meant that it was able to both take territory but also create a symbiotic relationship with Assad’s regime — one that lent each justification and legitimacy. For Assad: the presence of IS allowed him to claim he was fighting jihadists. For IS, Assad’s Iran-backed slaughter of Sunnis enabled the group to present itself, as Ali notes, as the only real and effective alternative.

In Iraq, while the group has fed off of Baghdad’s persecution (and slaughter) of Sunnis in a way similar to that in Syria, the military tactics of IS have always relied on defeating largely unmotivated, and often frightened, Iraqi military forces in strongly Sunni areas of the country. Unlike in Syria, they have not allowed themselves to become too attached to any city or town; often abandoning areas rather than risk losing too many of their core fighters — using more traditional terror tactics like IEDs to cause as much damage to incoming coalition or Iraqi troops as possible. In Iraq, it has always been more of a terror group than the army it is in Syria.

This makes it likely that this year could see Baghdad make further gains on the ground. But Baghdad is not fighting an opposing army there and the response will likely be an intensification of the trend of more insurgent attacks rather than outright battles, while those in Europe must brace themselves for yet more terror atrocities.

In Iraq we may be witnessing the emergence of IS 2.0. No matter the reversals it faces, as the recently killed IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, declared: “The battle of wills remains.

(EurActiv) — A car bomb exploded Monday (12 September) outside the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in the eastern Turkish city of Van, wounding 48 people including two police officers, local authorities said.

Turkish officials blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies.

The attack took place near a police checkpoint outside the AKP offices in the heart of the bustling city, the local governor’s office said in a statement.

“Forty-six civilians and two police officers were injured after a bomb-laden car… was blown up by members of the separatist terror organisation,” it added, using a term to describe Kurdish militants.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, which came on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha.

But Besir Atalay, an AKP lawmaker from Van, pointed the finger of blame at the PKK.

“The terrorist organisation has targeted our party building and the AKP’s presence in the past. This is one of their attacks,” he added, in live comments on the private NTV television.

Witnesses said the force of the blast shattered the windows in the surrounding vicinity and the AKP’s provincial offices sustained severe damage.

Several ambulances rushed to the scene and television images showed water cannon being used to put out a fire caused by the explosion.

Van, a city with a mixed Kurdish and Turkish population on the shores of the lake of the same name, has generally been spared the worst of attacks like those seen in the nearby city of Diyarbakir.

The city is a popular tourist destination, particularly with Iranians who arrive from across the border in huge numbers to enjoy shopping and the relaxed atmosphere.

‘Rule of law’

The blast came a day after the government announced the removal of 28 mayors, mainly over alleged links to the PKK in a move strongly denounced by pro-Kurdish parties.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defended the suspension of 28 mayors, saying it was a long-overdue.

“You, as mayors and municipal councils, cannot stand up and support terrorist organisations,” he told reporters after prayers outside an Istanbul mosque, shortly before the attack.

Critics have accused the government of using the state of emergency declared in the wake of the July 15 attempted coup to implement a vast crackdown, but Ankara has defended the measures as crucial at a time it is battling alleged coup plotters and the PKK insurgency.

European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who visited Ankara on Friday (16 September) for talks with Turkish leaders, said she expected steps would be taken in compliance with rule of law.

The government has also stepped up its military campaign in the restive southeast to eradicate PKK militants, who have launched almost daily attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.

In a message relayed by his brother, jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan said the Kurdish conflict could end if the state was ready.

“He said if the state is ready for the projects we can implement them in six months,” Mehmet Öcalan told supporters in Diyarbakir, without offering further details.

Mehmet Öcalan also said his brother was in “good health” amid concerns over the jailed leader’s welfare after months cut off from the outside world on the Imrali prison island near Istanbul.

A group of 50 Kurdish activists including MPs announced on Monday they were ending their hunger strike on the eighth day, after receiving news on Öcalan’s health through his brother, a spokeswoman for the group said.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Turkey has also launched an operation inside Syria to remove Islamic State (IS) group militants as well as Syrian Kurdish militia from its frontier.

By Preet Malik*

To try to evaluate a democratic process on a uniform framework is fraught with problems of a structural nature. Just by way of an example, in a farewell call on the then Malaysian prime minister in August 1990, he remarked that “in India, we had too much democracy.”

He was referring to the fact that the opposition could hold up the process of governance in India. In Malaysia, such possibilities were then contained by strong governmental action against any form of opposition to its policies. Myanmar is a case in point. How do you reflect in measureable terms the graduated move towards a democratic system that has to be viewed in positive terms and thus to be shown as an improvement over the past when the military held Myanmar in its authoritarian clasp, while the constitutional construct continues to place major hurdles in the way of attaining full democracy. The issue would remain as to how would one establishes a purely scientific basis for measuring this change.

The 2008 constitution is the basis on which the system of administration that Myanmar today enjoys. The fact that today there is a non-military elected government in place is a very positive development; particularly as this is the first such government in place after 1962. However, this positive is constrained by the provisions of the constitution that places the Myanmar Armed forces as central to preserving the unity and integrity of the nation while significantly placing them outside the control of the civilian authority; and the home or interior ministries are headed by a nominee of the armed forces, ensuring that both domestic and external security remains in the domain of the military.

Accordingly, any measurement of the actual functioning of democracy would have to factor in the overwhelming controls that the military continues to enjoy in the governance of the country. The elected government has flexibility to determine the course of the economy within its programmes for socio-economic development. It has control to a large extent over the direction that it would take on foreign policy and of course the place of Myanmar in international and regional discourse. However on key domestic policy areas like the Rohingya issue, the general issue of communal peace and harmony, reconciliation process with ethnic groups that fall within the purview of security, and on areas of strategic determination, the overbearing role of the armed forces remains centred around the veto over changes or policies that they disagree with.

The question therefore for the FSI is as to how it would determine accurately the weightage it would need to give to the different aspects of the technically limited democracy that has come to prevail in Myanmar. The essential fact is that while accepting the progress made, full democracy is far from being restored to Myanmar. Another significant negative is that the ethnic minority issue remains a key factor to which a solution is still to emerge. This poses a threat to the stability of the country and could become an excuse as it did in the early 1960s to prevalence of democracy.

The union governments, whether democratic or authoritarian, have so far failed to meet the demands and aspirations of the ethnic groups who have claimed that there has been a consistent failure to meet the provisions of the Panglong Agreement in letter and spirit. This has led to armed resistance and exploitation of the situation, particularly by China. The Thein Sein regime succeeded in bringing the groups to the negotiating table with a universal ceasefire as a key component of the negotiations. Significantly, it also succeeded in including the Karens to join the process. However, there are certain key groups that have continued their armed insurrection, encouraged by China. Suu Kyi’s recent visit to China has now resulted in the possibility of these groups also joining the process that the present government is following under the Panglong nomenclature. The key issue is the demand for structural changes that would establish a true federal structure with a significant undertaking on autonomy. This would involve amendments to the constitution that can only happen if the armed forces accept that changes pose no threat to the security and integrity of the country. Again, to satisfy the demands of autonomy, the role of the armed forces in the governance of the states would have to be curtailed if not eliminated. This could pose a serious problem in evolving a solution that would satisfy the ethnic groups.

To conclude, the negatives in Myanmar to a large extent still continue to override the positives. Any true index would have to reflect that the situation remains far from ideal. The challenge posed by the ethnic groups and the systemic change that would have to take place to meet it is an area that imposes itself on any analysis of the direction in which Myanmar is moving. The 2016 FSI has taken these factors into account but the weightage that it would apply to these developments is not quite clear.

* Preet Malik
Former Special Secretary for the Ministry for External Affairs, India, and former Ambassador of India to Myanmar

Winston Churchill called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We could say Obama’s energy and climate policy is confusion wrapped in muddled thinking inside obfuscation – and driven by autocratic diktats that bring job-killing, economy-strangling, racist and deadly outcomes.

President Obama was recently in China, where his vainglorious arrival turned into an inglorious snub, when he had to use Air Force 1’s rear exit. He was there mostly to join Chinese President Xi Jinping and UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, to formally sign the Paris climate treaty that Mr. Obama insists is not a treaty (and thus does not require Senate “advice and consent” under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) because it is not binding – yet.

However, once it has been “signed and delivered” by 55 nations representing 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it will be hailed as binding. China and the US alone represent 38% of total emissions, so adding a few more big nations (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan and Germany, eg) would reach the emission threshold. Adding a bunch of countries that merely want their “fair share” of the billions of dollars in annual climate “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” cash would hit the country minimum.

Few if any developing nations will reduce their oil, natural gas or coal use anytime soon. That would be economic and political suicide. In fact, China and India plan to build some 1,600 new coal-fired power plants by 2030, Japan 43, Turkey 80, Poland a dozen, and the list goes on and on, around the globe.

Meanwhile, the United States is shutting down its coal-fueled units. Under Obama’s treaty, the USA will be required to go even further, slashing its carbon dioxide emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. That will unleash energy, economic and environmental impacts far beyond what the Administration’s endless, baseless climate decrees are already imposing.

Federal agencies constantly harp on wildly exaggerated and fabricated “social costs of carbon” – but completely and deliberately ignore the incredible benefits of carbon-based energy.

The battle is now shifting to natural gas – methane. Hillary Clinton and Democrats promise to regulate drilling and fracking into oblivion on federal lands. California regulators are targeting cow flatulence!

EPA continues to expand ethanol requirements, even though this fuel additive reduces mileage, damages small engines, uses acreage equivalent to Iowa, requires enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticides, gasoline, methane and diesel fuel – andreleases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it removes.

Wind turbines, photovoltaic solar arrays and their interminable transmission lines already blanket millions of acres of farmland and wildlife habitats. They kill millions of birds and bats (but are exempt from endangered species laws), to provide expensive, subsidized, unreliable electricity. Expanding wind, solar and biofuel programs to reach the 28% CO2 reduction target would increase these impacts exponentially.

But all this is necessary, we’re told, to prevent climate cataclysms, like an Arctic meltdown. “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone,” the Washington Post reported. Icebergs are becoming scarcer, in some places seals are finding the water too hot, and within a few years rising seas “will make most coastal cities uninhabitable.” The situation could hardly be more dire. Oh, wait. My mistake.

That was in November 1922! Recent warming and cooling episodes are not so unprecedented, after all.

However, all this climate confusion, obfuscation, fabrication and prevarication are merely prelude, a sideshow. The real issues here are eco-imperialism, racism and racially disparate impacts.

Not the kind of racism the Washington Post alludes to by putting a front-page story about Donald Trump going to a black church in Detroit next to a piece about a black soldier being horrifically lynched at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1941. Nor absurd claims by Detroit Free Press writer Stephen Henderson that Trump is racist for daring to go to that church to “boost his stock among white middle-class voters,” when he has “no interest” in addressing inner city problems.

This racism is the sneaky, subtle, green variety: of government policies that inflict their worst impacts on the poorest among us, huge numbers of them minorities – while insisting that the gravest risks those families face are from climate change or barely detectable pollutants in their air and water.

In the Real World, soaring energy prices mean poor families cannot afford adequate heating and air conditioning, cannot save or afford proper nutrition, and must rely on schools, hospitals and businesses whose energy costs are also climbing – bringing higher prices, reduced services and lost jobs.

Workers who are laid off, dumped on welfare rolls or forced to take multiple lower-paying part-time jobs face greater stress and depression, reduced nutrition, sleep deprivation, greater alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, and higher suicide, stroke, heart attack and cancer rates. That means every life supposedly saved by anti-fossil fuel policies is offset by real lives lost due to government actions.

Unemployment among minorities, especially black teens, is already far higher than for the population at large. Crime and other inner city problems are far worse than elsewhere. Policies that further cripple economic growth, job creation and revenue generation will make their situation infinitely worse.

Of course, legislators, regulators, lobbyists, eco-activists, crony capitalists, judges and celebrities are rarely affected. Their communities are far from those that bear the brunt of their edicts, so they’re shielded from most impacts of policies they impose. They know what is happening, but are almost never held accountable for actions that are racist in their outcomes, if not in their supposed “good intentions.”

To them, a planet free from inflated, hypothetical dangers from modern technologies is more important than lives improved or saved by those technologies. In Earth’s poorest countries, the outcomes are lethal on a daily basis. There, billions live on a few dollars a day, rarely or never have electricity, and are wracked by joblessness, malnutrition, disease and despair. Millions die every year from malaria, lung infections, malnutrition, severe diarrhea, and countless other diseases of poverty and eco-imperialism.

And yet, President Obama, the UN, its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and myriad environmental pressure groups tell impoverished dark-skinned people they should rely on “clean energy strategies” to improve their lives, but not “too much,” since anything more would not be “sustainable.”

“If everybody has got a car and air conditioning and a big house,” Mr. Obama told South Africans, “the planet will boil over.” He can jet, live and golf all over the planet, but they must limit their aspirations.

Thus his Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support a gas-fired power plant in Ghana, and the United States “abstained” from supporting a World Bank loan for South Africa’s state-of-the-art Medupi coal-fired power plant. Meanwhile, radical environmentalist campaigns limit the ability of African and other nations to use DDT and insecticides to control malaria, dengue fever and Zika – or GMO seeds and even hybrid seeds and modern fertilizers to improve crop yields and nutrition.

No wonder Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said his country will not ratify the Paris climate treaty. “Now that we’re developing, you will impose a limit? That’s absurd,” he snorted. He’s absolutely right.

These anti-technology campaigns are akin to denying chemotherapy to cancer patients. They result in racist eco-manslaughter and must no longer be tolerated – no matter how “caring” and “well-intended” supposed “climate cataclysm prevention” policies might be.

If we’re going to discuss race, racism, disparate impacts, black and all lives mattering, and protecting people and planet from manmade risks, let’s make sure all these topics become part of that discussion.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Fisheries Mahinda Amaraweera said that an extended survey of marine resources within the Sri Lankan sea area is due to be conducted again, after 38 years from the first marine resources investigation conducted in Sri Lanka in 1978.

The objectives of the survey will be the assessment of fish stocks, conservation of certain species of fish at threat of extinction, collection of data of the fish species which need extended farming, and gathering information of other aquatic species and aquatic plants.

The survey is planned to be implemented with the collaboration of Fisheries Ministry, NARA and the Norwegian Centre for Development Cooperation in Fisheries. The Minister officially visited Norway in August and the matters related to this marine survey was highly noted there.

Accordingly, Norway has consented to providing Sri Lanka with world’s largest vessel deployed in marine resources investigations. The vessel, RV-Dr. Fridtjof Nansen is fully equipped with the latest technology used in marine resources investigations. This vessel with its length of 550 ft and width of 200 ft will be employed for the investigation purposes of marine resources in SriLankan waters for 2 years, said the Minister.

The survey will be fully funded by the Norwegian government and will be initiated in next January with a view to developing fisheries industry in Sri Lanka and the government of Norway has expressed their full consent .

By Zachary Fillingham

Ordinarily, the writers at Geopoliticalmonitor.com wouldn’t be fixated on the bacterial comings and goings of a presidential candidate, but this US election has been anything but ordinary.

It’s true that health had been made an election issue prior to the drama surrounding yesterday’s 9/11 commemoration ceremonies, but only by a fringe of Trump supporters who seemed to revel in each and every throat-clear and cough from the 68-year-old Clinton. Their candidate of choice is no spring chicken himself at 70, and both Clinton and Trump had been unwilling to clear the air surrounding their medical histories by releasing detailed records.

This initial non-disclosure fed the flames of conspiracy on candidate health, and now the Clinton team has poured gasoline on them.

At issue is how Clinton’s pneumonia was handled: hidden, ignored, denied, and then disclosed only after the damage was done. This early misinformation further fueled the conspiracy theorists, and the video footage of Clinton’s stumble helped make their message ring true in circles that had never even considered health to be an important matter.

Of course, this is all a game of perception, and in terms of voter perception, Clinton didn’t have many good options available to her. She gambled by trying to power through her illness, to hide it from the public, instead of disclosing it and scaling back her schedule. Ultimately, she got caught and was made to look like she has something to hide.

The Republicans have now picked their wish: health is an election issue.  Major media outlets on the right are openly questioning if Hillary Clinton will even survive, and Donald Trump is reportedly preparing a ‘very, very specific’ health report, presumably one that’s more comprehensive than the five-minute, ‘healthiest individual ever elected’ note from his personal physician. Whatever Trump comes up with now, it will compare favorably to a bed-ridden Clinton.

How exactly this all plays out in the polls remains to be seen, but it seems safe to assume that it will contribute to Trump’s modest revival of late. Trump’s path to the White House has gotten more favorable recently – even prior to Clinton’s health scare – with key battleground states like Ohio and Florida now in contention. It’s not an easy path by any means, with solidly red states like Georgia (won by every Republican candidate since 1996) and Arizona (Republican since 2000) still too close to call. A Washington Post poll conducted in the first week of September found that Clinton was even leading Trump in deep-red Texas by one percent.

The length of Clinton’s recovery period is another key question. It’s no secret that the longer she’s kept off the campaign trail, the more these negative perceptions of her health will crystallize among the electorate. And as anyone who’s had pneumonia before can probably attest: it’s not an easy thing to bounce back from in a day or two.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in terms of the United States’ position in the world. The two candidates champion divergent views on a myriad of policy points, including: the South China Sea dispute, US-Saudi relations, free trade, energy policy and climate change, and even the Cold War treaty system that has defined US foreign policy for over half a century.

The winner will get an opportunity to implement their own distinctive worldview, either perpetuating the status quo of US foreign policy or fundamentally overhauling it. If it turns out that Clinton’s pneumonia turned the tides in the race and paved the way for a Trump presidency, this will truly be a cough that changed the world.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Jim Hightower*

An old saying asserts that falsehoods come in three escalating levels: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. But now there’s an even higher category of lies: a Donald Trump speech.

Take his recent address on specific economic policies he’d push to benefit hard-hit working families, including an almost-hilarious discourse on the rank unfairness of the estate tax.

“No family will have to pay the death tax,” he solemnly pledged, adding that “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death.”

But workers aren’t taxed at death. The first $5.4 million of any deceased person’s estate is already exempt from this tax, meaning 99.8 percent of Americans pay absolutely zero. And the tiny percentage of families who do pay estate taxes are multimillionaires — not workers.

Of course, Trump knows this. He’s shamefully trying to deceive real workers into thinking he stands for them, when in fact it’s his own wealth he’s protecting.

In the same speech, he offered a new childcare tax break to help working families by allowing parents to fully deduct childcare costs from their taxes. With a tender personal touch, Trump said his daughter Ivanka urged him to provide this helping hand to hard working parents because “she feels so strongly about this.”

Another deception — 70 percent of American households don’t have enough yearly income to warrant itemizing deductions. So the Americans most in need of childcare help get nothing from Trump’s melodramatic posturing.

Once again, his generous tax benefits would only flow uphill to wealthy families like his, giving the richest Americans a government subsidy for purchasing platinum-level care for their kids.

As an early 20th century labor leader noted, “Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.”

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.

A pastor in China’s coastal Zhejiang province has been released after being detained for four months for “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.”

U.S. based rights group China Aid said that Wen Xiaowu, the leader of a house church in Rui’an, was originally detained on April 25 with his wife, Xiang Lihua, and their eldest son, Wen “Eden” Yidian.

They were arrested after they contacted Shanghai-based U.S. diplomatic officials and foreign journalists.

His family believes it was “persistent, focused and high-level pressure” from the international community put on the Chinese authorities that ensured Wen’s release.

China Aid says that Wen still must serve six months under “residential surveillance.”

Churches in Zhejiang have been subjected to an ongoing cross removal campaign in which more than 1,700 crosses have been removed by the state since the end of 2013. Most of the affected churches have been Protestant but there have been reports this year that authorities have targeted churches belonging to the much smaller Catholic community of an estimated 210,000 people.

Large-scale political and economic challenges are confronting the US multi-national corporate elite. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Pfizer and scores of other multinational tax evaders are facing the triple threat of multi-billion dollar fines, the redistribution of their wealth and the possible reintroduction of equitable socio-economic programs, which could undermine their power.

Washington-backed exporters and financiers, eager to impose free trade agreements on European and Asian business classes, have been faced with stiff resistance and outright rejection.

In Latin America, the Obama administration recently installed neo-liberal regimes in Argentina and Brazil, provoking massive opposition from small and medium sized firms driven into bankruptcy by their harsh policies.

Intense intra-capitalist rivalries are no longer confined to the conference table: Open warfare, involving large-scale transfers of capital, has undermined the foundation of international capitalist class solidarity. While working class movements and mass protests still occur, the fundamental internal capitalist antagonism toward the US Empire has become the driving force of the current upheavals.

We will identify the alignment of forces and the implications of these challenges to the power and wealth of the multi-national corporations. We will then highlight the break-up of the free trade treaties and the demise of US dominance in Europe and Asia. In the final section, we will focus on the rise and decline of the latest US interventions to subordinate Latin America to its domination, starting with the legislative coup in Brazil and the conflicts in Argentina.

The European Commission and Apple’s Tax Evasion

The European Commission (EC) imposed an initial $13 billion penalty on the Apple Corporation for tax evasion – with tens of billions of more fines to come. The EC announced that Apple’s ridiculous 0.005% corporate tax rate in Ireland was a form of theft, exposing its phony posture as a defender of human rights and a paragon of corporate social responsibility. Scores of the biggest US multi-nationals have set-up overseas operations, especially in Ireland, specifically to avoid paying taxes. These include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Pfizer and scores of others among the ‘Fortune five hundred’.

Apple’s multi-billion-dollar tax scams were possible because of support from the US Treasury, Commerce and Trade Departments. Indeed, Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, launched a tirade against the European Commission, threatening retaliation, claiming that these US tax swindles were vital to the security of world trade. Wall Street flunky, Senator Charles Schumer called the EU penalty ‘a cheap money grab’ and threatened to start a trade war with Europe if the Democrats regain power in the upcoming Senatorial and Congressional elections.

The entire US imperial edifice operates through corrupt multi-national corporate tax swindlers who control and direct their politician stooges who, in turn, intimidate, submissive European regimes (like Ireland). The system is now being challenged by rival European economic powers intent on reducing the US tax advantages to increase their competitiveness. The growing competition over profits, markets and tax receipts has important political implications as the US dominance of Europe depends on the supremacy of its multi-nationals.

US taxpayers subsidize the US multi-nationals even when they relocate jobs abroad to cheap labor markets and move their corporate head offices to low-tax countries. The result is that the US government has to increase the tax burden on wage- salaried workers and small businesspeople to finance social programs and critical infrastructure because the US multinationals have moved their ‘addresses’ to tax havens.

As Europe tightens the squeeze on the US billionaire tax fraudsters, Washington will retaliate by mobilizing its own stable of European flunkies and the ever-compliant US Senators. Capitalist warfare may increase ‘nationalist’ rancor and undermine Atlantic trade treaties.

The End of Atlantic and Pacific Trade Agreements

In demanding an end to negotiations with the US over the trans-Atlantic trade deal, the French minister for foreign trade summed up his country’s position: “There is no political support from France for those negotiations. . . the Americans give nothing or just crumbs”. Throughout Europe politicians of the Left and Right have pointed out that closer ties with the US undermine their business deals with Russia and China, dilute environmental protection and abolish workers’ rights.

Parallel developments are taking place in Asia with regard to the trans-Pacific trade deal: The US has failed to convince Asian countries to sign bilateral and multilateral trade pacts designed to exclude China.

Asia’s increasing use of China’s currency (the renminbi) shows that the Anglo-American bloc has declined as the center of foreign exchange markets and trade. The US no longer dominates Asia: Even its former colony, the Philippines, has made overtures to China. Cambodia has granted China extended use of a deep-water port, strengthening Beijing’s position as the dominant maritime power in Asia. The US ally, Australia increasingly depends on trade with Beijing. China’s mix of public-private capitalism has out-muscled the US in Asian markets while deepening its trade links with Russia, Iran, the Gulf States, Africa and Latin America.

To the extent that international capitalism has ‘recovered’ from the economic crisis of the recent past, it is thanks to Chinese-Asia capitalism. The policy failures of the US Treasury, Commerce and Trade departments have led to calls for protectionism – domestically with the Trump campaign – and growing militarism among both candidates.

Increasingly the struggle for world markets among regional capitalist blocs- Anglo-American, European and Sino-Asian -defines the nature of global instability.

Latin America: The Rebellion of the Middle Class

On the surface, Washington and Wall Street have gained some important political victories: In Argentina, the Mauricio Macri regime has imposed an economic agenda totally in line with Washington’s free trade demands. In Brazil, Washington successfully promoted the legislative coup impeaching the center-left government of President Dilma Rousseff and installing the corrupt Vice President Temer .The proxy regime is dedicated to de-nationalizing and privatizing strategic, lucrative sectors of the economy.

In Venezuela, Washington’s proxies who have gained control of the congress are organizing to oust the left-of-center Maduro government through street protests, sabotage and the hoarding of vital commodities.

Nevertheless the image of middle class and local capitalist support for Washington’s agenda is proving ephemeral. Once installed at the top, the US-backed local proxies are rapidly imposing brutal austerity policies that undermine middle class and, of course, working class support.

After merely nine months in power, Argentine President Macri and his Washington backers face open opposition from the entire range of small and medium size businesses.

Inflation and deflation, utility price increases of 400% to 1000% have bankrupted at least a fourth of small-scale commercial and medium-size business firms in Argentina. Thousands have massed in the streets. On September 2, a broad based multi-class demonstration of several hundred thousand took over the famous Plaza de Mayo in the center of Buenos Aires to denounce Macri’s devastating neo-liberal agenda.

Similar mass actions are erupting in Brazil, as the US-backed Temer regime slashes government budget subsidies, credit and public investments. His public approval rating (never high because of his own corruption) has dropped to a single digit.

In a short time the business class has become deeply divided between the top tier, linked to international capital, and the middle and lower tiers. The initial consensus opposing the left-populist government has rapidly disintegrated while the unity of the capitalist class has collapsed.

Conclusion

In the current phase of global capitalism, the most striking socio-economic dynamics are located in the deepening intra-capitalist conflicts between regions, nations and among segments of the capitalist class. The ideologues of capitalist globalization and regional integration are finally exposed as false prophets. Attempts by the US to impose a new world order that subordinates Europe and Asia have failed; the US now faces internal dissension, notably in US Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s ‘American First’ campaign, pressing for ‘national solutions’.

The European capitalist elite is now only willing to collaborate with Washington where US-Europe trade agreements can be mutually beneficial – they openly reject being reduced to ‘reaping crumbs.’ National capitalism has emerged as the new reality on both sides of the Atlantic and across the globe in Asia, as China emerges as the dominant economic force in the region. China’s quest to secure global markets and investment sites has set in motion rival nationalist alignments, which threaten US regional power.

Rebellions by capitalist political elites are the ‘new norm’ everywhere. Multi-national rivalries over tax evasion and its consequences are leading to ‘tit-for-tat’ reprisals, which can rupture historical ties.

Latin American capitalist triumphs over the left are short-lived, as the different segments engage in violent divisions and realignments.

The ultra-militarist US is incapable of establishing a stable world capitalist order under its direction. Instead, we now find a multiplicity of capitals and competing state regimes with subordinate and divided segments of the capitalist class. Trans-Atlantic and Pacific unity fractures, and each sub-region seeks its own socio-economic partners. Trade talks cease and acrimony reigns.

Given the US total reliance on military-driven empire building, this post-imperial emergence of national and class rivalries is more likely to lead to war than to a new just social order.

Tesla announced Sunday, September 11 that its upcoming Autopilot 8.0 update will rely more on radar than previous versions of the semi-autonomous feature. To boot, it will penalize inattentive drivers, Engadget reports.

Tesla said that it would combine the radar sensors (added to vehicles starting in October 2014) along with advanced signal processing to see the world. Initially, those sensors were supplementary with the onboard cameras handing most of the input.

The automaker is now putting that radar front and center in order to help the cars travel through bad weather conditions like, snow, fog, dust and rain. Traditional cameras become less reliable as the visual field becomes more dense. That’s where the radar will come in. “Even if you’re driving down the road and the visibility is very low and there’s a multi-car pile up, the camera can’t see it, but the radar would and apply the brakes,” Elon Musk says.

Tesla does note that reflective surfaces create issues with radar. It gives the example of a concave soda can amplifying its return signal. These sorts of false positives are why the automaker was only using radar as a supplement to other sensors early on.

Tesla is confident it’s been able to reduce those sort of false positives with the upcoming software update, which creates 3D snapshots of the world with all the vehicle’s radar sensors to determine the actual size of an object. It will also use fleet learning to reduce unintended braking from large stationary objects (like street signs) appearing over ridges by assigning geolocation data to those items.

Musk believes that the update would probably cut accidents by more than half. However, he cautions that it isn’t flawless. “Perfect safety is really an impossible goal. It’s really about improving the probability of safety,” he explains. He adds that Autopilot is called beta is to reduce the driver’s comfort level while it’s on. “It’s really not beta,” he says.

The update will also penalize inattentive drivers. If the car determines that the driver doesn’t have their hands on the wheel and throws its audible warning three times in an hour, it will lock the driver out of the feature. In order to re-enable Autopilot, the car will have to be pulled over and put in park.

Musk also notes that the drivers that end up with the most warnings to pay attention to the road are veterans of the system. They become too reliant on its benefits.

When pressed about whether the upcoming update would have saved the life of Joshua Brown, whose Model S slammed into a semi truck while in Autopilot, Musk says Tesla “believe[s] it would have.”

The exec notes that the update could potentially roll out in the next week or two, and that the company believes it “will improve not just the safety, but the comfort and feel of Autopilot.”

By Mitchell Blatt*

There’s a popular fantasy amongst rational Republicans that a good thumping of Donald Trump can cleanse the party of its toxins and set the GOP up for success in the future.

The scammers, entertainers, anti-intellectuals, and alt-right bigots who have “taken over” the party will be ushered out by the undeniable reality that their brand of “nationalist conservative populism” doesn’t work, and honest, principled conservatives will take over. It’s a nice vision. It reminds me of the idea (expressed more on the left) that Romney’s loss in 2012 would break the GOP’s “fever.” The problem is it won’t happen.

In the first place, the cancer of the Trumpist alt-right won’t be easily dislodged from the host. Voters have the freedom to choose, at the end of the day, and those voters who nominated Trump because they agreed with his proposals to build a wall, ban Muslims, and with his core nativism won’t be convinced to suddenly become tolerant just because Jeb Bush and members of the “Illuminati” tell them to. The entertainment faction, led by Sean Hannity, is already building the groundwork for the excuse that it is the “establishment,” not the Trumpists, who are to blame for not voting for Trump. Nevermind that Hannity’s critique is anti-democratic or that Jonah Goldberg has much less influence over the votes of the educated suburban whites who are abandoning Trump than Hannity gives him credit for; the fact that this argument is illogical will not prevent it from influencing the views and actions of a significant proportion of the GOP electorate going forward.

Even if Trumpism could somehow be successfully purged from the Republican Party, the Republicans and the conservative movement would still be far from solving their problems. Recall that the Republican Party faced major problems even before Trump came along. The Republicans had lost 5 of the last 6 presidential popular votes. Mitt Romney’s performance with minorities was abysmal even by GOP standards–so much so that Trump blamed Romney’s rhetoric on illegal immigration being too harsh. When four Republican Senators took Reince Priebus’s post-2012 advice and tried to pass an immigration reform bill, the bill didn’t get a vote in the House, and Marco Rubio was scared into apologizing to the Tea Party.

Shrek once said that ogres are like onions–they have layers. The GOP is a rotten onion. When you tear off one putrid layer you are confronted with another.

To reveal just how rotten the GOP is, try a thought experiment: What will happen if Trump does lose very badly? Who will rise to the top? Granted, it is impossible to see now, because that post-Trump future will be decided in part by events that have not yet happened, but it is easy to think of some possibilities.

If and when Trump fails, one of the people who will almost certainly try to get to the top is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz, having refused to endorse Trump, having said to Trump’s uncomfortable face at the convention that Republicans should “vote their conscience,” will present himself as vindicated.

Of course Cruz failed to take down Trump when he was (along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich) the last challenger left of the 16. Why did many otherwise anti-Trump Republicans oppose Cruz at the end? Because he is a political showman who cravenly used his position as a senator to set up his campaign for the presidency since day one. Principled conservatives who wanted to actually see Obamacare repealed or weakened cringed when Cruz channeled what little political capital the GOP had in the minority towards a stunt that culminated in the government shutting down after Cruz filibustered a spending bill for the C-SPAN cameras to capture.

An Ivy League-educated lawyer, Cruz must have known that 43 Republican senators couldn’t have gotten a bill passed in the Senate and that a more realistic strategy that went for a smaller goal would have had a better chance of succeeding. But doing so wouldn’t have put Cruz in the headlines and ingratiated him with hardline conservatives.

Before Trump was able to tell the base falsehoods about everything, Cruz was able to convince the base that a transparently impossible strategy of “fighting” would work if not for establishment surrender. Loud, angry Republicans prefer yelling and getting on cable news or YouTube (“fighting!”) to actually getting conservative policies enacted. Each of their failures is only further proof of establishment treachery.

Each faction in the GOP has some sins to atone for. That there were 16 candidates in this season’s primary and no consensus around any of them is illustrative of the problems. Marco Rubio arguably showed that the media consultants who craft handsome, manicured candidates are too disconnected from the voters. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum and the social conservatives who emphasize banning abortion and gay marriage in all cases are alienating millennials, moderates, and women.

When Trump is gone, conservatives will move onto the next fight, and they will still have a dogmatic Tea Party, a tin foil hat troop, and an aggrieved group of lower-middle class white men to deal with. Trump didn’t create the nativist, paranoid mania in the GOP. He capitalized on it and refined it to its purest form.

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey. Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

By Sanjay Badri-Maharaj

As Mozambique prepares to reap the windfall from a mammoth natural gas discovery off its coast, a resurgent armed conflict and the menace of piracy threaten to undermine the coming bonanza. In what could be an economic game-changer for Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries, 160 trillion cubic feet of liquid natural gas were discovered in 2010 in the waters of the Indian Ocean, off the East African country’s coastline. Like wildebeest to a watering hole, the world’s energy companies have come stampeding in to stake their claim to the bounty that promises to transform Mozambique into a global exporter of LNG and grow its economy by orders of magnitude.

Consortia have been formed and major projects have been mooted. One of which is slated to become one of the biggest LNG projects in the world. Involving two consortia, one led by Italy’s Eni and the other by US-based Anadarko, it would see the construction of an onshore LNG plant for exporting 50 million tonnes per year primarily to the Asian market. Although gas prices have fallen from $20 per million British thermal units (mbtu) at the beginning of 2014 to around $4.50 today, making ventures less profitable in the short term, most of the projects aren’t due to be operational until after 2020 by which time it is hoped that prices will have recovered significantly. One thing that Mozambique can count on is the demand for its gas, especially among its closest neighbours in energy starved eastern and southern Africa.

In an effort to meet some of that demand, plans are afoot to build a 2,600 kilometre pipeline to South Africa, which is desperately trying to diversify and increase its energy production after a year in which regular blackouts have taken its toll on the economy.  With so much riding on the successful exploitation of its newfound resource wealth, the challenge for Mozambique is going to be in maintaining political stability in the face of mounting security concerns. The most troubling news to emerge on this front has been the recent spate of clashes between government troops and the militant wing of the Renamo party. Since the two sides signed a peace treaty in 1992 to bring a thirty-year civil war to an end, Renamo has participated in elections, while retaining the right to maintain a force of 300 men as a private armed guard for the party’s leader Afonso Dhlakama. It is thought that this private army has swelled in numbers as former fighters, accusing the government of failing to integrate them into post-war civilian life, have chosen to take up arms again.

The government, however, blame Renamo for instigating the clashes in the central and north-eastern parts of the country that has killed hundreds and sent 8,000 Mozambicans fleeing into neighbouring Malawi, raising fears that up to 30,000 more could follow, resulting in regional instability. According to Human Rights Watch, Renamo have been conducting raids on hospitals where they make off with mosquito nets, medicine and bedding. The worrying conclusion to be drawn from these reports is that Renamo are digging in their heels and expecting further bloodshed. Political negotiations hoped to bring about a cease-fire look to have come to a dead end, after the government rubbished claims that it had offered Renamo the governorship of the six of Mozambique’s 12 provinces where Renamo topped the polls in the 2014 elections. Talks are due to resume later this month and could well determine whether Mozambique remains on the path of peace and, with its new found gas deposits, prosperity, or if the embers of civil war will be stoked into a new conflagration.

Besides the nightmarish prospect of civil war, there is another enormous challenge to be overcome if Mozambique is to get the utmost benefit out of its gas deposits: it badly needs to secure its territorial waters against piracy. To date, this has presented itself in the form of foreign fishing boats, often Chinese, entering Mozambique’s waters and pilfering its fish stocks to the tune of about $35 million every year. This is in a country where 34% of households are food insecure and 50% of the population depends on fish for proteins. The purchase of several patrol boats from a French shipbuilding company through the EMATUM government agency is intended to beef up Mozambique’s maritime defences and counter the scourge of illegal trawlers off its coast.

However, now that Mozambique’s waters are known to contain something much more valuable than fish, piracy takes on a whole new dimension. Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, to the north of Mozambique, were only defeated thanks to unprecedented levels of international cooperation to protect oil tankers passing through the Gulf of Aden. Nigeria too knows the damage that can be done by armed militants intent on sabotaging its oil facilities. As present it’s uncertain which way things in Mozambique are going to go and whether its gas find will turn out to be a curse or a blessing.

About the author:
*Originally from London, James Lessons recently graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in politics and international relations with a particular focus on the African region. He is currently working as a freelance research assistant and writer for a small economic risk consultancy.

By Dr Subhash Kapila

Contemporary politico-military developments in the Indian Subcontinent in the run-up to 2016 clearly posit that SAARC which was raised with great hopes in December 1985 to foster regional cooperation has not served its intended purpose. There is no point in perpetuating the charade of a failed organisation

In September 2016 the prospects of SAARC’s continuance looks bleaker with Pakistan having intensified its incitement of Kashmir Valley unrest on Muslim religious and communal grounds that Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan’s pernicious ‘Two Nation Theory’ debunked by the 160 million Indian Muslims thriving on India’s economic prosperity. With the 19th SAARC Summit due in Islamabad in November 2016 and Indian public opinion heavily weighted against PM Modi’s participation there, the major fissure in SAARC will widen further. More so, when the Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh who had gone to Islamabad to attend the SAARC Home Ministers Conference was rudely rebuffed by Pakistan.

SAARC in the last three decades has not been able to forge a unified approach in regional terms to combat the scourge of terrorism that afflicts South Asia. This chiefly arises from opposition and obstruction by Pakistan as the fountainhead of terrorism in South Asia not only against secular India but also against Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Both these nations have come out strongly against Pakistan on this score.

The single achievement of SAARC in the last three decades was the South Asia Free Trading Agreement which exists more in name than in practice. Pakistan has been obstructing and denying trade routes access to India and Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. This is highly condemnatory for a SAARC country professing regional cooperation. Trade and commerce, unhindered, would have been the stepping stones for political cooperation. But Pakistan’s propensity to inject geopolitical rivalries is a minus for SAARC.

SAARC would like to cite examples of achievements in the agricultural and cultural fields but these fields do not carry any political weight to endow SAARC with the halo of a substantial politically cohesive regional organisation. This lack of political punch degrades the very credibility of SAARC as the mouthpiece of regional aspirations.

Pakistan as the regional spoiler state solely reared by China all along to strategically discomfit India has proved that the Pakistani foreign policy blueprint in South Asia does not incorporate any political space for regional unity and cooperation. That applies more pointedly to the SAARC emerging as a powerful organisation.

Starry-eyed former diplomats and Indian academics vociferously advocated the inception of SAARC and even when it showed signs of failing fundamentally, these personalities invoked the example of the European Union and ASEAN to highlight the usefulness of regional cooperation organisations.

When in 2016 the European Union is unravelling and ASEAN unity is only a rhetorical façade with ASEAN in disunity succumbing to Chinese divisive pressures and muscle-twisting on the South China Sea issue, what optimism can be entertained on survival of SAARC with Pakistan playing China’s games in our region?

Pakistan’s problems with SAARC are two-fold. The first and more notable is that Pakistan with its obsessive complexes of India far outweighing Pakistan’s power potential in the Indian Subcontinent and accusing India of hegemonistic designs as China does views SAARC also as a mechanism for Indian hegemonism.

Secondly, Pakistan for many years vainly attempted to prevail over the other SAARC countries to line-up against India. In 2016 with India on an ascendant political and economic power trajectory these very SAARC countries see wisdom in plugging-in into India’s remarkable economic growth. In a way, Pakistan can be said to be now more isolated in SAARC. In remainder of SAARC countries Pakistan is perceived as only a mean alternative to India.

The above development raises serious implications for the longevity of SAARC as a frustrated Pakistan being egged on by China could eat into the remaining fabric of SAARC cooperation like termites.

Pakistan is highly unlikely to give up its pretensions of being considered and being respected as the strategic equivalent of India in the Indian Subcontinent and consequently in SAARC also. Contemporary geopolitical developments rule out the emergence of Pakistan as a strategic equivalent of India, and, therein exists the major rub for SAARC continuing as a sustainable regional cooperation organisation. In fact India on current trends is likely to emerge even more powerful and a strategic eyesore for Pakistan.

With this sort of contextual background, there are only two perspectives which have started playing out as far as future of SAARC is concerned. The first perspective is that despite SAARC failing as an effective organisation for regional cooperation SAARC continues in name only with token participation. The second perspective is that India fed up with Pakistan’s obstructive tactics in the smooth and effective functioning of SAARC explores other options.

India already seems to be engaged in the second option where a sub-regional cooperation organisation of SAARC minus Pakistan is taking shape. Scope exists for India to form a separate regional cooperation organisation comprising Afganistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka team up with India for a more integrated and unified in purpose regional cooperation organisation.

The next and most crucial question is whether Pakistan in the above eventuality has an option to form a rival regional cooperation organisation to the one that India is envisaging as outlined above. The straight and simple answer is that Pakistan has no such option open to it. Going by current trends none of the other SAARC member nations are likely to ally with Pakistan to form a rival organisation against India.

In conclusion, what emerges gloomily is that Pakistan can no longer be an effective and positive factor contributing to sustaining SAARC as the medium for regional cooperation. SAARC should therefore be disbanded forthwith and India promotes a new SAARC-minus Pakistan regional cooperation organisation. Such an envisaged organisation should not cater for any ‘observer status’ countries, and certainly not China, which has not proved itself as a force for good in South Asia.

An Egyptian businessman with close ties to general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has submitted a bid for the broadcasting rights of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in a move that is widely seen as an effort to polish the image of Egypt, tarnished by massive abuse of human rights, failing economic policies, and a military coup that put in 2013 put an end to the country’s first democratic experiment.

The $600 million bid also challenges the predominance among Arab satellite broadcasters of BelN, the Qatar-owned sports network that is part of Al Jazeera, and has bought broadcasting rights across the globe.

Finally, if successful, the bid could help improve Mr. Al-Sisi’s domestic standing at a time that the president is struggling economically and being propped up by funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Many Egyptians cannot afford BelN’s subscription rates that range from $7.5 to $54 a month.

Relations between Qatar, a supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt have been strained ever since Mr. Al-Sisi three years ago toppled Mohammed Morsi, a Brother and Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president.

Mr. Morsi was sentenced in June to 25 years in prison for passing state secrets to Qatar in a case in which several Al Jazeera journalists were convicted in absentia to either death of long prison terms. Al Jazeera was taken off the air within hours of the 2013 coup and three of its journalists were held in prison and sentenced to years in jail before ultimately being released.

The businessman, Ahmed Abou Hashima, a steel and media magnate with close ties to Mr. Al-Sisi, has the support of members of parliament close to the Egyptian leader despite Arab media reports that the Brotherhood supported him in 2012 when Mr. Morsi was in office.

Mr. Abou Hashima sought help at the time, the reports said, in his high-profile divorce, reportedly involving a $30 million settlement, from Haifa Wehbe, one of the Arab world’s most prominent singers and actors.

Mr. Abou Hashima’s effort to improve Egypt’s international image by buying African broadcasting rights builds on Egypt’s past African soccer glory. Egypt’s national team is the African Cup of Nation’s most crowned squad, winning the title in the three consecutive years that preceded the 2011 popular revolt that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

“We do our best to project Egypt’s name in all sectors in Africa, especially sport,” Mr. Abou Hashima said in a Facebook posting on August 30.

Pro-Sisi deputies linked Mr. Abou Hashima’s bid more directly to the mass anti-Morsi protests in the summer of 2013 that had been supported by the military and security forces and paved the way for Mr. Al-Sisi’s takeover.

“The proposal the Egyptian company presented to buy the broadcasting rights of African football honours the Egyptian people after the 30 June glorious revolution,” Hamdy al-Sisi, a namesake of the president, lawmaker and member of the lower house’s Youth and Sports Committee, told Al-Monitor.

“Egypt is the main key driver of the Middle East and it remains the pulse of the Arab world. The fact that an Egyptian company obtains the broadcasting rights of matches indicates a lot, including Egypt’s recovery from its crisis as it has come back to the African arena,” added Mahmoud al-Sayyed, another lawmaker and committee member.

Proper marketing of the broadcasting rights would project Egypt despite a violent insurgency in the Sinai as stable, demonstrate public support for Mr. Al-Sisi, and boost tourism, Mr. Al-Sayyed said.

Mr. Abou Hashima’s bid appears also to be part of broader government strategy to harness soccer in its effort to garner domestic popularity. The bid was announced days after Mr. Al-Sisi ordered a feasibility study for the construction of a new stadium in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, one of Egypt’s least populated and most neglected governorates.

Seventy-two members of Ultra Ahlawy, one of the militant soccer support groups that played a key role in the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak and subsequent resistance to military rule died in Port Said’s existing stadium in 2012 in a controversial, politically loaded brawl. It was Egypt’s worst ever sporting incident. Port Said did not figure in the government’s investment plan that was presented last year to an economic development conference.

Many in Port Said resent the fact that court proceedings have laid blame for the incident with militant supporters of Al Masri SC, some of whom have been sentenced to death, and two security officials in the city. Seven other security officers were acquitted. The defendants have appealed the verdicts.

Mr. Al-Sisi sought to co-opt Ultras Ahlawy earlier this year on the fourth anniversary of the incident by offering them to independently investigate what happened. The ultras turned the offer down, arguing that they could not simultaneously act as accuser and judge.

Mr. Al-Sisi made his offer as militant soccer fans formed the backbone of anti-government student protests that were brutally squashed. The protests were not only against the harsh repression of the Al-Sisi regime but also against its economic and social policies which failed to create public sector jobs for graduates and more places for students at universities.

Mr. Al-Sisi’s effort to use sports to his advantage sought to exploit the fact that physical exercise, including, jogging and biking, enjoys unprecedented popularity among Egyptian youth. In one event, Mr. Al-Sis led military academy cadets in 2014 on a well-publicized bicycle ride around Cairo.

“The young people can’t go out demonstrating, but they can go out to run,” sports coach Ramy A. Saleh told The New York Times.  “It’s connected with the withdrawal from public life by young people,” added political scientist Ezzedine C. Fishere.

“Everyone who had participated in 2011 (in the popular revolt0 started to move to the private sphere, some took refuge in depression, some in nihilistic activities and many in fitness — not just fitness, but taking care of oneself,” Mr. Fishere said.

Sports may for now prove to be a way for Mr. Al-Sisi to engage with youth who in the absence of post-2011 politics find expression in physical activity. If history is however any guide, sports could also turn on him as was evident with soccer fans being the foremost group to resist the Mubarak regime physically in the years before the president’s downfall.

Mr. Al-Sisi appears to recognize that with Egyptian stadiums remaining largely closed to the public for much of the years since 2011. That didn’t stop Ultras Ahlawy from rioting in July during a match against a Moroccan team. Some 80 ultras were arrested.

Pope Francis has written a private message approving the Buenos Aires bishops’ response to the divorced-and-remarried inspired by his apostolic exhortation on the family.

The pastoral response said ministry to the divorced-and-remarried must never create confusion about Church teaching and the indissolubility of marriage, but may also allow access to the sacraments under specific limits. These may include specific situations when a penitent in an irregular union is under attenuated culpability, as when leaving such a union could cause harm to his children.

The bishops of the Buenos Aires region had written basic criteria for their priests about the Pope’s post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia, which was released April 8 following two synods on the family.

The Pope discussed these criteria in a Sept. 5 letter addressed to Bishop Sergio Alfredo Fenoy of San Miguel, a delegate of the Argentina bishops’ Buenos Aires Region.

“The text is very good and makes fully explicit the meaning of the eighth chapter of ‘Amoris Laetitia’,” Pope Francis said. “There are no other interpretations. And I am sure it will do a lot of good. May the Lord reward you for this effort of pastoral charity.”

He said pastoral charity “moves us to reach out to those who have drifted away, and once we have met them, to begin a path of welcoming, accompaniment, discernment and integration into the ecclesial community.”

The Buenos Aires document, also dated Sept. 5, aimed to offer “minimal criteria” on the discernment of the possible access to the sacraments by penitents who are divorced and in a new union. Every bishop may clarify, complete, or establish limits on these criteria in his own diocese, the document said.

This advice must not be understood as “unrestricted access” to the sacraments or as if “just any situation would justify it,” the document said.

“What is proposed is a discernment which adequately distinguishes each case,” it said.

It emphasized a process of discernment for a penitent accompanied by a pastor. The pastor must emphasize the fundamental proclamation of Christ. This path calls for the priest to show pastoral charity in welcoming the penitent, listening carefully to him, and accepting the penitent’s “upright intention and good purpose to place his entire life in the light of the Gospel and to practice charity.”

“This path does not necessarily end in the sacraments, but rather it can guide one to other ways of joining more in the life of the Church,” it said. This include a greater presence in the community, participation in prayer groups, and commitment to various ecclesial services for those who have divorced-and-remarried.

“When the concrete circumstances of a couple make it feasible, especially when both are Christians with a faith commitment, it is possible to propose that they try to live in continence,” the document said.

“In other more complex circumstances, and when a decree of nullity cannot be obtained, the mentioned option may not in fact be feasible. Nevertheless, a path of discernment is equally possible.”

The Buenos Aires document did suggest that penitents in a limited number of circumstances, after careful discernment, could access the sacraments.

“If one comes to recognize that in a specific case, there are limitations that attenuate responsibility and culpability, particularly when a person believes that he would fall into a subsequent fault of harming the children of the new union, Amoris laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist. These sacraments in turn dispose the person to continue to mature and grow with the power of grace.”

Adequate discernment of each case deserves “special care” in examples such as a new union that arose from a recent divorce or the situation of someone who has consistently failed in his family obligations.

The document also warned of situations where a person justifies or flaunts one’s situation “as if it were part of the Christian ideal.”

“In these more difficult cases, we pastors must accompany with patience, trying to find some way of reinstatement,” the Buenos Aires document said.

The document stressed the importance of the examination of conscience as well as the need to avoid confusion about Church teaching.

In some cases it may be appropriate that access to the sacraments takes place in “a discreet manner” when conflicting situations can be foreseen.

“But at the same time the person should not stop accompanying the community so that he or she grows in a spirit of understanding and of welcome, without this involvement creating confusion regarding the teaching of the Church about the indissolubility of marriage.”

Pope Francis’ Sept. 5 letter to the Buenos Aires bishops reflected on the difficulties of discernment.

“We know this is tiring, it is a matter of a ‘person to person’ pastoral ministry, not satisfied with programmatic, organizational or legal mediations, however necessary. Simply: to welcome, accompany, discern, integrate. Of these four pastoral attitudes the least cultivated and practiced is discernment; and I consider formation in discernment, personal and communitarian, in our seminaries and rectories to be urgent,” he said.

He added that the apostolic exhortation was “the fruit of the work and prayer of the entire Church, with the mediation of the two synods and the Pope.”

The eighth chapter of Amoris laetitia had prompted much discussion and apparently conflicting views.

In a May 4 speech, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, countered arguments that the apostolic exhortation eliminated Church discipline on marriage and allowed in some cases the divorced-and-remarried to receive the Eucharist “without the need to change their way of life.”

He placed the exhortation in the context of the writings of previous Popes.

“This is a matter of a consolidated magisterial teaching, supported by scripture and founded on a doctrinal reason: the salvific harmony of the sacrament, the heart of the ‘culture of the bond’ that the Church lives.”

If Pope Francis’ exhortation “had wanted to eliminate such a deeply rooted and significant discipline, it would have said so clearly and presented supporting reasons,” Cardinal Müller said.

He countered claims that the exhortation’s footnote 351 offered the sacraments to those living in an objective situation of sin.

“The basic principle is that no one can truly desire a sacrament, that of the Eucharist, without also desiring to live in accord with the other sacraments, including that of marriage,” the cardinal added. “One who lives in contrast with the marriage bond is opposed to the visible sign of the sacrament of marriage; in that which touches his bodily existence, even if he should be subjectively not culpable, he makes himself an ‘anti-sign’ of indissolubility.”

Pope Francis had previously discussed this section of Amoris laetitia in an April 16 in-flight interview with reporters on his plane returning from the Greek island of Lesbos.

The Pope responded to a reporter’s question about whether there are new, concrete possibilities for divorced-and-remarried persons to access the sacraments. The Pope said that there are “many” such possibilities.

The Pope said he had been bothered and saddened by media coverage’s great focus on Communion for the divorced-and-remarried. He pointed to other problems like the “family crisis” and the falling birth rate in Europe. He cited Benedict XVI’s February 2013 statements about a “council of the media” whose coverage distorted the Second Vatican Council.

“Do you not realize that the youth don’t want to marry?” Pope Francis asked. “Don’t you realize that the lack of work or the little work (available) means that a mother has to get two jobs and the children grow up alone? These are the big problems.”

Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena said the next year would be planned as a year for implementation of well planned programs for the promotion of Buddhism.

“Dharma Prachraka programs will be implemented from next year under the guidance and advice of the Maha Sangha including the Tri Nikayas’ Sanga Nayaka Theros with the aim of making Sri Lanka the Centre of Theravada Buddhism,” Sirisena said.

Sirisena made these remarks participating in a religious ceremony held at the Ambalangoda, Polwaththa Sri Aggarama Temple on September 12.

This ceremony was organized to offer the Sannasa (Scroll) to the Most Ven. Nindane Vajiragnana Nayaka Thero for elevating his position to Anu Nayaka Thero of the Kalyaniwansa Nikaya of the Amarapura Maha Nikaya.

Sirisena presented the Sannasa (Scroll) and the Vijinipatha to the newly appointed Anu Nayaka Thero.

Addressing the religious ceremony, Sirisena further said that the service of the educated, disciplined and erudite Bhikkhus is an imperative requirement of the country.

President Sirisena pointed out the only way to heal the deteriorating society day by day with commercialization is the Buddhist philosophy and further said that the International Vesak Day celebrations will be held in grand scale next year and all the Head of States of the Buddhist countries will be invited to attend this ceremony.

The newly appointed Most Ven. Nindane Vajiragnana Nayaka Thero is the Chief Incumbent of the Ambalangoda, Polwaththa Sri Aggarama, Kobeithuduwa Siri Pashchimaramaya and Dorala Purwaramaya temples as well as the former Deputy Principal of the Devananda College, Ambalangoda.

Global oil demand growth is slowing at a faster pace than initially predicted, according to the newly released IEA Oil Market Report (OMR) for September. According to IEA, for 2016, a gain of 1.3 mb/d is expected – a downgrade of 0.1 mb/d on our previous forecast due to a more pronounced 3Q16 slowdown. Momentum eases further to 1.2 mb/d in 2017 as underlying macroeconomic conditions remain uncertain.

Meanwhile world oil supplies fell by 0.3 mb/d in August, dragged lower by non-OPEC, noted the IEA. At 96.9 mb/d, global oil output was 0.3 mb/d below a year ago, but near-record OPEC supply just about offset steep non-OPEC declines. Non-OPEC supply is expected to return to growth in 2017 (+380 kb/d) following an anticipated 840 kb/d decline this year.

According to the IEA, OPEC crude production edged up to 33.47 mb/d in August – testing record rates as Middle East producers opened the taps. Kuwait and the UAE hit their highest output ever and Iraq lifted supplies. Output from Saudi Arabia held near a record, while Iran reached a post-sanctions high. Overall OPEC supply stood 930 kb/d above a year ago.

The anaemic outlook for refining throughput extends further amid downward revisions to our 2H16 forecast, the IEA said, adding that refinery runs in 2016 are set to grow at the lowest rate in a decade.

OECD total inventories built by 32.5 mb in July to a fresh record of 3 111 mb, the IEA said, as refinery activities reached a summer peak, crude oil inventories refused to decline until an exceptional storm-related draw hit the US in late August.

Oil prices rallied in early August, rising from four-month lows near $42/bbl to briefly above $50/bbl amid peak summer demand for crude oil, which is expected to lead to the first quarterly crude stock draw in more than two years, the IEA said. At the time of writing, Brent futures had retreated to around $48.45/bbl while WTI was at $46.35/bbl.