The discarded bone of a chicken leg, still etched with teeth marks from a dinner thousands of years ago, provides some of the oldest known physical evidence for the introduction of domesticated chickens to the continent of Africa, research from Washington University in St. Louis has confirmed.

Based on radiocarbon dating of about 30 chicken bones unearthed at the site of an ancient farming village in present-day Ethiopia, the findings shed new light on how domesticated chickens crossed ancient roads — and seas — to reach farms and plates in Africa and, eventually, every other corner of the globe.

“Our study provides the earliest directly dated evidence for the presence of chickens in Africa and points to the significance of Red Sea and East African trade routes in the introduction of the chicken,” said Helina Woldekiros, lead author and a postdoctoral anthropology researcher in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

The main wild ancestor of today’s chickens, the red junglefowl Gallus gallus is endemic to sub-Himalayan northern India, southern China and Southeast Asia, where chickens were first domesticated 6,000-8,000 years ago. Now nearly ubiquitous around the world, the offspring of these first-domesticated chickens are providing modern researchers with valuable clues to ancient agricultural and trade contacts.

The arrival of chickens in Africa and the routes by which they both entered and dispersed across the continent are not well known. Previous research based on representations of chickens on ceramics and paintings, plus bones from other archaeological sites, suggested that chickens were first introduced to Africa through North Africa, Egypt and the Nile Valley about 2,500 years ago.

The earliest bone-based evidence of chickens in Africa dates to the late first millennium B.C., from the Saite levels at Buto, Egypt — approximately 685-525 B.C.

This study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, pushes that date back by hundreds of years. Co-authored by Catherine D’Andrea, professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser University in Canada, the research also suggests that the earliest introductions may have come from trade routes on the continent’s eastern coast.

“Some of these bones were directly radiocarbon dated to 819-755 B.C., and with charcoal dates of 919-801 B.C. make these the earliest chickens in Africa,” Woldekiros said. “They predate the earliest known Egyptian chickens by at least 300 years and highlight early exotic faunal exchanges in the Horn of Africa during the early first millennium B.C.”

Despite their widespread, modern-day importance, chicken remains are found in small numbers at archaeological sites. Because wild relatives of the galliform chicken species are plentiful in Africa, this study required researchers to sift through the remnants of many small bird species to identify bones with the unique sizes and shapes that are characteristic of domestic chickens.

Woldekiros, the project’s zooarchaeologist, studied the chicken bones at a field lab in northern Ethiopia and confirmed her identifications using a comparative bone collection at the Institute of Paleoanatomy at Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich.

Excavated by a team of researchers led by D’Andrea of Simon Fraser, the bones analyzed for this study were recovered from the kitchen and living floors of an ancient farming community known as Mezber. The rural village was located in northern Ethiopia about 30 miles from the urban center of the pre-Aksumite civilization. The pre-Aksumites were the earliest people in the Horn of Africa to form complex, urban-rural trading networks.

Linguistic studies of ancient root words for chickens in African languages suggest multiple introductions of chickens to Africa following different routes: from North Africa through the Sahara to West Africa; and from the East African coast to Central Africa. Scholars also have demonstrated the biodiversity of modern-day African village chickens through molecular genetic studies.

“It is likely that people brought chickens to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa repeatedly over long period of time: over 1,000 years,” Woldekiros said. “Our archaeological findings help to explain the genetic diversity of modern Africans chickens resulting from the introduction of diverse chicken lineages coming from early Arabian and South Asian context and later Swahili networks.”

These findings contribute to broader stories of ways in which people move domestic animals around the world through migration, exchange and trade. Ancient introductions of domestic animals to new regions were not always successful. Zooarchaeological studies of the most popular domestic animals such as cattle, sheep, goats and pigs have demonstrated repeated introductions as well as failures of new species in different regions of the world.

“Our study also supports the African Red Sea coast as one possible early route of introduction of chickens to Africa and the Horn,” Woldekiros said. “It fits with ways in which maritime exchange networks were important for global distribution of chicken and other agricultural products. The early dates for chickens at Mezber, combined with their presence in all of the occupation phases at Mezber and in Aksumite contexts 40 B.C.- 600 A.D. in other parts of Ethiopia, demonstrate their long-term success in northern Ethiopia.”

Africa, by far the world’s most rapidly growing region, must aim for population stabilization to ensure peace.

By Joseph Chamie*

World population, now 7.4 billion, is at a record high and will reach the 8 billion milestone before 2025. Managing this increase should not be ignored, postponed or relegated to laissez-faire or invisible-hand policies.

The paramount issue of the 21st century is the stabilization of world population. World population growth depends largely on the future course of fertility or childbearing, especially in Africa, by far the most rapidly growing region. Policymakers must aim for population stabilization. To do otherwise jeopardizes efforts to achieve universally adopted sustainable development goals, including ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

After centuries of innumerable births and deaths, world population reached its first billion milestone at the start of the 19th century in 1804. During the 20th century, world population doubled to 2 billion in 1927 and doubled again to 4 billion in 1974. Current projections forecast that the next doubling of world population will likely occur in seven years.

Could world population again double to 16 billion during the 21st century?  While a cataclysmic event like the Black Death or an asteroid could strike the planet and decimate humanity, most scientists view such events as highly unlikely.

Five projection scenarios point to continued demographic growth for the world and Africa over the next several decades.

Double down on growth: World population doubled in less 50 years, between 1927 and 1974, and again before 2023 (United Nations Population Division)

Constant fertility:  Although considered improbable, an instructive population projection assumes that current fertility rates of countries remain unchanged or constant throughout the 21st century. Under such a hypothetical scenario, world population increases rapidly, doubling to 16 billion by the year 2077 and reaching 26 billion at the close of the century. Nearly 80 percent of that projected demographic growth is in Africa – the continent’s population increasing to 3.2 billion by 2050 and nearly 16 billion by 2100. In striking contrast, Europe’s population with its below-replacement fertility rates decreases 25 percent by the century’s end.

Instant-replacement fertility:  Another improbable but instructive projection assumes the fertility rates of all countries move instantly to the replacement level of about 2 births per woman. In this instant-replacement fertility scenario, world population continues to grow, stabilizing at around 10 billion by the century’s end. Again, due to its young age structure, Africa’s population increases by about 70 percent over this period, from 1.2 billion to 2.1 billion.

Medium fertility:  Perhaps the most widely cited and utilized population projection is the United Nations medium variant. It assumes that global fertility declines gradually from its present average of 2.5 births per woman and converges for most countries around the replacement level of 2 births per woman by the end of the 21st century. In such a scenario world population reaches 11.2 billion by 2100. Again, Africa accounts for more than 80 percent of world’s future growth, its population doubling to 2.5 billion in 2050 and nearly quadrupling to 4.4 billion by the century’s close.

Fast growth: Africa is the source of most population growth regardless of assumptions; constant fertility assumes current rates continue, and the more commonly cited medium-fertility scenario assumes the global rate declines from 2.5 births per woman to 2 births before 2100 (United Nations Population Division)

Low fertility:  Under the UN low-variant projection, average world fertility declines gradually to a level of 1.5 births per woman by century’s end. In such a scenario, world population initially increases to a high of 8.7 billion in 2050 and plummets to 7.3 billion by 2100. Even in this scenario, however, Africa’s population continues to grow, adding a billion more people by 2050 and nearly a second billion more during the second half of this century.

High fertility: Average world fertility in the high-variant scenario increases after a decade to nearly 3 births per woman and gradually declines to 2.5 births per woman by century’s close. With fertility rates well above replacement, world population grows rapidly, reaching the global population-doubling milestone of 16 billion in 2096. Even more rapidly, Africa’s population doubles to 2.5 billion by 2050 and quintuples to 6.1 billion by century’s close.

The world’s fastest growing populations are now in Africa. More than a dozen countries have rates of increase in excess of 3 percent, including Niger at 4 percent; Gambia, 3.4 percent; and Uganda, 3.3 percent. If current growth rates continue, the populations of 15 African countries would more than triple by midcentury.

The rapid demographic growth of African countries not only undermines their development efforts, but also threatens political stability and basic survival of their populations. As many as two dozen countries struggle with food crises across sub-Saharan Africa – twice as many as in 1990. Sub-Sahara Africa has the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world.

Unemployment and underemployment, especially among the youth, constitute another major challenge facing African countries. Poor job quality with low and highly volatile earnings is common among sub-Saharan Africa countries. Even those with higher education levels encounter obstacles in securing suitable employment.

Inevitable migration: Africa’s economic development and jobs fail to keep pace with population growth, prompting young Africans to flee their homeland for better opportunities

The number of young Africans aged 15 to 24 years is expected to nearly double by 2050, to 452 million. During the same time period, in contrast, the number of European youth is expected to decrease by 12 percent. If only a few percent of young Africans are attracted to European labor demands, the resulting unauthorized and risky migratory outflows would be many times greater than recent numbers. During the first 10 months of 2016, about 330,000 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea – and more than 3,800 died attempting to cross the Mediterranean, a steady increase over the past five years.

Africa is the remaining continent passing through the demographic transition from high to low death and birth rates. While mortality levels are still comparatively high by developed country standards, rates have declined significantly in many African countries. In contrast, however, fertility levels remain high, with 20 countries having rates in excess of five children per woman, including Niger, 7.6; Somali, 6.6; and Mali, 6.4.

To accelerate the continent’s transition to sustainable fertility level, three critical ingredients are required:

• Provision of primary and secondary education to all children, especially girls: Without a basic education, young Africans are severely disadvantaged for competing in the world economy.

• Availability of vocational training, meaningful employment and career development opportunities for young Africans: Unemployment, underemployment and low wages contribute to poverty, social unrest and violence, all of which contribute to the out-migration of African youth in search of jobs and security. Governments must intensify efforts to provide training, employment, living wages and decent work conditions so that contributing to one’s country becomes a viable option for Africa’s youth.

• Lowering high fertility rates and ensuring reproductive health services are widely available: Women and men need information and means to decide on the number and spacing of children. The costs for providing reproductive health services are minor compared to the considerable benefits for families and society.

Increasingly, political leaders recognize that demography holds the key to Africa’s development and prosperity. High rates of population growth, notably among sub-Saharan African countries, outpace efforts to educate, employ, house and achieve fundamental development goals. Those development setbacks in turn feed illegal migration, smuggling and human trafficking.  Recent surveys report that more than 70 percent of migrants traveling through North Africa to Europe are victims of human trafficking, organ trafficking and exploitation along the way.

Without global population stabilization, governments will increasingly struggle to address critical issues facing humanity including global warming, biodiversity, environmental degradation, as well as shortages of energy, food and water supplies. High-growth countries, particularly those in Africa, must pass as quickly as possible through demographic transition to low death and birth rates as has already been realized throughout much of the world.

*Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division.

By Matt Hadro

Religious liberty is a pressing issue in this election, advocates say – but both major presidential candidates have shown serious deficiencies when it comes to protecting freedom of religion.

“What the friends of religious freedom need in the White House is a real, well-informed, energetic defender of religious freedom. And I don’t see one leading either party at the moment,” Dr. Matthew Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution, told CNA.

The next president may directly affect the outcome of religious freedom conflicts, either through their administration’s policies or their appointments to the judiciary.

Hillary Clinton’s support for broad anti-discrimination protections have concerned faith leaders that churches and religious charities will be forced to perform services that violate their religious mission, or be punished by the government for alleged discrimination.

For example, Catholic adoption agencies in several states have been forced to close rather than obey state mandates to place children with same-sex couples, against their religious beliefs.

Franck predicted there “could be a national push for this” under a Clinton presidency, and the Clinton campaign’s website says that “[Hillary] will end discriminatory treatment of LGBT families in adoptions.”

Another policy Clinton supports is the Equality Act, a proposed bill supported by most Democrats in Congress. Experts say it would force citizens and organizations to approve of acts they consider immoral.

Under the bill, “traditional orthodox Christian views about marriage and so forth are really expressions of bigotry, and not to be publicly tolerated,” V. Bradley Lewis, professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, explained to CNA.

Clinton has been a long-time promoter of access to contraceptives and abortions for women, and has promoted this agenda both domestically and internationally.

In her keynote address at the 2015 Women in the World summit, Clinton maintained that “far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced.” She added that “laws have to be backed up with resources and political will, and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed.”

Clinton would probably continue the HHS birth control mandate, which forces all employers to include in their employee health plans contraceptives, sterilizations, and drugs that can cause abortions. This could mean continued litigation against objecting religious non-profits until the cases are resolved by the Supreme Court.

And the appointment of a Supreme Court justice is another concern for religious freedom advocates after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February created a vacancy that will be filled by the next president’s appointee. This justice could be the deciding swing vote in a 5-4 religious freedom case.

Clinton has said she would appoint justices who would uphold the right to abortion and same-sex marriage. A major case involving the birth control mandate, Zubik v. Burwell, is still being litigated and resolved at the federal court level after the Supreme Court sent the case back to the circuit courts.

The Little Sisters of the Poor and other charitable organizations stood to win their case at the Supreme Court if the late Justice Antonin Scalia were on the bench, Franck noted, but under a justice appointed by Clinton if she were to be president, “they’re probably losers.”

Clinton also would support the transgender mandate, the Obama administration’s rule that would force doctors and physicians around the country to perform gender transition services if asked, even if they thought it harmful to the patient’s health.

Franck called it a “serious attack on physician freedom, including religious freedom,” and added, “I think that Hillary would keep that in place” and “might even expand on it.”

Earlier this year, the state of California mandated that pro-life crisis pregnancy centers had to inform patients on where and how they could procure abortions. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillary Clinton wanted to make that [law] national, if she could,” Franck said.

Another concern is that the Department of Education, with direct oversight of college accrediting bodies, could demand that these bodies withhold accreditation of religious schools until they support same-sex marriage.

And that’s just the domestic policy agenda. Internationally, Clinton could continue the State Department’s recent promotion of LGBT rights abroad as a “main” pillar of their diplomacy while focusing “very little” on religious freedom, Lewis noted.

Also of note are the recent release of past emails of Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, published by the website WikiLeaks.

Podesta, in a 2012 email thread about the Catholic bishops’ opposition to the Obama administration’s birth control mandate, was asked about the possibility of a “Catholic spring” to generate popular Catholic opposition to the bishops and bring about “the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.”

He responded that Catholic groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good had been created for “a moment like this.”

The “moment” Podesta is referring to could be “the eruption of a conflict between the Catholic Church and the liberal state,” Franck said, a “pseudo-Catholic front for generating dissent inside the Catholic Church when it comes into conflict with the government in order to weaken that side in the conflict.”

That it comes from the campaign chair of a major presidential candidate is all the more troubling, Franck insisted.

“That’s straight from somebody who is linked, for his whole career,” he said, “with the Clintons, and would be an important figure in a new Clinton administration.”

“I think what we can expect to see out of a Hillary Clinton administration is a continuation of the trajectory we’ve already seen in the two terms of the Obama administration,” Franck said, adding that “I would have serious, serious doubts that it would be better” or that Clinton’s administration would be “persuaded to moderate or retreat from any of the Obama initiatives that have been damaging to religious freedom.”

Trump, meanwhile, caused a stir last year when, after November’s Paris terror attacks and purportedly for national security reasons, he advocated “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Lewis called that policy, singling out a religious group, “in and of itself problematic on religious freedom grounds.”

Trump presented an “expansion” of that plan this summer, a ban on immigration from countries and territories that have been “compromised” by terrorism. His running mate Mike Pence said that Christians and Jews from such countries would also be included under such a ban.

Meanwhile, Trump’s rhetoric on other religious freedom issues shows that he lacks a presidential command of the topic, advocates say.

Although Trump could be “marginally better” than Clinton on religious freedom in that he would hire staff members who did not promote radical secularism, “I don’t really see Mr. Trump mounting much of a challenge to the agenda of the sexual revolution on same-sex marriage and transgender issues,” Franck said.

“On a generous reading of his statements, one might imagine that Trump simply doesn’t care about religious freedom, and perhaps doesn’t understand what is at stake,” Rachel Lu, a professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, wrote for the Religious Freedom Institute.

For instance, Trump “waffled on North Carolina’s transgendered bathroom law, but his immediate impulse was to criticize the state for infringing on the rights of the transgendered,” she wrote.

Trump was asked about religious freedom by EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on “The World Over” last Thursday.

He responded by championing the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, and as Trump put it, stops faith leaders from endorsing him as a candidate.

“I think it’s one of the most important things that I’ll be doing for the evangelicals and for religion,” he said. “So, I think it’s very, very important.”

However, while repealing the amendment is a good step, it is “way, way down the list [of importance] for every religious leader I talked to,” Franck said.

Furthermore, some say Trump’s rhetoric toward ethnic and religious minorities has inflamed social tensions and could spell trouble for them if he is elected president.

In a piece published by the Religious Freedom Institute, two representatives of the Ahmadyyia Muslim community harshly criticized Trump for his rhetoric and policy proposals for religious minorities, saying the policies are a “sharp departure from anything that we have seen in decades.”

In addition to his proposed Muslim ban, Trump had advocated the “surveillance of certain mosques” as a national security measure in the wake of the Paris attacks.

“It has become apparent that Trump responds emotionally to current events and does not always think his proposals through and whether or not they violate the principles of the constitution,” Rasheed Reno and Qasim Rashid wrote. “They are often inspired by fear and anger which is a dangerous and irresponsible use of a leadership position.”

This volatile behavior by a presidential candidate could spell danger for religious minorities under his administration, they insisted.

“When a president shows willingness to violate the civil liberties of its citizens,” like through a Muslim ban, “it sets a dangerous example which leads to violence and unrest against religious minorities,” they added.

“This has already been demonstrated in the short period of Trump’s candidacy, where violence against Muslims and other minorities has increased significantly.”

When he was asked by a Muslim-American about this uptick in violence during the second presidential debate, instead of explaining how he would protect the religious freedom of U.S. Muslims, Trump immediately pivoted to the need for Muslims to report suspicious activity in their own communities, they pointed out.

What can Catholics do when religious freedom is under attack, and may continue to be under attack in the next presidential administration? Church leaders must continue publicly defending it, Lewis maintained, pointing to initiatives like the U.S. bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom campaign.

Also, though the eyes of the nation are on the presidential race, there are plenty of key congressional races, Lewis added. “We have to know what the views of candidates for Congress are on these questions as well,” he said, as “it’s in their hands to approve legislation” like the First Amendment Defense Act, which would establish religious freedom protections.

The Church must also tell its story if religious charities are to gain a sympathetic ear from the public, he said, as the freedom of religious charities is threatened by laws like the birth control mandate and state laws preventing churches from serving undocumented immigrants.

“It’s important to continue to articulate the fact that those institutions do their work as part of their apostolic commissions,” Lewis said. “It’s not the case that the Church just runs charitable organizations just to run charitable organizations.”

“There’s no separating what they do from the very heart of the Christian mission.”

A new Oxford University study suggests that playing internet games is not as addictive as gambling. It is the first research that has tried to measure the scale of gaming addiction in the general population using symptoms of ‘internet gaming disorder’ as defined by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Researchers from the University’s Oxford Internet Institute asked nationally representative samples of men and women in four countries how they felt after gaming using the APA checklist of health symptoms. The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, investigates concerns voiced recently by the APA about a lack of good quality research into the effects of playing internet games.

Researchers from the University of Oxford surveyed 19,000 men and women from the UK, the United States, Canada and Germany. Over half of the sample said they had played internet games recently. Of these, between 2% and 3% reported they had experienced five or more of the symptoms on the list, with between 1% and 0.5% saying they also had feelings of ‘significant distress’ in being unable to curb their play. These rates are less than half those reported recently for gambling by the British Gambling Prevalence Survey. In that survey, 2.6% of those aged 18-24 and 1% of adults in the general population said they had experienced symptoms linked by the researchers with a gambling disorder.

Two years ago, the American Psychiatric Association outlined the potential problem as ‘internet gaming disorder’ and proposed nine standard symptoms that might characterize possible diagnoses. The APA gave each symptom equal weight, and specified there had be an over-riding ‘feeling of significant distress’. The Oxford study discusses this as a ‘key feature’, noting that while many gamers may feel preoccupied and distracted from other responsibilities in a similar way to a sports fan whose team has reached the finals, they are not likely to have a pathological condition unless there are feelings of significant distress.

All the study participants, recruited through YouGov and Google Surveys, completed symptom and health checklists. To be identified as a possible gaming addict, they had to report five of the nine symptoms from the APA list and also feel significant distress. Symptoms included preoccupation with internet gaming, anxiety and other withdrawal symptoms (if the game was taken away), increasing amounts of time spent gaming, loss of control, reduced interests, social withdrawal, and losing opportunities as a result of gaming. Unique to this study was an emphasis on open materials, open data, and a pre-registered data analysis plan.

According to study lead author Dr Andrew Przybylski, from the Oxford Internet Institute, “To our knowledge, these are the first findings from a large-scale project to produce robust evidence on the potential new problem of ‘internet gaming disorder’. Internet games are currently one of the most popular leisure activities, but we can’t leap to conclusions and assume that if 160 million Americans play them, one million of them might be addicted. Contrary to what was predicted, the study did not find a clear link between potential addiction and negative effects on health, however, more research grounded in open and robust scientific practices is needed to learn if games are truly as addictive as many fear. If clear evidence does emerge, this would have huge clinical significance as treatments for addicted gamers would vie with a range of serious psychiatric disorders in the current climate of limited health service resources.”

“There were some striking findings, for instance, we found specific indicators like increasing playtime to increase excitement were reported three times more frequently than other indicators, such as risking social relationships. Importantly, the great majority of gamers – nearly three in four – reported no symptoms at all that we would link with addictive gaming behaviour.”

Nominating potential Protestant representatives for the election of the chief executive of Hong Kong became controversial due recently to a new lottery arrangement which some deemed as unfair.

Certain Protestants have criticized a change from a general election to a lottery arrangement for an upcoming vote for the fifth term of Chief Executive by the 1,200 members of Election Committee (EC) in March of next year. They say the lottery arrangements will favor certain Protestant church groups — such as large ones — over others. One critic even went on hunger strike to oppose the new arrangement.

The Hong Kong Christian Council (HKCC), an ecumenical body of Christian churches in Hong Kong, drew 33 candidates from a lottery for the Election Committee out of 579 applicants in the first round on Oct. 30.

Protestant churches have 10 seats among 60 seats in the religious sub sector of the EC, which also include 10 seats each for representative Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims and Confucianists.

Reverend Po Kam-cheong, HKCC secretary-general, noted that the council had always sought to be fair but added, “there would never be an absolute fair model.”

Nations that pledged to carry out the Paris climate agreement have moved forward to find practical ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including efforts to ban hydrofluorocarbons and set stricter fuel-efficiency standards. Now scientists report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology that one source of carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas, has been overlooked: wastewater treatment plants.

Based on their findings, they recommend actions that could curb emissions from this source.

Linda Y. Tseng, currently at Colgate University, Diego Rosso, and colleagues from the University of California, Irvine, note that when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the data available to the organization did not include CO2 emission estimates from wastewater, which may contain fossil sources of carbon such as petrochemicals.

Although it does take into account greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, the IPCC model assumes that wastewater largely contains and releases carbon from non-petroleum sources — for example, human waste. However, studies have shown that relevant amounts of petroleum products, such as synthetic chemicals from detergents, wash into wastewater and can eventually add to total greenhouse gas emissions.

The team investigated the fossil-related carbon content of municipal and industrial wastewaters at various points in the treatment process. Including this carbon from treatment plants could increase estimates of their total greenhouse gas emissions by 12 to 23 percent over previous estimates that only included methane and nitrous oxide.

However, the researchers found that treating wastewater sludge could offer an opportunity to reduce the fossil carbon emissions from treatment plants. They note that on-site carbon sequestration run on renewable energy could also lower these plants’ impact.

By Catalina Ruiz-Navarro

In 2013, Justine Sacco ended up sabotaging her own career with a tweet just before boarding a plane to South Africa: “Going to Africa, I hope I don’t catch AIDS. It’s a joke. I’m white.” Sacco was then the global head of communications for the digital media conglomerate, InterActiveCorp (IAC). She had some 200 followers on Twitter. That tweet, intended to be sarcastic, sparked what would be called, “an ideological crusade.” Twitter users contacted Sacco’s boss, who in turn tweeted: “This is an intolerable and offensive comment. The employee is under question, we cannot contact her until she gets off the plane.” This, for many, was a sign that their complaints and criticisms “paid off.” The anger quickly turned into euphoria: “I’m dying to see Justine Sacco get down that plane”; “Dumb bitch, we’ll see how you get fired live.”

Since Sacco worked for a private company and in the area of communications, her boss had every right to fire her. Perhaps Sacco’s tweet was a mistake but she should have known about the scope of these blunders within the competence of her work. Justine Sacco was not fired just  because a “lynch mob” on the Internet asked for her head. Rather, she was fired because a mistake she made at work – while her job was managing communications – triggered a virtual version of a “lynch mob”.

In social media, language co-exists in the paradox of having an oral intent but a written format. What we say online is thought with immediacy and somehow, we still expect our words to be forgotten in the same way any reckless joke we say to our friends would be. But our words on social media are of a written nature and a message can be on the internet for eternity; since dissemination over the internet has a global reach, our words are very susceptible to being taken out of context. This has ethical and moral implications and requires changes in our behaviour. It is not the same for Justine Sacco to say her tweet as a joke to a friend (who perhaps will quickly forget it), than to say it in writing, in a social network, where it can be read by people who do not know her enough to understand her sense of humour and intentions. The same tweet would have different weight if it were written in a book or in an official statement letter; in these cases it would be much more serious than something said casually on social media. Not everyone is obliged to such high degrees of political correctness, but everyone with a public persona – journalists, communicators, politicians, public figures – should have, if not considerable care, at least awareness of how technology amplifies the impact of their words (and even more so of their mistakes).

This awareness of speech is not the same as self-censorship. A lynch mob on social media is undoubtedly better than one in the real world, and definitely preferable to silence because, at the end, censorship is even more violent than verbal violence. The effect of words on the Internet is different from the effects of a fist fight, or pitchforks and torches. After all, civilisation began when humans went from shooting each other stones to shooting insults. But insults on the Internet can be amplified, and there is no denying the hurt that can be caused by words. So what happens when the cyberbullying has effects beyond smear or dismissal? Can you blame online bullying for generating irreparable damage? If so, how can we regulate it?

For “angry mobs” on social media there is often no plan, no conspiracy and no leader. They are not necessarily right or fair, and we cannot be sure that they are as big as they feel. A lot of noise can be made on the internet by just few influencers. The vast majority of online lynch mobs are spontaneous and emotional, governed by the same rules Gustave Le Bon (1895) explored in the psychology of the masses.^[1] However, no matter how uncontrollable the “lynch mob” turns out, its effects are directly related to the vulnerability of its “victims.” As in three-dimensional life, mass demonstrations are highly powerful and meaningful, especially when they occur peacefully and collectively for a cause that is considered “fair.” But all crowds are susceptible to irrational and violent behaviour. The control of these situations often depends on individuals developing the sensitivity to resist their own cruelty.

In April 2014, the programmer Rachel Bryk, 23 years old and famous for her contributions to the development of the emulator Dolphin, killed herself. Bryk was also a prominent figure within the transgender community and amongst applications developers.  She had been the subject of repeated and constant attacks of transphobia and online bullying which triggered a bout of depression that eventually led her to suicide.

There are radical differences between bullying someone because of their sexual orientation, and bullying a professional in communications for not foreseeing the effect of a clearly discriminatory comment on the Internet. For Bryk, Internet was a place where she could elaborate her own identity but also a channel through which she could be attacked. A situation of vulnerability, coupled with attacks on the Internet, encouraged her suicide. It is not exactly a hate crime, although the similarities are enormous.

In Bryk’s case, harassment (whether the aggressor knows it or not) goes far beyond a “death threat on Twitter.” The insults may have the same intention as an obscene scribble in the bathroom door, but their impact is much stronger. In circumstances like Bryk’s, discourse takes a performative role. According to John L. Austin (1962), the concept of performative language is when words, rather than describing an action, perform it.^[2] For example, verbs like ‘swear’, ‘promise’, ‘declare’, ‘gamble’, ‘baptise’ and ‘marry’, actually have an effect on reality when they are enunciated.

Words are powerful; they build a symbolic field that affects the way we understand the world and our emotions. In cases of online harassment, ceaseless messages come through smartphones and personal computers, two of the most intimate devices a person can have in modern times; there are many who literally take them to bed every night. Imagine having the violence of bullying so close. However, a hurtful word, persistent as it may be, does not oblige Sacco’s dismissal nor drives a person to suicide. A person without a history of discrimination and living in a stable environment with a strong support system may not be as vulnerable to bullying as another one in more vulnerable conditions. The effects of online lynch mobs are psychological and should not be underestimated; it means reactions are as complex as human emotions and they too depend on context and environment. To withstand online bullying, all of these social vulnerabilities must be attended to and support systems must be strengthened. To counter the emotional effects of online harassment, people need plenty of support.  A policy of social inclusion of minority groups (both online and offline) will be more effective in reducing the harmful effects of online bullying than the “preventive” self-censorship.

In 2014, the scientist Matt Taylor managed to land a spacecraft on a comet. When he spoke to the media about his achievement, he wore a shirt illustrated with a blonde woman wearing a corset and holding a gun. Some feminists said Taylor’s shirt design was ‘sexist’; opinion pieces came out, analysing what his shirt meant. Taylor himself then came on TV to apologise while crying, which led people to talk about the “evil horde of feminists” who had “lynched” and “censored” Taylor. However, online bullying against Taylor had in no way the effects (or intentions) that online harassment had in the cases of Sacco and Bryk. Several people criticised Taylor’s shirt on social networks, a few opinion journalists joined the criticism, the man apologised on television and spoke again of his scientific achievements. No one complained nor censored or fired him. Criticism, in its most flamboyant form, cannot be equated with bullying, online harassment or censorship. Being embarrassed on the Internet, like Taylor, is far from being a victim of lynching. Feelings of shame, according to David Hume (1739), are appropriate and useful to regulate our ethical behaviour and moral emotions.^[3] In Taylor’s case, there was no job loss or permanent psychological damage. It is not that people have different sensitivities, rather, there are clear lines that distinguish criticism from online harassment. However, often on the Internet, legitimate, good, bad or exaggerated criticisms are indistinctly called lynching.

Interactions on social networks show that, in fact, the distinction between good and evil is not based solely on rational deliberation, and that moral judgments are not absolute or universal. People are not motivated solely by reason and logic; moral feelings are an important drive for our actions. The Internet is a privileged space to observe social regulation. If only David Hume had been alive to see it.

Hume said that morality is essentially based on feelings called “moral sentiments”, positive feelings associated with  happiness of mankind and resentment of its misery. They motivate what we call “virtuous actions” that awaken “moral sentiments” and this leads to social regulation. For Hume, sympathy represents the tendency to get involved with other people’s emotions; this allows subjects to relate with each other. In many cases in social media, a Like, Fav, or Retweet has to do with a simple, perishable feeling of immediate sympathy.

This sympathy is one of the things that motivate people to act collectively as a group or even a mob on the Internet. In fact, some say that the mobs that “lynched” Sacco were well-intentioned at first, aiming to “defend rights.” But whose rights? Maybe that was exaggerated and people simply defend political correctness because it easily provokes feelings of  virtue and belonging. With each “Like” or “Fav” on social media, we build shared values, a symbolic field of what is considered “good” and what is regarded as “bad.” To wear a shirt with a so-called sexist illustration and to make a racist tweet did not always awaken collective indignation. We have spent years building a symbolic field of language where these actions are rejected. In the exercise of public debate, we construct symbols that change how we perceive actions and the moral emotions that these actions stir.

Undoubtedly, the Internet is a great tool for participation in the global public debate. Social rejection is needed to regulate our behaviour, especially because legal punishment or criminal law may lead to censorship or other restrictions of the right to freedom of expression. When someone makes a racist or homophobic comment, or when he or she attacks or discriminates against any group, censorship is the least desirable solution; even the most absurd or prejudiced arguments should be said out loud in order to be debated.

“Lynch mobs” on the Internet exist and have real effects. But the only way to effectively regulate them is social regulation. Criminal or legal punishment has dire consequences; it would be crazy to send all internet trolls to jail, or to prosecute online harassment groups, especially since the term “lynch mob” is usually inaccurate, and it is also often used to stigmatise minority groups. Emotions cannot be dimmed or penalised. Censoring offensive speeches goes against the right to freedom of expression; we must remember that sometimes insults are legitimate social complaints. Social media is a space for scrutiny of public figures and this is unlikely to change. It is also a natural area for debating public opinion, and it should be assumed that everything said in social networks is some sort of opinion unless explicitly stated otherwise. The right to freedom of expression implies that each person must be held responsible for what he or she says on and off the Internet. In addition, in most countries there are extensive laws against harassment, threats, extortion, slander and libel, which can be used to handle cases of “cyberbullying” without inventing “new laws” for the digital realm.

In the end, each person has to go through an inner ethical negotiation between being respectful and empathetic, or aggressive and confrontational. Both positions may be valid depending on the circumstances, and both are protected by the right to freedom of speech. Sometimes, one speech strategy is more effective than the other. Of course, nothing exempts us of being aware of context in which we say things, of the privileges that we have and the potential impact of our amplified words. The verbal violence users experience online does not emanate from networks or computers; hatred and brutality are human emotions that can only be regulated with other human emotions like empathy and compassion. Maybe it is as simple as being mindful of the specific circumstances of the person we are engaging online and being aware of our desires to exert control over others. Communication should not be a violent act of conquest.

This article originally appeared in the third volume of Digital Debates: The CyFy Journal

^[1] Le Bon, Gustave. [1895] 2002. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

^[2] Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford; Clarendon Press.

^[3] Hume, David. [1739] 2003. A Treatise of Human Nature. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged his fighters in an audio recording posted online on Thursday not to retreat from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, but also to invade Turkey and attack Saudi Arabia.

Al-Baghdadi called on his militants to transform into rivers the blood of the Iraqi forces attempting to retake Mosul in Nineveh province.

“Do not retreat … this whole war only gives us more faith to fight towards victory which is a promise from God,” al-Bahgdadi said.

“To all the strugglers and the people of Nineveh, beware of any weakness … fight and struggle and face your enemy,” he added.

He called on the suicide bombers “to confront the enemy and transform their blood into rivers … transform their days into dark nights.”

“This war is your war,” he said.

Daesh overran Mosul in mid-2014 at the beginning of a lightning offensive that saw it seize swathes of Sunni Arab northern and western Iraq.

On October 17, government forces, Kurdish troops and Sunni and Shiite fighters, backed by US-led airpower, started a long-awaited campaign to liberate Mosul, Daesh’s de facto capital in Iraq.

The Daesh leader fiercely criticized Turkey.

“The fighters of the Caliphate, here comes the atheist, Turkish soldiers, … show them your strength,” he said in the 31-minute audio recording posted on the Islamic State website al-Furqan.

The recording could not be independently verified by dpa.

Turkey has been backing opposition rebels fighting Daseh in northern Syria.

“Turkey remained during our struggle with the supporters of atheism … seeking to achieve its interests in northern Iraq and on the borders [of Syria],” al-Baghdadi said.

He said that the airstrikes against Daesh by the US-led alliance and Russia had failed to weaken the extremist group, and referred to the ongoing attempts to dislodge rebels from the north-western Syrian city of Aleppo.

“Here is Aleppo facing the harshest crusade … supported by the atheist Russia amidst the treason of the groups busy with fighting Islamic State for the sake of the interests of their masters from heretic countries,” al-Baghdadi said.

In the recording, al-Baghdadi accused Saudi Arabia of turning Syria into a secular country, calling on Islamic State militants to attack the kingdom.

“Not only that, they took part in the alliance to fight Islam {in Syria],” he said.

Original source

By Lisa Ferdinando

Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are gaining ground in the battle for Mosul, with some forces reaching the northern Iraqi city, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve said Thursday.

“Some Iraqi forces have reached Mosul and others continue advancing toward the city, making steady progress as [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] is forced to fall back,” Air Force Col. John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters in a news briefing via teleconference from Baghdad.

“The ISF are conducting their advance deliberately as [ISIL] continues their tactics to intimidate civilians and complicate the Iraqi advance,” he said.

The U.S.-led coalition continues a “relentless campaign of precision air artillery and rocket strikes,” Dorrian said, highlighting the more than 3,000 strikes conducted since the battle for Mosul began Oct. 17.

“The advance of the Iraqi security forces on Mosul further complicates the enemy’s ability to command and control its fighters,” he said, adding ISIL continues to lose ground against advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

The coalition, he pointed out, continues to supply equipment, vehicles, ammunition and food to support the Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to “help provide a decisive advantage to our partners as the tougher phases of the battle ensue.”

Isolation, Liberation of Raqqa

The coalition remains focused on putting pressure on ISIL in both Iraq and Syria, Dorrian said. It continues to attack ISIL leadership and has struck the terrorists’ ability to make money from illicit sales of petroleum products, the colonel said.

“All these operations are intended to disrupt and dismantle the enemy’s ability to function as a coherent organization or respond to coalition and partner operations,” he said.

ISIL does not have the ability to move large troop formations or convoys in and out of the Syrian city of Raqqa. The coalition has conducted strikes on ISIL supply and infiltration routes to limit freedom of movement in and out of Raqqa, Dorrian said.

In Syria, “Operation Noble Lance” with Turkey and partnered forces has liberated about 50 villages to date to further isolate areas in northern Syria around Raqqa, the colonel said.

That operation and previous missions have created a buffer along Syria’s northern border, he said, reducing the access to infiltration routes to and from Europe.

Dorrian explained the buffer limits ISIL’s ability to resupply, bring in fighters and equipment, and conduct operations in Europe.

Currently Raqqa is not fully isolated and encircled, Dorrian said, “but that’s what’s coming in the in near future.”

The premature results appeared on NBC affiliate WRCB in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but were stored on the servers of a widely used news content management platform.

A NBC affiliate in Chattanooga, Tennessee inadvertently published what appear to be election night results. The results are published in the typical format used by mainstream news networks and display Presidential and Congressional results, the popular vote count, electoral votes, and percentage of precincts reporting in. The page was taken down soon after but is available via the internet archive. The results of the Presidential contest name Hillary Clinton the winner with 41.7 million votes or 42% of the total. Trump, on the other hand, received 40.1 million votes or 40%. The results also gave Gary Johnson 8% while Jill Stein received 5%.

However, the posted premature results were not exclusive to NBC nor its Tennessee affiliate. The page was pulled directly from the content management platform, WorldNow.com, which is used by major networks including NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. These media companies use the platform, also known as Frankly, to power their news content. Many news affiliates display this on their webpage, including the NBC affiliate that posted the premature results, by showing “powered by Frankly” at the bottom of their pages. The results information can still be found on an FTP server at WorldNow.com. In addition, the leaked page showing national results, another page on the WorldNow.com FTP servers appear to show the Presidential election results state by state. These results show Clinton winning in states like Texas (42%-40%), Florida (44-40%), Pennsylvania (44-40%), and South Carolina (44-39%), all of which are “battleground” states as well as must-wins for Clinton.

Do these “results” definitively show the election is rigged? There’s no denying that the presence of these premature and obviously doctored results on the server of a top news content management platform is downright suspicious. There’s no reason for these results to be there other than their planned illegal use on Election Day. Would the well-documented collusion between the Clinton campaign and mainstream media go so far as to rig the election in such a way – by reporting doctored results prepared days in advance? The Clinton campaign has already set a precedent for such behavior. The night of the California primary, which promised a large turn-out for Bernie Sanders, the Associated Press published an image saying Clinton had “clinched” the Democratic nomination. The image was titled “secret win v2,” indicating that the image declaring Clinton the “winner” had been pre-planned and had undergone few revisions. However, in the week to come, we can only expect more evidence of shady dealings as this high stakes and high drama US election finally comes to a close.

By Dr. Arshad M. Khan*

In a few days the election, and what to many Americans is a political nightmare, will be over. But will it? Who can imagine Trump graciously disappearing from the scene if he loses, or for that matter Hillary.

He is likely to parlay his greater celebrity into a new enterprise, and she into another run with the same political cronies at her side. The character of these candidates and the language of politics both outrage, although the seeds for the latter were sown a long time ago.

Rush Limbaugh was a disc jockey in the 1980s, until he initiated a career in radio commentary. No holding back was his style. Blend in humor, extreme right-wing positions and a gloves-off stance in his criticism of his opposition, and he now commands an audience of 13 million listeners and numerous imitators ranting on local radio across the nation. It has accustomed vast numbers of Americans to a tone of disrespect alien to civil discourse and polite disagreement.

On the television front, Roger Ailes a long-time Republican political operator helped Rupert Murdoch in building up his Fox News into the top rated cable news channel. Mr. Ailes’ formula used the Limbaugh script jazzed up for television. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, the loud conservative commentators, delivered the red meat to an increasing viewership, while serious journalism supplemented them with increasing respectability. The previously invincible Ailes might have been forced out due to numerous sexual improprieties but the channel’s significance is now undeniable — it hosted one of the presidential debates in this election.

Andrew Breitbart, after stints at the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, started Breitbart.com. With current Alexa rankings of 134 in the US and 746 globally, it remains one of the most successful right-wing sites. Its formula also appeals to the outrage of the deprived — Donald Trump’s favorite demographic. Again, in the footsteps of Limbaugh, the site targets liberalism — ‘limousine liberals’ taking advantage of hard-working Americans, shipping jobs overseas often in league with RINOs (Republicans in name only) who have betrayed their constituents.

Young Andrew Breitbart died of a heart attack in 2012 at he age of 43. The site has been run since by Stephen K. Bannon, who is now the official chief executive of the Trump campaign. It was Mr. Trump’s poke-in-the-eye to the Republican establishment.

Should he lose the election, can anyone seriously believe this penultimate spinner of outrage will retire in silence. No, his enhanced celebrity and his billions open up another business opportunity an entrepreneur like Trump is unlikely to miss. Trump TV comes to mind. If Andrew Breitbart did do well without any financial backing, the prospect of a well-funded Trump media behemoth is not difficult to imagine. After all, the time is ripe as the audience for Fox News and Limbaugh et al continues to age.

The new investigations of Hillary Clinton’s emails attached to a sordid case has cut her lead into a virtual tie, and there is now a distinct possibility Trump will win. And if he wins?

Well, we have come to expect the unexpected. Obama’s ‘change’ became ‘more of the same’ and the Nobel Peace Laureate has bequeathed seven wars, a refugee crisis in Europe, hundreds of thousands dead, and confrontation with Russia, the other major nuclear power. Amidst all the spewed hatred, Trump’s views on Putin and Russia might well diffuse this possibly calamitous tension.

About the author:
*Dr. Arshad M. Khan is a former Professor based in the US. Educated at King’s College London, OSU and The University of Chicago, he has a multidisciplinary background that has frequently informed his research. Thus he headed the analysis of an innovation survey of Norway, and his work on SMEs published in major journals has been widely cited. He has for several decades also written for the press: These articles and occasional comments have appeared in print media such as The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and others. On the internet, he has written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, Eurasia Review and Modern Diplomacy among many. His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in its Congressional Record.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

For every metric ton of carbon dioxide that’s emitted into the atmosphere, there is a direct correlation in the amount of Arctic sea ice that is lost, a new study shows.

Scientists have had difficulty predicting when the Arctic will be completely free of ice during the summer months, but this new analysis could help provide much more accurate predictions of such an occurrence.

Dirk Notz and Julienne Stroeve analyzed Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature data over time, deriving a linear relationship between the average monthly abundance of sea ice in the Arctic in September and cumulative carbon dioxide emissions, for a roughly 30-year period.

The data reveal that for every metric ton of carbon dioxide that’s emitted, 3 meters squared of sea ice is lost.

The authors used this robust relationship in a collection of climate models that are part of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5), to project Arctic summer sea ice loss.

These models often underestimate the extent of ice loss, they found; Notz and Stroeve suggest that CMIP5 models, based on existing knowledge of processes that shape ice loss, may not be accurately capturing the amount of incoming longwave radiation from the Sun, and the climate’s related response.

The results of this study suggest that any measure to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions will directly slow the ongoing loss of Arctic summer sea ice. Therefore, the authors note that achieving a global warming target of 1.5°Celsius, which would involve reducing carbon dioxide emissions, would help extend the lifespan of diminishing summer ice.

In another example of the Putin regime’s apparent belief that if it doesn’t talk about something, that something doesn’t exist, Russian officials this week made it quite clear that they don’t want anyone, including medical professionals, to say that there is an HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia.

On Monday, Russian news agencies reported that Yekaterinburg had declared there was an HIV epidemic in that city, but within a few hours, city officials said they hadn’t officially but acknowledged that in reality, the number of HIV infections there long ago passed that threshold (spektr.press/bez-obyavleniya-vojny-kak-v-rossii-oficialno-ne-priznayut-epidemiyu-vich/).

Approximately one in every 50 residents of that city is infected, with rates for younger age groups, newborns and certain districts even higher than that. Officials acknowledged that Sverdlovsk oblast as a whole ranks first in Russia in terms of the number of HIV infections registered per 100,000 population.

One reason rates in Yekaterinburg are higher than elsewhere is that officials, under city head Yevgeny Royzman, have tested a far higher percentage of people than is the case in most places, 23 percent as opposed to less than 15 percent. Were other places to be as proactive, their numbers would go up, and experts say there are at least 1.5 million HIV infected Russians now.

Tatyan Savinova, the first deputy chief of Yekaterinburg’s health care administration, says that “for us, doctors, there has been an HIV epidemic for a long time” given that “when on the territory of the city more than one percent of the population is HIV infected, this is a generalized stage of the dissemination of an epidemiological process.”

But she acknowledges that Moscow officials don’t want to declare an epidemic, despite the evidence. Consequently, more people will contract HIV and die when it grows into full-blown AIDS. Already more than 200,000 Russians have died from AIDS since the end of the 1980s.

The reluctance of Moscow officials to do so is not just because of homophobia. Many of those Russians now infected are heterosexuals or drug users. But it appears to be about status. Until recently, Russia was a donor nation in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. It would be hard to acknowledge that it now faces the same scourge at home.

But its failure to do so means that fewer Russians will be tested and given treatment earlier and that Russia will not be able to get some of the concessionary prices drug companies have offered states with epidemics. So once again for the sake of a false status, the Kremlin is creating a situation in Russia where more of its own people will die.

With one week to go in this year’s presidential election — an astonishing and depressing contest in which the two least-liked and least-trusted candidates in history are the two choices put up by our two main political parties — it’s time to look past the silly stuff like Wiener’s wiener and Trump’s women to real issues.

Obviously, nobody on the left or center left is going to vote for Donald Trump, but all too many are falling for the Clinton campaign’s main argument, which boils down to: You probably don’t like her, don’t trust her, and realize that she’s a greedy, entitled rich person, but she’s still better than Trump.

Honestly, is better than Trump a good justification for voting for Clinton?

I suppose, if we lived in a peaceful world, if the US were a peace-loving country instead of one that is wasting 55% of our federal taxes on military spending, much of it to terrorize or actually blow up people in other parts of the world — usually places where people are living in abject poverty even before they are bombed and invaded — if we weren’t facing an existential crisis of accelerating climate change that could wipe out most of the human race if something urgent isn’t done, and if there weren’t already 45 million people, or roughly 15% of the US population, stuck below the poverty line, perhaps such an argument would make sense. But the reality is that Hillary Clinton won’t change any of that, any more than President Obama did. In fact, she is likely to make these situations worse, if elected — in some cases perhaps worse than even Trump would do.

For me, the big issue with Clinton has to do with war and increased military spending.

Clinton is, to put it gently, a confirmed and unapologetic “hawk.” She calls for what in the US is euphemistically called a “muscular” foreign policy. Muscular is a term of art in vogue among Washington chicken hawks that means using the US’s outsized military might to pressure or even terrorize other countries into backing US foreign policy (think Philippines, Pakistan, Spain, etc.), and to invade or subvert those that do not go along (think Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.).

Clinton – a classic chicken hawk rivaling former VP Dick Cheney — has made it clear, including in her third national debate against Donald Trump, that she intends to try and impose a “no-fly” zone over Syria if elected. Now recall that Syria is a nation with an internationally recognized government, and that its government, headed by Basher al Assad, while clearly a dictatorship, did what government’s do, and invited Russia to send air support to protect it from a terrorist insurgency known as ISIS, funded and trained by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries. A US air campaign to try and bar Syrian aircraft and the aircraft of their Russian ally from conducting military actions against ISIS and other elements like Al Nusra (the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda) fighting to overthrow it, would, in the view of top American generals, mean war with Russia.

War with Russia! We haven’t talked about that nightmare possibility since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we now know the world was saved from a nuclear war only by the cool-headedness of a Russian submarine captain who refused his government’s orders to fire a nuclear torpedo at a US aircraft carrier if US ships continued their attempt to sink him or force his sub to surface and be boarded. Instead, he surfaced his sub and defused the crisis.

Nor is Syria the only flashpoint where Clinton appears willing — even anxious — to try and push Russia to see if President Vladimir Putin (whom she has compared to Hitler) can be forced to choose between a humiliating back-down or all-out war. One is in Ukraine — a country where, as Secretary of State, she helped an opposition led by fascists to topple the government of a Russian ally by funding and fomenting a coup — a coup which ultimately ousted the elected pro-Russian president and led to the installation of a US handpicked junta leadership which sparked the current civil war there. Clinton wants to push Ukraine deeper in that bloody civil conflict by supporting efforts by Kiev to reclaim the eastern, ethnically Russian part of the country which has effectively seceded. She may hope Russia won’t feel compelled to move in with troops and air support, but what if it does?

What’s scary there is that if Russia did decide to directly fight Ukrainian forces, and to occupy part or all of Ukraine — something that even US experts say its military could easily accomplish, how would Clinton respond? She has already pushed the Obama administration to move aggressively to put offensive weapons, including nuclear-tipped missiles, nuclear-capable fighter bombers and Abrams tanks, along Russia’s western border, in the Baltic nations, in Poland and, if we count British military forces, which act in accordance with US directives as part of NATO, Rumania. Would those forces be ordered to threaten challenge forces facing them inside Russia if Russia moved on Ukraine?

Who knows? These kinds of things develop a life of their own, like Frankenstein’s monster, once lit up by conflict.

At least Trump, who has said some bizarre things in this campaign, has stuck to one wise position, which is that “the US should not be viewing Russia as an enemy.” In his view, the US should be working with Russia on mutual problems like ISIS, and should be doing business with Russia. He’s right. The same goes for China, where Clinton claims authorship of the aggressive “Asian pivot” policy of the Obama administration, which now has the US confronting Chinese forces in the South China Sea, at exactly the opposite side of the world from this country.

Stupid? Yes. Scary? For sure. Good for the arms industry? Yes indeed.

Again (and I’m not suggesting one should vote for Trump, whose prouncements also include calls for using nukes and for boosting military spending), it needs to be said that he has argued against the long-standing position of his own adopted party in calling for a US pullback from NATO, an organization that since 1990 has lost its raison d’être and is now fighting in places as remote from the North Atlantic as Afghanistan. His explanation — that the European nations aren’t paying their fair share for the “defense of Europe” — may be inadequate, but his point that neither NATO nor the US should be engaging in regime-change military actions around the globe is correct.

Clinton, for her part, unambiguously calls for increased military spending.

Why? US military spending — a staggering $1.6 trillion in 2015 according to noted economist Jeffrey Sachs — represents 37% of all global military spending and exceeds the amount spent by the next seven largest military nations of the world, only two of which (China and Russia) can even be remotely considered military rivals (the others — Saudi Arabia, the UK, India, France and Japan — are not only friendly with the US but are major buyers of US military hardware!).

But enough about war-mongering and military spending.

Clinton is at least as much of a narcissist as is her opponent Trump and is at least as greedy. The Clintons have amassed an astonishing $231 million in personal wealth since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001. That’s over $16 million net per year over a 15-year period. They “earned” this money primarily by giving speeches to wealthy corporations, at more than $250,000 per speech. Clearly, as Bernie Sanders pointed out during his primary campaign, these fees were not paid because of the brilliant insights and words of wisdom offered by Hillary and Bill. Rather, they were a way of buying influence with two of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party. Thanks to Wikileaks, which published the emails of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, we now know both that the secret speeches Hillary Clinton was giving to Goldman Sachs and other big banking firms as well as to other powerful corporate entities were simply fawning peans to those firms and their executives, and promises to do right by them if she were to become president. We know too that Bill’s fixer and agent was actually hustling up major donations to the Clinton Family Foundation along with simultaneous personal bribes to Bill in the form of absurdly high-priced speaking engagements.

Hillary Clinton’s response to the news that she (and her husband) have for the past 15 years been little more than a pair of tawdry multi-million-dollar hustlers on the make has been to ignore the question and to blame it all on “the Russians.” She is claiming on the basis of no hard evidence, that Russia was the source of the hacks, even when the veracity of those hacks has been admitted, and so nobody should pay attention to them.

And that’s not even mentioning Clinton’s casual willingness to violate basic federal security laws with regard to the protection of state secrets, not to mention the requirements of the federal Freedom of Information Act, by conducting all of her official communications during her six-years as Obama’s Secretary of State on a private server in her home. While she initially tried to play “dumb blonde” over that decision, it has become clear from reports on what those communications involved, that her real reason for not using a State Department server for State Department business was that she was basically selling access to her as Secretary of State to both powerful US corporate interests like Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, Barclays Capital and Standard Chartered Bank, and to foreign government leaders, including those of a number of ugly totalitarian states like United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. And she didn’t want those communications subject to FOIA searches by prying media and political opponents.

We’re talking here about a top government official and her spouse, himself a former president, selling off US interests to the highest bidder for personal gain. (And remember, two of those entities Hillary was hitting up were Citicorp and Standard Chartered, which both accepted deals with the US Justice Department to pay huge fines for laundering vast sums of drug cartel cash and Iranian funds, respectively, of course both without having to admit guilt.)

Regarding the latest chapter in this ongoing scandal — the announcement by FBI Director James Comey that his agents had found as many as 650,000 Clinton emails saved on the hard-drive of a laptop computer shared by the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Wiener (he of the penis instagrams), and his now-separated spouse, top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. While nobody knows at this point — perhaps even Comey himself — whether some or all of those 33,000 emails improperly erased by Clinton and her staff during the investigation of her private server are included in that huge cache, the odds are good that at least some of them are. After all, Comey knew he’d be taking tremendous heat for announcing this discovery days before the election, and that if Clinton, ahead in the polls, were to still win the election after he did so, his days as FBI Director would be numbered. So he must believe that the contents of some of these emails are so damaging to Clinton that not reporting on the finding before Election Day would have been even worse for him and his reputation.

If it were to turn out that those deleted emails were not just about “birthdays, weddings and other personal things” as insisted by Clinton, the impact upon a Clinton presidency would be devastating, with impeachment efforts likely to be launched immediately after her inauguration.

Already, news of the reopened FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails is cutting her lead in critical swing states, and perhaps more seriously, is putting Democratic control of the House, and perhaps the Senate too out of reach.

This brings us to the final big Clinton issue: her obscene efforts, along with the Democratic National Committee which she had in her pocket from the outset of her campaign, to sabotage the primary campaign of the tremendously popular Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT). This sabotage, we now know from leaked emails as well as from disenchanted party officials like DNC vice chair Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who resigned her position, ranged from scheduling early debates between Clinton and Sanders for times when there would be fewer viewers, like during the Superbowl, to planting anti-Sanders hit pieces in major news media, including even the New York Times and Washington Post, and most recently to word that Donna Brazile, interim chair of the DNC, slipped advance word of questions in the CNN Sanders/Clinton debate to the Clinton campaign, allowing her to prepare answers in advance.

The leaderships of many labor unions, including for example the American Federation of Teachers, rammed through early endorsements of Clinton, in some cases months before the first primary was held, often over the strenuous objections of the rank and file. The argument was always made that Sanders, while a good guy, “cannot win.”
How does that play now? Sanders would have been looking at a Democratic landslide today against Donald Trump. Instead we have two corrupt narcissists running against each other, and the entire national electorate is talking about holding its collective nose and voting…and then perhaps, along with many Republicans, puking in revulsion at what they’ve just done.

One last thought. The other desperate gambit of the sinking Clinton campaign is to point to the Supreme Court, currently, thanks to the untimely but fortuitous demise of the junketing Justice Antonin Scalia, evenly divided between conservative and liberal judges, and to warn of the opportunity Trump could have to appoint new Scalia clones over his four-year term as President.

This is just a scare tactic.

First of all, let’s recall that it’s not at all certain that a President Trump would not be replacing liberal jurists. Scalia’s acolyte, Justice Clarence Thomas, who is known for dutifully copying whatever Scalia did, while only 68, is at least as unhealthy looking as was the late Scalia. And Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy, the least conservative of the four right-leaning jurists on the bench, is 80, and could easily decide it’s time to retire sometime over the next four years. Chief Justice John Roberts, while only 61 and seemingly healthy looking, is prone to serious epileptic seizures, which points to a certain vulnerability, particularly to falls.

On the liberal side of the court, the oldest member is Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, who at 83 is a cancer survivor. That is worrisome, but she seems to be a tough and committed woman, who could well beat the actuarial odds out of sheer intransigence and dedication. The other three liberals — Elena Kagan, 55, Sonia Sotomayor, 60, and Stephen Breyer, 78 — are all seemingly healthy, and should be able to hang on through a Trump presidency.

So really the question is what happens to that Scalia vacancy.

Republicans are already talking about how they would handle that issue in the event of a Clinton presidency: As Sen. John McCain has suggested, the could just refuse to confirm any Clinton nominee and will leave the court stymied at 4-4. Democrats, even if they narrowly lose the Senate thanks to Clinton’s corruption and lack-of-trust issues, can simply agree to do the same if Trump wins. They could also pick up where Republicans left off, blocking most federal judicial appointments unless Trump were to offer up a genuine, non-ideological nominee.

So there you have it. The answer to being presented by the two major parties with a choice between two genuine evils is not to vote for the lesser of those evils, but to reject them both. There are, after all, other options, from voting for third party candidates, to writing in Bernie Sanders or perhaps some appropriate expletive.

By Hani Hazaimeh

Islamic State’s (Daesh) leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s call to his followers to attack Saudi Arabia is a joke, said Arab coalition’s spokesman Maj. Gen. Ahmed Al-Assiri on Thursday.

Speaking to CNN, he said: “This terrorist (Al-Baghdadi) tries to push the Islamic world toward a sectarian war, while his group is kidnapping, torturing and beheading Muslims.”

Al-Assiri said it is of paramount importance for all Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, to unite in the fight against Daesh and other terror groups that pose a threat to the future of Muslims around the world.
“Saudi Arabia is regarded as a leader of the Islamic world by millions of Muslims. As such, it completely rejects Iran’s attempts to fan sectarianism, which contradicts our goals to see a unified Islamic world,” said Al-Assiri.

“We are victims of terrorism and have had our share of their atrocious crimes, not least from Iranian criminals committing terrorist acts against the country and innocent civilians in the Eastern Province” he explained.

These terrorist groups, added Al-Assiri, target the Kingdom, because they want to attack the heart of the Islamic world, represented by the Kingdom, which hosts the Muslims’ holiest sites. “The terrorists think that if Saudi Arabia collapses, the entire Islamic world will collapse, and then they can further their agendas, which would be extremely dangerous for the world’s security and stability,” he said.

Addressing the Syrian issue, he said: “From the beginning of the crisis, we called on the international community to help create a no-fly zone to end the misery of the displaced people in Syria.”

If you want to talk about the Syrian crisis “you have to also talk about the Syrian regime and its forces’ brutality, the Iranian militias who have been battering the Syrian people and the Russian intervention as well,” Al-Assiri pointed out, adding that the Kingdom has been working closely with the international community.

“It is for sure a very difficult and complicated situation because we are late and have missed so many opportunities to defeat the Syrian regime and the Iran-back militias. Now we have to find a solution (in which) the Syrian people will eventually have an upper hand even if the regime remains in power. The final word will be (that of) the people who have already said no to the regime’s brutality,” Al-Assiri said.

Moving closer to home, Yemen, Al-Assiri rejected claims that the Saudi-led coalition is indiscriminately bombing civilians there.

“Whenever there is a campaign, there are objectives, and our campaign’s objective is to avoid civilian causalities. We have initiated the campaign for the protection of the Yemeni people from the Houthi militias who are implementing Iran’s agenda. Yet mistakes do happen and we have the courage to admit when they happen,” he said, referring to the bombing of the Great Hall in Sanaa, an incident into which Saudi Arabia ordered an investigation.

The outcome of the inquiry, made public, was that a pilot conducted an airstrike based on a tipoff from the Yemeni Army, without informing the coalition’s headquarters.

“There was a breach of engagement by someone in the field. The investigating team issued three recommendations. First that the Yemeni Army should investigate who tipped off the pilot with the coordinates of the target. Second, the coalition should review and tighten rules of engagement in order to avoid future similar incidents. And third, the victims of the airstrike must be compensated,” he said.

Al-Assiri said the coalition is still waiting for the results of the investigation conducted by the Yemeni Army, and once the results are received, it will take the appropriate measures.

“We will not hide our mistakes. But we also want the world to know that more than 26 million Yemenis have been hijacked against their will by the Houthi militias.”

Researcher Don Hood from LSU and colleagues from collaborating universities studied an unusual region on Mars — an area with high elevation called Thaumasia Planum. They analyzed the geography and mineralogy of this area they termed Greater Thaumasia, which is about the size of North America. They also studied the chemistry of this area based on Gamma Ray Spectrometer data collected by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which was launched in 2001. What they found was the mountain ridge that outlines Greater Thaumasia was most likely created by a chain of volcanoes. The results were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

“The chemical changes we see moving northwestward through the region is consistent with the mantle evolving on Mars. Our research supports that this whole area was built as a volcanic construct,” said Don Hood, LSU Department of Geology and Geophysics doctoral candidate and lead author of the paper.

The chemical composition changes throughout the region. Silica and H20 increase and potassium decreases from southeast to northwest.

“The chemical composition shifting is the key progression that tells us that this environment was most likely shaped by a series of volcanic events that continually erupted from a changing mantle composition,” Hood said.

Hood and colleagues from Stony Brook University, University of Tokyo and Lehigh University ruled out another hypothesis that the abundance of H20 and potassium was caused by water interacting in rock.

“We looked for evidence of aqueous alteration through other geochemical means and didn’t find it,” he said.

The geography of the region has many shield volcanoes that are similar to the ones found in Hawaii. However from geochemical analyses, the researchers found that the sulfur that is present was most likely deposited as a volcanic ash. Volcanic ash from various areas could be evidence of explosive volcanism on Mars, which would be an important clue for piecing together the history of Mars. It is significant because explosive eruptions emit a lot of gas that can stay in the atmosphere and can cause global cooling and warming events.

“Whether there was explosive volcanism on Mars and how much of it there was is an important question in terms of finding out what the past climate was like,” Hood said.

“… [B]ecause Robin Hood was a pirate, we want to take the power from the powerful to give to the people.” — Birgitta Jónsdóttir, New York Times, Oct 31, 2016

Getting transparency advocates into parliament and assemblies has proven to be a great challenge in modern politics. Iceland has led on that point, giving the world political punditry much to discuss in the good fortunes of the four-year old Pirate Party. Hackitivist politics, in other words, is slowly becoming a parliamentary platform, though it remains a murmur in most states.

In the weekend elections, the party led by “poetician” and WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir came in third in what will be a complex patchwork of governing parties. Suggestions that it would storm into the top tier were misplaced, but this could hardly detract from what was a remarkable achievement.

Jónsdóttir found fame in 2009 as a member of the Citizens’ Movement Party, when she won a seat in the 63 member Parliament. Prior to that, she was directly connected with the efforts of WikiLeaks to release the now infamous footage featuring the murderous exploits of an Apache helicopter crew in killing a Reuters journalist, his driver and assistant, not to mention other civilians in Baghdad. By 2012, when she was re-elected, she had embraced the black flag of the Pirates. “I’m crossing paths with nerds as I’m such a nerd myself.”[1]

Jónsdóttir was philosophical about the result, which netted upwards of 10 seats. “Our internal predictions showed 10 to 15 percent, so this is at the top of the range. We knew that we would never get 30 percent.”

The conservative Independence Party also made gains, but will have to consider the heft of the left-leaning parties. In addition to the Pirate Party’s solid performance came gains for the Left-Green Party and its allies, the combined total which fell just short of a majority.

What mattered most was how much of a battering the political centre in Iceland had taken. The governing Progressive Party collapsed, falling to eight seats from the 19 it held from the 2013 election, forcing prime minister Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson to resign.

Transparency politics has certainly had its impact, with Jóhannsson’s predecessor, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, a casualty of the Panama Papers back in April. Massive disclosures of impropriety, or at least perceived impropriety, has value. In that instance, 600 Icelanders, among them cabinet ministers, business figures and bankers, were found to have lucrative offshore accounts created in the name of tax minimisation.

As for the Pirate Party’s own platform, transparent government, wedded to a redistribution of wealth platform, is all the rage. To this can also be added refuge for Edward Snowden, and the improved prospects for digital currencies. But even more fundamentally, their members insist on improving the democratic line between electors and the workings of the political process, one long frayed in many states claiming to follow its precepts.

There is no cynicism about lynch mob democracy here – the party as even gone so far as to insist on a “crowd-sourced constitution”, an idea blocked by the Icelandic Parliament in 2013. Such ideas have certain value, given fears that 2008 might be repeated. That particular annus horribilis saw a rampantly unregulated banking sector ruin an economy that continues to pay the price of credit bingeing. What Jónsdóttir wishes for is a genuine “trickle-down” economics, one freed from illusion and propaganda.

The Pirates find themselves riding a populist wave, a global movement that has it nipping at the heels of establishment politicians. Across Europe, the roar is being felt on both the right and left of politics, assuming an often ugly nativist form. In the United States, the pugilists promise mayhem if they are not heard.

The great modern dilemma in politics is how best to re-engage the estranged voter. Donald Trump’s somewhat unsophisticated approach is belligerent defiance spiced with totalitarian undertones. In Britain, a degree of provincialism has accompanied the anti-EU vote for Brexit.

In Iceland, this experiment is less indignant and more tempered, an example of restorative democracy in the face of crisis. Central to that is the vital role played by revealing information about political practice: those in power who are watched tend to behave better.

In these elections, there is little doubt that information, leaked or otherwise, mattered. The Robin Hood message, and accountability, sold well. Other countries, including the United States, have yet to see that influence play out. But the Pirates have set a precedent.

Notes:
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/5e9f86ee-9b7c-11e6-8f9b-70e3cabccfae

The fast changing poll results are creating more confusion, rather than providing a credible forecast about the outcome of US presidential elections being held on November 8.

Around the world Muslims and particularly Pakistanis are anxiously awaiting the official announcement. I wrote on Wednesday exploring the possible implication of the outcome on Pak-US relationship. The bottom line was that whoever wins the election the ‘status quo’ will remain, meaning the relationship will become good if Pakistan’s services are needed, or bad if the US focus shifts to other regions.

Some of my readers asked a funny question, who will win the election? I wondered if they believe I have a crystal ball or I am a fortune teller. Despite knowing my inadequacies, I sat down to explore the probability. Born in a third world country, having witnessed domestic, South Asia and MENA geopolitics for nearly half a century I have also started believing in conspiracy theories. Based on my observations, I tend to say that Hillary Clinton could be the next US president.

The reasons are following:

The US ruling junta has created a history by electing a black and half Muslim President. This time they will create another history by electing a woman as US president.

It is often said that in third world elections are engineered. I tend to say that the elections are also engineered in the US and the active players are part of electoral system. This time the female members of the system will play a decisive role. I say this because often the female members have not played a key role, with some reports saying they have in the past preferred to abstain from casting their vote.

A closer look at the outcome also indicates that the elected president should be from the Republican Party. However, if the ruling elite are adamant at making Hillary the next president, they will not hesitate in violating this norm. If they want to continue proxy wars, maintain US hegemony in South Asia and MENA and even South China Sea they have to elect Hillary who is known as the ‘queen of status quo’.

An upset US-based Hindu group is urging Cleveland (USA) headquartered online retailer RageOn for immediate removal of shoes, underwear, yoga mats, onesies, duvet covers, bed sheet, blankets that carry images of Hindu gods Ganesha and Shiva and goddess Kali; calling it highly inappropriate.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Hindu deities—Ganesha, Shiva and Kali—printed on RageOn shoes, underwear, yoga mats, onesies, duvet covers, bed sheet, blankets; were highly revered in Hinduism and were meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not to be worn around or touched by one’s feet, groin, buttocks, legs or slept upon. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged RageOn CEO & Founder Michael Krilivsky to offer a formal apology.

Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled, Rajan Zed noted.

Zed further said that such trivialization of Hindu deities was disturbing to the Hindus world over. Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers, Zed added.

RageOn, whose tagline is “dream it, share it, wear it” and which claims to be “World’s Largest All Over Print Online Store” and “100% green”, also has offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

(EurActiv) — Austria on Thursday (3 November) sent 60 troops to Hungary’s border with non-EU Serbia as Vienna’s defence minister warned that the EU’s migrants deal with Turkey was “showing cracks”.

Austria’s defence ministry said that the soldiers will not be armed or be involved in intercepting people making it past Hungary’s border fence with Serbia.

Hungary has been criticised by rights groups and others for its alleged mistreatment of refugees and its refusal to take in some of the huge numbers of refugees who arrived in Europe in 2015.

Based at Hodmezovasarhely near Szeged in south-east Hungary initially for six months, the Austrian soldiers are sappers who will help build roads and erect containers.

Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said that member states needed to do more to protect their borders because the bloc’s accord with Turkey risked unravelling.

“In my opinion, the cracks in this accord are starting to show,” Doskozil told Oe1 public radio. “We have a time window in Europe in which to organise ourselves” before the deal collapses, he said.

“Therefore it is right, and high time, that… EU member states recognise this and confront this challenge, deal with the problem themselves and be ready to act themselves.”

Under the EU-Turkey deal in force since March, Ankara agreed to take back migrants who made it to Greece in return for being allowed to send Syrians to the bloc in an orderly redistribution programme.

However, Greece has been slow to send migrants back to Turkey. Athens says this is because many have applied for asylum which means that they cannot be moved until the claims are processed.

In addition, Greece complains that the EU has failed to provide additional assistance as promised and to share enough of the thousands of migrants around the bloc.

Athens wants to transfer some of the nearly 16,000 migrants on its islands to the mainland but faces opposition from EU partners who fear a mass resurgence of migrants heading north, Greek migration minister Yannis Mouzalas said Monday (31 October).