It’s a hard call which is worse: “Bad Santa 2” or its juvenile fans. By any measure, the movie, and its reception in many quarters, is proof positive that American culture is witnessing a race to the bottom.

When the first “Bad Santa” was released in 2003, I described Santa as a “chain-smoking, drunken, foul-mouthed, suicidal, sexual predator. He is shown soiling himself in Santa’s chair, vomiting in alleys, having sex with a woman bartender in a car, and performing anal sex on a huge woman in a dressing room.”

The sequel is just as immature. The script was written by Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross, two geniuses who never outgrew their adolescence—or learned how to write. Don’t take my word for it.

Nick Schager, writing for The Playlist, notes the “narrative purposelessness” of the film. Similarly, Colin Covert of the Chicago Tribune says “the plot is so muddled it seems to have been stitched together from the dregs of multiple ditched drafts.”

But to some critics, the banality of the script matters less than fantasizing how normal people might react to this crud at Christmastime.

The Hollywood Reporter likes the movie because it is “Raunchy, rude and politically incorrect.” The latter observation, which was made by many reviewers, is factually incorrect: it is politically correct to trash Christian teaching, values, symbols, and holidays. It is politically incorrect to trash Judaism or Islam, which is why it is rarely done.

Juliana Roman of movieweb.com is happy that “Bad Santa 2 is as gloriously raunchy as the original. Bravo to the filmmakers for having the guts to make it just as ribald and patently offensive.” Sorry, Juliana, it takes no guts in Hollywood to offend Christians, especially this time of the year. Once Hollywood makes a movie doing to the LGBTQ community what it does to Christians—it should be released during Gay Pride Month—then Tinseltown can be heralded for its courage.

“‘Bad Santa 2’ is vulgar, nasty and offensive, but it has flawed aspects also.” It would be hard to beat this inane comment, courtesy of Kyle Smith of the New York Post. The movie is not flawed because it is vulgar, nasty and offensive, he says, but for other reasons. Evidently, the gutter talk is its only saving grace.

April Wolfe of the Dallas Observer begins her review by saying the country just elected a Nazi. After exposing her political acumen, she  notes that “liberals and people of color” were in the audience previewing the film, and were “eager to be offended.” She does not say what they took offense to. The bigotry? The violence? The misogyny?

“I don’t pretend to know everything about what hurts marginalized communities,” Wolfe says, “but I do know a lot of us are hurting right now. This film is far from perfect, but it made me and some other terribly frightened folks laugh for a while in the dark, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let some bigots tell us we don’t have a sense of humor.”

Can anyone top that? I hope these “terribly frightened folks” have a Happy Thanksgiving, but I get the feeling they won’t. Their natural step is to bask in cynicism, self-righteousness, and arrogance. Which is why they sulk.

General Raheel Sharif, the present Pakistan Army Chief is likely to retire on 29th November this year. By all accounts, General Sharif does not seem to be seeking an extension of his term. The sitting incumbent usually has a say in the extension of tenure, which cannot be refused by the political dispensation owing the stranglehold of the military over all affairs in the country. Given that, it appears pretty surprising that the present Chief does not want one. What then does that reveal about the state of affairs in Pakistan?

General Sharif became Chief with the tacit backing of former Chief and President of Pakistan, General Musharraf. Pervez Musharraf continues to maintain his command over the way the Pakistan Army, and therefore the civilian government functions. Ostensibly, there are a number of cases being contested in courts against Musharraf but these should be taken with a handful of salt considering the record of justice disbursement in an almost ‘banana republic’. Further, what is happening behind the screens will never be available for public consumption, and it may well be wheels within wheels in the warped politics of Pakistan that are propelling these eyewashes. In either case, it remains irrefutable that Musharraf continues to be an active and assertive voice in their domestic politics and foreign policy.

Foreign policy in Pakistan has two important tenets namely its relations with the United States (for what it can extract) and its historical conflict with India (which remains its bete-noire). Both these play an important role in what decisions are taken in its domestic sphere. In the present instance, with the confusion prevalent following Trump’s victory in the US Presidential elections, it may not be entirely clear to policy makers in Pakistan what to expect in the months to come. However, with Trump announcing General Flynn as the National Security Advisor in the transition team, it is evident that he intends to follow his rhetoric about Muslims (during campaigning) even after he takes oath. That may well be a cause of worry to the Pakistani establishment, both military and civilian, as they may not be able to continue sucking the American funds that they have been so used to in the past. It may also be wise to portray normalcy to the world, with the semblance of civilian control over the military establishment. To that end, a smooth transition of the Chief of Army will serve their interests in this projection to the US government.

It may also be possible that Sharif enters politics as a former Chief of Army, rather than usurp power that most of his illustrious (?) predecessors have done. By and large, he has enjoyed a fairly popular status in the country by selective action against radical Islamic groups, providing a fair degree of publically visible action against brutality and bloodshed on the streets, and yet has maintained the hidden agenda of the ‘Deep State’. He enjoys similar popularity in the armed forces as well. To that extent he seems to be more politically astute than most former Chiefs (and some ex- dictators). If he succeeds in entering politics on this plank, he would have successfully accomplished both a smooth transition in public view, as well as retain his grip on the military- civil complex in Pakistan. It would appear perfectly normal to the outside observer that a former soldier has now decided to enter politics (as is the case in Trump’s team also), without too much of focus on behind-the-scenes machinations. In addition he would have the continued backing of Musharraf, keep exploiting his background as Army Chief, even utilize his brother’s martyrdom to his advantage. In his last months, he has even successfully nullified India’s much touted ‘surgical strikes’; much of the world believes there’s more to the story than what the Indian government released to the world.

Therefore, this change in guard would translate in to little difference in the way things are dealt with, in Pakistan, in its civilian government, and definitely in its military establishment. In fact, the new Chief would be a handpicked General, obviously allegiant to the old guard, yet pitch for the ‘rule of law’ in international perspective. For those battling Pakistan’s ‘Export of Terror’ machinery, it should be business as usual.

Globalization is under assault, claims Russia, from a Western-dominated world order with benefits limited to a few.

By Richard Weitz*

Russians see globalization and international institutions in crisis. They offer to rescue this failing project, but on their terms, with a readjustment of world order more to their liking.

At the October meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club – a group of Russian and foreign international affairs specialists – the attendees assessed the processes of globalization under the rubric “global revolt and the global order.” Russians described Western-led neoliberal globalization as universally destructive economically, culturally, and politically and responsible for sparking a worldwide revolt.

Globalization is under assault “from two fronts,” suggested Fyodor Lukyanov, author of the upcoming Valdai conference report. One set of countries had no say in constructing the Western-dominated world order and considered it unfair, while anti-establishment political parties and social movements in Western countries, often backed by Moscow, reject globalization as an elite-driven project that benefits only a few. Together, the two trends impede needed international economic and security cooperation.

Russia’s concern for globalization was endorsed at the highest level when President Vladimir Putin addressed the final conference session. “Essentially, the entire globalization project is in crisis today” due to these challenges and the continued escalation of “the tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence.”

Putin cited that the triumph of anti-establishment parties in developed countries, the vote of the British people to leave the European Union, and Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party as evidence that even in the wealthy West, citizens no longer accept the rule of “unelected and uncontrolled bureaucrats and political elites.”

Putin blamed the West for missing a golden opportunity after the Cold War to partner with the new Russian Federation and construct a more just and stable world order. Instead, he claimed that NATO governments chose to exploit Russia’s weakness and construct a Euro-Atlantic centric political-economic structure that disadvantaged Russia and others: “They chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all. But far from everyone was ready to agree with this.”

Two recent worrisome trends for globalization, according to a panel on the world economy  – decreasing worldwide trade volumes and rising inequality between the world’s wealthiest people and everyone else – amplify the problem: The slowdown in international trade curtails income growth and poverty reduction in developing countries, and increasing inequality simultaneously undermines popular support for globalization and trade expansion efforts within and between countries.

The anti-globalization mood sweeping the world alarmed representatives from emerging and developed economies alike. C. Raja Mahon of Carnegie India argued that the anti-globalization movement’s strength in developed Western countries has shocked the international system. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that failure of large groups of people to benefit from economic globalization has led to political crises and extremist politics in many states, with the failure of international institutions to address globalization challenged compounding this problem.

Putin and other Russian speakers advocated strengthening the United Nations and international law to counter the global forces of fragmentation and disorder. In particular, Putin stressed the importance of the principle of national sovereignty for “help[ing] underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels.”

The Russian prescriptions for preserving sovereignty and countering global fragmentation – revitalizing the UN and limiting foreign interference in countries’ internal affairs – enjoyed strong support from other foreign speakers at the conference. Even though their governments were heavily involved in destabilizing Middle Eastern regimes, the Iranian and Turkish ambassadors joined Russian panelists in blaming foreign interference for instigating the civil war in Syria,. However, some US and Arab speakers, referencing the mass deaths in Syria and other war zones, insisted that humanitarian imperatives can override sovereignty and permit international intervention to limit suffering.

Of course, preserving the Russian veto power in the UN Security Council and traditional interpretations of international law upholding national sovereignty remain tools for constraining US foreign policy and buttressing Russia’s status as a great global player.

For this reason, Russians struggle with the issue of Security Council reform. South African President Thabo Mbeki and other foreign leaders consider such reform essential for reasons of international justice and representation. Putin acknowledged that some reform is needed, but he and other Russians insisted that this process had to proceed cautiously, incrementally, and only by consensus in order to preserve the Security Council’s effectiveness.

Putin’s call for caution is partly due to his perception that Western powers have constantly manipulated global rules and principles to Moscow’s detriment. In his view, when rules favor the West, the Western governments uphold them, but when those rules do not serve their immediate interests, those same governments disregard longstanding practices and create rules more to their liking.

Putin cited as examples Western military operations in Serbia, Iraq and Libya; the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Western governments creating “armed terrorist groups” as tools of regime change. He also charged the West with “sacrificing” free trade to apply sanctions for “political pressure” and promoting “closed economic alliances” such as the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he contends violates the universal principles embodied in the World Trade Organization.

In her presentation, Fu Ying, chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, echoed Russian criticisms of Western-led globalization but also saw benefits in existing international institutions. After all, she noted, the “US dollar-centered global economic framework spawned global governance institutions and opened up the world economic structure.” It also helped China attain “unprecedented growth.”

Still, Ying articulated China’s wishes to “reform” globalization’s defects – such as the unbalanced distribution of wealth and poorly regulated capital flows – to make the international system more “just and equitable.” Specifically, she called for strengthening the UN and international governance and advocated an inclusive, multilateral-based framework.

Russian and Chinese speakers at Valdai repeatedly mentioned the Sino-Russian partnership as a more enlightened form of international cooperation based on mutual respect, agreed standards and common interests. In particular, they highlighted plans to join the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union and Beijing’s Silk Road Economic Belt as a flexible regional integration project that would be open to all countries. The Russian speakers concluded that Russia- and China-led globalization would have better prospects, and yield better results, than the failing Western-led globalization.

Other Asian speakers at the conference anticipate that the Russia-China integration project, still at an early stage of development, would promote their region’s economic health.

Most participants at the late October conference expected Trump to lose the US presidential elections. His subsequent victory would suggest that the United States will also be open  to rolling back some dimensions of globalization while restricting others – more so than under the current administration of Barack Obama, whose final trip to Europe as president was keynoted by a speech in Athens that vigorously defended the benefits of globalization based on liberal democratic principles .

Nonetheless, last week’s Marrakech Climate Change Conference in Morocco and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Peru show that many world leaders are ready to fight valiantly to defend globalization .

This article was published at YaleGlobal Online

In February, the Israeli prime minister praised the British government for introducing new guidelines prohibiting publicly funded bodies from boycotting Israeli products. ‘I want to commend the British government for refusing to discriminate against Israel and Israelis and I commend you for standing up for the one and only true democracy in the Middle East,’ Netanyahu said.

‘Modern anti-Semitism,’ he went on, ‘not only attacks individual Jews, but attacks them collectively, and the slanders that were hurled over centuries against the Jewish people are now hurled against the Jewish state.’

Progressive voices such as Jewish Voice for Peace have tried for years to counter the insidious conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, but the identification may now be unravelling at last because of a forceful intervention from the right.

Two of Donald Trump’s first appointments as president-elect, his chief strategist Steve Bannon and attorney general Jeff Sessions, are white supremacists with anti-Semitic reputations. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, for example, accused Bannon of carrying anti-Semitic journalism on Breitbart News and of making anti-Semitic remarks himself; Sessions allegedly found fault with the Ku Klux Klan only when he realised they smoked marijuana. One might have expected the Israeli government to criticise these appointments, pointing to the real and present danger of anti-Semites working in the US administration, as well as to the message it conveys to white supremacists around the world. But Netanyahu has said nothing.

Israel’s education minister, Naftali Bennett, was a guest alongside Bannon at a dinner on Sunday organised by the Zionist Organisation of America. Bennett seems to have no qualms joining forces with an anti-Semite, if it will help him advance his goal of ensuring that ‘the era of a Palestinian state is over.’

Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, may have expressed Israel’s position regarding the incoming Trump administration most clearly. Defending Bannon’s appointment, Marcus said: ‘I have known Steve to be a passionate Zionist and supporter of Israel who felt so strongly about this that he opened a Breitbart office in Israel to ensure that the true pro-Israel story would get out.’

Israel’s leaders and their right-wing Jewish allies in the United States, in other words, have no problem stomaching anti-Semitism so long as the anti-Semite supports Zionism. But if an anti-Semite can be a Zionist then anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same.

First published on the LRB blog.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

How to define the post-Brexit foreign policy of Prime Minister May? The question is not simple at all and shows a series of new and unexpected signs. Meanwhile, Theresa May’s primary project is to increase her own international role outside traditional alliances so as to make up for the loss – scarcely relevant at military level, but highly symbolic – of the UK presence in the European Union.

Last September the Tory government led by Prime Minister May hosted the Qatari emir, Sheikh Al-Thani, to start new political and financial relations with the Emirate, with the sale of various leading-edge technologies for Defense.

Furthermore a new British attaché will be posted to Qatar, so as to support the UK strong commitment in the country, also at training level.

In mid-October Prime Minister May also hosted the King of Bahrain, Ahmad bin Isa al Khalifa, and, in her welcome speech, she underlined “the strong support for the efforts designed to make the Gulf region safe”.

Also Oman, a UK traditional friend, as well as the other United Arab Emirates, will shortly receive support from Great Britain, which will build new military bases in the region.

The Great Britain of Gertrude Bell and Christine Granville is back again.

Again a woman, Theresa May, is rebuilding the communication and strategic network with the Middle East.

Not to mention Al Sisi’s Egypt, already in the blacklist of “universal democracy” lovers which, however, Theresa May views as a bulwark of the new extra-European and non-EU policy of the reborn Great Britain.

It is a line which has emerged as early as the meetings held last August between Prime Minister May and the Egyptian leader Al Sisi.

The issue of the current Egyptian regime’ stability is of utmost importance.

If Al Sisi’s government collapses, the Muslim Brotherhood and the sword jihad will come back both towards the Maghreb region and the Sinai Peninsula – hence Israel.

Clearly Great Britain wants to act as a new security axis in the Middle East, by connecting all the Emirates’ areas, which have so far been a strategic void for the West, thus controlling the passage ways from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and establishing its independent network for China’s new “passage to the West”, its “Silk Road”, namely the Belt and Road Initiative.

The human rights mystics, very active also in Great Britain, have always criticized this choice by Prime Minister May to communicate with the “authoritarian countries” of the Gulf and the Maghreb region.

If Egypt collapses, however, all the Suez Canal will fall into unfriendly and often jihadist hands, with unimaginable and very dangerous consequences for the whole Mediterranean region.

Obviously neither the French and Italian pious souls nor the other EU naïve idealists think to these things which, however, are at the heart of the UK strategic project and, for example, Russia’s and China’s.

Not to mention Israel, of course.

Last October the British Ambassador to Jerusalem, David Quarrey, officially declared that “Brexit opens up new opportunities for Great Britain and Israel to work even more closely together”.

On the one hand, as is also the case with some other European governments, Great Britain criticizes the Jewish State’s policy vis-à-vis the occupied territories but, on the other hand, it sells many weapons to Israel.

From April-June 2016 to date, Great Britain has exported to the Jewish State 65 million pounds worth of munitions – a figure to be compared with the mere 9.5 million pounds for the whole 2015.

Furthermore Great Britain is the second largest arms exporter in the world.

By also predicting that after Brexit – as brilliantly planned by an Italian air force general, Gen. Camporini – the EU will have the opportunity of creating a single EU army, Theresa May has set up a new military investment plan to the tune of 178 billion pounds so as to build two new large aircraft carriers, with a power projection plan which will probably make Great Britain a new global power.

As at the times of Edward Montagu and Robert Blake.

The British military statements make us easily guess that this new UK presence in the seas, “like the one of the Empire and beyond” – as Prime Minister May says – will be applied to the expansion of the UK interest to Asia, in close connection with China’s.

Brexit is what Theresa May wants it to be: a new UK autonomous and global project; a foreign policy free from the European shackles in the Middle East; a strong and stable relationship with China before the latter focusing its attention on and addressing to the countries still members of the European Union.

Moreover, Prime Minister May wants to strengthen the limited and lukewarm relations with the Russian Federation – a situation which has been lasting since the “Litvinenko affair” – and, together with Putin, she has set a new agreement between both countries’ security agencies for air safety and the exchange of first-hand intelligence.

Even in this case, Theresa May is well beyond the EU childish geopolitics, which currently regards Russia only as an “authoritarian nation”.

In the phone call made on August 9 by Theresa May to Putin, they rebuilt good relations and organized a series of British participations in the forthcoming high-level political and historical events.

This is not something irrelevant: the British ships which, by passing through the Arctic, brought food and other items to Arkhangelsk is a historical fact, but also a symbol, and foreign policy also lives on symbols.

Today Great Britain wants to establish new relations with Russia not only to strengthen bilateral trade, but also to use the strong networks that Russia already owns throughout Eurasia.

What Prime Minister May is seeking, after the British stay in the EU strategic void, is a new internationalization of the British power.

It is worth recalling that from 2009 to 2012 Russia increased its imports from Britain by 75%.

And, after Brexit, as soon as the EU has begun to think about what the new capital of international finance could be, Great Britain has re-established all its channels with Russia, and later with China, so as to open to the capital coming from Eurasia – something which is not possible for the EU.

Currently, with the new prospects opened up by the relationship between Russia and the United States, Prime Minister May’s foreign policy is effective and far-sighted, while the EU keeps on postponing the solution of the strategic equation between Europe and Russia.

Furthermore, as repeatedly stressed by Theresa May, all this new range of choices for British foreign policy regards “the new return of free trade”, namely the free movement of goods, also free from the EU shackles.

Hence Prime Minister May will be increasingly tough on immigration, which is the sore point of Brexit, but will seize this opportunity to rebuild the British global strategy: competition with the EU in foreign policy and presence in new markets; reconstruction of the British military force and of its old power projection in world seas – all the more so that EU will never create its own independent military force.

This strategy will also include geostrategic support to China and the Russian Federation, in addition to redefining British policy in the Middle East, with strong support for Israel and simultaneous support for the Arab world that counts and which can really change equilibria.

A strategic project which will put an end to the EU tired petitions of principle and will recreate – on new bases – the traditional link between Great Britain and the United States, considering the foreign policy of President-elect Trump, who has already secretly sent out his intelligence people in key countries.

After the mad geopolitical idealism of the past decade, a wise assessment of world equilibria is back again.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

By Peter Miraglia*

Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the world has been confronted with the worst humanitarian disaster since the Second World War. The current global refugee crisis, which according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) includes over 60 million forcibly displaced people, involves refugees from every corner of the world. Since 2011, the international spotlight has primarily remained on the plight of the millions of Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghanis journeying to Europe.[i] By focusing attention and resources on this Europe-bound group, other migrant movements of the world are consequently ignored and have received insufficient support.

For hundreds of years, Central America has provided a land route for Latin American migrants heading north. Recently, the destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew and the reestablishment of Cuban-American diplomatic relations have spurred a record number of Haitian and Cuban refugees to elect to traverse Central America in order to reach the United States.[ii] In recent years, these intra-regional migrants have been joined by thousands of Asian and African migrants, primarily hailing from Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, and Somalia, who seek refugee status in the United States as well.[iii] Products of the global refugee crisis, this eclectic group of invisible emigrants is not as likely to relocate to Europe as their Middle Eastern counterparts, and attempt the perilous journey to the United States instead. Together, the surge in the traditional flow of refugees and the steady stream of non-Latin American migrants have placed mounting pressure on governments of Central America, as well as that of the United States, to protect the human rights and dignity of these stateless peoples. The focus of humanitarian efforts should be providing hard-pressed resources to those currently suffering within the deadliest segment of the route, the Darién Gap, which is a large swath of undeveloped jungle that straddles the border between Southern Panama and Northern Colombia.

Reaching the Darién Gap

Often relying on smugglers or “agents” to arrange their flight plans, non-Latin American migrants begin their journeys by flying into São Paulo, Brazil or Quito, Ecuador, as both countries have relatively lenient immigration laws.[iv] In fact, in 2008, Ecuador lifted visa requirements for foreigners who arrive for tourist stays, therefore providing migrants an easy access point to the Americas.[v] Ecuador’s loose immigration legislation has drawn international criticism, including from former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich, who suggested that Ecuador’s open-door stance might threaten U.S. national security and Latin American stability.[vi] In response, the Ecuadoran Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade cracked down on illegal immigration: however, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs infamously stated in early 2016 that it “is not aware of this human trafficking route.”[vii]

The second access point to the Americas, São Paulo, Brazil, has received a rising number asylum requests, growing from 566 in 2010 to 5,882 in 2013, according to UNHCR data.[viii] After arriving, these migrants usually obtain counterfeit passports and pay to be smuggled through the Amazon Rainforest, en route to Colombia. As it is not a crime to enter Colombia “irregularly”, the worst that can happen to these migrants is deportation to their original point of entry, which is usually Ecuador.[ix] However, Ecuador has recently started to reject the deportees who are not Colombian nationals, leading a Colombian immigration official to admit, “all we can do is drop them (Non-Colombian migrants) off at the bridge at the border and walk away.”[x] The failure of the governments of Colombia and Ecuador to provide sufficient support for those in limbo between their countries has made traversing the Darién Gap and Central America their only means of escaping statelessness. For those lucky enough to reach the Darién Gap, they often arrive nearly penniless, thanks to the high costs charged by smugglers, who are locally called “coyotes”, and the frequent extortion by criminal gangs and policemen at checkpoints. In a September 2016 report, Colombian private investigators estimated that the average price of reaching the United States through Latin America is around $12,000 USD per person.[xi]

If one were to make an analogy between the US-bound refugees of Latin America and the European-bound refugees, the Darién Gap would be the equivalent to the Mediterranean Sea. Unregulated and isolated, the Darién Gap is the “missing link” of the Pan-American Highway, as road building in the region remains too expensive and environmentally costly.[xii] Consequently, transportation across the Darién Gap is nearly impossible, and this inaccessibility has enabled the proliferation of drug smugglers and paramilitary groups in the region, including the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).[xiii] The combination of the Darién Gap’s natural dangers, such as difficult terrain, dangerous wildlife, and isolation, with the constant threat of being kidnapped, murdered, or robbed has produced a precarious situation for those traveling through the region. Although their calls for assistance have not been heard, these forcibly displaced peoples require international assistance to effectively demand additional support from the involved governments.

The total number of arrivals to the Darién Gap jumped from 3,078 in 2013 to 7,278 in 2014, a startling 236 percent increase.[xiv] From the U.S. perspective, the doubling of the volume of emigrants traveling this land route is a recent phenomenon. As put by Marc Rosenblum, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute, “the surge reflects the difficulty of entering the U.S. by traditional paths like arriving on a visa card and overstaying. These people are willing to take this risky and complicated route.”[xv] The increase in activity along this untamed route is also the consequence of the unwillingness by most affected governments to conduct mass deportations and the easing of visa and asylum requirements in some Latin American countries.[xvi]

Life in the Gap

The microcosm of life in the Darién Gap is the port town of Turbo, Colombia, which sits at the northern head of the Pan-American Highway. Serving as the primary jumping-off point for crossings into Panama, Turbo has become the hub for inter-American migration because of its position on the Caribbean Sea and proximity to the Darién Gap. As it is more accessible than Quito or São Paulo for the Haitians and Cubans, these demographics have increasingly migrated to the town by paying smugglers for maritime passage across the Caribbean Sea. Once within the city, many live in makeshift shelters with poor sanitary conditions, resembling a smaller-scale “Calais jungle”, which is another provisional community of thousands of refugees in northern France.[xvii] Despite Turbo’s migrant population swelling to around 4,000 in May 2016, the Colombian government has continually failed to adequately address this rapid influx in foreign population.[xviii]

Intended merely to be a transit city, Turbo has watched its population swell not only due to the growing inflow of migrants, but also because of the anti-immigration measures enacted by Central American countries. Reflective of the xenophobic reactions of many European governments, countries like Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and even Panama, have closed their southern borders in order to stem the stream of migrants crossing their countries. Instead of simply reacting, it is important that these countries learn from the European mistakes and properly respond to this crisis before it spirals out of control.

Back in May 2016, it appeared that Panama would spearhead the effort to relocate the rising number of refugees when it reached an agreement with Mexico to directly fly 3,800 stranded Cuban refugees to the Mexico-U.S. border.[xix] Unfortunately, with this declaration, Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela also announced that the key border crossings with Colombia, located within the Darién Gap, would be sealed until further action was taken to counter the inrush of migrants crossing through Panama en route to the United States.[xx] This changed the former policy, which allowed any asylum seeker to continue moving north if they did not appear on any terror watch lists after background checks staged by local border controls. An immediate consequence of his decision was the stranding of over 1,000 Cubans refugees, thereby forcing them to attempt to cross the Darién Gap if they still desired to reach the United States.[xxi]

While Panamanian authorities usually reject anyone who enters their country without a passport, they permit those arriving via the jungle route to enter without documentation because there is no nearby Colombian outpost to return them.[xxii] Once again, this shows the failure of the Latin American governments to collaborate and improve their capacities to handle this spike in immigration. In Central America, the insufficient immigration policies have forced the governments to take action that impedes the free movement of people. Prior to President Varela’s closure of the border with Colombia, Nicaragua militarized and sealed its southern border in November 2015, while Costa Rica concluded its “humanitarian act” and shuttered its southern border to Cuban migrants in March 2016.[xxiii] The immigration-obstructive policies, like the closing of borders, implemented by Central American countries will not help alleviate the situation in Turbo and the Darién Gap, but will likely contribute to its continued deterioration instead.

Groups in the Gap: The Cubans and Haitians

According to the Associated Press, the biggest outflow of Cubans since the 1980 Mariel Boatlift occurred in 2015, and consequently, they represent the largest migrant group in the Darién Gap.[xxiv] In recent years, Cubans have increasingly elected to undertake the grueling overland route to the United States, instead of sneaking past the U.S. Coast Guard in the Caribbean Sea en route to Florida. Coincidently, the recent thawing of United States-Cuban relations has raised concerns that the so-called “wet-foot, dry-foot policy”, which fast tracks legal residency for undocumented Cubans in the United States as long as they arrive by air or overland, could soon conclude.[xxv] According to the Pew Research Centre, almost 27,300 Cubans entered the United States during the first nine months of 2015, a 78 percent rise as in the same period in 2014, with two-thirds of the migrants now reaching the southern Texas border via the overland route.[xxvi] Reflective of this recent trend in Cuban immigration, Colombia detained 3,194 Cubans living in the country illegally during the first eight months of 2015.[xxvii]

The other group of intra-regional refugees in the Darién Gap is the Haitians, whose numbers in the Darién Gap have rapidly increased since Hurricane Matthew devastated the impoverished island nation in early October. Claiming approximately 1,000 Haitian lives and leaving over 60,000 displaced, Hurricane Matthew has placed the country on the brink of “real famine” and spawned deadly outbreaks of cholera in multiple communities.[xxviii] The confluence of these crises has driven the biggest Haitian exodus since the devastating 2010 earthquake, which displaced 1.5 million citizens.[xxix] By the end of 2015, US border patrol had reportedly encountered about 4,400 Haitians at the United States-Mexican border, compared to around 360 migrants in 2014.[xxx] In response to this surge, on September 12, just a week after Hurricane Matthew pummeled Haiti, US Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, announced the restriction of temporary protective status (TPS) for future Haitians refugees and the deportation those living in the United States unauthorized by TPS.[xxxi] This decision comes at a time when the United States needs to express solidarity with the Haitian population, who needs foreign support to recover from another natural disaster once again. Due to the conclusion of TPS for Haitians, another governments’ immigration policies have left a large number of Haitians without any viable locations to seek refuge in the wake of a natural disaster. Consequently, they are forced to sail to Turbo and risk their lives traveling through the Darién Gap and Central America in order to reach the United States.

Groups in the Gap: The Non-Latin Americans

Although Haitians and Cubans constitute a majority of the foreign population traveling through the Darién Gap, the growing numbers of non-Latin American migrants joining them in the dense jungle could eventually upgrade this situation to an international crisis. Fleeing from problems such as extreme poverty, violence, and religious discrimination, these non-Latin American emigrants are relatively unprecedented in the region, and thus, are products of the current global refugee crisis. According to Aljazeera America, 1,003 Nepali migrants, 910 Bengali migrants, and 462 Somali migrants were recorded in the Darién Gap between 2013 and 2015.[xxxii] The steady inflow of additional emigrants has placed a huge strain on the existing smuggling system in the Darién Gap, resulting in the decline of sanitary conditions and an increase in violence. As it is difficult to deport these migrants, Latin American governments must find creative solutions to accommodate for the increase of foreign refugees within their borders.

Conclusion

The silent suffering of the migrants in the Darién Gap, and those throughout Central and South America, demands more attention from the international community. This emerging refugee crisis cannot go unnoticed, and the reluctance of Latin American governments to properly address this situation has created a dependency on foreign pressure to improve the conditions for those traversing the well-trodden path. External entities, such as Pope Francis who called upon “the countries of the region to redouble generously every effort to find a rapid solution to this humanitarian tragedy” in 2014, should continue to increase awareness and demand that governments improve existing immigration policy.[xxxiii] Over time, migrant routes and flows will change, but it is the responsibility of the affected governments to adapt to the situation and provide sufficient resources to those seeking refuge. As it is estimated that over 25,000 total migrants entered Panama in the past year, it is pertinent that the governments of Latin America, especially those of Colombia and Panama, take decisive action to quell this situation while it is still manageable.[xxxiv] While the inflow of refugees will not necessarily change, Latin American immigration policy must stabilize before displaced population enters extreme distress.

*Peter Miraglia, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[i] Edwards, Adrian, “Global Forced Displacement Hits Record High”, UNHCR (2016): Accessed in October 22, 2016, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html.

[ii] Held, Sergio, “Is this the Next major Refugee Crisis?” Ozy (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/is-this-the-next-major-refugee-crisis/66850.

[iii] Motlagh, Jason, “A Terrifying Jounrey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jugnle”, Outside (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, https://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap.

[iv] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 16, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/syrian-refugees-central-america-routes-cuban-migrants.

[v] Motlagh, Jason, “A Terrifying Jounrey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jugnle”, Outside (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, https://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap.

[vi] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[vii] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[viii] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[ix] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 18, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/syrian-refugees-central-america-routes-cuban-migrants.

[x] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 16, 2016,

[xi] Held, Sergio, “Is this the Next major Refugee Crisis?” Ozy (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/is-this-the-next-major-refugee-crisis/66850.

[xii] Motlagh, Jason, “A Terrifying Jounrey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jugnle”, Outside (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, https://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap.

[xiii] Rampietti, Alessandro, “Migrants Stranded in Colombia as Route to US Closed”, Aljazeera America (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/migrants-stranded-colombia-route-closed-160707092815421.html.

[xiv] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, Bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street

Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[xv] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, Bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street

Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[xvi] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, Bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street

Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[xvii] Topping, Alexandra, “Calais Refugee Camp Conditions Diabolical, Reports Says”, The Guardian (2016): Accessed on November 2nd, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/calais-refugee-camp-conditions-diabolical-report-jungle-bacteria-hygiene

[xviii] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 18, 2016,

[xix] Rampietti, Alessandro, “Migrants Stranded in Colombia as Route to US Closed”, Aljazeera America (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/migrants-stranded-colombia-route-closed-160707092815421.html.

[xx] Rampietti, Alessandro, “Migrants Stranded in Colombia as Route to US Closed”, Aljazeera America (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/migrants-stranded-colombia-route-closed-160707092815421.html.

[xxi] Schaefer-Muñoz, Sara, “Global Migrants Brave Panama’s Vipers, Bats, bandits to Reach US”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-bound-migrants-brave-panamas-brutal-jungle-1432914231.

[xxii] Motlagh, Jason, “A Terrifying Jounrey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jugnle”, Outside (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, https://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap.

[xxiii] Rampietti, Alessandro, “Migrants Stranded in Colombia as Route to US Closed”, Aljazeera America (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/migrants-stranded-colombia-route-closed-160707092815421.html.

[xxiv] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 18, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/syrian-refugees-central-america-routes-cuban-migrants.

[xxv] Brodzinsky, Sibylla and Lakhani, Nina, “Global Refugeees take Long Detours through Latin America to reach the US”, The Guardian (2015): Accessed on October 18, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/syrian-refugees-central-america-routes-cuban-migrants.

[xxvi] Held, Sergio, “Is this the Next major Refugee Crisis?” Ozy (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/is-this-the-next-major-refugee-crisis/66850.

[xxvii] Held, Sergio, “Is this the Next major Refugee Crisis?” Ozy (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/is-this-the-next-major-refugee-crisis/66850.

[xxviii] Whelan, Robbe, “”Hurricane Matthew: Food, Water Shortages Threaten Haiti Victims”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 28, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-water-shortages-threaten-haiti-hurricane-victims-1476023087.

[xxix] Whelan, Robbe, “”Hurricane Matthew: Food, Water Shortages Threaten Haiti Victims”, Wall Street Journal (2016): Accessed on October 28, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-water-shortages-threaten-haiti-hurricane-victims-1476023087.

[xxx] Fifield, Jen, “After Hurricane Matthew, Haitians Hope for Change in US Policy”, The Pew Trusts (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/10/21/after-hurricane-matthew-haitians-hope-for-change-in-us-policy.

[xxxi] Fifield, Jen, “After Hurricane Matthew, Haitians Hope for Change in US Policy”, The Pew Trusts (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/10/21/after-hurricane-matthew-haitians-hope-for-change-in-us-policy.

[xxxii] Rampietti, Alessandro, “Migrants Stranded in Colombia as Route to US Closed”, Aljazeera America (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/migrants-stranded-colombia-route-closed-160707092815421.html.

[xxxiii] Held, Sergio, “Is this the Next major Refugee Crisis?” Ozy (2016): Accessed on October 26, 2016, http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/is-this-the-next-major-refugee-crisis/66850.

[xxxiv] Motlagh, Jason, “A Terrifying Jounrey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jugnle”, Outside (2016): Accessed on October 19, 2016, https://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap.

Using a new theory, Erwin Lambert shows that more freshwater in the Arctic may strengthen the Gulfstream’s extension into the polar regions – the opposite of what has generally been anticipated with future climate change.

A new study from researchers at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research gives less reason to fear a weakening of the Gulfstream due to climate change. One of the suggested ‘tipping points’ in the climate system is a substantial slow-down or even collapse of the Gulfstream due to increased freshwater input in the northern seas. In a warmer climate, the hydrological cycle of precipitation and evaporation will strengthen including more rainfall, river runoff and ice melt in the north. One can in its most extreme imagine this literally to close the large-scale ocean circulation between the Arctic and the lower latitudes.

In the article ‘How northern freshwater input can stabilise thermohaline circulation’, Erwin Lambert, PhD-student at UiB and the Bjerknes Centre and the University of Bergen, studies how ocean circulation is affected by increased freshwater input. Lambert and colleagues show how increased freshwater input in the north in some cases can even strengthen the Gulfstream extension into the Arctic – just like a river in a typical Norwegian fjord is a driver for the fjord’s exchange with the surrounding ocean.

In 1961, the American oceanographer Henry Stommel reduced the ocean to a few equations. With Stommel’s model, the North Atlantic can be split into a warm part in the south and the cold Nordic Seas in the north – a thought experiment of two boxes, without coastlines, islands or underwater ridges. In the North Atlantic, water flows northward at the surface, before sinking to the bottom in the Nordic Seas and flowing back southward in the deep ocean. The surface current flowing north is what we think of as the Gulf Stream. Stommel’s description of how water circulates between warm and cold regions like this, was entirely theoretical, and it was the Finnish oceanographer Clas Rooth who applied it to the Atlantic in 1982.

Stommel’s model is simple. It does not represent all factors in the real world, but still made it possible to answer a big question. You can neglect the wind, and there will be circulation in the North Atlantic. As long as water sinks in the north, the Gulf Stream will continue to flow north.

“The beauty of such a model is that we can understand the full behavior of its circulation,” said Erwin Lambert.

Lambert is a PhD candidate at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Centre, and works with a box model that builds on Stommel’s model. He remarks that both theoretical models, like his, and the large and more detailed circulation models used for weather forecasting and climate projections, only represent the real world to a limited extent.

“The benefit of a theoretical model is that we know, and actually choose, what these limitations will be.”

Simple models make it easier to pin-point the effect of changes. Like Stommel, Lambert can choose to let the water in the north be less salty and calculate how the ocean current will react to more freshwater in the Nordic Seas. A fresher north is exactly what is expected with global warming.

In a warmer world, there will be more rain and snow in the northern regions, meltwater from glaciers and sea ice will pour into the ocean, and together this will make the water in the Nordic Seas less salty. The salty Atlantic water that flows in from the south will mix with water that is fresher than it used to, and the mix will be less dense. As a result, water entering the Nordic Seas will not sink as efficiently as it has done in the past.

According to Stommel’s model, this would reduce the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. This is the background for theories that global warming may weaken the Gulf Stream.

Two thirds of the water that enters the Nordic Seas flow back south in the deep ocean. The remaining one third continues on the north-bound route and enters the Arctic Ocean. This water is not included in Stommel’s model, and when calculating the effect of climate change, it must be. The old model consists of one box for the southern part of the North Atlantic and one for the Nordic Seas.

By adding a third box, the Arctic Ocean, the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is stabilized. When you include the effect of more freshwater in the Arctic Ocean, the current will be less reduced than in Stommel’s model with only two boxes. This makes Erwin Lambert think that increasing precipitation in the north may be less important for the circulation in the Atlantic than previously believed.

He admits that it’s still an open question of how well such simple box models represent reality. For example, wind – which the Stommel model does not consider – is a vital driver of the Gulf Stream near the surface. But Lambert maintains that simple models still make it possible to study major processes in the ocean.

“It’s amazing how much knowledge can be gained from a model that consists of merely five equations.”

The Green Party’s 2016 presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised over $3.8 million in less than 24 hours to fund vote recounts in swing states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Stein is nearing her overall goal of $4.5 million to cover the recount costs in all three states, and so far the Wisconsin funding has been completed in time to meet the recount filing deadline of November 25.

Funding for Pennsylvania’s recount is also well underway, where the deadline for filing for a recount is Monday. The fundraising site says that after meeting Pennsylvania’s cost goals, the team will turn its attention to Michigan, which has a Wednesday deadline.

Stein, who won about 1.2 million votes in the presidential election, launched an online fundraising campaign Wednesday in an effort to “ensure the integrity of our elections” and “demand recounts in these three states where the data suggest a significant need to verify machine-counted vote totals.”

Stein says the $4.5 million in funds is required by state law to cover “filing fees alone” and claims the total cost including attorney fees is likely to reach $6-7 million.

Together, the three states carry a total of 46 electoral votes, and Trump would have to lose all three in the recount for them to impact the presidential result. Stein’s fundraising success has prompted mixed responses on social media, with some people suggesting the move undemocratic in refusing to accept the results as they stand, or is too late to be effective.

Others poked fun at the situation through memes or by suggesting moments they would have sought a vote recall.

The US dollar strengthened to a near 14-year high against its peers on Thursday on strong data from the world’s biggest economy.

The greenback reached $1.0523 against the euro before retreating to $1.0551. The Japanese yen fell to an eight-month low, while China’s yuan dropped to an eight and a half year low.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything stopping US yields going higher in the near-term so I think people are going to stay on the dollar trend,” State Street Global Markets’ head of global macro strategy, Michael Metcalfe told Reuters.

“The only risk to this are that the dislocations in markets outside of the US, particularly in emerging markets, get to a point where they start to feed back into concerns (for the Federal Reserve as it looks to raise interest rates),” he added.

On Wednesday, French investment bank Societe Generale predicted euro-dollar parity by March 2017 over the bigger-than-predicted rate hike by the US Federal Reserve following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. Soc Gen now predicts a 1.75-2.0 percent raise in rates rather than previously expected 1.25-1.50 percent. A higher US key rate means a stronger dollar.

However, not everyone is so bullish about the dollar. As Bloomberg reports, Amundi SA, which oversees about $1.2 trillion, said the greenback is unlikely to see sustainable growth in future over higher commodity prices and instability in the yuan.

A similar opinion was expressed by $119 billion asset manager from Australia, AMP Capital Investors.

“I don’t think the broad-based nature of the dollar rally is sustainable. From here the dollar rally is likely to become more selective,” said Nader Naeimi from AMP.

As the world’s fastest-growing economic region, Southeast Asia’s energy demand will increase to drive this growth. While Vietnam’s push towards nuclear energy may have started a regional race to develop nuclear power, this may slow down somewhat now that Hanoi has decided to freeze it. ASEAN should shift its focus to developing renewable energy.

By Cung Vu*

On November 22, 2016, the National Assembly of Vietnam ratified their government’s decision to hold off the building of its nuclear reactor. Cost was cited as the main reason. Another possible factor could be the unfolding lessons from the event of Fukushima, and the safety and security of nuclear reactors in cases of intentional attacks such as cyberattacks or terrorism still need to be assessed.

This is good news for the region. A possible regional nuclear energy race would now be avoided, and Vietnam’s neighbours would not have to brace themselves for a potential nuclear fallout. The region should now focus on developing renewable energy to meet its energy demand.

Regional Race for Nuclear Energy

Vietnam is the only ASEAN country which, in 2009, announced the building of nuclear power reactors. Supposed to go online in 2028, Vietnam’s quest for nuclear energy resulted in an increased frequency of discussions among neighbouring countries to address many aspects of nuclear safety and security.

The main concerns are whether ASEAN is ready to have nuclear energy in light of the nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. In the world we live in, one needs to examine all the aspects of nuclear energy, not only its benefit of not producing GHG.

More importantly, ASEAN needs to examine the management of its life cycle such as the hazardous nature of spent nuclear fuel material. Moreover, potential environmental impacts of a nuclear meltdown due to intentional attacks from terrorism or cyberattacks must be planned for.

Regional Energy Landscape

With more than 600 million people, Southeast Asia is the fastest growing economic region in the world. Its economy is predicted to grow at the rate of 4-6% in the next five years and the energy required to support the economic growth will be substantially increased.

Countries with biggest energy demands include Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam, and they account for 88% of the energy consumption in the region. In 2013, fossil fuels contributed to 80% of the energy supply, with the rest coming from different renewable energy sources.

Southeast Asia is blessed with fossil resources such as hard coal, lignite, natural gas and oil as well as abundant sources of renewable energy such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, ocean, and biomass energy. The region accounts for 4.1% of the world’s coal, 3.4% of world’s natural gas and 0.8% of world’s oil reserves.

Even though Southeast Asia as a region is a net energy exporter of fossil fuels, it continues to import oil to meet its energy demand. As an aspiration, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) targets to increase its usage of renewable energy to 23% by 2025.

Planning for Energy Cooperation

To meet its energy demand, ASEAN has identified renewable energy as one of seven programmes in its action plan called the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2016-2025. The other programmes are the ASEAN Power Grid, Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline, Coal and Clean Coal Technology, Energy Efficiency and Conservation, Regional Energy Policy and Planning, and Civilian Nuclear Energy.

ASEAN Power Grid

To meet electricity demand to stimulate economic growth, ASEAN needs to have a reliable and cheap source of electricity. ASEAN plans to construct a bilateral cross-border power grid, then expand to a sub-regional and finally to a total integrated regional system. This would serve to meet the electricity demand as well as to provide access to some of the 50% of the population which currently has no electricity.

Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline

This pipeline would connect existing and planned gas pipeline infrastructure to transport gas across borders to ensure greater security of gas supply within ASEAN.

Coal and Clean Coal Technology

As coal is still expected in the foreseeable future to be the main source of energy, ASEAN hopes to develop clean coal technologies and to facilitate intra-ASEAN coal trade towards enhancing regional energy security.

Energy Efficiency and Conservation

To lessen the energy demand, ASEAN also focuses on energy efficiency as the most cost-effective way of enhancing energy security. Energy efficiency programmes aim toward increasing energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings, as well as in transportation sectors.

Renewable Energy

To increase the penetration level of renewable energy resources, ASEAN has launched many initiatives to promote solar and biomass, and to facilitate trade and cooperation in the region. Renewable energy has been considered not only to reduce the dependency on oil but also to minimise the environmental impact with regard to climate change. ASEAN targets to increase the level of renewable energy to 23% by 2025 in the ASEAN Energy Mix.

Regional Energy Policy and Planning

Each member state of ASEAN has its own agenda to address its energy needs. There is a need for expertise sharing in terms of policymaking and planning as well as technical and capacity building.

Civilian Nuclear Energy

As a clean source of energy, as it does not generate GHG, nuclear energy has been considered as an option to help ASEAN countries meet their energy demand. ASEAN seeks to promote information sharing, governance and technical assistance regarding nuclear power generation.

Is ASEAN ready for Nuclear Energy?

As energy generated from a fusion reaction, totally clean energy with no harmful byproducts is still being piloted. As such ASEAN needs to focus on developing more renewable energy to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels and put the current nuclear energy technology (fission reaction) on the back burner as it carries new and huge risks due to terrorism or cyber attacks.

Moreover, ASEAN should focus on delivering electricity to more than 300 million, half of the population in remote islands or rural areas. New technology in micro-grid or smart-grid needs to be developed to address this. Clean coal technology and energy efficiency management will also help to balance the energy supply-demand in foreseeable future.

*Cung Vu is a Visiting Senior Fellow of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was an Associate Director of the Office of Naval Research Global and Chief Science and Technology Adviser of the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office, US Department of the Navy.

Moscow has complained about and done everything to stop efforts to create transportation links between China and Europe that bypass Russia, but Moscow experts say the biggest reason China is focusing on these alternatives is because Russia lacks the transportation infrastructure such a project requires.

Still worse, some of these specialists say, Russia’s infrastructure is in such bad shape and is likely to remain that way in the future, that absent a radical shift in policy, the country’s regions will not be able to take advantage even of “Silk Road” projects that bypass Russia by creating branch lines linking in to them.

In an article in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” journalist Andrey Serenko says bluntly that “in the subjects of the [Russian] Federation, there is no infrastructure for participating in Beijing’s logistical initiative,” the result of a lack of “political will on the part of the federal leadership” (ng.ru/regions/2016-11-24/3_6867_kartblansh.html).

This bottleneck, Serenko continues, is highlighted by the efforts of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the former president of Kalmykia, to revisit a proposal he made seven years ago to develop an 800-kilometer canal that would like the North Caucasus with the Chinese project and lead to development there.

In 2009, his idea was shot down not only by the onset of the economic crisis which left little money for such gigantist efforts but also by lobbyists in Moscow who preferred to build another canal that would serve only domestic Russian markets but that promised more money for those involved. It hasn’t been built either, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist notes.

Because Russia wasn’t prepared then and doesn’t appear prepared now to develop its infrastructure in ways that would make it the obvious route for a Chinese-organized Silk Road project, Beijing since 2013 had been focusing on the creation of a “single belt and single path” through Central Asia and the South Caucasus bypassing Russia entirely.

Had Moscow listened to Ilyumzhinkov seven years ago, Russia might be in a very different position; but it didn’t and it isn’t, Serenko says. Now, perhaps, the center will revisit the question but it may be a case of too little too late as Beijing is working hard to promote the bypass route.

“Several days ago,” he writes, “representatives of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Afghanistan prepared for signing an agreement on the creation of the Lazurian corridor,” a new railroad and canal transit network “connecting Central and South Asia with the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean basins.”

“Beyond doubt,” Serenko continues, “this route will interest the Chinese authorities” as well.

What does all this mean for Russia and for Russia’s region? “The more transit corridors from the western borders of China to the borders of the European Union bypassing Russian territory appear, the fewer will be the chances of Russia’s regions to extract economic value from their favorable geographic position.”

Moreover, he points out, Moscow will lose the possibility of “dividends” in foreign affairs that the Kremlin may have hoped for. Perhaps people in Moscow are now rethinking their past approach, but “the sluggishness of Moscow in this competition will involve the loss of economic prospects not only for Russia’s southern regions but for the country as a whole.”

US officialdom and their media megaphones have systematically concocted narratives having less to do with political reality and more with their hallucinogenic world view. Pre-election and post-election reportage weaves a tapestry of fiction and fantasy.

We will discuss the most pernicious of these remarkable foibles and fables and their predictable failures.

1. The pundits, prestigious editorialists and ‘economists with gravitas’, have convinced themselves that the election of Donald Trump would ‘lead to the Collapse of Capitalism (COC)’. They cited his campaign attacks of globalization and trade agreements, as well as his ‘reckless’ swipes at speculators. In reality, Trump was criticizing a specific kind of capitalism. The pundits overlooked the variety of capitalisms that constitute the US economy. With their snouts deep in the trough, their own vision was limited; their curly tails blindly twirled meaningless formulae on blackboards; their ample backsides flapping away in place of their mouths. Thus occupied, they easily ignored Trump’s glorification of national capitalism.

Trump followed the legacy of protectionism in US policies established by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton and carried into the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and others. Capitalism comes in various forms and is promoted by different protagonists at different times in our history. Some leaders have championed such economic sectors as domestic energy production, manufacturing, mining and agriculture and depended largely on the local labor markets. Nevertheless, the pundits’ dream of a final collapse of capitalism with the rise of Trump turned into a real stock market bonanza, the ‘DOW’ boomed to record levels, and monopolists rubbed their hands in anticipation of larger and more lucrative merger and acquisitions.

The world’s largest billionaire bankers had bankrolled Secretary Hillary Clinton, the ‘million-dollar-a-speech’ War Goddess. Blankfein, Soros and the dirty dozen had bet heavily against the populist-nationalist Donald Trump and they lost. Their pre-paid political manifestos, addressed to the readers of the NY Times, flopped and sputtered: Most readers and investors in domestic markets had placed their bets on ‘The Donald’. Their domestic celebrations pumped up the market after the election. The unimaginable had happened: George Soros had bet and lost! The ‘deplorable’ electorate preferred the obnoxious nationalist to the obnoxious speculator. ‘Who’d a thunk it?’

2. From electoral losers to street putschists, the speculators and their whiny media mouthpieces strive to overthrow the election process. Against the tens of millions of free voters, the speculators bankrolled a few thousands demonstrators, drunk with their own delusions of starting a color-coded ‘Manhattan Spring’ to overthrow the elected President. Decked out in black ‘anarchist chic’, the window vandals and historically illiterate students were energized by George Soros’ promise to replicate the putsches in Kiev and Tbilisi. They took to the streets, cracked a few some windows and signed thousands of ‘on-line petitions’ (while denouncing Trump as the ‘Second Coming of Kristalnacht’). The media magnified the theatrics as a sort of uprising to restore their loser-emancipator to the throne – the bleery-eyed Jean D’Arc of the Hedge Funds. The losers lost and Hillary will hopefully retire to count her millions. The stock market soared to record heights.

3. The four most influential financial newspapers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Financial Times (FT), the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post (WP) had deeply mourned their ‘Paradise Lost’: Long-gone was the rotting vassal-state of Russia under Boris Yeltsin 1991 – 2000, source of so much Western pillage. Their bile turned to venom, directed at the new Nemesis: Putin. The election of Vladimir Putin led to a remarkable economic and social recovery for Russia. From a Western controlled gangster-capitalist ‘thug-ocracy’, Russia has become a modern global power asserting its own sovereignty and national interests.

Gone are the days when Harvard economists could sack Russia of millions through their various ‘democracy’ foundations and Wall Street bankers could launder billions from the criminal oligarchs. Pentagon planners had dismantled Russian bases throughout its previous Warsaw Pact neighbors and set up NATO bases on Russia’s borders. State Department functionaries had overthrown elected pro-Russian regimes in the Ukraine, Georgia and as far afield as Libya. These were the unfettered joys of the US unipolar rulers and their stable of prestigious press pimps and academics, until Putin arrived to spoil the party. And in the run-up to the US election, the Clintonites and their Democratic entourage in the media launched the most frenzied demonic attack accusing Vladimir Putin of financing Trump’s campaign, of hacking Clinton’s messy, unsecured e-mail messages to undermine elections, of bombing Syrian hospitals full of children, of preparing to invade Latvia and Poland etc., etc. If there is one sliver of truth in the vassal press, it is that the demonic changes made against Putin reflected the gory reality of Hillary Clinton’s well-documented policies.

Clinton’s model for a democratic Russia was the drunken President Yeltsin, bankrolled by thugs as they gorged themselves on the corpse of the USSR. But Vladimir Putin was elected repeatedly by huge majorities and his governance has been far more representative of the Russian electorate than those of the recidivist loser, Hillary Clinton. Russia didn’t ‘invade’ the Ukraine or Crimea. It was the ‘potty-mouthed’ Victoria Nuland, US Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who boasted of having tossed a mere 5 billion dollars into neo-fascist-kleptocratic putsch that took over Ukraine and who famously dismissed the concerns of the European Union…with her secretly recorded ‘F— the EE’ comment to the US Ambassador!

At some point, reality has to bubble up through the slime: Putin never financed Trump – the billionaire financed his own campaign. On the other hand, Clinton was bankrolled by Saudi despots, Zionist billionaires and Wall Street bankers. The mass media, the WSJ, FT, NYT and the WP, dutifully served the same stale, old sexist gossip about Trump in support of the sweet and sour, wide-eyed Madam Strangelove, who never hesitated to rip the lives out of thousands of Muslim women in their own countries. The media celebrated Madame Clinton’s nuclear option for Syria (the ‘No-Fly Zone’) while it ridiculed Trump’s proposal to negotiate a settlement with Putin.

The media accused Trump of being a sexist, racist, anti-immigrant villain, all the while ignoring Secretary of State Clinton’s blood-soaked history of bombs and destruction, of killing of tens of thousands women in the Middle East and Africa and driving hundreds of thousands among the two million sub-Sahara Africans formerly employed in Libya under Gadhafi’s rule onto rotting ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Who in Madame’s media count the millions of people dispossessed or the 300,000 killed by the US-promoted mercenary invasion of Syria? Where were the feminists, who now dredge up Trump’s crude ‘crotch talk’, when millions of women and children of color were killed, injured, raped and dispossessed by Madame Clinton’s seven wars? Given the choice, most women would prefer to defend themselves from the stupid words of a vulgar misogynist over the threat of a Clinton-Obama predator drone ripping their families to shreds. Nasty, juvenile words do not compare with a history of bloody war crimes.

It is much easier to denounce Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump than to analyze the consequences of Madame Candidate Clinton’s policies. The mass media, subservient to Clinton, wave the flag of ‘worker struggles’ and highlight ‘capitalist exploitation’ when they describe China, Russia and the businesses of US President-Elect Trump. But their perspective is that of the ‘Uni-Polar Empire’. They cite non-unionized worker protests in Chinese factories and peasants fighting the rapacious developers. They cite corrupt oil sales in Russia. They find cheap immigrant labor employed on Trump’s building projects. The media describe and defend Hong Kong separatists. They heap praise on the Uighar, Chechen and Tibetan terrorists as “freedom fighters” and “liberators”. They fail to acknowledge that, as bad as worker exploitation is in these examples, it is far less horrific than the suffering experienced by millions of local and immigrant peasants and workers who have been injured, killed and rendered jobless and homeless by US bombing campaigns in Libya and US invasion-destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The imperial media’s phony ‘anti-capitalist-exploiter stories’ against Trump, Putin and the Chinese are mere propaganda rhetoric designed to entice leftists, influence liberals and reinforce conservatives by playing on workers’ plight inflicted by national adversaries instead of imperial conquests and egregious crimes against humanity.

These financial scribes are very selective in their critique of economic exploitation: They denounce political adversaries while churning out vapid cultural stories and reports on the ‘eclectic tastes’ of the elite. Their weekend cultural pages may occasionally contain a critique of some predatory financiers next to a special feature on an unusual sculptor or successful upwardly mobile immigrant writer. Day after day, the same financial media publishes predictable ‘bootlickeries’ masquerading as reports on vulture capitalists, warmongers and imperial warlords. They court and offer advice to Wall Street, the City of London and Gulf State sheikdoms. They write in blubbering awe at the bold multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions, which eliminate competitive prices and establish effective monopolies. Then they deftly turn to rant against President-Elect Donald Trump’s pronouncements on workers’ rights – he is ‘the demagogue threatening free-market . . . capitalism’.

The fear and loathing of the ‘Wildman’ Trump, so evident in the four most prestigious English language newspapers, is nowhere to be found in reference to Secretary Clinton’s pathological glee over the gruesome torture-murder of the injured President Gadhafi by her allied jihadi tribesmen. The global and domestic implications of the US Secretary of State expressing glee and high pitched squeals on viewing the filmed torture and final ‘coup de grace’ on the wounded head of the Libyan President was never analyzed in the respectable press. Instead, the press superficially covers the plight of millions of immigrants and refugees who would never have left their jobs and homes were it not for the US destruction of the Middle East and North Africa. The respectable media defend the US officials directly responsible for the plight of these migrants flooding and threatening to destabilize Europe.

The same newspapers defend the ‘human rights’ of Chinese workers in local and US-owned factories who out-competed domestic American factories, but ignore the plight of millions of unemployed and destitute workers trying to survive in the US war zones and Israeli-occupied territories.

The Presidential elections made millions of American voters starkly aware of the mendacity of the mass media and the corruption of the Clinton political elite.

The media and the Clinton-elite denounced the Trump voters as ‘deplorables’ and totally mischaracterized them. They were not overwhelmingly unemployed, bitter former industrial workers or minimum wage, uneducated racists from the gutted ‘heartland’. ‘Angry white male workers’ constituted only a fraction of the Trump electorate. Trump received the vote of large sections of suburban middle class professionals, managers and local businesspeople; joined by downwardly mobile Main Street shopkeepers, garage owners and construction contractors. A majority of white women voted for Trump. City household residents, still trying to recover from the Obama-Clinton era mortgage foreclosures, formed an important segment of the Trump majority, as did underpaid university and community college graduates – despairing of ever finding long-term stable employment. In short, low-paid, exploited and precarious business owners and service sector employees formed a larger section of the Trump majority than the stereotyped ‘deplorable angry white racists’ embedded in the media and Clinton-Sanders propaganda.

Post-election media has magnified the political significance and size of the anti-Trump demonstrations. Altogether the demonstrators barely surpassed a hundred thousand in a country of 100 million voters. Most have been white students, Democratic Party activists and Soros-financed NGOs. Their demonstrations have been far smaller than the huge pro-Trump public rallies during the campaign. The pro-Clinton media, which consistently ignored the size of Trump’s rallies, doesn’t bother to make any comparison. They have focused exclusively on the post-election protest, completely papering over the outrageous manipulation by which the Democratic National Committee under ‘Debbie’ Wasserman Schultz cheated Clinton’s wildly popular left-wing rival, Bernie Sanders, during the primaries.

Instead, the media has been featuring Clintonesque ‘feminist’ professionals and ‘identity’ political activists, ignoring the fact that a majority of working women voted for Trump for economic reason. Many politically conscious African-American and Latino women knew that Clinton was deeply involved in policies that deported 2 million immigrant workers and family members between 2009 – 2014 and destroyed the lives of millions of women of color in North and Central Africa because of her war against the government of Libya. For millions of female and male workers, as well as immigrants – there was a ‘lesser evil’ – Trump. For them, the Donald’s nasty remarks about women and Mexicans were less disturbing than the real history of Hillary Clinton’s brutal wars destroying women of color in Africa and the Middle East and her savage policies against immigrants.

The more bizarre (but transient) aspect of the anti-Trump smear campaign came from a hysterical section of the pro-Hillary ‘Zionist Power Configuration’ (ZPC) and ‘Israel-First’ crackpots who accused him and some of his appointees of anti-Semitism. These venomous propagandists slapped the Manhattan real-estate mogul Trump with an odd assortment of labels: ‘fascist’, ‘misogynist’, ‘anti-Israel’, Ku Klux Klan apologist and White Nationalist. The Minnesota Senator and former comedian Al Franken described Trump’s critique against Wall Street Bankers and finance capital as ‘dog whistles’ for anti-Semites, labeling the candidate as a 21st century disseminator of the ‘Protocols of Zion’. Senator Franken darkly hinted that ‘rogue’ (anti-Semitic) agents had infiltrated the FBI and were working to undermine Israel’s favorite, Clinton. He even promised to initiate a post-election purge of the FBI…upon Clinton’s victory… Needless to say, the Senator’s own rant, published (and quickly buried) two days before the election in the Guardian, did not help Madame Hillary with the security apparatus in the United States. History has never been a strong point with the Comedian Senator Al Franken, who should have know better than to threaten the deep security state: his Mid-West predecessor Senator Joseph McCarthy quickly deflated after he threatened the generals.

The accusations of anti-Semitism against Trump were baseless and desperate: The Trump campaign team has prominently included Jews and Israel-Firsters and secured a minority of Jewish votes, especially among smaller businesspeople supporting greater protectionism. Secondly, Trump condemned anti-Semitic acts and language and did not appeal to any of the extremist groups – let alone ‘cite the Protocols of Zion’.

Thirdly (and predictably) the Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL) slapped an anti-Semitic ‘guilt by association’ label on Donald Trump because of his consistent criticism of US wars and occupations in the Middle East, which Trump had correctly pointed out cost the US over two trillion dollars – money that would have totally rebuilt the failing US infrastructure and created millions of domestic jobs. For the loony ADL, the US wars in the Middle East have enhanced Israel’s security and thus any opposition to these wars is anti-Semitic or ‘guilt by association’.

The ADL directors, who have raked in over $3 million dollar salaries over the past 5 years ‘protecting’ US Jews, objected to Trump because Hillary Clinton was the darling of the pro-war Israel-First lobbies and Obama-Clinton appointees.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka (a convert to Judaism) is married into a prominent Orthodox Jewish family with strong ties to Israel; the Trump clan is close to elements among the Israeli elite, including the uber-racist Netanyahu. These hysterical slanders against ‘Trump the Anti-Semite’ reflect the fact that the most prominent domestic Jewish power bloc, ‘the 52 Presidents of American Jewish Organization’ had invested heavily in Hillary Clinton. No matter what the cost, no matter what the land grab, no matter how many Palestinians were ‘killed or maimed by Jewish settler-vigilantes’; the State of Israel could always count on Clinton’s unconditional support. The Lobby would not need to ‘petition’ their ‘First Woman’ President; Madame Hillary would have anticipated Israel’s every desire and even embellished their rhetoric.

In the end, Senator Al Franken’s rabid anti- Trump rant went too far . . . vanishing from the Guardian website in less than one day. Influential Zionist organizations turned their backs on the Senator Comedian; the Zionist Organization of America reprimanded the ADL for its intemperate slanders – sensing that Clinton could lose.

The Franken-Zionist power structure’s last-ditch efforts to attack Trump must have provoked a very negative response within the US ‘deep state’. There can be no doubt that the entire intelligence, military and security elites struck back and put their organizational

‘thumb on the scale’. The FBI’s release of damaging documents related to Secretary Clinton undermined the ADL’s candidate in the run-up to the election and hinted at an interesting power struggle behind the curtains.

The FBI’s release of confidential documents, likely including epistles from Chappaqua to and from Tel Aviv, linked tangentially to the pedophilic crimes of the disgraced Congressman (and former Clinton ally) Anthony Weiner was a heavy blow. The Netanyahu Cabinet put distance between themselves and their favorites, probably telling AIPAC leaders to muzzle Al Franken and pretend his threats to purge the FBI had never been launched. They were clearly worried that their lunatic attack dogs could set the entire US Security State on a hostile track against Israel.

The Franken-ADL trial balloon fizzled and disappeared. The intelligence establishment pounded the final nail into the coffin of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential aspirations. She even briefly accused the FBI of ruining her candidacy – hinting at some partial but oversimplified truth. A Zionist darling to the end, Hillary would never dare to identify and castigate the crazy and incompetent Zionist provocateurs that had helped to turn the Deep State against Madame Secretary.

A last note: Once Clinton lost and Trump took ‘the prize’, the Zionist Power Structure deftly switched sides: the former ‘Anti-Semite’ candidate Trump became ‘Israel’s Best Friend in the White House’. None of the 52 leading Zionist organizations would join the street protests. Only vulture-speculator George Soros (who had bet heavily on the wrong horse) would finance the motley group of goys marching in the streets and collecting on-line petitions for ‘democracy’.

The foibles, fables and failure of the financial press and their keepers lost the elections but are back, hard at work, remaking President-Elect Trump into a global free marketer.

Despite being just past 100 days in office, President Rodrigo Duterte had already put his country, the Philippines, under global spotlight. Reactions to his leadership style ranged from praise and fascination to criticism and suspicion. Elected by more than 16 million people – more than 6 million votes ahead of his next contender – he has definitely garnered enormous publicity, not only at home, but also abroad, thanks to his grassroots appeal, and decisiveness, unorthodox leadership approach. Critics tend to harp on his rough demeanor – his penchant for expletives and seeming non-observance of protocol and formalities – and lack of coherent vision. He has also been criticized for creating unnecessary uncertainty in Philippine foreign relations that exacerbates regional anxiety and adversely affects politico-security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific. But beyond his strong populist rhetoric are clear elements of a national foreign policy grounded on Philippine domestic imperatives and evolving regional and global architecture.

Duterte promised to fulfill the Constitutional mandate of pursuing an independent foreign policy. One of his statements in relation to this subject captures its essence – crossing the Rubicon, an expression that means crossing the point of no return. What is this Rubicon? Why do the Philippines have to cross it? And how should the country navigate such crossing?

Duterte personifies Filipinos who believed that the country had relied too much on the US, particularly for its external defense, for too long. In a unipolar world order with the U.S. at the apex, such free riding on U.S. security guarantee was expedient, enabling the country to prioritize domestic economic and social concerns at the expense of neglecting territorial and maritime defense in the long run. But in an increasingly multipolar world order with new emerging powers gradually chipping away, if not directly challenging, U.S. supremacy, particularly in the East Asian region, continued overdependence on the U.S. could become counterproductive as it limits the country’s security partners. Such dependence can also constitute a liability in the event of major power rivalry, with Philippines, rightly or wrongly, being seen as overtly leaning towards the U.S. camp. The South China Sea (SCS) flashpoint is evolving into a contest between big naval powers, and Duterte clearly wants to steer his country away from such major power competition. Such conflict may arise from miscalculations given U.S. freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS), and China’s strong opposition to deployments of military assets by external powers in its near seas. Thus, intensifying U.S.-China rivalry in SCS, has the potential of inflicting collateral damage to the Philippines should hostilities break out between the two powers. It must be noted that the presence of U.S. bases and troops in the country made it a legitimate target for Japanese attacks during World War II causing the country to be one of the most seriously devastated in the Far East.

Furthermore, an ambiguous U.S. position on whether the features and waters on West Philippine Sea are included in the 1951 PH-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty or not and inadequate transfer of military hardware raises Philippines’ vulnerability. Failure on the part of the U.S. to defuse tensions in Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) in 2012 through simultaneous Philippines-China maritime law and futility of FONOPS in preventing China from completing construction of artificial islands in SCS made Duterte realize the limits of U.S. role for the country’s security, especially when push comes to shove. All these compel Duterte to recalibrate security engagement with the U.S. Crossing the Rubicon can, thus, be equated with weaning away from excessive security reliance on US, a move seen by the President as necessary to reflect the changing times. For Duterte, it is not wise for the country to put all its eggs in one basket. External defense cannot be outsourced, even to a longstanding ally. Recent renewed tensions over SCS should not hijack long-term development of homegrown capability to defend the country’s territory, sovereignty, and sovereign rights. Moreover, there are many ways of securing such national interests even for militarily disadvantaged states, and he seems opened in exploring this whole gamut.

As a longtime mayor of a city in the largely troubled south, Duterte clearly knows how security affects politics and economics. Eastern Mindanao, including Davao Region, is a stronghold of the communist New People’s Army and Muslim rebels are located not far. Transforming Davao City from a lawless area to a safe and thriving metropolis gave him practical lessons that would later found relevance on a bigger scale. Duterte had developed an ability to deal with different political forces to advance peace and stability conducive for commerce and development in his city.

Although he is clearly an outsider in Philippine national politics and has no actual foreign policy background, his actions suggest a fair understanding of evolving regional dynamics. If crossing the Rubicon means reducing dependence on U.S., especially for external security, it can be argued that many of the country’s Southeast Asian neighbors have long began advancing towards this direction. Diversifying arms suppliers, partnering with other countries to produce arms at home, and expanding military linkages with multiple security partners are among the key steps they have taken to enhance their respective national security in an increasingly multipolar world order.

Indonesia has been conducting joint naval exercises with China, India, U.S., and Australia, aside from hosting a multilateral naval exercise (Komodo); Malaysia with China, India, Japan, U.S., and Australia and; Vietnam with France, Japan, and U.S. Indonesia, and Malaysia; and Thailand had procured Chinese (e.g. surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles and air search radars) and Russian arms and Vietnam had long been buying Russian arms (and now can buy U.S. arms as well). Thailand is buying 3 Chinese submarines, and Malaysia is about to purchase Chinese littoral mission ships. Russia, another country with which President Duterte wants to establish strong relations, had transferred amphibious tanks and Yakhont supersonic missiles to Indonesia, and Jakarta also expressed interest to acquire Russian Kilo-class submarines. Duterte’s announcement that he may procure Chinese (or even Russian) arms should therefore come as no surprise – many regional states have Chinese and Russian assets, along with Western-made weapons, in their respective arsenals. Similarly, considering joint naval exercises with China also jives with increasing regional practice.

However, in crossing the Rubicon, President Duterte must proceed with caution – he must feel the stones. Domestic public sentiment, economic demands and priorities, and international reaction, notably by East Asian neighbors, will be key considerations for him. The Filipino public welcomed his visits to key economic partners, China and Japan, and will be looking forward having the multi-billion dollar investments and credit facilities translated on the ground the soon. Domestic peace, order, and stability, coupled with good economic fundamentals (e.g. investment grade rating, fast growing GDP), will allow the country to corner more investments that will create jobs and sustain its improving economic performance. China is an emerging outbound investor with a demonstrated financial, technological, and engineering capacity to accomplish major infrastructure projects, such as railways, which can have a transformative impact on Philippine economic development. China’s entry into the global infrastructure market, in fact, compelled traditional players like Japan to rewrite part of their financing conditions to keep up with competition from more flexible Chinese lending terms. That the U.S. was not active in this sector encouraged Duterte to seriously consider the Chinese offer, particularly when the regional context is considered- China is already building Southeast Asia’s first high speed train in Indonesia (Jakarta-Bandung railway), constructing a port and industrial park in Malaysia (Kuantan), and building a network of railways that would link Kunming and Singapore, beginning with the section in Thailand.

Disputes over West Philippine Sea (WPS) had dominated bilateral relations during the previous Aquino Administration, and Duterte seems uninterested in continuing with this policy. If disputes can be managed well, Philippines can focus on its domestic priorities, while contributing to easing of regional tensions. However, this cannot be taken as a suggestion of his lack of interest in pursuing national interests in WPS. Visits to fellow ASEAN states with which China also has disputes over SCS, namely Vietnam, Indonesia and Brunei, and Japan, with which China also has some disputes with over features and waters in the East China Sea, and the fact that “South China Sea” appeared 8 times and “disputes” 4 times in the Joint Philippines-China Statement after his China visit indicates the high importance set by the President on this issue. Duterte’s trip to China was said to be largely economically–motivated, but he promised that Filipino fishermen will be able to resume fishing in Bajo de Masinloc – a promise that he delivered. Duterte seems cognizant of the pressing livelihood and needs of small-scale fishermen affected by the disputes and wants to bring them immediate relief while the larger politico-security aspects of the disputes are being discussed. This pragmatic approach was warmly received. Duterte also seems to realize that ASEAN remains divided on SCS and that individual ASEAN claimant states had, in fact, been pursuing quiet diplomacy with China while supporting multilateral forums for managing the dispute. In this sense, it can be said that he is feeling the stones.

Duterte’s presidency can be situated in a continuing trend to carve an autonomous space from major power rivalry, manage intractable disputes that seems difficult to be resolved in the immediate term, and benefit from economic engagement with the world’s second largest economy. However, such efforts by former Philippine leaders had checkered results. President Ramos was able to defuse the tensions arising from 1995 Mischief Reef incident, but this feature is now under Chinese occupation. President Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) engaged China for infrastructure deals that were later discontinued because of corruption and irregularities. She also entered into a joint marine seismic undertaking with China and Vietnam that were later considered as compromising the country’s national interests in WPS, although the concept of joint resource development itself is encouraged by UNCLOS and enjoys substantial state practice, including from regional states (e.g. Malaysia-Thailand and Malaysia-Vietnam offshore energy cooperation, Vietnam-China fisheries cooperation over Tonkin/Beibu Gulf).

Duterte brought home $24 billion of investments and credit facilities from his successful state visit to China and this includes funding for infrastructure projects. The GMA experience may have left a deep imprint on Duterte and this was reflected in item 24 of the Philippines-China Joint Statement post-visit: “… Both sides agree that infrastructure cooperation which are jointly undertaken will be subject to proper procurement process, transparency and in compliance with relevant domestic laws and regulations and international practices.” His tough talk against corruption and anomalies in state transactions may be put to test in the flurry of deals about to take place. As for joint development in WPS, he seems uninclined to pursue the same saying that he would need consent of Congress and the Filipino people. This demonstrates his respect for the executive-legislative separation and interdependence of powers and approval of his constituency.

In sum, Duterte realizes that he needs to lead his country to cross the Rubicon – almost every other Southeast Asian state had already crossed it. Regional states have long been diversifying both their economic and security partners to spread risk and to avoid getting entangled in big power tussles. Moreover, Philippines has been increasing its trade with neighboring East Asian states, while territorial and maritime disputes continue to pose a challenge to this burgeoning economic relations. Transnational security challenges such as drug trafficking, smuggling, piracy and cross-border crimes also create natural spaces for cooperation with neighboring coastal states. This would explain the greater emphasis he is according to the country’s immediate neighborhood. However, crossing the Rubicon must be done with caution and moderation. Uncertainties and ambiguities may be necessary for freedom of action and maneuverability, but freefalling to one side should be avoided.

This article appeared at China-US Focus

Omer Celik, Turkey’s Minister for EU Affairs said after the European Parliament vote on Thursday that Ankara would take no notice of the MEPs’ decision.

“This decision is not serious for us since there is a significant lack of vision,” Celik concluded.

European Parliament members on November 24 called for a temporary halt to EU membership talks citing Ankara’s “disproportionate” reaction to the July 15 failed coup.

The vote is not binding but is an advisory decision for the European Council where EU foreign ministers are in charge.

It followed a sharp rise in tension between the EU and Turkey over the government’s massive crackdown against alleged coup plotters and the opposition.

After the failed coup in July, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency.

It has since arrested more than 40,000 people who work in different sectors from the army to the media. It has fired more than 100,000 people from work in public enterprises.

Kati Piri, rapporteur of the European Parliament on Turkey and architect of the vote, said the vote was passed by a huge majority of MEPs.

In total, 479 votes were in favour of the motion while 37 were against with 107 abstentions.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the vote was of “no value”.

EU leaders are keen to continue working relations with Turkey but have warned that the government must abandon its repressive policies.

The EU High Representative, Federica Mogherini, on Tuesday said that if EU membership talks with Turkey fold, both sides will lose out.

“Our relations with Turkey have reached a crucial point,” she said.

Two days before the EU vote on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German Bundestag that she opposed halting membership talks with Turkey but was in favour of talking about unfavourable developments in the country.

Some policy makers and analysts criticized the European Parliament’s move, saying it risked pushing Turkey to harden its position on human rights and on reintroducing the death penalty.

They also fear it will endanger cooperation on limiting refugee flows to Europe, a subject of vital interest to many European governments.

Prominent libertarian communicator and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul is questioning whether Donald Trump will be able to withstand the enormous pressure placed on US presidents to intervene overseas, including with military force. Alex Pfeiffer, drawing on a recent interview with Paul, quotes Paul at The Daily Caller as suggesting President Barack Obama was pushed by powerful interests into a more aggressive foreign policy and that Trump, as president, will encounter similar pressure.

This pressure in favor of aggressive and interventionist foreign actions, Paul says, will come from sources including the “deep state,” the military-industrial complex, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Further, Paul is quoted in the article as expressing concern that Trump is “very friendly with” and “talking to” a lot of pro-intervention neoconservatives as Trump puts together a presidential administration.

Paul also warns that an accident or “false flag” attacks arranged by other nations could help propel the Trump administration into advancing more intervention abroad.

Read Pfeiffer’s complete article here.

For an introduction to the “deep state” that Paul mentions in the interview, watch here Paul and Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams’ February 11 Ron Paul Liberty Report interview with author Mike Lofgren.

For an in-depth explanation of Paul’s foreign policy concerns related to neoconservatives, read here Paul’s July 10, 2003 US House of Representatives floor speech “Neo-Conned.”

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

When Dr. Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister in the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s cabinet, most people recognized him as financial expert. He was given the credit for reviving the Indian economy, though many people believe even today that it was Mr. Narasimha Rao’s guidance and support that enabled Dr. Manmohan Singh to achieve tangible results.

Possibly, such a good image was one reason that he was chosen as the Prime Minister by the Congress party. However, some people believe that he was chosen as the Prime Minister , since he was expected to be pliable and not assertive.

Corrupt people enjoyed cover under Dr. Singh

During the ten years of his Prime Ministership, Dr. Singh was steadily losing his reputation. Finally, at the end of his two terms, most country men thought that he presided over one of the most corrupt governments in the independent India. He himself was accused of involving himself in coal scam ,apart from the accusation that he allowed so many other scams knowingly.

Even today, people still believe that Dr. Manmohan Singh is a honest person but a weak and inefficient Prime Minister, when so many corrupt persons were helplessly given shelter by him and they amassed wealth under the cover that he provided.

In the last two and half years after Mr. Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, many people tend to compare the type of confused and weak governance that Dr. Singh provided and assertive leadership now being provided by Mr. Narendra Modi.

Questionable remarks of Dr. Singh in parliament

Under such circumstances, many people would have been surprised to read about the extremely critical speech delivered by Dr.Manmohan Singh in the parliament on 24th November on demonetization. Really, Dr. Singh said nothing that has not been said before by other people who are opposed to the demonetization decision.

As a financial expert, Dr. Singh could have contributed better ideas for the consideration of the government for the sake of the country, particularly when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was listening to him in the parliament with rapt attention. It was a political speech appropriate for delivery by a politician and not the type of speech that should be delivered by a renowned economist.

Dr. Singh used questionable terms such as “organized loot” “legalized blunder” and “monumental mistake”.

He said that he did not disagree with the objectives of demonetisation but only questioned the way it was implemented.But, Dr. Singh, the economist, has not cared to say as to how it could have been done better or how he would have handled the situation.

Further, he said that frequent announcements after the demonetization revising the amount that the people can withdraw from their accounts or ATMs reflects “very poorly on the Prime Minister’s office, the Finance Minister’s office and Reserve Bank of India.” It is surprising that Dr. Singh failed to note that the various announcements and measures initiated by Modi government after the demonetization announcement were by way of relaxing the rules in the light of the changing scenario and not changing the basic decision or destroying the objective.

With more constructive and understanding approach, Dr.Singh could have viewed that the announcements of the government indicates it’s sensitivity and concern for the people. If he had said this , he would have sounded like a statesman who has the interest of the country in mind and the capability to look at matters objectively and in dispassionate manner.

What is particularly unfortunate is that Dr. Singh did not have single word to appreciate the bold initiative and courage of conviction of Mr. Narendra Modi.

Dr.Singh lost an opportunity

By and large, most country men recognize that the demonetization decision is necessary , the problems caused are temporary and the long term prospects for the economic and social health of the country due to demonetization decision are excellent.

In all fairness to Dr. Singh, one may think that he knows the merits of the decision taken by Mr. Modi and the genuine problems in implementing this much needed and difficult decision but Dr. Singh lacks the will and courage to say this due to his well known characteristic style of taking orders from elsewhere.

Dr. Manmohan Singh lost a great opportunity to redeem his prestige as an economist par excellence by failing to deliver a speech that would have justified his background, knowledge and understanding of the economics and ground realities.

Unfortunately, he delivered a speech that has more vituperative language and lacked wisdom that would reflect statesmanship qualities.

By Emanuel L. Paparella, Ph.D.*

Guy Verhofstadt, an insightful European liberal Parlamentarian and lawmaker, former Belgian premier and chief Brexit negotiator, has already sounded the alarm: World War III may already be in the making and the election of a Donald Trump portents it. He is convinced that a “ring of autocrats” is presently trying to wreck the EU and cites the presidents of Russia and Turkey and their counterpart Donald Trump who will soon be joining them.

He has also accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “openly financing” populist and Eurosceptic parties while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan targets Turkish opposition members in Europe. He has also pointed out that Trump’s chief strategists Steve Bannon has hinted at plans to open new bureaus for his right-wing Breitbart News website in France and Germany in order to influence elections there. This may not yet constitute an international conspiracy to destroy EU values but the signs are surely there constituted by the three stooges, Putin, Erdogan, and Trump, who rather than constituting a ring of allies and friends of Europe cooperating with the EU (after all, two are in NATO, and one has applied for entry into the EU) are perhaps better characterized as a menacing ring of autocrats planning its demise.

Donald Trump, who soon will be the de facto “autocrat” (whether or not he thinks of himself as one such) of all the democratic forces of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) will soon have to face the dilemma of whether defending a Baltic NATO member against Vladimir Putin is worth sparking World War III, because that’s the choice that may eventually need to be confronted.

The war may be ignited in Latvia, or perhaps neighboring Estonia or Lithuania, the so called Baltic nations which, after Crimea, may well be next on the Russian bear’s hit list. They are former satellites of the Soviet Union, and are now NATO members. Under article five of the NATO alliance treaty all member nations are compelled to come to the rescue of a member threatened with invasion, no matter how small or insignificant that nation may or may not be on the world’s political stage. Such a stipulation, if adhered to, may well ignite World War III.

The omens are all there: Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has claimed recently that he is proceeding with the mending of broken ties with Trump-led America, while he continues his firm support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. And why shouldn’t he? After all, during the presidential campaign Trump expressed reservations about coming to rescue of any NATO allies citing financial problems. He also encouraged Russian hackers to delve in Clinton’s e-mails and reveal their content while keeping quite all along about the efforts of Putin to interfere and influence the US presidential election; something the strong-man of Russia has acknowledged and seems even to be proud of.

The question arises: will Putin invade any of the 3 tiny countries with conventional troops? Probably not, he doesn’t have to be that blatant. All he needs to do is incite civil unrest among ethnic Russians which are a sizeable part of the population (25% in Latvia alone). He may simply instigate a militarized crisis using deniable proxies. One way to do it is to have Russian-speaking Latvians or Estonians riot in the streets, protesting persecution, violation of their rights and demanding international protection.

Then a well-armed and well-trained ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of the Russian Baltics’ will suddenly appear. Moreover, a few high-profile assassinations and bombings will ensue bringing the Baltics to the edge of a civil war or at least a low-grade insurgency. Then, voilà, Mr. Fix-all will enter the stage, first blocking an international peacekeeping force at the UN with his veto power, then intervening to settle the conflict in the interests of peace, of course! Have we not seen this movie before in Crimea? We know how it ends. Putin calls it “hybrid warfare.” It is an underhand technique which avoids conventional attacks and it involves militia not officially attached to a country’s force, ultimately justifying military intervention.

But, to return to the circle of autocrats, there is also China for the EU to worry about, for Turkey is actively looking into joining a Chinese-and Russian-led political, economic and military alliance known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as an alternative to joining the European Union, which has not been receptive to Turkey’s repeated bids for membership initiated way back in 1963.

France, Germany, and Belgium have long opposed Turkey’s accession into the EU. Erdogan’s reluctance to sign on to certain membership requirements, and his increasingly authoritarian leadership over Turkey, has also sparked concern among European leaders that he is not committed to a Western conception of human rights and civil liberties. The European Commission has warned Turkey that it is “backsliding in human rights and democracy” but Erdogan appears to merely scoff at the accusation with statements such as this: “From time to time, we see insults directed at myself, claims that there was no freedom of expression in Turkey, meanwhile, terrorists prance around in French, German and Belgian streets. This is what they understand of freedom.”

It is clear that Erdogan feels much more comfortable and at home among the authoritarian regimes of the SCO organization rather than facing the scrutiny and criticism of the EU. He knows full well that even just threatening to join the Shanghai bloc would rattle the West and “considerably broaden Turkey’s room to maneuver” as Erdogan himself has declared.

If Turkey were to actually join the SCO, it would be viewed as a rejection of the Western alliance, and make it incredibly difficult to include Turkey in any type of high-level strategic dialogue, given concerns about Russian expansionism. But it remains unclear, even to Erdogan, whether a closer alliance with Russia and China would benefit Turkey politically or economically. Erdogan has made those overtures toward Russia and China before but they failed to materialize. It may simply be a ploy to gain concessions and access to the EU which so far has been denied him. He wants the EU to be more forthcoming, especially since he has consented to help stem the flow of refugees trying to enter Europe. In some way Erdogan has already been successful. Over the summer, the EU agreed to pay Turkey €3 billion — and German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to speed up Turkey’s EU bid — if it pledged to harbor the vast amount of refugees and migrants seeking asylum in Europe.

Turkey’s possible entry into the SCO would also complicate its relationship with NATO. In theory, SCO membership would not require Turkey’s exit from NATO, but in practice, however, it would severely strain Turkey’s ties with other NATO members. Erdogan is reassuring in this respect. He told CBS that “Turkey is moving in the same direction with NATO that we have always done.” But at the same time Putin is making sure that the strains in the transatlantic alliance continue, for he knows that as a rogue and dysfunctional NATO ally, Turkey is a great advantage to Moscow’s devious policy of divide and conquer.

What his relationship to Trump and an America that is no longer seen as a stabilizer in NATO but a destabilizer, turns out to be, remains to be seen. The omens, however, are not good and the danger of a Third World War persist in a global atmosphere that has still to learn that a tone of cooperation is much more desirable than one of domination and competition; that social Darwinism will only insure that our planet becomes a social jungle with winners and losers. In the end, we all lose. We in the West ought to hope for the best but prepare for the worst that may be coming. Let those who have ears, let them hear.

About the author:
*Emanuel L. Paparella, Ph.D. has earned a Ph.D. in Italian Humanism, with a dissertation on the philosopher of history Giambattista Vico, from Yale University. He is a scholar interested in current relevant philosophical, political and cultural issues; the author of numerous essays and books on the EU cultural identity among which A New Europe in search of its Soul, and Europa: An Idea and a Journey. Presently he teaches philosophy and humanities at Barry University, Miami, Florida. He is a prolific writer and has written hundreds of essays for both traditional academic and on-line magazines among which Metanexus and Ovi. One of his current works in progress is a book dealing with the issue of cultural identity within the phenomenon of “the neo-immigrant” exhibited by an international global economy strong on positivism and utilitarianism and weak on humanism and ideals.

Source:
This article appeared at Modern Diplomacy

According to the national accounting data for the third quarter of the year published by the INE [National Statistics Institute], the Spanish economy is maintaining strong growth and a robust rate of job creation.

The quarter-on-quarter rate of growth stands at 0.7% and the year-on-year rate at 3.2%. This is twice the average posted by the countries in the Eurozone. So far this year, average growth stands at 3.3%, which means the target set for the year is guaranteed to be met. The contribution to growth from domestic and overseas demand is more even due to faster growth in exports than in imports. Job creation stands at 2.9% on a year ago, 0.1% higher than in the previous quarter. This translates into 499,000 new full-time equivalent jobs.

The third quarter of this year was the twelfth straight quarter of growth in the Spanish economy and the eleventh straight quarter of job creation. Since coming out of recession in late 2013, the Spanish economy has accelerated its growth rate to stand at around 3%. The same can also be said of the job creation rate. These results show that recovery by the Spanish economy is consolidating and mean that by the second quarter of next year, income levels will assuredly have recovered to the same levels as before the crisis and that the country is well on its way towards reaching the target of 20 million people in work.

The year-on-year growth rate posted in the third quarter is 0.2% lower than that posted in the previous quarter due to a lesser contribution from domestic demand (2.6 percentage points, 0.3% less than in the previous quarter). In contrast, overseas demand contributes 0.6% to GDP growth, 0.1% more than in the previous quarter. This is the second straight positive contribution from overseas demand following three negative quarters.

Within domestic demand, household consumption is up by 2.8%, 0.4% less than in the previous quarter. In turn, investment is up by half a point less, at 3.1%. In any case, these are high rates of growth and maintain domestic demand as the driving force of the economy, although more balanced by the foreign trade sector. Within the latter, exports are up by 2.8%. This is a faster rate of growth than that posted by imports, at 0.9%.

Full-time equivalent employment rose by 0.1% in the third quarter, both in year-on-year terms and in quarter-on-quarter terms, with rates of 2.9% and 0.8%, respectively. 136,100 equivalent jobs were created in the quarter, with almost half a million created over the last 12 months. The total number of hours worked rose by 2.5% in the third quarter of the year when compared with the same period of 2015, as was the case in the previous quarter, and the number of hours per worker fell by 0.4% year-on-year, compared with a decline of 0.2% in the previous quarter.

As a consequence of the change in GDP and employment, productivity per employee decelerated by 0.4% year-on-year, to 0.2%. Remuneration per salaried employee rose by 0.1% on the third quarter of 2015, 0.2% less than in the second quarter, resulting in a 0.1% year-on-year decrease in unit labour costs compared with a 0.3% decrease in the previous quarter.

Major earthquakes – magnitude 8.5 and stronger — occur where faults are mostly flat, say University of Oregon and French geologists. Curvier faults, they report in the journal Science, are less likely to experience earthquakes exceeding that strength.

Large earthquakes, known as mega-quakes, were long thought to be possible only at the boundary between fast converging, young tectonic plates until two giant earthquakes — the magnitude 9.4 quake in Indonesia in 2004 and the 9.0 quake in Japan in 2011 — disconfirmed the theory.

Since then giant earthquakes have been thought to be possible on any large fault. In the new paper UO researchers show that the maximum size of earthquakes may be controlled by another parameter: the fault curvature.

“The way people in the science community think about earthquakes is that some fault areas resist failure more than others, and when they break they generate large earthquakes,” said lead author Quentin Bletery, a postdoctoral researcher at the UO. “The reason they resist failure longer is often debated. I thought variations in fault geometry could be responsible, so I looked for changes in the slope of the major subduction faults of the world.”

Bletery had arrived at the UO with the idea that geometry could provide clues, based on his doctoral work at the Universite Nice — Sophia Antipolis. He developed a mechanical model to study his theory in collaboration with UO co-authors Amanda Thomas, Alan Rempel and Leif Karlstrom, all in the Department of Earth Sciences.

For the National Science Foundation-supported research, Bletery examined the geometry of subduction faults around the world to find the slope gradients, not the steepness of dipping itself, but its variations.

“I calculated the gradient of the slope (or curvature) curvature along the main faults and compared it with the distribution of very large earthquakes that happened in the past,” he said. “What I found is the opposite of what I expected: Very large earthquakes occur on fault areas where the slope is the most regular, or flat.”

The Cascadia fault, which last experienced a mega-quake in 1700, lies along such a flat region, Rempel and Thomas said.

“Earthquakes like the one that happened in Sumatra are mind-bogglingly large,” Thomas said. “The rupture was 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) long. When Cascadia goes, it could be 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) if it ruptures completely.”

A key aspect is that rupture thresholds are more heterogeneous along curved faults, therefore ruptures distances are restricted by portions of curvy sections that are not ready to fail. The rupture threshold is more homogeneous along flat faults, allowing larger fault areas to rupture simultaneously, the researchers said.

“The correlation of the curvatures to mega-quakes is strong,” Thomas said. “The data don’t lie.”

Based on the average curvature inside the giant earthquake rupture areas, the researchers concluded that the likelihood that mega-earthquakes are linked to fault curvatures is more than 99 percent.

The discovery is not expected to have direct impact on the ability of scientists to predict when an earthquake will occur, Thomas said.

“Instead, our findings backstop the idea that if you are at a location that hasn’t had evidence for large earthquakes in the past and your location is on a curvy plate, then maybe mega-quake will never happen,” Rempel said. “Not all subduction zones can have really large earthquakes is the implication of this study.”

That’s not to say a 7.5 quake can’t cause significant damage, Thomas said. “The next step in the research is asking why having a flat plate is more amenable to a large earthquake than a curvy plate,” she said. The information eventually, she said, could lead to improved hazard maps for earthquake-prone areas around the world.

By Aisha Fareed

The General Authority for Sports and Princess Nora bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) signed a memorandum of cooperation to activate sports facilities with a view to promoting healthy lifestyles.

The pact was signed in the presence of Princess Reema bint Bandar of the General Authority for Sports and PNU Rector Huda Al-Ameel.

Signing this agreement with Princess Nora University, which is considered one of the biggest women’s universities in the world in terms of its sports facilities, will contribute to boosting student involvement in sports and making them aware of its importance for their bodies.

The agreement forms part of a project of General Authority for Sports and the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee to raise the scale of community participation in sports from 13 percent to 40 percent by the year 2030 as a part of Vision 2030.

Princess Reema, who became the first Saudi woman to be appointed as the president’s undersecretary for the female section (Rank 15) at the General Authority for Sports on Aug. 1, expressed her pleasure in signing the memorandum, which embodies cooperation between government agencies to contribute to spreading awareness of the importance of sports for the Saudi community.

She said society needs to spread this culture and promote it. “I am so proud of seeing PNU’s huge potentials and its facilities, as well as the motivational halls provided for everyone,” she said.

She reiterated that the community is in crucial need for spreading and promoting a sports culture.

The entertainment center for PNU’s students started operating in 2014 under the supervision of a Korean training group, located on 200,000 square meters, with the capacity to accommodate 4,600 students.

Speaking to Arab News, Lina Al-Maeena expressed her excitement about this cooperation, saying it is a very wise and historic step as the facilities at PNU are outstanding. “We are talking about a multi-sport [facility]; it has basketball, football fields and numerous different sports; and as an educational institution is one of the biggest universities in the Kingdom in terms of space.”

“The General Authority for Sports and the Saudi Olympic Committee are very active in promoting and raising awareness about women’s sport. There is this hashtag #Health_Sportive_Society, which highlights the importance of the association for health and sports, because some people have a very limited perspective in how they view sports as competitive. But in reality, it should be a lifestyle, and this is what the General Authority for Sports, PNU, the Saudi Olympic Committee and Princess Reema are trying to do. So far, Princess Reema is doing a fantastic job,” she added.

The facilities include a number of sports halls and a stadium, in addition to an Olympic-class swimming pool that is available all weekdays. These halls include basketball, volleyball, aerobics, hiking, bicycles, as well as weight loss exercises, full-body exercises and a variety of other sports.