The Moscow Center for Economic and Political Reforms has released a report showing that Russia now is “a country of dying villages,” one in which in predominantly ethnic Russian areas one in five villages have no residents and in which by 2023 there will be no hospitals and by 2034 no schools.

“Only in the period between the 2002 and 2010 census,” the report says, “the number of villages without any people grew by more than 6,000,” and declines in the remaining villages were so great that “in more than half of all rural population points now live from one to 100 people.”

Drawing on official statistics, sociological studies and its own research, the Center in its 39-page report paints a depressing picture of rural Russia, one that has long been in decline but whose future appears likely to be even bleaker than it has been in the recent past (cepr.su/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Россия-страна-умирающих-деревень.pdf).

Among the most obvious measures of this decline and one of the drivers pointing to the demise of the Russian village in the future is the collapse of infrastructure. Since 2000 alone, the number of schools in rural Russia has fallen from 45,100 in 2000 to 25,900 in 2014, the number of hospitals from 4300 to 1060 and the number of clinics from 8400 to 3060.

That suggests that there will not be any rural hospitals by 2023 or any rural schools and polyclinics by the early 2030s. And their closings both reflect and will seriously accelerate the flight of population from the rural parts of the country to the cities, a flight already being driven by economic and social problems in the villages.

“The main causes” for the decline in the rural population lie in the lower standard of living and higher unemployment and crime there. Moreover, the report notes, prices in villages are higher than in cities because of distribution and transportation difficulties even though incomes are much lower.

Communal services in Russian villages are much worse than in the cities. “Only 57 percent of rural housing has a connection to water,” and “only 33 percent” have hot water at any time of the year. Moreover, only 54.7 percent have potable drinking water, and only five percent have indoor plumbing, a figure that has remained unchanged since 1995.

Not surprisingly, those who can leave for the cities are doing so; but that trend has been accelerated by Russian government policies in recent years, the Center concludes; and all proposed means of retaining population in the rural areas has proved to be empty. To be successful, the country would have to spend vast sums it currently doesn’t have.

Urbanization and the hollowing out of rural areas is a worldwide one, but in few developed countries is the gap between the rural world and the urban one as great as it is in Russia and in few of them has the government done as little to try to ensure that rural residents are left so far behind.

Time flows, time flies, time stands still. All these expressions show just how highly variable, depending on multiple factors, our perception of the passage of time can be. How is this subjective experience embodied in the human brain? Scientists in Portugal have begun to unravel this fundamental question.

A team of neuroscientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, has discovered that the activity of certain neurons in a deep region of the mouse brain can be manipulated to induce the animal to under- or overestimate the duration of a fixed time interval. In other words, they have, for the first time, identified neural circuitry that modulates judgments of elapsed time — at least in the mouse brain.

These results, which have now been published in the journal Science by Joe Paton, principal investigator of the Learning Lab, PhD student Sofia Soares and post-doc Bassam Atallah, offer a neurobiological answer to the long-standing question of how the brain produces such variable estimates of time. And not only that: they may also help to explain why time seems to fly when we are having fun, or to endlessly stretch when we are bored.

The group has been studying the neuroscience of how duration is judged for a number of years now, as part of a larger interest in understanding how the brain learns to link causes with effects even over extended over time periods. However, never has the work felt so personally relevant. Recently, two of Paton’s friends were in a serious accident. “The few hours between when we knew about the accident, and when we knew that they would be ok… felt like weeks. In retrospect, I wonder what role these neurons we have been studying might have played in that illusion.”

The passing of time seems such an elusive concept that studying it from the neurobiological point of view might appear short of impossible. Unlike vision or audition, time judgement is not can’t be traced back to a sense organ like the eye or the ear, Paton explained, making its neural underpinnings all the more difficult to pinpoint.

But the challenge with time goes deeper than this: the objective existence of time itself and its flow, which we so unequivocally exists for each and every one of us, has actually been questioned by some theoretical physicists. And yet, the ability to estimate duration is obviously crucial for any animal’s survival: for example, imagine an rabbit feeding in open terrain. The more it lingers, the greater the chances that a predator might sneak up on it.

“Timing is important for extracting information from the environment and deciding when to expect something to happen or when to engage or disengage from an action,” said Paton.

So no wonder we all feel it… But what in the brain could be generating this vital, subjective experience?

To unravel the neurobiology of this inner and universal perception, the team had an idea of where to look. Specifically, they were interested in studying certain dopamine-releasing neurons (dopamine is one of the brain’s chemical “messengers”, or neurotransmitters), in structure deep in the brain, called the substantia nigra pars compacta, that is known to play a role in temporal processing.

“Dopamine neurons are implicated in many of the psychological factors and disorders associated with changes in time estimation”, the authors write in Science. Factors such as motivation, attention, sensory change, novelty, and emotions like fear or feeling happy: “Give a fearful stimulus to a rat, and his dopamine release hits the floor,” Paton said. In humans, the destruction of the substantia nigra causes Parkinson’s disease, which is also known to impair the perception of time.

An additional reason for choosing to look more closely at these neurons was that they project onto another brain structure, called the striatum, which Paton’s group had thoroughly previously studied and found to carry the information to support timing behavior. And, in particular, they knew that removing the input of these dopamine neurons to the striatum “can cause a selective deficit in timing”, as they also explain in their paper.

Mice with great timing

The scientists started by training mice to perform a task that involved timing.

“Training animals to make categorical judgments in order to study perception is not new,” Paton added. It’s been done for decades in sensory modalities like vision, for example.

Such an approach has even been used to study timing.

“However, when we first set out to train mice to report their judgement of time, there was real doubt whether it could even be done!” said first author Atallah. To achieve this, the authors had to use modern molecular and genetic tools that allowed both measuring and manipulating dopamine neurons on a fast timescale. “Nobody had managed to do this with respect to the passage of time,” said Soares. “Up to now, there were many contradictory results regarding dopamine’s role in time perception”, she adds.

What did they do exactly? “We trained mice to estimate whether the duration of the interval between two tones was shorter or longer than 1.5 seconds,” Paton explained. “After months of training, they became pretty good at it.”

Mice indicate their choice but placing their snout at either a right (shorter) or left (longer) port. During the task, the interval between the tones was made to vary, and if the mice chose the right answer (they correctly estimated time), they were rewarded.

The second part of the work consisted in passively measuring signals that reflect the electrical activity of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta using a technique called fiber photometry, while mice performed the task.

Specifically, using genetic tools the neurons made to fluoresce when active, the team measured the intensity of the emitted light. Since the fluorescence “is an indicator of the electrical activity of a number of these neurons around the optical fiber tip, this allowed us to indirectly monitor the variation of those neurons’ activity during the task,” Paton explained. Using this technique, the scientists observed an increase in the neurons’ activity at the onset of both the first and the second tones. This suggested that the neurons might be effectively involved in the task. But more importantly, the team discovered that the increase of neural activity itself did not always have the same amplitude – and this was the clue they needed.

“What we saw was that the bigger the increase in neural activity [at the first and the second tone], the more the animals tended to underestimate the duration of the interval,” said Soares. “And the smaller the increase, the more the animal overestimated duration.”

The conditions under which the dopamine neuron response predicted judgments suggested that electrical activity in these cells was actually strongly correlated with the animals’ judgement of the passage of time.

Causal link

At this point, the team wanted to know whether they had found a mere correlation between these neurons’ activity and the way the brain keeps track of time, or a causal link between the two. Could the neurons’ activity actually induce the alterations in judgment of elapsed time observed in the mice?

“The neurons seemed to reflect information about the estimation of duration by the animals. But might they actually be controlling their sense of time?,” asked Paton.

To address this, they performed a third round of experiments, by taking advantage of a technique called optogenetics, where they used light to manipulate (stimulate or silence) these neurons in a specific and fast way in order to see the impact on the animals’ behavior during the task.

“We found that if we stimulated the neurons, the mice tended to underestimate duration, and if we silenced them, they tended to overestimate it,” Paton said. “This result, together with the naturally occurring signals we observed in the previous experiments, demonstrate that the activity of these neurons was sufficient to alter the way the animals judged the passage of time. This was the major result of our study.”

Can it be extrapolated to humans? Do we have the same type of neurons, do they control the way we perceive duration, and could they be manipulated to alter our subjective experience of the passage of time? How might this effect contribute to symptoms of attention deficit disorder or substance addiction that are thought to involve dysfunction of the dopaminergic system? According to the authors, it is very likely that a similar circuit is at work in the human brain. But the problem is, warns Paton, that what they now measured in mice cannot be said to be a percept, because the animals’ cannot tell us what they felt.

“When we study animals, the only thing we can measure is the animal’s behavior. But we are never sure of what they perceive,” he said. “We interpret this as ‘a subjective experience of the animal’, but it’s no more than an interpretation. And that’s the best we can do.”

Even so, Paton likes to “wildly speculate”, as he calls it. “There’s this cliché about young lovers staying up all night talking, and not feeling time go by.” It might be those dopamine neurons at work shrinking time in a spectacular way.

A peculiar class of meteorites has offered scientists new clues about when the planet Jupiter took shape and wandered through the solar system.

Scientists have theorized for years now that Jupiter probably was not always in its current orbit, which is about five astronomical units from the sun (Earth’s distance from the sun is one astronomical unit). One line of evidence suggesting a Jovian migration deals with the size of Mars. Mars is much smaller than planetary accretion models predict. One explanation for that is that Jupiter once orbited much closer to the sun than it does now. During that time, it would have swept up much of the material needed to create supersized Mars.

But while most scientists agree that giant planets migrate, the timing of Jupiter’s formation and migration has been a mystery. That’s where the meteorites come in.

Meteorites known as CB chondrites were formed as objects in the early solar system–most likely in the present-day asteroid belt–slammed into each other with incredible speed. This new study, published in the journal Science Advances, used computer simulations to show that Jupiter’s immense gravity would have provided the right conditions for these hypervelocity impacts to occur. That in turn suggests that Jupiter was near its current size and sitting somewhere near the asteroid belt when the CB chondrules were formed, which was about 5 million years after formation of the first solar system solids.

“We show that Jupiter would have stirred up the asteroid belt enough to produce the high-impact velocities necessary to form these CB chondrites,” said Brandon Johnson, a planetary scientist at Brown University who led the research. “These meteorites represent the first time the solar system felt the awesome power of Jupiter.”

Strange structures

Chondrites are a class of meteorites made up of chondrules, tiny spheres of previously molten material, and are among the most common meteorites found on Earth. The CB chondrites are a relatively rare subtype that have long fascinated meteoriticists.

Part of what makes the CB chondrites so interesting is that their chondrules all date back to a very narrow window of time in the early solar system. “The chondrules in other meteorites give us a range of different ages,” Johnson said. “But those in the CB chondrites all date back to this brief period 5 million years after the first solar system solids.”

But to Johnson, who studies impact dynamics, there is something else interesting about CB chondrites: They contain metallic grains that appear to have been condensed directly from vaporized iron.

“Vaporizing iron requires really high-velocity impacts,” Johnson said. “You need to have an impact speed of around 20 kilometers per second to even begin to vaporize iron, but traditional computer models of the early solar system only produce impact speeds of around 12 kilometers per second at the time when the CB chondrites were formed.”

So Johnson worked with Kevin Walsh of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to generate new computer models of the chondrule-forming period–models that include the presence of Jupiter near the present-day position of the asteroid belt.

Gravity boost

Big planets generate lots of gravity, which can slingshot nearby objects at high speeds. NASA often takes advantage of this dynamic, swinging spacecraft around planets to generate velocity.

Walsh and Johnson included in their simulations a scenario of Jupiter’s formation and migration considered likely by many planetary scientists. The scenario, known as the Grand Tack (a term taken from sailing), suggests that Jupiter formed somewhere in the outer solar system. But as it accreted its thick atmosphere, it changed the distribution of mass in the gassy solar nebula surrounding it. That change in mass density caused the planet to migrate, moving inward toward the sun to about where the asteroid belt is today. Later, the formation of Saturn created a gravitational tug that pulled both planets back out to where they are today.

“When we include the Grand Tack in our model at the time the CB chondrites formed, we get a huge spike in impact velocities in the asteroid belt,” Walsh said. “The speeds generated in our models are easily fast enough to explain the vaporized iron in CB chondrites.”

The most extreme collision in the model was an object with a 90-kilometer diameter slamming into a 300-kilometer body at a speed of around 33 kilometers per second. Such a collision would have vaporized 30 to 60 percent of the larger body’s iron core, providing ample material for CB chondrites.

The models also show that the increase in impact velocities would have been short-lived, lasting only about 500,000 years or so (a blink of an eye on the cosmic timescale). That short timescale allowed the researchers to conclude that Jupiter formed and migrated at roughly the same time the CB chondrites formed.

The researchers say that while the study is strong evidence for the Grand Tack migration scenario, it doesn’t necessarily preclude other migration scenarios. “It’s possible that Jupiter formed closer to the sun and then migrated outward, rather than the in then out migration of the Grand Tack,” Johnson said.

Whatever the scenario, the study provides strong constraints on the timing of Jupiter’s presence in the inner solar system.

“In retrospect, it seems obvious that you would need something like Jupiter to stir the asteroid belt up this much,” Johnson said. “We just needed to create these models and calculate the impact speeds to connect the dots.”

By Matt Hadro

More than 10 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in two separate cases that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to juveniles or the intellectually disabled.

But today, over a decade later, many states still execute inmates with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

And Catholic advocates say the rules need to change.

“As Catholics we are called to uphold the dignity of all life, and supporting a Severe Mental Illness exemption bill is a vital part of our call to live where justice and mercy meet,” said Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network. The group advocates for an end to the use of capital punishment.

The death penalty for the severely mentally ill “does not further the retributive goals of the punishment, as this population simply does not have the requisite moral culpability,” a new report by the American Bar Association on the death penalty stated.

“Their illnesses can impair the ability to interpret reality accurately, comprehend fully the consequences of their actions, and control their actions.”

Two years ago, a federal court halted at the last minute the execution of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia. Advocates are citing his case in favor of a death penalty ban for the severely mentally ill.

Scott Pinetti, the man at the center of the Texas case, killed his in-laws in 1992 and was sentenced to death in 1995.

Before his crime, he had been hospitalized 14 times in 11 years for symptoms of mental illness. Pinetti was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and suffered from hallucinations. At his trial, he dressed in a purple cowboy outfit and attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus Christ. Yet he testified in court against the wishes of his attorney, and the jury sentenced him to death.

A federal appeals court granted a temporary halt to his scheduled execution in 2014, just hours before it was to take place. Texas’ Catholic bishops approved of the move and restated their opposition to his execution.

“The Texas Bishops have long taught about the immorality of the death penalty and were particularly vocal seeking mercy for Panetti, who has been diagnosed by several doctors as suffering from severe mental illness,” they stated, adding that “the death penalty in his case would violate the constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.”

Yet despite prohibitions on the execution of juveniles and persons with Intellectual Disability (formerly referred to as mental retardation), decided by the Supreme Court in 2002 and 2005 respectively, many states that use the death penalty have no specific prohibition on the its use on persons who had severe mental illness at the time of their crime.

Thus, controversial executions of people with evidence of mental illness continue. For instance, in 2015 Georgia executed Andrew Brannan, a Vietnam War veteran whose lawyers said was ruled 100 percent disabled with PTSD by the Department of Veterans Affairs and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before he shot and killed a police officer.

A coalition of groups, including the Catholic Mobilizing Network, the American Bar Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and other religious and mental health groups have been pushing for this legal protection.

Several states, including Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina, are “expected to consider severe mental illness exemptions” to their death penalty law next year, said Hilarie Bass, president-elect of the American Bar Association. These legislative proposals are bipartisan, she added, speaking at a keynote luncheon on severe mental illness and the death penalty at Georgetown University.

Getting into the details

What might this prohibition look like and why is it so important to this coalition?

In its new report, the American Bar Association quoted from the American Psychological Association’s definition to clarify what mentally ill person might be exempt from the death penalty.

Someone with “severe mental illness” would have a specific diagnosis like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, would have had it for at least a year, and would have “comparatively severe impairment in major areas of functioning.”

Before a capital murder trial, the judge would need testimony “from a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist who would reevaluate the defendant and his or her health history,” Bass explained. Witnesses familiar with the defendant could give testimony for or against their claim of severe mental illness.

It would have to be clear that the judgment of the defendant would have been impaired at the time of their crime, and not just in the present moment.

And these exemptions “would not create a total defense for murder, or mean that the defendant would not be punished if found guilty,” Bass insisted, as someone committing a capital crime could still receive a life sentence without parole.

Severe mental illness like schizophrenia can clearly impair someone’s judgment to the extent that their guilt for a capital crime is reduced as it is for juvenile offenders and the Intellectually Disabled, Bass argued.

In those cases, she said, “our society considers both groups less morally culpable than the worst of the worst,” and “less able to appreciate the consequences of their actions, less able to participate fully in their defense, and more likely to be wrongfully convicted.”

Yet the same applies for persons with severe mental illness, she said. Someone could competently plot a crime yet be delusional while doing so – which was the case of Russell Weston, who drove from Illinois to Washington, D.C. and shot two Capitol Hill police officers in 1998.

According to the Washington Post, Weston afterward told a court-appointed psychologist that he had come to the Capitol seeking “the ruby satellite” which would protect citizens from diseases spread by cannibalism. He had also previously stayed 53 days in a mental hospital.

Calls for greater action

There are some ways that a defendant with mental illness can currently escape a death sentence. Juries can consider their mental health, they can plead insanity, they could be judged incompetent to stand trial, or be judged incompetent at the time of their execution.

However, these aren’t reliable methods of ensuring a just sentence, Bass said.

For one, a defendant with severe mental illness could be seriously impaired in court. “It can strongly affect defendants’ decision-making about their defense, leading them to refuse to cooperate with their attorneys or reject the presentation of any mitigating evidence related to their illness,” the American Bar Association noted in its report.

However, mental illness can also be an aggravating factor for the jury in someone’s sentence, “and it is worsened when a defendant has a bizarre or flat affect in the courtroom,” the report said. Juries can also “view people with mental illness as intrinsically dangerous,” thus bringing “a significant risk” that a death sentence may be imposed because of – not simply in spite of – a defendant’s mental illness.

The delusion that can haunt a person with severe mental illness is all the more reason why they should receive treatment – not the death penalty, advocates insist.

The U.S. bishops have advocated for the overall repeal of the death penalty, but also emphasized what they called particular abuses of it, in their 2000 statement on criminal justice reform, “Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration.”

“While government has an obligation to protect the community from those who become aggressive or violent because of mental illness, it also has a responsibility to see that the offender receives the proper treatment for his or her illness,” the bishops stated.

Mentally ill inmates need treatment for their condition and not just punishment, they said. “Far too often mental illness goes undiagnosed, and many in our prison system would do better in other settings more equipped to handle their particular needs.”

And one of the bishops’ recommendations was to push for a death penalty ban for the mentally ill: “In states that sanction the death penalty, join organizations that work to curtail its use (e.g., prohibit the execution of teenagers or the mentally ill) and those that call for its abolition.”

Catholic Mobilizing Network agrees that treatment and rehabilitation can be more effective ways of dealing with crime in cases where criminals are severely mentally ill.

Another reason why a death penalty exemption must be considered for them, the network added, is because such persons are overrepresented in the prison population and on death row. According to one estimate, around 20 percent of those on death row suffer from severe mental illness.

Ultimately, protecting those with serious mental disorders from the death penalty is part of Catholic practice, Clifton stressed, and “a vital part of our Church’s pro-life mission.”

By Behzad Khoshandam*

Relations between Iran and the United States under the new president, Donald Trump, will take shape under the influence of the logic, teachings, and requirements of global and regional systems of balance of powers.

To list some variables that play a significant role in determining the two sides’ relations at the current juncture, one could name political and ideological encounters, mutual historical hostilities, implementation of Iran’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 group of countries, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), impact of political and strategic structures of the two sides, as well as their regional behaviors and roles and the level of effectiveness of diplomacy and international institutions.

At present, the most important point is that whether recognition of the Iran exception will continue in US foreign policy under the country’s 45th president? The quality and outcome of recognizing this situation are also important.

The requirements for realizing the balance of powers have triggered a new period of Cold War since 2014, thus boosting the importance of geopolitics in strategic discussions. Under such conditions, Iran’s geopolitical and strategic importance and its position were promoted in the third millennium in a gradual manner and in the light of such developments as the war in Afghanistan in 2001, invasion of Iraq in 2003, and emergence of Arab Spring developments in 2011. In the meantime, the Iran exception was recognized by such an influential actor as the Obama-led US on the basis of his “change” motto and following global crises in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

There are complicated issues in world politics, which have made a compromise and some kind of deal among the United States, Russia, China and other influential European and Asian actors inevitable. Under these conditions, one of the most important issues will be the collection of security and strategic components of the United States’ Middle Eastern foreign policy under the Trump-led US as Washington tries to stabilize the system of strategic balance of powers, as well as its policies toward Iran and the region.

Based on its potentialities and its power to find allies and learn at international, regional and national levels, Iran will remain one of the challenging components and a partner to security and strategic architecture of the system of balance of strategic power in such fields as human rights, the peace process in the Middle East and the fight against radical groups. Every one of the aforesaid actors will try in accordance with their strategic and tactical needs to increase their share of the Iran pie. At the same time, due to its national power components, Iran in 2016 has acquired and legal characteristics, which make it a stabilizing force in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. As a result of these characteristics, real potentialities of this actor cannot be unilaterally used by any other actor.

Positions taken by President Trump during his election debates and in his election approaches strongly suggested that he and his foreign policy team deeply believed in Iran’s unique position and effective dynamism in the US foreign policy during the third millennium. Under these conditions, Trump’s two main characteristics, that is, unpredictability and pragmatism in the field of foreign policy, in addition to complexities of Iran’s domestic policies, will further complicate fears and hopes in Iran-US relations under Trump.

Other factors, which can be taken into account in this regard include, liberalism, American values, Iran’s regional rivals, Israel, Daesh, role of China, Russia and Asian order in addition to the impact of such important global institutions as the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, West’s missile defense system, the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and Iran’s regional role and possible direction of its regional policy.

According to historical and geopolitical experiences, the Iran exception will continue in US foreign policy under Trump. As a result, various scenarios of confrontation between American and Iranian interests and values are imaginable on the global chessboard in order to pave the way for the emerging and balancing world order.

Under present complicated conditions that govern global developments beyond 2016 on the basis of Trump’s leadership of US foreign policy, the Iran exception will remain an important and basic factor for the stabilization or continuation of security and geopolitical trends in Eurasia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Europe and other security complexes. Under these circumstances, strategic differences between these two actors will remain in place, but both the Iranian and American diplomacy and soft power will give birth to historic events in order to help them adapt to the emerging global and regional strategic balance and new retrenchments.

Without a doubt, these developments will be among the most important foreign policy developments under the 45th president of the United States, which will once more introduce Iran as an adaptive, consensus-seeking and exceptional model in US foreign policy during past few decades and even beyond Trump’s term in office.

* Behzad Khoshandam
Ph.D. in International Relations & Expert on International Issues

With Syria’s Assad on the verge of retaking Aleppo, and with it, regaining full control in the ongoing Syrian proxy war, we asked last week in “With Assad On Verge Of Historic Victory, Syrian Rebels Request A Ceasefire” how long before the US intervenes in an attempt to derail the sudden Syrian (and Russian) momentum. We got the answer this morning, when US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Saturday that the US is sending 200 additional military personnel to Syria to help drive Islamic State from its de facto capital of Raqqa.

Speaking in Bahrain at the Manama Dialogue conference on Middle East security, Carter said the 200, including special forces trainers, advisers, and explosive ordnance disposal teams, would join 300 US special forces already in Syria. “These uniquely skilled operators will join the 300 US special operations forces already in Syria, to continue organizing, training, equipping, and otherwise enabling capable, motivated, local forces to take the fight to ISIL,” Carter said (apparently with a striaght face) quoted by AP.

Three years ago Obama vowed that he would not put American boots on the ground in Syria.

President Obama: “I will not put American boots on the ground in #Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan.”

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 11, 2013

Carter added that “by combining our capabilities with those of our local partners, we’ve been squeezing ISIL by applying simultaneous pressure from all sides and across domains, through a series of deliberate actions to continue to build momentum.”

A hint of US plans to intervene came earlier in the week, when on Thursday, President Obama unexpectedly granted a waiver for restrictions on the delivery of military aid to “foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals,” if those forces are supporting the US’ alleged counter-terrorism efforts in Syria.

The decision was promptly slammed by Syria on Saturday, whose Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that “the lifting of the ban on arms supplies to Syria by US President Barack Obama is another evidence of Washington’s continuing support for terrorism, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.”

“The United States has provided a new evidence of its notorious role in support for terrorism in Syria by taking the decision to lift the ban on supplying arms to terrorist groups,” the ministry added.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov likewise warned that “the prospect of terrorists coming into possession of those weapons, including MANPADs (man-portable anti-air missiles), “poses a serious threat not only for the region, but the entire world,” adding that the US’ decision will “definitely” create a risk for the Russian Air Force.

However, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the decision to ease restrictions on military aid for foreign forces and other fighters supporting the US in Syria is unlikely to affect the situation in eastern Aleppo. Moscow is looking for a solution that involves as few casualties as possible, Lavrov stressed, speaking at an OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg.

“I think everyone understands that the militants in east Aleppo are agonizing. We don’t want to support those who would gladly finish off those militants at any cost without any talks. We are ready to solve these problems in a way that would spare us additional casualties and destruction,” he noted.

That said, in light of the recent significant gains by the Syria regime and Russian forces in Syria while the US State Department was rocked by a post-election power and decision vacuum, it would take a full blown US ground offensive against Assad to prevent what now an almost certain defeat of the “Syrian rebels” in the coming weeks and months, thereby eliminating the biggest source of geopolitical instability in the middle east as life in Syria slowly returns to normal.

By Sanjay Badri-Maharaj

By Rajeesh Kumar

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debated Security Council (SC) reform on November 7, 2016. Reports note that many states favoured India’s candidature for permanent membership and demanded that an updated Security Council reflect the far reaching changes the world has witnessed since the formation of the United Nations in 1945.1 This article examines whether the new debate on reforming the Security Council generates any hope for India’s membership in the world body. The first part of the article discusses issues related to UNSC reforms, demands, proposals, challenges, and prospects. The second part focuses on India’s aspiration, scenarios and possible challenges to India’s bid.

UNSC Reforms: Demands and Proposals

During the 71 year history of the UN, Security Council reform has been a much demanded and debated subject. It is widely accepted that the existing membership and functioning of the UNSC reflects the realities of a bygone era. Global politics has changed a lot – as regards its power, structure, rules, and norms since the formation of the UN. The world has witnessed a redistribution of power and emergence of new power centres, along with a transformation from the era of colonialism to that of post-colonial independent states. However, as a global institution to promote international peace and security, the UNSC has not responded to these changes due to many reasons. The only change hitherto has been an increase in the number of non-permanent members in the UNSC from six to ten, that too as far back as 1965.

In 1992, a promising reform move was initiated in the form of General Assembly Resolution 67/62, which highlighted the three major criticisms raised as regards the Council — lack of equitable representation, unresponsiveness towards new political realities and domination of Western states.2 In 1993, General Assembly resolution 48/26 established an Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) to discuss SC reform.3 Most reform proposals revolved around the five core issues of “membership categories, the question of the veto held by the five permanent members, regional representation, the size of an enlarged Council, and Council working methods.4 However, even after negotiations for more than two decades, there exists a huge difference of opinion among members on these issues.

The major coalitions for SC reforms include the G-4 (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan), the L.69 (Group of 42 developing countries), the Uniting for Consensus (UfC) (Group of 12 countries), the African Group (Coalition of 54 African countries) and P5 Countries (Britain, China, France, Russia and United States). G-4 is the leading contender for permanent membership in the Council, as they seek four permanent seats for themselves, and one more seat for the African continent. The coalition demands expansion of both categories of membership — permanent and non-permanent – so as to make the Council more representative of the new realities in the global political landscape.5 The L.69 comprises 42 countries from Africa, Asia, Caribbean, South America and Pacific — and includes three of the four G-4 members (Brazil, India and South Africa). Similar to the G-4, L.69 also argues for reform as a way towards greater accountability, transparency, representation and legitimacy.6

The African Group, comprising 54 states from five regions of the continent, is another prominent advocate of reform. The coalition reflects the Ezulwini Consensus, the official position of the African Union, which demands two permanent seats with veto power for the African continent. In addition to these four constellations, some other coalitions have also proposed reforms in accordance with their own interests and preferences. The Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group led by Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Pakistan, and South Korea, the Arab Group comprised of members of the Arab League and 10 countries from Africa, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and Accountability, Coherence, and Transparency (ACT), a cross-regional grouping of 27 countries, are the other leading constellations that have proposed reforms consistent with their particular interests and preferences.

Since the adoption of the two GA resolutions related to Security Council reforms in 1992 and 1993, and the inception of the OEWG in 1993, the question of reform has made little progress. The OEWG, which came out with its report in 1995, the formation of a Working Group to Inter-Governmental Negotiation (IGN) in 2009, and the Group of Friends on Security Council Reform have been some of the developments towards Security Council reform hitherto. However, none of these formal and informal efforts were able to bring in either concrete institutional reform or create a broader consensus regarding the issues under debate.

India’s Aspiration: What would it take?

India’s quest for a permanent seat in the UNSC has a long history stretching back to two and a half decades. India was one of the leading countries of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), which initiated a draft resolution of 1992 in the General Assembly on equitable representation in the Council. Since then, several formal and informal negotiations have been held both within and outside the UN to address the issue. These negotiations indicated the necessity and urgency of Council reform.

A careful reading of the report of the deliberations of the UNGA on November 7, 2016 would suggest that nothing has changed at the ground level; only the rhetoric of member states has been amplified. In a repeat of the scenario of past debates, two of the permanent members — the United States and Russia – inflexibly opposed any alteration to the existing veto system. The other two major powers — France and the United Kingdom — extended their support to reform that would keep alive the competence of the UN. China, as in the past, took an ambiguous position towards the expansion and reform of the Council.7

The debate witnessed a division of opinion among the P5 members, whose unanimous consent is a pre-requisite for any reform, particularly on the question of veto. For instance, Vladimir K. Safronkov, representing the Russian Federation, observed that Council reform was one of the most complex issues on the UN agenda since the approaches of the major players are highly divergent.8 He also noted that any proposal which would “infringe on the rights of current permanent members, including historic right to veto” was unacceptable.9 While Russia continues to back India’s claim for a permanent seat from among the G-4 countries, its strong opposition to changes in veto has generated an apprehension that it is now inclined to support India as a permanent member only without veto power. The US also opposed an expansion or alteration of the veto and demanded the consideration of aspiring members’ contribution to peace and security as a criterion for granting permanent seats in an expanded Council.10 Since the start of the reform initiatives in 1992, the majority of Chinese statements has contained identical phrasings. A sample of such statements includes the following: “Council reform should be carried out on the basis of broad consensus”; “A proposal that was acceptable to the overwhelming majority of Member States had not yet emerged”; and “No artificial deadline should be set”.11

Three among the five permanent members of the Security Council are still against Council reform that would entail a change in their present status. The possibility of changes in the positions of the US and Russia are unlikely since they are in a state of relative decline. Since it is their current status in the Council that provides them pre-eminence on issues related to international peace and security, they are not expected to support any move that reduces their say in global politics. It is unrealistic to think that China would give up its present privileged status in the UN, even as it seeks greater influence and presence in global politics as a rising power. Moreover, reading the text of the November 7 debate makes it clear that additional permanent seats with veto power is at best a distant possibility. The P5 are unlikely to approve the promotion of any states to permanent status due to the fact that such a change would eventually dilute their power. Therefore, for reform-seekers including India, there is nothing to rejoice in the recent UNGA debate.

Given the consistency of the P5’s positions in the past and the minimal progress towards reform during the last two decades, there are three possible scenarios regarding India’s quest for permanent membership in the Security Council.

First, India takes the leadership of reform calls and actively and relentlessly pushes other countries in that direction. Its latent power, remarkable economic growth, rapidly increasing defence capabilities, status as a nuclear weapons power, and contributions to UN peacekeeping all give it the right and privilege to assume such a responsibility. However, looking at India’s engagements with the UN combined with its growing indifference towards multilateralism in the recent past, such a development is unlikely. Beyond the rhetorical statements of leaders and officials, it is still not clear whether a permanent seat in the Council is a priority for India. Many of the policy makers in the country still entertain doubts about the wisdom of India seeking greater space in an institution that has lost its legitimacy. In this situation, it is unrealistic to think that India would take the responsibility of patching the holes of the UN.

The second option is to push for Security Council reform without changing the current status of veto power. Since having a seat without veto is almost similar to not having a place in the Council, the likelihood of such a move from India is even less.

The final possible scenario is for India to accept the fact that, given the current pace and momentum, Security Council reform is never going to happen and to consequently search for alternatives to push the agenda of emerging powers. Given the miserable fate of such alternatives, for example, BRICS and its uncertain future, this option would also be a great gamble. BRICS was formed as a political and economic alternative to the Western-dominated architecture of global governance and to drive an emerging power agenda in such institutions. Nonetheless, no coherent action has been taken by BRICS countries in this regard. Such inaction raises questions about the ability of the emerging powers to either pilot multilateral institutions or push for reforms in the current global governance system.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/india-unsc–bid_rkumar_081216

1. See Press Release of General Assembly Debates on Security Council Reform, available at http://www.un.org/press/en/2016/ga11854.doc.htm
2. See UN Doc. A/RES/47/62, ‘Question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council’, December 11, 1992, at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/47/a47r062.htm.
3. UN Doc. A/RES/48/26, ‘Through the resolution Assembly recalled its resolution 47/62 and formed an Open-ended Working Group to consider all aspects of Security Council expansion’, December 3, 1993, at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/a48r026.htm
4. Press Release of General Assembly Debates on Security Council Reform, n. 1.
5. C.S.R. Murthy, ‘UNSC Reforms: A Perspective’, in Ruchita Beri and Arpita Anant (eds.), United Nations Security Council Reform: Perspectives and Prospects, IDSA Monograph Series, No 38. (2014), p. 18.
6. Statement of Ambassador Menissa Rambally, Permanent Representative of Saint Lucia to the United Nations, on behalf of the L.69 Group on September 14, 2015; Also see her statement on behalf of the L.69 Group on November 7, 2016, n. 1; For more details on L.69 reform proposal, See UN Doc. A/61/L.69/Rev.1, September 14, 2007.
7. See Note 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Statement of Vladmir Safronkov, Representative of Russian federation to the UN General Assembly on November 7, 2016; Ibid.
10. See the statement of Michele J. Sison, US Deputy Representative to the UN General Assembly on November 7, 2016, Ibid.
11. See Statements of Chinese representatives to UN, Liu Zhenmin at General Assembly meeting on July 20, 2006, at http://www.un.org/press/en/2006/ga10484.doc.htm and Liu Jieyi on November 7, 2016, n. 1.

What bothers me is not that we are unable to find the solution to our problems, what bothers me more is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware of the real structural issues that their attempts to sort out the tangential issues will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism, militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty, backwardness and disenfranchisement.

Empirically speaking, if we take all other aggravating factors out: like poverty, backwardness, illiteracy, social injustice, disenfranchisement, conflict, instability, deliberate training and arming of certain militant groups by the regional and global players, and more importantly grievances against the duplicitous Western foreign policy, I don’t think that Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the likes would get the abundant supply of foot soldiers that they are getting now in the troubled regions of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Moreover, I do concede that the rallying call of “Jihad in the way of God” might have been one reason for the abundant supply of foot soldiers to the jihadists’ cause, but on an emotional level it is the self-serving and hypocritical Western interventionist policy in the energy-rich Middle East that adds fuel to the fire. When Muslims all over the Islamic countries see that their brothers-in-faith are dying in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan, on an emotional level they feel outraged and seek revenge and justice.

This emotional outrage, in my opinion, is a far more potent factor than the sterile rational argument of God’s supposed command to fight holy wars against the infidels. If we take all other contributing factors out of the equation, that I have mentioned in the second paragraph, I don’t think that Muslims are an “exceptional” variety of human beings who are hell-bent on killing the heretics all over the world.

Notwithstanding, it’s very easy to distinguish between the victims of structural injustices and the beneficiaries of the existing neocolonial economic order all over the world. But instead of using words that can be interpreted subjectively I’ll let the figures do the talking. Pakistan’s total GDP is only $270 billion and with a population of 200 million it amounts to a per capita income of only $1400. While the US’ GDP is $18 trillion and per capita income is well in excess of $50,000. Similarly the per capita income of most countries in the Western Europe is also around $40,000. That’s a difference of 40 to 50 TIMES between the incomes of Third World countries and the beneficiaries of neocolonialism, i.e. the Western powers.

Only the defense budget of the Pentagon is $600 billion, which is three times the size of Pakistan’s total GDP. A single multi-national corporation based in the Wall Street and other financial districts of the Western world owns assets in excess of $200 billion which is more than the total GDP of many developing economies. Examples of such business conglomerates are: Investment banks – JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, BNP Paribas; Oil majors – Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, RDS, Total, Vitol; Manufacturers – Apple, Microsoft and Google.

On top of that, semi-legit wealth from all over the world flows into the Western commercial and investment banks: in July 2014 the New York Post published a report that the Russian oligarchs have deposited $800 billion in the Western banks from 2002 to 2014, while the Chinese entrepreneurs have deposited $1.5 trillion in the Western financial institutions during the same period of time.

Moreover, in April this year the Saudi finance minister threatened that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow the Americans to sue the Saudi government in the US’ courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack. Bear in mind, however, that $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the US, if we add its investment in the Western Europe, and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investment in North America and Western Europe.

The first and foremost priority of the Western powers is to save their corporate empire, and especially their financial institutions, from collapsing; everything else like eliminating terrorism, promoting democracy and “the responsibility to protect” are merely arranged side shows to justify their interventionist foreign policy, especially in the energy-rich Middle East.

Additionally, the irony is that the neoliberal dupes of the mainstream media justify and validate the unfair practices of the neocolonial powers and hold the victims of structural injustices responsible for their misfortunes. If a Third World’s laborer has been forced to live on less than $5 a day and a corporate executive sits on top of trillions of dollars of business empire in the Wall Street, neoliberals don’t find anything wrong with this travesty.

Regardless, we need to understand that how does a neoliberal mindset is structured? As we know that mass education programs and mass media engender mass ideologies. We like to believe that we are free to think, but as a matter of fact human beings don’t exist in vacuums; the human mind is always socially constituted and socially situated.

Thus, our narratives aren’t really “our” narratives. These narratives of injustice and inequality have been constructed for the public consumption by the corporate media, which is nothing more than the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments and their business interests.

The media is our eyes and ears through which we get all the inputs and it is also our brain through which we interpret raw data. If the media keeps mum over the vital structural injustices and blows the isolated incidents of injustice and violence out of proportions then we are likely to forget all about the former and focus all of our energies on the tangential issues which the media portrays as the “real” ones.

Monopoly capitalism and the global neocolonial political and economic order are the real issues, while Islamic radicalism and terrorism are the secondary issues which are itself an adverse reaction to the former. This is how the mainstream media constructs artificial narratives and dupes its audience into believing the absurd: during the Cold War it created the “Red Scare” and told its audience that communism is an existential threat to the free world and the Western way of life. Its audience willingly bought this narrative.

Then the West and its regional collaborators financed, trained and armed the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” and used them as proxies against the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they declared the former “freedom fighters” to be terrorists and another existential threat to the “free world” and the Western way of life. Its gullible audience again bought this narrative.

And finally, during the Libyan and Syrian proxy wars the former terrorists once again became freedom fighters – albeit in a more nuanced manner, this time around the corporate media sells them as “moderate rebels.” And the naive audience of the mainstream media is once again willing to buy this narrative. It really stretches the limit of human credulity that how easy it has been for the mainstream media to sell fake news and false narratives to its uncritical audience.

By Ivan Angelovski and Lawrence Marzouk

Mohammed Dahlan, the powerful arch-rival to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, will again face a court in Palestine over allegations of embezzling $18 million of public money from his homeland.

In a written statement to BIRN, Abbas’s office said the anti-corruption court in Ramallah, West Bank, had reopened the trial and scheduled a session on December 14 “to review the criminal case against Dahlan”.

Dahlan has always maintained his innocence, claiming he is the victim of political persecution. His Parisian lawyer, Sevag Torossian, previously told BIRN that the corruption allegations against his client amounted to “accounting issues”.

But he did not respond to our requests for comment on the latest development and BIRN was unable to contact Dahlan directly.

Dahlan, who has held Montenegrin citizenship since 2010 and Serbian citizenship since 2013, is accused of embezzling $18 million of public money in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority, the PA.

According to the indictment, the money was placed in private accounts controlled by Dahlan who was the security chief of the PA at that time, before being withdrawn in cash by his associates.

The prosecution claims Dahlan has offered no evidence of where the money was spent.

The case was dropped in April 2015 after a court ruled that a presidential decision to lift Dahlan’s immunity should have been taken by parliament.

This was overturned by the constitutional court in Ramallah last month.

It ruled that Abbas was entitled to remove the MP’s protection from prosecution as the Palestinian assembly was not in session, due to the dispute between the country’s two political movements, Fatah and Hamas.

As an adviser to Prince Muhammad Bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Dahlan has played a critical role in building political and economic ties between the Gulf state and Serbia and Montenegro.

In doing so he has also forged close relationships with the Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and his former Montenegrin counterpart, Milo Djukanovic. He secured himself citizenship from both countries despite the allegations of corruption and even murder which have dogged him.

The 55-year-old was once seen as Yasser Arafat’s heir apparent but lost out to Abbas in 2003. He was kicked out of the Fatah movement in 2011 after Abbas accused him of corruption and hinted he may have been involved in Arafat’s death, a claim which resurfaced in recent weeks in a report by a Palestinian special commission.

Living in exile in Abu Dhabi since then while also renting a luxurious villa in Belgrade, he has formed a powerful network of backers spanning Europe and the Middle East and built support for himself in Gaza and the West Bank by channelling Gulf funds to Palestinian refugee camps.

While Dahlan maintains publicly he is not interested in succeeding Abbas, he remains a frontrunner for the job and has made no secret of his desire to return to politics in his homeland.

Abbas has refused to patch up his dispute with Dahlan, who has already been sentenced in absentia to two years’ jail for defamation, despite pressure to do so from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

Palestinian officials also told BIRN Dahlan is being investigated in connection with the assassinations of 13 opponents in Gaza while he was PA security chief.

Dahlan’s iron-fisted tactics in Gaza led to the area being nicknamed “Dahlanistan”, and admitted in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2008 that “mistakes” had occurred there. However, he maintained that no one had been tortured or killed under his orders.

By Michael Rogers

There have been many commentaries about the potential conflicts of interest that are posed by the Trump real estate portfolio. It has been pointed out that traditionally, presidents set up blind trusts with more liquid assets like stocks and bonds. The problem with the President Trump’s wealth is the strong connection to his name and brand. Even if he sold and/or gave his interest in the business to his children, there will remain a strong connection to the business. All transactions involving the business will be under scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest. Who is renting space? Who is buying condos? Who is lending money to the Trump organization? Who is clearing regulatory obstacles for the Trump Organization? All the ways that money or favors comes to the Trump organization will be scrutinized. This could undermine a Trump presidency.

That summarizes much of the recent editorials on the matter. There is another significant reason for president-elect Trump and the Trump family to divest themselves of the Trump real estate portfolio and cease the use of the Trump brand for the duration of the presidency. As soon as President Trump engages in the war against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist groups, every one of the Trump properties will be magnets for terrorist attacks. Not only will they represent attacks against the US, they will represent direct personal attacks against the president of the United States!

Destroying the ISIS bastion in Syria and Iraq will send many foreign fighters scattering around the world. Many will head to countries that have Trump properties. These properties will need to be protected from lone wolf attacks, coordinated attacks by gunmen, car bombs, and in some countries with lower levels of airport security, they will need to be protected from a 9/11 type attack. It would be virtually impossible for the Trump Organization to afford such protection on its own. Will the US government try to provide it? Unlike US embassies that have been secured behind blast walls and space between buildings and roads, the Trump towers are in city centers close to heavily traveled streets.

President Trump needs to concentrate on doing what is best for the country. He needs to do himself, his family, and especially the country the service of freeing himself from this potentiality. Having this in the back of his mind is an unnecessary burden for a president. He needs to be focused on protecting the whole country not on his own family’s wealth.

Liquefying his own stake in the Trump Organization is the necessary first step. Purging the Trump brand and the Trump family ownership of these properties should be done as soon as possible. The Trump family wealth and the safety of the people who live in, work at, or visit Trump properties is at stake. Some commentators have said that the Trump family will not want to sell at “fire sale” prices. It would be a shame if they have to lose a great deal of their wealth due to a quick divestiture. It would be a greater shame if the figurative “fire sale” becomes a literal fire sale.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

An upset US-based Hindu group is urging Boston headquartered online home giant Wayfair for immediate withdrawal of bathmats carrying image of Hindu deity Ganesha; calling it highly inappropriate.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Lord Ganesha was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not to put/wipe your feet on. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged Wayfair to offer a formal apology.

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

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

In Hinduism, Lord Ganesha is worshiped as god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking. There are about three million Hindus in USA. Ganesha bathmats at Wayfair sell up to $55.99.

Recently, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the country’s Muslim population should support a plan by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party to adopt hudud, or the Islamic Shariah law system that metes out punishment as set up by the Quran. Azly Rahman writes on this development.

I wrote these sentences on my Facebook status page some time ago:

“ … SIMPLY PUT, ON THE HUDUD…

seriously speaking … i have a few questions:

you kidnap innocent girls and sell them, in the name of religion

you shoot girls in the face — those who only wish to go to schools

you rape women and put them on trial for immodest behaviour

you spew hatred towards people of other faiths and race

you ask those who disagree with you to leave the country

you do all these — in the name of protecting religion?

and now you wish to implement the hudud and force us to agree or you wage war against us?

what cult do you actually belong to? – ar

Malaysia is undergoing a rupture out of this growing complex debate on the Sharia law and the hudud. The Muslims are deeply divided on this issue, depending on how each understands the religion, judgments of who is more Muslim than others aside.

All Muslims are not created equal these days; each one is a complex construction of the history, culture, and politics of Islam. Even of the metaphysics of Islam. Most importantly education and socialization are the twin pillars of this idea of “to have or not to have hudud” or “to what extent must the Sharia law govern the lives of Muslims”

Is a Muslim educated in Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or even Indonesia, or even Kelantan created as equal as those educated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, Singapore, or even in Johor?

Which Muslim educated in which country and state has the right to impose the ideas of Sharia law and hudud more than those in other places?

Boko Haram Muslims in Malaysia?

Who has the right to say the “liberal Islam” is less Islam than Boko Haram type of Islam? Why would Malays of the Islamic faith be kow-towing to the dictates of those other Malay-Muslim who not only are happy to be ignorant of Western foundational ideas but also think that because they are educated in Arab-speaking countries and louder in their chants for an Islamic state they have the right to speak about Islam and become guardians of the “morality of the ummah”?

What makes those calling for the implementation of a comprehensive Sharia, the hudud, en route to an “Islamic state’ think that all Muslims must also agree?

What makes them believe that these Malay-Muslims are not already fed-up and even nauseated by the call for this or that type of “Islamic-ness” which includes waging war on other races and religion in multicultural Malaysia — instead of waging peace and ensuring that Malaysia will not see the rise of Boko Haram’s type of Muslims?

Aren’t peace-loving Muslims in Malaysia more interested in having their children learn about diverse ideas to become world-wise citizens able to live is a complex and globalizing world, rather than follow the calls warning Muslims against “liberal ideas” these Boko-Haram-inspired Muslims” thinks only mean Western ideas that will turn human beings in lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgenders? How obsessed with the libidinal and the sexual can these groups be?

Is that how much these Muslims understood what knowledge is about? Should we even care? Should progressive Muslims care when, in order to succeed in many “Western and infidel nations of liberal institutions of the advanced nations” the foundational courses are all about “liberal ideas”?

Do you think these progressive Muslims are going to care about those “liberal-bashing” Boko-Haram-inspired Muslims to discourage their children to even explore what “liberalism” means?

And these “enemies of liberal ideas” got their college/university degrees, did they not? Did they not learn about western and liberal ideas and pass their exams and at least learn a bit of good things about it?

This is a similar situation of the hypocrisy we see demonstrated in the case of those who oppose the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English. Many are distinguished professors who wrote their dissertations in English yet intoxicated they are by a strange out-of-whack nationalistic sentimentality, chose to produce hypocritical and damaging statements denying especially the Malay-Muslim children and youth of the importance of exploring liberal ideas and other languages including the English Language; the lingua franca many of the Boko-Haram-type of Muslims would call “language of the infidels/kaffirs”

Who need these kinds of Muslims and their call for an “Islamic state” when the stench of hypocrisy has filled the Malaysian air — like the poisoning of the sky through the Kuala Lumpur haze?

Think about it? — What actually is this hudud debate about? Who is benefiting from this?

Teach them well

Leave the fruitless debate on hudud and the Islamic state behind. They are not going to happen most probably. Spend time and energy on good nation-building. Teach our children to make friends from people across cultures, religious beliefs, and the children of the wealthy having empathy over those working hard to get out of poverty.

Focus on getting our university students to create multicultural clubs and have loads of fun playing sports, playing music together, or simply have frequent teh tarik sessions together, and of course studying together and sharing and creating new knowledge together

If I were the Minister of Education, these are the things I would work on and hold on to as top priority and not some “ranking” of this or that or building more one-superior-race schools. I’d work on collaboration, cooperation, co-creation in everything — from the philosophy of education right till college teaching and learning and beyond.

We see time wasted on entertaining groups out to destroy each other in a Malaysia we all care for. We ought to be teaching each other to see life as a gift and to create a “state of peace” in ourselves, our family, communities, and nation — rather than be obsessed in creating this of that “religious state”, in the process crafting a “we versus them” enmity.

And some of you politicians have been the biggest culprits in nation-destroying rather than nation-building.

Aren’t we tired of all these?

So — where do we go from here? Where is this Islamic state debate taking Malaysia? Shouldn’t Malaysians be talking about the hypocrisy of the quasi-Islamic governments in destroying the environment, cutting down trees, speeding up floods, and bullying the indigenous people or the Orang Asli and Asal out of their ancestral lands?

By John Feffer*

Shortly after taking office in 1969, President Richard Nixon devised his “madman theory.” It was the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon believed that he could end the conflict. It just required a bit of unpredictability.

“I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war,” Nixon told his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. “We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communists. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button.’”

To convey this message that Nixon was a violent, obsessed leader, he and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, launched a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. Many people in Southeast Asia — and in the United States — were convinced that Nixon was indeed a violent, unpredictable man. But the North Vietnamese didn’t back down, and the United States eventually had to negotiate a face-saving treaty and pull out.

Donald Trump has adopted his own “madman theory.” Throughout his campaign, he insisted that any potential negotiating partner — ally or adversary — must be left guessing. Toward that end, he refused to rule out the potential use of nuclear weapons, even in Europe. “We, as a nation, need to be more unpredictable,” he declared, and millions of people shuddered to think that his hand might one day on the nuclear button.

Trump tried to present this unpredictability as the philosophy that made him a successful businessman (bankruptcies aside). But the plain truth was that, when he didn’t know an answer to a question or have a ready plan of action, he covered his butt by pretending to possess a secret approach that would self-destruct if revealed. It sounded like a movie spoof. Mission Unpredictable: Trump’s Rogue Nation.

Unpredictability wasn’t just a pose. It was fundamental to Trump’s style. His late-night tweets, his bursts of anger during the presidential debates, his flip-flops on issues: these were all characteristic of a non-politician, indeed an anti-politician.

Pundits chided him for his lack of impulse control, his failure to self-censor, his impetuosity. But it was fundamental to his appeal, his very “authenticity.” His supporters didn’t know what a Trump presidency would look like exactly. But they were willing to take a chance. They voted in the same way that they might put a coin into a one-armed bandit. They knew the odds were stacked against them, but they were stilling hoping for a big payout.

In the aftermath of the election, itself an exemplar of unpredictability, Trump has again attempted to keep his audience guessing. He was “presidential” in his acceptance speech. He had a cordial sit-down with President Obama. He lay off the demonization of Hillary Clinton. He walked back some of his more extreme campaign pronouncements on climate change, the Iran deal, and waterboarding. He reached out to some unexpected candidates — Mitt Romney, Tulsi Gabbard — for cabinet positions.

Don’t be fooled by these latest manifestations of “unpredictability.” In fact, Trump has always been the most predictable of men.

He wants power. He is ruthless and vulgar. And he will do whatever it takes to win. It’s not difficult to predict the kind of foreign policy he will attempt once in office. Trump will try to grab the world by the crotch.

Unfortunately, there’s no law against sexual harassment of the planet.

The Company He Keeps

Nothing defines Trump’s predictability more than the choices for his foreign policy team. They are, without exception, members of the far right: aggressive, Islamophobic, and contemptuous of diplomacy. Trump emphasized these themes in his campaign, and his appointments so far are entirely consistent with his rhetoric. And yet some anti-war advocates are still trying to make the case that Trump is a net gain for world peace. Talk about a madman theory.

The United States, guided by its new foreign policy elite, will be a reflection of its chief executive: assaultive and unscrupulous. The best-case scenario is that Trump’s team will be incompetent, their reach exceeding their grasp. The worst-case scenarios are positively dystopian.

In the George W. Bush administration, the foreign policy team was dominated by the “Vulcans” who advised the neophyte president on how to look at the world. Within this elite circle, some moderating influences emerged — first Vulcan fellow traveler Colin Powell, then Vulcan insider Condoleezza Rice. They possessed a modicum of realism. Powell tried to persuade Bush not to invade Iraq (but then, like a loyal soldier, dutifully supported the invasion). Rice would be responsible for such initiatives as engaging North Korea through the Six Party Talks.

The overall failure of these somewhat wiser counsels to have any real impact on the Bush foreign policy speaks to the naiveté of those who favor cooperating with the Trump administration.

Taken collectively, Trump’s foreign policy picks are more martial even than the Vulcans. Mike Flynn, the potential national security advisor, wants to push regime change in Iran and is frankly delusional when it comes to Islam. Mike Pompeo, the potential head of the CIA, wants more surveillance, was sorry to see CIA “black sites” shuttered, and was the tip of the spear during the congressional attack on Hillary Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi affair (if you thought the politicization of intelligence was bad during the Bush years, wait until Pompeo is in charge).

John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Cotton: These potential picks are ideologues who will tear through the international community like a tank at a tea party. The best that can be said about any of the foreign policy appointees so far is that they know nothing: South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the potential ambassador to the UN, has zero foreign policy experience (unless, like some Trump supporters, you believe that the South is actually an independent state).

In place of the evil genius of Dick Cheney, there’s Steve Bannon, the administration’s chief strategist. From his perch at Breitbart News, Bannon has pushed a racist and anti-Semitic agenda — whether he himself is either of those things is irrelevant.

Among the many malign policies he will advance, the most disturbing will be the war on Islam. The Trump administration will not play favorites — it will go after both Sunni (Islamic State, Hamas) and Shia (Iran, Hezbollah) in waging a larger civilizational campaign.

The administration might link arms on a temporary basis with strong-arm leaders — Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, or the more conservative Sunni politicians of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain — but those will just be tactical alliances to be discarded as Judgment Day approaches. They don’t want to be distracted by a cold war with Russia, for Putin is a potential Christian ally. Some on Team Trump, like Mike Flynn, even believe against all evidence and common sense that China and North Korea are aligned with the forces of Islam. This 21^st-century crusade will serve as the ideological North Star for the Trump administration’s foreign policy much as anti-Communism functioned for its predecessors.

Mitt Romney as secretary of state? Tulsi Gabbard as secretary of defense? Dream on. Trump is merely gesturing in the direction of unpredictability. Romney is no moderate, while Gabbard would be merely ornamental. In the casino world of Donald Trump, the numbers are always predictable in the end, and they always favor the house. In this case, the house tilts to the extreme right.

Calm Down?

Tom Hanks, a gifted actor but anodyne political commentator, said after the elections: “We are going to be all right. America has been in worse places than we are at right now.”

We, white man?

Sure, well-paid Hollywood liberals don’t have to worry about the consequences of the elections. Many communities in the United States, however, are justifiably concerned about what will happen to them on January 21, 2017. People with medical coverage through the Affordable Care Act face an uncertain future. Immigrants, documented as well as undocumented, are worried about their status. Muslims, people of color, and the LGBT community are all terrified by the dramatic spike in hate crimes in the first 10 days after the election.

Then there’s the larger world, which will decidedly not be all right. Human rights activists are anxious about the deals Trump will make with autocrats. The EU is worried about all the future Brexits — Frexit, Czexit, Nexit — that Trump will encourage. There’s the unraveling of the nuclear deal with Iran and the détente with Cuba. There’s the possibility of war with China, starting with trade and moving on from there. And if that weren’t bad enough, the next four years will be critical ones for arresting climate change, except that Donald Trump will be trying to get every last bit of coal, oil, and natural gas out of the ground.

Yeah, sure, American has gone through difficult times in the past. Donald Trump is an unpredictable fellow. It’s only four years.

But it’s not Donald Trump’s unpredictability I’m worried about. It’s his very disturbing predictability. For Trump, the presidency will be business as usual. The past is prelude, so it’s really not that difficult to predict the arc of this story.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. His latest book is the dystopian novel, Splinterlands.

By Gil Baram*

From the early days of statehood, technology occupied a prominent place in Israel’s national security concept as it sought to establish a qualitative edge over its vastly more populated and better endowed Arab adversaries. In the past few years, a new tech-nological challenge, that of cyber warfare, has grown to the point of becoming among the most critical threats to Israel’s vital infrastructures in both the civil and the military-security sectors. Energy, water, communications and traffic networks, and an economy that relies heavily on computers must be viewed as being at risk. To respond to the new, evolving threats, Jerusalem must revise certain aspects of its security concept so as to ensure cyber superiority as an inseparable part of its national defense capabilities.

What Is the Cyber Threat?

Cyber warfare is commonly defined as “the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.”[1] A virus or a worm is essentially a program, often self-replicating and usually destructive, loaded onto a computer without the user’s knowledge or wishes. A denial-of-service attack is a disruption to a user’s access to a computer network caused by malicious intent.

Advanced cyber capabilities are an effective way to deter Israel’s enemies. One such example was the “Stuxnet” virus, attributed to a U.S. and Israeli operation, in which the functioning of centrifuges belonging to Iran’s nuclear program was disrupted. Computers in other countries were also affected.

Countries conduct cyber-attacks mainly for political reasons to achieve strategic, economic, diplomatic, or military advantages by attacking military, government, or civil computer infrastructures. Cyber-attacks, like kinetic attacks, have a range of options—including denial of service attacks, vandalizing websites, espionage and information gathering, as well as attacks that can cause physical damage as did the Stuxnet worm that hit the Iranian centrifuges and was exposed in 2010.[2]

The vast progress made in computer and information networks has created a new reality in which military communications infrastructures are often connected to their civilian counterparts. Both infrastructures are increasingly dependent on computers, and their protection is critical for both civilian and national security purposes. Once it was recognized that computers were weak points, cyber warfare technologies began to emerge, designed to attack an adversary’s data assets and even cause significant physical damage remotely to systems without employing conventional or non-conventional weapons or sending soldiers into the battlefield. At the same time, security agencies and armed forces worldwide have been developing cyber defense capabilities to protect these vital infrastructures.

This dependence on cyber technologies is a global phenomenon and has put at risk national and public infrastructures that were once regarded as inaccessible and well-protected. Israel, which has been under threat since its inception, has needed to adapt its national security posture accordingly.

In the traditional Israeli approach to security, much effort is invested in intelligence, early warning, and deterrence so as to minimize the expenditure involved in maintaining a continuous state of alert. In this context, three problems that underlie every cyber-attack should be mentioned. The first is the problem of attribution, i.e., who ordered the attack and who launched it? The second is the difficulty in establishing the results of the attack and determining the extent of its success. The third problem is that of evidence: It is often difficult to determine whether the event under investigation occurred due to a technical failure or as a result of a cyber-attack.[3]

Israel’s National Security Concept

The formulation of Israel’s national security concept dates back to the pre-state era and continued to evolve in the face of the many threats that the nascent state had to address after its war of independence. Having concluded that the threat posed by its Arab adversaries was a given and persistent reality with which Israel was destined to contend in the foreseeable future, in October 1953, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presented a document to the cabinet regarded ever since as Israel’s official national security doctrine.[4]

Peace was the ultimate strategic goal of Ben-Gurion’s security concept. However, since peace was likely to remain elusive, he argued that the proposed security concept would at least make the Arab states accept the existence of a Jewish state, if only begrudgingly.[5] Essentially, the Israel that Ben-Gurion envisioned strove to have long periods of quiet and to hold off military confrontations as much as possible. However, if the need arose, it had to win a quick victory because of its small size and limited human resources.

To this end, two principles were adopted. The first was the idea of “an army of the people” that could be rapidly mobilized and comprised mainly of draftees on mandatory military service and reserves. The second principle became known as the “security triangle”: deterrence, early warning, and a decisive operational victory.[6] Ben-Gurion argued that Israel must forestall any Arab attempts to change the post-1948 war status quo by adhering to these three elements.

In Israel’s national security concept, deterrence refers to developing defensive and offensive capabilities that will discourage the country’s enemies from attacking it. Classical military theory maintains that deterrence is created when one side intimidates the other to the point that it avoids reverting to armed force, realizing that the likely costs of this move would far exceed its anticipated gains. Once this fear dissipates, deterrence no longer exists, and aggression is likely to follow. Jerusalem perceives deterrence as “cumulative” because it regards each of its wars as one round in a series of hostile episodes.[7]

Early warning denotes receiving advance warning about developments in neighboring countries that could put Israel’s security in jeopardy. Early warning is critical if Israel and its economy are to keep functioning normally under what has been, for most of its existence, a permanent Arab military threat. Without early warning, Israeli forces would have to maintain a constant state of readiness that would undermine the economy and the nation’s strength. As demonstrated by the opening stage of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, early warning capabilities are vital if reserves are to be mobilized and forces moved to the front in time. Advance warning also enables the launch of a preemptive attack if necessary.[8]

Achieving a decisive operational victory is predicated on building sufficient military power to win a conflict if early warning fails. A decisive operational victory compels an adversary to conclude that there is no point in going on fighting, reflecting not only the actual balance of power on the battlefield but also a psychological state by which political and military leaders perceive their situation.[9]

These three elements have underlain Israeli strategy from the country’s early days and have served as guidelines for all the security agencies involved in building and operating its military power. By adhering to these principles, Israel has managed to cope with its quantitative inferiority and unique geostrategic position as a state under a constant military threat.[10] But nothing is static, and geopolitical changes and global technological advances have forced a rethinking of this strategy.

A New Paradigm?

Israel’s success in implementing its national security concept eventually drove several Arab states to a grudging acquiescence in its existence. However, rapid technological developments within the last few decades and the momentous regional events of the past few years have seriously challenged this traditional security concept.

Increasingly, the Israeli government has invested considerable resources in promoting security-related technological research and in developing new, highly sophisticated combat means. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have aspired to base their power on advanced weapons and creative technological solutions, resulting in the IDF becoming the most advanced army in the Middle East.[11]

The history of Israel’s wars demonstrates that, over time, the IDF has significantly improved its use of technology while the importance of technological measures in the battlefield has grown. The 1973 war drove the IDF to develop its electronic and electro-optic capabilities by using computerized systems such as electronic weapon systems and radar systems. The ultimate goal was to improve the country’s fighting capabilities and enhance its performances on the battlefield. According to former IDF major general Yitzhak Ben Israel, this war had a direct effect on the development of advanced weapon systems and the military doctrine of Israel.[12]

Over the years, the importance of computer warfare and cyber warfare technologies has not escaped the attention of those in charge of Israel’s national security. The IDF identified the enormous potential of computers and engaged in various types of computer warfare as early as the 1990s. Initially though, the focus was on “information security,” the term commonly used to describe the protection of computerized systems. The need for such security stemmed from the view that protecting sensitive information (classified or sensitive business information) was of the utmost importance. In time, the meaning of computer security expanded to include other threats such as denial of services, disabling vital, computer-based processes, and causing damage to computers in a way that could harm physical infrastructures. On a national level, the protection of computerized systems is now referred to as “cyber defense.”[13]

In 2002, the Ministers Committee on Security Affairs issued a resolution titled “Responsibility for the defense of computerized systems in the State of Israel” (resolution 84/b), which outlined the defense principles for Israel’s critical computer-supported infrastructures. The country’s response to the cyber threat faced by its essential national computer systems is based on this document.[14]

Following the resolution, a steering committee was established later that year, tasked with compiling a list of steps to be taken to defend the nation’s vital computer systems. The committee convened periodically and formulated the principles of defense and the bodies required to take special precautions. The National Information Security Authority, which operates under the Israel Security Agency (ISA) law, was also created in 2002. It guides organizations that have been deemed vital on matters of computer security and network protection and oversees the implementation of information security and protection instructions.[15]

In April 2006, the Committee on Israel’s Defense Doctrine headed by Dan Meridor, a former deputy prime minister and minister of intelligence, submitted to then-defense minister Amir Peretz a proposal for an updated national security concept.[16] The committee recommended adding the term “defense” to the three previously mentioned components of the national security triangle and to update its defense strategies accordingly.[17]

Augmenting the National Security Concept

Defense is an extremely important concept in cyber warfare because effective defense guarantees that the country’s vital systems continue functioning. Developing operational capabilities in the cyber arena is essential to safeguarding Israel’s national strength. Its economy and its future as a democratic and open society depend largely on the capability to protect the country’s vital computer networks from any disruption of normal life.

The growing dependence on computer systems both in Israel and around the world has given rise to new challenges that require an immediate national-level response.[18] Since the Meridor committee submitted its report, cyber warfare technologies have been increasingly used on the modern battlefield.[19]

In 2009, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, then chief of general staff, defined cyberspace as a “strategic and operative combat zone for Israel.”[20] Following this statement, in 2010 a cyber headquarters was set up in the Israeli National Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Code Decryption Unit, or 8200 as it is commonly known, to coordinate and direct military cyberspace operations.[21] A cyber defense department was also established in the C4I Corps, a combat support unit responsible for all areas of teleprocessing and communications in the IDF. Although most of its activity is classified, this department is known to facilitate land, air, and sea operations in an era when the IDF is significantly dependent on computers and communication networks. The department works in cooperation with most of the defense force’s elite units and uses varied, advanced technological means to counteract enemy cyber-attacks.[22]

In June 2015, IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot decided to establish an independent cyber branch in order to lead the cyber warfare activity of the forces.[23] This branch will join the Israeli air force, navy, and GOC army headquarters as a main service branch that will oversee the military’s cyber warfare strategy. Eizenkot has also instructed military intelligence director Herzl Halevi to form a special think tank to review the military’s cyber framework.[24]

At the Second International Cyber Conference held at Tel Aviv University in June 2012, then-defense minister Ehud Barak revealed for the first time that Israel had the capability to launch offensive cyber-attacks. While stressing that in warfare of this kind preference should be given to defense rather than to offense, he revealed that Israel had both capabilities.[25]

To date, there is no publicly available document outlining Israel’s official strategy on ways to deal with cyber threats, though the Israeli government resolution 3611 provides the national governance roadmap for cybersecurity.[26]

In 2011, the National Cyber Bureau was established to formulate an official cyber defense concept, determine state-level preparations in this field, and supervise national procedures and cooperation. In February 2015, the Israeli government approved the establishment of the National Cyber Security Authority under the supervision of the National Cyber Bureau. This operational authority has several missions: threat analysis and early warning; active defense operations; operating the CERT-IL (Israel National Cyber Event Readiness Team) and creating national regulation for the emerging cyber professions.

In April 2016, the National Cyber Security Authority began its official work. Its primary function is to oversee “cyber defense actions so as to provide a comprehensive response against cyber-attacks including dealing with threats and events in real time.” The authority’s director is subordinate to the head of the National Cyber Bureau, defined as the head of the national cyberspace operation. In 2016, the new authority was slated to recruit more than one hundred employees.[27]

Cyber Warfare in Action

Israel is perceived as a world leader in cyber capabilities. In a report that examined the cyber preparedness of twenty-three countries, Israel received the highest score (4.5 stars out of 5). The report’s authors praised Israel’s defense systems and noted that the country was well prepared to handle a cyber-attack.[28]

Such attacks are not mere theoretical dangers. In May 2013, following an Israeli airstrike on Damascus, a group called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed it had attacked the remote monitoring and control system that manages the main water infrastructure of Haifa.[29] Again, in April 2014, hundreds of websites, including those of banks, schools, nonprofit organizations, newspapers, and government agencies were attacked by hackers associated with the Anonymous collective as part of an anti-Israeli group operation called OpIsrael. Jerusalem was well prepared for these attacks as the national Computer Emergency Response Team reported that most of the attacked websites were operating normally.[30]

At present, the Israeli government stands at the forefront of using cyber technologies against the threats the country faces in all arenas. Cyber warfare leans on independent Israeli capabilities, combining local inventiveness with international technologies.[31] The approaches Jerusalem takes also merge with and reinforce the three original requirements of Israel’s traditional national security concept:

(a) Deterrence: Advanced cyber capabilities may be an effective way to deter Israel’s enemies. One such example was the Stuxnet operation attributed to the United States and Israel, in which the functioning of centrifuges belonging to Iran’s nuclear program was disrupted.[32] The event has been widely viewed as a turning point in cyber warfare, demonstrating that governments are able to launch cyber-attacks that can be extremely effective.[33] While the effectiveness of cyber deterrence is still being debated,[34] the Iran-Stuxnet event offers an interesting case study. While Tehran did not stop its nuclear pursuit, the Stuxnet revelation may have prompted other enemies of Israel to reconsider the use of force against it in the coming years.

(b) Early warning: Advanced cyber technologies can enable the collection of large quantities of accurate information about an adversary’s intentions and future plans. By using such capabilities, Jerusalem can gather much high-quality information about its enemies and block access to its own databases at the same time. Thus, Israel’s security agencies can provide the defense establishment with effective warnings about an adversary’s intentions in order take the necessary measures against them at the right moment.

(c) Decisive operational victory: By applying their advanced cyber tools, Israeli forces can gain advantages in combat that could tip the scales in the country’s favor. For example, during the 2007 attack on Syria’s nuclear reactor, which has been widely attributed to Israel, Syria’s radar systems were incapacitated by a hostile code that transmitted apparently normal signals.[35] This enabled the Israeli air force to penetrate Syrian airspace undetected and target the nuclear complex, destroying it completely.

While during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza (July-August 2014), Israeli forces focused most military operational protection efforts on rocket and tunnel attacks, evidence has emerged that the IDF had also to deal with cyber threats during the fighting from such radical factors as Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. In the words of the IDF’s cyber defense division commander: “It wasn’t like this in previous operations. For the first time, there was an organized cyber defense effort alongside combat operations in the field. This was a new reality.”[36]

Although Israel’s cyber protection agencies neutralized these attempts quickly and easily, it appears that Tehran had invested much effort in developing effective attack measures against Israel’s critical infrastructures.[37] This was publicly confirmed by both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon in September 2014 after the fighting.[38]

Conclusion

Today’s cyber threats are the direct outcome of the critical role computerized systems play in national infrastructures and modern life. Different systems and sectors developed separately and eventually converged to form a cyber-network that typically was not security oriented. As it became clear that it would be necessary to deal with the security aspects of cyber life, Israeli leaders were compelled to imagine what a future cyber battlefield might look like and the requirements needed to be victorious in it.

Developing strategies to engage in and defend against cyber warfare also jibe with other aspects of the Israeli situation. Cyber warfare allows Israel to initiate operations against remote targets without risking the lives of its citizens and soldiers, a cardinal goal of such a small country with limited human resources. Operations of this kind also gain Israel worldwide prestige, which can contribute both economically to the country’s bottom-line—as other nations look to the Jewish state for expertise and advanced technologies and application—and reinforce deterrence.

For example, at the January 2014 launch of CyberSpark—the Israeli Cyber Innovation Arena in Beersheba—Netanyahu said, “Beersheba will not only be the cyber capital of Israel, but one of the most important places in the cyber security field in the world.”[39] Building on the success of Deutsche Telekom working in the city in collaboration with Ben-Gurion University, a number of multinational giants have opened centers of excellence in Beersheba, including EMC2-RSA, Lockheed Martin, Oracle, and IBM. In addition, JVP Cyber Labs is the first incubator for fledgling cyber companies investing in technologies that are set to revolutionize the future of cyber security.[40]

While Israel appears to be dealing with the cyber threat in advanced ways consistent with its general national security concept, additional measures will likely have to be taken as time goes on. One of this measures may be creating cooperation between the different security agencies in charge of cyber defense so as to establish the optimal policy for cyber defense and determine what national preparations must be made to this end.

About the author:
*Gil Baram is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Political Science and International Relations at Tel-Aviv University, and a research fellow at the Blavatnic Interdisciplinary Cyber Center (ICRC).

Source:
This article was published by The Middle East Quarterly in its Winter 2017 edition.

Notes:
[1] “Cyber Warfare,” RAND Corp., accessed Sept. 16, 2016.
[2] See, for example, Richard A. Clarke and Robert Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 6; Brandon Valeriano and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber War versus Cyber Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 32.
[3] Yitzhak Ben Israel and Lior Tabenski, “An Interdisciplinary Look at Security Challenges in the Information Age,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Dec. 2011, p. 33.
[4] Yitzhak Ben-Israel, Tfisat Habitahon shel Israel (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 2013), pp.125-53.
[5] Ibid., p. 35.
[6] Gideon Taran, “Mavo litfisat bitahon: musagei yessod umarkivim merkazyim,” in Mavo Lebitahon Leumi (Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 2002), pp. 21-36.
[7] Ben-Israel, Tfisat Habitahon shel Israel, pp. 64-5.
[8] Roni Amir, “Torat habitahon hi hasiba lekishlon hahatra’a be-1973,” Maarachot, June 2013, p. 57.
[9] Ben-Israel, Tfisat Habitahon shel Israel, pp. 62-3.
[10] Avner Simhoni and Avriel Bar Yosef, “Tfisat habitahon—shimur veidkun,” Maarachot, June 2012, pp. 13-4.
[11] Yitzhak Ben Israel, “Bitahon, technologia usdeh hakrav haa’tidi,” in Mirkam Habitahon, H. Golan, ed. (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 2001), p. 270.
[12] Yitzhak Ben Israel, “Lekahim Technologim,” Maarachot, Oct. 1993, p. 9, 12.
[13] Rami Efrati and Lior Yafeh, “The challenges and opportunities of national cyber defense,” Israel Defense, Aug. 11, 2012.
[14] Prime Minister’s Office, “Background for the Establishment of the Bureau,” Jerusalem, accessed Sept. 23, 2016.
[15] “Cyberwellness Profile—Israel,” International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, Jan. 22, 2015.
[16] Haaretz (Tel Aviv), Apr. 24, 2006.
[17] Shai Shabtai, “Israel’s National Security Concept: New Basic Terms in the Military-Security Sphere,” Strategic Assessment, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv, Aug. 2010, pp. 9-10.
[18] “Hameizam hakiberneti haleumi: hatza’a lehakamat tochnit leumit livniyat yecholot kibernetiot beshiluv heibetei mehkar ufituah, kalkala, akademia, ta’asiya vetzorhei habitahon haleumi,” Science and Technology Committee, Tel Aviv University, Nov. 2012, p.18.
[19] Yitzhak Ben Israel, et al, “Lohama Kibernetit—he’archut medinat Israel lemitkafot al rishtot mahsehvim vetikshoret,” Protocol 95, Science and Technology Committee meeting, July 4, 2011.
[20] Hanan Greenberg, “Virus bimkom matos,” NRG, Nov. 11, 2011.
[21] Haaretz, Jan. 1 2012.
[22] “Cyber Command: Defeating the Enemy that Can’t Be Seen,” Israel Defense Forces blog, Jerusalem, Dec. 22, 2015.
[23] Shmuel Even, David Siman-Tov, and Gabi Siboni, “Structuring Israel’s Cyber Defense,” INSS Insight, Sept. 21, 2016.
[24] BreakingIsraelNews (Beit Shemesh), June 22, 2015.
[25] Haaretz, June 6, 2012.
[26] “Cyberwellness Profile—Israel,” International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, Jan. 22, 2015.
[27] “Cabinet approves establishment of National Cyber Authority,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, Feb. 15, 2015.
[28] Homeland Security News Wire (Mineola, N.Y.), Feb. 2, 2012; “Cyber-security: The vexed question of global rules,” p. 66-7.
[29] The Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2013.
[30] RT Television Network (Washington, D.C. and London), Apr. 6, 2014; Ynet (Tel Aviv), Apr. 7, 2014.
[31] Amos Yadlin, “Hameimad hehadash shel halehima—cyber,” Meimad Malam, Jan. 2010, p. 4.
[32] Ynet (Tel Aviv), Nov. 29, 2011; The New York Times, June 1, 2012.
[33] The New York Times, June 1, 2012; Bruce Schneier, “The Story behind the Stuxnet Virus,” Forbes (New York), Oct. 7, 2010.
[34] For studies on the problems of cyber deterrence, see, for example, Martin Libicki, Cyber Deterrence and Cyberwar (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2009); Amir Lupovici, “Cyber Warfare and Deterrence: Trends and Challenges in Research,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Dec. 2011.
[35] Wired (San Francisco), Apr. 10, 2007; Haaretz, Aug. 3, 2012.
[36] “The Attack against Israel You Haven’t Heard About,” Israel Defense Forces blog, Aug. 22, 2014.
[37] Calcalist (Tel Aviv), Aug. 18, 2014.
[38] The Jerusalem Post, Sept. 14, 2014; Globes (Rishon Le-Zion), Sept. 15, 2014.
[39] “CyberSpark—The Israeli Cyber Innovation Arena,” Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, accessed Oct. 31, 2016.
[40] Hunter Stuart, “The Future of Cybersecurity Is Being Written in the Israeli Desert,” MotherBoard, Feb. 1, 2016; “CyberSpark.”

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — J. Krishnamurti

Reflecting on the “Spirit of Time” and Zeitgeist it can certainly be identified within the area of the World as Global Sin, from the beginning of the XXI Century, where the Earth as a whole is seen as a laboratory for the possible, not only in the economic realm, but also with regard to social orientations and directions of the global comprehensiveness for the future.

Methodologically speaking one does not need to be an economic expert to see how the Spirit of  Time is radiating in all areas:

• Most of the banks keep their foreign exchange reserves in foreign banks (of course, except for a big global players) with a lower interest rate than the interest rate that is obtained when the government borrows in the same bank in which the banks from small countries (and there are close to 200 of them – countries) keep their own money.
• The printing of bonds, just as the Spirit of Time says: “Connection emerged out from the air” – an example is the Government of the Republic of Srpska (entity, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and bonds of war damage: “It is clear that the payment of the bonds, from the standpoint of the damaged parties, far less favorable option. From the standpoint of the entities, however, this is only possible solution because the Republic of Srpska there is no possibility that from the budget, which is already stagnant, to be paid hundreds of millions of convertible marks (1 Euro= 1.95583 KM) of war damage, and must not been forgotten significant obligations of entities on the basis of old foreign currency savings, which have been also settled through the bonds1”.

Here are just two examples of the shining (read: radiating) Spirit of Time, because it is necessary again and again to analyze the movie Zeitgeist Addendum, with a goal to clarify the global comprehensiveness.

However, I will try to explain that by continuing with concrete conclusions:

1. A complete area of the World as global sin is covered by corporate conquering based on neo-liberalism2, which sees its epitome and/or incarnation in this saying “let the market regulate everything and everything will be fine”. The mention of this is so transparent and easily understandable to all educated people, except, however, to the politicians and parliamentarians in countries around the world (deliberately ignoring precisely the meaning because of their self-interest):

a) Neo-liberalism is another word for the governing of corporations over small countries and nations – however, how can it be an equal match when large shopping centers of the world occupy the cities, offer discount prices and by that measure they are actually “killing” small business, while at the same time allegedly creating new jobs. Today, although we have beautiful supermarkets and shopping “malls” around the world, employment in them has not replaced the lost jobs at small businesses that disappeared.

b) Corruption around the world is not the exception, but the rule. It is enough to look at the merits web site Transparency International and be faced with the fact that more than 6 billion people in the world live in countries with serious corruption problems. Despite the proven, and more than several times evaluated, specific cases of corruption in front of our eyes, we instead have more negative talk directed against those who point towards corruption, the so-called. “Whistleblowers,’ than about the people who “liberated” millions and directed them to their own pockets. This is also a part of the Spirit of Time.

c) The Spirit of the Time is when the red ones accuse the blue ones that they are intriguing with yellow ones, while the blue ones are also saying the same. In this Age, it is always the fault of the others who are different and when you say that this or that politician is guilty, he, regardless of the “color” of his people, immediately hides behind his same people.

d) The Spirit of The Time is also the growth of populism in the countries of “developed democracy”, and at the same time have not seen the “forest because of the wood”. The basic mantra of the populist movements in the world is no longer only and exclusively the lack of focus on their own nations (they used to blame their politicians for doing that), but the mantra can now spread to other areas such as the problem of not stopping immigration policies, which is a conditio sine qua non of globalization (read: neo-liberalism) … and the vicious cycle continues, and continues. The problem is not that foreigners take away jobs from local workers. The problem is in the system (capitalism), which still has no answers to the challenges of new technologies, its own problem of global expansion, without understanding that by destroying the economy of a country, this will create economic migrants who will soon knock on the door of those who until yesterday were at their house – first as dear guests, then as enemies who destroyed the economic and human future of their country.

e) The Spirit of the Time is also when companies create jobs in other countries, such as when textile factories produce clothing at a price of 10 euros/dollars while the same clothing, with the insertion of branding  from known international brands will be sold at a  50 to 100 times higher price on the world market. Who is there in this “good” position. The country from which the company originates? No. The country where the work is being realized? No. The “good” position is only and exclusively to be understood with respect to the corporate capital behind it. Fleeing from one country destroys jobs in that country … and coming to a second country all too often just creates places where the workers are effectively being treated as slaves for the primitive accumulation of capital. This is the comprehensive Spirit of The Time.

f) The Spirit of The Time should allow for the possibility that, through the automation and the introduction of new technologies,  people’s lives in the world will be made easier and more bearable. Instead, by automating we are going back to the improvement of the life just for the owners of corporate capital through the losing of working places and jobs due to the exclusive interests of capitalism to, with less costs, create a bigger profit, without any present social sensitivity. We are going back, through making huge steps,  to the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the initial accumulation of capital around the world.

Freedom is today a very misused word because it is always at the expense of those who are different from us – from the free market that has been controlled by the big corporations, to the freedom of expression, which is manipulated by the politicians and their own parasite press, believing that “freedom” is the one that they advocate for. They are forgetting that freedom stops in any form, no matter what  we are talking about. The movie BRIAN’S LIFE (Monty Python, UK, 1979) spoke about the Spirit of The Time in a satirical stripped manner that really defined everyday life as ordinary suffering, manipulation and exploitation, rather than common, targeted pleasure for everyone, everywhere. So, today is it in 2016 … nothing has changed since this movie was made in 1979  – it seems that we have learned nothing, and we could have, very much.

The modern Spirit of The Time has created competition to make is so that the “best” wins, forgetting that not all have started from the same starting points.

Instead of working on a joint, common good, in front of us opens a chasm of gladiator fights for a piece of the pie from which no crumbs make it to more than 90% of the population of a country, no matter in what point of the World.

Where is the answer?

The answer is to establish a common goal-oriented compromise that will satisfy all and in time that of the individual, because the satisfaction of selected individuals does not satisfy all. For this we have enough knowledge around the world. About having enough wisdom – I’m not sure.

I wonder, what has happened with the musketeers and the maxim: “All for one, one for all.”? Or it is still another Hollywood illusion of the New World Order within the Zeitgeist.

Notes:
1. Info: http://www.6yka.com/novost/10415/zivot-naplacen-obveznicama-republike-srpske

2. What is knowledge within the world of developed society? What does it mean for us to be aware that every 11 hours the knowledge in the world is doubled? We are so developed and yet so uncivilized. How it can be? It all depends on how you “read” an understanding of development and civilization. Especially, if development and civilization means neo-liberalism, and the “exporting” of “my way of thinking-democracy” as it “should exist all around the world” and let the markets to do everything – to liberalize the liberalism. It is amazing that those who were fighting against Mao Zedong’s “flourishing of thousand flowers” are doing nowadays exactly the same thing, but instead of operating with the system of “communism” they are doing it now within the guise of “capitalism”. – Sabahudin Hadžialić (13.3.2016): http://www.eurasiareview.com/13032016-world-as-global-sin-knowledge-as-margaritas-ante-portas-essay/ quoted on The New Humanity project: http://worldclasscitizenrylabel.com/tag/sabahudin-hadzialic on the same day, 13.3.2016.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter met Sunday with Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani in Irbil, Iraq, where the two leaders discussed the latest developments in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.

Carter and Barzani also discussed the key role Peshmerga forces have played in the counter-ISIL campaign, Cook said.

Unprecedented Cooperation

Carter and Barzani noted the unprecedented cooperation between Iraq’s government and the Kurdistan regional government, Cook said.

The two leaders, he added, agreed that all partners in the counter-ISIL fight must avoid distractions and remain focused on dealing the barbaric group a lasting defeat.

Cook said Carter thanked Barzani for his close partnership, and recalled the many successes over the past year that were made possible by strong cooperation between the Iraqi government, the Kurdistan regional government, and the United States.

The CIA had allegedly given an ‘assessment’ to the NYT and WaPo that Russia helped Trump become president, whether this is the Clinton wing within the CIA is irrelevant since now the actual ‘assessment’ may have been faked.

Sean Spicer told CNN’s Michael Smerconish Saturday morning that the reports claiming the Russian government hacked the Republican National Committee during the 2016 election are false.

On Friday, the Washington Post and New York Times ran articles detailing a CIA “assessment” U.S. Congressmen received last week.

Hill staffers briefed on the assessment claim it states with “high confidence that [Russia] hacked the DNC and the RNC.”

The reports further claim that while the DNC documents were handed over to WikiLeaks for publication, the hackers “conspicuously released no documents” from the RNC breach, indicating “that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post’s source explained.

Spicer, however, cast doubts on the reports Saturday, claiming that the RNC is working with separate U.S. intelligence agencies who have concluded that the RNC was not hacked.

“The intelligence is wrong,” Spicer told Smerconish. “It didn’t happened. We offered the New York Times conclusive proof that it didn’t happen. They ignored it. They refused to look at it because it didn’t fit the narrative.”

“The bottom line is the intelligence is wrong,” he continued. “They are writing that the conclusion they came to was based in part on the fact the RNC was hacked. It wasn’t hacked. We have intelligence agencies that we worked with that are willing to sort this out.”

Spicer also criticized the media — and Smerconish personally — for accusing him of lying, when he’s “just trying to get the facts out there.”

“Michael, the New York Times in their story said that they based their conclusion on the fact that the RNC was hacked. If the RNC was not hacked, that casts doubt on their conclusions. I don’t understand why this is that difficult to understand.”

During the last couple of months, two very similar military campaigns have simultaneously been going on in Syria and Iraq, while the Syrian offensive with Russian air support against the militants in east Aleppo has been reviled as an assault against humanity, the military campaign in Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces and Shi’a militias with American air support has been lauded as the struggle for “liberation” by the mainstream media.

Although the campaign in Mosul is against the Islamic State while in east Aleppo the Syrian regime has launched a military offensive against the so-called “moderate rebels,” but the distinction between Islamic jihadists and “moderate” militants is more illusory than real.

Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq, the Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition against the regime and it still enjoys close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria. Keep in mind that although turf wars are common not just between the Islamic State and other militant outfits in Syria, but also among the rebel groups themselves; however, the ultimate objective of the Islamic State and the rest of militant outfits in Syria is the same: that is, to overthrow the Shi’a majority regime of Bashar al-Assad.

It is not a coincidence then that when the regime was on the verge of winning a resounding victory against the militants holed up in east Aleppo, the Islamic State came to the rescue of its brothers-in-arms by opening up a new front in Palmyra from where it had been evicted in March. Consequently, the regime has to send reinforcements from Aleppo to Palmyra in order to defend the city and thus the momentum of the military offensive in east Aleppo has stalled.

It defies explanation that while the US has announced the Phase II of the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have amassed north of the Islamic State’s bastion in al-Raqqah, instead of buttressing its defenses against the SDF in the north, the Islamic State has launched an offensive against the Syrian regime in the south? In order to answer this perplexing question, we need to revisit the ideology, composition and objectives of the Islamic State in Syria.

Unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-West rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.

Moreover, such spin-doctors also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are quite porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to the Syrian militants in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars for the sake of readers, I would divide it into three separate and distinct zones of influence. Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar.

Both of these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to the Sunni Arab jihadist organizations like al-Tawhid Brigade, Nour al-Din Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey.

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus.

Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan. Here let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.

And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqah and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State. Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by the hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

The bottom line is that although the American efforts to stall the momentum of the Islamic jihadists’ expansion in Iraq appears to be sincere, but the Western powers and their regional allies are still pursuing the duplicitous policy of using the Syrian militants, including the Islamic State, to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

Global concentrations of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and cause of climate change, are now growing faster in the atmosphere than at any other time in the past two decades.

That is the message of a team of international scientists in an editorial to be published 12 December in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The group reports that methane concentrations in the air began to surge around 2007 and grew precipitously in 2014 and 2015. In that two-year period, concentrations shot up by 10 or more parts per billion annually. It’s a stark contrast from the early 2000s when methane concentrations crept up by just 0.5 parts per billion on average each year. The reason for the spike is unclear but may come from emissions from agricultural sources and mainly around the tropics – potentially from farm sites like rice paddies and cattle pastures.

Scientists involved in the editorial will discuss these trends at a session during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco on Tuesday, 13 December.

The findings could give new global attention to methane – which is much less prevalent in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but is a more potent greenhouse gas, trapping 28 times more heat. And while research shows that the growth of carbon dioxide emissions has flattened out in recent years, methane emissions seem to be soaring.

“The leveling off we’ve seen in the last three years for carbon dioxide emissions is strikingly different from the recent rapid increase in methane,” said Robert Jackson, a co-author of the paper and a Professor in Earth System Science at Stanford University. The results for methane “are worrisome but provide an immediate opportunity for mitigation that complements efforts for carbon dioxide.”

The authors of the new editorial previously helped to produce the 2016 Global Methane Budget. This report provided a comprehensive look at how methane had flowed in and out of the atmosphere from 2000 to 2012 because of human activities and other sources. It found, for example, that human emissions of the gas seemed to have increased after 2007, although it’s not clear by how much. The methane budget is published every two to three years by the Global Carbon Project, a research project of Future Earth.

Methane, Jackson said, is a difficult gas to track. In part, that’s because it can come from many different sources. Those include natural sources like marshes and other wetlands. But the bulk, or about 60 percent, of methane added to the atmosphere every year comes from human activities. They include farming sources like cattle operations – cows expel large quantities of methane from their specialised digestive tracks – and rice paddies – the flooded soils make good homes for microbes that produce the gas. A smaller portion of the human budget, about a third, comes from fossil fuel exploration, where methane can leak from oil and gas wells during drilling.

“Unlike carbon dioxide, where we have well described power plants, almost everything in the global methane budget is diffuse,” Jackson said. “From cows to wetlands to rice paddies, the methane cycle is harder.”

But a range of information – such as from large-scale inventories of methane emissions, measurements of methane in the air and computer models – suggests that this cycle has shifted a lot in the last two decades. Jackson and his colleagues, for instance, report that the growth of methane in the atmosphere was mostly stagnant in 2000 to 2006. But that changed after 2007.

“Why this change happened is still not well understood,” said Marielle Saunois, lead author of the new paper and an assistant professor of Université de Versailles Saint Quentin and researcher at Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement in France. “For the last two years especially, the growth rate has been faster than for the years before. It’s really intriguing.”

Saunois added that this runaway pace could threaten international efforts to limit warming from climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. The research provides a strong argument that “we should do more about methane emissions,” Saunois says. “If we want to stay below 2 degrees temperature increase, we should not follow this track and need to make a rapid turn-around.”

Pinpointing where those methane emissions are coming from, however, isn’t easy. Many environmental advocates in North America have raised concerns that expanded drilling for natural gas in recent years could lead to a surge in methane emissions. But Saunois says that based on available data, the more likely source, at least for now, is agriculture. She and her colleagues aren’t sure what may be driving this increase. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock operations around the world expanded from producing 1,300 million head of cattle in 1994 to nearly 1,500 million in 2014 – with a similar increase in rice cultivation in many Asian countries.

Saunois and Jackson argue, however, that the story isn’t all bad news. A number of researchers have experimented with different ways of reducing methane emissions from farms. Feeding cows a diet supplemented with linseed oil, for example, seems to reduce the amount of methane they belch out. “When it comes to methane, there has been a lot of focus on the fossil fuel industry, but we need to look just as hard if not harder at agriculture,” Jackson said. “The situation certainly isn’t hopeless. It’s a real opportunity.”