Today Facebook reminded me that on 17th December 2011, I posted these questions: Do you believe that after taking an exit from Iraq, USA is trying to open new fronts? I also apprehended that some of the potential targets among Muslim countries could be Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and also posed a question does my assertions carry any weight?

When I posted this question about five years back, I didn’t have good knowledge of geopolitics in South Asia and MENA. If I look at 5-year history now, ongoing war in Syria and changed relationship of US with Saudi Arabia show that the world’s super power wants to keep war ongoing in this region. The US has not attacked Saudi Arabia but has caused it huge economic losses by bringing down crude oil price per barrel to less than US$35 from US$ 147. Even at present price is hovering around US$ 50 because of Saudi Arab led OPEC effort to cut output but US is taking full advantage of the prevailing situation.

If one looks at the US mania to topple Syrian President Assad, the only conclusion that could be drawn is US war mania. The history also shows that the US initiated war in various countries; an example of distant past is Vietnam and recent past are Afghanistan and Iraq.

The irony is that the US never accepts its defeat and never declares that war is over. It continues to support various rebel groups in war-torn countries and the most notorious examples are Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

One may wonder, why should the US initiate war? My reply is simple, it has to sell its arms and to conclude huge transactions first it creates rebel groups and then sells arms to the incumbent groups. The most notorious groups of present time supported by the US are Taliban and ISIS; other groups may also be working in different countries.

Kindly allow be to refer to Saudi Arabia that lately emerged as the biggest buyer of arms in the recent past. The US supported it by taking price of crude oil to US$147/barrel. In the meantime the US also increased its rig count to above 1900 to attain self sufficiency in indigenous crude production. To the viability of indigenous producers, the US funds plunged crude price to US$35/barrel.

The US not only caused huge economic losses to Saudi Arabia but has lately withheld supply of arms on the please that these are being used in Yemen. I may laugh at the US acts because over the years it was fully aware that arms were being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. It concluded the deals, took the money and now not honoring its commitments.

Emphasis should be on the energy needs of companies and communities rather than locally available resources.

Furthermore, social acceptability and active involvement of the aboriginal communities are key to developing renewable energy in the North. These were two main takeaways that emerged from the workshop on defining energy solutions for northern regions held at INRS on December 9, 2016, in the wake of the international research cooperation agreement between Quebec and Iceland.

The workshop, which brought together INRS (which initiated the agreement), Université Laval, Reykjavik University, University of Iceland, Landsvirkjun (Iceland’s national power company), Hydro-Québec’s Research Institute (IREQ), and Ouranos Consortium, was an opportunity for university partners and energy producers to discuss and define collaborative projects aimed at replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, not only to preserve the environment but also to reduce price volatility. Participants highlighted the importance of improving:

• Short-, medium-, and long-term energy demand forecasts for northern regions
• Our understanding of weather and climate change in order to adapt energy systems to the realities of northern regions

By pooling their complementary expertise in shallow geothermal energy, mobile energy system development, geothermal system engineering, and new materials research, partnership members want to provide private and public decision makers with valuable scientific and technical insight. To succeed, they plan to:

• Develop capacity-building projects on common issues relating to integrated energy systems
• Incorporate bilateral activities into ongoing research projects and to establish a dual degree agreement between universities in Quebec and Iceland
• Promote student enrolment in summer sessions at participating institutions and to foster faculty mobility and personnel exchanges with industrial partners

Choosing the right materials for geothermal operations remains a constant challenge, which is why cooperation and knowledge sharing between universities, industry, and government is crucial to the growth of geothermal energy. That was the general consensus following the geothermal symposium held on December 8, 2016, at INRS’s Eau Terre Environnement Research Centre.

The event gave researchers from Iceland, Sweden, and Quebec an opportunity to review the state of knowledge in this multidisciplinary field. They concluded that:

• The scarcity of equilibrium temperature measurements in Quebec leads to considerable uncertainty when analyzing regional geothermal potential
• Deepening our knowledge of available geothermal resources is critical to dealing with the growth of the drilling industry, which may affect the energy market
• Geothermal energy can be used anywhere, regardless of local geological conditions
• There is a lack of data on northern Quebec, and an easier access to geothermal data is essential
• Demonstration projects are required to validate assumptions regarding low temperature heat pumps
• Research on new materials is boosting the performance and reducing the cost of geothermal systems

“Iceland’s and Sweden’s experience with geothermal energy in the Arctic Circle is paving the way for Quebec,” asserted INRS professor Jasmin Raymond, holder of the Northern Geothermal Potential Research Chair.

Soviet and Russian rulers have used a variety of means in order to reduce the possibility that the Kazan Tatars, the Siberian Tatars and the Crimean Tatars will make common cause against Moscow. But now, a Russian paper reports, the powers that be are using a new tool.

Moscow’s “Gazeta” reports that genetic studies carried between 2006 and 2014 prove that the various Tatar groups do not have a common origin because genetically, the three peoples “are not like one another” (https://www.gazeta.ru/science/2016/12/14_a_10425539.shtml#page6 and nazaccent.ru/content/22670-uchenye-ne-nashli-dokazatelstv-obshego-proishozhdeniya.html).

“In other words,” the Russian researchers say, “the gene funds of the contemporary groups of Tatars must not be considered ‘fragments of a mosaic’ of a one-time common Tatar population [as many Tatars and some Russians have argued] but rather ‘a gallery’ of various genetic portaits.”

Three aspects of this report make it noteworthy: First and foremost, it shows that Moscow is prepared to do what it can to undermine the Volga Tatars, the second largest nationality in the Russian Federation, and will use any method to do so, however problematic it may be, given that culture is not the same thing as genetics.

Second, this approach reflects the increasing biologization of nationality among Russians, a trend to consider genetics the final word on ethnic borders rather than culture or language, and that in turn opens the way for racialist approaches to ethnicity not only among the Tatars but among all groups.

And finally, while the Russian scholars are unlikely to draw attention to this fact, the use of genetics to describe populations almost certainly would show that the much-ballyhooed unity of the Russian ethnos is far from being supported genetically. Almost certainly, given the geographic range and cultural contacts of the Russians, it would show just the reverse.

Thus, what Moscow is deploying against the Tatars may come back to haunt it not only by biologizing ethnicity and nationality but also by undermining Moscow’s claims about the fundamental underlying unity of the Great Russian Nation.

Donald Trump has just finished the last of his nine post-election “thank you tour” rallies. Why did he do them? Why is he planning further rallies after he becomes president?

One clue is Trump conducted them only in the states he won. And most attendees appeared to be people who had voted for him – overwhelmingly white, many wearing Trump hats and T-shirts. When warm-up speakers asked how many had previously attended a Trump rally, most hands went up.

A second clue is that rather than urge followers to bury the hatchet, Trump wound them up. “It’s a movement,” he said in Mobile, playfully telling the crowd that in the run-up to the election, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall?’ ‘We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison!’ ‘Prison!’ ‘Lock her up!’ I mean, you were going crazy. You were nasty and mean and vicious.” He called his followers “wild beasts.”

A third clue: Rather than shift from campaigning to governing, Trump’s post-election rallies were almost identical to the rallies he held when he was a candidate – the same format, same condemnations of the “dishonest” media, identical pledges (“We will build a great wall!”). They also elicited many of the same audience responses, such as “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

And rather than use the rallies to forgive those who criticized him during the campaign, he’s used them to settle scores — criticizing politicians who opposed his candidacy, like Ohio Governor John Kasich; blasting media personalities who predicted he would lose, such as CNN’s John King; and mocking opponents, such as Evan McMullin, the Republican who campaigned against him as an independent in Utah.

Trump vows to continue these rallies after he becomes president. As he told the crowd in Mobile, “They’re saying, ‘As president, he shouldn’t be doing rallies.’ But I think we should, right? We’ve done everything else the opposite. This is the way you get an honest word out.”

“Get an honest word out?” That’s the real tipoff.

Like his non-stop tweets, Trump’s purpose in holding these rallies is to connect directly with a large and enthusiastic base of followers who believe what he says – and thereby reject facts from mainstream media, policy analysts, government agencies that collect data, and the scientific community.

During the rallies Trump repeatedly claimed, for example, that the murder rate in the United States is the largest it’s been in 45 years. In fact, it’s near a 50-year low, according to the FBI.

A democracy depends on truth. Trump’s repeated claims that the murder rate is soaring may elicit support for policies such as harsher policing and sentencing – the opposite of what we need.

Trump also repeatedly said he won the election by a “landslide,” when in fact he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes – over five times Al Gore’s margin over George W. Bush in 2000.

And he repeatedly asserted that the election was marred by “massive voting fraud,” when in fact there has been no evidence of voting fraud at all (unless you consider the possibility that Russia hacked into our voting systems – which Trump dismisses).

Here again, the biggest potential loser is democracy. When continuously told by Trump that he won by a landslide, the public may give him a mandate he doesn’t deserve. If told of “massive voter fraud,” the public may support further efforts to suppress votes through rigid ID and other requirements.

If repeatedly told Muslims are the enemy, the public may support efforts to monitor them and their places of worship inside America, or even to confine them. If told that tide of undocumented immigrants is rising (in fact, it’s been falling), the public could get behind draconian policies to keep them out.

If told to disregard scientific evidence of climate change, the public may reject efforts to reverse it. If told to disregard CIA reports of Russian tampering with our elections, the public could become less vigilant about future tampering.

The rallies and tweets give Trump an unprecedented platform for telling Big Lies without fear of contradiction – and therefore for advancing whatever agenda he wishes. It’s no coincidence that Trump continues to denigrate the media and hasn’t held a news conference since July.

A president intent on developing a base of enthusiastic supporters who believe boldface lies poses a clear threat to American democracy. This is how tyranny begins.

It’s a good thing to explore the great outdoors. But a new study led by Colorado State University and the Wildlife Conservation Society found that recreation activities in protected areas are impacting wildlife. More often than not, the impact appears in negative ways.

Hiking, a common form of outdoor recreation in protected areas, can create a negative impact by causing animals to flee, taking time away from feeding and expending valuable energy.

Nature-based, outdoor recreation is the most widespread human land use in protected areas and is permitted in more than 94 percent of parks and reserves globally. Inspiring an estimated 8 billion visits per year to these areas, outdoor recreation is assumed to be compatible with conservation. Increasingly, however, negative effects of recreation on wildlife are being reported.

Protected areas include national parks, wilderness areas, community conserved areas, nature reserves and privately-owned reserves.

“People generally assume that recreation activities are compatible with conservation goals for protected areas,” said Courtney Larson, lead author of the study and a graduate student in CSU’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. “However, our review of the evidence across wildlife species and habitat types worldwide suggests otherwise.”

The authors reviewed 274 scientific articles published between 1981 and 2015 on the effects of recreation on a variety of animal species across all geographic areas and recreational activities.

More than 93 percent of the articles reviewed indicated at least one impact of recreation on animals, the majority of which, or 59 percent, were negative.

Surprisingly, studies of hiking and other non-motorized activities found negative effects on wildlife more frequently than studies of motorized activities.

“These findings do not mean that everyone should hop on an ATV instead of going for a hike,” Larson said. “Since motorized activities generally cover a larger area, their influence on animals can be more widespread. They can also result in other environmental impacts, such as soil loss and vegetation disturbance.”

Researchers found the following negative impacts in the study:

• decreased species diversity
• decreased survival, reproduction, or abundance of species, and
• behavioral or physiological disturbance, such as decreased foraging or increased stress.

Negative effects were documented most frequently in the studies for reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates.

Positive effects of recreation on wildlife were frequently observed on birds in the crow family and mammals in the rodent order. These effects included increased abundance and reduced flight responses.

“The harmful effects of recreation are a growing concern for land managers who must balance goals for recreation and conservation, as protected area visitation rates increase,” said Sarah Reed, Wildlife Conservation Society associate conservation scientist and a study co-author. “Results of this study are critical to inform science-based solutions to avoid or mitigate those impacts.”

“There is still much to know about the impacts of recreation on wildlife,” said CSU Professor Kevin Crooks in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, and also a co-author.

“We must start by simply acknowledging that recreation and conservation are not always compatible for all species, in all locations,” he added. “It might be time to establish limits on public access to protected areas, and encourage changes in the behavior of recreationists, leading to improved conservation outcomes.”

Although residential and commercial industries are widely adopting energy-efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs), the drop in LED prices is driving away manufacturers because of decreased profitability, dramatically dislocating and restructuring the solid-state lighting marketplace, according to a new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report.

Since the last Academies report in 2013 that assessed the state of solid-state lighting — which uses diodes, a semiconductor technology, as an alternative light source to incandescent bulbs — the annual residential installation of LED bulbs has increased sixfold between 2012 and 2014, from 13 million to 78 million.

The report also cites the emergence of new applications for solid-state lighting that have the potential to create new markets and commercial opportunities for the industry, as well as add value to aspects related to quality of life. For example, product and lighting designers are exploring options that collect and process data from the illuminated environment and offer additional features to consumers.

Developing new products with multiple features that offer functions beyond illumination could promise higher margins for manufacturers, said the committee that conducted the study and wrote the new report.

The report warns that the successful proliferation of such applications would not focus on the reduction of energy consumption alone, but the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should think of ways to continue to improve their efficiency, given their inevitable growth. The committee recommended developing strategies for supporting broader research that enables more efficient use of light across all applications, with attention to both the lighting design process and the design of lighting products.

With the possible emergence of new applications for solid state lighting, both consumers and industry need to be more fully educated about the transformative and broader implications of solid state lighting, the report highlights. To achieve this, DOE should partner with industry, states, and utility companies to develop and implement a public outreach program to deploy solid-state lighting.

By Kevin J. Jones

Pope Pius XII’s secret support for the attempted overthrow of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler is the subject of a recent book that draws on wartime documents and interviews with the American intelligence agent who wrote them.

“This book is the truth – as best I could establish it in a number of years of research – about the Pope’s secret operations in World War II,” historian Mark Riebling told CNA earlier this year.

“Its main premise is that Pius opted to resist Hitler with covert action instead of overt protest. As a result, he became involved in three separate plots by German dissidents to remove Hitler.”

“I thought this idea – that the Church engaged in secret operations during the bloodiest years in history, in the most controversial part of its recent history – was not just a footnote; it was something worth pursuing,” he said.

Riebling tells this story in his book “Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler,” published by Basic Books in September 2015.

In the late 1990s, debate over whether Pius XII did enough to counter the Nazis reached a high point with the publication of the deeply controversial book, “Hitler’s Pope,” by British journalist John Cornwell. The book was highly critical of Pius XII, charging that he was culpably silent – if not an accomplice – in the rise of Nazism.

“If you read the fiercest critics of the Nazi-era Church, the major ones all concede that Pius XII hated Hitler and worked secretly to overthrow him,” Riebling said. “Yet they say this in their books in just a clause, a sentence, or a paragraph. To me, this episode merited more curiosity.”

“If ‘Hitler’s Pope’ wanted to help rid the world of Hitler, what’s the story?”

Riebling said there were several sources of inspiration for the book. During his Catholic upbringing, he learned the long history of the Church: in its first centuries, Christianity was an underground organization. In post-Reformation England, the Jesuits were involved in clandestine work.

This history prompted him to ask how a historian would document it and find evidence.

He also drew inspiration from the story of James Jesus Angleton, a famous U.S. intelligence officer who during World War II ran an operation to penetrate the Vatican for the Office of Strategic Services, the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor.

During research on his previous book, “Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA,” Riebling discovered wartime documents from Angleton’s Rome section of the Office of Strategic Services.

“There were at least ten documents implicating Pius XII and his closest advisers in not just one, but actually three plots to remove Hitler – stretching from 1939 to 1944. These were typed up by someone using a very distinct nickname.”

That nickname, “Rock,” belonged to Ray Rocca. Rocca served as Angleton’s deputy in Rome and for most of his later career. His career included responsibility for the Central Intelligence Agency’s records concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“So, here’s a guy who had been in the Vatican; who had been charged with penetrating the Vatican; and who knew a thing or two about assassination probes. I thought: here’s an interesting guy to get to know,” Riebling said. Rocca did not violate his oath of secrecy, but his interviews with Riebling are among the book’s sources.

According to Riebling, his book does not charge that the Pope “tried to kill Hitler.” Rather, the Pope’s actions were more subtle.

“Pius becomes a key cog in conspiracies to remove a ruler who is a kind of Antichrist, because good people ask for his help, and he searches his conscience, and he agrees to become an intermediary for the plotters – their foreign agent, as it were – and thereby he becomes an accessory to their plots.”

The historian described these actions as “some of the most astonishing events in the history of the papacy.”

Pius XII had connections with three plots against Hitler. The first, from October 1939 to May 1940, involved German military conspirators. From late 1941 to spring of 1943 a series of plots involving the German Jesuits ended when a bomb planted on Hitler’s plane failed to explode.

The third plot again involved German Jesuits and also German military colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Although the colonel successfully planted a bomb near the Nazi dictator, it failed to kill Hitler. The priests had to flee after the failed attempt. Those unable to escape were executed.

During his research, Riebling discovered that Pius XII secretly recorded the conversations held in his office. Transcripts of the Pope’s talks with German cardinals in March 1939 show that he was deeply concerned that German Catholics would choose Hitler instead of the Church.

“The cardinals asked Pius to appease Hitler, so that German Catholics won’t break away and form a state church, as happened in Tudor England,” Riebling said.

“Pius heeded the German episcopate’s advice. Instead of protesting openly, he would resist Hitler behind the scenes.”

Pius XII’s agents provided the Allies with useful intelligence about Hitler’s war plans on three occasions, including Hitler’s planned invasion of Russia. In all three cases, the Allies did not act on the information.

For their part, the Nazis regarded Pius XII with suspicion since his election in 1939.

“He worked hard to allay those suspicions, to minimize persecutions of German Catholics. But the Nazis never dropped their guard,” Riebling said.

At one point Hitler planned to invade the Vatican, kidnap the Pope and bring him to Germany. Leading Nazi Heinrich Himmler “wanted to have the Holy Father publicly executed to celebrate the opening of a new soccer stadium,” Riebling said.

“Pius became aware of these plans, through his secret papal agents; and, in my view, that influenced the Holy Father’s decision to become involved with the anti-Nazi resistance.”

For Riebling, the assassination plots against Hitler were an admission of weakness, “because it’s saying that we can’t solve the problem by some other means.”

“Knowing what I do about Pius XII, and having researched him for many years, I believe he wanted to be a saint. He wanted people in Germany to be saints,” he added.

“When he heard that a priest was arrested for praying for the Jews and sent off to a concentration camp, he said: ‘I wish everyone would do that.’”

“But he didn’t say it publicly,” the writer acknowledged. The Pope’s words were made in secret in a letter to a German bishop.

“So I think what really happened here is: Pius XII wanted to lead a Church of saints. But had to settle for a Church of spies.”

In the wake of a bomb attack Saturday that killed 13 Turkish soldiers traveling on weekend leave and injured dozens of others, U.S. defense officials expressed condolences and reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Turkey and the battle against terrorism.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook issued a statement on behalf of Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the Defense Department.

“We wish to express our deepest condolences to our NATO ally Turkey after today’s bus bombing in Kayseri,” Cook said. “The attack targeted off-duty soldiers, and our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and those injured. We remain united with Turkey in the ongoing fight against terrorism, and those responsible for this cowardly act should be held accountable.”

Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, spoke with Turkish Chief of Defense Gen. Hulusi Akar today to express his condolences, Eucom officials said in a statement.

“During the call, General Scaparrotti reaffirmed his commitment to stand with our NATO ally Turkey and fight against shared threats,” officials said.

By Kizito Makoye Shigela

anzania has adopted a new national land policy which, among others, lowers the ceiling under which foreign investors can lease land from the current 99 to 33 years.

The new policy comes barely months after the East African nation embarked on a campaign to seize “idle” land and deter “rogue investors” from using it for speculative purposes.

The government has repeatedly accused some investors of hoarding swathes of land without developing it, while using the land as collateral for securing bank loans or selling it later at a higher price.

Tanzania is one of the sub-Saharan African countries which have attracted growing interest from foreign investors as a location of large-scale agricultural investments due to the availability of land and cheap labour.

According to William Lukuvi, Tanzania’s Minister for Lands and Human Settlements Development, the new policy aims to put in place an effective land tenure system that fosters economic development for the benefit of the majority of people.

“We are committed to ensuring that all citizens of Tanzania enjoy equitable land rights to enable them participate effectively in economic development, job creation and poverty reduction,” the minister said.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8 and 9 call for the promotion of development-oriented policies that support productive activities aimed at lifting the majority of people out of poverty.

In Tanzania, land is a public property vested in the President as trustee on behalf of the people. Non-citizens or foreign companies cannot own land except for investment purposes, according to the country’s 1999 land legislation.

Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania’s economy and more than 80 percent of the population depends on it for their livelihood, but while the country has a total of 44 million hectares of land suitable for agricultural production, only 10.8 million hectares are currently being cultivated, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives.

Foreign investors gain access to land through government leases whereby they are issued with a document known as “derivative right” through the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) – a government agency tasked to oversee foreign investments, with a maximum duration of 99 years under current legislation.

According to Yefred Myenzi, former executive director of HakiArdhi, a Dar es Salaam-based land rights institute, “in Tanzania we have land laws categorised as customary and statutory laws, with the latter having overriding powers in case there are problems with the former.”

Land can be given to an investor in the form of a derivative right which allows investors to lease land for investment purposes for a period of 32 years, 65 and 98 years, he explained.

Currently, investors seeking land in Tanzania must present a business plan to the TIC for approval. If approved, they must then apply for land through the agency. The investors are then introduced to the village, where they present their investment proposal to the Village Council.

If the Village Council agrees, the wider Village Assembly is requested to consider the proposal. If the request is approved, a process of land mapping is undertaken to identify, demarcate and value the village’s land.

“The problem with this process is that once the land has been transferred to the government, local people no longer have the right to it until after 99 years,” said Myenzi.

Although Tanzania’s land laws indicates that foreign companies should obtain land through the TIC, analysts say there have been cases where private companies have directly negotiated with village leaders to obtain land.

“Village leaders often make dubious deals with outside investors without providing appropriate information for villagers to make an informed decision,” says Marjorie Mbilinyi, a policy analyst with the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP).

The new policy is intended to plug all such loopholes to ensure that non-citizens and foreign companies do not directly acquire village land through allocation, purchase or lease, according to officials.

Under the new policy, the government will fix land ceilings on the basis of use, location, feasibility studies and proven ability of the investor to develop and use the land in a sustainable manner.

“We will ensure that foreign investors are allocated land for a maximum term of 33 years, or a lesser term depending on their proven ability to develop it,” Lukuvi said.

To ensure that compensation offers are not given on an unfair “take-it or leave-it” basis, the new policy would recognise land values in all transactions to ensure that compensation is paid promptly and interest at market rate is charged if delayed.

“I think it is good that the government has heard our cries. Very often the compensation given when your land is taken is too small and sometimes not paid in time,” said Maulid Ali, a farmer in Kisarawe district.

One fish species is able to adjust the gender ratio of its population, through changes at the molecular level, in response to changing environmental conditions, shows a KAUST research team.

“Several species of fish, and in particular coral reef fish, are able to swap their sex during their lifespan,” explained Timothy Ravasi from KAUST’s Environmental Epigenetic Program. “This is known as sequential hermaphroditism.”

Such characteristics can render fish communities more resilient to disruptions that might otherwise prove catastrophic to their reproductive capabilities. For example, clownfish “families” normally consist of one mature male and female plus numerous juveniles. If the female disappears, the remaining male alters hormone levels to transform into a female, restoring the previous gender balance.

The precise biology of this is unclear, and Ravasi and his KAUST colleagues set out to identify changes in gene expression within the brain and gonads that drive this process of sequential hermaphroditism. They compared gene activity profiles from fully developed males and females as well as males at multiple stages of the process.

After two weeks of being separated from a female, the researchers detected clear changes in gene expression within the brains of males that apparently herald the onset of gender transition, and complementary changes in gonadal gene expression became apparent a few weeks later.

The researchers were subsequently able to map the genetic machinery driving this process.

“We identified a large number of candidate molecular pathways that are potentially able to fine-tune and therefore control the gender ratio in a population of fish,” noted Ravasi.

One key candidate is a gene encoding an enzyme called aromatase, which is known to be involved in the production of estrogen. Aromatase was highly expressed in both the brain and gonads of the fish adapting to gender ratio alterations. Ravasi and the research team also found many other genes that are likely to interact with aromatase in managing the degeneration of the testes and the development of the ovaries.

With these foundational insights into this complex biological process, Ravasi now hopes to explore how this adaptive process is influenced by environmental factors and specifically climate change.

“We are not sure whether the ocean’s warming and acidification can influence the tightly controlled regulation of gender ratio changes,” he said. “We are systematically exposing the fish to end-of-century predicted ocean conditions and trying to understand whether climate change alters these molecular pathways.”

By Kabir Taneja

The world is still perhaps coming to terms with the outcome of the elections in America, where Republican candidate and businessman Donald J. Trump orchestrated a shock victory, which caused a wave of concern within the global diplomatic community.

One of the foremost questions around Trump’s victory has been in relation to the future of the Iran nuclear deal, one that the President-elect has criticised himself, dubbing it as a “horrible deal” and insisting that he will look to renegotiate the agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He went on to add, prior to his victory, that the sanctions imposed against Tehran were in fact doing a good job, and their removal will push Iran to become “a major power at some point.”

Over the past few weeks, Trump’s appointments to critical posts in his cabinet have largely included people who have been against the JCPOA (we still wait for his decision to appoint the Secretary of State). The current chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Brennan, has warned the incoming president against any attempts to dismantle the deal, calling any such move as a ‘height of folly.’ Meanwhile, Trump’s pick to replace Brennan, Mike Pompeo, posted on Twitter that he was looking forward to “rolling back” the nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “disastrous” and relegating the Iranian establishment as “the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”

The Iran deal, successfully negotiated at the Palais Coburg Hotel, a legacy palace built in 1845, in Vienna, between Tehran and the UN Security Council members, plus Germany (collectively known as P5+1) was seen as a momentous victory for international diplomacy where military actions were avoided to bring Tehran’s nuclear programme under international scrutiny. Even as America’s allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, who found themselves in a rare embrace over similar regional interests against Iran, criticised the deal, the world looked forward to warding off a potential nuclear arms race in the planet’s most volatile region. Of course, Israel is known to already have nuclear weapons, and if former US Secretary of State Colin Powell is to be believed, Tel Aviv, which of course denies having any such weapons, has an arsenal of around 200 nuclear weapons, more than India. This past week, the US Senate overwhelmingly voted for renewing the existing non-nuclear sanctions on Iran for another ten years. Even as Trump has not revealed any detailed outlooks on his approach to the Iran question, the above move emboldens his stance currently on offer as a take-away menu from his scrappy takes on foreign policy during pre-election debates. Overall, there are no clear, well-presented indication on what he intends to do with the Iran agreement.

However, it is critical to remember here, that the JCPOA is a multilateral deal and not one that Washington can scrap just by itself. The governments in Paris, Berlin, Beijing, Moscow and London have perhaps much more invested into the success of the deal economically and politically than the US, and will look to continue the deal in whatever forms possible in an event of an American abdication.

Iran offers tremendous economic opportunities as it comes out of international isolation. It is home to some of the world’s largest untapped oil and gas reserves, and much of the technology currently in use in Iran here is obsolete, which led to many Western energy companies to camp out in Tehran well before the deal was achieved in Vienna in order to gain a first-mover advantage. Beyond energy, Iran offers a well educated, young population, a strong domestic manufacturing base thanks to it being forced to look inward over the decades and so on. To put it in simple terms, Iran is not the destitute, war-torn pariah state that many believe it to be.

India, while a close, historical friend of Iran, with significant trade and civilisation ties, was initially in two minds over its approach on the country’s nuclear programme. New Delhi, in 2009, played a balancing gamble when it voted against then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime at the United Nations against the country’s nuclear programme. While India did so predominantly under pressure from Washington, it also looked to continue its robust energy trade with Iran despite a confrontational Tehran under Ahmadinejad’s rule over its stance at the UN. However, New Delhi and Washington caught each other at odds over this, as the Americans continued to squeeze Iranian interests out from the largely Western controlled global financial system. India’s energy imports from Iran came down drastically, and New Delhi was unable to make payments to Tehran as the Americans also terminated the last route to do so, via a bank in Turkey. The Iranians, known for their bullish and often backtracking style of diplomacy, pressured India tremendously to release more than $6 billion in due payments which New Delhi was depositing in a bank account at a UCO Bank branch in Kolkata. However, to move this money at that time to Iran would require India to break a host of international financial accords it was signatory too, which it refused to do. During this period, Iran even threatened to ‘give away’ the Farzad B gas field, which it had committed exclusively to India for its development, if India did not make the payments.

Beyond energy, the development of Chabahar port is also critical to the India-Iran optics. While India has been characteristically slow in execution of this project, the extended regional policy of Afghanistan may finally push its commitments to the port development into overdrive after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked for the project to be executed on priority, and later visited Iran as well. However, the public discourse around Chabahar in India has been oversimplified, making it look like an exclusively strategic Indian influence region in Iran, similar to what China has in the name of Gwadar, about 300 km away in Pakistan. To put the false equivalence in perspective over Chabahar’s exclusivity towards India’s interests, Tehran has openly invited China as well for the Chabahar Economic Zone’s development, and in January this year, Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, where Gwadar port is located, and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Governor Ali Osat Hashemi signed a decree to declare Gwadar and Chabahar as “sister port cities.” Iran also pledged to help out Gwadar in one of its most debilitating problems, water scarcity. Zehri also roped in the fact that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will bring progress to both sides for Balochs, with Iran also selling electricity to Pakistan’s Balochistan grid.

Last month, after a long gap, Iran regained its top spot from Saudi Arabia as India’s largest crude oil supplier. After months of New Delhi getting breathers from the US in financial sanctions against Tehran to pay its dues, uninterrupted energy trade resumed clearing significant portions of debts to Iran. Return of financial sanctions under Trump, or worse, repercussions of an attempt by the US to renegotiate the JCPOA could put India in a spot of bother once more. Even though India can easily hedge its oil imports from other suppliers, with Gwadar now fully operational under China’s influence in Pakistan, New Delhi will look to increase its influence at a fast pace in the region.

A dismantling of the Iran nuclear agreement, as unlikely as it may be, may not cause a huge dent in Indo-Iranian optics, but will require India to manoeuvre its relations with Tehran with diplomatic creativity, something that has been missing in the past. The good news is, if such a situation arises, New Delhi can align with the European powers interests in Iran quite naturally, including on issues such as financial transactions and trade. Overall, a revisit of the agreement by Trump’s administration is going to be far more counterproductive and possibly even isolating for Washington than Iran or other global players.

By Dr. Arshad M. Khan*

Stealing elections is not new. Most observers can recite examples. It was also clear something was wrong. The size of Bernie Sanders rallies for one in comparison with Hillary Clinton’s even when exaggerated by the main stream media (MSM). It turns out the MSM had been bought in other ways also, printing positive op-eds for Hillary and vice versa for Bernie before primary voting.

How do we know all this? Thanks to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other emails. Informing the public of high level corruption is a grievous sin in the Obama administration. So it was that a jaunty President Obama appeared for his final news conference — just before setting off for a Christmas vacation to Hawaii costing millions and paid for by the taxpayer. The Russians hacked the emails; the Russians influenced the election; this has to stop; we’ll consider a measured response.

Forget the corrupt DNC chair (at the time), Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned in disgrace and disappeared from the Democratic Convention as Bernie Sanders delegates booed. Forget John Podesta; forget the Clintons, clearly not unknowing beneficiaries; forget the crooks. Blame the Russians.

It is a many-months old story from summer suddenly given new legs. At the time, President-elect Donald Trump encouraged the Russians, if they were responsible, to hack more! So why is the MSM pushing it again led by The Washington Post (current owner Jeff Bezos) now notorious for a dubious, unsourced McCarthyism story impugning alternative media in a black list published by the heretofore almost unknown group PropOrNot?

Surely the CIA has better things to do than pursue an old hack that informed voters of a corrupted Democratic party. No wonder Trump has stopped taking intelligence briefings from the CIA. That alone is a first time ever for a newly elected president. One supposes he will wait until his selected CIA nominee Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas takes control.

Well, the answer to these questions lies in one simple fact: the selection of Rex Tillerson as the nominee for Secretary of State. He has cordial relations with Russian business leaders and knows Vladimir Putin. Here’s what’s happened.

Candidate Trump’s two foreign policy initiatives were to get tough with China on trade and to improve relations with Russia. He tried and failed to get someone to do both; hence the repeated meetings with Mitt Romney.

So it was that he decided to focus on one or the other. He met with a former ambassador to China, John Huntsman, a moderate Republican who was appointed by Obama. And he interviewed Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, a man who clearly knows his way around the Russian oligarchy.

The Chinese enterprise is fraught with pitfalls, a principal one being the WTO which would in all probability negate a unilateral tariff. Moreover, the Chinese have already fired a small warning shot in the air, if not across the bow: they sold $45 billion of US government securities this week.

So it had to be Tillerson — a tilt to better relations with Russia. Couple this with the announcement to review the bloated and troubled F-35 multi-role fighter program, and one can easily discern how Trump has sent tremors, if not an earthquake, through the unholy neocon and military industrial complex alliance. Their minions are responding.

Tellingly, improving relations with Russia seems the only saving grace of the incoming Trump administration. The other cabinet nominees portend a dismal future for government departments and services, as the individuals supposed to lead them either disavow their need to exist or do not believe in their remit. It is going to be an horrendous four years.

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

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

US President-elect Donald Trump has publicly vowed to “stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments.” He has also pledged to work with any nation that is genuinely interested in fight against ISIS terrorism. This sounds good and raises some hope that perhaps the US under Trump will shrink from the pattern of foreign intervention and meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations, but the big question is if this is a realistic hope or rather hope against hope?

After all, the previous Republican president, George W. Bush, famously said in the 2000 campaign that “we’re not into nation-building” and, yet, using the 9/11 pretext, he ended up as one of the most interventionist US presidents ever and, indeed, in 2004 reluctantly admitted that the US was involved in nation-building in Iraq

So, naturally, one wonders if Trump, who is full of ultra-nationalistic bombast about “making America great again,” will remain true to his public rhetoric, or will he turn out another Bush, who is blamed for a 3 to 6 trillion dollar price tag for US’ messy involvement in “wars of choice, not necessity.” Of course, it is simplistic to say that wars are ipso facto bad for the US economy and one must take into consideration the logic of military-industrial complex that breeds conflict in order to satiate its profit motif. This is why the cycle of war often repeats itself and shows its reptilian face in different guises, such as manufacturing crises, which is what both Bush administrations, father and son, excelled in. Look for example at the prologue to the Kuwait crisis: the US deliberately gave misleading ‘green light’ to Saddam Husain that led him believe US would tolerate his takeover of Kuwait, which proved out to be wrong.

One reason to suspect Trump’s ability to remain faithful to his public stance against “regime change” is that it sits uncomfortably next to the other Trump, the militaristic and hawkish politician who has a penchant for US’ hard power and has repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for acting indecisively, e.g., in Persian Gulf. Trump’s choice of several hawkish retired generals has further reinforced the concern that his administration may turn out to be “trigger happy” and embroil the US in new wars and conflicts irrespective of Trump’s focus on improving the domestic economy

Concerning the latter, Trump’s economic blueprint — of lowering taxes for corporations and the middle class while increasing government spending on defense and infrastructure — sounds almost like a mission impossible that may actually lead to unfulfilled promises and voter disillusionment, in which case Trump may resort to artificial foreign crises as part of a politics of scapegoating. Unable to take on nuclear Russia and or China, Trump the president may opt for second-tier adversaries such as Iran, in which case he would have to sacrifice US’ economic interests reflected in the 16 billion dollar Boeing deal with Iran. Should Trump opt for Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO, as his secretary of state, then it is almost a sure bet that Tillerson will prioritize global stability and risk avoidance in US’ Middle East policy. But, then again, Tillerson would have to compete with a host of Trump hawks, e.g, Flynn and Mattis and others, favoring a new level of US confrontational approach in dealing with US’ adversaries such as Iran. This would be particularly the case if Trump picks the warmongering ultra-right John Bolton as Tillerson’s deputy, sure to cause frictions within the foreign policy establishment from the outset of Trump’s administration. Chances are, then, that Tillerson would be the odd man out and left out of key policy decisions, in other words, turned into a figure head. Of course, the opposite possibility also exists, that is, that Bolton would be the scarecrow and ends up frustrated by a duet of Trump-Tillerson singing a different tune on Iran, Russia, and Syria.

While it remains to be seen how US foreign policy under Trump will be shaped and re-shaped by changing global circumstances, it is less uncertain however that just like Bush, Trump may switch to regime change, interventionism, and so on, in the name of political expediency, recalling Bush’s flip-flop after 9/11. In fact, US has a long history of “false flags” and manufacturing foreign crises, such as the Gulf of Tonkin (non) incident, which was used by President Johnson in the Vietnam war. With a uniform Republican-dominated Congress and White House, unfortunately it is rather easy for US today to recycle such foreign adventures, which have had calamitous results. History instructs us not to lose sight of important analogies, which is why it is important to keep Bush’s example (cited above) in mind when pondering on the true significance of Trump’s pledge to pull the US power away from the addiction of regime change abroad.

Source: Iranian Diplomacy

At least ten people have been killed and several taken hostage by fighters who have barricaded themselves in a medieval castle in Jordan’s city of Al Karak.

Among the dead are four Public Security Department (PSD) personnel, two citizens and a Canadian tourist were shot dead by unknown assailants in the southern city of Karak on Sunday, according to an updated PSD statement.

By Sunday evening, an operation against the unknown attackers was still ongoing, according to the statement, which estimated their number at around five to six people.

The statement said there were people who were injured in the shootout, but did not give any number or details.

The PSD urged citizens in Karak, 150 kilometres south of Amman, to take caution and to follow security updates.
blank

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Hani Mulki said several people were killed during a security operation in Karak.

He said Special Forces have surrounded an area in the southern city where 10 of the suspected attackers were entrenched in.

Addressing a Parliament session, the premier said there was no information on the attackers, describing them as “outlaws”.

He said the incident started in Qatraneh town, north of Karak, when the unknown assailants opened fire from a cafe’s rooftop on a police patrol. Later on, he said, they targeted other patrols in the Karak governorate.

Original source

United States foreign aid dollars, and even police training, have been supporting for several months large-scale systematic street executions of supposed drug dealers and users in the Philippines. Now, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who has promoted the escalation of the drug war in the country since his election in the summer, is expressing his dislike for the US government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation postponing a decision on renewal of potentially several hundred million dollars in US aid to the Philippines government in order to review “concerns around rule of law and civil liberties.”

Duterte sounds angry from his comments in response. And he may be angry. But, Duterte’s comments also may be designed to place him in a good position to strike a more advantageous US aid deal with President-elect Donald Trump.

A Saturday report from the Associated Press relates that Duterte has reacted to the US foreign aid announcement by saying he welcomes not being given the aid, “bye-bye America,” and the Philippines “can survive without American money.” Plus, the Associated Press report further notes that Duterte, in his comments, said that the US should “prepare for the eventual repeal or the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement.” In other words, Duterte is suggesting the Philippines is ready to respond to an aid cut-off by terminating the Philippines’ cooperation with the US military.

Indeed, it may be that Duterte’s earlier talk of reducing ties with the US and increasing ties with China is the primary, though unspoken, motivation for the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s announcement regarding Philippines aid.

This all sounds like great news for advocates for a noninterventionist US foreign policy: There may soon be a significant reduction in US foreign aid to the Philippines and a termination or substantial curtailment of US military operations with the nation.

However, it is too early for noninterventionists to celebrate.

At the same time Duterte was saying “bye-bye” to the US he also said his nation can instead receive aid from the Chinese government and expressed an affinity with Donald Trump. “I will let Obama fade away and if he disappears, then I will begin to reassess,” said Duterte.

How should we interpret Duterte’s comments overall? It seems that Duterte may, like Trump, see himself as a great dealmaker. Knowing Trump’s repeatedly expressed concerns about China, what better way to ensure much US aid continues to flow to the Philippines government, and maybe even increases substantially, than to threaten to end military cooperation with the US and to increase ties with China? And, to help make negotiations move forward smoothly, it may not hurt to compliment the US leader across the negotiating table, especially when that leader is prone to categorize people into “friends” and “enemies.” “I have talked to Trump, he was very nice, very courteous,” Duterte said. This type of compliment is in stark contrast with the type of language Duterte has used to describe President Barack Obama.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

The minds of some Electoral College members have apparently been affected by the irrational Russian hacker hysteria. Eighty of them signed a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. They asserted that they “require a briefing on all investigative findings” on the Russia issue.

According to Politico, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it is supporting the electors’ requirement.

However, recognizing that these electors are in no position to “require” any such briefing, Clapper rejected their preposterous request outright. The Washington Examiner reported, “No intel briefing for Electoral College.”

The hack scandal the electors sought intel on is actually a non issue. I documented the speciousness of the Russian hacker stories in my article “Congressional Cybersecurity Leader Demolishes Obama’s Hacking Case Against Russia.” But now the electors are fretting over this fabricated problem.

Their purpose in the Electoral College is allegedly to apply wisdom should there be a flagrantly and dangerously unwise presidential choice of the electorate. Isn’t it hard to see how the wisdom of these eighty duped electors rises to a level that justifies nullifying the result of the constitutional voting process?

For the record, here are their names:

Christine Pelosi (CA); Micheal Baca (CO); Anita Bonds (DC); Courtney Watson (MD); Dudley Dudley (NH); Bev Hollingworth (NH); Terie Norelli (NH); Carol Shea-Porter (NH); Clay Pell (RI); Chris Suprun (TX); Sandra Aduna (CA); Edward Buck (CA); Donna Ireland (CA); Christine Kehoe (CA); Vinz Koller (CA); Katherine Lyon (CA); John P. MacMurray (CA); Stephen J. Natoli (CA); Andres Ramos (CA); Priscilla G. Richardson (CA); Shawn Terris (CA); Gail Teton-Landis (CA); Olivia Reyes-Becerra (CA); David Scott Warmuth (CA); Shirley Weber (CA); Denise Wells (CA); Gregory H. Willenborg (CA); Laurence Zakson (CA); Polly Baca (CO); Jerad Sutton (CO); Robert Nemenich (CO); John Bickel (HI); Janice Bond (HI); Marie (Dolly) Strazar (HI); David Mulinix (HI); Lauren Beth Gash (IL); William Marovitz (IL); Nancy Shepherdson (IL); Nazda Alam (MA); Dori Dean (MA); Jason Palitsch (MA); Parwez Wahid (MA); Paul G. Yorkis (MA); Lillian Holmes (MD); Lesley Israel (MD); Robert Leonard (MD); Salome T. Peters (MD); Diane Denk (ME); Jules Goldstein (MN); Lizette Delgado-Polanco (NJ); Edward Farmer (NJ); Christopher D James (NJ); Leroy J. Jones (NJ); Herieberta Loretta Winters (NJ); Kelly Maer (NJ); Retha Onitri (NJ); Hetty Rosenstein (NJ); Paul Catha (NV); Stuart Appelbaum (NY); Hazel Ingram (NY); Letitia James (NY); Melissa Mark-Viverito (NY); Stephanie Miner (NY); Melissa Sklarz (NY); Anastasia M. Somoza (NY); Andrea Stewart-Cousins (NY); Lovely Warren (NY); Leon H. Coleman (OR); Frank Dixon (OR); Laura Gillpatrick (OR); Karen Packer (OR); Timothy Norman Powers Rowan (OR); Sam H.W. Sappington (OR); Beth Caldwell (WA); Bret Chiafalo (WA); Deb Fitzgerald (VA); Terry C. Frye (VA); Jeanette Sarver (VA); Kathy Stewart Shupe (VA); Martha Allen (VT).

Many believe that these people have an agenda to delegitimize Trump’s election. They are not alone in that quest. Immediately after the election I heard MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell do a segment suggesting that EC members should abandon the candidates they were elected to support and vote their own minds.

His quest to delegitimize the election is shared yet by others too. A week after the election an Internet domain name was registered apparently with the same goal. It is HamiltonElectors.com. Whoever registered it took steps to conceal their actual identities. But the site is well designed and includes a very professionally produced documentary film aimed at nullifying Trump’s victory.

Both O’Donnell and Hamilton Electors venerate the ideas of Alexander Hamilton about the Electoral College. The relevance of Hamilton’s eighteenth century thinking to today’s society should instead be seriously questioned. He may have had some thoughts that were interesting in his day. Even so, as to the totality of his wisdom, it’s worth considering this: Hamilton in the end was a fool who was lured into a gun duel over a petty political disagreement, and his foolishness resulted in his death.

The actions of the eighty electors, the Clintonites, and the Lawrence O’Donnells of the media may not be an immediate threat to anyone’s life.

But the proposed coup in the Electoral College would portend great trouble ahead, including a possible constitutional crisis and even insurrection in the streets.

Let us pray that the electors can find greater wisdom within themselves than they have demonstrated to date.

Weeks before Donald Trump moves to the White House as the next President, a lot of readings are being made on what kind of foreign policies he would be pursuing following his many unconventional statements on certain foreign policy issues. It is uncertain if there is going to be a new model in foreign policy making. In particular, his 10-minute talk on telephone with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has opened up the critical question of the ‘One China’ policy that the US adhered to since 1979 when it adopted the policy and has since been maintaining only unofficial ties with Taiwan. The ‘One China’ policy refers to the recognition by other countries of Chinese sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan.

The Taiwan issue is too sensitive in the US-China relations. After almost a decade of near-normal relations between China and Taiwan, Beijing had developed doubt about Taiwan’s thinking after Tsai took office. Beijing started to develop the feeling that Tsai is likely to extract favourable conditions from the US in the relationships. The Trump-Tsai phone talk has only precipitated the doubt.

What could be at the core of Trump’s likely new approach to the Taiwan issue? While the political considerations are given, what possibly weighs high in Trump’s mind are the security and economic considerations. Not only Trump has questioned Beijing’s inability or unwillingness to address North Korea’s pursuance of nuclear programs, and militarisation in the South China Sea, what seems to bother the most is the unfavourable balance of trade that the US has with China and China’s currency manipulation. Even during the election campaign, trump consistently excoriated China’s trade policies and pledged to whack a 45 per cent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office.

Trump wants to correct the imbalance in trade with China and the Taiwan card seems to have come handy. Because of the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue, Beijing’s reactions could be harsh, even to the extent of breaking ties with the US. The evolving great power rivalry between the US and China could possibly dramatically impact the security scenario in the Asian region if Trump moves to the next step and Beijing reacts in a more belligerent manner. Trump’s assertion has been rebutted by Beijing by a string of stern reactions, the latest being by Chinese ambassador to the US.

Economic factor

As it seems, Trump wants to use the sensitive issue of Taiwan and the ‘One China’ policy as a bargaining chip to address the economic issue. This in itself could shape how great powers conduct relations. If Trump is thinking of using the trick of a business mind to put pressure on an opponent till the point the adversary (China) yields, this trick may not work. China has unequivocally declared in uncertain terms that Taiwan is one of its “core interests” and would not hesitate to integrate with the mainland by the use of force, if needed. If either side do not back off, the new situation could be the recipe for disaster to happen in the Asian theatre.

Days after Trump questioned the efficacy of the ‘One China’ policy, the state media urged the government to invade Taiwan. The nationalist Global Times, affiliated to the Communist Party of China’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, observed in an editorial China’s Taiwan policy should not be dictated by the US or Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The editorial observed: “The future of Taiwan must not be shaped by the DPP and Washington, but by the Chinese mainland. It is hoped that peace in the Taiwan Straits won’t be disrupted. But the Chinese mainland should display its resolution to recover Taiwan by force. Peace does not belong to cowards.” A majority of countries, including India, officially consider Taiwan – a functioning democracy with a free press – as part of China while maintaining diplomatic, trade and cultural ties by proxy. Now Trump sees no compelling reason why the US should subscribe to the ‘One China’ policy unless the US makes a deal with China.

Since for China the ‘One China’ policy remains as the foundation of US-China relations, any deviation from this stance by Trump by putting China’s “core interest” on the bargaining table is simply a recipe for rocky relations, or perhaps worse than that. For Beijing, Taiwan is a non-negotiable national interest. If this is the case, are there any chances for economic deal-making, which is what Trump has in mind? Given the way the Chinese have reacted to Trump’s direct contact with Tsai and his subsequent criticism of China’s trade issues and monetary policy, there seems to be little scope for reaching fresh understanding.

Yet, there could be two possibilities. One is the new approach would spiral a war with inconceivable consequences; the other is Trump could succeed in putting Beijing on notice by putting US’ core interests on the table as well to get some results in America’s favour. In other words, Trump is asking Beijing to respect the core interests of the US if it expects the US to continue to do the same for China. By calling that equation into question, Trump is unfolding a Pandora box, which complicates the matter. For now, Trump is only President-elect and not the President and that he may be testing the Chinese waters and may actually not pursue the policy that he has been articulating now after he moves to the White House. Does it men than that the Chinese need not overreact? The answer to this could be both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

Should China be patient and wait till Trump moves to the White House on 20 January and see what exactly he does? If the ‘core interest’ analogy means mutual respect, which is what Trump probably wants to leverage with Beijing by way of open shipping lanes in the South China Sea, reduced cyber-security risks emanating from China, and less protectionism and unfair competition for American business interest in China, Beijing might like to ponder in the largest interest of preserving the relationship and also for the interest of the world. But given the recent Chinese aggression in asserting its positions on regional and world issues that could be a mere will-o-the-wisp.

There are fears that Trump’s chest-thumping over trade issues with China could trigger a trade war and if that happens, it would send shockwaves across the globe. Though Trump has announced the name of Terry Branstad, the Iowa governor and “an old friend of the Chinese people”, as his ambassador to China, it is unlikely to prevent worries of a looming trade war if Trump sticks to his threat. It is amazing that a simple telephone talk between two people has the power to reshape world politics and affect the uneasy equilibrium, injecting a dimension to how international diplomacy is conducted.

In April, the US Treasury will release its report and it is to be seen how the report mentions about China’s currency. That time, Trump’s assertion that China has been devaluing its currency in order to stack the deck on exports in its favour will be tested as imposing tariffs on China by bypassing procedure will not be appropriate way to do business. Production of a product is no longer a business of a single country; it involves many companies of other countries as well. Since many US and European companies are involved in assembling products in China, high tariffs would hurt them as well when such products are exported from the assembly lines. That could mean that Trump could target sectors where US companies’ interests are not too much affected. Steel could be one sector that might attract Trump’s tariff wrath as China exports a lot of cheap steel because of overcapacity and which is causing disruption to the US steel industry.

If such would be the scenario, what could be China’s response? It could be in two ways: ignore and concentrate on the larger picture; or retaliate by targeting large American firms (for example, Boeing or Apple whose reliance on China is high). Whichever way the relationship moves, if there is a trade war, loss for both could be immense.

China is America’s largest trading partner. But the US has a trade deficit of $366 billion with Beijing in goods and services in 2015, an increase of 6.6 per cent over the previous year. Trump accuses Beijing of artificially depressing its currency, the renminbi, in order to boost its exports as its value fell by around 15 per cent in the past two-and-half years, which is why Trump accuses China of being a “currency manipulator” and wants the US Treasury to start negotiations with Beijing on allowing the renminbi to rise the day he takes office. During the campaign, Trump was blunt in saying that the US has a massive trade deficit with China and that the US cannot “continue to allow China to rape our country”. He termed the US-China trade as “the greatest theft in the history of the world”. So, if Trump toughens stance, China’s loss would be more in terms of loss in earning from trade but the US might as well find it harder to source the same products elsewhere. So, both sides would be the losers.

China’s position is better than the US if disruptions occur. This is because the largest categories of goods that it sources from the US are soybeans, cars and aircraft for which it has choices to source from other destinations. In contrast, the three categories of goods that the US imports from China are mobile phones, tablets/laptops and network equipment in each of which China is the dominant global supplier, accounting for almost 70 per cent of global output. If trump decides to impose high tariffs on such Chinese products, the US purchasers would be hurt by effectively paying a higher tax on purchases on consumer electronics.

The damage to the US and China’s interests would no longer be confined to the two countries alone but the effects would be felt beyond, across the Asia Pacific region. This is because China imports 35% of the components of its export items from other countries (as of 2015) which are assembled in China before exports, which inevitably means that a trade war would not only hurt both the US and China but would cause collateral damage on imports from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and others. This would also leave debilitating impact on the real estate sector and result in loss of jobs for millions of workers. According to the World Trade Organisation, China charges an average 15.6 per cent tariff on US agricultural imports and 9 per cent on other goods. In contrast, Chinese farm products pay 4.4 per cent and other goods 3.6 per cent when coming into the US.

So, the rebalancing the economy would prove to be a disaster. However, Trump probably needs to take into consideration that labour-intensive industries that moved to the third world countries are unlikely to return to the US, which is why his policy may be flawed. Trump also need not overlook the fact that China has a stranglehold on the US economy by holding about a trillion dollars in US government debt, which would limit Trump’s leverage to negotiate better terms with China to some extent. Pushing the case too far could only increase the prospect of a trade war.

South China Issue

Dealing with China’s military expansionism is another item in Trump’s agenda, apart from currency manipulation. During his election campaigns, Trump questioned China’s military expansionism in the South China Sea as well as trade issues. Since then China has upped the ante on the South China Sea by making further inroads by building massive military complex in the middle of this body of water. This has not deterred the US to challenge Beijing for its “assertive behaviour in the South China Sea”. Trump has rejected Chinese control of the region and its rapid development of artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.

As is well known, China insists on sovereignty in its entirety over the resource-endowed South China Sea, ignoring claims by some other Asian nations. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim territory in the strategic waterway, while the US Navy insists on its right to operate throughout the area, including in waters close to China’s new outposts. Not only Washington not accepted the Chinese claims but also has regularly sent warships into the strategically vital area to assert the right to freedom of navigation. Trump has taken cognizance that China seems to have installed anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons on all seven of its man-made islands in the South China Sea. China says that these efforts are intended to boost maritime safety in the region.

The coming of Trump into the White House soon has already injected a new element of uncertainty how the future course of US policy towards Asia would be. Trump has also questioned the continuation of US commitment to defend its allies in Asia and has called for a reconsideration of such commitments, suggesting Japan and South Korea even ponder to seek their own nuclear deterrence for their security. This, together with his tough stance on Chinese trade policy towards the US, impacting the future of US-China relations, has injected an element of volatility in the security dynamics in the Asian region, implications of which is difficult to decipher at the moment.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are author’s own and do not represent either of the ICCR or the Government of India.

By Jordy Garcia*

Given the recent pushback against trade liberalization in Europe and the United States, Peru’s recently inaugurated President, Pedro Kuczynski, has come out to double down in its defense and acclaim its value in expanding Peru’s economy.[i] Kucyznski’s goal is to not only expand trade but also halt potential protectionist trade policies.[ii]

Trade liberalization is the removal of barriers to international trade such as taxes on imports (tariffs), non-tariff barriers, and quotas in order to increase the flow of trade between nations. Protectionist trade policies contrast with this concept by erecting artificial barriers to trade with the goal of promoting domestic business interests.[iii] In light of the recent United States presidential election, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is now in dire straits, making the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit all the more important for those interested in establishing closer trade relationships among countries on both sides of the Pacific.

APEC, founded in 1989, is made up of 21 member states that make up 49 percent of world trade, 54 percent of global GDP, and 40 percent of the world’s population. This is the second time that Peru has hosted the APEC summit, the first being in 2008. In the last eight years, the country has improved its economic status and its government has expressed a desire to play a larger role in transpacific relations.[iv] Given the likely fall of TPP, Kuczynski will now have to seek other opportunities to expand trade with APEC members representing the likeliest candidates.

TPP’s supporters major concern is U.S. retraction from the trade pact. The deal was designed with the United States as the principle market and the agreement aimed at harmonizing the standards of other signatories with those of the U.S. Without U.S. participation, there is concern that many countries will shoulder the cost of trade harmonization without the expected benefit of the U.S. market. Several officials have voiced their concern. Japanese President Shinzo Abe said that “the TPP would be meaningless without the U.S.”[v] Canada’s trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, has also pointed out that the structure of the TPP deal requires U.S. participation for it to function.[vi]

During the APEC Summit, President Obama attempted to assuage fears that U.S. policy is retracting permanently from free trade stating that the United States’ progress is a “zig-zag [and] not a line.”[vii] Obama’s comments counter those of president-elect Donald Trump, who made numerous claims during his campaign that he would kill TPP and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[viii] Obama appeared to be suggesting that President-elect Trump would either change his mind or become more amenable to possibilities related to free trade. However, Trump has strongly reaffirmed his opposition to TPP, dispelling any doubts as to what his intentions are following his ascension into office.[ix]

Peru, however, is not wasting any time in taking steps in response to the likely end of TPP. In light of a strong and growing relationship with China, Peru and Chile have vocalized an interest in joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) a trade-pact led by China and consisting of 16 member countries.[x] RCEP could still serve Kuczysnki’s goal of opening access to new markets with harmonized standards and low tariffs. According to Peruvian officials, the Andean nation has also started bilateral trade negotiations with Indonesia and could strengthen ties with Russia.[xi]

Peru’s interest in developing trade relations is related to Kuczynski’s goal of expanding the country’s infrastructure in the form of railways, roads, and investment in copper processing. Through this strategy, Peru hopes to increase its exports of high value added goods and phase out, to some extent, the reliance on primary commodities for exports. In the short term, China could play an extremely valuable role as a potential investor in the Andean country.

This was made explicit by Kuczysnski who, following an event at the Bank of China Headquarters, stated, “we are not seeking loans of financial aid, but investment and international cooperation… that’s why I came to Beijing with my ministers and my Vice President.”[xii] However, China’s past approach to many Latin American economies demonstrates a tendency towards dependency theory by developing trade deals in which commodities are exported to China to be processed and turned into higher value goods, with infrastructure investments only focused on supporting this arrangement.[xiii] Peru’s desire to develop a more advanced economy and China’s interest in securing cheap commodities may very well run counter to each other.

While China’s capital is valuable, Peru will likely need to strengthen trade ties with many other countries. The TPP agreement was expected to expand Peru’s exports by a projected “$2.25 billion USD in products and services to five key countries [with] which it previously had no trade deal,” particularly the valuable markets of New Zealand and Australia.[xiv] Developing new trade relations will be necessary as Peru’s current balance of trade is strongly in China’s favor. Fourteen percent of Peru’s exports and 23 percent of its imports go to China as of November.[xv] This means that even with an expansion of trade relations with China and an attempt to foster manufacturing industries such as copper refinement, it is likely that a trade imbalance will persist.[xvi] Peru is also discussing a new bilateral trade agreement with Russia in the form of seventeen new deals, projected to value $1 billion USD, which were released to the public this November.[xvii] However, what form these agreements will take has, so far, been rather murky.

Ultimately, Peru’s primary focus, under Kuczysnki, is on entering into a multilateral trade deal with other Pacific countries, hence the importance the Peruvian government has placed on TPP. Peru wants to increase its overall market size and avoid a tangle of bilateral trade deals that all have their own unique set of rules. As a result, Kuczynski is likely to pursue a neoliberal expansion of the Pacific Alliance to secure investment and open markets for exporting manufactured goods. The target markets that TPP would have opened for Peru were New Zealand and Australia.[xviii] It can only be hoped that the future trade pacts Peru pursues will be more to the public’s benefit. TPP’s strict copyright enforcement, for example, would have reduced the accessibility of medicine for many of Peru’s poor.[xix] Further attention must also be brought to the inclusion of provisions like the Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism, which have been closely examined in previous COHA reports, to protect the Peruvian government and people from being strong-armed by corporations’ one-sided litigation.[xx]

With the vacuum created by TPP, the possibility of RCEP becomes greater. Given Australia’s current trading relationship to China in agriculture, it is possible that the Australian government would consider such a trade deal.[xxi] As a result, Peru’s other viable access point to the Australian market could be through RCEP either as an individual country or more likely with the Pacific Alliance, given the Pacific Alliance’s original design to strengthen the collective member states’ bargaining power in forging new trade relations. Whatever comes in the future, the Peruvian government is interested in developing new multilateral free trade agreements, with or without the United States.

*Jordy Garcia, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[i] http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/11/18/america/1479495356_710127.html

[ii] Asia Pacific Summit Redoubles Defense of Free Trade Against Donald Trump

http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/11/18/america/1479495356_710127.html

[iii] Trade Liberalization, (Economics Online, 2016)

http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Trade_liberalisation.html

[iv] Cué, Carlos. Fowks, Jacqueline. Asia Pacific Summit Condemns Protectionism and Prepares for Trump (El Pais, Novemeber 21, 2016)

http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/11/20/actualidad/1479680654_545868.html

Peru Country Profile (OEC,

http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/per/

Peru GDP (Trading Economics, 2016)

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/peru/gdp

[v]Woolf and Others

[vi] Blanchfield, Mike. TPP Needs U.S. to Survive Says Canada’s Trade Minister (TheStar, November 22, 2016)

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/22/trumps-threat-to-pull-us-out-of-tpp-may-not-take-effect-until-2018.html

[vii] Obama Bids Farewell to the World With an Impassioned Defense of Immigration (El País, November 21, 2016)

[viii] Donald Trump Win is the Only way to Stop TPP Catastrophe (DonaldJTrump.com, August 2, 2016)

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/trump-win-is-the-only-way-to-stop-tpp-catastrophe

[ix] Woolf, Nicky. McCurry, Justin. Haas, Benjamin. Trump to Withdraw From Trans-Pacific Partnership on First Day in Office (The Guardian, November 22, 2016)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/21/donald-trump-100-days-plans-video-trans-pacific-partnership-withdraw

[x] Dube, Ryan. Lee, Carol. Pacific-Rim Nations Push Back on Free-Trade Skepticism (WSJ, November 21, 2016)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apec-delegates-push-back-against-protectionism-1479656260

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Post, Colin. Peru President Courts Chinese Investment in First International Trip (Peru Reports, September 13, 2016)

Peru president courts Chinese investment in first international trip

[xiii] Patey, Luke. “Trouble Down South.” (Foreign Affairs. November, 28 2016.)

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/south-america/2016-11-21/trouble-down-south

[xiv] Post, Colin. What Did Peru Get Out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? (Peru Reports, November 12, 2015)

What did Peru get out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Levchenko, Anastasia. Peru Likely to Seek Trade Deals with New Zealand (SputnikNews, November 18,2016)

https://sputniknews.com/latam/201611181047566018-peru-zealand-australia-tpp-deals/

[xv] Peru Balance of Trade (Tradingeconomics.com, November 28, 2016)

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/peru/balance-of-trade

[xvi] Ibid.

Colin, Peru President Courts Chinese Investment in First International Trip

[xvii] Peru, Russia Leaders Agree on Increasing Trade (Andina, November 19, 2016)

http://www.andina.com.pe/ingles/noticia-peru-russia-leaders-agreed-on-increasing-trade-641123.aspx

[xviii] Levchenko. Peru Likely to Seek Trade Deals with New Zealand

[xix] Post. What Did Peru Get Out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

[xx] Foust, Chandler. TPP: Free Trade or Corporate Interests? (COHA, June 29, 2015)

Sri Lanka was selected as eligible for a Compact Program under the U.S. Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) at the meeting of the MCC Board of Directors held in Washington DC on 13th December.

Compact Programs are large, five-year grants for countries that meets MCC’s eligibility criteria of good governance, economic freedom and investment in its citizens. The selections are based on performance indicators of these criteria compiled by the MCC in an annual scorecard for countries under consideration.

Following the selection, the Board’s decision was conveyed over the telephone to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, by a senior official of the MCC.

Created by the U.S. Congress in 2004 with bipartisan support, the MCC is a unique U.S. agency that operates on the principle of delivering assistance on the basis of a long-term consultative partnership with recipient countries. Country ownership and country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable economic growth are the underlying principles on which MCC grants are provided. Grants are designed to complement other U.S. and international development programs, and to create an enabling environment for private sector investment.

The MCC Board is chaired by the US Secretary of State. Its members include the Secretary to the Treasury, the U.S. Trade Representative, the USAID Administrator, the Chief Executive Officer of MCC and four private sector representatives. The Board members are appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.

In December 2015, Sri Lanka was selected as eligible for a Threshold Program by the MCC Board. Threshold Programs are smaller grants awarded to countries that come close to MCC’s eligibility criteria, and are firmly committed to improving policy performance. During the past year, MCC in partnership with the government of Sri Lanka conducted a Constraints to Growth Analysis to determine the binding impediments to economic growth with a view to designing a Threshold Program for poverty reduction. With Sri Lanka’s selection for a Compact Program this year, MCC and Sri Lanka will now begin to develop a much larger program to fight poverty and improve standards of living.

By Anvar Mammadov

Over the past three years, a share of non-cash payments in Azerbaijan has increased by four percent, Mandy Lamb, Group Country Manager of Visa in CIS and South-Eastern European countries, said in an interview with Trend.

She added that Azerbaijan has a great potential to increase the share of electronic payments.

“We have been in the market for a number of years and in the last three years we have seen the biggest growth of electronic payments, despite the fact that the economy had one of the biggest challenges for the last couple of years,” Lamb said. “We still see a huge opportunity for further growth of electronic payments in Azerbaijan.”

“We measure the ratio between card payment operations and total volume of operations,” she said. “The fact is that three years ago, only seven percent or seven manats out of every 100 manats spent in the country, were spent electronically via cards and the rest was cash. Today this figure equals 11 percent.”

“That is, over three years, there was an increase of four percent, which may seem small, but if you look at some developing markets, you will see that it takes years to achieve significant ratio growth,” Lamb said. “For example, in the Belarusian market, this figure makes about 36 percent, so the opportunity of growth is there.”

Lamb said that over the last 1,5-2 years, despite the national currency devaluation and economic challenges, the Azerbaijani market of cashless payments continues to grow and introduce innovations, and potential for its growth is higher than in some other countries in the region.

“Consumers are still spending money domestically, but we are observing a shift towards e-commerce, which is taking place in other countries of the CIS region as well,” she said. “Consumers began to travel less due to changes in the exchange rate of manat; however, at the same time, the number of online purchases has increased – both on local and foreign web sites.”

“This is a good trend, as consumers feel more confident,” she added. “As for innovations, together with our another bank partner, couple of months ago we launched a new product – Dual Card, that combines two fully featured Visa cards – debit and credit. Azerbaijan has become the first market in the CIS region, where this innovative product has been launched.”

“We also have a number of mobile innovations that we can launch here,” Lamb said. “We can say that general trends are quite similar in the region. But I believe that the potential of electronic payments is slightly bigger here than in the other markets; because, as I have already mentioned, only 11 percent of payments out of every 100 manats are carried out in an electronic format, and so there is room for growth.”

She added that over the past 3 years, the volume of cashless payments measured in USD has increased by 15 percent.

“As it was mentioned by Igor Kovalev, Visa country manager for Azerbaijan, in 2016, the volume of payments has increased by 15 percent, as compared to figures of 2013,” she said. “This shows that consumers have the same, if not less consumer spending power; but instead of cash, they are shifting to electronic payments.”

“This growth can be achieved as a result of increased electronic payments in stores and retail outlets, as well as online purchases, which is a good indicator, especially in the current economic circumstances,” Lamb said.

She added that the company would continue to further invest in Azerbaijan and develop the market of electronic payments in the country.

“All mentioned above shows that the cashless expenses are gradually replacing cash ones in Azerbaijan, and that’s why we are going to continue investing in this market and try to further develop it,” Lamb added.

According to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, in October 2016, the card payment turnovers using ATMs and POS-terminals in Azerbaijan amounted to 1.07 billion manats, which is four percent more than the figure in the same period last year.

The total number of transactions carried out using payment cards for this period made almost 7.11 million (a decrease of 4.01 percent a year).

In October, the number of payment cards has decreased by 6,2 percent compared to the same period last year, i.e. down to 5.33 million units.

Major share of the cards – 4.64 million – are debit ones, in particular, 2.51 million – social cards, 1.51 million – salary cards, 0.62 million – others. The number of credit cards for the said period made 688,000.