The Moroccan Royal Office issued a communiqué stating that King Mohammed VI held a phone conversation with President-elect Donald Trump. During the phone call, King Mohammed VI reiterated his heartfelt and sincere congratulations to Trump over his election as the 45th president of the United States, the statement noted.

HM the King and the American President-elect agreed to strive for the reinforcement of the strong, deep, and multidimensional strategic relations between Morocco and the United States of America.

Since King Mohammed VI acceded to the throne in July 1999, all his efforts of in-depth reform in Morocco were highly appreciated and supported by the American leadership.

Letters from former President Bush and current President Obama praising Morocco’s commitment to democracy, rule of law and sustainable development including Morocco’s continuous endeavors to set up a complementary, integrated Maghreb Union to promote a regional environment in which the people concerned can enjoy security, prosperity and stability.

Morocco shares US earnest ambition regarding the achievement of sustainable development in Africa. Morocco has always stood by American side to uphold the ideals of freedom, justice, equality and dignity, to foster good governance and shared progress, to promote the lofty human values of tolerance and intercultural, inter-faith coexistence and to reject all forms of violence, extremism and insularity.

Morocco pledged to do whatever it can to contribute to the emergence of a better, safer, more peaceful and more equitable world which is committed to upholding the principles of solidarity and to international legitimacy.

Morocco is strengthening its political, economic and spiritual presence in Africa. This royal vision will certainly contribute efficiently to a stable and prosperous africa that will become more and more economically attractive to foreign investors.

Morocco’ s political influence is growing and so is the trust of the states it is working with. The kingdom keeps defending African’s cause, either directly, thanks to its participation in different operations to maintain peace or either indirectly, supporting, in all of the international summits, sustained efforts for human and social development in the whole African continent.

This “parfaite entente” between Morocco and the United States resulted into the creation of the Strategic Dialogue, recognition of than a decade of peaceful reforms and stability under the leadership of King Mohammed VI. The two countries signed the Strategic Dialogue, which will not be affected by changes in administration, leadership or personnel, officially begins and builds on bilateral advances already achieved, including the Morocco-US Free Trade Agreement, the Millennium Challenge Compact, and Morocco’s designation as a major non-Nato ally.

It is high time now to give a new impetus to the private sector, NGOs, think tanks, universities…from both countries to implement many of the agreements and accords reached between the two countries. Both Moroccans and Americans should now accelerate their initiatives and projects in different fields to give a meaning to excellent political relations between the two countries. An economic, cultural, educational road map should be elaborated to open doors for potential projects from both sides.

If Morocco was the first country to recognize the independence of the United States, it should now be the first country to develop a strong win-win partnership with the United States.

Hanukah is for Muslim Jews for two reasons, One is because Hanukah (Hebrew for faithful dedication-Islam) refers to the rededication of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem after it was profaned in 168 BCE by an idol installed in it by the Syrian Greek king Antiochus IV.

The second reason is because Hanukah also refers to the dedication and valor of the Maccabees and all those who joined them in their resistance to the attempt by the ruling powers to force the Jews to abandon their God given religion, and conform to Greek forms of worship and culture (abandoning circumcision for example).

Those who resisted were Muslims (Arabic for faithful follows of God’s will) and their dedication eventually led to religious freedom and national independence for the Jews living in the Land of Israel.

The oppression of Judaism by Antiochus IV, the Syrian Greek king, was the first known attempt at suppressing a minority religion, but unfortunately not the last. Other well known attempts were the three century long Roman persecution of Christianity, and the persecution of Muhammad and his followers by the majority of pagan Arabs in Makka.

All three religions emerged from their varying periods of persecution stronger than ever, and this is the ongoing spiritual lesson of the Hanukah lamp that once lit by faithful believers, filled with hope and trust in God; lasts longer than anyone else thinks possible.

The history: In 200 BCE, King Antiochus III of Syria defeated Egypt and made the Land of Israel a part of the Seleucid Empire. King Antiochus III wanting to conciliate his new Jewish subjects guaranteed their right to “live according to their ancestral customs” and to continue to practice their religion in the Temple of Jerusalem.

However in 175 BCE, his son Antiochus IV invaded Judea to put in power a pro Syrian high Priest. As the ancient Jewish historian Josephus relates, “The king came upon the Jews with a great army, took their city by force, slew a great multitude of those that favored Egypt, and sent out his soldiers to plunder them without mercy.

He also spoiled the temple (erecting an idol in it that looked like himself, and thus) put a stop to the daily offerings (to God) for three years and six months.”

The tradition: When the Temple in Jerusalem was looted and services stopped, Judaism was outlawed. In 167 BCE Antiochus IV (who named himself ‘Manifest God’) ordered an altar to Zeus be erected in the Temple. He banned circumcision and ordered pigs to be sacrificed at the altar of the Temple. This provoked a large-scale revolt.

The Second Book of Maccabees (6:3-11)relates the terrible details: ‘Harsh and utterly grievous was the onslaught of evil. The Syrian Greeks filled the Temple with debauchery and reveling; dallied with harlots and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts. They also brought in things for sacrifice that were unfit. The altar was covered with abominable offerings (pigs) which were forbidden by the Torah. A man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of his fathers, nor so much as admit to being a Jew. On the monthly celebration of the king’s birthday, the Jews were taken, under bitter constraint, to partake of the sacrifices; and when the wine feast of Dionysus came, they were compelled to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus, wearing wreaths of ivy.

“At the suggestion of Ptolemy a decree was issued to the neighboring Greek cities, that they should adopt the same policy toward the Jews and make them partake of the sacrifices, and should slay those who did not choose to change over to Greek customs. One could see, therefore, the misery that had come upon them. For example, two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. These women they publicly paraded about the city, with their (dead) babies hung at their breasts, then were hurled down headlong from the wall. Others who had assembled in near by caves, to observe the Sabbath day secretly, were betrayed to Philip and were all burned together, because their piety kept them from defending themselves, in view of their regard for that most holy (Sabbath) day.”

Mattityahu, a Jewish priest, and his five sons Jochanan, Simeon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Judah led a rebellion against Antiochus. They became known as HaMakabim (the Hammers). In 166 BCE Mattathias died, and Judah Makabee took his place as leader. By 165 BCE the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid monarchy was largely successful. The Temple was liberated and (Hanukah) rededicated. The festival of Hanukkah was instituted to celebrate this event.

The oil: Judah Makabee ordered the Temple to be purified, and a new altar to be built in place of the one polluted by pig’s blood. According to the Torah, pure olive oil was needed for the menorah in the Temple, which was required to burn day and night throughout the year.

However, there was only enough pure oil found to burn for one day, and it would take a week to prepare a fresh supply of pure oil for the menorah. Some said delay the Hanukah of the Temple for a week.

Others said kindle the Temple Menorah and pray for it to last until new pure oil could be made. The menorah was lit; and it did not go out prior to the arrival of the new pure oil. An eight-day festival was declared by the rabbis to commemorate this miracle.

The lights: Can be candles or oil lamps. Most Jewish homes have a special candelabrum referred to as a hanukkiah, or an oil lamp holder for Hanukkah, which holds eight lights plus the additional light used to light the others each day. The reason for the Hanukkah lights is not to “light the house within”, but rather to “illuminate the house without,” so passersby should see it and be reminded of the holiday’s miracle. So lamps are set up at a prominent window or near the door leading to the street.
Only when there was danger of antisemitic persecution were lamps supposed to be hidden from public view, as was the case in Persia under the rule of the Zoroastrians, or in parts of Europe before and during World War II.

A modern Hanukah tale I told my granddaughters: Aisha,Talyah and their parents were standing just outside their front door, admiring their newly lit Hanukiya, when a power failure occurred. The street lights went out. The house lights went out. It was dark almost everywhere around them.

The only lights they could see on the whole block were from the Hanukiya in the window of one house across the street, and from their own Hanukiya on the porch. After a few minuets, several of their neighbors, who did not want to sit in their dark houses, came over to join them.

“It is a good thing you have those candles.” said one neighbor. “I am afraid of the dark.”
“Why do you have the menorah outside?” asked another neighbor.
“It is an old tradition” said Aisha. “Jews are supposed to publicize the miracle of Hanukah to all the people around them.”
“You mean the oil that lasted for eight days.” said the neighbor who knew what a menorah was.

“Yes “ said Aisha, “The oil is the symbol of hope and faith. If the Maccabees had not lit the lights in the restored Temple in Jerusalem, because they were afraid the lights would go out the next day, the miracle would not have happened.”
“You mean the miracle of the oil?”
“I mean the miracle that lots of times, things that you think will never happen, do happen, if you do not give up. If the Maccabees had not lit the oil lamps, how would they have found out that the oil could last for eight days.” said Aisha.

And her sister Talyah added, “That is why we put the Hanukiya outside on the door step.”
“Aren’t you afraid the wind will blow out the lights?” asked the neighbor who was afraid of the dark..

“Most of the time it does on at least one or two evenings.” said Talya. “That is why we put another Hanukiya in the window. You should always trust in God, but if you can arrange for back up, you should do it. After all, you should not test God by expecting God to stop the winds every evening for eight days. Other people might need the wind.”

“I thought Hanukah was the festival of freedom.” said another neighbor. “What does all this have to do with freedom?”

Aisha answered, “Hanukah is a celebration of religious freedom; especially the freedom of all religious minorities to observe their religious practices with equal treatment and respect. But freedom is not only freedom from oppression.

It is also freedom to do the right things, and to become a really good loving person. A free person is not free to oppress, hurt or insult other people or their religious’ beliefs. Freedom comes from fulfilling your responsibilities to other people, to nature, and to God.”

They all stood in the dark talking about the importance of trust in God, hope and religious freedom for all people. Each had something to say and add. They could have gone on and on for a long time but just then the power came on and the lights lit up.

The neighbors thanked the Cohen family for all they had learned, and the neighbor who was afraid of the dark said to them, “I think I will go to Church next Sunday.”

By Scott N. Romaniuk, Tobias J. Burgers and Shih-Yueh Yang

60 years ago China set out on its space program with the establishment of the 5th Academy of the Ministry of National Defense. At its helm was rocket scientist Qian Xuesen – also known as Tsien Hsue-shen – who is now regarded as the father of China’s space and missile programs. 14 years later, Beijing sent its very first satellite (the Dongfanghong-1) into space and its first astronaut followed on October 15, 2003.

40 years after Apollo 11 embarked upon the first spaceflight that led to the lunar module landing with commanders Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, China successfully launched its very own space lab module called Tiangong-1. Not long afterward, Tiangong-2 made its way into orbit.

For decades, China appeared to be trailing behind or merely catching-up to the world’s two major space pioneers – the United States (US) and Russia – until this past August 2016, when China assumed its position as the world’s first country to launch a quantum satellite called “Micius.” Micius is designed to “establish ultra-secure quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground,” noted China’s state news agency, Xinhua. Furthermore, “It could also conduct experiments on the bizarre features of quantum theories, such as entanglement.” As a result, Micius has fortified essential communications lines between Earth and space.

The quantum field is still embryonic, but China has quickly forged its position as a leader, setting the overall pace of research, and it could become the leader in establishing a worldwide network of laboratories dedicated to furthering quantum research in both space and the international space race. Shortly after China sent its satellite into orbit several months ago, China rocketed the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft into orbit from Jiuquan base for the longest space mission China has undertaken to this day. It connected with Tiangong-2, hosting two Chinese “taikonauts” for just over a month-long stay. This achievement follows on the previous mission of Tiangong-1, which carried Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang, and Wang Yaping (China’s first woman in space).

China has shown no signs of receding in its space activities. In 2018, Beijing plans to launch one of the main components of its future habitable space satellite or space station, which will become a permanent feature of Earth’s spacescape. China’s sights are also set on Mars, with a small, unmanned rover destined for the red planet which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) claims to have an atmosphere. If successfully reached, China’s space agency, China National Space Administration (CNSA), will be the 5th to reach the planet named after the Roman god of war. Furthermore, in 2022, China plans to send its permanent space station into orbit, to be followed by a mission to the Moon in 2025. This signals the unwavering determination of China to establish an entire spectrum of “firsts” in the context of space exploration. It already became one of the leaders in space, yet Beijing’s focus sets it apart from its Cold War rivals; they focused more on space as a means of geopolitical and popular rivalry, besting the other in a show of political, technological, and economic superiority, in order to illustrate the virtue of their respective value systems.

China, on the other hand, has set its sights on the long-term of space exploration with the view to establish a permanent presence in space. Those wheels are already in motion. Only a few years after China plans to launch its space station some 250 miles above Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) is set to expire. NASA Director, Charles Bolden, Jr., announced the ISS will be finished in 2028, thought the date could be sooner. The life expectancy of ISS has already been extended several times.

The end of the ISS means a lot of work for NASA and its partners. It will likely have to be brought back down the same way it was put up: piece-by-piece. Building began back in 1998 and even then it was established that the entire structure would eventually have to come back down. Missions centering on its deconstruction and movement back to Earth will come at a high price. The original task of putting the satellite up in space required no less than 40 missions.

When the ISS comes down, China will maintain the predominant presence in space, and will have successfully overshadowed a number of NASA’s previous achievements while at the same time establishing a considerable distance over other countries space programs. While NASA’s budgets have been diminishing over previous years, China has shown no signs of tripping over the financial costs associated with its space ventures. Beijing’s presence will put a damper on Washington’s commitment to its space presence.

Over the past 15 years, the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama pledged to maintain America’s presence in space. The US will be hard-pressed to even temper its decline in the face of China’s burgeoning space program. The Apollo space shuttle is a relic. The STS-135 signaled the final mission of the American Space Shuttle program, using the shuttle Atlantis for its final ISS logistics mission. The 2004 Vision for Space Exploration was supposed to have been Project Constellation, using the Ares 1 and Ares 2 launch vehicles in addition to the Orion Spacecraft. That program was eventually cancelled. Subsequent programs centered mainly on bringing the necessary equipment into space to service the ISS.

If the stage is set for intensive geopolitical rivalry in space between China and other countries, the major question would center on which side would intensify that rivalry. China’s primary objectives are to establish a permanent presence and to generate resources. Its long-term goals would not converge well with geopolitical rivalry, given its strategic interests and current position. Beijing is open to cooperating with other states in it space programs. Unlike the US, who welcomed astronauts from 15 countries, aboard the ISS, which was supported by facilities in Canada, Spain, Russia, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, and numerous others, China has so far not barred anyone from potentially setting foot on its space station. Federal law prohibits NASA from working with the CNSA and Chinese citizens affiliated with China’s space program.

Despite its friendly disposition devoid of directly confronting or challenging the space ambitions of other countries, particularly the US, China is maintaining the view to further leaps and bounds in the space realm unilaterally if need be. Not only does Beijing want its “taikonauts” to be walking on the moon in just over a decade, it aims to be the first to land humans on Mars. The feedback effect of China’s space missions will be enormous but will likely need a great deal of time to build momentum, with newer and more sophisticated robotics, avionics, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies likely to emerge.

We can expect those developments to have many positive effects for other governments as well, providing them with critical information about weather patterns and climate changes, better and safer communications, enhanced navigation systems, and critical platforms that should augment existing security and defense instruments. Beijing has aptly eyeballed the area of advanced technologies as a critical aspect of China’s future economy. In this, it has the ability to inspire over thousands, even tens-of-thousands, of private ventures.

Further research and development figures prominently in China’s current Five-Year Plan and those to follow, with China’s latest satellite leading the charge in space science exploration. This is truly a collaborative venture, with Chinas’ Academy of Sciences (CAS), the CAS’ Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (SITP), and the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), all playing a collaborative role. In its approach to space science, China has done a fine job in bringing together a broad spectrum of institutions and organizations, sort of like a “full spectrum” approach.

Director-General of China’s National Space Science Center, Wu Ji, along with many other top researchers in the country requested that Beijing step-up its spending in the space science sector to support China’ progress. The request was made to triple its nearly 5 billion yuan ($700 million USD) investment between 2011 and 2015, to a minimum of 15.6 billion yuan (over $2 billion USD) between 2026 and 2030. NASA’s final 2016 science budget was $5.5 billion USD and is projected to oscillate between $5.6 billion and $5.7 billion over the next four years.

With this support, China is poised to make an actual “great leap forward” but in a way that could benefit each and every person on the planet. China has made a gargantuan departure from its space science spending a decade ago. Further intensive research in the area of communications could catapult existing systems and computational capacities to levels never before experienced. But those systems should be expected to provide the very latest and best to China first, particularly China’s defense and security sectors/institutions.

Despite the impracticalities still associated with space science investment, China is continuing its pursuit of benefits that would likely be realized years down the line. Perhaps the mystery behind China’s space program is what worries people most, including those in the US and allied countries. It is possible that China turns its spending to more practical utilities that yield immediate benefit, for instance, rockets and missiles, military satellite systems, and other types of military craft and apparatuses. Perhaps China has the potential to develop a new “NASA” or maybe concern is merely driven by China’s space science research acceleration at the same time the US slows down or “struggles” to maintain its pace.

US congressional members, during a space subcommittee hearing, recently asked if America is losing the space race to China. Washington will simply be unable to extract the same level of potential political and economic benefit from its space ambitions if they fail to stack-up to those of China. Vincent Chan, a Managing Director of Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, noted that in the past 15 years, “China has leapfrogged other countries in terms of technology development” and that, “[t]he potentially disruptive implications of China’s innovative drive should not be underestimated.”

In 2015, the World Economic Forum reported, “[i]ndicators show that China has what it takes to rise to the forefront of global innovation. This includes soaring R&D spending (China’s R&D expenditure reached 1.18 trillion yuan ($193 billion) in 2013, a 15% increase year-on-year, and is set to overtake the European Union and the United States to be the top R&D-invested country by the end of this decade), a large number of corporate patents, a new generation of entrepreneurial CEOs and high number of engineering and science graduates.”

China’s “Long March” to space began over half-a-century ago, when Mao Zedong sought to rocket China into third place as a country with a satellite orbiting Earth. Beijing has put more than 100 satellites into space since the 1970s. As mentioned previously China today is looking at a number of “firsts” and has been lauded for becoming one of the world’s foremost defense technological power. The country’s technological innovation and development in the space industry has set a trajectory of “upward and onward” that China has so far fulfilled. Beijing also recently flipped the switch on its “Tianyan” (“Heavenly Eye”) – the world’s largest aperture radio telescope occupying a space equivalent to 30 football fields in size. Beijing exclusively owns the intellectual-property rights of that awesome piece of technology, which costs somewhere in the vicinity of 1.2 billion yuan (approximately $180 million USD).

In contrast to previous space projects undertaken by the US and Russia, China’s space ventures in the contemporary period extend beyond the confines of prestige and status. They have the potential to harness real military power. Planning a network of satellites in the coming years, Beijing is slowly creeping toward a position to supercharge its quantum computer network, building a magnificent quantum communications network reaching over 1,000 miles. The University of Science and Technology of China’s Professor Pan Jianwei recently explained how “China is completely capable of making full use of quantum communications in a regional war. The direction of development in the future calls for using relay satellites to realize quantum communications and control that covers the entire army.”

Michael Raska, at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, spoke of China’s immense network capable of serving “as a dual-use strategic asset that may advance the [PLA’s] capacity for power projection through a constellation of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, tactical warning and attack assessment; command, control, and communications; navigation and positioning, and environmental monitoring.”

The network ascribes China a superposition of power in which, “establishing ‘space dominance’ (zhi tian quan),” writes Raska, “is an essential enabler for ‘information dominance’ (zhi xinxi quan) – a key prerequisite for allowing the [People’s Liberation Army] PLA to seize air and naval superiority in contested areas.” What we are seeing now is the result of China’s careful observation of wars fought by other states over the past several decades, wars such as Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, US/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military action in the Balkans, America’s ensuing 9/11 wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, and long strand of counterterrorism/counterinsurgency operations and campaigns), and even Russia’s sundry military engagements). Vietnam and the 1973 Arab-Israeli war also served as valuable lessons for the PLA.

Beijing has long-since established that the key to winning wars is zhi xinxi quan, and determined that wars of the future will be “local wars under informationized conditions” (xinxihua tiaojian xia jubu zhanzheng). In short, the exploitation of information leads to the successful outcome of wars irrespective of where they are fought. Zhi xinxi quan is also a fundamental determinant of defensive systems protecting a country against military aggression. Augmenting the military aptitudes of the PLA has become a priority in China, occupying a part of PLA military/strategic doctrine that complements its formal doctrine for military space operations.

One such project demonstrating China’s willingness to pursue this path is its new 35-meter-diameter parabolic antenna/space-monitoring base, located in Patagonia, Argentina (coordinates: 38.1914°S, 70.1495°W). The facility is a tracking, telemetry, and command center run by a PLA unit. The facility is outfitted with the latest technology, complete with accommodations for military personnel and state-of-the-art power generator valued at some $10 million USD. Its purported function is the facilitation of deep-space exploration and the eventual lunar mission but will have, according to Beijing, “no military use.” That is not to say the base cannot be used to support military operations of various sorts.

Beijing need only look through the history books, reading up on the different courses of action the US pursued to boost its military clout in different places and at different point in time. During the Kosovo intervention alongside NATO, the US military fielded dozens of satellites. Those were used synchronically to great effect, enabling the US military and those of its close allies during the campaign to employ unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) along with other aircraft to basically see every single thing that moves in and around the battlespace – solely with the ironic exception of the Chinese embassy bombing, which was the result of faulty intelligence.

During a 2015 Congressional testimony, Senior Research Fellow for Chinese Political and Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, Dean Cheng, explained that, [s]pace systems are judged to have provided 70 percent of battlefield communications, 80 percent of battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, and 100 percent of meteorological data, and did so through all weather conditions, 24 hours a day.” Such extensive oversight cannot only enhance one’s strike capabilities, but also substantially augment the precision factor of offensive systems.

He underscored China’s development of “a number of anti-satellite systems, including a demonstrated capacity for direct-ascent kinetic-kill vehicles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, and cyber tools that could interfere with space control systems. Future developments may include more soft-kill options that would lead to ‘mission kills’ on satellites, preventing them from gathering or transmitting information, rather than physically destroying the system.”

China’s potential space dominance is in a sense misleading, as dominating space is a means of dominating other (terrestrial) areas. China’s government and military institutions repeatedly indicate that dominating space offers an attractive way of managing that which what takes place on the Earth’s surface. This is true with considerable crossover between civilian/peaceful and military areas. The same logic has been applied within China’s space programs, intertwining civilian and defense sector efforts and activities. “China’s space program is integrated. Unlike the United States,” writes Ashley J. Tellis, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “where a significant divide exists between civilian and military space activities, and where diversity, heterogeneity, and atomistic competition are the norm in both realms, civilian and military space programs in China are not only centrally directed but are also mutually reinforcing by design.

Just as China is able to use space-based systems to improve its offensive military capabilities, it can also increase its defensive military capabilities. If those systems are improved over time, which will surely be the case, China could prevent another country from coming even remotely close to its space-based systems. The development of co-orbital jammers and other systems capable of interfering with enemy satellites, for instance, and even hijacking them could go a long way in maintaining China’s space dominance. In this, its ongoing space science and exploration programs could turn its superposition of power into a superposition of superpower.

Fortunately, the very nature of space technology means that so-called “space dominance” is quite difficult to achieve. If a country wants to prevent an adversary with the same level of space technology from utilizing the space, that opponent can retaliate with relative ease. Both sides would be denied from the space. This rationale explains why there was no space arms race during the Cold War, despite the fact that anti-satellite systems existed. Little has changed since. The prospect of waging a “space war” in the foreseeable future remains low given the costs that would be involved. While leading space actors will not and cannot monopolize space, we can expect that space will remain part of the global commons.

China’s space program can no longer be described as “a mystery within a maze.” There is little doubt that China’s space ambitions present the US with a daunting challenge to check the rise of China as a soaring power even if the US possesses a limited range of immediate and long-term options as a response. But this does not spell the end of America’s role or presence in space, or that of any other country, for that matter. What ought to be considered, however, is whether or not China is better suited to lead future space science ventures and programs, even if it means China may be seen as “dominating” what has been popularized as the ultimate or final frontier.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

Twenty four Iranian Baha’is who had been sentenced to heavy sentences ranging from 6 to 11 years for charges ranging from threatening national security to links to espionage, were acquitted from the charge that link them to enemy countries by the appeals court in Golestan Province.

The unprecedented ruling comes after numerous human rights groups and activists have repeatedly expressed concern over the unfair nature of the charge, the treatment of these individuals by the judiciary and alleged abuse by prison authorities.

In the unprecedented decision the appeals court accepted the defence presented by the 24 accused Baha’is who stated that their contact with the Baha’i World Centre located in Haifa was for religious inquiries and not in any way related to the Israeli government which Islamic Republic regards as an enemy of Iran.

Justice for Iran reports that the decision states: “In terms of links to enemy countries, it may have been that these individuals traveled to other countries in connection with promotion or administration of their group, however, the court has been provided with no evidence establishing espionage or harm to the Islamic government…therefore, the accused are all acquitted from the charge of links to enemy countries.”

The ruling translate to a reduction ranging between two to five years in the sentences for each individual.
Despite the ruling on links to enemy countries, the appeals court still found the detained Bahal’is guilty of threatening national security by discussing issues regarding their faith which the Islamic Republic does not regard as a “legitimate” religion.

The court also ruled that responding to questions posed by Muslims regarding the Baha’i faith is propaganda against the Islamic system.

Meanwhile the proceedings against Tina Muhebati a Baha’i teenager who at the time of her arrest was under the age of majority and has been sentenced to nine years in jail in the preliminary hearings, are ongoing and the appeal court has yet to announce its decision in the matter of her case.

Ten human rights organizations had issued a joint letter addressed to the EU leaders urging their intervention in the case of the detained Baha’is in Iran to call on the Islamic Republic to probe into allegations of torture and mistreatment of these individuals in prison.

The 24 Baha’is were arrested ago for the charge of propagating their faith among Muslims across Golestan Province in the course of a campaign by the intelligence ministry four years. Reports indicate that the detainees were subjected to severe torture.

Earlier several of these prisoners had written to the former head of the provincial justice department, Gorgan Imam, Golestan governor as well as the provincial council to inform them of the abuse and torture they had suffered in the hands of prison authorities. The government has however ignored the allegations and no probe has been ordered to investigate these charges.

While Iran is the birth place of the Baha’i faith, Baha’is face widespread discrimination and persecution in Iran in all aspects of life as the government regards Baha’ism as membership in an outlawed organization.

By Hossein Kebriaeizadeh*

The British Prime Minister Theresa May was invited to attend the 37th summit meeting of the member states of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council [(P)GCC] last week. During the meeting, she made unprecedented remarks, which elicited reactions from other regional actors, including Iran.

Theresa May not only stated that her country was making plans to engage in free trade with the member states of the (P)GCC, but also made controversial statements in which she defended the Arab states of the Persian Gulf against Iran.

Those positions were taken by London at a time that the UK is grappling with the crisis emanating from London’s decision to exit the European Union – know as the Brexit – and it is clear that this country now has to pay special attention to such lucrative markets as the littoral states of the Persian Gulf. It must be noted that the growth of trade between Britain and the member states of the (P)GCC has approached 18 percent during the current year. It is also predictable that following consultations between the two sides to promote the volume of their bilateral trade to about 50 billion pounds over the next five years, strategic interests of Britain will lead to a turning point in London’s interactions with these countries.

This need has been, however, felt by the Arab sides as well and they have informed London of their conditions for further expansion of trade ties. As a result, although the former British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, criticized Saudi Arabia’s attacks on civilian locations in Yemen, now his successor in May’s government, Boris Johnson, asserts that Saudi Arabia’s military assaults on civilian, residential and educational centers in Yemen do not violate the principles of human rights. This new position seems to be in line with the priority that Britain gives to its own expediencies according to its mercantilist logic. Meanwhile, such double standards applied to human rights issues by the West, which constitute the most important weakness in Western countries’ commitment to human rights in the current century, are now evident in London’s behavior.

On the other hand, London’s undiplomatic behavior in trying to capitalize on the existing rift between Persian Gulf Arab states and Iran in order to avail itself of its economic benefits and sell more arms to the member states of the (P)GCC can be seen as a solution for Britain in the post-Brexit era, though it will once again cause the littoral Arab countries of the Persian Gulf to find themselves in a vicious circle of security puzzles.

In this way, London would be benefited by the money that Arab states invest in purchasing their security without those Arab states achieving anything remarkable in return for the investment they have made. In fact, spending petrodollars in purchasing security will, on the contrary, led to spread of violence and cause other actors to make erroneous calculations. In their totality, such actions will lead to a new round of arms race across the region. Let’s not forget that former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, signed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth 70 billion dollars in the 1980s to sell weapons to Riyadh and in doing so, she paved the way for other actors to take similar measures, which finally led to escalation of violence by other allies of the UK, including the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

In addition, apart from imposing the aforesaid costs on the (P)GCC, adoption of unrealistic decisions will cause ambitious and more respectable goals pursued by its members, such as the creation of a single currency and launching a structural fight against terrorism through educational reforms as well as political, social and cultural development to be marginalized.

A review of about four decades of the council’s life, which is full of similar statements, shows that insisting on such inflexible approaches, which are mostly based on general remarks and only suitable for statements, will not solve any of the council’s problems. As a result, past experiences of these countries, including forming alliances with such transregional actors as France and the United States, and their presence in the council’s meetings, have not been able to help this group of countries get rid of their security crisis, which has various dimensions and is fed by various sources.

Part of the current insecurity, which has been threatening these countries, is the result of the ambitious approach taken by such actors as Saudi Arabia, which imposes its own interests on all council members. An evident example in this regard was Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen, which has taken more than 20 months thus far and faces the (P)GCC with new forms of insecurity on a daily basis.

Another part of the regional insecurity is related to the existence of terrorist groups in the region, which are affiliated with radical Islamist currents and happen to be especially sensitive about presence of the West and Western countries in the region.

Taking a single approach to all sources of insecurity in the region by the (P)GCC and summarizing all of them to the Iran threat and Tehran’s regional goals may be the simplest solution to the council’s problems, but it will not radically the problems that the (P)GCC faces for building security. Such an approach only provides countries like the UK with an opportunity to seek their own economic benefits by taking advantage of subjective and unrealistic gaps in the region.

Given the background of Britain’s presence in this region, its current policy is a source of surprise. London’s insistence on military presence in the Persian Gulf region and establishing military bases in the member states of the (P)GCC, creating military emotions among forces stationed in the country’s regional base, sending warships to the Persian Gulf and doing the United States’ marine missions in the Persian Gulf without attention to sensitivities of regional nations about the West and their pessimism toward Britain’s colonialistic policies are all thought-provoking and can be considered as the result of undue political haste caused by pressures of the Brexit.

The geopolitical balance sought by Theresa May cannot be achieved through mere militarism, but requires a certain level of mutual trust not only between the two sides, but also among all influential actors in the region. However, realization of such a high level of trust does not seem to be possible in view of Britain’s past performance and track records.

On the whole, the grounds for interaction between Britain and the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, which were enumerated by May, will not only fail to help the council meet the minimum degree of its security needs, but will also face the member states of the (P)GCC with new challenges.

* Hossein Kebriaeizadeh
Expert on Middle East Issues

By Liepollo Lebohang Pheko*

Donald Trump is the second coming of the familiar phenomena of political impossibilities that become not only tangible realities but almost immoveable beams of obstruction. What is particularly disgusting about the Trump moment is that despite all his toxic flaws, a whole bunch of people believes him.

At the risk of evoking the wrath and ire of my own faith community, I am using the metaphor of Donald Trump’s victory to describe the ascendancy of so many things that are so wrong with the idea of a Trumped up world. Like most sane and caring quarters of humanity, I was and remain somewhat shell-shocked by the US election result not least its decisive outcome. Even though it could have gone either way, I had no idea that it veered so far away from an ethical universe. During his thundering and violently divisive approach to the White House, Trump already created the sort of racist, misogynist, anti-migrant, anti-anything that is not full-blooded American sentiment. Whatever that means. Whoever those are including himself, his many wives and children. Even in locker rooms, his coming is a bizarre apparition.

He is certainly anti-anything thoughtful, decent, kind, inclusive, nuanced. Which brings me to the second coming. A second coming of a rabid re-invention of a polarised and razor thin interpretation of privileged whiteness.

America is in an era that has been marked by a new civil rights movement, one that has necessarily taken social and racial solidarity global again. This internationalism had in many ways diminished since the end of the South African apartheid colonial struggles.

Globalised struggle was subverted by most countries’ hard battle to remain afloat in the midst of ongoing assaults of market fundamentalism, state retreat, social exclusion and disenfranchisement that accompanies society’s underclass and marginalised. The ‘Blacklash’ against Obama has been apparent by the increased lynching of Black people. Although largely seen as male targeting men, several Black women and girls have also been targeted. The othering of non-whiteness has been a rehearsal of the second coming. A rehearsal to lynch the reality that America and the world beyond are not the White bastions.

Attempting to recreate and impose a misplaced post-Darwinism imagination on the rest of the world is beyond naïve. In today’s global power matrix, it is a risk that the US dare not assume will be met with passively. Because it isn’t. The world beyond the United States has moved on and the centrality of the United States as the axis of global power has plummeted probably beyond repair. Like Great Britain before, their era of invincible imperial domination has ended. However, like a macabre scene, the decapitated chicken runs dead with its head off causing chaos and bloodletting in their wake particularly for those who do not know they are dead yet.

Hillary Clinton remains a deeply divisive candidate who polarised many of my friends on the progressive left. She has a recent history of presiding over Gaddafi’s extra-judicial killing and her centrist, hawkish stance did not differentiate her from the bland Establishment . Unlike Bernie Sunders, she just did not evoke excitement and support. Hers and Bill’s race baiting when she ran against Obama in the 2008 are also not entirely forgotten. And of course the rumours that she ran her husband’s many mistresses out of town have not been quashed. And still, she is a better option if only because she is a known quantity and a somewhat familiar adversary particularly in the Global South. So I remain annoyed at my friends who opted to sit this one out or to vote elsewhere thus splitting the vote and enabling the second coming.

The community insurrections in Ferguson and Baltimore have resonance with the demands made in Cairo and Tunis in 2011. Across South African metropoles the protests are part of a constant reclamation and reiteration of every liberation dividend that was conceded in 1994. It is from one of these cities that I write, a country that is facing its own paradox of a leader who defies insurmountable odds, using or bypassing democratic, legal and constitutional processes. So Trump is the second coming of familiar phenomena of political impossibilities that become not only tangible realities but almost immoveable beams of obstruction.

His comments on trade policy are complicated mainly because they are zealously protectionist, part of the re-invention of a great America in which Trump predicts America will ‘win so much that they will get sick of it‘. A world without bi-lateral agreements and international trade obligations that require reciprocity and demand full access to markets for the bullying Northern countries. Trump’s reluctance to proceed with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP] has caused some consternation from markets and cautious relief from some countries in the southern hemisphere who have been resisting the potential assault of the global mode of free trade.

Yet Trump is coming from such a toxic place of ‘Ameri-absorption‘ that any potential gains must be counted and calculated carefully. Indeed the climate denialists have come out to play and global action in this regard is unlikely to be easy. The second coming of increased militarisation of international life and domestic instruments notably the US police give me a cold sweat. How Trump will deal with the insurgencies that sometimes arise on my continent given his hawkish tendencies can only be speculated.

His remarks on South Africa as a crime-ridden mess were ill judged and inflammatory, typical of a parochial invention of Africa as a basket case that Trump favours. And, unfortunately for him, we have long memories. There are multiple democratic deficits that have been revealed about the US electoral system (re-counting in three states is taking place at the time of writing) and I have proposed external election monitoring particularly from African, Asian and Latin American countries. What is particularly disgusting about the Trump moment is that despite all these and his flaws, a whole bunch of people believes him. Along with Brexit, the Global South can only ponder and recalibrate these moments. The re-invention that he represents is as thin and fragile as a reed and subject to the sort of head winds that varied social forces can easily demolish or manipulate for their own ends.

This article first appeared in Women In and Beyond the Global website.

*Liepollo Lebohang Pheko is Senior Research Fellow The Trade Collective, Managing Director Four Rivers Trading, Steering Member South African Women in Dialogue [SAWID] and Board Member and Africa Regional Coordinator – International Network on Migration and Development.

It is no coincidence that anti-Russian propaganda is being ramped up at the same moment the Syrian government is poised to retake its country from terrorists. Barack Obama and the rest of the war party are left to sputter nonsensical statements because their grand plan to realize the neocon Project for a New American Century is in very big trouble.

The American corporate media ignored the suffering of Syrians in the city of Aleppo until their captivity was broken by the Syrian Arab Army. Ever since 2012 ISIS and other terrorist groups sponsored by the United States, NATO, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have held thousands of people hostage there. Turks picked the region apart, raiding Syrian factories and transporting them piece by piece back to their country.

Now that the Syrians are retaking the city with the help of their Russian and Hezbollah allies, there is a steady stream of news about the Aleppo. All of it is meant to pull at the heart strings of uninformed people as the human rights industrial complex reliably goes about its dirty work. Human Rights Watch and other groups who work to promote United States foreign policy speak endlessly about war crimes. They didn’t say much when America’s allies were terrorizing Syrians but now they suddenly point fingers and always at the people who run afoul of regime change plans.

The five year-long effort to destroy the Syrian state has produced many victims in that country and it always threatened to spark a larger international conflict. The assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey could be such a moment. The gunman’s last words and obviously his actions were a call to jihad. Even one hundred years later the 1914 assassination in Sarajevo is not far from memory.

But the United States is the principal actor in this drama. None of the other nations involved in this crime would have acted absent American direction. All of the casualties, the sieges, the hunger and the frantic search for refuge can be placed at America’s feet. So too the death of the Russian ambassador. This international tangle is covered with American finger prints.

The Syrian government is determined to take back its country and the Americans and their allies are equally determined to thwart it. The recent successes of the Syrian army explain part of the desperation coming from Obama, the Democratic Party and corporate media. Blaming Russia kills several birds with one stone. It continues the propaganda war against a country that will not knuckle under and accept American hegemony. The hyper Russophobia was also an attempt to make the unpalatable and incompetent Hillary Clinton more appealing. And its continuation is being used by Democrats and Republicans to stop the incoming president from having any chance to improve relations with that country or curtail the regime change doctrine. The war party never sleeps.

Barack Obama’s last press conference was replete with lies and insults aimed at Russia and Vladimir Putin. He should have been embarrassed to say that Russia was “smaller,” “weaker” and “doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms.” He completed his bizarre rant by saying that Putin was “the former head of the KGB.” He was no such thing and of course Obama knows that. It isn’t clear if he expected anyone to believe him or if facing his failure carried him away to heights of rhetorical foolishness.

Obama thought that Hillary Clinton would win and complete his regime change plans. Not only did she lose and deprive him of his third term but the hollowness of his legacy is clear. Obviously “hope and change” was a marketing tag line meant to hide his commitment to the world wide neoliberal project.

Donald Trump will be president of the United States in just four weeks. That is a short period of time in which to pull off a soft coup. He will be inaugurated but team Obama want to make sure he cannot upend the status quo they work so hard to uphold.

While the Democratic Party rank and file are anxious about racism, immigration, Islamophobia, judicial appointees and voter suppression their leaders only care about maintaining imperialism. Obama and the rest of the democratic party are unworthy of the loyalty they engender. On January 20^th thousands of people will head to Washington to protest Trump while the Democrats will be making last ditch efforts to help jihadists destroy Syria.

Some of the protesters ought to target their ire at Obama and the Democrats and not just because of their electoral failure. They ought to pledge an end to support for warmongering Democrats altogether. If it is true that Trump is a fascist he won’t be the first one in the White House. His predecessor fits that description just as well. But events may have spun out of his control. The fate of Syria may not be in American hands any longer. And that is why the desperation is so evident.

A December 16, Fox News Bret Baier hosted segment had a portion of Barack Obama’s same day press conference. It included Obama’s repeated fallacy, which describes Vladimir Putin as the former head of the KGB. Since October, this is at least the third time that Obama has said such.

Earlier, MSNBC like Fox News, didn’t bother to make a correction when replaying that gaffe from Obama. For objectivity sake, both networks would benefit by having erudite opposites to Garry Kasparov (on Fox News) and Michael McFaul (on MSNBC). (Concerning Kasparov, the late Bobby Fischer is a prime example of a brilliant chess player being quite out of touch with some other matters. McFaul’s lauding of Julia Ioffe and smear of RT should be in the nuff said category. Ioffe is clearly biased against Russia/Russians. A legitimate case can be made that the Russian government funded RT is more objective than the US government funded RFE/RL and some other Western media venues.)

The defeated US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has repeated the claim made by some others that Putin has a vendetta against her. That comes across as ironically spun, mind reading hogwash. Clinton herself has carried on like she has had a vendetta against Putin. In contrast, he has been rather level to her insults. Moreover, her comments about him aren’t as harsh as John McCain’s. No complaints about Russia hacking McCain before, during and after his failed presidential bid. Is it because Putin is a wus, who fears the Arizona senator? Get serious!

President-elect Donald Trump gets a good deal of criticism when he has insulted some of his compatriots – people including Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham – individuals who can be quite insulting as well. Comparatively speaking, Trump hasn’t been as condemnatory to foreign leaders. Clinton and a number of other US elites have taken the reverse stance. Overall, the incoming Trump administration might prove to not be as diplomatically rough as its predecessor.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer correctly observed that Obama was insulting towards Russia during the latter’s December 16 press conference – something that has been previously evident with him. Obama’s appointed lead UN representative, Samantha Power, is even more insulting. It won’t take much for the Trump appointed Nikki Haley to be a better UN ambassador than Power.

In threatening Russia (over the not well substantiated to the public) Russian “interference” in the US presidential election, Obama said that retaliatory measures between governments aren’t always made known to the public. With that in mind and assuming the belief that the Russian government hacked the Democratic Party (emphasizing that the available conclusive proof is still lacking), perhaps the Kremlin launched a payback  – once gain noting that it remains factually unclear as to who actually hacked the Dems.

Without getting too specific, CNN contributor Evan Perez, suggested the possibility of a Russian retaliation in a December 16 CNN discussion. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted that the Obama administration asked US business executives to not attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. Maddow added that the newly appointed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was one of those Americans who chose to come to that event. Other examples include the US government periodically telling other nations like Greece and Serbia to not have closer ties with Russia.

Still yet, the Obama administration might’ve done some unknown things to Russia which the Russian government has chosen to not disclose. During the Cold War, the Soviet leadership knew that their country was being spied on by US U2 flight missions. Until the Soviet shoot down of Gary Powers, the Kremlin didn’t openly acknowledge the U2 flights. It’s believed that this silence was because the Soviet leadership didn’t want to formally acknowledge the inability to deter that activity.

The image of Putin as a former KGB official, entrapped by the Soviet past is something that has been inaccurately overhyped. Among other things, he has denounced Lenin and gave the nod for a memorial honoring the victims of persecution during Stalin’s rule. Nevertheless, Putin’s Soviet upbringing and intelligence background from that period, could explain his being silent on a possible clandestine US government activity against him and his country.

Upon the greater attention given to the leaked Democratic Party emails, Maddow and her MSNBC colleagues have greatly enhanced their anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda. Their answer is the often stated US intelligence claims of Kremlin involvement in the leaked Democratic Party emails – never minding that the evidence hasn’t been made available to the public. The intelligence community isn’t without overly partisan individuals, as evidenced by the likes of such former officials as Michael Hayden and Malcolm Nance, who spout very collapsible anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda on MSNBC and elsewhere. The possibility of a different source involved in the leaked Democratic Party emails, has received little attention in US mass media.

His noticeable biases against Putin and Russia aside, CNN host Fareed Zakaria, had a reasonably balanced panel discussion on his December 18 aired GPS show. Without specifically naming the neolibs and neocons and those influenced by them, one of the guests, Fyodor Lukyanov, got across the point that the neocon/neolib vision of the world is lacking globally, in a way that isn’t so much influenced by Russia – but the sincere belief that the confrontational approach towards Russia isn’t so necessary. As US mass media bashes Russia, Putin was accorded respect during his recent visit to Japan. Brexit, the likely soon to be changed political standing in France and Germany, serve as further examples of change, which haven’t been orchestrated from Moscow.

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. This article initially appeared in the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website on December 21. On a related note, former CIA analysts Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, are among a number of individuals who’ve coherently disputed the claim of hacked Democratic Party emails by the Russian government, with the approved knowledge of Vladimir Putin.

President Obama made the following remarks in a recent NPR interview:

“I’ve had to live through controversies like the notion that I was trying to kill Christmas. Right? Well, where’d that come from? Well, I bet, you know, well, he said Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. So, that, you know, that must be evidence of him either not being a Christian or not caring about Christmas. It—it sounds funny now, but you’ll have entire debates in conservative circles around that.”

Well, you know, there is evidence of Obama not caring about Christmas, and it didn’t emanate from conservative circles. Here it is.

The cover story of the July 23, 2008 edition of People magazine featured a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama, and their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. People reported that “The kids receive no birthday or Christmas presents from Mom and Dad, who spend ‘hundreds’ on birthday slumber parties and, as Barack puts it, ‘want to teach some limits.'”

On December 7, 2009, weeks before the Obamas celebrated their first Christmas in the White House, I said in a news release, “If the Obamas want to deprive their children of celebrating Christmas, that is their business. It is the business of the public to hold them accountable for the way they celebrate Christmas in the White House.”

What I was referring to was a December 7, 2009 news story in the New York Times by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. She wrote, “When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. [Desirée] Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a ‘non-religious Christmas….”

“The lunch conversation inevitably turned to whether the White House would display its crèche, customarily placed in a prominent spot in the East Room,” Stolberg wrote. “Ms. Rogers, this participant said, replied that the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display—a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood. (A White House official confirmed that there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.)”

The person whom the Obamas chose to oversee Christmas decorations in 2009 was Simon Doonan, the head of creative services for Barneys in New York. A website, biggovernment.com, posted pictures of some of the Christmas tree ornaments. They featured such religious figures as Mao Zedong, a genocidal maniac, and various drag queens. Fox News did a story on this issue as well; it aired December 22, 2009.

None of this was a mistake. The Obamas chose Doonan because of his stellar Christmas reputation.

I had a showdown with Doonan in 1994 when I protested the store’s “Hello Kitty Nativity Scene.” It was more than a spoof of the traditional nativity scene—it showed a kitten Virgin Mary posed with her legs spread wearing an undergarment that left six nipples in evidence.

On December 9, 1994, after someone called the Catholic League office to complain, I personally confronted store officials at the 61st Street and Madison Avenue store: I told them they had 45 minutes to remove the offensive crèche. They didn’t budge. Then I hit the air waves. Within hours, it was removed. Doonan called me saying he was surprised by the reaction of New Yorkers. I quickly brought him up to speed, explaining that Catholics were no longer going to tolerate this kind of intolerance.

Obama says conservatives lie when they say he is uncaring about Christmas. Yet he and his wife refuse to give their children Christmas presents; they gave serious consideration to censoring a White House crèche; they hired a man to be in charge of Christmas decorations who is known for trashing Christmas; and they displayed Christmas tree ornaments in the White House featuring pictures of mass murderers and kinky men.

Wonder who fed the idea that Obama is not exactly Christmas-friendly?

Ivanka Trump just had a bumpy start to her Christmas holiday … an out-of-control passenger Dan Goldstein (Attorney from Brooklyn) on her flight began verbally berating her and “jeering” at her 3 kids.

Ivanka was on a JetBlue flight leaving JFK Thursday morning with her family when a passenger started screaming, “Your father is ruining the country.” The guy went on, “Why is she on our flight. She should be flying private.”

A passenger on the flight told TMZ Ivanka ignored the guy and tried distracting her kids with crayons.

JetBlue personnel escorted the unruly passenger off the flight. As he was removed he screamed, “You’re kicking me off for expressing my opinion?!!”

Goldstein’s husband, Matthew Lasner, said that was not what happened however on Twitter, writing: ‘My husband expressed his displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane.’

However, just an hour prior to that Lasner wrote on Twitter: ‘Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil’. Lasner soon after deleted his tweeter account.

BTW … Ivanka, her family and bunch of cousins were all in coach.

Over half the women in Brazil are avoiding pregnancy due to the Zika epidemic, reveals a study published online in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care.

There is an urgent need to reconsider abortion criminalisation, and also to improve reproductive health policies to ensure women have access to safe and effective contraceptives, according to the authors of the study.

Since the outbreak of Zika in Brazil, there have been 1,845 confirmed cases of congenital Zika syndrome in babies.

A team of doctors, led by Professor Debora Diniz from University of Brasília, wanted to understand how the epidemic has impacted reproductive health practices.

A national survey conducted in June 2016 used face-to-face questionnaires to collect data about reproductive health and pregnancy, and a secret ballot box to obtain information related to abortion experiences.

Data were collected from 2,002 urban and literate Brazilian women aged 18-39 years, corresponding to 83% of the total female population.

Over half (56%) the women reported that they had avoided, or tried to avoid pregnancy because of the Zika epidemic.

Conversely, 27% of women reported that they had not tried to avoid pregnancy because of the epidemic and 16% had not been planning to get pregnant, regardless of the epidemic.

A higher proportion of northeastern women (66%) than southern women (46%) reported avoiding pregnancy, and the authors say this is most likely due to the epidemic being more concentrated in northeastern Brazil.

Black (64%) and brown (56%) women were more likely to report avoiding pregnancy than white women (51%), most probably reflecting the disproportionate impact of the epidemic on vulnerable racial groups, they add.

There were no significant differences among the main religious groups: 58% of Catholic women and 55% of Evangelic women reported having avoided pregnancy because of the Zika epidemic.

“The results provide an important first glimpse into how the Zika epidemic has shaped pregnancy intentions among women in Brazil,” said the authors.

“Brazil must urgently re-evaluate its reproductive health policies to ensure better access to contraception information and methods” they argued.

This includes making available a wider range of contraceptive methods, including long-acting reversible contraception, which are either scarce, such as the copper intrauterine device, or not available, such as hormonal implants, through public health services.

“As indicated by the high proportion of women who avoided pregnancy because of Zika, the Brazilian government must place reproductive health concerns at the centre of its response, including reviewing its continued criminalisation of abortion,” the authors concluded.

A new concept in energy harvesting could capture energy currently wasted due to its characteristic low frequency and use it to power next-generation electronic devices, according to a team of Penn State materials scientists and electrical engineers.

The project, funded by Samsung, designed a mechanical energy transducer based on flexible, organic, ionic diodes that points to scalable energy harvesting of unused mechanical energy in the environment, including that from wind, ocean waves and human motion.

Devices that harvest ambient mechanical energy and convert it into electricity are widely used to power wearable electronics, biomedical devices and the so-called Internet of Things — everyday objects that wirelessly connect to the internet. The most common of these devices, based on the piezoelectric effect, operate most efficiently at high frequency, greater than 10 vibrations per second. But at lower frequencies their performance falls off dramatically.

“Our concept is to specifically design a way to turn low-frequency motion, such as human movement or ocean waves, into electricity,” said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. “That’s why we came up with this organic polymer p-n junction device.”

Called an ionic diode, their device is composed of two nanocomposite electrodes with oppositely charged mobile ions separated by a polycarbonate membrane. The electrodes are a polymeric matrix filled with carbon nanotubes and infused with ionic liquids. The nanotubes enhance the conductivity and mechanical strength of the electrodes. When a mechanical force is applied, the ions diffuse across the membrane, creating a continuous direct current. At the same time, a built-in potential that opposes ion diffusion is established until equilibrium is reached. The complete cycle operates at a frequency of one-tenth Hertz, or once every 10 seconds.

For smart phones, the mechanical energy involved in touching the screen could be converted into electricity that can be stored in the battery. Other human motion could provide the energy to power a tablet or wearable device.

“Because the device is a polymer, it is both flexible and lightweight,” Wang said. “When incorporated into a next-generation smart phone, we hope to provide 40 percent of the energy required of the battery. With less demand on the battery, the safety issue should be resolved.”

According to the authors of “Flexible Ionic Devices for Low-Frequency Mechanical Energy Harvesting” published online in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, “The peak power density of our device is in general larger than or comparable to those of piezoelectric generators operated at their most efficient frequencies.”

Michael Hickner, associate professor of materials science and engineering, produced the ionic polymers, with Liang Zhu, a postdoctoral scholar in his group. Qiming Zhang, distinguished professor of electrical engineering, and his group focused on device integration and performance. Wang’s group, including coauthors postdoctoral scholar Qi Li and graduate student Yong Zhang, focused on materials optimization. The co-lead authors are visiting scholar Ying Hou, recent Ph.D graduate Yue Zhou and visiting scholar Lu Yang, all part of Zhang’s group.

“Right now, at low frequencies, no other device can outperform this one,” said Wang. “That’s why I think this concept is exciting.”

Future work will involve further optimization and integration into smart phones and tablet devices.

A company building warships for the Israel Navy is owned by the family of Samir Moqbel, who was Lebanon’s defense minister until last week, Channel 2 News reported Wednesday.

Construction of the four “Sa’ar 6 corvette” ships, commissioned to defend Israel’s offshore gas fields, was agreed in a 2015 deal between the Jewish state and German company ThyssenKrupp, which subcontracted the work to the Moqbel-owned shipyard, now called German Naval Yards Kiel. Under the 2015 deal, worth $480 million, ThyssenKrupp is supplying Israel with the four warships over a period of five years.

According to Channel 2, the true ownership of the company emerged when Zionist Union MK Erel Margalit recently sent an urgent letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, calling on him to open an investigation into the affair. In the letter, Margalit wrote that he recently met with “senior sources” during a trip to Europe, who informed him of the true ownership of the shipyard.

Margalit also told Mandelblit that three unnamed Israeli businessmen representing the defense establishment — two former senior naval officers and a prominent attorney — “pressured” the shipyard, then named Abu Dhabi MAR, to change its name to German Naval Yards Kiel so as to cover up its links to the Arab world.

“The fact that one of the owners of the company building naval vessels for Israel is the defense minister of a country designated as an enemy state, and who, according to reports, cooperated with the Hezbollah organization and Iran, sets off a warning light,” the MK wrote.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper initially reported last week that the four ships are under construction in a shipyard owned by Lebanese and Abu Dhabi-based companies, but said officials insist no classified information about the warships is at risk.

Yedioth named the shipyard as Abu Dhabi MAR, calling it a major shipbuilder in the Persian Gulf that operates the docks where the vessels are being assembled.

The circumstances behind the arrangement are the outcome of a failed attempt several years by ThyssenKrupp and Abu Dhabi MAR to cooperate on military shipbuilding projects. A 2009 press release on the Thyssenkrupp website said it would deal with German navy and NATO contracts, while Abu Dhabi MAR was to handle business from the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2011, ThyssenKrupp announced that the deal with Abu Dhabi MAR was off, yet a small part of the agreement was completed, including the transfer of a shipyard in Kiel, Germany called HDW Gaarden to Abu Dhabi MAR. As a result, HDW Gaarden changed its name to Abu Dhabi MAR Kiel. The company website says it became German Naval Yards Kiel in 2015, but omits any mention of a link to Abu Dhabi MAR.

Yedioth said that the name change came two months before the Israel-ThyssenKrupp naval deal, and quoted sources as saying it was to ease the contract with Israel.

Abu Dhabi, which serves as the capital of the United Arab Emirates, does not recognize Israel and does not have official diplomatic or economic ties with the Jewish state. Israel and Lebanon do not have diplomatic ties either and under Israeli law its northern neighbor is considered an enemy state.

The Defense Ministry told Yedioth in a statement that “the contract to buy protective ships was signed with the German company, with direct involvement of the [German] government, that is even funding a third of the cost of the deal.”

In response to inquiries from Yedioth, German Naval Yards Kiel said it is a secondary contractor of ThyssenKrupp Sea Systems and that it contributes to the engineering of sailing vessels and to their construction in the Kiel shipyards. The company noted that all contact between the shipyard and Israeli officials was via ThyssenKrupp.

The latest revelation comes on the heels of reports that an Iranian government company owns 4.5 percent of ThyssenKrupp, which itself is at the center of a scandal over the provision of submarines and other services to the Israel Navy.

Mandelblit earlier this month ordered the police to look into allegations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, David Shimron, used his close relationship with the premier to push Israel to purchase several submarines from ThyssenKrupp, award the company the contract for the naval vessels to defend Israel’s Mediterranean gas fields, and allow it to build a shipyard in Israel. Shimron was a representative of the company in Israel.

Original source

In the name of fighting foreign influence and without an adequate understanding of the nature of religious faith or religious organizations, the Kremlin has handed control of Russia’s religions back to the country’s special services, thus restoring a much-criticized Soviet era practice, according to Roman Lunkin.

In the current issue of “NG-Religii,” Lunkin, who heads the Center for the Study of the Problems of Religion and Society at the Moscow Institute of Europe, says that this is the meaning of the country’s new security doctrine, which, regarding religion, means “security from religion” (ng.ru/ng_religii/2016-12-21/5_412_doctrina.html).

In one sense, this is “the most logical result of the restoration of Soviet stereotypes in Russia over the last decade,” a period in which the massive interest in religion in the 1990s largely dissipated. “But few could have predicted that as a result, there would emerge in society an unusual consciousness based on the denial of religion.”

There have been warnings about this trend before, Lunkin says. In 2007, sociologist Dmitry Furman said in a book “New Churches, Old Believers; Old Churches, New Believers” that there is too great a divide between the “’official traditional religions’” and “the ignorance of the population about practical religiosity.”

That divide laid a delayed action mine under the relations between organized religion, on the one hand, and the population and now the Russian state, on the other. But its full extent was concealed by the rapid growth in the number of Russian Orthodox Churches (from 11,000 in 201o to 16,000 now) as well as the growth of the number of those listed as parishioners.

But this growth would not have happened, Lunkin argues, “without the harsh interference” of the state authorities who saw the new churches as a way to control independent Orthodox activists and reduce the influence of other faiths, two serious misreadings of the outcomes of what they were doing.

The government’s conflict with all but the official Orthodox structures and popular support for the regime’s position grew in response with the anti-Western propaganda of the last few years and the fear, promoted by the authorities, of the spread of radicalism “on a religious basis,” either Islamic or sectarian.

“In fact,” the religious specialist continues, “the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t know what to do in response to spontaneous social protest. And what it has done has often approached “the absurd.” But the political authorities have concluded they have no choice but to support the official hierarchy and “traditional” religions.

“The only way out which the state has found,” Lunkin argues, “is to declare the entire religious sphere potentially dangerous” and to specify in the new Doctrine on Information Security that the special services, not the usual civil authorities, are now in charge of sorting things out and thus controlling religious groups.

That document, signed December 5, goes significantly beyond the 2000 version it replaced which only spoke of the need to counter “foreign missionaries and their ‘cultural-religious expansion on the territory of Russia from the side of other states.” In a directive released at the end of November, the MVD specified that the security organs should protect people from being pressured into non-Orthodox faiths.

That builds on the consequences of the so-called Yarovaya package of laws and amendments adopted in July which increased penalties for missionary activity and has led to numerous arrests and trials of foreigners for simply engaging in religious activities, Lunkin points out.

Such arbitrary actions against non-traditional faiths and “indifference to the real interests of others (traditionalists) are in and of themselves a dangerous policy, only superficially similar to the support of the balance of interests of the majority and the minority.”

These actions reflect “a major error of bureaucrats and special services” in thinking that “non-Orthodox groups cannot develop on their own [in Russia] without foreign help.” That is nonsense. There are now approximately 10,000 Muslim communities and about the same number of Protestant ones, and they were not all set up by foreigners.

There is one particularly alarming immediate threat, he says. “This is the threat of extremism on a religious basis. The current relation of the state to religion renders the authorities blind and senselessly cruel in the sphere of struggle with religious radicals … and with non-traditional believers.”

Since about 2010, “religious policy at the regional level has been carried out by the force structures rather than by the executive authorities” such as prosecutors and the courts. As a result, “the Constitution and the Law on Freedom of Conscience have ceased to work and officials in the localities even those well-inclined are forced to ignore all non-Orthodox.”

That is a tragedy because “the police and officers of the special services don’t see the shades of various trends, their particular features and do not understand the network character of present-day religiosity and the psychology of fundamentalists.” Obviously, every country must use its special services against extremists; but Russia is now using them against all believers.

The result, Lunkin concludes, is that the authorities are laying the groundwork for “new and unpredictable conflicts” rather than for the stability and calm they say they are working to achieve.

US Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley on Thursday urged federal officials to make much-needed federal timber sales payments as quickly as possible to Oregon counties in need of funding for schools, roads and law enforcement.

In letters to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the senators noted that congressional failure to reauthorize Secure Rural Schools (SRS) funding puts a premium on ensuring the federal timber payments are sent in a timely fashion to Oregon counties.

Counties no longer receiving an SRS payment as of Jan. 1 will instead receive payment under a federal act that provides them 25 percent of the federal timber sale revenue from national forestlands generated in each county, the senators wrote Vilsack. In 2015 when SRS was not reauthorized until after the 25-percent payments were made, the 25-percent payment was $50 million nationwide compared to about $300 million from SRS the previous year.

“Without the certainty of SRS payments, schools, libraries and jails close, roads go unpaved and become unsafe, mental and physical health services are scaled back or even ended and fewer and fewer law enforcement officers patrol larger and larger areas,’’ Wyden and Merkley wrote. “We have talked to counties in Oregon experiencing these hardships, which will be made even worse if the remaining 25 percent payments are delayed.”

In their letter to Jewell, the senators made a similar point urging that the 18 Oregon O & C counties receive their payments in a timely fashion under the 1937 O & C Lands Act and 1939 Coos Bay Wagon Road grant fund providing counties with 50 percent of the revenue from O & C federal timber sales. When SRS was not reauthorized in 2015, those counties received $18 million from those federal timber sales and an additional $19.9 million after SRS was reauthorized.

Wyden and Merkley are continuing to work on reauthorizing the SRS program, which has brought almost $4 billion since 2000 to Oregon’s timber counties and schools all across the state.

Last year’s SRS funds were paid to the counties in March 2016 and include payments from the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. In Oregon, 33 counties received a total of $95 million in Secure Rural Schools payments earlier this year.

Wyden co-authored the original SRS legislation in 2000 with then-Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.

(EurActiv) — Romania could appoint its first female and first Muslim prime minister after the Social Democratic Party (PSD) put its support behind Sevil Shhaideh, in a shock move following the Eastern European country’s 11 December elections.

Shhaideh, a 52-year-old who hails from a family with Tartar-Turkish ancestry and who is married to a Syrian, has unexpectedly gained the confidence of the PSD, who managed to secure 45% of the vote in elections held on 11 December.

Romania’s Sevil Shhaideh. Photo Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration, Wikipedia Commons.

The economics graduate is a close ally of PSD President Liviu Dragnea, having worked with him during her time at Romania’s regional development ministry.

Her nomination, supported by the Liberal Democratic Alliance (ALDE), came as a shock, as Dragnea had not announced or given much indication about who would be backed to succeed outgoing technocrat Prime Minister Dacian Cioloș.

Dragnea himself was effectively ruled out of the running when Romania’s president and head of state, Klaus Iohannis, confirmed that he would not accept the nomination of an individual that had been convicted of a crime or whose integrity was in question, citing an existing law on the matter.

Dragnea was convicted in 2015 of organising electoral fraud during Romania’s 2012 referendum on the impeachment of then-President Traian Băsescu. His initial one-year punishment was doubled in April of this year by the Court of Cassation but remained a mere suspended sentence.

However, his conviction did not stop him leading the PSD to election victory this month or being elected chamber president.

This is where Shhaideh comes into the picture. As a trusted collaborator of Dragnea, her appointment would prevent any further political turmoil in a country that is still struggling to get over the shockwaves caused by the resignation of Victor Ponta’s cabinet last year.

Dragnea said that Shhaideh is “a person I fully trust” after meeting with Iohannis yesterday (21 December), adding that she would be the only candidate his party would put forward.

Muslims only make up a tiny percentage of Romania’s population, just 0.3%, mostly Tartar-Turkish. The largest minority, 86%, are orthodox.

The president is expected to announce a decision either today or tomorrow (23 December).

Washington State University archaeologists are at the helm of new research using sophisticated computer technology to learn how past societies responded to climate change.

Their work, which links ancient climate and archaeological data, could help modern communities identify new crops and other adaptive strategies when threatened by drought, extreme weather and other environmental challenges.

In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, assistant professor of anthropology, and WSU colleagues Stefani Crabtree, Kyle Bocinsky and Tim Kohler examine how recent advances in computational modeling are reshaping the field of archaeology.

“For every environmental calamity you can think of, there was very likely some society in human history that had to deal with it,” said Kohler, emeritus professor of anthropology at WSU. “Computational modeling gives us an unprecedented ability to identify what worked for these people and what didn’t.”

Leaders in agent-based modeling

Kohler is a pioneer in the field of model-based archaeology. He developed sophisticated computer simulations, called agent-based models, of the interactions between ancestral peoples in the American Southwest and their environment.

He launched the Village Ecodynamics Project in 2001 to simulate how virtual Pueblo Indian families, living on computer-generated and geographically accurate landscapes, likely would have responded to changes in specific variables like precipitation, population size and resource depletion.

By comparing the results of agent-based models against real archeological evidence, anthropologists can identify past conditions and circumstances that led different civilizations around the world into periods of growth and decline.

‘Video game’ plays out to logical conclusion

Agent-based modeling is also used to explore the impact humans can have on their environment during periods of climate change.

One study mentioned in the WSU review demonstrates how drought, hunting and habitat competition among growing populations in Egypt led to the extinction of many large-bodied mammals around 3,000 B.C. In addition, d’Alpoim Guedes and Bocinsky, an adjunct faculty member in anthropology, are investigating how settlement patterns in Tibet are affecting erosion.

“Agent-based modeling is like a video game in the sense that you program certain parameters and rules into your simulation and then let your virtual agents play things out to the logical conclusion,” said Crabtree, who completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at WSU earlier this year. “It enables us to not only predict the effectiveness of growing different crops and other adaptations but also how human societies can evolve and impact their environment.”

Modeling disease- and drought-tolerant crops

Species distribution or crop-niche modeling is another sophisticated technology that archeologists use to predict where plants and other organisms grew well in the past and where they might be useful today.

Bocinsky and d’Alpoim Guedes are using the modeling technique to identify little-used or in some cases completely forgotten crops that could be useful in areas where warmer weather, drought and disease impact food supply.

One of the crops they identified is a strain of drought-tolerant corn the Hopi Indians of Arizona adapted over the centuries to prosper in poor soil.

“Our models showed Hopi corn could grow well in the Ethiopian highlands where one of their staple foods, the Ethiopian banana, has been afflicted by emerging pests, disease and blasts of intense heat,” Bocinsky said. “Cultivating Hopi corn and other traditional, drought-resistant crops could become crucial for human survival in other places impacted by climate change.”

Millet comeback in Tibet

WSU researchers also used crop-niche modeling to identify a viable alternative food source on the Tibetan Plateau. Rapidly rising temperatures make it difficult for the region’s inhabitants to grow cold weather crops and raise and breed yaks, a staple form of subsistence.

In a paper published in 2015, d’Alpoim Guedes and Bocinsky found that foxtail and proso millet, which fell out of cultivation on the Plateau 4,000 years ago as the climate got colder, could soon be grown there again as the climate warms up.

“These millets are on the verge of becoming forgotten crops,” d’Alpoim Guedes said. “But due to their heat tolerance and high nutritional value, and very low rainfall requirements, they may once again be useful resources for a warmer future.”

Future of informed management

With hundreds of years of anthropological data from sites around the world yet to be digitized, scientists are just beginning to tap the potential of archaeology-based modeling.

“The field is in the midst of a renaissance toward more computational approaches,” Kohler said. “Our hope is that combining traditional archaeology fieldwork with data-driven modeling techniques will help us more knowledgeably manage our numbers, our ecosystem interactions and avoid past errors regarding climate change.”

On its integration journey to the European Union institutions, Serbia is undertaking strenuous efforts; however it has exhumed more rhetoric than real reforms.

Unfortunately, its recent past is present with all of its reminiscences. The country embodies a series of challenges that must be addressed by its government over the coming years and decades.

Among all of these obstacles appears to be the demilitarization of Serbian State, its institutions, civilian population and that of Serbian minorities around the Balkan region.

1. Serbian Army

Militarization is an existential component of a nation building heritage in Serbia. The politics of force has dominated the landscape of political dialogue in Belgrade. Since its foundation as a state and throughout all of its development stages, Serbia has been a militarized state. The Armed Forces of Serbia have shown a leading responsibility to run the country, enjoyed a privileged role among its many other institutions, it has displayed a determining role through the most critical moments of this nation’s political history.

The Serbian Armed Forces and its leadership components have affected the internal and foreign policies of Serbia. In the internal politics the Armed Forces have decided a national political system that is based on the framework of a Unitarian, militarist affairs and a national chauvinistic political doctrine.

The military installed army bases all over the Serbian communities across the Yugoslavian Federation. The long legacy of Joseph Broz Tito and the continuous pressure from the Croatian – Slovenian Federalists were not able to change such a characteristic of Serbian Army in the political doctrine and government system of Belgrade.

Belgrade’s Armed Forces have established, preserved and developed in a constant fashion the Serbian geopolitical and geostrategic orientation towards Russia. Every attempt undertaken by any civilian or individual component that aims to divert, distort such a Russian propensity in the Serbian Foreign Policy decision-making body, has encountered a fierce resistance and punishment by Serbian Armed Forces.

Even in our time Serbia, at the state level, continues to pay a special attention to its Armed Forces and is committed to increase its militarization budget every year. Indeed, the Serbian defense budget is much higher than its actual needs; this is a real threat to neighboring countries in the region.

After the years of 2000, Serbia was engaged to remain neutral on its strategic views. However, despite its engagement to remain strategically neutral, the truth is that during the last years Serbia has violated all heartedly the principle of neutrality. Serbia has established a strategic treaty with the Russian Federation; is organizing bilateral training, projects and military drilling sessions with Moscow, scheduling military exercises and is purchasing weapons from the Russian Defense Industry.

2. Parallel Military Structures

Adjacent to Serbian official armed forces, the country has also dark structures embedded on the society. These structures are created at the beginning of the XIX Century and have continued to serve as parallel military institutions until today.

Known with the name of Cerna Ruka (dark hand) and with other names, these obscure military structures from time to time have seen their demise and rise but have never disappeared. They operate where the government is absent or in places where the government wants to hide, however based on their impact, it appears that such a parallel military structure remains an integral component of Serbian State interests. Only its tactics have changed.

These dark Serbian military structures have led military operations, mainly undercover, throughout Former Yugoslavia. The physical elimination of the Obrenovich family members all the way to Zoran Đinđić (the sixth Prime Minister of Republic of Serbia) have been orchestrated by these structures. Moreover the current threats made against Aleksandar Vučić (current Serbian Prime Minister) in Belgrade and against Milo Đukanović in Montenegro are the works of these dark military structures within Serbia. The assassination of the academicians Fehmi Agani and Ukshin Hoti in Kosovo has been organized by these entities.

3. An armed population

Militarization as a feature of Serbia characterizes its society as a whole. From many trusted media sources we all know that Serbian population is the world’s second largest country based on the number of weapons that are carried – owned by its citizens. Therefore we are dealing with a militaristic population. This state of affairs generates a great instability to the Serbian internal order and jeopardizes regional stability.

While keeping in mind the manipulative politics of Serbia with its minorities located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro, the possession of weapons by Serbian population (minority groups) is also a real threat for these Balkan countries that border Serbia.

This past year, many events that have happened around Serbia, have the same consequences and active measures led by Serbia. The organization of a referendum in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016, the separation of northern Kosovo and repeated attempts to build a separation wall in Mitrovica and the recent Coup D’état attempt in Montenegro after the general elections of last Autumn, are clear testimonies that the so called dark military structures of Serbia are cooperating with the Serbian minorities – heavily armed – that are living on the other Balkan countries mentioned above. Moreover there are significant Serbian minorities currently living in Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania, Hungary as well as a minority group of a few hundred Serbs living in Bulgaria.

4. The Alliance with Russians

The Serbian Army, its dark military structures and its armed civilian population, including the Serbian ethnic minorities in other independent countries of the Balkans (mentioned above), appear to be the staunchest and constant allies of Russia in the region.

These military factors are in a state of a “time bomb,” ready to be used at every moment to defend the interest of Serbia and Russia in the Balkans. Russia is also feeding these structures in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Such a model is followed by Serbia, based on the ongoing conditions and circumstances set forth in the Balkans.

The absence of a demilitarized Serbian State, its coexistence with dark military structures, large quantities of weapons carried by a large number of civilians as well as the bellicose attitude of Serbian Minority communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro, dormant position of Serbian minorities in Croatia, Slovenia and Romania, are a serious threat to peace and stability in the Balkans region.

5. Animosity with its neighbors

Militarization of Serbia is a process that runs against the democratization of relations among the Balkan nations. The European Union politics of enlargement through positive and good neighborly relations are not accepted by Serbia. For Serbia good neighborly relations are only a matter of rhetoric.

The indicators of a state becoming militarized, parallel military structures, civilians heavily armed and Serbian ethnic communities armed as well; do not produce good neighborly relation. They show once again that the past is still dominating the Serbian society and its political elite.
The militarization of Serbia comes from two sources: 1. the lack of a demilitarization strategy after the wars in Yugoslavia and 2. Russian Assistance. After the wars in the 1990 Serbia did not accept a control and verification campaign on the weapons – possession among civilians, organized by the OSCE and did not initiate any campaigns of demilitarization. In fact the opposite took place; Belgrade allowed civilians and dark military groups to hold on to their weapons and has even armed its ethnic minorities across the Balkans.

Over the last few years the Russian strategic interference has significantly meddled within the context of the dark military structures in former Yugoslavia. Serbian army, its dark-parallel military groups, armed civilians as well as armed ethnic Serbian minorities on a number of Balkan countries, make them the most trusted allies of Russia in the Balkans.
The bi-vectored politics of Serbia, focused on Europe and Russia, is focused above all on the militarization of its human assets, whether they are undercover structures or civilians carrying guns. Such a bi-vectored militarized politics reveals a clear obstacle to Serbia’s E.U. integration process, while it continues to be a critical challenge to regional security across the Balkans.

Translation from Albanian language by: Peter Tase

*Prof. Dr. Lisen Bashkurti is the President of Albanian Diplomatic Academy in Albania. Prof. Dr. Bashkurti has been a Chancellor in a number of Universities in the Balkan Peninsula. He is also the Global Vice President of Sun Moon University in South Korea. As a distinguished scholar of international relations he has received many international awards including: A “Gold Medal” for his research on US-Albanian Partnership,” “Four Silver Medals” for his great contribution during his service as Albania’s Ambassador to Hungary (1992-1993); appointed as “Peace Ambassador” from the International Peace Foundation, United Nations (2009). He is the author of more than 18 books that cover a range of issues including: International Affairs, Negotiations and Conflict Resolution, International Diplomacy, Multilateral Diplomacy and Diplomatic History. He is an honorary professor in many prestigious European Universities and an honorary fellow to a number of prominent International Institutions.

Suggestions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is bent on creating a new Russia-led and China-backed Eurasia-centred world order by undermining Western democratic institutions may be a crackpot conspiracy theory. Yet that may not be so far-fetched against the backdrop of US allegations of Russia’s waging cyber warfare against the US, German intelligence sounding the alarm bell, East European leaders having their fears confirmed and Moscow and Beijing reaching out to Western supporters of the idea.

Whether conspiracy theory or not, western intelligence agencies and many analysts see a pattern in Russian moves that would serve Chinese interests, particularly if US president-elect Donald J Trump adopts a more confrontational approach towards Beijing. The analysts believe that the sum total of Russian activity amounts to an attempt to undermine trust in democratic structures and manipulate elections.

Turkish Approach to Eurasia

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly subscribed to conspiracy theories alleging Western backing for the failed coup attempt in July against his government and a mysterious international financial cabal seeking to undermine the Turkish economy. In response, Erdogan has applied for Turkish membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that groups Central Asian states with China and Russia.

Bent on enhancing his personal power, Erdogan is not about to fully rupture relations with the West but is happy to play both ends against the middle by publicly aligning himself with concepts of Russian-backed Eurasianists.

A left-wing secularist, Dogu Perincek, who spent six years in prison for allegedly being part of a military-led cabal to stage a military coup, was long a fringe voice calling on Erdogan to break ties with the West and align himself with Russia and China. Perincek’s worldview — one that envisions an alliance between Russia, China and Turkey that would replace the US-led international order — is gaining currency in Ankara, Moscow and Beijing, according to a prominent Turkish intellectual, Mustafa Akyol and other well-known pundits.

The rise of Perincek’s Homeland Party, dubbed the Russian lobby by Akyol in an article in Al-Monitor, comes on the back of its ability to backchannel a reconciliation with Russia following a rupture in relations and a crippling Russian economic boycott in the wake of Turkey’s downing in 2015 of a Russian warplane.

Perincek, together with deputy Homeland leader Ismail Hakki Pekin, a former head of Turkish military intelligence with extensive contacts in Moscow including Putin’s foreign policy advisor Alexander Dugin, mediated the reconciliation with Erdogan’s tacit approval. They were supported by Turkish businessmen close to the president who were severely affected by the boycott, and ultra-nationalist Eurasianist military officers.

Making Inroads

Several factors have worked in favour of the Eurasianist idea. The first is the increasingly strained relations between Turkey and the West over the latter’s perceived lack of support following this summer’s failed military attempt to topple Erdogan. The second is a Western refusal to crack down on the Hizmet movement led by exiled imam Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey holds responsible for the unsuccessful coup. The third is Western criticism of Erdogan’s wholesale crackdown on his critics. Differences over Syria have intensified the pro-Eurasianist thinking.

Erdogan’s purported alignment with the Eurasianists fits neatly into an apparently larger Russian effort to fuel populist and right wing sentiment in the West and interfere in the affairs of former Soviet states. Together with China, whose One Belt, One Road initiative seeks to tie Eurasia together through infrastructure and trade, Russia seeks to reach out to Western intellectuals and politicians whose views stroke with Moscow’s ambition.

Outgoing US President Barack Obama has blamed Putin personally for hacking into Democratic Party computers to undermine Hilary Clinton’s presidential bid. A New York Times investigation concluded that Russian cyberwar had played a key role in defeating Democratic candidates in local races for the House of Representatives.

Germany’s head of foreign intelligence Bruno Kahl warned last month that Russia might try to undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel in upcoming elections. “We have evidence that cyber attacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit political uncertainty. The perpetrators are interested in delegitimising the democratic process as such, regardless of who that ends up helping. We have indications that (the attacks) comes from the Russian region,” Kahl told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Russian Funding

German media reported earlier this year that the Russian embassy in Berlin had co-funded a security policy seminar hosted by the Alternative for Germany party that is riding a populist wave with its anti-immigrant and anti-European Union positions. In France, National Front leader Marine Le Pen, a frontrunner in presidential elections, stands accused of being beholden to Moscow because of a US$10.2 million Russian loan to her party.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek warned that Russia was pursuing a “divide and conquer” policy in Europe by trying to boost Eurosceptic populists. Officials of former Soviet states say their long-standing warnings of subversive Russian activity were ignored by the Obama administration.

To be sure the US and the West too have a long history of waging disinformation and destabilisation campaigns. As a result this may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, yet one wrong doesn’t justify another.

For their part Moscow and Beijing have been reaching out to Western intellectuals and journalists who have been charting Eurasianist advances. Prominent Turkish journalist Murat Yelkin warned recently that Perincek’s group was exploiting its “close access to Erdogan” to promote an “elaborate plan” that would rupture Turkey’s relations with the EU. This it would do by reintroducing the death penalty, something the Turkish leader has advocated, and reversing restrictive EU regulations adopted by Turkey.

None of this amounts to incontrovertible evidence of a Russian-Chinese plot. The West however risks ignoring at its peril what could be a pattern rather than a string of unrelated incidents that foreshadows a new world order that ranges across the Eurasian mega continent.

This article was published by RSIS

According to nearly 700 foreign companies surveyed, the business climate in Spain has improved again in 2016 and the forecast for the next two years looks even sunnier.

This is according to the ninth edition of the Barometer of the Business Climate in Spain, prepared by IESE’s International Center for Competitiveness in collaboration with ICEX-Invest in Spain and Multinacionales por marca España, an association that works with multinationals to promote Spain as a brand.

On a scale of 1 to 5, the country’s business climate is rated 2.9 overall. Spain’s strong points remain its infrastructure, quality of life, market size and human capital, according to those surveyed. Of the 10 areas evaluated, seven were rated more positively than last year. Only infrastructure, costs and financing saw slight year-over-year declines.

Upward Trends

Foreign companies’ bullishness on investment levels, local hiring, sales and exports for 2016 follows positive forecasts from last year.

A resounding 95 percent of surveyed companies plan to maintain or increase their levels of investment in Spain in 2016 — up from 93 percent a year ago. Furthermore, these forecasts remain unchanged looking ahead to 2017.

There is also a rosier outlook for employment: 91 percent of foreign companies expect to maintain or increase their Spanish workforce in 2016, a number that jumps to 95 percent looking to 2017.

At the same time, 87 percent of companies expect to either increase or maintain their sales levels in 2016, 5 percentage points more than the previous year. That said, the increase came from more companies expecting to maintain their sales levels. Meanwhile, 62 percent see sales increasing in 2016, compared to 64 percent a year ago. The forecast for 2017 is more optimistic, with 69 percent expecting sales growth.

With respect to exports from Spain, the forecasts continue to be positive, if cautious. In the survey, almost 70 percent of foreign companies are exporting from Spain to third markets. For 2016, 37 percent see exports increasing and 29 percent are maintaining previous levels. Only 4 percent see exports to third markets decreasing in 2016, dropping to 2 percent for 2017’s forecasts.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The aspects of Spain most highly rated by foreign investors are its infrastructure, market size and quality of life, followed by its human capital.

Echoing last year’s results, foreign investors are particularly pleased with the quality of Spanish infrastructure — including airports, roads and high-speed trains. Other perceived strengths are public safety and the quality of its healthcare system. Finally, the availability of telecommunications networks/services as well as skilled and unskilled labor are also considered advantages by investors.

Compared to 2015, Spain’s scores for seven of 10 key areas have improved, including the average rating for its market size — which has grown as the economy has recovered. In addition to increasing internal demand, exporting from Spain to third markets has become more attractive, too.

The country’s main weaknesses remain its higher business costs, lower levels of spending on R&D for innovation and lack of access to venture capital or other types of funding. In terms of costs, higher electricity prices as well as spending on labor and taxation have discouraged some investors. Bureaucratic burdens and the scant availability of public subsidies were also cited as weaknesses.

Priority Areas for Action

Although human capital ratings have improved since the previous year’s survey, room for improvement remains, with a notable gap between the country’s current rating and the importance placed on it by foreign investors. Three areas for priority action, according to investors, should be: improving workers’ language skills, amplifying their learning capacity, and their acceptance of responsibilities and targets.

Other concerns include the bureaucratic burden on corporate operations and the cost of telephone and internet access.

Spain remains the fastest-growing country among larger members of the European Union, with economic growth up 3.2 percent in 2015, accelerating and extending the gains of three consecutive years of growth.

Methodology, Very Briefly

The study is based on questionnaire responses from nearly 700 foreign companies. Each year since 2007, questions have been classified into four major groups: (1) a general overview of business conditions for Spain; (2) costs, taxation and funding opportunities; (3) infrastructure and resources; and (4) quality of life. Respondents offer ratings (1 to 5) and comments.