By Sanjay Badri-Maharaj

Suriname is the only Dutch-speaking country in the South American continent. With a population of about 566,000 and a land mass of 156,000 sq.km, Suriname is sparsely populated except for its coastal areas. A largely uninhabited hinterland contains pockets of Amerindians (3.8 per cent of the population) and Maroons (21.7 per cent), descendants of escaped slaves, while the more densely populated region is home to a heterogeneous mix of Indonesians (13.7 per cent) called Javanese, Africans (15.7 per cent) called Creoles, and Indians (27.4 per cent) called Hindustanis.1

Location of Suriname. Source: CIA World Factbook.

In contrast to the very violent ethnic strife that plagued its English-speaking neighbour Guyana, Suriname has managed to keep ethnic tensions largely under control despite periodic political upheaval. Unlike at the time of independence in 1975, when there were distinct political parties for each of the different racial groups, political parties now are not strictly divided along ethnic lines anymore. Both ruling and opposition alliances are multi-racial and multi-religious in nature. While no actual data exists on the ethnic composition of either the military or the police (the latter in 1973 was 32.8 per cent Hindustani and 65 per cent Creole), anecdotal evidence from observers of the country suggest that the military and police are dominated by Creoles and Maroons, with 20-25 per cent Hindustani component.2

In 1980, a group of non-commissioned officers (NCOs) overthrew the elected government despite intense resistance from a badly outgunned police force, which was only subdued when the navy shelled them into submission. This led to the establishment of a de facto military dictatorship (though there was a nominal civilian president) in the country for the next seven years, headed by Sergeant-Major (self-promoted to Lt. Colonel) Desi Delano Bouterse. In December 1982, following a counter-coup attempt earlier in March, 16 prominent Surinamese soldiers, lawyers, academics, businessmen and trade-unionists were murdered allegedly at the behest of Bouterse and his henchmen. As one of the victims was also a Dutch national, all assistance programmes were suspended by the Dutch Government. The trial of the perpetrators of this crime has since been a subject of much controversy in Suriname.

During the military dictatorship, Suriname had also flirted with a Cuban style-socialism, which resulted in the country being treated as a pariah by the United States (US) too. Meanwhile, between 1986 and 1991, a bloody civil war broke out in the country due to rebellion by a group of Maroons led by former Bouterse bodyguard Ronnie Brunswijk. The 1986 Moiwana massacre in which 39 Maroons were killed stands testimony to the brutality unleashed by the military dictatorship at the time. The armed forces were an instrument of national repression then. The size of the army had grown to about 3,000 men and their position in the civil war was further bolstered by the induction of armoured vehicles and aircraft. It is noteworthy that though the size of the police force was reduced to about 1200 personnel during this period, their reputation and prestige among the civilian population was much higher than that of the army.3

A slow transition to democracy began in 1987, with full multi-party democracy finally restored in 1991. Support from Brazil and Venezuela enabled the civilian government to neutralise the political power of the military in 1993 with the removal of the last of the officers from the era of military dictatorship. Though Bouterse is now the president of Suriname, being democratically elected in 2010 and again in 2015, he has the dubious distinction of being prosecuted and convicted in absentia for drug smuggling (as was Ronnie Brunswijk) by the Dutch authorities. He was sentenced in July 2000 to 11 years in prison for trafficking 474kg of cocaine. A Europol warrant for his arrest is still out and his appeal for a review has been rejected.4

Furthermore, thanks to the continuing efforts of Chandrikapersad Santokhi, earlier in his capacity as commissioner of police and thereafter minister of justice and police, and later as the leader of the opposition, Bouterse was finally prosecuted and put on trial for his involvement in the December 1982 murders – leading to Bouterse dubbing Santokhi as the ‘sheriff’.5 This led to Bouterse Government extending amnesty in 2012 to all those who were accused of involvement in the 1982 murders including President Bouterse himself. The amnesty is being challenged in Suriname’s courts and the legal arguments and machinations surrounding the trial continue to be debated to this day, with no sign of closure for the families of the victims.

Bouterse’s son Dino Delano Bouterse, who had previously been arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eight years of imprisonment in 2005 for narcotics and weapons trafficking and also for vehicle theft, was arrested and extradited by the US Drug Enforcement Agency from Panama in 2013. He was prosecuted in the US and was sentenced to a 16-year jail term in March 2015. He was not only accused of drug smuggling but also for trying to help Hezbollah establish a base in Suriname, all the more ironic since Dino was holding a senior position in the country’s counter-terrorism unit.6

Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America seem to be aimed at establishing bases there to launch attacks on American targets as well as to benefit from the lucrative cocaine trans-shipment trade en route to Europe and Africa.7 Dino was reportedly paid US$ two million as a down payment and trial documents suggest that he saw Hezbollah as a potential parallel military force in the event his father is forced out of office.8

Amidst all of this, the Surinamese armed forces went through periods of trials and tribulations and mostly neglect. Currently comprising some 2,200 personnel, it is divided into army, navy and air force. However, years of turmoil and neglect have left a potentially effective military (for its size) seriously deficient in capability. While some tentative steps towards recapitalisation of the military are in progress, it is unclear whether these will be brought to fruition.9 In May 2013, while announcing the purchase of 75 armoured and luxury vehicles for the security forces, Melvin Linscheer, Director of the Bureau for National Security, had stated:

“When this government was sworn in, we encountered an outdated, ragtag fleet of vehicles for the departments charged with security services…There was nothing; no boats, no aircraft, not even cars that work properly. And meanwhile, more than 150 known criminals are walking around free. So we purchased these cars and we’ll also be purchasing helicopters soon…There will be complaints against them, but you simply can’t put a price tag on guaranteeing safety. When the responsibility is yours, you have to make decisions”10

However, rhetoric has not been matched with budgetary allocations. Suriname currently spends about 0.6 to 0.7 per cent of its GDP on defence.11 At a time when its commodity dependent economy is experiencing negative growth rate of two per cent per annum, funding will inevitably be in short supply.12 While defence expenditure may have been high during the period of military dictatorship (reliable figures being unavailable), but that has not been the case 2008 onward. Bouterse has since shown no inclination to increase defence spending.

The Dutch assistance has gone to the Suriname police rather than the national army, and the American assistance has been largely in the form of intelligence cooperation with some minor support in the form of small arms and vehicles. In neither case has the assistance been very high. The US security assistance amounted to $422,236 in 2012, 97.3 per cent of which was for general military assistance and remaining three per cent for narcotics control programmes.13 What is of interest is the US effort to train the officer corps of the national army on military’s role in a civilian democracy. It might be suggested that the legacy of the 1980 Bouterse coup still looms large in the consciousness of Suriname’s partners.

The Armed Forces

The Nationaal Leger (NL) or the National Army consists of all the three formations and all use army ranks. The naval unit (or Marine) of the NL, which was reconstituted as the Coast Guard, now reports to the ministry of internal affairs though it remains under military control. It should be noted that most formations are led by Lt. Colonels, with the current commander of the NL, Adolf Jardim, holding the rank of a Colonel. This rank is also held by the Director-General of the Coast Guard.

Army

The Suriname Army comprise of the following units:

• A Light Infantry Battalion (33ste Bataljon der Infanterie);
• A Special Forces Corps;
• A Support Arm (Staf verzorgings Bataljon); and
• A Military Police Corps (also responsible for immigration).

For a small force, Suriname’s army appears well-equipped with a small armoured force of EE-11 Urutu APCs and EE-9 Cascavel Armoured Cars – the latter armed with 90mm guns. However, serviceability of the said vehicles was very low until Brazil stepped in to refurbish six of the Urutus and two Cascavels.14 This process has now been completed but it is unclear if these eight vehicles are the only ones serviceable, as Suriname had displayed at least three road-worthy Cascavels as recently as 2015.15

In addition, Suriname has a small artillery detachment comprising three vintage QF 25pdr artillery pieces, though it is not entirely certain whether the guns are functional.16 These assets are augmented by nine DAF YP-408 APCs, dating back to the 1970s, and a number of 14.5mm and quad-12.7mm anti-aircraft guns. A detachment of M40 106mm recoilless guns that was once in service has not been seen for some years now.

Coast Guard

In contrast to the army, the Suriname Coast Guard – formerly the navy/ marine – has experienced a serious depletion in its capability. Starting with three 32m patrol craft, the Coast Guard has suffered from prolonged neglect. All three patrol craft are now out of service. Their replacements, a force of five Rodman Type 55 and three Rodman Type 101 patrol boats, were far less capable. In fact, they too rapidly fell into disrepair and reduced to rusting hulks by 2011.17

After spurt in piracy, blamed on neighbouring Guyana, Suriname rebuilt its Coast Guard between 2012 and 2013 with the induction of three French OCEA patrol boats. The serviceability of these vessels is not entirely clear, with some observers suggesting that maintenance is a chronic problem largely due to the fact that these vessels themselves are not particularly robust – OCEA is best known for manufacturing pleasure craft. Despite then Vice President Robert Ameerali saying that the country could be proud of its Coast Guard, the response of Colonel Jerry Slijngaard, who heads government’s Coast Guard Committee, was rather pessimistic. He was of the view that these vessels are barely sufficient to patrol Suriname’s territorial waters and combat maritime crime activities like piracy.18 In fact, since 2013, no new vessels have been acquired nor have any older ones been returned to service.

Air Force

The state of the Surinamese Air Force is similar to that of the Coast Guard. Suriname once operated a capable force of five BN-2 Islanders, three PC-7 armed trainers, four helicopters and three Cessna liaison aircraft. The civil war took a heavy toll with natural attrition reducing the fleet next to nothing. To bolster its transport and maritime surveillance capabilities, two CASA 212-400 aircraft were purchased in 1999, one fitted with a capable sensor array. Once again neglect took its toll and by 2012 the Venezuelan experts had deemed these aircraft beyond recovery. They were subsequently sold to the US-based Fayard Enterprises. The Cessna 172 too has been offered for sale, though BN-2 and Cessna T303 may still be operating.19

Suriname’s only operational aircraft seem to be the three Chetak helicopters India delivered in 2015.20 While the project suffered from multiple administrative and financial problems, these aircraft continue to operate as the nation’s only military aircraft. They are supported by a single Eurocopter Bk-177B-2, operated on behalf of the Suriname Police Corps. In a belated recognition of the need for a fixed-wing component, a single de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is reportedly on order.

Conclusion

Suriname is not faced with any conventional military threat except for a minor border dispute with Guyana. In August 2016, Colonel Jardim, Commander of the National Army, had very clearly stated that the country faces no existential external or internal threat. Its security challenges mainly arise from the growing menace of narco-trafficking and piracy, besides the internal law and order challenges common to the Latin America-Caribbean region. These are all linked to the transnational organised crime, which the government and the military of the country have identified as the country’s major threat.21

Suriname, like many other countries of the region, is a party to the Inter-American Convention against Corruption and Migrant Smuggling and the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters. Furthermore, the country has bilateral maritime counter-narcotics enforcement agreements with the US, the Netherlands, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. This cooperation has proved invaluable as within the first nine months of 2015, Surinamese authorities had arrested 139 alleged drug traffickers and seized 626.6 kilograms of cocaine, 33.8 liters of liquid cocaine, 841.7 kg of marijuana, four grams of heroin, 4.3 grams of hashish and 2,878 MDMA tablets.22

It appears that the Surinamese Police has been the biggest recipient of training and assistance from the US and the Netherlands. The Caribbean Basin Security Initiative has yielded significant benefits to the police in terms of training, equipment and technical assistance.23 In comparison, the army has been left to its own devices and any assessment of the armed forces show how lack of maintenance and outright neglect has repeatedly compromised its capabilities.

While the national army has to an extent managed to restore a veneer of its former capability, it remains critically deficient in terms of air transport and maritime surveillance aircraft. Its small force of OCEA patrol craft is insufficient to provide adequate coastal surveillance. With such compromised capability, it is an open question whether Suriname’s armed forces will prove equal to the task of combating transnational organised crime.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/issuebrief/suriname-armed-forces_sbmaharaj_020217

• 1. Suriname Census Statistics 2012, Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek in Suriname (General Bureau of Statistics in Suriname).
• 2. In 1994, the author undertook some research into this aspect of Suriname’s armed forces. No data was forthcoming but the author spoke with academics who studied Suriname and then proceeded to examine photographic evidence of armed forces and police parades and exercises.
• 3. During the dictatorship period, the Surinamese police personnel, even with guns drawn, were known to reassure civilians – “No frede! Wij zijn van het Volk” – “Don’t be afraid. We are of the people”
• 4. “Dutch Supreme Court rejects bid for review of Desi Bouterse drug sentence”, Stabroek News, January 14, 2015.
• 5. Stieven Ramdharie, “Moet Bouterse bang zijn voor Chan de Sheriff?”, de Volkskrant, May 21, 2015.
• 6. “Suriname President’s Son Pleads Guilty to Abetting Hezbollah”, Haaretz, August 30, 2014 and Jonathan Stempel, “Suriname President’s Son Gets 16 Years in U.S. Prison for Aiding Hezbollah”, Haaretz, March 10, 2015.
• 7. Guy Taylor “Hezbollah moving ‘tons of cocaine’ in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations”, The Washington Times, June 08, 2016.
• 8. Haaretz, n. 6.
• 9. Marvin Hockstam, “Suriname Defense Ministry Boosts Spending, Cooperation with Pentagon”, Dialogo, May 20, 2013.
• 10. lbid.
• 11. “Suriname Military Expenditures – Percent of GDP”, IndexMundi, As of May 16, 2008.
• 12. “Suriname facing economic crisis – report”, Stabroek News, September 24, 2016.
• 13. “U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants to Suriname”, InsideGov (accessed January 22, 2017)
• 14. “Cerimônia de entrega de viaturas blindadas EE-11 URUTU no Suriname”, Exército Brasileiro, December 08, 2015 (accessed January 22, 2017)
• 15. Author’s observation during a military parade held on November 25, 2015.
• 16. Ibid. Also during the second parade in 2016.
• 17. Author’s observation.
• 18. Ray Chickrie, “Suriname gets modern coast guard to tackle Guyanese pirates”, Caribbean News Now, September 07, 2013 (accessed January 22, 2017).
• 19. The entire registry of all aircraft in Suriname – including military – is available at http://landewers.net/PZ.TXT (accessed January 22, 2017)
• 20. “India Gives 3 Chetak Helicopters to Suriname”, Defence-Aerospace.com, March 16, 2015 (accessed January 22, 2017).
• 21. Marcos Ommati, “Suriname Sees Transnational Criminal Networks as Biggest Security Challenge”, Dialogo, August 29, 2016 and Suriname, 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, U.S. Department of State (accessed January 22, 2017).
• 22. Ibid.
• 23. Dialogo, n. 21.

The Calabash Nebula, pictured above — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the sun. The image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space.

The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed — the gas shown in yellow is moving close to one million kilometers per hour (621,371 miles per hour).

Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms. Over the next thousand years the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully-fledged planetary nebula.

The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulphur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg — but luckily, it resides over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis.

As we saw during the 2016 US election, protecting traditional computer systems, which use zeros and ones, from hackers is not a perfect science. Now consider the complex world of quantum computing, where bits of information can simultaneously hold multiple states beyond zero and one, and the potential threats become even trickier to tackle. Even so, researchers at the University of Ottawa have uncovered clues that could help administrators protect quantum computing networks from external attacks.

“Our team has built the first high-dimensional quantum cloning machine capable of performing quantum hacking to intercept a secure quantum message,” said University of Ottawa Department of Physics professor Ebrahim Karimi, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Structured Light. “Once we were able to analyze the results, we discovered some very important clues to help protect quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats.”

Quantum systems were believed to provide perfectly secure data transmission because until now, attempts to copy the transmitted information resulted in an altered or deteriorated version of the original information, thereby defeating the purpose of the initial hack. Traditional computing allows a hacker to simply copy and paste information and replicate it exactly, but this doesn’t hold true in the quantum computing world, where attempts to copy quantum information-or qudits-result in what Karimi refers to as “bad” copies. Until now.

For the first time, Professor Karimi’s team was able to clone the photons that transmit information, namely the single carriers of light known as qubits, as well as quantum theory allows, meaning that the clones were almost exact replicas of the original information. However, in addition to undermining what was previously thought to be a perfect way of securely transmitting information, the researchers’ analyses revealed promising clues into how to protect against such hacking.

“What we found was that when larger amounts of quantum information are encoded on a single photon, the copies will get worse and hacking even simpler to detect,” said Frédéric Bouchard, a University of Ottawa doctoral student and lead author of an open access publication that appeared this month in the renowned journal Science Advances.

“We were also able to show that cloning attacks introduce specific, observable noises in a secure quantum communication channel. Ensuring photons contain the largest amount of information possible and monitoring these noises in a secure channel should help strengthen quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats.”

Karimi and his team hope that their quantum hacking efforts could be used to study quantum communication systems, or more generally to study how quantum information travels across quantum computer networks.

Consuming grapes twice a day for six months protected against significant metabolic decline in Alzheimer-related areas of the brain in a study of people with early memory decline. Low metabolic activity in these areas of the brain is a hallmark of early stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Study results showed a grape-enriched diet protected against the decline of metabolic activity. Additionally, those consuming a grape-enriched diet also exhibited increased metabolism in other areas of the brain that correlated with individual improvements in attention and working memory performance, compared to those on the non-grape diet. Results of the randomized controlled research study, conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles, were recently published in Experimental Gerontology[1].

“The study examines the impact of grapes as a whole fruit versus isolated compounds and the results suggest that regular intake of grapes may provide a protective effect against early decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Daniel H. Silverman, lead investigator of the study. “This pilot study contributes to the growing evidence that supports a beneficial role for grapes in neurologic and cardiovascular health, however more clinical studies with larger groups of subjects are needed to confirm the effects observed here.”

In the study, subjects with early memory decline were randomly selected to receive either whole grape powder – equivalent to just 2 ¼ cups of grapes per day – or a polyphenol-free placebo powder matched for flavor and appearance. Cognitive performance was measured at baseline and 6 months later. Changes in brain metabolism, assessed by brain PET scans, were also measured at baseline and 6 months later. PET scans provide valuable predictive and diagnostic value to clinicians evaluating patients with dementia symptoms.

The results showed that consuming grapes preserved healthy metabolic activity in the regions of the brain that are affected by the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, where metabolic decline takes hold. Subjects who didn’t consume grapes exhibited significant metabolic decline in these critical regions. Additionally, those consuming the grape-enriched diet showed beneficial changes in regional brain metabolism that correlated to improvements in cognition and working memory performance.

Grape polyphenols help promote antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Research suggests that grapes may help support brain health by working in multiple ways – from reducing oxidative stress in the brain to promoting healthy blood flow in the brain to helping maintain levels of a key brain chemical that promotes memory to exerting anti-inflammatory effects[2].

Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disease that results in a slow decline of memory and cognitive skills. Currently 5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease and the numbers continue to grow. The cause of Alzheimer’s disease is not yet fully understood, but believed to be a combination of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors.

[1] Lee, J., Torosyan, N., and Silverman, D.H. (2017). Examining the impact of grape consumption on brain metabolism and cognitive function in patients with mild decline in cognition: A double-blinded placebo controlled pilot study. Experimental Gerontology, 87 (Pt A):121-128. Doi:10.1016/j.exger.2016.10.004.

[2] Maher, P. (2016). Grapes and the brain. In J.M. Pezzuto (Ed.), Grapes and health (pp. 139-161). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-28995-3.

By Matt Hadro

President Donald Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court wrote a book on “the future of assisted suicide” in 2006 – and he came to some strong pro-life conclusions.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, in his 2006 book “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” argues that “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Gorsuch was tapped by President Trump on Tuesday night to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year. The almost year-long vacancy on the Court was the longest in decades.

Religious liberty advocates hailed his selection, citing his previous opinions upholding the freedom of businesses and non-profits to operate according to their sincerely-held religious beliefs.

Pro-life leaders also applauded his selection, admitting that he had not specifically ruled on the Roe v. Wade decision but pointing to his defense of human life in his 2006 book on assisted suicide.

In that book, Gorsuch makes strong statements in defense of protecting all human life, from disabled persons to depressed, terminally-ill patients. Rather than relying on religious reasoning, he takes a secular approach in his arguments.

He states that his book has two purposes: to examine the views of assisted suicide advocates – from utilitarian arguments to defenses of autonomy – and to provide his own views on why current prohibitions on assisted suicide and euthanasia should stand.

In Chapter 9 of the book, he lays out a defense of prohibitions of assisted suicide. His argument is “based on secular moral theory,” he says, and “is consistent with the common law and long-standing medical ethics.”

Life is a “basic good,” he argues, “inherently worthwhile” and which can be enjoyed by many and has been seen as a good throughout “human history.”

Aristotle defined goods this way, and “argued from life’s experiences and observations of human nature” rather than from “hypothetical construct.”

We see life as a good simply from our observation of fellow human beings, Gorsuch explains, noting that “people every day and in countless ways do something to protect human life.”

Laws prohibiting murder, traffic laws, and government health departments are all based in protections of human life, he argues.

“We have all witnessed, as well, family, friends, or medical workers who have chosen to provide years of loving care to persons who may suffer from Alzheimer’s or other debilitating illnesses precisely because they are human persons, not because doing so instrumentally advances some other hidden objective,” he continues.

“This is not to say that all persons would always make a similar choice, but the fact that some people have made such a choice is some evidence that life itself is a basic good.”

The founding documents of the United States, the Constitution, and foreign political documents express that life is a basic good and argue from pragmatic experience and history, he says:

“The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection of the laws to all persons; this guarantee is replicated in Article 14 of the European Convention and in the constitutions and declarations of rights of many other countries. This profound social and political commitment to human equality is grounded on, and an expression of, the belief that all persons innately have dignity and are worthy of respect without regard to their perceived value based on some instrumental scale of usefulness or merit. We treat people as worthy of equal respect because of their status as human beings and without regard to their looks, gender, race, creed, or any other incidental trait – because, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, we hold it as ‘self-evident’ that ‘all men [and women] are created equal’ and enjoy ‘certain unalienable Rights,’ and ‘that among these are Life.’”

To say that some persons don’t have a right to life is a clear violation of “equal protection,” and undermines it at its core, he adds.

Furthermore, Gorsuch says, to create distinctions on a person’s right to life based on their “currently exercisable abilities for self-creation and self-expression” leads to “arbitrary” and “subjective” judgments of whose life should be protected – like determining the rights of “those with low IQs,” “the autistic,” and “infants with Down syndrome.”

The mandates of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons (COID) should be extended indefinitely to ensure that justice, accountability, and reparations are achieved for the thousands of victims of Nepal’s brutal civil war, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said Friday.

The United Nations and donors, who played a major role in post-conflict peacemaking and rights protections, should publicly call on the government of Nepal to amend the law which created the commissions in line with international norms and extend their mandates.

“In spite of delays caused by political parties, the two commissions have succeeded in accumulating a body of evidence of wartime atrocities that can lead to justice, accountability, and reparations for survivors,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The victims and their families who showed great courage to appear before the commissions did so expecting the commissions to complete their work. It is time for Nepal’s political parties to prove their commitment to justice and truth.”

The two commissions, whose mandates are set to expire on February 10, 2017, were set up as a result of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2006 between the government of Nepal and the rebel Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) to address accountability for human rights violations that took place during Nepal’s 10-year civil war.

Nepal’s 1996-2006 civil war caused an estimated 13,000 deaths and thousands of disappearances. Credible allegations to both sides of the conflict reveal a pattern of torture, killings, enforced disappearances, and sexual violence. In spite of numerous calls for answers and accountability, the government has stalled on delivering justice to victims.

The commissions finally began receiving submissions in early 2016. By September 2016, together they had received nearly 60,000 complaints. Due to limitations on their mandate and persistent political and resource constraints, the commissions have been unable to complete their work. The COID recently indicated that it will need a further three years to achieve its objectives.

Although the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction has said that the mandates of the commissions mechanisms will be extended, there has been little concrete action to date. It is also unclear whether the Investigation of Disappeared Persons, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act, 2014 (TRC Act), which formally established the commissions, will be amended before the mandates are renewed in line with two separate Supreme Court rulings in 2014 and 2015, which found that the act did not conform to Nepal’s international legal obligations since it allowed for amnesties for crimes prohibited under international law.

In May 2016, the four main political parties agreed to a nine-point deal containing provisions shielding perpetrators of wartime abuses. Provision 7 directs the authorities to withdraw all wartime cases before the courts and to provide amnesty to alleged perpetrators.

Several TRC commissioners have expressed concerns that extending their mandate without the necessary legal amendments would render any future work meaningless and would not lead to justice for victims. To date, the government has not implemented the court’s directives despite repeated calls from the commissions, victims’ groups, and the international community to amend the act in line with the Supreme Court directives, including the removal of any amnesty provisions. In addition, calls to adopt legislation to criminalize torture and disappearances and to lift any time limitations on prosecutions for rape have not been heeded.

“The government of Nepal cannot continue to ignore the rights of victims to justice, truth, and reparation,” said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia director at Amnesty International. “Failure to amend the act as ordered by the Supreme Court and grant the commissions a reasonable extension of their mandates will squander the hope that wartime victims have placed in this process.”

Nepal’s transitional justice efforts have been plagued by a lack of political will on all sides of the political spectrum, including the army and former armed members of the CPN-M. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International renewed their calls on the international community, including donors and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, to publicly call on the government to amend the TRC Act and provide adequate support and resources to the commissions so they can make meaningful progress to secure justice for victims and their families.

“The UN was deeply involved in Nepal’s peace process and transitional justice issues for many years, before withdrawing due to governmental pressures against their presence and voice,” Adams said. “The international community needs to stand up for the rights of wartime victims now – otherwise more than a decade of international efforts for Nepal to fulfill its obligations to deliver truth, reparation, and justice to victims will have been wasted.”

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

South China Sea conflict escalation in2017 hovers as a distinct possibility with the maximalist positons taken by China and the new US Trump Administration in opposing China’s claims.

China’s belligerent postures on virtually claiming the South China Sea expanse as it’s ‘Inland Sea’ are well known and so also China’s propensity to push the envelope to the extreme exploiting the strategic restraint exercised by the previous US Obama Administration.

But post-January 2017 enough indications have been given by President Trump and his cabinet colleagues that the United States intends to adopt hard-line policies against China right across the entire US spectrum of security and trade policies.

Nothing is more galling for the United States than that China in the last decade without any pre-emptive or punitive actions by the United States has defiantly extended ‘de facto’ sovereignty over the entire South China Sea resulting in China’s less powerful claimants looking helplessly on.

The perceptions emerging from the above are two-fold. Firstly, the perceptions in Asian capitals that gathered momentum were that the United States was a timid guarantor of Asia Pacific security. Secondly, that the United States as the unipolar Superpower shirks from meeting China’s aggression in the South China Sea head-on, and moreso when the Hague Tribunal has invalidated China’s claims to the South China Sea expanse.

The Trump Administration in 2017 seems intent on carrying out US course corrections to restore credibility in the region of the United States weight and intentions to exercise its role as a Superpower and regain its unquestioned Asia Pacific predominance more specifically.

Significantly and most noticeably in this direction were the statements made by incoming US Secretary of State Tillerson during his confirmation hearings in the Senate. The new US Secretary of State minced no words in asserting that the Chinese activities in the South China Sea were worrisome for the United States. He put China on notice when he asserted that “Building islands and then putting military assets on these islands is akin to Russia’s taking over of Crimea. It amounts to taking territory of other claimants.” Further indicating American intentions, the US Secretary of State declared that “We are going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island building stops, and second, your access to the islands is now not going to be allowed.”

China expectedly in response declared that China had enough determination and strength to make sure that rabble-rousing will not succeed unless the United States plans to wage a large scale war in the South China Sea.

In United States new policy establishment a feeling has gone around that previous US President Obama’s lack of firm responses to China’s aggression in the South China Sea in the last decade had prompted China to push the envelope a bit too far. The major deduction being that China’s further aggression against its less powerful claimants in the South China Sea needs to be checkmated.

Analysing United States intentions now as asserted by the US Secretary of State, these fall into two sequential steps. First, that China must cease construction of any further artificial islands in the South China Sea and second, that China would not be allowed access to the islands already constructed by China and militarily fortified.

The underlying premise being that the South China Sea maritime expanse is ‘international waters’ and construction of artificial islands in ‘international waters’ considered as ‘global commons is therefore illegal. This legal argument gets further reinforced by the fact that The Hague International Tribunal has already given a ruling dismissing China’s claims on the South China Sea as illegal.

The second assertion made by the US Secretary of State is that China’s access to the illegally constructed islands in international waters is not going to be allowed.

Analytically, China will be in no mood to desist from its ongoing military aggression in the South China Sea, its construction of new artificial islands and even the possibility of declaring a China ADIZ over the South China Sea.

In view of the above, the United States has only two options open to it to bring Chinese anarchy in the South China Sea to an end. In light of China’s belligerence on its disputed sovereignty over the South China Sea, the United States needs to be prepared for conflict escalation in this vital maritime expanse of international waters, and which could blow up to full-scale hostilities between China and the United States..

The choices for the United States are going to be tough but then if the United States wish to regain its earlier Superpower predominance then the United States has to follow the old adage that ‘When things become tough, the tough become tougher’.

China buoyed by its massive military machine that it built up in the last decade when United States was distracted by its Afghanistan and Iraq interventions, is today in no mood to compromise or submit to international conventions, tribunal readings or anything else.

Hence, China will not resile from its existing aggression in the South China Sea, despite any strong assertions that the United States keeps making.

Unlike China, any strong initiatives that the United States may resort to checkmate China on the South China Sea disputes, would find wide regional and global support. China on this issue is bereft of any support in the region or otherwise.

The United States has a precedent to follow to checkmate China’s strategic waywardness in the South China Sea by what it did in the Korean War in fighting the Chinese aggression in the Korean Peninsula under the United Nations flag

As recommended in one of my earlier papers on the subject, presumably the time has come for initiating ‘Freedom of Navigation’ naval patrols under the United Nations flag as a multi-national effort as opposed to American sporadic efforts lately. There is also the case for planning a permanent UN Naval Force presence in the South China Sea to challenge China’s illegally presumed sovereignty.

If China intends to defy United Nations mandates, then so be it. Chinese defiance would pave the way for stiffer multinational responses. If the United States and the West could impose ‘Air Exclusion Zones’ in Southern Iraq in the past, why cannot the United States in the lead, as a further initiative impose a ‘Naval Exclusion Zone’ in the South China Sea to limit China’s further aggression and additional artificial island building in these international waters.

In conclusion, it needs to be highlighted that the Asia Pacific region subjected to Chinese aggression and waywardness in the South China Sea for a decade waits expectantly for President Trump to ‘walk the talk’ and restore US credibility. Towards this direction the new US Administration would have to ignore the US- China Lobby in Washington spearheaded by the US-China Business Council and the powerful likes of Henry Kissinger.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

Dear Senator Sanders:

I hear that you will be debating Senator Ted Cruz next Tuesday on CNN in prime time where you will seek to defend Obamacare against Republican assault.

You have said in the past that “I don’t believe in Obamacare” and that Obamacare is “a good Republican program.” So, I’m not sure why you continue to defend it.

As you know, under Obamacare, tens of millions remain uninsured or underinsured.

Deductibles are expanding and networks are narrowing – not to mention numbing complexities, higher co-pays and higher premiums.

In 2013, you introduced a single payer bill in the Senate (S. 1782) – with no co-sponsors.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, you powerfully made the case all over the country before massive audiences for a more efficient single payer Medicare for All – without deductibles, co-pays, premiums – plus free choice of doctor and hospital.

But you have reportedly decided not to introduce or push for single payer in the Congress this year.

Your health policy adviser has privately told some single payer activists you will not introduce a single payer bill into the Senate this year because the Democratic leadership believes that such a bill will get in the way of electing a Democratic Senate in 2018.

Even without the Democratic Party or the labor unions making a major public educational push, a December 2015 national Kaiser public opinion poll found that 58 percent of adults in the US supported single payer –  including 81 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Independents, and 30 percent of Republicans.

I urge you to drop your defensive stance and introduce the equivalent of HR 676 – the gold standard single payer bill in the House of Representatives (with 56 co-sponsors so far) – into the Senate this week and come out swinging for the bill next week.

How many of your millions of supporters would not want you to do this?

Onward to Single Payer Medicare for All.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

By Joyce Karam

Less than 48 hours after US President Donald Trump put Iran “on notice” for conducting a ballistic missile test, his administration responded Friday by slapping 25 Iranian entities and individuals — some based in China, Lebanon and the Gulf — with sanctions.

The move, while not a surprise, is a departure from the more diplomatic and measured response that Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama pursued for eight years with Tehran.
The sanctions include networks of individuals and companies that allegedly provide support, technology and funding for Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The networks are based in different locations in and outside Iran, spanning as far as China, Lebanon and the UAE. Some allegedly have direct affiliation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Quds Force.

John Smith, the Treasury Department’s acting sanctions official, said in a statement that “Iran’s continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the US.”

In a conference call with reporters, three senior administration officials stressed that more sanctions could follow and that these are only “initial steps.”

One of the officials laid out the choices for Tehran as such: “We will work positively with Iran if it keeps (its international) commitments … or aggressively to counter its terrorism activities.”

The officials also held Iran directly “responsible” for actions that its proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen, could take. One senior official said that Iran enjoys “heavy influence” on the Houthis and has granted them access to weapons and training. The same official said the US is “very concerned” about the Houthis’ targeting of Saudi and Emirati vessels and the impact of that on the “freedom of navigation and global commerce” in the Bab Al-Mandab Strait.

The Senate and House Democratic leadership did not have an immediate reaction to the sanctions, while ranking Congress Republicans hailed them.

“This announcement makes clear that it is a new day in US-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Iran’s destabilizing behavior,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker in a statement. “A coordinated, multi-faceted effort to push back against a range of illicit Iranian behavior is long overdue,” he added.

The Trump administration did not confirm if it has any ongoing diplomatic channel with Iran. The president himself tweeted: “Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!”

Among those hit by the new sanctions were companies, individuals, and brokers the US Treasury said support a trade network run by Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh.

Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the US has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Three Lebanese companies involved in waste collection, pharmaceuticals, and construction were also listed under the sanctions for being owned or controlled by Mohammed Abd-Al-Amir Farhat, allegedly an employee of Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi.

Ebrahimi — a Beirut-based official with the IRGC’s Quds Force, which runs the military organization’s operations abroad — was put under sanctions for acting on behalf of the Al-Quds Force, Treasury said.

Treasury said he has facilitated millions of dollars in cash transfers to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Two of his employees and a company he manages were also sanctioned. Treasury said that Ebrahimi and his employees used a Lebanon-based network to “transfer funds, launder money, and conduct business.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday ahead of the announcement: “Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense”. Zarif led the nuclear negotiations in 2015.

The events at Berkeley Wednesday night have been a boon to Milos Yiannopoulos, of Breitbart News, and to Steve Bannon, formerly head of Breitbart News and now Trump’s consigliere.

As you may know, on Wednesday night, February 1, Berkeley gave Yiannopoulos a major forum to spout his racist and misogynistic vitriol. But police had to cancel the talk because about 150 masked agitators threw Molotov cocktails, smashed windows where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak, and threw rocks and fireworks at the police – delivering made-for-TV images of a riot.

According to a promotional Breitbart story that ran before the event, Yiannopoulos was going to “call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies.”

Which is exactly what Trump did via tweet early the next morning:: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

Thursday night, Yiannopoulos had a friendly interview on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” – a show that, according to the Washington Post, has ridden anger at left-wing activism into best-in-class prime time ratings.

Yiannopoulos wasn’t asked about the content of the speech that was shut down. The conversation focused instead on how Berkeley proved the point that the Left was ceding its right to federal grants by cracking down on free speech.

Which raises the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.

Thursday night on CNN, I said “I wouldn’t bet against” that possibility. Almost immediately an indignant article appeared in Breitbart News, misleadingly headlined “Robert Reich Lies, Claims Breitbart News Organized Berkeley Riots.”

Hmmm. Connect these dots:

(1) Yinnopoulos writes for Breitbart News, which Steve Bannon – Trump’s strategy director – ran before joining Trump.

(2) Before Yiannopoulos speaks at Berkeley, Breitbart publishes an article saying that Yiannopoulos will call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies.

(3) Berkeley opens its doors to Yiannopoulos, but campus police have to cancel the event because of masked agitators.

(4) Hours later, Trump issues a misleading tweet, accusing the university of not allowing free speech and promoting violence against innocent people with different views, and threatening to withhold federal funds.

(5) The next night, Yiannopoulos on Fox News says the incident proves that universities like Berkeley don’t deserve federal grants by cracking down on free speech.

(6) That same night, on CNN, I raise the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Breitbart could have been collaborating with the agitators – saying “I wouldn’t bet against it.” This generates a belligerent column in Breitbart with a misleading headline calling me a liar for claiming that Breitbart News organized the riots.

I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here.

I wouldn’t bet against it.

God is – finally – getting the feature documentary treatment.

Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars, described as an unflinching and deeply personal journey into the life of one of music’s all-time legends, is in the works, with Lili Fini Zanuck, director of 1991’s Rush and the Oscar-winning producer of Driving Miss Daisy, directing, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

John Battsek (Searching for Sugar Man, One Day in September, The Imposter) produces for Passion Pictures, while BAFTA-winning editor Chris King (Amy, Senna) is in the cutting room.

Altitude Film Sales has boarded the project for international sales and will be showing the first footage to buyers in Berlin. Altitude’s distribution arm is also taking U.K. rights to the film.

The only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an 18-time Grammy Award winner, Clapton is widely regarded as one of the greatest performers of all time, underlined when “Clapton is God” was graffitied across London. But behind the scenes lay restlessness and tragedy, with his quitting of successful bands to pursue his craft, a struggle with drugs and alcohol and the tragic death of his son in an accident.

“Clapton’s music is the foundation of our film – his commitment to the Blues, its traditions and originators is absolute from his earliest day,” says Zanuck. “He was also forever restless in his search of a suitable vehicle to shape and grow his artistic voice, often bewildering fans and the media with sudden changes in musical direction, bands, songs, guitar style, tone, and physical appearance through various incarnations from sidemen to leader to musical journeyman.”

Added Battsek: “We have unique access to Clapton’s extensive personal archive of classic performance clips, on and off stage footage, iconic photos, concert posters, handwritten letters, drawings, and personal diary entries – elements with the power to transport audiences to each era, from obsessive student, to peer, to transcendent figure in musical history and one of the greatest guitarists of all time.”

(EurActiv) — Spain is one of the main beneficiaries of the Juncker Plan, according to European Investment Bank Vice-President Román Escolano, after a year in which the EU bank focused on financing SMEs.

Despite not knowing the 2016 balance of payments, Escolano revealed that Spain is among the main recipients of funding in absolute terms related to GDP, at an informative breakfast organised this week by the Spanish Maritime Cluster.

Escolano added that the Baltic countries, as well as member states in the east and south, have also done well in terms of mobilising resources.

The EIB chief also highlighted how his institution signed off on projects worth some €83 billion last year, which especially targeted small and medium-sized enterprises.

He added that this was somewhat of a “novelty” for the bank, but that it was an exercise aimed in “alleviating” problems faced by SMEs in securing financing, particularly those on the EU’s periphery.

It was also involved in environmental projects as a part of Europe’s climate change and infrastructure policies, which again was new ground for the bank.

The EIB has also financed a number of projects outside of the EU, but which are intended to contribute to the bloc’s policies, and they make up about 10% of the operations being financed each year by the bank, to the tune of some €8bn.

In terms of the Investment Plan for Europe, otherwise known as the Juncker Plan, projects worth some €30bn have been financed, reaching the halfway mark of the €60bn that has been earmarked for the whole program.

Escolano insisted that progress has been “satisfactory so far”, noting that investment has been targeted principally at SMEs, research and development, and transport.

The vice-president also added that “the EIB is the main multilateral bank in the world” and that it is something to be valued at a time when the European Union as a whole is being questioned.

On Brexit, Escolano would only say that the United Kingdom currently holds a 16% stake in the bank and that it has €50bn in outstanding loans.

Unlike countries like Germany and France, the UK does not have a state bank that funds development projects at home.

Electricity prices can vary dramatically within a single day. However, most analyses of energy efficiency programmes ignore this variation, focusing on total energy savings without regard to when those savings occur. This column uses hourly smart-meter data to demonstrates a surprisingly large variation in economic value across energy efficiency investments. Air conditioner investments, for example, deliver savings when the value of electricity is high, increasing their value by about 50%.

By Judson Boomhower and Lucas Davis*

Unlike most other goods, electricity cannot be cost-effectively stored even for short periods. Supply must always meet demand, or you have blackouts. In addition, electricity demand is highly variable and inelastic (Ito 2014). As a result, electricity markets clear mostly on the supply side, with production ramping up and down to meet demand (Borenstein 2000, Griffin and Puller 2005). Consequently, electricity prices vary dramatically, often by a factor of ten or more in a single day.

These features of electricity markets are well known, yet most analyses of energy efficiency policies ignore this variation. For example, when the US Department of Energy considers new energy efficiency standards, it focuses on total energy savings, without regard to when they occur. With a few notable exceptions, both policymakers and academics have given little attention to how the value of energy efficiency depends on when savings occur.

In new paper, we demonstrate the importance of accounting for timing (Boomhower and Davis 2017). Our study uses hourly smart meter data from more than 5,000 participants generated by a rebate programme for energy-efficient air conditioners in southern California. We measure the change in electricity consumption after installation, and show that savings tend to occur during July and August, and between 3pm and 9pm.

When does this investment save electricity?

Figure 1 shows large differences in electricity savings across seasons and hours. During July and August there are large energy savings, particularly between 3pm and 9pm. During non-summer months, savings are much smaller — less than 0.05 kilowatt hours saved on average per hour.

Figure 1 Electricity savings by hour of day

Notes: Figure plots estimated coefficients and 95th percentile confidence intervals from 48 least-squares regressions. For each regression, the dependent variable is average electricity consumption during the hour of the day, indicated on the horizontal axis. All regressions are estimated with household-by-week observations and control for week of sample, by climate zone, and household by month-of-year fixed effects. The sample for all regressions includes all households who installed a new air conditioner between 2012 and 2015, and all summer- or non-summer months, as indicated. Standard errors are clustered by nine-digit zip code.

We compare our estimated time profile with ex ante engineering estimates. The two sets of estimates are similar, with several interesting differences. Most importantly, the econometric estimates indicate peak savings between 6pm and 7pm, compared to between 4pm and 5pm in the engineering estimates. This seems like a small difference, but it has important implications for electricity markets given growing concern about meeting electricity demand during the early evening, when the sun sets and solar generation plunges.

When is crunch time in electricity markets?

Figure 2 shows the value of electricity by hour of day in California for February and for August. It shows wholesale electricity prices, and the payments that generators receive to make sure they are available when demand is high (Bushnell 2005, Cramton and Stoft 2005, Joskow and Tirole 2007, Allcott 2013). The data series in each panel show different methods for allocating resource adequacy contract prices to high load hours. For example, ‘Top hour’ assigns the entire capacity value to the highest load hour in each month.

Figure 2 Wholesale electricity prices and capacity values

Notes: Figure shows the average hourly value of electricity in February and August in California, under different assumptions of capacity values. The vertical axis shows dollars per megawatt-hour.

Whichever approach we choose, summer afternoons are crunch time in California electricity markets. Depending on approach, electricity during summer afternoons is worth 5, 10, or even 20 times as much as during off-peak hours. This is not unique to California. We bring in data from Texas’ ERCOT market and five other regional markets to show that, while the exact timing of peak differs, all US markets were characterised by wild swings across hours and seasons (Callaway et al. 2015).

Energy savings and the value of electricity

There was a strong positive correlation between energy savings and the value of electricity. Air conditioning investments yielded their largest electricity savings during summer afternoons which were peak periods for electricity markets. Figure 3 shows the correlation. Each marker corresponds to an hour-of-day by month-of-year pair (for example, 1pm to 2pm during November).

Figure 3 Correlation between savings and prices, by season

Notes: Scatterplot shows the correlation between electricity savings and California wholesale electricity prices. Each observation is an hour-of-day by month-of-year pair (for example, 1pm to 2pm during November). Electricity savings are estimated using a regression which controls for household by hour-of-day by month-of-year and week-of-sample by climate zone fixed effects. The figure also includes least-squares fitted lines for April-September and October-March observations, with the correlation indicated in text above.

During the summer, there is a strong positive correlation (r = 0.69) between savings and energy prices. The summer months include many more high-price realisations than the winter months, and air conditioning tends to deliver significant savings during these periods. There are essentially zero electricity savings in all hours during the winter, so there is little correlation between savings and prices during winter months.

Overall, we estimate that accounting for timing increased the value of air conditioner investments by 50% relative to a naive calculation that ignores timing. Including capacity payments is important in this calculation. Most of the value of electricity in ultra-peak hours is captured by forward capacity payments to generators to guarantee their availability.

Our analysis suggests that air conditioner investments will be even more valuable as the way electricity is generated shifts towards renewables. Increased solar generation makes electricity less scarce during the middle of the day, but more valuable after the sun sets (CAISO 2013). The price peak is likely to move into the late afternoon and early evening, when energy savings from residential air conditioners are largest. We conduct an informal sensitivity analysis using price and load forecast data from Denholm et al. (2015) and fing that by 2024 air conditioning investments in California could be 75% more valuable than an investment with a flat savings profile.

Energy efficiency investments

Finally we compare air conditioning to a much larger set of energy-efficiency investments, both residential and non-residential. There is a wide range of value. Residential air conditioning has the highest timing premium in most markets. Commercial and industrial heat pumps, chillers, and air conditioners have a 20-30% timing premium, reflecting the relatively high value of electricity during the day.

On the other hand, refrigerators and freezer investments have timing premiums near zero, because savings from these investments are only weakly correlated with electricity prices. Lighting also does poorly, with timing premiums of 8% (residential) and 10% (commercial and industrial). LEDs save electricity mostly during the winter and at night, when electricity tends to be less valuable.

Timing matters

Hotel rooms, airline seats, restaurant meals, and many other goods are more valuable during particular times of the year and hours of the day. The same applies to electricity. If anything, it is even more variable. Our research shows that accounting for timing significantly impacts the value of energy-efficiency investments. In particular, air conditioner investments are more valuable than other types of investments, because they deliver savings during periods when electricity is most valuable.

We hope to move the energy efficiency discussion away from total savings and toward total value. This would require more rigorous ex post analysis of energy savings based on market data. It would also require integrating savings estimates with market measures to rebalance the energy efficiency portfolio toward investments that save energy in more valuable hours.

This work also highlights the power of smart-meter data. The econometric analysis for residential air conditioning would have been impossible just a few years ago, but today more than 40% of US residential electricity customers have smart meters, up from less than 2% in 2007. This flood of new data can help to create smarter, more evidence-based energy policies.

*About the authors:
Judson Boomhower, Postdoctoral scholar, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Lucas Davis, Associate Professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley

References:
Alcott, H (2013), “Real-Time Pricing and Electricity Market Design”, Working Paper, NYU.

Boomhower, J and L Davis (2017), “Do Energy Efficiency Investments Deliver at the Right Time?” NBER Working Paper No. 23097.

Borenstein, S (2000), “Understanding Competitive Pricing and Market Power in Wholesale Electricity Markets”, Electricity Journal, July, pp. 49‐57.

Bushnell, J (2005), “Electricity Resource Adequacy: Matching Policies and Goals”, Electricity Journal 18(8): 11-21.

Callaway, D, M Fowlie and G McCormick (2015), “Location, Location, Location: The Variable Value of Renewable Energy and Demand-Side Efficiency Resources”, Energy Institute at Haas Working paper.

California Independent System Operator (CAISO) (2013), “Demand Response and Energy Efficiency: Maximizing Preferred Resources”.

Cramton, P and S Stoft (2005), “A Capacity Market that Makes Sense”, Electricity Journal 18(7): 43-54.

Denholm, P, M O’Connell, G Brinkman, and J Jorgenso (2015), “Overgeneration from Solar Energy in California: A Field Guide to the Duck Chart”, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Tech. Rep. NREL/TP-6A20-65023, November.

Ito, K (2014), “Do Consumers Respond to Marginal or Average Price? Evidence from Nonlinear Electricity Pricing,” American Economic Review 104(2): 537-63.

(2005), “A Primer on Electricity and the Economics of Deregulation,” in J Griffin and S Puller (eds), Electricity Deregulation: Choices and Challenges, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1‐11.

Joskow, P and J Tirole (2007), “Reliability and Competitive Electricity Markets”, RAND Journal of Economics 38(1): 60-84.

Shortly after the President Trump-authorized commando raid on Yemen, Fox News led the mainstream media in reporting on the great “treasure trove” of intelligence that was seized at the compound. With the claimed killing of a senior al-Qaeda official, the mission was proclaimed a success.

Soon the initial triumphalist reporting on the raid gave way to a much darker reality: an American was killed, millions of dollars in US military equipment destroyed, at least a dozen innocent women and children were killed, US military cover had been blown before the attack, the mission was poorly planned, the mission had been turned down twice by President Obama only to be dusted off by President Trump, and so on.

Worse, the raid was probably not on a hardened al-Qaeda compound, as Centcom claimed, but, as the Telegraph writes, on a ramshackle, impoverished village:

But information from US military officials speaking on condition of anonymity, human rights groups and sources on the ground build a different, contradictory, picture, in which massive fire power was brought to bear on a ramshackle village against targets of limited importance in the so called ‘war on terror.’

By this account, the reinforced al-Qaeda ‘headquarters’ was a two room residence crammed in among other houses in the village; the ‘determined enemies.’ which the Pentagon said included women in ‘prepared fighting positions’ were scared residents firing weapons into the night in panic; and the value of the intelligence gathered is still being assessed.

And what about that treasure trove of intelligence? Facing increasing pressure over the botched raid, the Pentagon earlier today released a video titled “Courses for Destroying The Cross,” to prove just how important was the cache that had been seized.

But the botched part of the botched raid kept botching. It turns out that, as the Telegraph put it, the “video released by Pentagon to prove Donald Trump’s deadly Yemen raid was successful is a decade old and available online.”

So this valuable information could have been been retrieved by a guy with a laptop on YouTube and tens of millions of dollars as well as scores of innocent lives spared. That is why US interventionism is a bad idea. It produces bad results.

We can only hope that the young Trump Administration will learn from this black eye and very quickly retreat from its increasingly aggressive positioning in the Middle East. A president elected on the promise that he would start no new wars is swaggering us into something his panting advisors cannot, in their blind enthusiasm, even imagine.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

In the final months of World War II, as Allied Forces began to liberate the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, they captured on film the horrors they saw around them. Soon, the whole world saw — images of skeletal survivors bearing silent witness to what they and millions more had been forced to endure.

In the summer of 1946, the psychologist interviewed at least 130 Jewish survivors in nine languages in refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. With a wire recorder — then considered state-of-the-art equipment — and 200 spools of steel wire, Boder preserved some of the first oral histories of concentration camp survivors. He also recorded song sessions and religious services.

A portion of Boder’s work has been archived at The University of Akron’s Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology since 1967. But it wasn’t until a recent project to digitize the recordings got under way that a spool containing the “Henonville Songs,” performed in Yiddish and German and long thought lost, was discovered in a mislabeled canister.

“I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history,” noted Dr. David Baker, the Margaret Clark Morgan Executive Director of the Cummings Center. “The songs were recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France. The Nazis made the prisoners sing some of these songs as they ran to their forced labor sites and back each day.

“That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrors of the 20th century is remarkable,” Baker added.

While the Cummings Center had several wire recorders in its collection, none were compatible with the spools on which Boder made his recordings. James Newhall, a senior multi-media producer in Instructional Services at UA, led the search for just the right model. It took a year and it was actually his co-worker, Litsa Varonis, who spotted the unit on eBay. Varonis, now retired from UA, made the purchase and donated the recorder to the center.

It was her husband, Orestes Varonis, a retired electrical engineer, who provided Newhall with valuable advice as he redesigned the recorder to use modern electronic components. “There was a lot of time spent on research and experimentation,” said Newhall. “The recorder no longer uses vacuum tubes or rubber tires, and is mostly built from new parts. It has a more simple, and accurate, drive mechanism.”

From there, Jon Endres, a multimedia producer/media specialist with the Cummings Center, was able to put the recordings into a digital format.

“It felt like I was helping in some way to bring these voices to the present, voices that had become somewhat lost to the historical record,” said Endres. “The discovery of this single canister holding a lost recording means that these songs can be heard again, they can be studied and they can inform us in a new way about the experiences, the joys and the frustrations of these displaced persons.”

The Cummings Center shared the discovery with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and its staff helped with translations. The museum now has a digitized copy for its collection.

Researchers from around the world have contacted Baker, eager to visit the Cummings Center and study the Boder recordings.

“These songs, in the voices of those subjected to unspeakable cruelty, are a reminder of the power of memory, the value of history and the indomitable human spirit,” noted Baker. “Hearing them sing again after 70 years of silence gives the world a greater understanding of the circumstances and experiences of those who were witnesses to a dark chapter in human history.”

Mongolia’s air pollution has reached the point of affecting the country and city’s national security, says Samantha Brletich, a freelance writer and researcher on the region of Central Asia, in her article “Mongolia’s new approach to curb air pollution” published in foreign Media.

“Roughly half of Mongolia’s 2.8 million population lives in Ulan Bator. […] In December 2016, Ulan Bator’s air quality registered five times as worse as Beijing’s and is 80 times more than recommended levels by the World Health Organization,” the article says.

According to the author, Ulan Bator has seen an increase in pollution from coal burning furnaces and motor vehicles.

“Mongolia’s harsh winters require residents and businesses to burn coal. […] Mongolia’s Gers (yurts) dwellings contribute to air pollution as they are on the outskirts of the city, use coal furnaces for heat, and are not connected to the city-level infrastructure,” the analyst says.

Almost 60% of Ulan Bator residents live in ger settlements, which became a popular form of housing for migrants as housing prices in Mongolia have peaked in recent years, she says.

At the same time Samantha Brletich stresses that Mongolia’s “Ulaanbaatar 2020 Master Plan and Development Approaches for 2030” outlined several changes which involve the creation of the central area, middle area, and fringe area connecting the central area to the grid and the middle area partially to the grid; the fringe area, where Gers are located, will be replaced by private housing or low-rise buildings with self-sustaining utilities.

“Three decrees will be presented at Mongolia’s National Security Council meeting. The Restriction Action decree states ‘rural residents, excluding those who require long-term medical care, those who already own an apartment, and those who have a mortgage loan, will be restricted from taking up residence in Ulaanbaatar’,” the researcher says.

Meanwhile, the two other decrees, rooted in urban planning, will divide the city into zones including the establishment of ‘eco areas’ and the establishment of air pollution zones with the regulation what buildings and dwellings can use what energy source to produce heat, she adds.

“The Ulan Bator city government, prior to the three decrees, implemented regulations to curb air pollution. To decrease vehicular traffic restrictions were placed on vehicles based on license plates’ numbers determining what days residents can drive their vehicles. The result would be less congestion, shorter commutes leading to less road time, and less vehicle emissions,” the author says.

Moreover, the expert stresses that a working group tasked with lowering air pollution has been working since June 2016 to develop a national approach.

“The government of Mongolia already passed the National Action Program on Climate Change, Mongolian Environmental Action Plan, and the Action Program to Protect Air Quality,” Samantha Brletich reminds.

In her opinion, the power plant outside of Ulan Bator will assist the city in reaching its electricity-output goals and curbing air pollution.

“The Engie group will operate the plant, a combined heat and power facility called CHP5, for 25 years and will add to the Newcom’s 50-megawatt Salkhit wind farm built in 2013,” the analyst says.

At the same time, she stresses that Ulan Bator stretching over long distances, lacks a comprehensive public transportation system: there is only a rapid bus system financed by the Asia Development Bank.

“According to Mongolia Media, metro stations will be completed by 2020. An underground metro system is required because of population growth and would aid Ulan Bator in becoming a ‘compact city’ and a green eco-city. The Ulan Bator (Ulanbataar) Clean Air Project, funded and approved by the World Bank in 2012, ‘is to enable consumers in Ger areas to access heating appliances producing less particulate matter emissions’ and develop particulate matter reduction measures in Ulaanbaatar,” the expert says.

According to her, previously the country has also actively participated in international initiatives aimed at improving the environmental situation.

“Mongolia signed the 2015 Paris Agreement and joined the Kyoto Protocol in 1999. Mongolia strives to meet Paris Agreement standards by curbing greenhouse gases and pollution by utilizing methodologies developed under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. Mongolia submitted its climate change action plan to the UNFCCC in September 2015,” the author reminds.

Meanwhile, according to her, multiple international organizations including UNICEF and the World Health Organization still warn Mongolia against the adverse effects of heavy smog and pollution.

“The country would benefit from a pollution management system. Strengthening Mongolia’s electric system, diversifying energy resources, and transportation options will also increase air quality and benefit Mongolia economically,” Samantha Brletich believes.

From her point of view, rural to urban migration is impacting air pollution beyond seasonal migration or service-based migration—seeking medical services and employment.

“To control migration, Mongolia may expand of Ulan Bator, encourage settlement in peripheral cities, and develop rural areas which have been under stress since the 1990 reforms impacting agriculture,” the author sums up.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/63481-2017

The leaders of Moldova and unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transdnistria) Igor Dodon and Vadim Krasnoselski held a working meeting in the city of Bender on 4 January 2017.

During Moldovan President’s first visit to the breakaway territory in eight years, the parties expressed their willingness for compromise and identified a number of issues requiring urgent solution.

“Most importantly, we established good contacts; there is openness and willingness to compromise on both sides. The target is set: the citizens on both sides of the Dniester should see concrete results in 2017. I am sure that we will make it together. […] There are all prerequisites for 2017 to be successful for joint work on improvement of the relations between Chisinau and Tiraspol,” Igor Dodon said following the talks.

Moreover, he expressed hope that at the next meeting, the parties will be able to identify “the specific terms for implementation of the decisions that will be agreed upon.”

In turn, the head of Transnistria stressed the importance of finding a compromise to solve the socio-economic problems.

“We must create conditions so people were not held hostage to politics, and decisions taken by politicians were for the people’s benefit. We must respect people in Transnistria and Moldova and search for a compromise in any case,” Vadim Krasnoselski stated.

Meanwhile, the political problems, in particular, the status of Transnistria, were not on the table of talks.

“I have always said and I do not hide the fact that the guarantee of our security is our independence. We have a lot of priority goals, which we have already identified and which we will work on now,” Transnistrian leader said.

Commenting on the working meeting results, Alexander Rahr, Research Director of the German-Russian Forum, reminded that the visit was part of the schedule of the newly elected Moldovan President, who is aimed at reunification of the country.

“In my opinion, this will be carried out without any enforcement, threats or blackmail, but through the new suggestions, new opportunities and arrangements. […] Sooner or later there will be created a workable federation in Moldova, which does not exist yet,” the expert told PenzaNews, suggesting that there will be no rapid results as the negotiations are going to be long and complex.

“However, there may occur some changes in the country based on mutual respect, mutual understanding and new agreements that will ensure Moldova’s greater stability and economic prosperity between the EU and the Eurasian Union, and then will lead to the new form of statehood,” the analyst said.

He also added that there is no common economy and financial system in Transnistria and Moldova now.

“Transnistria lives its own life with its own rules and laws, having close ties with the Russian Federation, while Moldova is focused partly on the European Union and partly on the Eurasian Union. It is necessary to establish some common forms of economic interaction, and it requires federal or confederal mechanisms of economic cooperation. The both parties need a common financial system,” Alexander Rahr said.

According to him, in the future the two leaders will be able to discuss the possibilities of joint work on the Eurasian economic market and in the European Union.

“People from Transnistria will also benefit from a visa-free regime with the EU, and they do not refuse from this, it is a big advantage. The parties just need to hold an important conversation. It is an advantage that the negotiations between Moldova and Transnistria are currently carried out by the president who has always stressed that he wants to stay with Russia. All the previous Moldovan leaders in the past 25 years did not do that, and Transnistria always had a certain alertness and blockade of rapprochement with Chisinau: there was a suspicion that it will sooner or later begin a rapprochement with Romania. Now, in my opinion, everything points to the likely convergence [of Moldova] with Russia, not rejecting the cooperation with the EU. In this changed situation Transnistria will be able to negotiate with the new government in Chisinau,” Research Director of the German-Russian Forum said.

In turn, Michael Emerson, associate senior research fellow at Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), former Ambassador of the EU to Russia, noted that the atmosphere of the meeting was cordial, which was a significant improvement over recent times.

“However the substantive issues discussed were all quite technical matters of local interest. No big, economic or geo-political stuff,” the analyst said.

He also expressed uncertainty that Transnistria would implement all of its obligations concerning economic cooperation with Moldova and the EU.

“Looking ahead it remains to be seen whether Tiraspol implements its agreement with Chisinau and the EU over its future economic relations. Tiraspol’s economy is largely dependent on European markets and the agreement contained provisions for basic free trade with the EU. President [Igor] Dodon however has in the past made speeches about Moldova joining the Eurasian Economic Union, which would be very damaging for Chisinau as well as breaking up Tiraspol’s trade deal with the EU,” Michael Emerson explained.

At the same time, he reminded that Moldovan President does not control the parliament and government of the country.

“So there is the double uncertainty now over first what [Igor] Dodon would like to do, and second on whether this could be accepted by the parliament and government in Chisinau,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, the independent Latvian journalist Aleksey Vesyoliy stressed that to address the most pressing socio-economic problems, the parties should first listen to one another and take into account the citizens’ interests.

“People on both sides are looking for new jobs, decent working conditions, social security. It is necessary to change the situation in the field of small business, where social mobility and start-ups support need to be developed. For joint projects, legal framework should be put in order,” the expert said.

According to him, social stability is only possible when all the mechanisms of civil interaction between the conflict parties are on.

“It is impossible to go without people’s diplomacy. If you look at the situation broadly, the interests of the people from both sides are very similar. For decent working conditions, it is important to establish a social dialogue between the state and the citizens, to reorganize the existing trade unions and to include them into the discussion process, because they can be a reliable partner for the implementation of this goal,” said Aleksey Vesyoliy, adding that strengthening of civil institutions will contribute to solving social and economic problems.

From his viewpoint, the meeting contributes to strengthening the Moldovan statehood and stability of the region.

“Compromise is difficult to reach, but that’s what the art of diplomacy is all about: to find a solution that will ensure implementation of policies which take into account real interests of Transnistrian and Moldovan citizens,” the analyst said.

According to him, the both parties need deserving young people who are ready to take action and can resolve conflicts, wishing to live and work in their home country.

“Large investment projects may involve investments in building city-forming enterprises in those regions falling behind economic development, as well as creation of enterprises chains on both sides of the Dniester River to promote economic integration,” the Latvian expert said.

In turn, Anatoly Dirun, Scientific Leader, Tiraspol School of Political Studies, also noted that the meeting between the two senior officials of Tiraspol and Chisinau took place on the initiative of the Moldovan president.

“Igor Dodon has previously dropped some ‘curtseys’ to the new head of Transnistria, thus breaking the patterns and stereotypes. In particular, he published his theses on possible conflict settlement, which included three main positions: the rejection of the EU membership, the rejection of NATO membership, and a referendum on the new Constitution among citizens of the right and the left bank of the Dniester,” the analyst said.

At the same time, Transnistrian comments on the first meeting results were quite restrained: they called the talks introductory and expressed the wish that they will then serve as a basis for problems solving, he said.

“This precautionary approach is connected with several difficulties in the relations between Transnistria and Moldova, the main of which is a different vision of the negotiations purpose. Chisinau creates and then solves economic problems of Tiraspol in order to gradually involve Transnistria in its legal space, while Tiraspol seeks to use the negotiations for solving problems and strengthening its statehood,” said Anatoly Dirun, adding that such a tactic negates the possibility of a breakthrough.

He also reminded that presidential powers in Moldova are much narrower than that in Transnistria, which makes the practical implementation of Igor Dodon’s initiatives more difficult.

“However, today the leaders of Tiraspol and Chisinau have a set of documents the position on which has been mostly agreed by the working groups of both Transnistria and Moldova. If such an active work of senior Moldovan leadership is transferred to the solution of these working moments, we’ll see, not great, but a step forward,” the expert concluded.

Moldova is a parliamentary republic in South-Eastern Europe located between Romania and Ukraine. President is head of the state. Its central legislative body is the unicameral parliament. The capital city is Chisinau.

Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) is an unrecognized state on the left and right banks of the river Dniester, 60% of its citizens are Russian and Ukrainian. It is recognized a part of Moldova by the international community.

Transnistria sought to secede from Moldova even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing that on the wave of nationalism, the country will join Romania.

In 1992, after a failed attempt of the Moldovan authorities to solve the problem of Transnistria by force, it actually run out of Chisinau’s control.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/63437-2017

Petroleum and other liquids

Over the past decade, Turkey’s economy has expanded, and its petroleum and other liquids consumption has increased. With limited domestic reserves, Turkey imports nearly all of its oil supplies.

Sector organization

Exploration and production

Consumption and imports

International oil transit

Turkey plays an increasingly important role in the transit of oil. The country is strategically located at the crossroads between the oil-rich former Soviet Union and Middle East countries, and the European demand centers. The Turkish Straits are home to one of the world’s busiest chokepoints, through which more than 2 million b/d of crude oil flowed in 2015.

Refining sector

Natural gas

Turkey has a strategic role in natural gas transit because of its position between the world’s second-largest natural gas market—continental Europe—and the substantial natural gas reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Middle East.

Sector organization

Consumption, imports, and exports

Turkey is increasingly dependent on natural gas imports because its domestic consumption, especially in the electric power sector, has experienced significant growth.

Storage

Pipelines

Liquefied natural gas

Coal

Coal, particularly lignite, is Turkey’s most abundant indigenous energy resource and is an important fuel for electricity generation.

Electricity

Following the restructuring of Turkey’s electricity sector, both consumption and generation of electricity have expanded. Most electricity is generated using fossil fuel sources, although the government plans to displace at least some of this generation with nuclear power.

Sector organization

Nuclear

Notes

Endnotes

Sonia Jaffe and Mark Shepard of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) have written a new paper, which compares the effects of fixed-dollar subsidies for health insurance to subsidies that are linked to premiums. She concludes that fixed-dollar subsidies reduce taxpayers’ costs and improve access. Unfortunately, the structure of subsidies in U.S. health insurance has moved in the other direction.

Tax credits that subsidize health insurance offered in Obamacare’s exchanges are based on the second-lower cost Silver-level plan in a region. Intuitively, this implies insurers will not compete too much because that would drive down subsidies. As long as subsidies chase insurance premiums, premiums will be higher than otherwise.

Jaffe looks at evidence from Massachusetts’ health reform (“Romneycare”), which dates to 2006. Its costs are still spiraling, and Jaffe estimates one factor is its design of subsidies, which is similar to Obamacare’s:

Across several simulation years and assumptions, we find a non-trivial upward distortion in the price of the cheapest plan (to which Massachusetts’ subsidies are linked) of $4-26 per month, or 1-6% of baseline prices. Although modest, these effects imply meaningful increases in government costs. For instance, the $24/month subsidy distortion (in our simulations for 2011) would translate into $46 million in annual subsidy costs for Massachusetts, and over $3 billion if extrapolated nationally to the ACA. We show that absent uncertainty, shifting to fixed subsidies could let the government achieve the same coverage at 6.1% lower taxpayer cost, or 1.3% greater coverage at the same cost.

(Sonja Jaffe, Price-Linked Subsidies and Health Insurance Markups, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 23104, January 2017)

The paper is a heavy read, full of PhD-level economic theory and modelling. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that replacing Obamacare’s tax credits with a fixed-dollar tax credit to subsidize health coverage is as close to a free lunch as is possible in health reform.

This article was published at The Beacon

By Natalia Zaba and Maja Zivanovic

Serbian premier Aleksandar Vucic on Friday blamed Kosovo’s leaders for the sharp rise in tensions between Pristina and Belgrade and for the apparent failure of talks in Brussels this week aimed at calming the situation.

“They don’t want any agreement,” Vucic said of Kosovo’s leaders.

Speaking at a press conference in Belgrade, he also accused the EU of lacking the courage to say who was undermining the Kosovo-Serbia agreements.

“Who first came out with statements – [Kosovo President Hashim] Thaci and [Prime Minister Isa] Mustafa, or Vucic? So, why didn’t you say so? You don’t have the courage to say who violated [the agreements],” Vucic said as he castigated EU officials for their alleged timidity.

He said that he had urged Serbs in Kosovo to do their best to remain calm.

“I saw fear among the Serbs of the south [of Kosovo] and rage among Serbs from the north, but I called on them to relax,” Vucic said.

“If they [the Kosovo Albanians] come to destroy, let them destroy, we have the brains and capacity to rebuild from scratch; we must not start conflicts. One month of conflict sets us back ten years,” he added.

After a month of mounting tensions, relations between Belgrade and Pristina were dragged backwards even further on January 14 when Serbia sent a train painted in the colours of the Serbian flag and bearing the words “Kosovo is Serbian” in 21 languages from Belgrade to the northern, Serb-run part of the town of Mitrovica.

The Serbian authorities stopped the train in Raska, just before the Kosovo border, after which Vucic dramatically accused the Kosovo government of trying to blow up the railway line. Kosovo dismissed the claim.

An EU-led meeting on Wednesday between senior Serbian and Kosovo officials failed to resolve matters.

Vucic also complained on Friday of Pristina’s inaction over the formation of the planned Association of Serbian Municipalities in Kosovo, saying that Serbia had been awaiting action on this agreement for four years.

He further accused the Kosovo authorities of threatening Serbs in northern Kosovo.

Thaci said on Thursday that he wanted to send a message to Kosovo Serbs that they “never have to fear Kosovo state”.

But Vucic said this was not true.

Nenad Radosavljevic, a Serb municipal committee member from Leposavic in Kosovo, meanwhile accused Serbia’s politicians of trying to hide their failures and unfulfilled promises by drawing attention to ethnic conflicts, instead of important things like employment or economic growth.

“They want to hide their failures because nothing that they promised has happened. People don’t have a better life so they decided to call for war. And that situation could easily get out of control,” Radosavljevic warned.

Aleksandar Djikic, a university professor and president of the Serbian National Forum, also accused politicians of inflaming the situation.

“No matter how much Belgrade works on raising tensions in Kosovo for their own marketing and election campaigns, these tensions do not exist,” Djikic claimed.

Far-right Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj alleged on Thursday that Kosovo Albanians were planning an armed attack on the four mainly Serbian municipalities in northern Kosovo – Leposavic, Zvecane, Mitrovica and Zubin Potok.

But Djikic said Seselj’s comments were “deliberate political stupidities”, arguing that “plans for bloodshed” did not exist in Serbia or Kosovo.

Nexhemdin Spahiu, a Kosovo Albanian journalist in Mitrovica, said the situation in Mitrovica was calming down after Vucic’s messages to local Serbs.

Spahiu said that while relations between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo were not friendly, they were not as bad as Belgrade wants to present them.

“Relations between Kosovo Serbs and Albanians are far from perfect but … incidents happen more often inside both ethnic groups than between them,” Spahiu told BIRN.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-serbs-already-got-used-to-belgrade-s-political-provocations-02-03-2017#sthash.l5ZOXLUw.dpuf