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Whither The Muslim World’s NATO? – Analysis

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Controversy and uncertainty over the possible appointment of a Pakistani general as commander of a 40-nation, Saudi-led, anti-Iranian military alliance dubbed the Muslim world’s NATO goes to the core of a struggle for Pakistan’s soul as the country reels from a week of stepped up political violence.

It also constitutes a defining moment in Saudi relations with Pakistan, historically one of the Gulf state’s staunchest allies and a country where the kingdom is as much part of the problem as it is part of the solution. Finally, whether the general accepts the post or not is likely to be a bellwether of the Muslim world’s ability to free itself of the devastating impact of Saudi-like Sunni ultra-conservatism and bridge rather than exasperate sectarian divides.

Retired Pakistani military chief of staff General Raheel Sharif’s acceptance of the command of the alliance, the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, would kill several birds with one stone. The alliance, created in 2015 to bolster Saudi Arabia’s two-year old, flailing intervention in Yemen and counter Iran, has so far largely been a paper tiger.

The alliance has staged military exercises that appeared to target Iran but has not yet established a joint command or command infrastructure. The appointment of General Shareef could potentially help the alliance evolve into a force that is credible, assuming that he can overcome widespread hesitancy towards it across the Muslim world.

In personal terms, the appointment would award Mr. Sharif for opposing the Pakistani parliament rejection in 2015 of a Saudi request for military support in Yemen.

The decision took Saudi Arabia by surprise given that Pakistan has been one of the world’s foremost beneficiaries, if not the largest, of Saudi government and non-governmental largess and its dependency on remittances from Pakistani workers in the kingdom.

The appointment of General Sharif would have also been a favour to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a politician and businessman with close ties to the kingdom who like the general favoured Pakistani military support in Yemen. It would remove the popular general as a potential political rival of the prime minister. Namesakes, Messrs Sharif are not related to one another.

The uncertainty about General Raheel’s appointment that has been lingering since it was first announced two months ago, and then been called into question is indicative of strains in relations between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, once the closest of nations in the Muslim world.

In a telling tale of the times, remittances to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia dropped 5.8 percent over the last seven months while cheaper and better trained Indians and Bangladeshis have begun to replace Pakistani manpower. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has deported 39,000 Pakistanis since October as part of its crackdown on militants.

Abdullah Ghulzar Khan, a Pakistani national who lived in Saudi Arabia for 12 years, last year blew himself up in a parking lot near the US consulate in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Fifteen Pakistanis have since been arrested on suspicion of being militants. Two of them were believed to be part of a plot to attack the city’s Al-Jawhara Stadium with a truck carrying 400 kg of explosives during a Saudi Arabia-UAE soccer match that was attended by 60,000 spectators.

The arrests like the story of Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani woman who together with her American-Pakistani husband, gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015, tell a much bigger tale about the risks inherent in Saudi backing at home and abroad, including Pakistan, of puritan, supremacist interpretations of Islam.

Ms. Malik moved with her parents to Saudi Arabia when she was a toddler to escape sectarian skirmishes and family disputes. In the kingdom, the family turned its back on its Sufi and Barelvi traditions that included visiting shrines, honouring saints and enjoying Sufi trance music, practices rejected by the kingdom’s austere Wahhabi form of Islam‎. The change sparked tensions with relatives in Pakistan, whom the Maliks accused in Wahhabi fashion of rejecting the oneness of God by revering saints.

Ms. Malik turned even more conservative when she returned to Pakistan in 2009 to study pharmacology. She started attending religion classes at a branch of Al-Huda (The Correct Path) International Welfare Foundation, a controversial academy that has made significant inroads into Pakistan’s upper and middle classes, and propagates an ideology akin to that of Saudi Arabia.

In a statement after the San Bernardino attack, Al Huda described itself as “a non-political, non-sectarian and non-profit organisation which is tirelessly serving humanity by promoting education along with numerous welfare programmes for the needy and destitute.” It said that it “does not have links to any extremist regime and stands to promote peaceful message of Islam and denounces extremism, violence and terrorism of all kinds.” The institution said that it could not be held responsible for “personal acts “of its students.

To be sure, Al Huda like Sunni ultra-conservatism in its various guises does not breed violence by definition. Yet, like any inward-looking, intolerant and supremacist ideology it creates potential breeding grounds in a given set of circumstances. Similarly, as in the case of the Islamic State (IS) or Al Qaeda, the shared basic tenets of ultra-conservatism has lead to the formation of groups that have turned on Saudi Arabia itself.

A newly formed alliance of IS and Pakistani Taliban that strives to impose strict Islamic law was responsible for the series of attacks in the last week that killed 83 people at a Sufi shrine in southern Punjab and targeted the Punjabi parliament, military outposts, a Samaa TV crew, and a provincial police station.

Complicating Pakistan’s struggle with militancy is the fact that massive, decades-long backing of ultra-conservativism by successive Pakistani political, military and intelligence leaders and Saudi Arabia has made it part of the fabric of significant segments of Pakistani society and education as well as key branches of the government and arms of the state.

That coupled with geopolitics and Pakistan’s increasingly troubled relationship with its religious and ethnic minorities is precisely what makes the proposed appointment of General Raheel so problematic.

Pakistan, a country with a long border with Iran and the world’s largest Shiite minority, has long been a major frontline in Saudi Arabia’s almost four-decade long covert proxy war with the Islamic republic, dating back to the 1979 Islamic revolution. Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the Pakistani military and intelligence as well as senior government officials, has long backed militant sectarian groups that have helped push Pakistan towards Sunni ultra-conservatism and are responsible for a large number of deaths among Shiites, Ahmadis, Sufis and others.

General Raheel’s appointment would bring the chicken home to roost. By taking the command, General Raheel would give the alliance the credibility it needs: a non-Arab commander from one of the world’s most populous Muslim countries who commanded not only one of the Muslim world’s largest militaries, but also one that possesses nuclear weapons. The appointment would build on decades of Pakistani military support of Saudi Arabia dating back to war in Yemen in the late 1960s.

Yet, accepting the command would put Pakistan more firmly than ever in the camp of Saudi-led confrontation with Iran that Saudi political and religious leaders as well as their militant Pakistani allies often frame not only in geopolitical but also sectarian terms. Ultimately, it was that step that the Pakistani parliament rejected in 2015 when it refused to send troops to Yemen. Acceptance of the command by General Raheel would fly in the face of parliament’s decision.

Pakistani Shiite leaders as well as some Sunni politicians have warned that General Raheel’s appointment would put an end to Pakistan’s ability to walk a fine line between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It could raise the stakes in Balochistan, the province bordering Iran where separatists are agitating for independence and China has invested billions of dollars as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative.

Pakistani news reports suggest that General Raheel has sought to alleviate the risk by setting conditions that are unlikely to be acceptable to Saudi Arabia, including that Iran be invited to join the alliance and that he be the mediator in disputes among alliance members with no need to report to a higher i.e. Saudi authority. Iran reportedly advised Pakistan that it would work with General Raheel if he took the command to reach a negotiated resolution of the Yemen war.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, in a speech last weekend to the Munich Security Conference, laid out a vision that rules out General Raheel’s thinking. “Iran remains the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Iran has as part of its constitution the principle of exporting the revolution. Iran does not believe in the principle of citizenship. It believes that the Shiite, the ‘dispossessed’, as Iran calls them, all belong to Iran and not to their countries of origin. And this is unacceptable for us in the kingdom, for our allies in the Gulf and for any country in the world… So, until and unless Iran changes its behaviour, and changes its outlook, and changes the principles upon which the Iranian state is based, it will be very difficult to deal with a country like this.,” Mr. Al-Jubeir said.


India-China Strategic Dialogue: Both Have Core Interests – Analysis

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By Bhaskar Roy*

India and China will hold a new round of strategic dialogue in Beijing on February 22. The meeting will be co-chaired by Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui. The format was put in place when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited India in August last year.

According to Xinhuo (Feb. 17, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, “The dialogue is an important communication-mechanism” between the two sides expected to strengthen political and mutual trust, expand common understandings and further promote bilateral ties through this dialogue. All issues of mutual interest in bilateral, regional and international domain will be discussed”.

Xinhua is China’s official news agency and standard bearer of news which other official news outlets can publish. It is the mouthpiece of China’s official statements.

Referring to Indian media reports, the Xinhua said that issues to be discussed include India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and India’s demand to list Masood Azhar, “the head of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)”, as a designated terrorist under the 1267 sanctions committee of the UN Security Council. The report quoted Geng Shuang as saying the issues are multilateral rather than bilateral, while stressing that China’s stance is based on the rights and wrongs of the case itself.

Subsequently (Feb. 18), China asked India to provide solid evidence on Masood Azhar. This statement from China is like US President Donald Trump’s press conference, when the said, “the leaks (from White House Staff) were real but the news reporting of the same was fake”. What more evidence does China require on Masood Azhar when at least three, if not four, of the P-5 of the UNSC agree with India’s evidence, and their own evidence in the case corroborates that given by India.

Reacting to the recent visit of a group of Taiwanese legislators to India, China protested and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said (Feb. 15) that India should respect China’s “Core interests”, adhere to the “One China” policy, and maintain healthy development of China-India relations.

China has several “core interests”, starting from the ruling position of the communist party, to Tibet, Xinjiang, and the “One China” policy regarding Taiwan. None of them have been questioned by India though some of them are questionable.

Similarly, India has its “core interests” and strategic and security interest. These are articulated as and when necessary. China has no locus standi to decide what is India’s core interest and what is not. The oft repeated Chinese feelers the Masood Azhar case and India’s membership of the NSG are “small issues” cannot be entertained under any circumstances and must be out rightly rejected.

By keeping India out of the NSG on the flimsy ground that India has not acceded to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Threaty (NPT) does not have any moral ground. International laws and treaties are primarily based on morality and justice. The NPT is discriminatory, created precisely to handicap India’s nuclear programme. India’s non-proliferation record is impeccable while China’s record has huge holes. Beijing may deny this till they are blue in the face, but as the Shakespearean quote goes “truth comes to light, murder cannot be hidden”. Some Chinese companies have recently been indicted in the United States. Not to forget that Pakistan’s first nuclear device was made in China and tested in China.

Beijing must take stock and review its own actions, and quietly move away from blocking India’s NSG membership. This is a core strategic issue for India. Last year, King’s college, London, published its Alpha project findings which conclusively prove the involvement of several Chinese companies in nuclear proliferation.

Similarly, holding up India’s and western efforts to list Masood Azhar as an international terrorist in UN Committee 1267 will not help China ultimately. In international perception China is getting into the grey zone when it starts being labelled as a country which has its own classification of good terrorists and bad terrorists.

As the trusted “all weather friend” of Pakistan, Beijing would be informed why Islamabad has put JUD Chief Hafiz Saeed and four of his men in the fourth schedule of Pakistan’s Anti-terrorist Act, which relates to a suspected terrorist or a terrorist.

Pakistan may be buying time under US and other pressure. It may revert to its old tricks, as it keeps its friends in the American establishment confused. But Azhar may come under more severe international pressure, compelling Pakistan to include him and his lieutenants in the fourth schedule.

Countering terrorism from Pakistan (it is the only country that exports terror to India) is India’s top “core interest” at the moment. China still has time to save face and get out of this slippery slope.

These are bilateral issues with international impact. Bilateral, because in both issues China stands against India. The international implication is that China is supporting a Pakistan based terrorist, and terrorism is a huge international concern.

The recent bombing of the Sufi Shrine of Lal Shabaz Qalander at Sehwan in Pakistan, killing almost one hundred devotees, should be a wakeup call. The Islamic state is here and has spawned its affiliates. Many terrorists have moved to the IS, including around 500 from Hafiz Saeed’s JUD. The IS is not amenable to persuasion, and China is one of their targets.

If Beijing is sincerely looking for peace and security, it must make its deep state friends in Pakistan discard their old and failed strategic view of India. Otherwise, this policy will burn Pakistan first, and singe others around.

*The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohard@yahoo.com

NATO Alliance Regains Relevance In New Global Geopolitics – Analysis

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By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Global Geopolitics in 2017 are fast acquiring the contours of the initial years of the cold war when both the former Soviet Union (now Russia) and China were geopolitically aligned to challenge the ‘New World Order’ that emerged in post-World War II era.

The post-1945 ‘New World Order’ was characterised by the overwhelming global predominance of the United States and Western countries. This was opposed by the former Soviet Union singly till end-1949 with the massive military confrontation in Central Europe between the North Atlantic Alliance Organisation (NATO) led by the United States and the Warsaw Pact Bloc led by the former Soviet Union and comprising East European countries. Communist China on emergence in October 1949 aligned itself with the Soviet Union, both on ideological grounds and geopolitical compulsions.

The Cold War thereafter got extended to the Asia Pacific and the only cold war major armed conflict was triggered by Communist China’s military intervention in the Korean Peninsula against the US led United Nations Forces stemming North Korean Communist invasion of South Korea. Major NATO countries including Turkey battle Communist China, though under the UN flag.

The above is a major tipping point that needs to be flagged in discussions of NATO’s future of its redundancy. The MATO was not confined only to the European Theatre of operations but also partook in what can be best described as the first ‘out of NATO area’ operations. The second such participation by NATO countries has been in Afghanistan. Many more could be on its strategic menu as threats multiply.

Moving to contemporary debate on NATO, till recently NATO was being increasingly seen as heading towards redundancy and that its continued existence as a military alliance was debatable. The logic that was being applied against NATO continuance seemed more economic that strategic.

Many reasons can be ascribed to this sentiment of NATO’s redundancy, chief of which was the absence of perceived threat perceptions from Russia to European security and stability. Second, flowing from the foregoing was the laxity or reluctance to contribute their 2% share of their GDP towards meeting the NATO’s burden of defence expenditure. Third, the United States strategic gaze on European security being distracted by events in greater South West Asia, leading to the feeling within NATO member nations that the United States was not fully committed to the Atlantic Alliance Security.

The NATO redundancy debate got further by the election campaign rhetoric of US President Trump who for partly political and partly economic reasons railed against NATO. This reinforced the arguments of those in Europe opposing NATO continuance and it can also be said that Russia and China for Geopolitical reasons favoured the disintegration of NATO. The United States has since resiled form this posture as we shall see later.

Threat perceptions to European security and stability have revived after Russia’s military intervention in the Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. At the other end of the global strategic spectrum, one finds China aggressively muscling into the United States security architecture of the Asia Pacific and heading towards and inevitable military conflict with the United States, can one trace a connection with Russian aggressiveness in Europe and China’s military adventurism in the Asia Pacific? Is there a possibility that in event of China being hell-bent on reordering the Asia Pacific with China characteristics, that NATO could be drawn into a World War III scenario? European security cannot be an island by itself nor exist in a cocoon.

The United States is right and so is President Trump when they insist that NATO nations must contribute to their agreed share of NATO expenses. Since it is 2% of their respective GDPs it follows that the major NATO nations are shouldering a bigger burden of NATO budget besides providing the muscle and teeth to NATO with their troops contributions. Security does not come cheap and nor can emerging threat perceptions be wished away by Europe.

European doubts of United States commitments to underwriting the continuance of NATO as a credible military alliance were reasserted during the last weekend at the Munich conference where the United Stated and sent a high-powered delegation led by US Vice President Pence and include were the US Secretary of State Tillerson and US Defence Secretary Mattis. All of them in their addresses and statements unequivocally committed the United States to the strengthening of NATO. This should remove the lingering doubts of those within Europe that the United States commitments to NATO were wavering.

In the coming years, it can be expected that the security and stability in both Europe and the Asia Pacific will be seriously impacted by Russia and China, singly or jointly, as they flex their muscles to change the existing ‘World Order’. This intent was getting louder with the Russian Foreign Minister asserting at the Munich conference last week that a radical change was required to craft a ‘New World Order’ not dominated by the United State and its allies.

A ‘New World Order’ can only emerge when Russia and China line up wide global support in support of their assertions. The same is not visible or forthcoming as was analysed in my last week’s SAAG paper that the ‘Global Balance of Power was heavily weighted against the China-Russia Nexus’. However, this would not preclude China and Russia not attempting to give shape to their strategic and geopolitical designs. For this, short of war both Russia and China have many options of weakening the will of nations both in Europe and the Asia Pacific by creating disunity, turbulence etc.

NATO was stood the test of time and today is the only well-organised and credible military alliance which has stood up against global and regional threats to peace and security. The fact that NATO has expanded to a membership of 28 nations after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact threat highlights that strategic and geopolitical threat perceptions still prevail which impelled this NATO expansion to include East European nations of the erstwhile Warsaw Pact. NATO is therefore not redundant and European nations need to recognise that they reached their levels of economic prosperity under the NATO shield. That is the concluding message.

The Empire Strikes Back – OpEd

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By Tomislav Jakić*

When Donald John Trump took over as president of the United States a month ago, there were – not many though – reasonable, cold analysts who, based on his pre-election statements, predicted that a man who is going to wage war against the establishment (the empire) is entering a conflict with a very uncertain result. Some of them even did not hesitate to say that Trump is bound to lose this battle. Judging by what is happening now, those who spoke about a war with uncertain results were completely right, and those who predicted Trump’s defeat might be right. We will see in the not-so-distant future.

Trump’s throne – if one can say so – was seriously shaken the moment one of his closest associates, national security advisor general Michael Flynn, was forced to resign. And, let us not be misguided, not because he was “insincere” with Vice President Pence, but because he dared to contact (how horrific!) the ambassador of Russia before the elections and – allegedly – spoke with him about the possibility of abandoning sanctions against his country. And when, immediately after that, a White House spokesman said that Russia is expected to return the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine, there was no doubt whatsoever whether Trump would be able to fulfill what he promised in the election campaign. With those promises, the key ones, he managed – despite his lack of political experience, despite his sexism, and despite his entertainment past – to arouse the hopes of all those in the world who were fed up with the American policy of interventionism and with its imposing of what has been “sold” for decades as democracy, with massive help from an enormous army and more than 700 military bases around the world. Just to remind you: Trump explicitly promised that America will stop imposing regimes, or as he put it in his inaugural address: ‘the American way of life.’ And, very important, he expressed his willingness to normalize relations with Russia, which were deteriorating rapidly and dangerously. General Flynn backed such a policy. And that is the reason why he had to go. His resignation is the first serious blow delivered by the system (establishment) against the new man in the White House. After getting rid of Flynn, influential circles not only in the Democratic party (including the Clinton clan), but in the Republican party too (which never really got to terms first with his nomination as presidential candidate and after that with him as the president), as well as those who are often described as the ‘invisible centers of influence,’ directing the politicians as actors on the stage – they all smelled blood. And this is not a conspiracy theory, this is something quite obvious to everybody who is willing to see, to hear, and to draw the only possible conclusions from what he (or she) saw or heard, without becoming the victim or the hostage of anybody’s propaganda, regardless of whose. Do not be mistaken: those who smelled blood will not stop.

And who is, after all, this general Michael Flynn? He is former chief of the US military intelligence, the most decorated high-ranking American officer in this position over the last two decades. From this position he was relieved when he dared to put into question the way the US intelligence community worked and its results (the very same intelligence community which spies for years now on whomever it wants, around the globe, including heads of states, American allies; this is, by the way a proven fact!). Did he speak with the Russian ambassador prior to the elections? Yes, he did. Did he, by doing so, violate an old act (the Logan Act) which forbids, to put it in the simplest terms, private persons to engage in diplomatic activities? Again: yes, he did. But, did anybody invoke this same act when some 8 or 9 years ago a certain Barack Obama, at that time just a presidential candidate (a private person too) travelled around the world meeting heads of states and governments? The answer is: no! Had Flynn have spoken with ambassadors of, let us say, Germany or France, nobody would have said a word. But he sinned, because he spoke with the Russian ambassador and Russia is, as everybody “knows,” an enemy of the West, an enemy of democracy, a power which is on the verge of sending its armed forces to conquer Europe (if one would believe the mainstream media, or for that matter, the Secretary-general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg).

On the tracks of the anti-Russian hysteria, which becomes more and more present, Flynn was accused, without any evidence, that for him “Putin comes first and only then the US.” Demands are being made, imperatively, to investigate all links between the general and Russia. And all this only to be able to repeat the “old song” from the US election campaign: Russia’s role in the US presidential elections should be investigated (although this role was never proved by solid evidence, or what the Americans call a “smoking gun” – it was only talked about). And all of this to repeat that Trump is a puppet in Russian hands, backed now with the “expertise” of more than 30 “shrinks” who have concluded, on the basis of Trump’s behavior and his statements, that he is not fit to be the president of the U.S.

And again: the story will not stop here. The empire (establishment) strikes back and hits a man who thought, because he practically alone, against all odds, won the presidential elections, that he can change the system. It is more than likely that he cannot. The war hero, CIC of the Normandy invasion and later US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was clever (or wise) enough to mention the military-industrial complex and its dangerous role only at the end of his term in office. Trump, who cannot be compared with legendary Ike in any way, did practically the same thing in the first days of his mandate, challenging this system. And sealed, thus, his destiny – as it seems now. He will be, with the “logistic help” of the Europeans who are already describing him as somebody able to launch in the next two years “a cultural revolution” (allusion to communist China) either be chased out of the White House (under any pretext), or he will be forced to become a tool in the hands of others. After all, one should remember Obama and his big promises with which he won the Peace Nobel price (hand stretched to the Muslim countries, a world without nuclear weapons etc.) He did nothing of that sort, but continued the policy of his predecessors, becoming “famous” because of his bombings of a number of countries and destabilizing the Middle East, not to mention the direct and indirect support to those who are today known as Islamist terrorists. In short: he allowed himself to be “eaten” by the system. And this is the least that could happen to Trump.

Why did this “deconstruction” of Trump begin with General Flynn? The answer is simple: because the general backed the normalization of the relations with Russia, even more he backed the cooperation with Russia in the fight against global terrorism, which means stopping any support and help for the Islamists, who are still called by many in the West “opposition,” “armed opposition,” or “fighters against tyranny and for freedom.” The military-industrial complex lives from wars and it imposed on the West the confrontation with Russia, the policy of enlarging and strengthening of the NATO (which, being a genuine relict of the Cold War, was called “obsolete” by Trump), the policy which resulted in bringing to Europe hundreds of American tanks and thousands of troops.

To put it quite simply: without the confrontation with Russia, without the continuation of the policy of imposing regimes and taking control over energy sources and main energy routes, there is no money, there is no profit. This is the reason why those who evaluated the fall of socialism in Europe as their final victory, only to see how Putin is putting into question this victory (namely standing up against a unipolar world), after absorbing the shock of Trump’s victory and his announced foreign policy, decided to take things into their hands again. Thus we may expect strengthening of anti-Russian sentiments (allegations of Russian meddling in elections, though never proven, are being repeated again and again, now prior to the presidential elections in France). We may expect a changed rhetoric both from President Trump and from the White House. And we should stop hoping for the end of the renewed Cold War. This war means profit, and those who are making this profit are not prepared to let anybody else take it from them, or to stop them making it at all; despite the fact that it is a bloody profit, “earned” at the cost of hundreds of thousands of human lives. General Flynn had this experience. President Trump, from what can be concluded right now, still has to learn the lesson.

And the “rest of the world”? Well, those who survive will tell the story.

*Tomislav Jakić is a journalist who served as foreign policy advisor to the second President of the Republic of Croatia, Mr. Stjepan Mesic.

This article appeared at Geopolitical Monitor.com

Medicare, Medicaid And VA At High Risk For Waste, Fraud And Abuse – OpEd

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published its biennial update of federal programs “that it identifies as high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement…”

Healthcare programs feature high on the list. Medicare, the entitlement program for seniors, and Medicaid, the joint state-federal welfare program for low-income households, are longstanding members of the list; and the GAO notes that legislation will be required to fix them:

We designated Medicare as a high-risk program in 1990 due to its size, complexity, and susceptibility to mismanagement and improper payments.

We designated Medicaid as a high-risk program in 2003 due to its size, growth, diversity of programs, and concerns about the adequacy of fiscal oversight.

So, that would be 27 years for Medicare and 14 years for Medicaid. Seen any progress?

This is the second time the Veterans Health Administration has made the list of high-risk programs:

Since designating Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care as a high-risk area in 2015, we continue to be concerned about VA’s ability to ensure its resources are being used cost-effectively and efficiently to improve veterans’ timely access to health care, and to ensure the quality and safety of that care.

Although VA’s budget and the total number of medical appointments provided have substantially increased for at least a decade, there have been numerous reports in this same period of time—by us, VA’s Office of the Inspector General, and others—of VA facilities failing to provide timely health care. In some cases, the delays in care or VA’s failure to provide care at all reportedly have resulted in harm to veterans.

As I noted in a recent op-ed that was widely syndicated, this problem cannot be fixed by the federal government and the system should be privatized.

It should also be noted that “Ensuring the Security of Federal Information Systems and Cyber Critical Infrastructure and Protecting the Privacy of Personally Identifiable Information” has been on the GAO’s high-risk list since 1997. Recent breaches of federal databases have brought the issue to the public’s attention.

Despite its failure to secure its own data, the federal government has had the temerity to try to impose a standard Electronic Health Record onto all the nation’s hospitals and doctors’ offices.

This article was published by The Beacon.

Trump Marks End Of A Cycle – OpEd

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Roberto Savio*

Let us stop debating what newly-elected US President Trump is doing or might do and look at him in terms of historical importance. Put simply, Trump marks the end of an American cycle!

Like it or not, for the last two centuries the entire planet has been living in an Anglophone-dominated world. First there was Pax Britannica (from the beginning of the 19th century when Britain started building its colonial empire until the end of the Second World War, followed by the United States and Pax Americana with the building of the so-called West).

The United States emerged from the Second World War as the main winner and founder of what became the major international institutions – from the United Nations to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – with Europe reduced to the role of follower. In fact, under the Marshall Plan, the United States became the force behind the post-war reconstruction of Europe.

As winner, the main interest of the United States was to establish a ‘world order’ based on its values and acting as guarantor of the ‘order’.

Thus the United Nations was created with a Security Council in which it could veto any resolution, and the World Bank was created with the US dollar as the world’s currency, not with a real world currency as British economist and delegate John Maynard Keynes had proposed. The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – as a response to any threat from the Soviet Union – was an entirely American idea.

The lexicon of international relations was largely based on Anglo-Saxon words, and often difficult to translate into other languages – terms such as accountability, gender mainstreaming, sustainable development, and so on. French and German disappeared as international languages, and lifestyle became the ubiquitous American export – from music to food, films and clothes. All this helped to reinforce American myths.

The United States thrust itself forward as the “model for democracy” throughout the world, based on the implied assertion that what was good for the United States was certainly good for all other countries. The United States saw itself as having an exceptional destiny based on its history, its success and its special relationship with God. Only US presidents could speak on behalf of the interests of humankind and invoke God.

The economic success of the United States was merely confirmation of its exceptional destiny – but the much touted American dream that anyone could become rich was unknown elsewhere.

The first phase of US policy after the Second World War was based on multilateralism, international cooperation and respect for international law and free trade – a system which assured the centrality and supremacy of the United States, reinforced by its military might,

The United Nations, which grew from its original 51 countries in 1945 to nearly 150 in just a few decades, was the forum for establishing international cooperation based on the values of universal democracy, social justice and equal participation.

In 1974, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States – the first (and only) plan for global governance – which called for a plan of action to reduce world inequalities and redistribute wealth and economic production. But this quickly became to be seen by the United States as a straitjacket.

The arrival of Ronald Reagan at the White House in in1981 marked an abrupt change in this phase of American policy based on multilateralism and shared international cooperation. A few months before taking office, Reagan had attended the North-South Economic Summit in Cancun, Mexico, where the 22 most important heads of state (with China as the only socialist country) had met to discuss implementation of the General Assembly resolution.

Reagan, who met up with enthusiastic British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, stopped the plan for global governance dead in its tracks. I was there and saw how, to my dismay, the world went from multilateralism to the old policy of power in just two days. The United State simply refused to see its destiny being decided by others – and that was the start of the decline of the United Nations, with the United States refusing to sign any international treaty or obligation.

America’s dream and its exceptional destiny were strengthened by the rhetoric of Reagan who even went as far as sloganising “God is American”.

It is important to note that, following Reagan’s example, all the other major powers were happy to be freed of multilateralism. The Reagan administration, allied with that of Thatcher, provided an unprecedented example of how to destroy the values and practices of international relations and the fact that Reagan has probably been the most popular president in his country’s history shows the scarce significance that the average American citizen gives to international cooperation.

Under Reagan, three major simultaneous events shaped our world. The first was deregulation of the financial system in 1982, later reinforced by US President Bill Clinton in 1999, which has led to the supremacy of finance, the results of which are glaringly evident today.

The second was the creation in 1989 of an economic vision based on the supremacy of the market as the force underpinning societies and international relations – the so-called Washington Consensus – thus opening the door for neoliberalism as the undisputed economic doctrine.

Third, also in 1989, came the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the “threat” posed by the Soviet bloc.

It was at this point that the term “globalisation” became the buzzword, and that the United States was once again going to be the centre of its governance. With its economic superiority, together with the international financial institution which it basically controlled, plus the fact that the Soviet “threat” had now disappeared, the United States was once again placing itself at the centre of the world.

As Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, once said, “Globalisation is another term for U.S. domination.”

This phase ran from 1982 until the financial crisis of 2008, when the collapse of American banks, followed by contagion in Europe, forced the system to question the Washington Consensus as an undisputable theory.

Doubts were also being voiced loudly through the growing mobilisation of civil society /the World Social Forum, for example, had been created in 1981) and by the offensive of many economists who had previously remained in silence.

The latter began insisting that macroeconomics – the preferred instrument of globalisation – looked only at the big figures. If microeconomics was used instead, they argued, it would become clear that there was very unequal distribution of growth (not to be confused with development) and that delocalisation and other measures which ignored the social impact of globalisation, were having disastrous consequences.

The disasters created by three centuries of geed as the main value of the “new economy” were becoming evident through figures showing an unprecedented concentration of wealth in a few hands, with many victims – especially among the younger generation.

All this was accompanied by two new threats: the explosion of Islamic terrorism, widely recognised as a result of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the phenomenon of mass migration, which largely came after the Iraq war but multiplied after the interventions in Syria and Libya in 2011, and for which the United States and the European Union bear full responsibility.

Overnight, the world passed from greed to fear – the two motors of historical change in the view of many historians.

And this is brings us to Mr. Trump. From the above historical excursion, it is easy to understand how he is simply the product of American reality.

Globalisation, initially an American instrument of supremacy, has meant that everyone can use the market to compete, with China the most obvious example. Under globalisation, many new emerging markets entered the scene, from Latin America to Asia. The United States, along with Europe, have become the victims of the globalisation which both perceived as an elite-led phenomenon.

Let us not forget that, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, ideologies were thrown by the wayside. Politics became mere administrative competition, devoid of vision and values. Corruption increased, citizens stopped participating, political parties became self-referential, politicians turned into a professional caste, and elite global finance became isolated in fiscal paradises.

Young people looked forward to a future of unemployment or, at best temporary jobs, at the same time as they watched over four trillion dollars being spent in a few years to save the banking system.

The clarion call from those in power was, by and large, let us go back to yesterday, but to an even better yesterday – against any law of history. Then came Brexit and Trump.

We are now witnessing the conclusion of Pax Americana and the return to a nationalist and isolationist America. It will take some time for Trump voters to realise that what he is doing does not match his promises, that the measures he is putting in place favour the financial and economic elites and not their interests.

We are now facing a series of real questions.

Will the ideologue who helped Trump be elected – Stephen Bannon, chief executive officer of Trump’s presidential campaign – have the time to destroy the world both have inherited Will the world will be able to establish a world order without the United States at its centre? How many of the values that built modern democracy will be able to survive and become the bases for global governance?

A new international order cannot be built without common values, just on nationalism and xenophobia.

Bannon is organising a new international alliance of populists, xenophobes and nationalists – made up of the likes of Nicholas Farage (United Kingdom), Matteo Salvini and Beppe Grillo (Italy), Marine Le Pen (France) and Geert Wilders (Netherlands) – with Washington as their point of reference.

After the elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany this year, will know how this alliance will fare, but one thing is clear – if, beyond its national agenda, the Trump administration succeeds in creating a new international order based on illiberal democracy, we should start to worry because war will not be far away.

* Roberto Savio is publisher of OtherNews, adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is also co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus. This article is being published jointly with OtherNews.

Saudi Arabia, Greece Usher In New Era Of Bilateral Relations

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By Rashid Hassan

Saudi Arabia and Greece ushered in a new era of relations as King Salman and Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos held bilateral talks to enhance cooperation.

“I consider this a historic visit,” Greek Ambassador Polychronis Polychroniou told Arab News on the final day of the visit. “Our two people enjoy friendly relations and share the same principles on almost every issue.”

He added: “During this visit, the president met the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques as well as many senior officials, and the meetings were very productive, paving the way for a new era in our already close relations.”

However, he pointed out that visits at the top level are needed to further enhance cooperation and “specify certain areas where we can work together even more closely.”

The envoy said: “We signed two agreements, one on technological and scientific cooperation, and the other in the field of satellite technology and its applications.”

In addition, a joint ministerial committee between the two governments was convened, giving the two sides the opportunity to agree on many pending issues, he said.

Ilias Andronikos Klouvatos, deputy head of mission at the Greek Embassy, told Arab News that on Wednesday, the president met Gulf Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Abdullatif Al-Zayani. The two leaders discussed relations with Greece and various ways to enhance cooperation between the EU and the GCC.

The president and his accompanying delegation also visited the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), where he met KACST President Prince Turki bin Saud bin Mohammed. The president was briefed on activities and research projects.

An agreement on satellite applications was signed between Prince Turki and Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolaos Kotzias. Prince Turki and George Katrojals, Greek minister of state for international economic relations and foreign trade, signed another accord for scientific and technical cooperation.

Official Says ‘Conditions Have Been Set’ For Islamic State Defeat In Western Mosul

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By Lisa Ferdinando

Iraqi forces are advancing into western Mosul and making steady gains in efforts to liberate the area from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve said Wednesday.

The ISIS-controlled area is “shrinking steadily with each passing day,” Air Force Col. John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters in a news briefing from Baghdad.

“The main effort is to isolate the remaining enemy remnants in the west part of Mosul,” he said, noting the terrorists will “either surrender or they’re going to be killed there.”

Iraqi forces have encountered moderate resistance in their approach, Dorrian said.

The coalition continues to pound ISIS targets in precision strikes, destroying 23 ISIS mortar and artillery pieces in the first three days of operation, he said. That is setting the conditions for Iraqi forces to retake the Mosul airport and begin moving toward more dense urban terrain, the colonel said.

“Conditions have been set for ISIS’s defeat through their significant effort to reduce their command and control, their weapons and their financial resources,” Dorrian said.

‘Extraordinarily Difficult Fight’ Expected

He commended the Iraqi forces for their progress, but noted they have a number of challenges ahead of them. Those challenges include the tedious and extremely dangerous task of clearing each of the more than 100,000 buildings in west Mosul, Dorrian said.

The narrow streets in the oldest parts of the city will make it difficult for the Iraqis to move their vehicles, he said, but that also means the terrorists will not be able to move vehicle-borne explosive devices.

“We do expect it to be an extraordinarily difficult fight,” Dorrian said.

Removing ISIS Leaders From Battlefield

Part of efforts to defeat the terrorists is to “take every opportunity that we can to remove ISIS leadership figures from the battlefield,” he said.

A coalition precision airstrike Feb. 13 in Mosul killed Haqi Ismail Hamid al Emri, a legacy al-Qaida in Iraq member who had a leadership role in ISIS security networks in Mosul, Dorrian said.

Additionally, he said, precision strikes in January in Mosul killed Abu Abbas al Qurayshi, who coordinated the movement of vehicle bombs and suicide bombers inside Iraq; and Abdullah Yasin Sulaymani al Jaburi, who was responsible for anti-aircraft defense assets within Mosul.

ISIS Feels Pressure in Raqqa

Syrian Democratic Forces continue advancing from the north and east of the key Syrian city of Raqqa, Dorrian said.

Coalition partners on the ground in Syria have liberated more than 300 square miles and more than 100 villages since Feb. 4, when they began reclaiming and clearing the land east of the city, he said.

“We’re now seeing signs that ISIS fighters [and] its leaders in Raqqa are beginning to feel the pressure,” he said.

They are becoming “increasingly paranoid” and have intensified measures to control the population and destroy televisions, mobile phones and satellite dishes in order to maintain control of access to information about their losses, he said.

“These are not the actions of an enemy who feel they’re winning,” Dorrian explained.

In addition, he said there are reports of ISIS executing fighters who try to abandon the fight or are suspected of collaborating with forces trying to liberate the city. ISIS leaders are also reportedly moving their own families out of Raqqa, but detaining civilians who attempt to flee, Dorrian said.


Popular Heartburn Drugs Linked To Gradual Yet ‘Silent’ Kidney Damage

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Taking popular heartburn drugs for prolonged periods has been linked to serious kidney problems, including kidney failure. The sudden onset of kidney problems often serves as a red flag for doctors to discontinue their patients’ use of so-called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which are sold under the brand names Prevacid, Prilosec, Nexium and Protonix, among others.

But a new study evaluating the use of PPIs in 125,000 patients indicates that more than half of patients who develop chronic kidney damage while taking the drugs don’t experience acute kidney problems beforehand, meaning patients may not be aware of a decline in kidney function, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System. Therefore, people who take PPIs, and their doctors, should be more vigilant in monitoring use of these medications.

The study is published Feb. 22 in Kidney International.

The onset of acute kidney problems is not a reliable warning sign for clinicians to detect a decline in kidney function among patients taking proton pump inhibitors, said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. “Our results indicate kidney problems can develop silently and gradually over time, eroding kidney function and leading to long-term kidney damage or even renal failure. Patients should be cautioned to tell their doctors if they’re taking PPIs and only use the drugs when necessary.”

More than 15 million Americans suffering from heartburn, ulcers and acid reflux have prescriptions for PPIs, which bring relief by reducing gastric acid. Many millions more purchase the drugs over-the-counter and take them without being under a doctor’s care.

The researchers — including first author Yan Xie, a biostatistician at the St. Louis VA — analyzed data from the Department of Veterans Affairs databases on 125,596 new users of PPIs and 18,436 new users of other heartburn drugs referred to as H2 blockers. The latter are much less likely to cause kidney problems but often aren’t as effective.

Over five years of follow up, the researchers found that more than 80 percent of PPI users did not develop acute kidney problems, which often are reversible and are characterized by too little urine leaving the body, fatigue and swelling in the legs and ankles.

However, more than half of the cases of chronic kidney damage and end-stage renal disease associated with PPI use occurred in people without acute kidney problems.

In contrast, among new users of H2 blockers, 7.67 percent developed chronic kidney disease in the absence of acute kidney problems, and 1.27 percent developed end-stage renal disease.

End-stage renal disease occurs when the kidneys can no longer effectively remove waste from the body. In such cases, dialysis or a kidney transplant is needed to keep patients alive.

“Doctors must pay careful attention to kidney function in their patients who use PPIs, even when there are no signs of problems,” cautioned Al-Aly, who also is the VA’s associate chief of staff for research and education and co-director of the VA’s Clinical Epidemiology Center. “In general, we always advise clinicians to evaluate whether PPI use is medically necessary in the first place because the drugs carry significant risks, including a deterioration of kidney function.”

Liberals Beware: Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas – OpEd

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The New York Times is currently engaged in one of its most ambitious projects: Removing a sitting president from office. In fact, Times columnist Nicolas Kristof even said as much in a recent article titled  “How Can We Get Rid of Trump?”

Frankly, it’s an idea that I find attractive, mainly because I think Trump’s views on immigration, the environment, human rights, civil liberties and deregulation are so uniformly horrible, they could destroy the country.   But the Times objections are different from my own. The reason the Times wants Trump removed is because Trump wants to normalize relations with Russia which threatens to undermine Washington’s effort to project US power deeper into Central Asia.

Trump’s decision to normalize relations with Moscow poses a direct threat to Washington’s broader imperial strategy to control China’s growth, topple Putin, spread military bases across Central Asia, implement trade agreements that maintain the dominant role of western-owned mega-corporations, and derail attempts by Russia and China to link the wealthy EU to Asia by expanding the web of pipeline corridors and high-speed rail that will draw the continents closer together creating the largest and most populous free trade zone the world has ever seen.

This is what the US foreign policy establishment and, by inclusion, the Times are trying to avoid at all cost. The economic integration of Asia and Europe must be blocked to preserve Washington’s hegemonic grip on world power. That’s the whole deal in a nutshell.

So don’t be fooled, the Times doesn’t care any more about the suffering of immigrant families who have been victimized by Trump’s extremist policies than they do about the three million refugees that have fled America’s wars in Libya and Syria.  The fact that the Times continues to mischaracterize this vast human exodus as some sort of natural disaster instead of the predictable spillover from persistent US aggression, just confirms the fact that the Times is not a reliable source of unbiased information at all. It is a political publication that crafts a political narrative reflecting the views of politically-minded elites whose strategic objectives cannot be achieved without more brainwashing, more coercion and more war.

Let’s consider, for a minute, the Times article that precipitated the current furor over Trump’s alleged connection to Russian intelligence. This is the article that’s been held up by numerous members of congress and the media as ironclad proof of Trump’s collusion with Moscow. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.” (“Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence”, New York Times)

There’s no reason to read any further, because the entire article follows this same basic pattern, that is, the article is shaped to create the impression that the Trump camp teamed up with the Russians to torpedo Hillary’s campaign. Unfortunately, the Times presents no hard evidence that the “call logs and intercepted communications (that) are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I.” even exist. Nor have they proved that anyone in the Trump camp ever communicated with people in Russia (excluding Michael Flynn, of course) let alone, collaborated to undermine the presidential election. It’s all 100% uncorroborated fluff.

So what’s going on here? Why would the Times run an article alleging impeachable offenses –which has sharpened the attacks on Trump by his critics in the media, the congress and in foreign capitals– without providing any evidence that their claims are true? None of the intelligence agents cited in the article have come forward and identified themselves (as one might expect when the charges are this serious), and as the Times admits, “The F.B.I. declined to comment.”

So they have nothing, right?

One can only conclude that the real intention of the article was to generate as much suspicion as possible –in order to damage to Trump as much as possible– without really saying much of anything, that is,  to create the impression of wrongdoing without providing any proof of wrongdoing.   And, in that regard, the Times certainly succeeded. It has been a very impressive smear campaign.

(By the way, in a Sunday morning interview on Fox News White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said that top intelligence officials told him that their was no collusion between Trump’s people and Russia. Priebus said that “top-level people,” in the intelligence community told him “that that story in the New York Times is complete garbage. And quite frankly, they used different words than that.”

Not surprisingly, Fox News host Chris Wallace demanded that Priebus reveal his sources, a demand that Wallace never made of the Times.)

Here’s more from the Times piece:

“The intercepted calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year between Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States. In those calls, which led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation on Monday night, the two men discussed sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Russia in December.”

More disinformation. So far, all we know about Flynn’s conversations was that he said that the administration would “review” the newly-imposed sanctions when after Trump was sworn in as president. There’s no evidence at all that Flynn did something illegal or in violation of the Logan Act. None. The media has used the incident to suggest that illicit activities had taken place when in fact, there is no evidence of wrongdoing at all. As far as we know, Flynn was just doing his job.

What’s more interesting is the fact that Obama decided to impose the new sanctions on Russia in late December (after Trump had already been elected) knowing that Trump probably wouldn’t support the sanctions.

That seems strange, don’t you think? Why would Obama do something so disrespectful at the eleventh hour unless he had something else up his sleeve?  Was Obama setting a trap to get rid of the man who was the driving-force behind better relations with Russia? (Flynn)

I don’t know, but the facts are pretty suspicious.  First, Obama imposed the sanctions in late December knowing that Trump would oppose them.

Second, Obama knew that Russia would want to discuss the sanctions with Flynn, right?

Right. So was it a trap set by Obama to trip-up Flynn?

Maybe “yes”,  maybe “no”. It’s hard to say. But what we know is that 17 days before Obama left office, he issued an executive order expanding the powers of the NSA “to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” (NYT)

Why does that matter?

It matters because Flynn had already had his conversation with the Russian ambassador, so if the Intel agency that illegally gathered the information wanted to escape prosecution, the best way to do that would be to spread the information around to other agencies making it impossible to hold any one agency accountable. Simply put: They were taking the precautionary step of removing their bloody fingerprints from the murder weapon.

Check this out from Zero Hedge:  “According to civil rights expert and prominent First Amendment Supreme Court lawyer, Jay Sekulow, what the agencies did by leaking the Trump Administration information was not only illegal but “almost becomes a soft coup”, one which was spurred by the last minute rule-change by Obama, who intentionally made it far easier for leaks to propagate, and next to impossible to catch those responsible for the leaks…

This is his explanation:

‘There was a sea-change here at the NSA with an order that came from president Obama 17 days before he left office where he allowed the NSA who used to control the data, it now goes to 16 other agencies and that just festered this whole leaking situation, and that happened on the way out, as the president was leaving the office.

Why did the Obama administration wait until it had 17 days left in their administration to put this order in place if they thought it was so important. They had 8 years, they didn’t do it, number one. Number two, it changed the exiting rule which was an executive order dating back to Ronald Reagan, that has been in place until 17 days before the Obama administration was going to end, that said the NSA gets the raw data, and they determine dissemination.

Instead, this change that the president put in place, signed off by the way by James Clapper on December 15, 2016, signed off by Loretta Lynch the Attorney General January 3, 2017, they decide that now 16 agencies can get the raw data and what that does is almost creates a shadow government. You have all these people who are not agreeing with President Trump’s position, so it just festers more leaks.

If they had a justification for this, wonderful, why didn’t they do it 8 years ago, 4 years ago, 3 years ago. Yet they wait until 17 days left.’

One potential answer: They knew they had a “smoking gun”, and were working to make it easier to enable the information to be “leaked” despite the clearly criminal consequences of such dissemination.”  (“Jay Sekulow: Obama Should Be “Held Accountable” For The “Soft Coup” Against Trump“, Zero Hedge)

It’s an intriguing twist to the larger story, but it is not one that I can independently verify. Besides, what really concerns me is the emerging alliance between the Dems, the agenda-driven media, the deep-state agencies, the all-powerful foreign policy establishment and the progressives that are desperate to get rid of Trump by hook or crook. Glenn Greenwald summed it up perfectly in a recent post at The Intercept. He said:

“I happen to think that the Trump presidency is extremely dangerous…. They want to dismantle the environment. They want to eliminate the safety net. They want to empower billionaires. They want to enact bigoted policies against Muslims and immigrants and so many others. And it is important to resist them. …(But) if you’re somebody who believes that both the CIA and the deep state, on the one hand, and the Trump presidency, on the other, are extremely dangerous, as I do, there’s a huge difference between the two, which is that Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls… But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. They’re barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity. That is a prescription for destroying democracy overnight in the name of saving it.” (“Greenwald: Empowering the “Deep State” to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy“, Democracy Now)

In other words, if you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas. Leftists should avoid the temptation of aligning themselves with groups and agencies that might help them achieve their short-term goal of removing Trump, but ultimately move them closer to a de facto 1984 lock-down police state. Misplaced support for the deep state Russophobes will only strengthen the national security state’s stranglehold on  power. That’s not a path to victory, it’s a path to annihilation.

Banker Under Scrutiny For Alleged Misuse Of Vatican Financial System

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A banker who allegedly used the Vatican Bank and other aspects of Holy See finances to manipulate the market for his bank stock price continues to be under investigation, as Italian authorities froze millions of euros in his personal assets on Tuesday.

Giampietro Nattino, the head of Banca Finnat Euramerica SpA, allegedly used Vatican financial institutions as cover for “a complex stock operation which resulted in criminal behavior regarding market manipulation.” Police said he used “misleading and false” methods to “substantially alter” the price of shares in his bank, Reuters reports.

The alleged manipulation used the Institute for Religious Works, known informally as the Vatican Bank, and APSA, which oversees Vatican real estate and investments. Vatican investigators suspect that during a stock placement handled by Nattino’s bank, shares were bought through the accounts at APSA before the shares were allocated to other investors.

Nattino is also accused of providing false information to Italy’s stock regulator, Consob.

Italian magistrates are investigating two people who were managers at APSA in 2011, suspecting they were collaborators with Nattino’s bank.

In a statement, Nattino said that his work had “always been characterized by maximum transparency and correctness.” He said the frozen assets belong to him, not his bank, and he pledged cooperation with investigators.

Efforts to reform Vatican finances have been ongoing. Vatican officials have closed many outside accounts in an effort to block corruption.

In June 2013, a longtime accountant at APSA, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, was arrested and faced charges of conspiracy to smuggle 20 million euros from Switzerland to help friends avoid taxes.

Though he was acquitted on those charges, and denies all charges of wrongdoing, he will face a separate trial for alleged money laundering.

Lutheran Prelate To Receive Japanese Buddhist Peace Prize

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The president of the Lutheran World Federation will receive a prestigious Japanese Buddhist peace award in July.

Founded by a lay Buddhist organization, the Niwano Peace Foundation (NPF) announced on Feb. 20 that it award their 34th Niwano Peace Prize to Evangelical Lutheran Church Bishop Munib Younan of Palestine.

In choosing Bishop Younan, the selection committee said he “has devoted his life to building peace with justice in the Middle East and globally.”

“He continues tirelessly in a self-sacrificing manner promoting dialogue and joint action between religions and over ethnic and national divisions” while strongly condemning all kinds of religious extremism and terrorism, the committee continued.

The presentation ceremony will take place in Tokyo on July 27.

Last year, the Lutheran prelate and Pope Francis jointly led the ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation held on Oct. 31 in Lund, Sweden, and signed a joint statement.

NPF established its peace prize to honor and encourage individuals and organizations that have contributed significantly to interreligious cooperation, thereby furthering the cause of world peace.

The prize is named in honor of Nikkyo Niwano who is the NPF founder and first president of the lay Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, which established the foundation in 1978.

The first winner of the award was the late Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Helder Pessoa Camara in 1983. Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns also from Brazil, Swiss theologian Hans Kung and the Community of Sant’Egidio in Italy are Catholics who have been previous winners.

Securing The Vertical Space Of Cities – Analysis

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Cities are increasingly exploring vertical spaces as a viable and smart approach to address the physical challenges from growing urbanisation. Given that urbanisation could shape the nature of crime and security threats, the approach should involve forward planning for homeland security strategies.

By Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman*

A passenger drone (UAV) – EHang 184 – was unveiled in February 2017 at the World Government Summit held in Dubai where the Road and Transportation Agency of the United Arab Emirates then announced its plans to commence regular flights (flying taxis) by July 2017. In Singapore, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University are designing an air traffic management system for drones. In London, the new mixed-use Canaletto tower was designed to create vertical communities.

Such developments not only underscore the practical utility of new technologies and architectural ideas but more profoundly how growing urbanisation and the advent of smart cities herald the increasing territorialisation of the vertical space. The foreseeable mixed use of the vertical space in cities – vertical urbanism – would have strategic implications on homeland security.

Rise of the Vertical Space

To sustain long-term economic vibrancy and livability, cities and city-states are grappling with the complex challenges of accommodating increasing population density and economic activities amid land constraints. With innovation and the use of disruptive technologies, the optimisation of the urban space could expand radically beyond existing concepts of land use zoning and high-rise residential and commercial buildings to include the mixed use of the vertical space.

Socio-economic activities and infrastructure could develop in novel ways in the vertical space as the ground would be less horizontal. Futurists have envisioned the proliferation of vertical communities in cities as more, taller and smarter buildings sprout in each precinct, with amenities such as parks and schools at the upper levels. High-rise farms could feed the growing population of land-scarce cities while minimising the risks of droughts and diseases. Integrated road-rail viaducts such as the Tuas West Extension in Singapore could enhance transport connectivity while reducing road congestions. As the technology and regulations on the use of drones improve, the lower airspace could function as streets in the sky for certain public and commercial activities.

Indeed, the scale of vertical urbanism could potentially broaden as communities, corporations and governments discover novel applications from high-rise, high-density infrastructures and drone technology.

Strategic Considerations

Besides safety and privacy concerns, vertical urbanism could have deep policy implications as it entails the vertical expansion of public space and therefore introduces strategic considerations for governance, including homeland security. These considerations could include delineation between privately-owned and navigable lower airspace; circumstances where the aerial vantage point of drone traffic or high-rise activities could encroach into private space; enforcement of drone traffic; and monitoring of vertical space for law enforcement and security.

Vertical urbanism could expand the operating terrain and scope in the policing of public space, and create new points and lines of vulnerabilities that could complicate policing and emergency response efforts. The vertical space, in addition to the streets, could present additional vectors for evolving crime and security threats.

For example, the proliferation of drones in increasingly high-rise cities could inspire new criminal tactics of home invasion that evade the surveillance gaze of street-level police CCTVs. A terrorist drone attack on a high-rise communal space could generate an alarming spectacle and panic comparable to an attack on a crowded ground. Cyber threats arising from the use of drones for “rooftop packet sniffing” could become more substantial as more essential services in buildings, including homes and businesses, are connected to the smart infrastructure.

The security agencies’ resources would be stretched and their current operational tactics and procedures would be challenged. There would be implications on surveillance, and performance in terms of police presence and incident response.

Effective Vertical Policing

Securing the vertical space of cities of tomorrow would fundamentally entail more than traditional strategies for vertical patrols and neighbourhood watch. Strategies for intelligence, operational capabilities and community vigilance would need to adapt to meet the challenges. Intelligence-led policing would require a three-dimensional appreciation of the operating terrain as crime hotspots, persons of interest and anomalous activities including hostile drones might not be horizontally limited to the streets. This approach could also help ascertain whether any vertical space is optically or/and physically inaccessible to security forces, thus creating a vacuum in security.

Operational capabilities need to adapt by tailoring tactics, procedures and training to suit the vertical terrain, including in the interception of hostile drones. Leveraging new technologies – police drones, high-rise CCTVs, IoT sensors in buildings and etc. – could enable better mobility and reach in order to surveil and respond to incidents at vertical locations; as stated in a paper on “SMART policing for smart cities” commissioned by the Indian Police Foundation Community vigilance would be crucial in supporting security agencies to monitor and deter threats in the vertical space but this requires the elements of the security awareness and sense of guardianship in the community. These elements could be fostered through regular social interactions as indicated in a paper on “Planning for Vertical Community Safety” by the Australian Criminology Research Advisory Council. However, challenges abound as factors such as the physical features of high-rise buildings and socio-cultural differences arising from migration from within and outside the country could potentially hamper social interactions.

Given the need to develop effective vertical policing strategies, security agencies would have to participate in the planning and development of vertical space in cities. This should begin with close coordination with the public, private and community stakeholders from the outset.

*Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Jazz-Rock Fusion Pioneer Larry Coryell Dies At 73

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Fusion pioneer Larry Coryell, one of the first guitarists to win an audience bringing a rock edge to the jazz guitar, has died. He was 73, AFP reports.

The guitarist, who kept a busy recording and touring schedule and had concerts planned well into 2017, died of natural causes at a New York hotel Sunday, February 19 after playing two nights at the city’s Iridium club, his publicist said.

Coryell was best known for his 1970 album “Spaces” in which he stayed true to jazz but brought a new rock power and psychedelic ambience to the music, on which he teamed up with pianist Chick Corea and fellow guitarist John McLaughlin.

Coryell came to be known in some jazz circles as the “Godfather of Fusion” although jazz legend Miles Davis defined fusion with his rockier, improvisational album “Bitches Brew,” also released in 1970.

Born in Texas and raised in Seattle, Coryell arrived in New York in the 1960s and immersed himself in the jazz scene but also studied classical guitar and sitar.

In his autobiography, “Improvising: My Life in Music,” Coryell said he had wanted with fellow artists to make a “creative statement” that goes in a “modern/progressive direction.”

“We wanted to head towards combining the integrity of jazz with some of the glitz and excitement of rock and funk. We felt it was a combination of styles whose time had come,” he wrote.

Coryell later left New York for Florida and pursued much of his live career in Europe and Japan, where he said he found audiences more receptive to jazz fusion.

Coryell, a Buddhist, often embraced social issues in his music, if abstractly.

His album “Montgomery” explored the US civil rights struggle, while “Blues for Yoshihiro Hattori” reflected on the infamous 1992 incident in Louisiana where a Japanese exchange student was shot dead while wearing a Halloween costume.

Resetting China’s Energy Security Goals – Analysis

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By Manish Vaid

According to BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 (BP Stats 2016), China, with 23% of global energy consumption, is the largest energy consumer of the world. It also remains the world’s largest net importer of energy, with 16% of its energy needs met from imports, mostly from oil and natural gas, which comprises 61% and 30% respectively.

Further, BP Energy Outlook 2035 (BP Outlook) projects the share of oil and gas imports of China to grow by 79% and 40% respectively in 2035, signifying its unabated ‘going out strategy.’ It is well integrated into China’s energy security. The strategy initiated in 1999 by the Chinese government for promoting its investments abroad continues to help China aggressively seek overseas oil and gas.

However, BP Outlook suggests China’s steady shift towards low carbon fuels by reducing the consumption of dirty fossil fuels such as coal and oil. The share of coal in its energy mix, for instance, will come down from 64% in 2015 to 42% in 2035, while in the case of oil the increase is projected by just 2% to 20% in 2035. Interestingly, it is the enormous increase in the demand of cleaner energy fuels and renewables during the projected period which is set to make a big difference in China’s existing energy strategy and curbing emissions, significantly. The biggest projection in demand is observed in natural gas (186%), renewables in power (695%) and nuclear (644%).

With China still being the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, since it surpassed the US in 2007, its task is to move along a low-carbon path.

The biggest factor behind the recent shift towards low-carbon economy is the Paris Agreement, which is seen as a milestone in climate negotiations. Countries across the globe, including China, adopted international climate agreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in December 2015 by submitting their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). China’s NDC aimed to achieve peak carbon emissions by around 2030 or sooner; to lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from 2005 levels and to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in the primary energy mix to approximately 20%.

The effort to control the usage of coal and implement targets to increase the capacity of wind and solar and also to increase the share of natural gas is already evident in BP Stats 2016. There has been a significant increase in the consumption of non-fossil fuels in the primary energy mix with nuclear and renewables increasing by 28.9% and 20.9% respectively in 2015 on a year-on-year basis. The share of natural gas consumption too showed an upward trajectory with over 77% increase since 2010.

Beijing’s old economic model based on investment and manufacturing, enabled it to maintain double digit economic growth over the past three decades. It also resulted in China’s demand for energy to grow at 6% per annum over the past 20 years. But with recent attempts to restructure the old economic model and a policy commitment to move to cleaner, lower carbon fuels, that is less energy and emissions intensive has helped China upgrade its old growth model to a ‘new normal.’

Beijing’s old economic model based on investment and manufacturing, enabled it to maintain double digit economic growth over the past three decades.

Thus, recent attempts to shift towards a newer growth model from the quantity of input to the efficiency of input, through innovative means could help China curb its energy demand to just 2% per annum, from 6% at present, as projected by BP Outlook.

However, China will have to walk a tightrope between its continued oil ambitions and the need to act fast on low-carbon growth. The present low oil prices and the need to accumulate oil for its strategic reserves will challenge its urge to do away with energy and emissions intensive growth.

China continues to play with fire by increasing its dependence on oil imports through its dubious energy plans issued in January 2017 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA). Accordingly, China’s oil production targets set for 2020 is four million barrels per day (mbpd), down by 6.8% from 2015, while allowing net oil imports to increase by 17% during this period. In other words, China’s oil consumption over the next five year period would come almost entirely from oil imports. These developments are not only putting at risk China’s energy security goals, given its increasing reliance on politically vulnerable countries in the Middle East and Africa, but also the process of economic transformation through less energy intensive means.

Thus the co-existence of China’s geopolitical approach to energy security and its attempt to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in its primary energy mix will test its intention to decarbonise its economy. The origin of this strategy can be traced to the late 1990s,which was being pursued irrespective of the surge in oil prices. In 2003, Hu Jintao, then President and General Secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) articulated China’s energy security concerns through the term “Malacca Dilemma.” The fact that 80% of China’s energy moves through the waterway of the Malacca Strait, it poses great risks of being cut off, reflecting China’s energy security challenge.

China’s insecurities about its energy supplies is also reflected in its new One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative.

However, to allay its fear, China needs to intensify its association with several global energy institutions such as the International Energy Agency and capitalise on its recent engagement with it by integrating with the global energy market. This will not only help China insulate itself from external supply and price shocks but also help Beijing gain greater access to energy producers and buyers. Aligning with energy buyers, for instance, could help bring down the cost of procuring energy, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), significantly, while keeping intact its clean energy goals with greater usage of natural gas, a cleaner fossil fuel.

Further, China would do well to work on its core strength towards energy technology innovation, which has already placed China as the world’s largest wind power market as well as the largest producer of solar photovoltaic batteries and hydroelectricity. Efforts towards these have helped China in bringing electricity to more people than any other country in a very short period of time and the world stands to benefit from China.

China has taken a step forward in this regard under its new energy vision laid out by former Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2006 at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. Jintao called for greater international cooperation on supplies of oil and gas between both energy exporting and energy consuming countries, while ensuring secure energy transport routes with less politicisation of energy security. Besides being associated with the IEA, China can play a significant role in shaping its own sustainable clean energy agenda by using platforms such as the Group of Twenty (G20), the International Energy Forum, the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI), Energy Charter Treaty Organisation and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which though is not an energy governance platform per se, holds great promise for energy cooperation in Asia.

This will help China extricate itself from its old geopolitical approach towards energy security while offering greater scope for its integration into the global energy value chain.


Amnesty International Report Condemns Revival Of 1930s-Style ‘Us-Them’ Rhetoric – OpEd

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Many governments around the world over the last year have cynically revived 1930s-style rhetoric of dividing people into “us” and “them” and the movement away from the defense of human rights by major countries is pushing others to adopt “an analogous course,” according to Amnesty International’s annual report.

In 2016, Salil Shetti, Amnesty International’s secretary general says, many leaders “began to use rhetoric directed at the dehumanization of whole groups of the population, refugees and migrants, foreigners and representatives of other confessions” in order to gain power by “manipulating collective identity” (amnesty.org.ru/ru/air201617/).

“Ever more leaders of states and politicians who call themselves battlers against the establishment are introducing policies based on persecution, dehumanization and blaming particular groups of people for social problems,” thus undermining human rights in general and opening the way to repression.

The 175-page report on the state of human rights in 159 countries says that “the situation in the former USSR is generating growing concern.” In most former Soviet republics, it says, “repressions of dissidents and the political opposition continued.” The situation in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus was “especially bad,” and both Russia and Azerbaijan continued to limit the space “for basic freedoms.”

Over the course of 2016, civil society in Russia continued to lose ground to state repression. Ever more NGOs were put on the register of “foreign agents,” and three foreign NGOs were declared “undesirable organizations.” Moreover, the regime “ever more actively used anti-extremist laws against is opponents.”

In Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, Amnesty International continues, the human rights situation in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan continued to deteriorate rapidly. And as in 2014-2015, the conflict in the Donbass “negatively affected the situation with regard to human rights in Ukraine.”

Both the Ukrainian government and the pro-Moscow forces in the eastern portion of Ukraine violated the rights of many, with the latter seriously restricting the media to work freely on the territories of the “’self-proclaimed’” republics and the former violating media rights as well.

In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, the situation is far worse, with the occupiers restricting the rights of residents far more severely than Kyiv. The particular target of such abuse, Amnesty says, are the members of the Crimean Tatar Milli Mejlis, civic activists and independent journalists.

Type 2 Diabetes Prevented In 80 Percent Of At-Risk Patients

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The drug, which increases the amount of appetite-supressing hormones produced by the gut, was tested on overweight people with ‘prediabetes’. This is also known as ‘borderline diabetes,’ and is characterised by slightly increased blood sugar levels. The condition often leads to type 2 diabetes when untreated.

Prediabetes affects one in ten people in the UK, and progresses into diabetes in 5-10 per cent of patients within ten years. Prediabetes is curable with exercise and a healthier diet, but once it progresses into diabetes, it is significantly harder to treat. Both conditions are strongly linked to early death and poor health outcomes like nerve damage, blindness and amputation.

Now, obesity expert Professor Carel le Roux from Imperial College London and colleagues have found that a drug already used for obesity and diabetes can help to prevent progression into diabetes when combined with diet and exercise, and could even cure patients of prediabetes altogether.

The study is published in The Lancet and was funded by Novo Nordisk.

The researchers recruited 2,254 obese adults with prediabetes at 191 research sites in 27 countries worldwide. After splitting participants into two groups, they studied whether adding daily self-administered injections of liraglutide to diet and exercise helped to prevent progression into diabetes, compared to diet and exercise alone.

After three years, the researchers found that the patients given liraglutide were 80 per cent less likely to develop diabetes than those in the placebo group. In 60 per cent of those patients, prediabetes was reversed and patients returned to healthy blood sugar levels.

Of the patients who did go on to develop diabetes, those who were given liraglutide took nearly three times longer to develop the disease than those in the placebo group. In addition, liraglutide was linked to greater sustained weight loss after three years compared to placebo, with those on liraglutide losing 7 per cent body weight compared to 2 per cent body weight in the placebo group.

Co-author Professor le Roux, from Imperial’s Department of Medicine, said: “These groundbreaking results could pave the way for a widely used, effective, and safe drug to reverse prediabetes and prevent diabetes in 80 per cent of at-risk people. This could improve the health of the population and save millions on healthcare spending.”

Professor le Roux added that the drug seems to work by mimicking the action of naturally-produced hormone that supresses appetite, called GLP-1. This compound is released in response to food, and interacts with the brain’s hypothalamus to suppress appetite.

However previous studies have found that many obese people produce less of this hormone, which may lead to them over-eating. Liraglutide mimics the effects of GLP-1, essentially doing the hormone’s job to regulate appetite.

Professor le Roux said: “Liraglutide promotes weight loss by activating brain areas that control appetite and eating, so that people feel fuller sooner after meals and their food intake is reduced. Although liraglutide’s role in weight loss is well known, this is the first time it has been shown to essentially reverse prediabetes and prevent diabetes, albeit with the help of diet and exercise.”

Liraglutide is already being used to manage weight and diabetes, but it is expensive and not yet widely available in the UK. However, future studies could help develop a test for GLP-1 deficiency, to ensure the drug is given only to those who would benefit. Alternatively, patients could undergo a 12 week trial where the drug is stopped if there is no improvement within that time.

Low Snowpacks Of 2014, 2015 May Become Increasingly Common With Warmer Conditions

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Oregon experienced very low snowpack levels in 2014 and historically low snowpack levels in 2015; now a new study suggests that these occurrences may not be anomalous in the future and could become much more common if average temperatures warm just two degrees (Celsius).

The low snowpack levels were linked to warmer temperatures and not a lack of precipitation, the researchers say. Based on simulations of previous and predicted snowpack, the study suggests that by mid-century, years like 2015 may happen about once a decade, while snowpack levels similar to 2014 will take place every 4-5 years.

Results of the study, which was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation, have just been published the journal The Cryosphere.

“It is a cautionary tale,” said lead author Eric Sproles, who conducted much of the research as a doctoral student at Oregon State University and has been working as a hydrologist in Chile. “California received a lot of attention for its drought, but the economic and environmental impacts from those two low-snowpack years were profound in the Pacific Northwest.”

“We set out to learn whether they were just off years, or if they would be likely to happen more often with increased warming. Unfortunately, the data show these will become more commonplace.”

The key, Sproles said, is what happened in the Cascade Mountains at an elevation of around 4,000 feet – a level that frequently is the boundary between rain and snow. In 2014, winter precipitation in the mountain region was 96 percent of normal and overall temperatures were 0.7 degrees (C) warmer than normal. But temperatures in that snow zone were 2.7 degrees (C) warmer than average.

The winter of 2014 led to drier springtime conditions and moderate to severe drought throughout western Oregon. That pattern was even stronger in 2015. A fair amount of precipitation still fell – 78 percent of normal – but temperatures in the snow zone were 3.3 degrees (C), or 5.9 degrees (F) warmer than average.

On March 1 of 2015, 47 percent of the snow monitoring sites in the Willamette River basin registered zero “snow water equivalent” – the amount of water stored in snowpack.

“The result was a significantly reduced stream flow in the summer, water quality concerns in the Willamette Valley, an increase in wildfires, high fish mortality and a dreadful season for ski resorts,” said Sproles, who worked with Anne Nolin and Travis Roth in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences on the project. “Hoodoo Ski Area was open for only a few weekends in 2013-14, and in 2015, they suspended operations in mid-January – the shortest season in their 77-year history.”

Detroit Reservoir in the adjacent Santiam basin had reservoir levels that were as much as 21 meters (or 68 feet) below capacity, and was plagued by high levels of harmful blue-green algae concentrations.

The study focused on the McKenzie River basin, which has a major influence on the Willamette River – all the way to Portland. In fact, during summer months nearly 25 percent of the water in the Willamette at its confluence with the Columbia River originates from the McKenzie. As much as 60 to 80 percent of the volume of the Willamette River in the summer originates from precipitation that fell above 4,000 feet.

“The study shows how incredibly sensitive the region’s snowpack is to increasing temperatures,” Sproles said. “The low snow years took place even though precipitation wasn’t that bad. But when it falls as rain instead of snow, it loses that ability to function as a natural reservoir in the mountains.”

The typically consistent flow of the McKenzie River in the summer of 2015 was only at 63 percent of its median flow.

“We don’t really know yet the impact of the 2015 low snowpack because some of the water takes as long as seven years to percolate through the ground and end up in the Willamette River,” Sproles said.

A comparatively cold and wet winter has made many Oregonians forget about the low-snowpack years of 2014 and 2015, Sproles said, but the region has been in a La Niña cycle – which is typically colder and wetter – and is expected to move toward neutral conditions by the end of February.

“It seems like much of the state has been socked with snow and ice this winter,” Sproles said, “but despite that, snowpack for the Sandy and Hood River basins is only 110 percent of normal and the Willamette basin snowpack is 124 percent of normal. That is certainly positive, but it seems like those numbers would be a lot higher considering what kind of winter we’ve had in the valley.”

Discovered Seven Small Planets Orbiting Red Dwarf Star

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Astronomers using the TRAPPIST-South telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as other telescopes around the world [1], have now confirmed the existence of at least seven small planets orbiting the cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 [2]. All the planets, labelled TRAPPIST-1b, c, d, e, f, g and h in order of increasing distance from their parent star, have sizes similar to Earth [3].

Dips in the star’s light output caused by each of the seven planets passing in front of it (astronomy) — events known as transits — allowed the astronomers to infer information about their sizes, compositions and orbits [4]. They found that at least the inner six planets are comparable in both size and temperature to the Earth.

Lead author Michaël Gillon of the STAR Institute at the University of Liège in Belgium is delighted by the findings: “This is an amazing planetary system — not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to the Earth!”

With just 8% the mass of the Sun, TRAPPIST-1 is very small in stellar terms — only marginally bigger than the planet Jupiter — and though nearby in the constellation Aquarius (constellation) ) (The Water Carrier), it appears very dim. Astronomers expected that such dwarf stars might host many Earth-sized planets in tight orbits, making them promising targets in the hunt for extraterrestrial life, but TRAPPIST-1 is the first such system to be found.

Co-author Amaury Triaud expanded: “The energy output from dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 is much weaker than that of our Sun. Planets would need to be in far closer orbits than we see in the Solar System if there is to be surface water. Fortunately, it seems that this kind of compact configuration is just what we see around TRAPPIST-1!”

The team determined that all the planets in the system are similar in size to Earth and Venus in the Solar System, or slightly smaller. The density measurements suggest that at least the innermost six are probably rocky in composition.

The planetary orbits are not much larger than that of Jupiter’s Galilean moon system, and much smaller than the orbit of Mercury in the Solar System. However, TRAPPIST-1’s small size and low temperature mean that the energy input to its planets is similar to that received by the inner planets in our Solar System; TRAPPIST-1c, d and f receive similar amounts of energy to Venus, Earth and Mars, respectively.

All seven planets discovered in the system could potentially have liquid water on their surfaces, though their orbital distances make some of them more likely candidates than others. Climate models suggest the innermost planets, TRAPPIST-1b, c and d, are probably too hot to support liquid water, except maybe on a small fraction of their surfaces.

The orbital distance of the system’s outermost planet, TRAPPIST-1h, is unconfirmed, though it is likely to be too distant and cold to harbour liquid water — assuming no alternative heating processes are occurring [5]. TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g, however, represent the holy grail for planet-hunting astronomers, as they orbit in the star’s habitable zone[6].

These new discoveries make the TRAPPIST-1 system a very important target for future study. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is already being used to search for atmospheres around the planets and team member Emmanuël Jehin is excited about the future possibilities: “With the upcoming generation of telescopes, such as ESO’s European Extremely Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope , we will soon be able to search for water and perhaps even evidence of life on these worlds.”

Notes:

[1] As well as the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope , the team used many ground-based facilities: TRAPPIST-South at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, HAWK-I on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, TRAPPIST-North in Morocco, the 3.8-metre UKIRT in Hawaii, the 2-metre Liverpool and 4-metre William Herschel telescopes at La Palma in the Canary Islands, and the 1-metre SAAO telescope in South Africa.

[2] TRAPPIST-South (the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope-South) is a Belgian 0.6-metre robotic telescope operated from the University of Liège and based at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. It spends much of its time monitoring the light from around 60 of the nearest ultracool dwarf stars and brown dwarfs (“stars” which are not quite massive enough to initiate sustained nuclear fusion in their cores), looking for evidence of planetary transits. TRAPPIST-South, along with its twin TRAPPIST-North, are the forerunners to the SPECULOOS system, which is currently being installed at ESO’s Paranal Observatory.

[3] In early 2016, a team of astronomers, also led by Michaël Gillon announced the discovery of three planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1. They intensified their follow-up observations of the system mainly because of a remarkable triple transit that they observed with the HAWK-I instrument on the VLT. This transit showed clearly that at least one other unknown planet was orbiting the star. And that historic light curve shows for the first time three temperate Earth-sized planets, two of them in the habitable zone, passing in front of their star at the same time!

[4] This is one of the main methods that astronomers use to identify the presence of a planet around a star. They look at the light coming from the star to see if some of the light is blocked as the planet passes in front of its host star on the line of sight to Earth — it transits (astronomy) the star, as astronomers say. As the planet orbits around its star, we expect to see regular small dips in the light coming from the star as the planet moves in front of it.

[5] Such processes could include tidal heating, whereby the gravitational pull of TRAPPIST-1 causes the planet to repeatedly deform, leading to inner frictional forces and the generation of heat. This process drives the active volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io. If TRAPPIST-1h has also retained a primordial hydrogen-rich atmosphere, the rate of heat loss could be very low.

[6] This discovery also represents the largest known chain of exoplanets orbiting in near-resonance with each other. The astronomers carefully measured how long it takes for each planet in the system to complete one orbit around TRAPPIST-1 — known as the revolution period — and then calculated the ratio of each planet’s period and that of its next more distant neighbour. The innermost six TRAPPIST-1 planets have period ratios with their neighbours that are very close to simple ratios, such as 5:3 or 3:2. This means that the planets most likely formed together further from their star, and have since moved inwards into their current configuration. If so, they could be low-density and volatile-rich worlds, suggesting an icy surface and/or an atmosphere.

Sudan: Islamists Assail Journalist Over Column On Public Health

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Wednesday it is alarmed to learn that radical Islamists have been threatening and attacking the journalist Shamael Al-Nur in the media ever since she denounced the government’s public health policies in a column in the independent newspaper El Tayar on 2 February.

Her Islamist critics have even accused her of apostasy, which is punishable by death under the Sharia law in force in Sudan since 1983.

Headlined “The Virtue Mania” and alluding to the fact that less than 3% of Sudan’s budget is allocated to health and education, Al-Nur’s column said: “Islamic regimes are preoccupied with matters of virtue, women’s dress, appearance, more than health and education issues.”

“It is easy to cut spending on health in the state budget, but it is very difficult for the Ministry of Health to distribute condoms,” the article concluded.

Those leading the verbal offensive against Al-Nur include Mustafa Al-Tayeb, the editor of the newspaper El-Sina and uncle of President Omar Al-Bashir. He likened her to a “worm” and said she had to be prevented from corrupting the country’s values.

A radical imam who supports Al-Qaeda, Mohamed Ali al-Gazouli, attacked her in the same newspaper on 16 February and urged his followers the next day to “get up to protect your religion.” He also threatened to bring a judicial complaint against her accusing her of apostasy.

“The publication of this kind of threat in the newspapers is unacceptable and clearly shows the arbitrary to which media freedom is submitted in Sudan,” said Cléa Kahn-Sriber, the head of RSF’s Africa desk.

“After the media were banned from discussing economic reforms and the conflict in Darfur, will it now be impossible for women to talk about their health? And yet publicly threatening a journalist seems to pose no problem! We urge the authorities to do what is necessary to protect Al-Nur and the rest of Al-Tayar’s personnel and to condemn these calls for hate and violence.”

Al-Nur has filed a complaint against Al-Tayeb, accusing him of inciting hatred and extremism. El Tayar has stood by Al-Nur, requesting police protection for her. But, to RSF’s knowledge, no protective measures have so far been taken.

Faisal ElBagir, the coordinator of the Journalists Association for Human Rights (JAHR), attributed the virulence of the response to Al-Nur’s column to her sex. “If a man had written this column, he would not have gotten such a fierce reaction,” he said.

Al Tayar has paid a high price of being outspoken. The authorities have often confiscated entire issues as they came off the press and its editor, Osman Mirghani, was beaten unconscious in July 2014 after referring to the normalization of relations with Israel during a radio debate.

The security services closed the newspaper in December 2015 after it criticized the finance ministry in an editorial. In May 2014, it was suspended again for four months without any grounds being given.

Sudan is ranked near the bottom of RSF’s2016 World Press Freedom Index (174th out of 180 countries) and President Al-Bashir is on RSF’s 2016 list of press freedom predators.

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