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Cataloging Complex Flavors Of American-Made Goat Cheese

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Nutty? Salty? Soapy? Goaty? Those are some of the descriptions Kansas State University and K-State Olathe researchers list in a new flavor lexicon that characterizes goat cheeses made in the U.S.

Martin Talavera, assistant professor of sensory analysis and consumer behavior at K-State Olathe, and Delores Chambers, professor of food, nutrition, dietetics and health and co-director of Kansas State University’s Center for Sensory Analysis and Consumer Behavior, catalog the comprehensive list of descriptors and the science behind them in the study, “Flavor lexicon and characteristics of artisan goat cheese from the United States.” It was recently published in the Journal of Sensory Studies.

The lexicon describes the specific flavor characteristics of American-produced cheeses made from goat milk. While lexicons exist for cheddar, Swiss and other types of cheeses, cheese made from goat milk previously had no such guide.

Flavor lexicons serve as important production tools for numerous aspects of cheesemaking — particularly adapting cheeses to meet consumer interests, Talavera said. For example, previous research shows that American consumers currently prefer more mild, less “goaty” flavors of cheeses that are made with goat milk. With a standardized flavor lexicon, cheesemakers could reduce the less desirable flavors in cheeses and other products made with goat milk and instead scale up the individual flavors and flavor combinations that match consumer demand.

Researchers conducted the study using 47 artisan cheeses made from goat milk. Cheese samples were collected from California, Texas, Kansas, Georgia, Maryland, Wisconsin, Colorado and Connecticut. Samples included goat cheeses of the cheddar-style — those with waxy, nutty and sweet flavors; feta-style — those with saltier flavor profiles; che?vre-style — those with milder flavors; and mold-ripened — cheeses that were more pungent and sharp.

Cheese samples were evaluated at the Center for Sensory Analysis and Consumer Behavior by a trained sensory panel, which was given previously developed lexicons for cheese products. Panelists sampled each cheese and then broke down the flavors into its most basic components, such as sour, bitter and buttery. Cheeses also were analyzed for their aroma, pungency, dairy sweetness, dairy sourness and mouthfeel, among other attributes.

All cheeses also carried a unique goaty flavor.

“Goaty is a very unique characteristic flavor attribute for products made out of goat milk,” Talavera said. “It’s very common across all of the different cheese styles, but it tended to be slightly higher for products with mold growth, which have a more complex flavor.”

Results from the goat cheese analysis were then compared to the flavors on the existing cheese lexicons.

Researchers found that the cheeses made with goat milk evaluated in the study had five unique flavor characteristics — overall dairy, white pepper, lemon, black walnut and soapy. The flavor attributes of soy sauce, ashy/sooty and fish oil — flavors present in some cheeses made from cow milk –were not present in the cheeses made from goat milk that were evaluated in the study.

In total, researchers generated complete flavor profiles for each of the 47 goat cheese samples evaluated using 39 flavor attributes.

“The thought is that a producer can now use this flavor lexicon and its information as a resource for development, product benchmarking and quality control of goat cheeses,” Talavera said. “A new producer, for example, can also learn what types of products are currently available on the market and the main flavors that consumers expect in certain varieties of goat cheese.”


More Black Police Won’t Decrease Police-Involved Homicides Of Black Citizens

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Hiring more black police officers is not a viable strategy for reducing police-involved homicides of black citizens in most cities, according to new Indiana University research that is the first in-depth study of this increasingly urgent public policy question.

IU researchers tested a potential solution that emerged following the police shooting of an unarmed black citizen in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as similar homicides in more than a dozen other cities. The shootings triggered nationwide “Black Lives Matter” protests and heated political debates.

The study finds that, for many cities, it would take a massive increase in the percentage of black police officers to reduce the number of police-involved shootings of black citizens. Adding just a few black officers, the researchers say, won’t help and might make matters worse.

“More black officers are seen as a way to directly reduce unnecessary violence between police and citizens,” said study co-author Sean Nicholson-Crotty. “We found that, for the vast majority of cities, simply increasing the percentage of black officers is not an effective solution.

“There may be other good reasons to have a police force that is more representative,” he said, “but there is little evidence that more black cops will result in fewer homicides of black citizens.”

The full analysis by IU researchers is presented in the article, “Will More Black Cops Matter? Officer Race and Police-Involved Homicides of Black Citizens.” It will appear in the March/April issue of Public Administration Review as part of a symposium on policing and race.

Until recently, no data existed that allowed a study of police homicides, according to the authors. Local law enforcement agencies have not been compelled to report deaths in custody by race, and there was no federal source for the information. To produce the first peer-reviewed study of its type, Nicholson-Crotty and co-researchers Jill Nicholson-Crotty and Sergio Fernandez, all from IU’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, used new data from two sources:

  • Mapping Police Violence, an advocacy group that developed a database of police homicides in 2014 in the 100 largest American cities.
  • A Washington Post collection of data on police-involved homicides in 2015.

Previous studies have examined the effect of hiring more black officers on policing outcomes such as arrests, citizen complaints and traffic stops. Findings were mixed. The studies found that greater representation reduces discrimination in some cases, has no effect in others and leads to more discrimination against black citizens in yet other situations. Furthermore, the IU researchers argue, the studies do not tell us much about the likely impact on police-involved homicides.

“Because of these inconsistent conclusions, we want to find out if there’s a critical mass, a point at which the impact of more black officers on police-involved homicides changes from positive or neutral to negative,” Jill Nicholson-Crotty said.

The authors found that, until the number of black officers reached between 35 percent and 40 percent of the police force, adding black officers had no effect on the number of police-involved shootings of black citizens or was associated with a higher number of such shootings. After the number of black officers surpassed between 35 percent and 40 percent, they found, adding black officers had no effect and, in some cases, may have been associated with a lower number of police-involved shootings of black citizens.

“At that point [35 to 40 percent] and higher, individual officers may become less likely to discriminate against black citizens and more inclined to assume a minority advocacy role,” Fernandez said.

The sticking point is that in Ferguson and most other places, even doubling or tripling the number of black officers won’t result in a percentage as high as 35 percent to 40 percent. The authors also caution that: “In most cities, a critical mass of black officers on the police force can be achieved only by over-representing blacks and making bureaucracy even less representative of the community it serves.”

They say more investigation is needed to find solutions and fully understand how questions of race affect protection of peace and administration of justice.

Does Donald Trump Believe In American Civil Religion? If So, Which One? – OpEd

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By Walter A. McDougall*

(FPRI) — The subject to be discussed is American Civil Religion, its problematical relationship to Biblical religion, and especially its sometimes-nefarious influence on U.S. foreign policy. But for this session I thought to describe what we already knew and have recently learned about the faith and practice of Donald Trump. His civil religious rhetoric and theatrics have already proven to be as surprising, indeed unprecedented, as his political campaign and governing style.

Let me begin by reciting a blog I wrote for Yale University Press on the occasion of its publication of my new book in November, just after Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election. That was less than three months ago, but already seems like another age:

Americans [I wrote] are saying good riddance to the ugly 2016 campaign. Many believe Donald Trump, having won, will cease the shock-jock talk and govern as the pragmatic businessman he purports to be. Most experts predict that Trump, like every president before him, will be constrained by the Congress, judiciary, warring bureaucracies, and uncontrollable foreign powers. Thus did Harry Truman famously say of his successor, General Dwight Eisenhower, “Poor Ike. He’ll say do this and do that and nothing at all will happen.” No doubt opponents and supporters alike hope the same will be true of a splenetic, impulsive President Trump.

However, the truth is our long, national nightmare is far from over, regardless of Trump’s performance, because the demographic and economic shifts that caused this year’s political earthquake remain. The widespread resentment of political correctness, open borders, and globalization will only increase as the elites who control the levers of power push back or co-opt the Trump administration. No doubt international banks, multinational corporations, transnational foundations, non-governmental and international organizations, and their intellectual publicity agents in think tanks, universities, and the media have already started to plan how to frustrate dangerous atavistic nationalism in Europe and now America. So what appears now to be a populist victory over globalization may turn out to have been the pathetic yawp of believers in a dying American Civil Religion (ACR) that has morphed since the end of the Cold War into an abortive Global Civil Religion.

This year the Internet has been drenched with speculation about what the Trump campaign means for the ACR that was first described by sociologist Robert Bellah fifty years ago. A Google search for “Trump and American Civil Religion” or “Trump’s civil religious rhetoric” yields a plethora of thoughtful, informed articles and blogs that nevertheless could not disagree more about what that meaning may be. Some are obituaries because their authors suspect Trump has repudiated the idealism characteristic of ACR. Others argue that Trump represents the worst variety of ACR: the chauvinistic Captain America culture that demonizes “the other” and promises only that Americans start winning again. Still others suggest the Trump campaign is the logical outcome of a civil religion that identifies the United States as a new Promised Land inhabited by a new Chosen People blessed by the Almighty with power and prosperity. Now, civil faith is a powerful glue that can help a large, diverse people cohere in good times and bad. But once untethered from the Biblical message that even (or especially) a chosen people come under judgment when they abandon God’s commandments, civil religious solipsism based on vox populi vox dei theology can become destructive, even suicidal.

Is that the case with the worldly, egoistical Trump? He says his favorite Bible verse is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” the lex talionis which he probably considers a mandate for vengeance (but in fact sternly limits it because “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”). Not that Trump was unchurched. His family attended Marble Collegiate in New York City, a Presbyterian congregation presided over by Norman Vincent Peale, the best-selling author of The Power of Positive Thinking. Donald might have learned no theology from Peale or his strong-willed father, but he evidently absorbed a prosperity gospel that, so far as it goes, is very compatible with ACR. But the evidence of Trump’s spiritual life is still thin and the campaign taught us nothing. Rarely do candidates get more specific than “God bless America” lest they sound sectarian, and appeal to specific constituencies only through issues (such as the strong pro-life stand taken by Trump in the third debate). The real proof of his ACR piety will be revealed at his inauguration, for that is the moment when presidents assume the high priestly mantle and usually reassure the whole nation of their ACR orthodoxy. Just view the videos of Barack Obama’s second inauguration, a patriotic liturgy so “high church” it even eclipsed the second George W. Bush inaugural.

What Bellah meant by civil religion was the general belief in a transcendent, spiritual reality guiding the nation through space and time like Jawheh led the Israelites, a cult embodied in myth, ritual and symbol, and a vaguely Unitarian faith ritually invoked by its presidents and other leaders. That transcendent, spiritual reality is what distinguishes civil religion from nationalism and other secular ideologies. Americans never worshiped their government, a fact made palpable by the checks and balances of their Constitution. Rather they worshiped the deity who made them one out of many (e pluribus unum), a new order for the ages (novus ordo seclorum), and blessed their undertakings (annuit coeptis). Consider it a divine right republicanism that replaced divine right of kings.

However, since Bellah did not delve deeply into the phases of American history he missed the fact that at least three ACR’s, or competing orthodoxies, evolved over time as the nation grew into a world power and various sectors came to dominate its economy’s commanding heights. During the nineteenth-century when most white Americans were farmers, merchants, craftsmen, and professionals (in short, proprietors), a Classical ACR preached prudence, frugality, federalism, modest self-government, and a foreign policy focused only on expansion in North America. The Civil War brought wrenching change, but the same list of virtues animated American politics down to the 1890s. By then, however, industrialization, urbanization, mass immigration radically changed American economics, social composition, and dominant cultures. People once self-employed went to the cities and turned into dependent employees of big corporations. Pathologies familiar to us today such as racial and ethnic strife, drug and alcohol addiction, crimes and killings tormented the cities. Political, academic, and clerical elites adjusted to industrialization by presiding over a new “church”, a Progressive ACR in which bureaucratic regulation, public spending, overseas imperialism, and crusades to make the world safe for democracy–forbidden fruit under the old dispensation–became holy sacraments. To be sure, Woodrow Wilson’s utopian project ended in carnage and disillusionment and was followed a decade later by that plague of locusts, the Great Depression. So Americans stumbled through twenty years confused about their ACR, conflicted as to what God intended their sacred nation to do in the twentieth century.

Not even Franklin Roosevelt’s dogged revival of Progressive ACR during World War II sufficed to answer that question. The outbreak of Cold War did. After 1945 the United States exercised a veritable hegemony over much of Eurasia, the Americas, and the oceans between. So when the Soviet Union threatened rather than joined the U.S.-led new world order, the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations rallied a broad consensus behind a militant ACR. God called Americans to lead the Free World and rewarded them for it with unprecedented prosperity. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s even the working classes saw their wages, security, political clout, and dignity soar to unprecedented heights. They in return formed the patriotic base who willingly paid taxes, waved flags, and gave their sons to the military. They believed their elites when they promised nothing less than a united humanity and perfect society, a New Jerusalem and heaven-on-earth sure to arrive on that glorious day the Communist bloc collapsed.

What middle-class and blue-collar Americans did not perceive was the ascent during those decades of the post-industrial financial sector to the commanding heights of the once national, now increasingly global, economy. That sector counted on free flows of capital, goods, ideas, and people across borders and thus had contempt for national sovereignty and messy democracy. Fast forward to the twenty-first century. Trump voters may be distinguished by various, sometimes contradictory traits to be expected of 47% of the electorate. But it is safe to say nearly all are nostalgic or subconscious believers in the Progressive ACR which stipulated American exceptionalism and which used to provide Trump’s constituencies with economic opportunity and affirmation of their traditional values.

Some of Trump’s voters may even be nostalgic or subconscious believers in the old Classical ACR eloquently expressed by President Benjamin Harrison who was elected in 1888. He admonished Americans that riches were not what exalted a people. “It is a pure, clean, high, intellectual, moral, and God-fearing citizenship that is our glory and security as a Nation.” The centerpiece of his moral economy was the tariff because it protected the jobs and elevated the wages of workers. “God forbid,” said Harrison, “that the day should ever come when, in the American mind, the thought of man as a ‘consumer’ shall submerge the old American thought of man as a creature of God, endowed with ‘unalienable rights.’”

The Trump phenomenon burst through this year because the Progressive and financial elites tried to shove extreme agendas down the throats of threatened people whose real wages had stagnated for thirty-five years, and because the “end of history” Global Civil Religion promised after the Cold War was over has failed. But the Trump election does not signal the beginning of some whole new era. It is likely the last hurrah (to quote Ronald Reagan’s prophecy about Marxism) of “a chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.”

That was November. What have learned about Trump since? Or what does he want us to think we have learned, because Trump the businessman is a masterful shape-shifting image creator, a genius of marketing whose purpose is to sell a brand through a mixture of illusion and truth. In fact, he is so good that his campaign repeatedly flummoxed the establishment politicians and spin-masters of both political parties. And to judge from his extraordinary inaugural, we have learned – or think we have learned – that an unusually profane candidate has been miraculously transformed into an unusually sacred high priest of American Civil Religion. For the liturgy, symbolism, and rhetoric of President Trump’s inauguration was the most overt, explicit equation of the cross and the flag in American history.

Did you watch the inauguration? Not just Trump’s speech, but the whole thing? It was simply unprecedented, and not only because Trump is the first person elected president with no military or governmental experience, plus the oldest person to assume the presidency, plus the wealthiest man. The inaugural ceremony did not begin with the usual invocation, but rather three prayers of invocation by various clergy. The first, by Cardinal Dolan, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, was typical of presidential inaugurations in that it was non-sectarian. He crossed himself, but otherwise did not use the J-word which some non-Christians find offensive, and chose as his text a passage from the Wisdom of Solomon. The second, by Dr. Samuel Rodriguez, broke with precedent by quoting at length from the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew with its civil religious tropes about “ye shall be as a city upon a hill” and “shall not hide your lamp under a basket.” He concluded, “respectfully in Jesus’ name. Amen.” The third, by pastor Paul White, explicitly called the United States a blessed nation, a gift from God, one nation under God, and a beacon of hope for all men, asked for God to bestow on the nation and its new president wisdom, justice, righteousness, and compassion, and concluded, “Glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

I tell you, not even George W. Bush dared such sectarian language. In fact, Bush was the first president to welcome Muslims into the American church lest the world conclude his Global War on Terror was a religious crusade.

After Trump took the oath of office with his hand on the Lincoln Bible and his family Bible, the new high priest delivered his inaugural address, which he also swore that he wrote himself (though subsequent reports attribute it to his advisers Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon). It was unusually short – just 16 minutes long – but stuffed with unusually many rhetorical echoes. His assurance that he meant to transfer power from Washington, D.C., back to the American people was an echo of Ronald Reagan’s statement that government is not the solution to America’s problems, government is the problem. Trump then promised the “forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” which echoed Franklin Roosevelt’s appeal to the common man and Richard Nixon’s appeal to the Silent Majority. Trump then ticked off a litany of woes that had left many Americans without jobs, without security, without good education, without hope while the rich and powerful exploited globalization. But from now on, he promised, “it’s going to be America First.” Needless to say, much of the establishment media howled in protest against that resurrection of an isolationist phrase from 1940-41, even insinuating that Trump might be a Nazi sympathizer. What they don’t tell you is that the America First Committee was a reputable organization whose membership included future-President Gerald Ford, future Vice Presidential candidate Sargent Shriver, and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, and received donations from the future President John F. Kennedy, not to mention all manner of leaders from American business and academics.

Next, Trump promised America will start winning again, winning like never before, which certainly expresses the Power of Positive Thinking that he learned as a boy from his father as well as his pastor Norman Vincent Peale. Next, Trump promised the United States would seek “friendship and good will with the nations of the world,” a direct quote from Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address. Next, Trump promised “we will not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example,” a virtual quote from John Quincy Adams’s famous speech of 1821. Trump then quoted from Psalm 133 to admonish Americans to live in unity, and asserted that “when America is united, America is totally unstoppable” – an echo of Truman’s and Kennedy’s over-the-top rhetoric. Trump echoed nearly all previous presidents-slash-high priests of the civil religion when he declared us “protected by God” and “infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.” Finally, Trump quoted his own stump speech in concluding “We will make American strong again … wealthy again … proud again … safe again … and, yes, great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.”

The benedictions followed, again, not one, but three! The first clergyman to speak was a rabbi, but he was followed by Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, who quoted from 1 Timothy to the effect that we worship “one God and one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all” and concluded, “In Jesus’ name. Amen.” Finally, the African-American Bishop Wayne T. Jackson combined Old and New Testament scriptures, concluding “May the Lord bless America … in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.”

No president in American history – not one – has ever sanctioned such public displays of sectarian faith. Civil religion does not draw attention to itself. Civil religion is meant to be unspoken, taken for granted, merely accepted. Civil religious rhetoric has traditionally been communicated through what Aristotle called enthymemes: incomplete, implied syllogisms that invite the audience to supply the missing premise and complete the argument themselves. What made the Trump inauguration unique was the fact that he broke all the rules by allowing (encouraging?) explicit confessions of Christian faith and explicit statements about God’s partisanship.

What are we to make of that and what might it mean for America and the world? The hints offered by Trump’s travel ban from selected Muslim nations and his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, suggest he champions what The Atlantic magazine has called, “an agenda of religious nationalism.” He even emphasized that religious freedom is under assault abroad, from Islamic terrorists, and at home, from runaway political correctness. Hence, his promise to seek repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits clergy and churches from endorsing political candidates. Interestingly, that provision dates from 1954, the very era when President Eisenhower was drenching Cold War America with ecumenical civil religion, including the National Prayer Breakfast and the addition of “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The civil religion of that era preached that all Protestants, Catholics, and Jews should worship at the altar of the American Way of Life, but not assert their sectarian differences in any disturbing way. Perhaps Trump, a neophyte to our politics, does not understand that subtlety. Or perhaps he was trying to solidify the surprising support he received from evangelical voters. Or perhaps the inauguration as a whole reflected the influence of Trump’s éminence grise Steve Bannon, who might have inspired Trump’s religious nationalism and now hopes it will impact U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

If so, then the pretense of global civil religion as defined by globalization, open borders, multi-culturalism, political correctness, and too often apostasy may well be challenged by some form of resurgent American Civil Religion, with unpredictable consequences for church and state.

The above article is based on a lecture given at the Templeton College Forum at Eastern University on February 17, 2017.    

About the author:
*Walter A. McDougall is the Co-Chair of FPRI’s Madeleine and W.W. Keen Butcher History Institute, Chairman of FPRI Board of Advisors, Chair of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West, and sits on the Board of Editors for FPRI’s journal, Orbis. He is the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Source:
This article was published at FPRI

Counter-Extremism In Pakistan: Success Or Falling Short? – Analysis

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Two years on from the development of the Pakistani government’s flagship plan to tackle terrorism, has it had any success?

By Zahid Shahab Ahmed*

In October 2016, a terrorist attack aiming to kill an entire generation of Quetta’s lawyers took place in Pakistan. The suicide bomber attack killed 72, including 53 lawyers, and injured another 122 people.

In response, Pakistan’s judicial commission has released the Quetta Commission Report. This largely criticises the government’s inaction in regards to the attack. This critique is a welcome and timely suggestion for an evaluation of the National Action Plan (NAP) which was implemented approximately two years ago.

The NAP was created following a previous attack, on the Army Public School in Peshawar, that killed 133 children. It is a 20-point counter-terrorism and counter-extremism plan, formulated through a consensus of civil and military leadership. It covers – if vaguely – a range of issues, including the government’s actions on madrassa registration, the repatriation of Afghan refugees, the jurisdiction of military courts, and action against terrorist funding.

The new Quetta Commission Report is unique because of the unprecedented effort and research that went into it. It is easy to blame outside actors or influences, such as India, for terrorist attacks that take place in Pakistan, which is what the government often tries to do. In this report, the Commission clearly stated that there was no outside hand in the attack.

While international reports point to a decreasing trend in terrorism in Pakistan, the Quetta Commission Report has raised fresh concerns about the ineffectiveness of the NAP and whether it is truly working to prevent violent extremism.

Since its inception, criticisms of the NAP have included its deficiency in particular targets regarding the curbing of violent extremism. This includes, for example, action against material promoting hatred, extremism, sectarianism and intolerance, as well as its non-existent timeline. Scholars have also criticised the plan for reasons that go beyond inadequate targets for preventing violent extremism.

Moeed Yusuf questions the relevance of issues such as political reconciliation in Balochistan and the repatriation of Afghan refugees. Bringing the issue of Balochistan under a plan focused on counter-terrorism and countering extremism itself creates an obstacle to reconciliation with militants in Balochistan. The government has not prepared and presented a detailed rationale for the 20-point plan.

The Commission has specifically highlighted the NAP’s weaknesses in multiple areas, including the negative role of the media, a lack of counter narratives, insufficient protection for religious minorities, and the limited role of the National Security Advisor (NSA), Lieutenant General (retired) Janjua. One of the findings of the report is that Janjua, does not have access to data on terrorist attacks. It has also called out the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony for not doing any interfaith related work.

Instead of taking the recommendations of the Quetta Commission seriously, the government has responded aggressively. The Interior Minister, Nisar Ali, has taken criticism personally. “I will challenge the commission’s report at every forum and I request the Supreme Court to fix the case for hearing it as early as possible,” he said. This is not surprising, given that the government is dominated by a stubborn mindset. The government took a defensive position soon after whistle-blowers like Sherry Rehman started talking about the report.

For a change, the government should show some respect and flexibility by seriously addressing a range of much-needed recommendations from the Quetta Commission Report. If they did, the Quetta Commission report could act as a timely opportunity to conduct a much needed appraisal of the NAP.

The role of peacebuilders is crucial in this context, to assist relevant governmental bodies, especially the Ministry of Interior, to ensure that the NAP addresses the root causes and symptoms of terrorism and violent extremism. In this regard, many local and international NGOs have experience of peacebuilding work at grassroots level that could really be helpful for the government. Ideally, such government and civil society interactions should lead to a consortium of NGOs providing direct input to the government. Such a forum would be highly useful in ensuring timely reporting of hate crimes from across the country, as most NGOs work at community levels.

*Zahid Shahab Ahmed is Peace Direct’s Pakistan Local Peacebuilding Expert and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Deakin University in Australia. He received his PhD from the University of New England (UNE) in Australia, and has taught peace and conflict studies at universities in Australia and Pakistan. Since 2003, Zahid has worked with local and international development agencies in South Asia on various peacebuilding and development projects. He has published and presented papers on a wide range of issues, including Islam, human rights, peace & conflict, regionalism, and regional security.

Uzbekistan: Newspaper Editor Freed After 18 Years In Prison

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The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA), Civil Rights Defenders (CRD), Freedom House, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Uzbek–German Forum for Human Rights (UGF) are extremely relieved to learn that Uzbek journalist Muhammad Bekjanov, the winner of RSF’s Press Freedom Prize in 2013, was released this week after 18 years in prison.

The onetime editor of what was Uzbekistan’s leading opposition newspaper, Bekjanov was one of the world’s longest imprisoned journalists. Now aged 62, he was repeatedly tortured following his arrest in 1999 and his sentence was extended just before he was due to be released in 2012. According to initial information, he will not be allowed to leave the country for one year, which means he would not be able to join his US-based family during this period.

“We are delighted and relieved that Muhammad Bekjanov has been freed,” said the signatories. “It is tragic and deeply unjust that he spent so much time in prison just for doing his job. His release will not be complete until he is allowed to join his family in the United States.”

“We reiterate our call for the immediate release of all other journalists and human rights activists who are unjustly imprisoned in Uzbekistan. Many of them have serious health problems. We are especially concerned about Yusuf Ruzimuradov, a colleague arrested at the same time as Bekjanov, as we have had no news of him for a long time.”

As the editor of Erk (Freedom) in the early 1990s, Bekjanov tried to initiate a debate on such taboo subjects as the state of the economy, the use of forced labor in the cotton harvest and the Aral Sea environmental disaster. His brother, the well-known poet and government opponent Muhammad Salikh, was the only person to run against President Karimov in the December 1991 election.

Karimov took advantage of a series of bombings in Tashkent in 1999 to silence outspoken critics by prosecuting them as accomplices to the attacks. Like many pro-democracy activists, Bekjanov was tried in this way and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was arbitrarily given an additional sentence of four years and eight months in prison in February 2012, just a few days before he was due to be released.

Bekjanov has lost many teeth and much of his hearing as a result of mistreatment in prison and a serious case of tuberculosis that was left untreated for a long time. In recent years, he has suffered from intermittent acute pain as well as permanent discomfort from an inguinal hernia that developed when he was assigned to prison work making bricks.

Uzbekistan is ranked 166th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index. A few political prisoners including human rights defender Bobomurod Razzakov and politician Samandar Kukanov have been freed since Karimov’s death in August 2016. But many other journalists, human rights defenders, opposition politicians and civil society representatives continue to languish in prison.

Opposing Sides Of Syrian War Come Face To Face

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Opposing sides in the Syrian war have come face to face in UN peace talks for the first time in three years, as a way out of the deadly conflict remains elusive.

Describing the negotiations as an uphill task, the UN’s special envoy called for a joint effort.

“Let us now keep the interest of Syria and its own people in mind. Work together – I know it’s not easy – but let’s try to work together, to end this horrible conflict, and lay the foundation for a country at peace with itself, sovereign and unified,” said Staffan de Mistura.

De Mistura is due to hold meetings on Friday with the delegations. He says it would be his “dream” to bring them back together for direct talks, but there is still work to be done.

“As opposition, we’re looking forward and waiting for a positive role for the US in the region. So we could get rid of ISIL and also, get rid of Iran and the other Shiite militias, so we can achieve the political transition in Syria,” said Nasr El Hariri, Head of the Higher Negotiations Committee (HNC).

Reporting from Geneva, Euronews’ Faiza Garah said: “At the end of the first day of negotiations, the HNC eventually accepted De Mistura’s request to involve the two Moscow and Cairo platforms in the opening session.

“Many analysts here saw this as the beginning of a Russian will to impose its strategy on these negotiations, in the absence of an effective US role at the moment in the Syrian crisis.”

Original source

Egyptian Christians Flee Sinai Following Islamic State Killing Spree

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Christian families and students fled Egypt’s North Sinai province in droves on Friday after Islamic State killed the seventh member of their community in just three weeks.

A Reuters reporter saw 25 families gathered with their belongings in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia’s Evangelical Church and church officials said 100 families, out of around 160 in North Sinai, were fleeing. More than 200 students studying in Arish, the province’s capital, have also left.

Seven Christians have been killed in Arish between Jan. 30 and Thursday. Daesh, which is waging an insurgency there, claimed responsibility for the killings, five of which were shootings. One man was beheaded and another set on fire.

“I am not going to wait for death,” Rami Mina, who left Arish on Friday morning, said by telephone. “I shut down my restaurant and got out of there. These people are ruthless.”

Sectarian attacks occur often in Egypt but are usually confined to home burning, crop razing, attacks on churches, and forced displacement.

Arish residents said militants circulated death lists online and on the streets, warning Christians to leave or die.

“My father is the second name on their list; anyone Christian they put on the list” Munir Adel, a vegetable seller who fled on Friday, said as he huddled with four family members at the Evangelical Church, waiting for church officials to find them a place to stay.

Adel’s parents did not leave Arish because of their old age, he said. “They could be killed at any moment.”

Original source

Georgia’s Modern Decisions And Threats Of Expansion Of Russian Presence In Caucasus – OpEd

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Soon after 2016 parliamentary elections, the government of the party of the Georgian Dream (GD), which won the elections, started discussions and implemented some actions, both of which create new threats for the country’s economic and energy independence.

Sale of Georgia’s Strategic Assets

To build trust within the parliament, in his address, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili stated that the government would consider the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of 25% of the state-owned Georgian Railway and the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation stakes.

The disposal of Georgia’s strategic assets is in no way a novel concept as the United National Movement (UNM) government (being in a power in 2003-2012) did not recognize the existence of such assets and considered that selling them to Russia harbored no security threats for Georgia. All the more, this took place in light of Moscow’s public announcement of its intention to establish a “liberal empire;” (http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav102703.shtml) in other words, secure influence over the post-Soviet space (and beyond) by applying economic mechanisms (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-s-economic-imperialism?barrier=accessreg).

Given that gas pipelines and railways in Armenia are owned by Russian state companies (gas pipelines are owned by Gazprom while the railway is administered by the Russian Railways, company which went so far as to rename the state-owned Armenian Railways the South Caucasus Railways that constitutes an overt acknowledgement of Moscow’s intentions to establish control over the Georgian and, ultimately, Azerbaijani railways) it is evident that if even 25% of the Georgian Railway and Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation shares are put up for sale, Russian companies will be the primary stakeholders.

Due to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Azerbaijani companies may also emerge as buyers of Georgian assets as Baku seeks to acquire new economic mechanisms to exert pressure on Yerevan. In this case, Tbilisi will certainly be embroiled into the Armenia-Azerbaijan confrontation which is definitely not within Georgia’s interests.

It is unfortunate that the GD continues to pursue the same policies threatening Georgian national interests as the UNM government had throughout the nine years of their tenure.

Russian Gas Transit Fees to Armenia

Already during Eduard Shevardnadze’s presidency, Tbilisi and Moscow signed an agreement which authorized Georgia to retain – as a transit fee – 10% of the gas transported by Gazprom via the pipeline through Georgia into Armenia.

In January 2016, Gazprom initiated talks with the Georgian Ministry of Energy, seeking to replace the transit fee disbursement in the form of natural gas with cash amounting to 10% of the value of the transported commodity.

Gazprom’s proposition is undoubtedly economically unprofitable for Georgia. To expound, we should recall that in 2006, Gazprom announced that as of 2007 it would supply gas to both Georgia and Armenia at higher rates – USD 230 per 1,000 m3 instead of USD 110. Moreover, Gazprom would agree to uphold the previous tariff provided it would gain ownership of gas distribution facilities, the cumulative value of which would be equal to the difference between the new and old tariffs multiplied by the amount of gas consumed. Unlike Georgia, Armenia agreed to this proposition, effectively transferring the ownership of its gas distribution systems to Gazprom.

Subsequently, against the background of Armenia’s rapprochement with Russia, the price of gas supplied by Gazprom to Armenia experienced a decline.

It is evident that due to the price differences, Georgia will be unable to purchase the same amount of gas with the monetized payment that it would have received in the form of natural gas for supporting transit to Armenia.

The impression that the Georgian government would concede to Gazprom’s amendments to the payment method for gas transit fees was followed by sharply critical assessments and protest rallies. As a result, the Minister of Energy managed to reach an agreement with Gazprom according to which, existing transit terms; namely, the commodity-based payment scheme, would be retained throughout 2016 (for one year).

By 2017, talks between Gazprom and the Ministry of Energy on the gas transit fee payment method resumed and, unfortunately, the Energy Minister agreed to Gazprom’s proposal.

Perhaps, the Georgian government managed to preserve the transit fee payment terms in 2016 on account of Tbilisi’s explanation to Moscow that due to the upcoming parliamentary elections, it would have been highly unlucrative for the incumbent GD government and parliamentary majority to introduce amendments to gas transit terms. Thus, a one-year postponement was requested.

It is noteworthy that already in November 2016, Armenia announced that the price of gas for local consumers would decrease as, starting in 2017, Gazprom would reduce gas transit fees for Georgia by monetizing the commodity payments (http://www.naturalgasworld.com/armenia-cuts-gas-price-again-34312). Evidently, this information (the fact that Gazprom expected concessions on Tbilisi’s part in terms of amendments to the transit fee payment method and reductions in the amount of gas thus available to Georgia whereby Yerevan made its assurances regarding consumer tariff cuts) should have been available to the Georgian government.

If the Georgian side was still obliged to cut transit fees, it would have been more prudent to retain the commodity payment scheme and agree to a smaller share instead of the 10% of transported gas.

It is imperative to consider that Georgia is located between two member states of the newly-established Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); thus, the threat that Georgia will be compelled to join the Union is substantial. Moreover, this time, Tbilisi has handed over its energy leverage to Moscow since Gazprom can now also make concessions by allowing Georgia to purchase 10% of the gas transported to Armenia (previously retained as transit payment) using the cash obtained as the current transit fee if Georgia becomes an EAEU member. It should be emphasized that the economic basis for the existence of the EAEU is underpinned by the redistribution mechanism for revenues generated by energy resources.

Georgian MPs have assessed this harmful decision as “optimal” and “maximal” and that they have attributed the economic losses resulting from their weakness (at best) to the “market principle.”

Conclusion

The main root cause for Georgia’s modern government’s such type of steps at best lies in unprofessionalism and the denial of the universally recognized knowledge of economics, contemporary geopolitics and geoeconomics.

*Vladimer Papava is former a Minister of Economy of the Republic of Georgia, and is the author of Necroeconomics, a study of post-Communist economic problems.


Ambassador Nikki Haley Is Completely Clueless – OpEd

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Just when we thought the great national embarrassment of a UN Ambassador Samantha Power was over, we are suddenly faced with a new US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who almost makes Ms. Power look like a giant in world affairs and diplomacy.

Addressing the UN Security Council Open Debate on Conflicts in Europe this week, Ambassador Haley managed to get nearly every single point spectacularly wrong while mixing in the most banal of platitudes to further deaden the delivery.

Said Haley:

It can be tempting to take Europe’s peace and security for granted. Europe is a continent of strong, stable democracies. And Europe is a continent of flourishing economies that benefit from close cooperation.

But Europe faces serious challenges – most acutely, Russia’s attempts to destabilize Ukraine and infringe upon Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

How exactly is Russia attempting to destabilize Ukraine? It was Russia, after all, and not the US, which called together the opposing sides two years ago to hammer out the “Minsk II” ceasefire and reconciliation agreement. Was not that in fact a stabilizing move rather than a destabilizing move?

Haley continues:

More than three years ago, the Ukrainian people took to the streets to speak out against political oppression and corruption. These protesters demanded freedom, democracy, and respect for the rule of law, and they succeeded in creating a new Ukraine.

That is not all what happened. It was the “protestors” who started the killing. They targeted police officers to provoke a response and thus add fuel to the simmering flame of months long protests in 2014. Russian propaganda, you say? Not at all. The killers went on television to brag about it!

Here is the story of one of the cop killers, Ivan Bubenchik, as reported in Foreign Policy magazine (hardly a pro-Russia outlet) and told on camera to Ukraine’s Hromadske TV station:

To create a word of mouth effect, you have to shoot two or three [police] commanders I only picked two. And after that, there was no need to kill anyone else, so I aimed at the legs.

Does Nikki Haley support killing police officers?

Another report — this time in the BBC — told the same story. It was Nikki Haley’s peaceful protestors who started the violence by shooting at police:

The protest leaders, some of whom now hold positions of power in the new Ukraine, insist full responsibility for the shootings lies with the security forces, acting on behalf of the previous government.

But one year on, some witnesses are beginning to paint a different picture.

‘I was shooting downwards at their feet,’ says a man we will call Sergei, who tells me he took up position in the Kiev Conservatory, a music academy on the south-west corner of the square.

‘Of course, I could have hit them in the arm or anywhere. But I didn’t shoot to kill.’

Sergei says he had been a regular protester on the Maidan for more than a month, and that his shots at police on the square and on the roof of an underground shopping mall, caused them to retreat.

Does Nikki Haley believe shooting police officers is justified as long as you’re demanding “respect for the rule of law”?

In fact, the overthrow of the government in Ukraine was not at all set in motion by the Ukrainian people. It was planned in Washington and executed in the streets of Kiev, where US policymakers openly urged an overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government.

It is established fact that US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was on the streets of Kiev with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt meeting with the protesters, encouraging them, and handing out food. Later she was caught in a phone call with the US Ambassador plotting in detail the overthrow of the government and how to replace it with Washington’s picks.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was also on the streets of Kiev during the early stages of the coup. He was actively supporting the overthrow of Ukraine’s legal government. Said McCain:

We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe…

Later on CNN, McCain admitted his role in the coup, stating:

What we’re trying to do is try to bring about a peaceful transition here…

How would Senator McCain react were a Russian member of parliament appear in the midst of a Washington, D.C. riot urging “a peaceful transition here”?

Trump’s Ambassador to the UN continued:

But Russia has tried to prevent the change that the Ukrainian people demanded. Russia occupied Crimea and attempted to annex this piece of Ukrainian territory – an act the United States does not recognize.

That is also demonstrably false. Russia did not “occupy” Crimea because the Russian military was already in Crimea! Russia had leased the naval base in Crimea from the Ukrainian government until 2042. The troops were already there. Russia did not attempt to annex Crimea, but rather a referendum was held in which, according to the BBC, 90 percent of the residents voted to rejoin Russia (of which they had been a part since the 18th century).

Surely this is fake news! Why would Crimeans vote to leave Ukraine and join Russia? In fact Russians make up more than 65 percent of the population of Crimea and when the US-backed coup brought to power a vehemently anti-Russian government in Kiev was it really so surprising that the people would look for the exit signs?

Haley continues:

Russia then armed, financed, and organized separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, leading to a devastating and senseless conflict that has cost more than 10,000 lives.

Again untrue. The rebellion in eastern Ukraine was fueled by the US-backed coup in Kiev. Eastern Ukraine is predominantly Russian-speaking and in some parts of the region 96 percent voted for the president ousted with US support. As one might expect, unrest follows when one’s president is overthrown with assistance from an outside power. And it was the US who did the arming, financing, and organizing the unelected coup forces who took power in Kiev.

More Haley:

The scenes of destruction from the town of Avdiivka in recent weeks show the consequences of Russia’s ongoing interference in Ukraine.

Avdiivka fell under attack after the Kiev forces advanced into the no-man’s land separating the opposing sides. Ukrainian deputy defense minister Pavlovaky admitted that “meter by meter, step by step, whenever possible our boys have been advancing.”

You get the point. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has no clue what is happening in eastern Ukraine and so has just dusted off the dusty old talking points of the Obama Administration.

While on the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump sharply (and correctly) criticized the Obama Administration’s militaristic foreign policy. At the time Trump said:

…unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct. You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy. A superpower understands that caution and restraint are really truly signs of strength.

He continued by calling for new people and new approaches to foreign policy:

My goal is to establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations. That’s why I also look and have to look for talented experts with approaches and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war. We have to look to new people.

Well, Mr. President, I am sorry to have to inform you of this, but when it comes to Ambassador Nikki Haley, you may technically have “new people” in positions but you most certainly do not have new ideas. You have failed former ambassador Samantha Power’s stale, regurgitated talking points. Enough!

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Could The ‘Trump Effect’ End Up Being Good For US Muslims? – Analysis

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By Joyce Karam

Despite an uptick in hate crimes against US Muslims in the months since Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, a wave of public solidarity and improved views of both Muslims and Islam signal some good news for the community in the medium- and long-term.

Data and public opinion polls conducted by Shibley Telhami — a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings and the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland — show significant improvement in how US Muslims and their religion are viewed in the Trump era.

The change and improved attitudes constitute a backlash to the increasing Islamophobia that has accompanied Trump’s ascendancy to the White House. Telhami described to Arab News what is happening as a “parallel trend” to the shootings, vandalism and other kinds of hate crimes that have targeted the community.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented more than 1,000 hate crimes in the US since Trump won the election on Nov. 9. Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating a shooting in Kansas on Wednesday that killed one Indian engineer and injured another in a suspected hate crime that mistook the two men for being Middle Eastern.

“The sharp rise in hate crimes is definitely a big concern and a symptom of the deep polarization in the US,” said Telhami, adding: “Trump has successfully empowered a fringe segment of the US population that is detrimental to American values.” White nationalist groups and anti-Semitic voices have become more vocal since Trump won the presidency.

According to Bloomberg, “the New York Police Department (NYPD) received 143 hate-crime complaints between Nov. 8 and Feb. 19,” a 42 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. The Jewish community was the primary target of these attacks (72 percent), according to the NYPD.

Jewish community centers also received bomb threats in at least 10 locations across the US, reported Bloomberg. The vandalism of a Jewish cemetery in Missouri shocked the US public last week, prompting condemnation from Trump and a visit by Vice President Mike Pence.

However, this spike in criminal acts against minorities could tip the balance, and is driving a “heartening parallel trend,” said Telhami. “Trump has also empowered a majority of Americans on the other side of the equation to show solidarity with the Muslim community.” Almost 1,000 participants rallied in New York in solidarity with Muslims last weekend.

After a mosque in Texas was destroyed in a fire last month, Jews handed Muslims the key to their synagogue. This week, after the vandalism of Jewish headstones at the cemetery, an online fundraiser encouraging Muslims to donate raised over $100,000 in 24 hours to repair the damage.

Telhami referenced “four polls over the past year” that his center has conducted, which show that “Americans’ views on Islam and Muslims have become more favorable incrementally. Every single poll showed a positive change of around 12 percentage points. We are almost now at pre-9/11 numbers.”

The polls show that attitudes toward Muslims jumped from 53 percent favorable in November 2015 to 70 percent in October 2016. Attitudes toward Islam also “saw improvement from 37 percent in November 2015 to 49 percent in October 2016, reaching the highest favorable level since 9/11.”

Telhami said: “This is a revolution (in the perception of Muslims) taking place in America,” one where “Islam and Muslims are being integrated into the American identity as part of who they are.” The rise in Islamophobia has also prompted more active engagement from the community in US politics, whether it is running for public office or taking part in political and media discourse.

While Telhami stressed that it will “be hard to know which one of the two trends (Islamophobia or revolution) will win out because it is a function of politics,” he saw the trajectory of US values as one that would ultimately favor the embrace of Muslims.

As the Trump administration works on a second version of the travel ban, and authorities continue to investigate several hate crimes, the public backlash in solidarity with Muslims gives Telhami hope that the “good more than the bad will prevail as an effect of Trump.”

Asian Ports: Pitfalls Of China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative – Analysis

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Troubled ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, envisioned as part of China’s string of pearls linking the Eurasian heartland to the Middle Kingdom, exemplify political pitfalls that threaten Beijing’s ambitious One Belt, One Road project.

Political violence over the past decade has stopped Pakistan’s Gwadar port from emerging as a major trans-shipment hub in Chinese trade and energy supplies while turmoil in Sri Lanka threatens to dissuade Chinese investors from sinking billions into the country’s struggling Hambantota port and planned economic hub.

The problems of the two ports serve as pointers to simmering discontent and potential resistance to China’s ploy for dominance through cross-continental infrastructure linkage across a swath of land that is restive and ripe for political change.

Chinese, Pakistani and Russian officials warned in December that militant groups in Afghanistan, including the Islamic State (IS) had stepped up operations in Afghanistan. IS in cooperation with the Pakistani Taliban launched two months later a wave of attacks that has targeted government, law enforcement, the military and minorities and has killed hundreds of people.

China is investing $51 billion in Pakistan infrastructure and energy, including Gwadar port in the troubled province of Balochistan that is struggling to attract business nine years after it was initially inaugurated. The government announced this week that it had deployed 15,000 troops to protect China’s investment in Pakistan, a massive project dubbed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

For Gwadar to become truly viable, Pakistan will have to not only address Baluch grievances that have prompted militancy and calls for greater self-rule, if not independence, but also ensure that Baluchistan does not become a playground in the bitter struggle for regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

To do so, Pakistan will have to either crackdown on militant Afghan groups with the Taliban in the lead who operate with official acquiescence out of the Baluch capital of Quetta or successfully facilitate an end to conflict in Afghanistan itself.

That is a tall order which in effect would require changes in longstanding Pakistani policies. Gwadar’s record so far bears this out. Phase II of Gwadar was completed in 2008, yet few ships anchor there and little freight is handled.

Success would also require a break with long-standing Chinese foreign and defence policy that propagates non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. China has pledged $70 million in military aid to Afghanistan, is training its police force, and has proposed a four-nation security bloc that would include Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

A mere 70 kilometres further west of Gwadar lies Iran’s southernmost port city of Chabahar that has become the focal point of Indian efforts to circumvent Pakistan in its access to energy-rich Central Asia and serve as India’s Eurasian hub by linking it to a north-south corridor that would connect Iran and Russia. Investment in Chabahar is turning it into Iran’s major deep water port outside the Strait of Hormuz that is populated by Gulf states hostile to the Islamic republic. Chabahar would also allow Afghanistan to break Pakistan’s regional maritime monopoly.

Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa warned Chinese officials in December that public protests would erupt if plans proceeded to build in Hambantota a 6,000-hectare economic zone that would buffet a $1.5 billion-deep sea port, a $209-million international airport, a world-class cricket stadium, a convention centre, and new roads. Protests a month later against the zone turned violent. Similar protests against Chinese investment have also erupted in recent years in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

In Sri Lanka, the government has delayed the signing of agreements with China on the port and the economic zone after the protests catapulted the controversy onto the national agenda with opposition politicians and trade unions railing against them. A Sri Lankan opposition member of parliament moreover initiated legal proceedings to stop a debt-for-equity deal with China.

China’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Yi Xianliang warned that the protests and opposition could persuade Chinese companies to walk awayfrom the $5 billion project. “We either go ahead or we stop here,” Yi said.

“The Hambantota fiasco is sending a clear message to Beijing: showing up with bags of money alone is not enough to win a new Silk Road,” commented Wade Shepard, author of a forthcoming book on China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.

Adding to China’s problems is its apparent willingness to at times persuade its partners to circumvent or flout international standards of doing business. A European Union investigation into a Chinese-funded $2.9 billion rail link between the Hungarian capital of Budapest and Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, could punch a hole into Chinese plans to extend its planned Asian transportation network into Europe. The investigation is looking at whether the deal seemingly granted to Chinese companies violated EU laws stipulating that contracts for large transportation projects must be awarded through public tenders.

The sum total of problems China is encountering across Eurasia highlight a disconnect between grandiose promises of development and improved standards of living and the core of Chinese policy: an insistence that economics offer solutions to deep-seated conflicts, local aspirations, and a narrowing of the gap between often mutually exclusive worldviews. It also suggests that China believes that it can bend, if not rewrite rules, when it serves its purpose.

To be sure, protests in Sri Lanka and Central Asia are as much about China as they are expressions of domestic political rivalries that at times are fought at China’s expense. Even so, they suggest that for China to succeed, it will not only have to engage with local populations, but also become a player rather than position itself as an economic sugar daddy that hides behind the principle of non-interference and a flawed economic win-win proposition.

Reaping Benefits Of Exercise In Early Postmenopause

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Women recently postmenopause have similar or improved benefits from physical activity, in terms of muscle and blood vessel function, as those premenopause. Therefore, early postmenopause might be a time when women can gain increased benefit from physical activity to oppose negative effects of oestrogen loss and aging.

This research, published in the Journal of Physiology, was conducted by Professor Hellsten and her team at the University of Copenhagen.

Postmenopausal women are deprived of oestrogen, a hormone with a strong positive effect on muscle and blood vessel function. Previous research had shown that the beneficial impact of physical activity is reduced or absent in postmenopausal women.

This research suggests that the effects of different stages of menopause on physical exercise cannot be lumped together.

The participants were 36 middle-aged pre and postmenopausal women only a few years apart in age. After a 12-week training regimen of high intensity cycling, Professor Hellsten and her colleagues determined the effect of training on the women’s muscles and blood vessels using a series of physiological tests. To look at molecular changes, they took tissue samples from thigh muscles.

Less invasive tests in larger and more diverse populations will be important in order to confirm these findings.

Elaborating on the findings, first author Michael Nyberg said,

“The present study pinpoints a possible signalling pathway at the cellular level that may underlie the higher sensitivity to physical activity in recent postmenopausal women. Future studies should, therefore, further explore this pathway in both animal and human models.”

Trump Rejects Invitation For Annual Press Dinner

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U.S. President Donald Trump, who has a rocky relationship with the media, announced Saturday he would not be attending an annual press dinner.

“I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!” Trump tweeted.

Jeff Mason, head of the association, acknowledged Trump’s announcement, saying in a statement the organization was looking forward to “shining a spotlight” on “some of the best political journalism of the past year”.

President Trump has recently dismissed major news outlets as “fake news” over stories detailing some of the controversies involving his administration.

This month, intelligence information regarding his aides’ communications with Russian officials leaked to media has resulted in Trump sacking his national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and lashing out against the press.

When reports emerged earlier this week that the FBI turned down a request by the White House to publicly discredit news stories on Trump aides’ Russian contacts, Trump harped on some media organizations, calling them the “enemy of the American people”.

Traditionally held in April, the Correspondents’ Dinner is attended annually by the president, White House reporters and celebrities, and hosted by a performer who delivers a comedy script taking aim at both the president and the media.

Attending the dinner in 2011, Trump found himself at the receiving end of one such performance by comedian Seth Meyers, who mocked the business mogul over circulating rumors that he would run for president in the 2012 election.

In his speech that night, President Barack Obama also made jokes about Trump’s potential candidacy. Two weeks later, Trump publicly announced he would not “pursue office of the Presidency”.

Original source

Is Nawaz Government Changing Gears Towards India? – OpEd

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By Maria Amjad

Pakistan and India relations have always been termed as the roller coaster ride, with fledgling democracy, imperious military dominion and uncanny mistrust decelerating its velocity. During the season of peace, the governments of both countries confabulates the campy slogans and glib promises of never-ending friendship between both nations, which turns into irksome babbling in times of political tension.

The masses of both sides have also started to question the tendency of recidivism of ties after a peaceful tenure. Uri-attack is the latest in the series of the events that have resulted in political impasse between both the nuclear armed states. The attack, which was made on rear administrative base of Indian army at Uri, Kashmir by group of heavily armed terrorist, jeopardized the subtle relations between the two arch-rivals, where one alleged the other for the deadly attack, and the other ranted about its own innocence on different international platforms. This has led to series of minatory finger-wagging in cross-talks between both countries’ army chiefs and lethal cross-fire on Line of Control (LOC) between both the armies. These clashes not only infuriated the masses against each other, but also desiccated the relations between the two countries on level of: diplomacy, trade and culture exchanges. Even though after five months of Uri-attack, the relations between both the countries have remained brim, however, it has been observed that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has taken some diplomatic measures to reach out India.

Nawaz government’s change of gears towards India has been comprehensibly reflected in some of the steps it has taken in past four or five months. Just three months after the attack, Nawaz government released 220 Indian fishermen on the occasion of Christmas as a “Goodwill Gesture”. Moreover, government also released an Indian soldier in January 2017 who claimed to inadvertently strayed across LOC on the day Indian claimed surgical strike was held. Previously, the Indian soldier was being alleged as a spy who was imprisoned and was being investigated and elicited. His unexpected release by Pakistani authorities has been taken as a first signal of thaw in India-Pakistan ties.

In the same month of January, Nawaz approved the resumption of screening of Indian movies in Pakistani cinemas. Following Uri-attack, Pakistani cinema owners boycotted Indian movies by implementing self-imposed ban to not show Indian movies in their cinemas. The idea was to register their vastitude of hatred towards India and its culture. Their decision was later backed by Nawaz government as well. Indian Bollywood movies and dramas have always acted as a channel to promote Indian culture, tradition and language to Pakistan. While every deadlock with India has witnessed the ban on Indian movies and dramas in Pakistan, the resumption of their screening in Pakistani cinemas and on televisions have always been used as a symbol to escalate tensions between both the neighbors.

With CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) widening its extent by garnering more supporters from around the region, a lot has been said and written about India’s objections over the project and building of Chahbahar port with Iran and Afghanistan as rival of Gwadar port, the baseline of CPEC. In the past, the impact of these two projects on regional and extra-regional actors has always been used as a source of power struggle in the region, but the recent flexibility of attitude shown by both sides have been commendable. On one hand, Iran and India have indicated that they will not use their project to counter the CPEC, on the other hand, Minister of Planning and Development of Pakistan Ahsan Iqbal have invited India to join the CPEC, something which have been called as an unexpected move by the current Pakistani government. The Minister also seeks to pursue peace-talks with India which have been adjourned after the Uri-attack. At least one of them should realize the importance of getting out of the vicious circle of eternal issues by condoning them for a while and collaborating with the other. If the intention for building these two projects will be to reap economic benefits rather than to indulge in inept power competition, then these projects will bring prosperity to the region in the “Asian Century”.

The recent of all these steps taken by Nawaz government is the detainment of Hafiz Saeed at the end of month of January. Following his detainment, he was also listed under anti-terrorist attack and in Exit Control List. Furthermore, recently government has also canceled license of 44 weapons issued to Saeed and his aid. Although many experts contend that these bold measures are taken by Nawaz government in part by President Donald Trump’s arrival on the world stage as well as pressure from China, however, the factor to use Saeed’s detention to please India cannot be ignored. Saeed, mastermind of Mumbai attacks, is virulently anti-India and have always stood against Indian government’s occupation of the disputed territory of Kashmir. So, his detention will make India to persuade Pakistan on one lesser factor in order to make peace-talks effectual. While the majority of analysts state that the action has been done to placate Trump, but taking it as killing two birds with one stone, Pakistan has also used this opportunity to ameliorate India government as well. US, India and China have repeatedly asked the detainment of Jamaatud Dawa leader as his unrestricted campaigns have been a continuous threat to stability and peace of these countries.

Moreover, in the first week of February it has been signaled that Abdul Basit, the Pakistani envoy to India, will be replaced soon as part of a wide-ranging reshuffle to be carried out by Pakistan’s new foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua. Basit, who was posted to India in March 2015, is believed to have shaggy tenure as High commissioner to India, because of prickly relations between the both countries following Uri-attack. There was also news of Basit being the strongest contender for the post of foreign secretary before Tehmina Janjua’s appointment, however, he was not been chosen by Nawaz because of his recent cold relations with India being Pakistani envoy. Therefore, the wider reshuffle in Foreign Office of Pakistan and Basit’s end of tenure as High Commissioner to India next month has been considered as an explicit indication by Nawaz government to reset India-Pakistan ties.

The question arises that what engendered Nawaz government to take all these measures now?

Many analysts relate Nawaz current policies towards India with the retirement Pakistan’s 15th Army Chief’s Raheel Shareef, on 29th November 2016, as he was perceived to be hostile against India. This factor cannot be ignored but Raheel’s retirement will have minute implications over the policies of Nawaz government as the new army chief Qamar Jawed Bajwa is considered to be as hostile against India as Raheel was. Bajwa is believed to be well-versed with the complexities, nature of operations and terrain along the LOC. Although the news of his acclamation of Indian mature democracy while addressing a gathering of senior army officers at the General Headquarters in December 2016 got Indian and Pakistani media into tizzy, but his recent anti-India stance and open admonishment to Indian army has restored his status as a quintessential Pakistan’s army chief. Therefore, to argue that Nawaz government will face lesser resistance from new army chief will not be a fair argument to make.

The discreet behavior shown by Nawaz government towards India by the above mentioned factors can act as foundational step towards the new phase of healthy and friendly ties between both the countries, however, a lot need to be done to take relations forward from here. Pakistan and India should recommence the stalled peace-talks after six months impasse. Both countries’ Foreign Offices should realize the dire need of multi-faceted dialogues which could build long-term cooperation in energy, strategic stability and nonproliferation, counterterrorism, economics and education. Specifically they should resume their trade relations which have been on low following Uri-attack. Recently it has been in news that Indian Punjab have asked their government to negotiate with Islamabad to boost exports to Pakistan through the land route, keeping aside the ongoing diplomatic stand-off following the Uri attack and the surgical strike. This can be used as an opportunity to reinstate the trade relations between the two countries which are vital for the economic uplifts of both the states. However, despite a more peaceful LOC and stable situation in Kashmir, Indian Foreign Office has categorically rebuffed any possibility of peace-talks with Pakistan. Therefore, Indian government also needs to show flexibility in mending the old scars as one hand cannot clap alone. There is a dire need to rebuild the transactional relationship between the two countries which later need to be transformed into strategic one with deeply rooted trust and interest. The measures taken by Nawaz government in this aspect are appreciable however there is a need to put further efforts to persuade India for another episode of dialogue with firm belief to not let it file under the saga of ineffectual outcome this time.

Source:
This article was published at Modern Diplomacy

Pope Francis Visits Rome’s Anglican Parish Of All Saints

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By Elise Harris

During his Sunday visit to Rome’s Anglican parish of All Saints, Pope Francis voiced gratitude for the good relations Catholics and Anglicans now enjoy, and said that on the path toward full communion, humility has to be the point of departure.

“(Humility) is not only a beautiful virtue, but a question of identity,” the Pope said in his Feb. 26 visit to the Anglican parish of All Saints.

He noted that in evangelizing the Christians in Corinth, St. Paul had to “grapple” with the fact that relations with the community weren’t always good. But when faced the question of how to carry out the task despite ongoing tensions, “where does he begin? With humility.”

“Paul sees himself as a servant, proclaiming not himself but Christ Jesus the Lord. And he carries out this service, this ministry according to the mercy shown him,” he said, adding that this ministry is done “not on the basis of his ability, nor by relying on his own strength, but by trusting that God is watching over him and sustaining his weakness with mercy.”

To become humble, he said, “means drawing attention away from oneself, recognizing one’s dependence on God as a beggar of mercy: this is the starting point so that God may work in us.”

Francis then quoted a former president of the World Council of Churches, who described Christian evangelization as “a beggar telling another beggar where he can find bread.”

“I believe Saint Paul would approve,” he said, because “he grasped the fact that he was fed by mercy and that his priority was to share his bread with others: the joy of being loved by the Lord, and of loving him.”

Pope Francis spoke to a crowd of both Catholic and Anglican faithful during his Feb. 26 visit to the Anglican church of All Saints, which marked the first time a Roman Pontiff has set foot in an Anglican parish inside his own diocese of Rome.

This visit coincided with the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Anglican parish community in the heart of the Eternal City, and consisted of a short choral Evensong service, during which the Pope blessed and dedicated an icon of “St. Savior” commissioned for the occasion.

During the ceremony, the symbolic “twinning” of All Saints Anglican Church with the Catholic parish of “Ognissanti” – the only Catholic parish in Rome dedicated to All Saints – also took place, forming strong ecumenical ties between the two.

Ognissanti is the parish where Bl. Paul VI, on March 7, 1965, celebrated the first Mass in Italian following the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

After his arrival, Pope Francis was greeted by the church’s pastor, Rev. Johnathan Boardman, and Rev. Robert Innes, Bishop of the Church of England Diocese in Europe.

In his greeting, Innes thanked Pope Francis for his “global leadership, and for the particular inspiration you have been to those of us in the Anglican Communion,” particularly when it comes to the issues of the poor, migrants, refugees, and human trafficking.

“Within Europe and our diocese, you have challenged members of the European Union to rediscover their Christian heritage and values. Your published work speaks far beyond Rome in addressing difficult ethical issues that face us all,” he said.

Innes voiced his hope and prayer that the Pope’s visit would be “one more small step in further strengthening the unity between our churches and in celebrating the deep bonds of Anglican Roman Catholic friendship that we already enjoy.”

After singing Evensong, Pope Francis gave a homily, during which he noted that “a great deal has changed” both in Rome and in the world since the parish’s founding 200 years ago.

“In the course of these two centuries, much has also changed between Anglicans and Catholics,” he said, noting that while in the past the Churches viewed each other “with suspicion and hostility,” today we recognize one another as we truly are: brothers and sisters in Christ, through our common baptism.”

Francis pointed to the icon he blessed, noting that when looking at it, Jesus “to call out to us, to make an appeal to us: ‘Are you ready to leave everything from your past for me? Do you want to make my love known, my mercy?’”

“His gaze of divine mercy is the source of the whole Christian ministry,” the Pope said, and turned to the ministry of St. Paul, particularly in the community of Corinth.

As the Apostle’s letters show, he “did not always have an easy relationship” with the community in Corinth, the Pope said, noting that at one point there was even “a painful visit” during which “heated words” were exchanged in writing.

But by living his ministry in light of the mercy that he’s received, St. Paul “does not give up in the face of divisions, but devotes himself to reconciliation,” Francis observed, explaining that Christians of different confessions must have the same attitude.

“When we, the community of baptized Christians, find ourselves confronted with disagreements and turn towards the merciful face of Christ to overcome it, it is reassuring to know that we are doing as Saint Paul did in one of the very first Christian communities,” he said.

The Pope then noted how at perhaps the most difficult moment St. Paul had with the community in Corinth, the Apostle cancelled a trip he was planning to make, and renounced the gifts he would have received.

However, while there were certainly tensions in their relationship, “these did not have the final word,” Francis said, explaining that the two communities eventually reconciled and the Christians in Corinth eventually helped St. Paul in his ministry to the poor and needy.

“Solid communion grows and is built up when people work together for those in need,” he said, adding that “through a united witness to charity, the merciful face of Jesus is made visible in our city.”

Pope Francis then voiced his gratitude that after “centuries of mutual mistrust,” Catholics and Anglicans can now “recognize that the fruitful grace of Christ is at work also in others.”

“We thank the Lord that among Christians the desire has grown for greater closeness, which is manifested in our praying together and in our common witness to the Gospel, above all in our various forms of service,” he said.

Although the path to full communion can at times seem “slow and uncertain,” the Pope said the two communities ought to be encouraged by his visit to the Anglican parish and the joint prayer.

The visit, he said, “is a grace and also a responsibility: the responsibility of strengthening our ties, to the praise of Christ, in service of the Gospel and of this city.”

Francis closed his homily encouraging both Catholics and Anglicans to work together “to become ever more faithful disciples of Jesus, always more liberated from our respective prejudices from the past and ever more desirous to pray for and with others.”

After his homily, Pope Francis took three questions from the congregation on the state of Catholic-Anglican relations today, his approach to relations versus that of his direct predecessor Benedict XVI and what Catholics and Anglicans can learn from the “creativity” of Churches in the global south, specifically Africa and Asia.

In his answer to the first question, the Pope noted that despite a turbulent past, relations between Catholics and Anglicans today “are good. We see each other as brothers.” He added that monasteries and the communion of Saints are two particular “strengths” the Churches have in common.

He also stressed the importance of not taking certain moments of history out of context and using them as ammo to damage current relations, saying “a historic fact must be read in the hermeneutic of that moment, not in another hermeneutic.”

In the second question it was asked if Pope Francis, by emphasizing a strategy of “walking and working” together toward unity was perhaps the opposite of Benedict XVI, who at one point warned that collaboration in social action shouldn’t take priority over theological matters.

Francis responded to the question with a joke told to him by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, that while the different Churches work together on other things, the theologians “can go to an island” and have their discussions there.

Theological questions are important, he said, noting that there are “many things in which we still don’t agree.”

But having this discussion “can’t be done in a laboratory, it has to be done walking,” he said, explaining that “we are on a journey.”

It’s important to have these theological discussions, “but in the meantime we help each other” though acts of charity such as serving the poor, migrants and refugees, he said, adding that “you can’t have ecumenical dialogue that is stopped…you have to do it walking.”

When responding to the third question, Pope Francis noted that “young Churches” in Africa and Asia do have “a different vitality because they are different and they look for ways to express themselves differently.”

However, the “older Churches” in European countries, also have their own benefits, he said, noting that they have had time to “mature” and deepen in many things, including theological and ecumenical questions.

The Pope acknowledged that young Churches “have more creativity,” just as the European Church did when it began, and said there is “a strong need” for the two – old and young – to collaborate together.

As an example, he revealed that he is considering a trip to South Sudan sometime this year, and explained that the idea came from a recent visit the heads of three major Christian churches in the country to Rome.

In October Archbishop Paulino Luduku Loro of the Catholic Archdiocese of Juba traveled to Rome alongside ev. Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan, and Rev. Peter Gai Lual Marrow, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan, to explain the dire situation of their country, and their joint collaboration in working to quell the effects of the crisis.

Pope Francis noted that during his Oct. 27, 2016, meeting with the three, they invited him to come, but told him “don’t do it alone,” and requested that he make the trip alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Primate of the Anglican Communion.

He said the trip hasn’t been confirmed since situation on the ground is so risky, but assured that it’s “being studied,” because each of the Churches there “have the will to work for peace” together.

The Pope ended his answer to the question with the suggestion that, given the benefits of both the “old” and “young” Churches throughout the world, there be an exchange set up where priests from Europe travel to the “younger Churches” for a pastoral experience, rather than it always being the other way around.

“It would do us well,” he said, “You learn a lot.”


Why Tamil Nadu Residents Are Protesting Gas Exploration Project And A Way Out – OpEd

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The writer had the opportunity to interact with the local people living in and around Neduvasal in the Pudukottai district in Tamil Nadu who are protesting against the proposal to take up natural gas exploration projects in the region. The interaction took place during a two hour session with the concerned people in a program organized by a leading Tamil TV channel (News 18 Tamil), when a cross section of people in different age groups, education level and income level, both men and women, from the region and local MLA participated and were encouraged to express their views. The writer was asked to respond to their observations, provide the necessary clarifications and suggest an appropriate future course of action.

The program took place on February 23, 2017.

Background

There is a proposal approved in principle by the Government of India to launch hydrocarbon (natural gas) exploration project in Neduvasal and the nearby areas, where a preliminary study indicated that there could be considerable gas reserves. This area is among several other areas in various states in India approved for exploration.

It is reported that 20 to 23 gas wells could be launched in regions surrounding Neduvasal, which is a region where more than 5 lakh people live. Each well may be drilled to a depth of 1,500 metres to 6,000 metres depending upon the particular condition. There would be requirement of around 25 cubic metres of water per well per day for operating the well for tapping the gas.

It is possible that some of the wells may not yield an adequate level of gas to justify the investment and economics of the project. In such a case, it is possible that such wells may be capped.

Why has the government of India approved the project?

India presently produces around 31 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year and imports almost an equal quantity of natural gas, as the domestic production is inadequate. The world over, around 26% of energy generation and use is met by natural gas ,which is considered as an eco-friendly fuel, particularly in comparison to coal and crude oil. In India, the usage level of natural gas is 6% at present.

The Government of India proposes to increase the consumption of natural gas from the present level of around 6% to around 15%.

As the demand for natural gas is steadily increasing, the Government of India is concerned about the outflow of foreign exchange due to imports and the dependence on imports from various countries. In such circumstances, the Government of India’s desire to increase the domestic production of natural gas is appropriate.

Based on the preliminary study, several locations have been approved for drilling, exploration wells and Neduvasal and surrounding area is one such location identified.

Why are the local people concerned?

There is considerable fear and anxiety among the local people in Neduvasal and surrounding areas that the drilling of the gas wells could deplete ground water sources. Further, local people think that valuable agricultural land could be diverted for the drilling of wells, which would lead to the loss of jobs and occupation for them. There is also unfounded fears that the gas wells would spread diseases. Another fear expressed is that any leakage of gas in the area may spread disasters by way of  a massive fire.

The explanation offered to the people

The writer explained to the people during the interaction various aspects and the people listened with attention and also put forward subsequent queries seeking clarifications.

The writer explained that the coal bed methane gas project, which was earlier conceived in the delta region in Tamil Nadu and later on given up due to public protests, is different from the current proposed natural gas wells. This has to be said, since there seems to be an impression that the process of extracting coal bed methane gas is the same as that of natural gas.

The coal bed methane gas, lying below the soil caught between the coal seams, is a low pressure gas and it would lie under the water table. Since it is a low pressure gas and the coal bed methane gas wells would be drilled several thousand feet below ground, very large quantities of water has to be pumped to enable the methane gas to come out. Such pumped water would be contaminated with metallic salts, high total dissolved solids and other chemicals and therefore cannot be used for irrigation purposes or any human consumption without elaborate and expensive treatment. Such a tapping of a huge quantity of water would inevitably lead to the depletion of ground water resources, which the agricultural-dominated Neduvasal and surrounding region cannot afford. Therefore, the protest against the coal bed methane gas project was totally justified.

In the case of the present proposal to drill natural gas wells, the requirement of water would be only around 25 cubic metres per day per well and it would be around 500 cubic metres per day for 20 wells. This is not a large quantity of water.

It is true that some agricultural land area would be diverted for drilling the wells. This would be a case of cost benefit analysis, where it remains to be evaluated whether the diversion of agricultural land for drilling gas wells can be justified from the overall benefits to the country and without unduly affecting the interests of the local people.

It was also clarified that rumors about spreading of disease due to gas wells is totally unfounded. There are more than 450 onshore gas wells already operating for the last several years in India and any spread of disease around those areas due to the wells have not been reported.

The responsibility of the governments

What is particularly surprising is that no minister or official from the Government of India has so far cared to contact the concerned local people and allay their apprehensions.

The local people seem to be reasonable in their approach and are not blind agitators. They want adequate and proper explanations from the state and central government authorities, credible technologists and engineers and demand answers for their queries logically, with good understanding of the local situation and the ground realities.

Further, it is not certain as to whether the Government of India has taken the Tamil Nadu state government into confidence, before announcing the decision and provided adequate details to it to enable the Tamil Nadu government to communicate with the local people. Certainly, the state government is in a position to understand the sentiments of the people and local economic and social situation much better than the central government. Communication with the local people by the state and central government is conspicuous by absence.

What is the way out?

During the interactive discussion that took place in a good climate, the following observations were made by the writer and the people listened in silence, but did not respond nor did they object to the observations.

  • In a democratic set up, it would not be advisable to force such a project on the people, when there is ground swell of opposition, with the people thinking that they would be socially and economically uprooted. They have to be convinced.
  • While the consumption of water for use in the drilled wells would not be very large, still if the required water would be tapped from the ground, this would really cause concern in Neduvasal and nearby areas where ground water resources have already depleted in recent months due to drought and a lack of water in the Cauvery river.
  • In such circumstances, the authorities have to assure that the water would not be tapped from the ground in the area, but would be brought from elsewhere. Perhaps, like what is being done at the Koodankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu a separate desalination plant can be put up to meet the water requirement.
  • People in the region are still not aware as to how much agricultural land area would be diverted for the project, how much loss would be there due to the diversion of agricultural land and how the farmers there would be compensated in the short- and long-term.
  • There is thunderous silence on the part of ministers and authorities, both in state and central governments, in responding to the local people’s fear and anxiety.

The writer suggested that a meeting should be immediately organized by the Tamil Nadu government involving the participation of central government, state government, representatives of the local people and the technical experts. Let there be detailed, frank and healthy discussions with good understanding of the various viewpoints.

Hopefully, the local people would be convinced after the discussions, balancing the need of the state and the sacrifice that they will have to make and how their interests would be protected.

If the local people cannot be convinced, the project has to be given up.

What alternate for natural gas?

A LNG gas terminal is now being constructed in the Ennore port near Chennai for the importing of natural gas involving an investment of around Rs.6000 cr. with a capacity of 5 million tonne.

The project is likely to be completed and ready for commissioning by 2018.

To utilize the imported gas, it is proposed to lay a gas pipeline of around 1,170 kilometres from the Ennore port to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu for the utilization of gas at various locations in Tamil Nadu and for setting up downstream projects based on natural gas. Such projects have the potential of generating an investment of around Rs. 15000 cr. that would lead to significant economic and industrial development in the state.

However, the firm strategies for laying the pipelines are yet to be made, which involves the acquisition of land across the state for laying the long pipeline. The pipeline route may involve criss-cross roads, agricultural fields and even buildings in some densely populated areas. Such acquisition of land for the project may lead to acrimonious debates and protests delaying the pipeline project. In such a case, the LNG terminal at Ennore would remain largely un-utilized for long time.

It has to be pointed out that Kochi LNG terminal in Kerala with an investment of around Rs. 4500 cr. is now operating at just 5% capacity utilization level, since the pipeline project extending around 310 kilometres in Tamil Nadu had to be stopped due to protests against the acquisition of land.

When 310 kilometre gas pipe project has suffered such a fate in Tamil Nadu, one has to keep the fingers crossed about the proposed 1170 kilometre gas pipeline project from Ennore to Tuticorin.

Obviously, the central and state government should know that communication with the local people is very vital in implementing such projects and the Neduvasal gas exploration project is an instant to remember with regard to the importance of communication.

Malaysia: Airport Being Swept For Toxic Chemicals After Kim Jong Nam Murder

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Malaysia will sweep one of the terminals at Kuala Lumpur international airport for toxic chemicals after Kim Jong Nam was murdered there with a nerve agent last week, as authorities said they would issue an arrest warrant if a North Korean diplomat wanted over the death did not come forward, Reuters reports.

Kim Jong Nam was murdered on Feb. 13 at the budget terminal of Kuala Lumpur’s main airport with VX nerve agent, a chemical classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction.

The police forensic team, fire department and the Atomic Energy Licensing Board will be conducting the sweep at the airport, Malaysian cops said in a statement on Saturday.

The sweep will be conducted from 1 a.m. on Feb. 26 (1700 GMT on Feb. 25), the police said.

The airport terminal will not be closed, but the search areas would be cordoned off, a police official told Reuters.

VX is one of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man: just 10 milligrams of the nerve agent or a single drop is enough to kill in minutes, experts have said.

Kim Jong Nam was waiting at the departure hall when he was attacked by two women who splashed his face with the liquid. He died en route to hospital.

Malaysian police on Friday said one of the women had suffered from the effects of VX and had been vomiting.

The two women – one Indonesian and one Vietnamese – have been detained, along with a North Korean man. Seven other North Koreans have been named as suspects or are wanted for questioning.

Malaysian police are also sweeping other locations in Kuala Lumpur the suspects may have visited.

Selangor state police chief Abdul Samah Mat said earlier on Saturday authorities raided an apartment in an upscale Kuala Lumpur suburb earlier this week in connection with the killing, and were checking for any traces of chemicals in the apartment.

Trump’s Opportunity To Support Transparency, Accountability On The Conventional Arms Trade – Analysis

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By Rachel Stohl*

THE CHALLENGE: As President Trump takes office, there has been a renewed focus on nuclear weapons — particularly with regard to their potential use and modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad. However, Trump will also inherit challenges with regard to numerous conventional conflicts around the world — most notably in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In the coming months, President Trump will have to determine the level of U.S. engagement in existing and emerging crises. Thus, in short order the Trump administration will have to determine its own views and policies concerning conventional arms transfers.

THE CONTEXT: Trump officials may look to the Obama administration’s record on conventional arms issues to inform their own policies. Arms sales were increasingly used as a tool of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, where U.S. weapons were sent to countries to support allies or influence behavior (though there is clear academic work indicating that arms sales are rarely effective in changing recipient government behavior). Indeed, the Obama administration completed the highest value of Foreign Military Sales agreements since World War II. From 2009-2015, the United States made approximately $245 billion worth of arms agreements. That is more than double the amount of agreements made by the George W. Bush administration, which approved approximately $126.5 billion in arms agreements throughout its tenure. The volume of arms sales was not the only noteworthy aspect of the Obama administration’s policies and practices, but also the continued provision of weapons to recipients with questionable human rights records and poor governance, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain.

The Obama administration also completed the first review of U.S. arms export policy in January 2014 — the first time such a review had taken place in 19 years. Presidential Policy Directive 27 (PPD-27) articulates U.S. conventional arms transfer policy goals, outlines the process and criteria that guide U.S. arms transfer decisions, clarifies the ways in which U.S. policy on conventional arms transfers supports arms control and arms transfer restraint, and explains how the United States supports responsible arms transfers around the globe. The Obama administration also took on reform of the export control process, reviewing the contents of the U.S. Munitions List, moving items to the Commerce Control List, and restructuring some of the bureaucratic machinery surrounding arms sales, amongst other reforms.

So, what will the conventional arms landscape look like under the Trump administration? Thus far, it is unclear what Trump’s view towards arms sales may be, as little was articulated on the subject during the campaign or transition. However, we can draw some prognostications based on Trump’s personal and his appointees’ attitudes and with regard to relations with allies and national security priorities.

For example, it is unlikely that President Trump will call for a review and revamping of the U.S. Conventional Arms Transfer Policy. It took 19 years to update the policy, and the new policy reflects the current security environment — with a focus on counterterrorism. Indeed, the policy provides enough flexibility to support Trump’s economically focused interests, and given that Trump has expressed other, more pressing priorities, the administration likely will not find it necessary to spend time and resources on a comprehensive review. However, Trump may move to streamline some of the bureaucracy responsible for arms transfer decisions and eliminate key offices or positions within the State Department.

Additionally, given Trump’s views on job creation and the importance of supporting U.S. industry, it is likely that the new administration will continue the practice of sending arms to U.S. allies to support U.S. interests. But, he also could make such sales contingent on certain behaviors or actions and challenge the reliability of the United States as a supplier. Some U.S. customers are concerned about a transactional approach to arms sales under the Trump administration, which could undermine defense relationships and reliability. Signs also point to the continuation of the export control reform process under Trump, particularly with regard to Foreign Military Sales and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This could be a positive sign for industry, which has favored a more streamlined and predictable approach to arms sales, though critics argue current export control reform efforts have undermined oversight, transparency, and accountability.

Overall, in the short-term, arms sales are likely to continue at the high levels seen in the Obama administration. This could be particularly true with regard to countries in the Middle East, which have historically been major purchasers of U.S. weapons. Indeed, the Obama administration made over $115 billion worth of arms sales agreements to Saudi Arabia alone, as part of 42 separate deals, since 2009, which according to expert William Hartung is “more than any U.S. administration in the history of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.” One could also argue U.S. arms sales could go down, as Trump has repeatedly expressed disinterest in getting involved in Middle East affairs, and his call to governments to take the lead in attending to their own security concerns, and not always relying on the United States. However, on the flipside those same words could indicate a possible increase in U.S. arms sales, as Trump could trade the provision of weapons for minimal political engagement.

Based on Trump’s past statements, including support for known dictators and human rights abusers such as Russia’s Vladmir Putin and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s testimony during his confirmation hearing, human rights violations are unlikely to be major criteria in determining arms sales authorizations. Allowing weapons to flow unimpeded to human rights abusers opens the door for U.S. arms sales to human rights abusing governments in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and allows the United States to compete with Russia and Iran for arms sales to the world’s worst dictators. The Trump administration will have to decide if that is the legacy it wants to leave at the end of its term.

PRAGMATIC STEPS: The Obama administration had a proven track record of using conventional arms sales to support national security and foreign policy priorities, including counterterrorism interests. The Trump administration will need to decide to what extent it will use conventional arms sales to achieve its objectives. During its first 100 days in office, the Trump administration would do well to take the following steps on the conventional arms trade:

  1. Review all pending and future arms sales to consider potential human rights risks. Although considering the human rights impact of U.S. arms sales is mandated by U.S. law, human rights often take a back seat to other policy considerations when determining whether to authorize an arms sale. Indeed current Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker, announced recently that human rights concerns do not belong in arms transfer decisions and could be dealt with in other ways. However, conditioning arms sales to ensure that human rights are protected helps uphold U.S. foreign policy values, protects U.S. industry from complicity in human rights abuses, and ultimately serves key strategic interests.
  2. Consider long(er)-term regional/international stability implications of potential arms sales in addition to short-term economic benefits. President Trump has thus far demonstrated and economic cost/benefit analysis to policy decisions. However, arms sales, while potentially providing an economic benefit in the short-term, can result in longer-term costs in terms of risks to U.S. soldiers on the ground — through blowblack — as well as risks in exacerbating and prolonging armed conflicts, and potentially contributing to a need for U.S. intervention. It is wise to look at the full potential impact of a U.S. arm sale, ensuring it is fully compliant with existing U.S. policy and regulations — and makes good business sense.
  3. Support transparency and accountability of global arms transfers. Although the United States has a robust arms transfer system, including public reporting of U.S. arms sales and security assistance, other countries are less transparent. The United States should be concerned with the global trends in the arms trade — to identify potentially destabilizing build-ups or increased transfers to/from a particular country and/or region. The Trump administration cannot simply take a transactional approach to arms sales, but rather must examine arms sales in context. To acquire this global picture, the United States must ensure that it provides information and data to global arms transfer transparency instruments and encourage other governments to participate as well.

About the author:
*Rachel Stohl
is a Senior Associate and Director of the Conventional Defense program at the Stimson Center.

Source:
This article was published at the Stimson Center

How Cutthroat Corporate Culture Imposed On Politics Dooms Trump Administration – OpEd

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By Jason Aidan*

Kellyanne Conway, a political activist and current advisor to President Donald Trump, and Stephen Miller, also a Trump advisor may not, at first blush, seem to be products of a corporate structure.

Employees who work in upper echelons of huge corporations all know corporate structure comes from top management, usually the CEO and Executive Board. It is easy to succumb to the rigorous demands of deeply embedded corporate structure without realizing it. However, when a corporate structure makes a cross over to government, all of the most negative factors of living the corporate life become obvious. Such is the picture the public sees of Conway and Miller. Part of the structure is what many recognize as the “rat race” to stay in close proximity to the top. Within such an environment, the level of competition between top advisors becomes overwhelming, and leaks abound. (Reportedly Conway leaked to the press that Trump was dissatisfied with press secretary Sean Spicer’s performance.)

The Ambitions of Conway and Miller

In order to remain a vital part of the “team,” Conway and Miller often become “creative” about facts and truth. They believe it is a matter of “loyalty.” Oddly, neither Conway nor Miller actually exhibit “team player” attitude. Rather, they exhibit the natural race to remain highly visible to their “leader.” The quality of any team depends on choices made by leadership. It would be impossible to ignore that Conway and Miller were handpicked because of their “flexibility” with truth and facts.

Traditionally, conservatives have held strong views regarding presentation of facts and the ideal of always having supporting evidence of stated facts. However, Conway and Miller have both besmirched these ideals by making false statements in the pursuit of winning approval from their boss.

Their blatant insistence, crafted to appeal to Trump’s narrative, on such issues as “voter fraud” in the state of New Hampshire, for example, has no basis in fact. Conway laid claim to 200,000 illegal voters on buses voting in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Conway never bothered to get the facts from the Governor of this state who emphatically proved she lied. New Hampshire allows same day registration of new voters; but, at the time of registration polling clerks in each district take “photos” of all new voters.

Nor is there any logical reason why the Democrats would want to “rig” New Hampshire, a state worth 4 electoral votes that they have won seven times in the last eight presidential elections. The Trump theory is that the Democrats somehow colluded to win the popular vote, but all of their 3 million “illegal votes” were concentrated in one state, California, when they needed 80,000 in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But that’s what someone would think who also thinks that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination.

Stephen Miller recently made the statement that the “president’s control cannot be challenged.” In reality, the U.S. Constitution clearly provides checks and balances providing for policies to be overturned or for the president to be removed from office for certain violations.

Conway and Miller, Dumb and Dumber

The pernicious need to inculcate falsehoods into public media for the purpose of enhancing their individual status as part of the “team” has failed. Even when Conway has been called out on her lies, she dumbly stated “there are alternate facts.” In fact, Conway has been so untrustworthy that she hasn’t been on TV this past week. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough says they won’t book her because, “I don’t believe in fake news or information that is not true.”

As to Miller, his media appearances all seem monolithically juxtaposed to conservative ideals because they fly in the face of conservatives’ view of pristine democracy and constitutionality.

Many conservatives feel Conway and Miller are detrimental to conservatism because they present a false image of conservative ideology. To continue to present falsehoods that can be proven wrong by factual documentation is dumb and dumber for Conway and Miller.

This article was published at Bombs and Dollars.

Is India Under Weaponized Biological Attack? – OpEd

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By Shelley Kasli*

Bill Gates, the man who tops the Forbes richest person in the world list has just issued a grave warning about a potential catastrophe that could kill 30 million people at the Munich Security Conference held in Germany:

“Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years.”

Although Bill Gates didn’t provide much contextual information, a month ago similar warning was voiced from London by the Thomson Reuters Foundation with specific details.

The global spread of bird flu and the number of viral strains currently circulating and causing infections have reached unprecedented levels, raising the risk of a potential human outbreak, according to disease experts.

The greatest fear is that a deadly strain of avian flu could then mutate into a pandemic form that can be passed easily between people – something that has not yet been seen.

Avian influenza A(H7N9) is a subtype of influenza viruses that have been detected in birds in the past. This particular A(H7N9) virus had not previously been seen in either animals or people until it was found in March 2013 in China.

In China, H7N9 strains of bird flu have been infecting both birds and people, with the number of human cases rising in recent weeks. According to the WHO, more than 900 people have been infected with H7N9 bird flu since it emerged in early 2013.

However a year later in 2014 a new avian influenza virus (H5N6) was discovered in China and was believed to be a cross species infection. H5N6, though not deadly to avian population its clinical manifestation in human seems severe. According to a research paper published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine:

“the widespread epidemic of avian influenza in domestic birds increases the likelihood for mutational events and genetic reassortment and the threat of a future pandemic from avian influenza is real. It is apparently proposed that genetic alteration is the basic problem causing existence of the new influenza virus. Reid and Taubenberger concluded that “novel influenza virus strains emerge periodically to which humans have little immunity, resulting in devastating pandemics.”

Nearly 40 countries have reported new outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry or wild birds since November, according to the WHO. Few weeks back animal quarantine authorities in Taiwan have slaughtered at least 150,000 poultry after an outbreak of the bird flu was found in many counties and cities across the island. In the UK, after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) detected the H5N8 strain the authorities confirmed to have culled 23,000 chickens. The disease is reported to have reached Ireland. Spain’s Central Veterinarian Laboratory in Algete, in the outskirts of Madrid reported a case of the highly contagious H5N8 bird flu virus in a northeastern farm in Catalonia and said it would cull 17,000 ducks.

In 2015 Russia had stopped the movement of US poultry through the country in an effort to halt re-importation. 157 cases of bird flu were found in 17 Russian states which resulted in the slaughtering of 33.3 million chickens. Russian Agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor found “harmful residues and illegal substances,” including antibiotics, in the products. “This decision was made due to the fact that the US is at the centre of a bird flu infection and we have seen facts of American transit products returning to our market,” the head of Rosselkhoznadzor Sergey Dankvert told Interfax. Now Rosselkhoznadzor is about to ban import of poultry from several EU countries as well where outbreaks were registered. The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) recently banned poultry products from 6 countries. Dozens of countries have imposed total or partial bans on U.S. poultry and poultry imports since the outbreak of this highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was discovered.

The threat posed by this deadly avian flu and how a WTO ruling puts India at grave risk of a deadly pandemic was reported by GreatGameIndia six months back in August.

To prevent the disease from entering into the Indian market India had already banned the import of frozen chicken legs from the U.S. to stop the spread of this deadly avian influenza. However US raised a dispute with the WTO.

“India’s ban on U.S. poultry is clearly a case of disguising trade restrictions by invoking unjustified animal health concerns,” US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement. “We are confident that the WTO will confirm that India’s ban is unjustified.”

A separate statement from US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed that the United States had repeatedly sought scientific evidence for the import restrictions.

“Countries have the right to impose certain restrictions,” said Alex Thiermann, President of the OIE Code Commission. However, he added that “the code very clearly says that low pathogenic influenza allows for trade.”

A WTO panel confirmed in June 2015 an earlier ruling that India’s ban was not based on international scientific standards, was more trade restrictive than necessary, and unfairly discriminated against U.S. imports. India was given until June 2016 to lift the ban and follow international standards. Along with it India was to be slapped with a penalty of $450 million per year for failing to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling.

The concerns of the Rs 50,000 crore Indian poultry industry regarding chicken raised on genetically modified (GM) corn and soya as feed being dumped on the Indian market have since fallen on deaf ears with no action from the Indian Government.

Excerpt from GreatGameIndia’s report – Is The Disease That Resulted In Death Of 50 Million Birds, 8444 Job Losses And $3.3 Billion Loss To US Economy, Coming Soon To India?

While countries around the world are trying to prevent this now mutated deadly avian flu outbreak into their human population through ban on poultry imports from certain countries, the Indian Government seem to have negotiated an agreement with US officials during the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in New Delhi last year. Even though reports of bird flu cases are pouring in from different parts of the country substantial steps are yet to be taken by the govt to contain the outbreak.

Like India, China is facing the largest pandemic threat to hit the country in the last 100 years accounting for the deaths of 79 people in January from the 192 human cases reported so far. Until it was detected in China in March 2013, the virus hadn’t been seen in people or animals, apart from birds.

At the time Sr. Col. Dai Xu a Chinese Air Force officer of the People’s Liberation Army accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu afflicting China as a biological warfare attack. Dai alleged the new bird flu strain had been designed as a bioweapon, similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), that affected the country in 2003 which was also developed as a US bio-weapon.

“At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions,” he said. “This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.”

In 2011 it was revealed that the U.S. government paid scientists to figure out how the deadly bird flu virus might mutate to become a bigger threat to people — and two labs succeeded in creating new strains that are easier to spread. The details of the study were not published until in 2014 when Ron Fouchier and his team at Erasmus Medical Center took the H5N1 flu virus and made it more contagious. Now the team has published another study with more details on the exact genetic changes needed to do the trick. Critics argued that the scientists had created a dangerous new superflu.

The security versus scientific openness debate is a long drawn out battle. The question is where does India stand? Before addressing the issues of science and security first India need to settle the question of international trade arbitration and the political will to do it. India with the population of one billion has high chances of rapid transmission of such virus – Ebola or Swine Flu or any other deadly virus once it hits the crowded metropolitan cities of India. Is India prepared to tackle a weaponized attack of such viruses? How would we know if it could be classified as a naturally occurring phenomenon or a biological attack? What should be our counter response if it were found to be an attack? Does India have a National Security policy that deals with such a scenario?

*Report by Shelley Kasli, GreatGameIndia

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