By Zachary Ritvalsky

My community includes people who are both materially poor and “poor in spirit.” However, what exactly does it mean to say that people are “poor in spirit”? To be “poor in spirit” is not the same as being economically poor, yet both kinds of poverty matter, and the church must address both. In his commentary on Matthew, John Nolland interpreted the phrase like this: “The poor in spirit would be those who sense the burden of their present (impoverished) state and see it in terms of the absence of God; who patiently bear that state, but long for God to act on their behalf and decisively claim them as his people.”

Nolland understands the poor to be the impoverished who are looking for God to rescue them from their pov­erty. This means the church, as God’s representative here on earth, has the responsibility to do the same. Therefore, one of the first ways we can serve the poor is by genuinely loving them. I know this sounds like an overly simplistic cliché, but we need to love the poor as much for them as for ourselves (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 10:19). Pastor Jim Cymbala, in his book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, shares the story of a homeless man who came to his church on Easter. The day had been long, and, after the final ser­vice, the man, bearing the proof of his homeless condition, approached Pastor Cymbala, who responded to his pres­ence as many of us probably would have. He reached into his pocket to give the man a few dollars to which the man replied – “I don’t want your money preacher, tell me about this Jesus you preach.” At that moment, Jim Cymbala said, “The smell of the street became the aroma of a garden.”

How we love the poor is a clear indicator of how we understand God’s love for us. Too often, in misunderstanding God’s love we make the poor the object of our charity, the front cover of our programs, the focus of our grant requests, or the target audience to fill our seats. We make them listen to sermons before we feed them, ask them to join the church before we clothe them. We use them as objects instead of people loved through us. God is love, and by being endowed in his image, as they are, we ought to love them for who they are in God’s kingdom here on earth. It is important to do this because Jesus loved them enough to die on the cross for them.

Through what sort of actions does this love express itself? After all, don’t believe for a moment that anyone poor wants to be poor.

First, we need to educate the poor about the Bible’s sto­ryline, and I don’t mean through the sound bites and video clips that all too often characterize Sunday morning. We must help them understand the metanarrative of scripture, what Vaughan Roberts calls “God’s Big Picture.” This sense of the Bible’s storyline informs the poor that when every­thing is said and done, they win because Christ won the victory over sin, death, and the grave. The “not yet” of the kingdom in the Bible’s story speaks about foundations made of precious stones, gates of pearls, and streets of gold as the new Jerusalem comes from heaven to earth. The poor need to know that poverty is not forever when you’re in Christ.

Second, we need to educate the poor and our youth in preparation for the current and future job market. We need to advocate for better education, including vocational skills train­ing in step with the market. This means we need vocational high schools that link students to sponsors who will provide on-the-job training so students can graduate from high schools with life skills, trades, and, hopefully, jobs. Not everyone is going to college, and this means an increase in education funding. The church should be working in the public square to make this happen.

Third, we the church can also serve the poor by mak­ing our facilities accessible to them. In most cases, the big­gest asset a church has is its facilities, and often they are underutilized. Therefore, it is important to consider using our buildings to meet the needs of the communities we serve. Often, the people we don’t reach on Sunday mornings have needs starting on Monday. They may need computer lab access to develop resumes and apply for jobs. Students may need a place to complete homework assignments or just to play computer games. Local community development orga­nizations that link with a church’s vision may need a space to host meetings or deliver their services.

Fourth, the church needs to serve the poor by offering educational opportunities that enable them to secure a GED and receive personal finance training. Our church provided such training through partnerships with other organiza­tions. It was amazing to see the many community residents who came looking for instruction. This training is critical, as nobody needs personal financal education more than some­one whose resources are limited, stretched to the breaking point each month. I’ve even seen Muslims from the commu­nity, who normally won’t enter a church, attend the program. We held twelve-week training sessions and 150 community members participated. Citizen’s Bank did the training using the Money Smart curriculum offered by the FDIC. Fidelity did our retirement and investment training, while our legal clinic partners provided instruction on wills and taxes. Meeting the needs of the community is a wonderful way to bear witness to the kingdom of God.

Fifth, the church must serve the poor by availing finan­cial resources to them in times of crisis. Our church doesn’t focus on relief efforts, but life happens, and, occasionally, people need financial assistance. Rent money is short, babies need coats, utilities get shutoff, and food is in short supply. This can easily happen when take-home pay barely meets expenses or survival depends on a welfare or Social Security supplement check. The Bible is replete with passages on this topic regarding the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-11, 26:12; Isaiah 58:7, 10; Matthew 5:42, 19:21; Luke 3:11). This doesn’t mean we just hand out benevolence, though in some circumstances that’s okay. Instead, the church can serve the poor in times of financial crisis by becoming their temporary employer. We can provide opportunities for them to earn what they need by working around the church. The worker is worthy of his wages and, in many cases, the work provides them with a sense of dignity because an economic exchange is taking place as two people meet each other’s needs. In my book, that’s not charity. Overall, the work of our church is about providing development opportunities as opposed to relief and rehabilitation. Relief and rehabilitation efforts are important in a crisis, they’re just not what we do given the prevailing conditions among the poor in my community.

The ways our church serves and loves the poor are not exhaustive. There is one gospel of Jesus Christ, but there is no one way to love our neighbors. Only through the gospel’s understanding can people learn contentment in states of plenty or want. Only through the gospel can people rightly form hope. The gospel is about transformation – positive, progressive, life-altering change that produces good fruit. Let the church of Jesus Christ be the catalyst for facilitating this change by loving, advocating for, educating, and sharing with the poor of this world.

This commentary was excerpted from the author’s longer essay in Oikonomia Network’s Economic Wisdom for Churches. Download a free copy of the new 184-page book here.

About the author:
*Zachary Ritvalsky is a professor and the Philadelphia site director at Lancaster Bible College

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Gurmeet Kanwal*

During his two and a half years as India’s Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar came across as a sincere and perceptive leader and an accomplished manager. He gave a free hand to the army to act pro-actively on the LoC. He got the prime minister to approve surgical strikes across the LoC in September 2016 – operations that changed the paradigm of India’s response to Pakistani provocations.

Parrikar worked closely with the leadership of the armed forces and the bureaucracy to put the stalled process of military modernisation back on the rails. And, he put his management skills and experience to good use to review policies and procedures for the efficient functioning of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the armed forces.

Under Parrikar’s leadership, the NDA government began the long process of addressing the “critical hollowness” plaguing defence preparedness – a term used by General VK Singh as the army chief, in a letter he had written to the prime minister. Besides major operational voids in the war establishment of the three services, there were large-scale deficiencies in the holding of important items of equipment, ammunition and spares that had an adverse impact on combat readiness.

According to a CAG report, the army’s depots have stocks of some key varieties of ammunition – for example for some tanks and artillery guns – for barely ten days of conflict. It has been estimated that it would cost over INR 20,000 crore to replenish stocks and increase holdings to the required levels.

Under Parrikar’s guidance, the MoD invoked the government’s emergency financial powers to sign contracts with Russian manufacturers to procure ammunition and spares worth INR 5,800 crore for the army and INR 9,200 crore for the air force. Similar deals are being negotiated with French and Israeli companies. However, the serviceability state of warfighting equipment still needs substantial improvement.

Modernisation of the armed forces had been stagnating during UPA rule due to inadequacy of funds, rigid procurement procedures, frequent changes in the qualitative requirements, the black-listing of several defence manufacturers and bureaucratic red tape. Parrikar took it as a personal challenge to give a fillip to modernisation.

He appointed a committee to review the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) and lost no time in studying and approving its recommendations. Several pragmatic amendments were approved by the Defence Minister and DPP 2016 was issued in April 2016, including an emphasis on ‘make in India’, raising of FDI in defence to 49 per cent, tweaking of the policy on offsets and permitting defence exports.

Consequently, weapons and equipment purchases worth over INR 1,50,000 crore have been accorded AON (acceptance of necessity) approval by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC). Contracts have been signed for acquisitions worth approximately INR 90,000 crore without a scam. However, it will take three to five years before deliveries begin.

On the negative side, on Parrikar’s watch, the defence budget for FY 2017-18 has dipped to 1.62 per cent of the country’s GDP – the lowest level since the disastrous 1962 border war with China. It is grossly inadequate to build the defence capabilities required to meet future threats and challenges and discharge its growing responsibilities as a regional power. A portion of the budgetary allocations on the capital account for the modernisation of the armed forces still continues to be surrendered unspent.

Not much has been done to streamline the nearly defunct long-term defence planning process. The 12th Defence Plan that will end on 31 March 2017 was not accorded formal approval by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). The CCS has also not formally approved the tri-service long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP 2007-22).

The defence minister was widely expected to initiate long-pending structural reforms to improve national security decision-making and synergise combat capabilities. These reforms were thought to include the appointment of a chief of defence staff (CDS) and new tri-service special forces, aerospace and cyber commands. In May 2015 he had told this writer that he would be putting up his recommendations to the CCS after the monsoon session of Parliament. However, for reasons that are difficult to understand, he was unable to do so.

On other fronts, the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission have still not been implemented for the armed forces. The agitation for One Rank One Pension (OROP) launched by veterans was allowed to linger on for an embarrassingly long period of time, with many anomalies remaining unresolved. Also, there has been no progress on the establishment of the national defence university and the construction of a national war memorial-cum-military museum.

Overall, the achievements of Manohar Parrikar as India’s Defence Minister far outweigh the disappointments. He deserves compliments for his untiring efforts to enhance India’s combat capabilities.

* Gurmeet Kanwal
Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi

After hearing concerns from parents and health authorities, the City of Toronto is being asked to consider restricting the sale of caffeinated energy drinks to people under the age of 19.

On Monday, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, the city’s acting medical officer of health, called on city council to ask city agencies to restrict the sale and marketing of caffeinated energy drinks to people under 19.

She said there are health concerns about the safety of the drinks, which contain sugar, caffeine and taurine, and which some studies have shown can trigger health problems such as abnormal heart rhythms.

Yaffe said children and youth should really not be drinking the drinks and she worries about the effects of mixing them with alcohol.

“In particular, when combined with alcohol, they may impair your ability to know how much you’ve drunk and therefore, (they may) increase risky behaviour like drunk driving or violence,” Yaffe told reporters Monday.

After reviewing evidence and listening to presentations from parents as well as groups representing drink makers, Yaffe said she would like to see amendments to the municipal alcohol policy to educate event organizers about the drinks and to encourage them not to mix them with alcohol.

One of those who spoke before the Board of Health was Jim Shepherd, whose 15-year-old son died of an unexplained arrhythmia, or heart rhythm disturbance, hours after consuming energy drinks.

Shepherd told CTV Toronto that, while his son’s autopsy wasn’t able to identify a clear cause of death, his son never had any health or heart problems before he died and he’s convinced that the energy drink his son drank contributed to his death.

Shepherd believes much more needs to be done to keep energy drinks away from teens.

“If an informed adult wants to drink them, that’s their business; I have no problem with that. But we protect minors from alcohol, we protect from cigarettes, we protect them from fireworks. So why don’t we protect them from energy drinks?” he said.

The Canadian Beverage Association defended the drinks, noting that the drink labels already state that they are not recommended for children and should not be mixed with alcohol.

“We look to Health Canada, who’s our regulator here, and in 2013, they did their risk assessment and said energy drinks are safe for consumption,” a CBA representative told the board.

The Board of Health’s recommendations will now go to Toronto city council for discussion next week.

Some 290 million years ago, a star much like the sun wandered too close to the central black hole of its galaxy. Intense tides tore the star apart, which produced an eruption of optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that first reached Earth in 2014. Now, a team of scientists using observations from NASA’s Swift satellite have mapped out how and where these different wavelengths were produced in the event, named ASASSN-14li, as the shattered star’s debris circled the black hole.

“We discovered brightness changes in X-rays that occurred about a month after similar changes were observed in visible and UV light,” said Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the lead researcher of the study. “We think this means the optical and UV emission arose far from the black hole, where elliptical streams of orbiting matter crashed into each other.”

Astronomers think ASASSN-14li was produced when a sun-like star wandered too close to a 3-million-solar-mass black hole similar to the one at the center of our own galaxy. For comparison, the event horizon of a black hole like this is about 13 times bigger than the sun, and the accretion disk formed by the disrupted star could extend to more than twice Earth’s distance from the sun.

When a star passes too close to a black hole with 10,000 or more times the sun’s mass, tidal forces outstrip the star’s own gravity, converting the star into a stream of debris. Astronomers call this a tidal disruption event. Matter falling toward a black hole collects into a spinning accretion disk, where it becomes compressed and heated before eventually spilling over the black hole’s event horizon, the point beyond which nothing can escape and astronomers cannot observe. Tidal disruption flares carry important information about how this debris initially settles into an accretion disk.

Astronomers know the X-ray emission in these flares arises very close to the black hole. But the location of optical and UV light was unclear, even puzzling. In some of the best-studied events, this emission seems to be located much farther than where the black hole’s tides could shatter the star. Additionally, the gas emitting the light seemed to remain at steady temperatures for much longer than expected.

ASASSN-14li was discovered Nov. 22, 2014, in images obtained by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASASSN), which includes robotic telescopes in Hawaii and Chile. Follow-up observations with Swift’s X-ray and Ultraviolet/Optical telescopes began eight days later and continued every few days for the next nine months. The researchers supplemented later Swift observations with optical data from the Las Cumbres Observatory headquartered in Goleta, California.

In a paper describing the results published March 15 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Pasham, Cenko and their colleagues show how interactions among the infalling debris could create the observed optical and UV emission.

Tidal debris initially falls toward the black hole but overshoots, arcing back out along elliptical orbits and eventually colliding with the incoming stream.

“Returning clumps of debris strike the incoming stream, which results in shock waves that emit visible and ultraviolet light,” said Goddard’s Bradley Cenko, the acting Swift principal investigator and a member of the science team. “As these clumps fall down to the black hole, they also modulate the X-ray emission there.”

Future observations of other tidal disruption events will be needed to further clarify the origin of optical and ultraviolet light.

Britain has followed in US footsteps by imposing a cabin baggage ban on larger electronic devices from several Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Direct inbound flights from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are affected by the new restrictions, amid fears of attacks.

Passengers won’t be allowed to bring phones, laptops or tablets over 16 cm in length, 9.3 cm in width and with a depth of over 1.5 cm into the cabin. These items will have to be in checked-in hold luggage.

Earlier on Tuesday, the United States imposed similar restrictions on planes coming from 10 airports in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa in response to unspecified security threats.

Original source

Back in the glory days of the so-called “Arab Spring”, when Middle Eastern dictators were falling like ninepins, it seemed that the overthrow of Ben Ali of Tunisia, Mubarak of Egypt, Gaddafi of Libya and Saleh of Yemen would inevitably be followed by the downfall of President Bashar Assad of Syria.

But, it now seems, providence had reserved a different fate for Assad.  A determination to cling to power, however ruthless or inhumane the methods, allied to a favourable concatenation of political circumstances, has enabled Assad to emerge from a long, multi-faceted combat battered, depleted territorially and logistically, but still in power.

In the amoral world of international relations, power commands respect.  So it is, perhaps, not surprising that green shoots of acceptance are beginning to sprout, even among states that were once totally opposed to Assad.

From the beginning Assad found himself with powerful allies to help counter his formidable opponents.  Syria has long been a vital component of Iran’s so-called “Shia crescent” (so dubbed by Jordan’s King Abdullah) – that area of Shia and Shia-allied states and peoples that form the foundation of Iran’s policy for achieving religious, and thus political, hegemony in the Middle East.  The crescent embraces Lebanon and so, in supporting Assad against the Syrian democratic forces that were attempting to overthrow him, Iran was able to augment its own Revolutionary Guards with Hezbollah fighters.

Dictators take risks, often winning a trick by relying on the spinelessness of their opponents.  Assad knew full well that US President Obama had threatened immediate counter measures if chemical weapons were used in the Syrian conflict.  Nevertheless, sensing indecision in his opponent, in August 2013 Assad authorised the use of the potent nerve agent, sarin, in an attack on the town of Ghouta, quite regardless of collateral civilian casualties.  Sarin is officially designated a weapon of mass destruction.

In the event Obama turned somersaults to avoid the decisive response he had promised.  When Russia’s President Putin claimed to have extracted an undertaking from Assad to destroy all the chemical weapons he had originally claimed not to possess, Obama seized on the chance of avoiding any form of punitive action.  The result was enormously to strengthen Putin’s position in the Middle East, while the deal was not worth the paper it was written on – if indeed it was ever written down.  The subsequent record abounds with convincing evidence of the continued use by Assad of chemical weaponry of various kinds, including VX, sulphur mustard and chlorine.

Meanwhile Assad had assured himself of a powerful new ally in his effort to cling to power in Syria. For his part Putin had two main objectives in view when he sent his forces into Syria on September 30, 2015 – to establish Russia as a potent political and military force in the region, and to secure his hold on the Russian naval base at Tartus and the refurbished air base and intelligence-gathering centre at Latakia.  He achieved both, as he launched massive air and missile attacks mainly against Assad’s domestic enemies, namely the rebel forces led by the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

As a result, by the end of 2016 Assad had retaken the city of Aleppo after a particularly brutal conflict, and in addition currently controls the capital, Damascus, parts of southern Syria including the tiny enclave of Deir Az Zor in the south-east, much of the area near the Syrian-Lebanese border, and the north-western coastal region.

Nothing succeeds like success, and some of the states in the Middle East are reported to be making tentative moves towards a rapprochement with Assad.

Jordan’s position towards the Syrian civil war has never been entirely clear. While  supporting moderate rebel groups from the FSA, the Jordanians have not openly called for Assad to step down, and recent reports seem to indicate that Jordan is moving closer to him and his supporters.  It was at Russia’s invitation that Jordan attended the latest round of talks between the Syrian regime and rebels in Astana. It was also present during the Geneva talks on 23 February 2017. In addition Jordan’s King Abdullah recently met with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a staunch supporter of Assad, to discuss the Syrian crisis.

Jordan is hosting the Arab League annual meeting scheduled for 29 March.  Syria was suspended from the League in 2011 over Assad’s failure to end the bloodshed caused by brutal government crackdowns on pro-democracy protests, and the League imposed economic and political sanctions on him.  So, as was the case in previous summits, Assad was not invited to the forthcoming meeting.

And yet recently reports have begun to emerge of a concerted attempt by Russia, Egypt and Jordan to get Assad readmitted to the League. This move was apparently spearheaded on 25 February by Egypt’s parliamentary Committee for Arab affairs, which issued a statement describing Syria’s continued suspension as totally ‘unacceptable’.

A response from the Syrian side was not long in coming.  Botros Morjana, head of the Arab and Foreign Affairs Committee at Syria’s People’s Assembly, expressed the committee’s appreciation of the call for the return of Syria to the Arab League.

There is as yet no indication that Assad will indeed be attending the forthcoming meeting.  Rumours however abound: there’s been a flurry of official and diplomatic activity;  military officers and intelligence agents from Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria have been flying back and forth between Cairo, Riyadh, Amman, Damascus and the Russian command in Syria, all engaged in detailed planning for the event;  Assad will arrive in Amman armed with a Russian safe-conduct guarantee, aboard a Russian military aircraft which would fly him there and back from Russia’s Syrian air base at Hmeimim. And so forth.

If Putin could indeed persuade Saudi King Salman to accept Assad’s return to the Arab summit, the Russian president’s reputation in the Arab world would soar.  An historic handshake and greetings between Assad and Salman would signify the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia, which backed the Syrian rebels, and the Assad regime. But for Assad, whom few expected to emerge alive from the nearly seven years of warfare, it would mark collective Arab recognition of his personal triumph against all the odds.  It may not happen this time – but it’s on the cards.

In the coming weeks, Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The primary reason for this visit is for Serbia to receive the coveted S-300 anti-aircraft system, reports Belgrade daily Informer.

Serbian and Russian officials have already met to discuss the transaction.

The S-300 system cost around $120m each. According to officials, Belgrade will strike a special deal with Russia and lease the system, thus saving substantial money, but still obtaining the system. Russia has similar deal with India for their submarines.

The S-300 system will be de facto owned by Russia, however Serbia will pay a “subscription” fee and utilize the system.

According to the Informer daily, that the deal has already been made, what remains now is the official meeting between Vućić and Putin.

Former Serbian DM Bratislav Gašić said the S-300 system will put his country well above the rest not just in the region but in Europe as very few countries have such systems.

“With the new MiG29s, and now the S-300 system, we’ll certainly be above the rest in the region, but also be a major factor of stability,” said Gašić.

By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera*

In 1908, MK Gandhi said, the “English have not taken India, we have given it to them.” This expression is applicable to Sri Lanka as well when one observes how some elites handed the island nation over to Britain in the optimism of a better rule. Before the Indian subcontinent won back its independence, Britain ruled the region with the support of fewer than 100,000 troops and managed to control 400 million people via draconian policies and supporting local allies who worked to secure the British interests. Irrespective of the upper hand they enjoyed due to advanced military technology, this was possible largely due to their capacity to divide the targeted populations and co-opt locals into becoming British allies. This “divide and rule strategy” was employed in Sri Lanka too; and the communal discrimination and differences between different ethnic groups fuelled by the colonial British rulers at that time continues to overshadow the Sri Lankan nation even today.

Sri Lankan President Mathripala Sirisena’s dissolution of the gazette notification issued by the British rulers – that had declared 82 rebels as traitors during the 1818 rebellion – is remarkable. Sri Lankans who had fought in the rebellion had been assassinated in cruel ways and some were exiled and imprisoned outside the country. Several decades on, a Sri Lankan president was bold enough to remember the country’s national heroes who had sacrificed their lives for an independent Sri Lanka. Many countries still remember the gross human rights violations and plunder of national wealth during the British colonial period, and till date, resultant scars run deep in the post-colonial societies.

In another positive development, President Sirisena’s Asia-centric balanced foreign policy has delivered results, such as winning support and trust from several world leaders. The levels of external pressure witnessed during the past are not visible and have drastically reduced owing to issues of concern being addressed with commitments to rectify the situation. At the UNHRC, the Sri Lankan foreign minister assured that “the Constitution drafting process is for us both central and essential not only for democratisation, but also for ensuring non-recurrence of conflict…The Parliamentary process and referendum are for us, imperative.” The UN had criticised the Sri Lankan mechanism as “worryingly slow,” accusing the latter’s leadership of neglecting the widespread torture and abuse that are still a reality in the country.

In Sri Lanka, different members of the government have voiced different opinions on the constitutional process. Sending mixed signals has been a practice that has not helped much. Therefore, a consensus has to be reached on the constitutional process and if the government proposes to go for a referendum.

Neville Ladduwahetty, in his recent article, ‘The referendum trap’, clearly explains that it is also vital to consider how “unintended consequences would be exploited by the Tamil leadership both nationally and internationally to make claims for the right of self-determination followed by other claims that go far beyond what was intended through Constitutional Reforms,” and argues that this “is the end game the Tamil leadership is striving for by pushing for a referendum.” What if the referendum has dual outcomes such as a huge loss in the South and a victory in the North? It will clearly send a message of further division in the polity. Who would take the advantage of this situation?

President Sirisena’s stance regarding the fresh UNHRC appeal for a hybrid court has been clear in that he will not allow foreign judges into the process and has explained that the local judicial process is dependable and capable. At a recent event, President Sirisena reiterated his position and said “I am not going to allow non-governmental organizations to dictate how to run my government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute my troops.” Having foreign judges in Sri Lanka will definitely aggravate political tensions.

There are three essential elements that can be easily introduced to bring credibility and results to the local reconciliation process. First, the government could consider international engagement such as of Interpeace, a reputed body that could be used to provide technical assistance for the reconciliation process with terms of reference from the government. In January 2016, the Director General of Sri Lanka’s Reconciliation taskforce met the Director General of Interpeace. However, unfortunately, there has been no forward movement since then. Second, certain recommendations of the eight national reconciliation conferences conducted during 2011-2015 could be implemented. Civil society leaders had contributed significant recommendations vis-a-vis these reports. Third, top priority must be given to Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka relations and Sri Lankan diaspora re-engagement strategies.

There is much to be done to heal the hearts and minds in the deeply divided Sri Lankan community. It is hoped that one of the options succeeds in becoming a lasting policy. As a wise Wazir (minister) in 9th century Baghdad had said, “The basis of government is jugglery. If it works, and lasts, it becomes policy.”

* Asanga Abeyagoonasekera
Director General, Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), Sri Lanka & Columnist, IPCS

We live in a three-dimensional world, but everything we see is first recorded on our retinas in only two dimensions.

So how does the brain represent 3-D information? In a new study, researchers for the first time have shown how different parts of the brain represent an object’s location in depth compared to its 2-D location.

Researchers at The Ohio State University had volunteers view simple images with 3-D glasses while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. The fMRI showed what was happening in the participants’ brains while they looked at the three-dimensional images.

The results showed that as an image first enters our visual cortex, the brain mostly codes the two dimensional location. But as the processing continues, the emphasis shifts to decoding the depth information as well.

“As we move to later and later visual areas, the representations care more and more about depth in addition to 2-D location. It’s as if the representations are being gradually inflated from flat to 3-D,” said Julie Golomb, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State.

“The results are surprising because a lot of people assumed we might find depth information in early visual areas. What we found is that even though there might be individual neurons that have some depth information, they don’t seem to be organized into any map or pattern for 3-D space perception.”

Golomb said many scientists have investigated where and how the brain decodes two-dimensional information. Others had looked at how the brain perceives depth. Researchers have found that depth information must be inferred in our brain by comparing the slightly different views from the two eyes (what is called binocular disparity) or from other visual cues.

But this is the first study to directly compare both 2-D and depth information at one time to see how 3-D representations (2-D plus depth) emerge and interact in the brain, she said.

The study was led by Nonie Finlayson, a former postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State, who is now at University College London. Golomb and Xiaoli Zhang, a graduate student at Ohio State, are the other co-authors. The study was published recently in the journal NeuroImage.

Participants in the study viewed a screen in the fMRI while wearing 3-D glasses. They were told to focus on a dot in the middle of the screen. While they were watching the dot, objects would appear in different peripheral locations: to the left, right, top, or bottom of the dot (horizontal and vertical dimensions). Each object would also appear to be at a different depth relative to the dot: behind or in front (visible to participants wearing the 3-D glasses).

The fMRI data allowed the researchers to see what was happening in the brains of the participants when the various objects appeared on the screen. In this way, the scientists could compare how activity patterns in the visual cortex differed when participants saw objects in different locations.

“The pattern of activity we saw in the early visual cortex allowed us to tell if someone was seeing an object that was to the left, right, above or below the fixation dot,” Golomb said. “But we couldn’t tell from the early visual cortex if they were seeing something in front of or behind the dot.

“In the later areas of visual cortex, there was a bit less information about the objects’ two dimensional locations. But the tradeoff was that we could also decode what position they were perceiving in depth.”

Golomb said future studies will look to more closely quantify and model the nature of three-dimensional visual representations in the brain.

“This is an important step in understanding how we perceive our rich three-dimensional environment,” she said.

The Dutch Electoral Council has announced the official results of the parliamentary elections, which turned out to be very close to the preliminary polling predictions and confirmed the victory of the Netherlands’ ruling People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

The VVD, the party of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, secured an electoral victory by gaining 33 seats in the Dutch parliament’s lower house out of 150 and becoming the largest parliamentary faction, according to the data presented by the Dutch Electoral Council.

However, it lost eight seats in comparison to the previous elections.

Its closest rival, Geert Wilders’ far-right populist Party for Freedom (PVV) came second by securing 20 seats in the House of Representatives. Even second place can be regarded as a relative electoral success for the party, as it got eight more seats than last time.

The Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), a center-right Christian Democratic party, shared third place with the social-liberal Democrats 66 party, with both parties gaining 19 seats each. Meanwhile, the Green Left and the Dutch Socialist Party each won 14 seats.

The Dutch Labor Party, which had been the second biggest faction in the House of Representatives before the elections, with 35 seats, suffered a decisive defeat and received only nine seats this time.

Rutte’s VVD was also allocated two out of eight seats that remained vacant after the vote counting, while one seat was allocated to each of the PVV, the CDA, Democrats 66, Socialists, Green Lefts and the Labor Party.

According to the Dutch Electoral Council, the turnout in these parliamentary elections, which were held on March 15 amid an escalating spat with Turkey, was 81.9 percent – the highest since 1986. A total of 13 parties are represented in the parliament – the highest number since 1972.

Wilders conceded defeat to Rutte late on March 15, soon after the preliminary voting results were announced, and said he would like to be invited to coalition negotiations. The formal negotiations about a government coalition are expected to start after the new parliament convenes on March 23.

The authors assess the first year of the EU-Turkey statement on refugees, providing a summary of the current situation.

By İlke Toygür and Bianca Benvenuti*

n 2015 the EU faced one of the most severe crises in its entire history. The refugee flows from the Aegean Sea caused a humanitarian drama that required a rapid response. While one particular member state, Greece, has been the most affected, another transit country, Turkey, has played a crucial role. A candidate country and also a long-term economic partner, Turkey was there to keep refugees out, as the guardian of Europe’s borders. Externalising the issue seemed the best option to European leaders after the many inconclusive attempts of the European Commission to relocate asylum seekers among the EU’s member states. With an unexpected revitalisation of relations with the aim of delegating irregular migration flows, Turkey and the EU concluded a deal to halt these flows to Europe. The EU-Turkey Statement was signed on 18 March with the proviso of certain concessions to be made Turkey, such as opening up chapters in its accession negotiations, €3 (plus €3) billion and, most importantly, visa-free travel for its citizens. Nevertheless, the deal was immediately subject to criticism from many sectors. One year on, an honest assessment is very much needed since the EU is considering the designing of new deals with other transit countries. In the meantime, both Turkey and key countries of the EU, such as the Netherlands, France and Germany, are facing very critical electoral challenges of their own. For this reason, internal politics and foreign policy decisions are highly interwoven.

Analysis

Introduction

While the world witnessed one of the most tragic refugee crises of its history in 2015, the EU got itself into an impasse due to its member states’ clashing interests and their inability (or unwillingness) to find a common solution to this global challenge.¹ Despite the European Commission’s efforts and the publication of the European Agenda on Migration,² this profound solidarity crisis led to the blunt refusal by some member states to implement the relocation system as approved by the EU Council in September 2015.³ As no common solution was found to distribute migrants and asylum seekers fairly among the member states, the decision was taken to strengthen the EU’s cooperation with countries of both origin and transit.⁴ With a Syrian refugee population at the time of around 2 million,⁵ and being the main transit country for migrants to the EU through the Balkan route, Turkey was identified as the provider of the solution to the European deadlock.⁶ On 29 November 2015, the EU’s heads of state or government held a first meeting with Turkey to develop EU-Turkey relations and draw the lines of a new cooperation agreement to manage the migration crisis.⁷

On 18 March 2016, during a second International Summit, EU leaders and their Turkish counterparts signed the EU-Turkey Statement, better known today as the EU-Turkey deal.⁸ According to the statement, all migrants crossing the Aegean Sea illegally would be readmitted to Turkey, while for every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian would be resettled from Turkey to the EU, in a process that became known as the “one-to-one mechanism”. In exchange, the EU promised to re-energise Turkey’s accession process by opening up chapters, speeding up visa liberalisation and investing a €3 billion financial packet plus an additional €3 billion to improve the standard of living of the Syrian immigrant community in Turkey.⁹ While welcomed in Brussels as a positive step to addressing the ‘migration crisis’, the deal sparked heated criticism among international human rights organisations and civil society for being in breach of international laws such as the ban on collective expulsions. In particular, many opposed the decision to consider Turkey a ‘safe third country’ –ie, a country that is safe for third-country nationals–.

One year after the EU-Turkey statement, externalisation (or the effort to externalise migration control) is the cornerstone of the European strategy to address the migration challenge. On 3 February 2017 Europe’s leaders met in Malta to devise an action plan with Libya to halt irregular migration through the Central Mediterranean route.¹⁰ While the EU-Turkey statement might become a model for future deals with other countries, it is important to evaluate its effect at one year’s remove from its implementation. On the one hand it seems to have achieved its main goal, with the number of migrants crossing from Turkey drastically dropping in the weeks following March 2016. However, the situation is not as bright as it might seem, to the point that many observers are envisaging that the deal might break down. The growing political instability in Turkey, combined with a worsening of its relations with the EU, is also playing against the partnership designed to cooperate on migration management. This paper assesses the first year of the accord’s implementation, looks at its main effects and will try to answer the one question that remains in the air: will the deal break down in the near future?

Stemming the flow across the Aegean Sea: data evidence

One of the declared aim of the EU-Turkey Statement –better known as the EU-Turkey deal– is to ‘end irregular migration from Turkey to the EU’.¹¹ Data evidence suggests that the flow of irregular migrants crossing the Aegean Sea did in fact slow down. However, a critical approach to the numbers reveals that the causal relation between the EU-Turkey deal and the drop in irregular crossings is not as clear as it might seem.¹² After the peak in October 2015, the number of irregular crossings to Greece did in fact slow down, mostly due to the poor weather conditions of the winter months. In addition, the progressive closure of the Balkan route since September 2015, as the result of the closure of the border between Hungary and Serbia and the subsequent construction of a barbed-wire fence along the Hungarian-Serbian and Hungarian-Croatian frontiers,¹³ had already deterred migrants from undertaking the perilous journey through the Aegean Sea.¹⁴ In short, the combined effect of the Balkan route closure and the EU-Turkey statement resulted in migration across the Aegean Sea remaining very low even in the summer months of 2016.

Nevertheless, the EU has frequently resorted to the rhetoric of preventing migrants from dying at sea to justify the agreement with Turkey. On this point there is no doubt that it has failed to achieve its goal: 2016 has been the most tragic year, with over 5,000 people dead while attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean.¹⁵ The sharp increase from the 3,771 recorded in 2015 may well be the result of migrants tending to use the Central Mediterranean, the deadliest route. In short, even if the deaths on the Aegean have decreased, as underlined various times by the European Commission, this is not, however, unfortunately the case when taking into account the Central Mediterranean route as well.

Political and legal challenges to the deal

International organisations criticised the EU-Turkey deal from day one,¹⁶ claiming that Turkey cannot be considered a ‘safe third country’. The concept of ‘safe third country’ is the legal basis for the deal, as it allows the EU to return migrants and asylum seekers to Turkey without violating the non-refoulement principle.¹⁷ Reports and studies have shown that Turkey is indeed not a ‘safe third country’ for either asylum seekers or refugees.¹⁸ Additionally, the country’s domestic situation has deteriorated dramatically over the past year, following the attempted coup of July 2016. As a result, legal challenges to the return of asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey are on the increase. Furthermore, asylum requests filed in Greece must be assessed on an individual basis before a potential return to Turkey, as this would otherwise amount to mass expulsions. As a result, in April 2016 Greece adopted a new law (Law 4375/2016) to fast-track asylum procedures at the border.¹⁹ The law envisages a two-step process: before considering an application on its merits, the individual concerned must pass an admissibility assessment. Until recently, only Syrians have been subject to the admissibility procedure to decide whether they should be returned to Turkey. According to the EU-Turkey statement, most Syrians should be returned to Turkey: however, the Greek Appeal Committee has overturned the vast majority of the appeals, arguing that Turkey does not qualify as a ‘safe third country’, thus blocking a central element of the deal itself.²⁰ According to the latest figures provided by the European Commission, arrivals continue to outpace the number of returns from the Greek islands to Turkey, as the total number of migrants returned since the date of the EU-Turkey Statement is only 1,487.²¹

The new procedure puts a disproportionate bureaucratic burden on Greece’s asylum system by establishing a de facto double formula for those in the islands –who need to undergo an admissibility and then an eligibility process– and those on the mainland –who undergo only the eligibility process–.²² Besides, the fate of those sent back to Turkey is also worrying: the UN Refugee Agency, entrusted by the deal to monitor the situation of returnees in Turkey, has expressed on several occasions its concern over the situation of Syrians readmitted to the country.²³ It also reported obstacles to the regular access to refugee camps in Turkey and to monitor whether anyone sent there from Greece is given legal protection.²⁴In addition, the reception conditions on the Greek islands, inadequate already before the deal, has worsened dramatically: the camps there have been transformed into detention facilities for those waiting a response on their eligibility –ie, on whether they can seek asylum in Greece or should be returned to Turkey–. By the end of 2016 around 15,000 people were still stranded on the islands in dire conditions.²⁵

The legal nature of the EU-Turkey Statement is itself unclear, as the EU’s negotiators failed to follow EU procedure for concluding treaties with third countries.²⁶ For this reason it is called a ‘statement’ and not an agreement, since it has not been approved by the European Parliament. As a result, the EU General Court has declared that it has no jurisdiction over a case presented by three asylum seekers against the agreement,²⁷ placing a clear distinction between the member states and the EU itself.

The part of the deal that was best received –safe passage to Europe, also known as the ‘1-to-1 mechanism’– it also not working properly. Only 3,565 Syrian refugees have been resettled from Turkey to Europe, a negligible number compared with the goal of resettling 72,000, and even more so compared with the almost 3 million Syrians in Turkey.²⁸ Figure 2 shows the number of individuals resettled from Turkey according to the agreement. Germany has by far accepted the highest number. The reason lies not only in the size of its population and its economic situation but also in the fact that it is the key country behind the design and negotiation of the deal with Turkey. The Netherlands and France followed Germany’s lead: being founder members of the EU they are merely assuming their responsibility.

Will unfulfilled promises be the breaking point?

Another aspect of the settlement is that relations between the EU and Turkey have unexpectedly revived. Since the EU was unable to find a fair solution for the allocation of asylum seekers among its member states, the only way of ‘solving’ the problem was its externalisation. Thus, there was a revitalisation of its relations with Turkey, since it is the main transit country for Syrian refugees. However, the situation was merely circumstantial as there is no convergence of interests when it comes to migration management.²⁹ The agreement has also been criticised widely since Turkey’s democratic credentials are quite problematic as regards basic rights and freedoms, and this was even aggravated following the attempted coup. Bearing all this in mind, it is important to underline the following promises made to Turkey:

• Lifting the visa requirements for Turkish citizens. Turkey has been given 72 benchmarks for achieving visa-free travel to the Schengen Area, among which it has fulfilled 67. One of the remaining benchmarks, revision of the anti-terror law, faced constant resistance from the Turkish side, leading to a deadlock. The issue of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens to the Schengen area is considered the deal’s ‘core’ part by the European Commission as it has already been on the agenda for a long time.
• Opening negotiation chapters in Turkey’s accession process. However, only one chapter has been opened following the signing of the deal.³⁰
• ‘3-plus-3 billion euros’. According to the European Commission, of the €2.2 billion already allocated for 2016-17, contracts have now been signed for 39 projects to the value of €1.5 billion, all of which have begun to be implemented.³¹
• Resettlement from Turkey, also known as the 1-to-1 rule. As noted above, 3,565 refugees have been resettled.

‘Visa liberalisation is a core part of the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March which is designed to decrease irregular migration. The proposal for placing Turkey on the visa free list also clearly specifies that the visa exemption is dependent both upon continued implementation of the requirements of the visa liberalisation roadmap and of the European Union-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016.’ ³²

Within all this process, the institutional division between the Commission, the Council and the Parliament has been highly visible. The Commission and the Council have appealed to realpolitik and tried to maintain the deal despite worsening conditions in Turkey following the attempted coup. On the other hand, there is also the European Parliament’s non-binding decision on freezing negotiations, with the aim of imposing some kind of sanction. However, the decision was not further promoted by a Council decision, and all of the deals financial stipulations have remained in place.

Conclusions

The deal: can it –and should it– be maintained?

An assessment one-year on of the deal’s implementation should also take into consideration that it came at a time when Brussels was gridlocked vìs-a-vìs the migration crisis. Therefore, there was no time for detailed debates in the EU to find a more adequate and long-term solution to the challenge. The Statement could have provided space for further discussion but instead it proved to be the first step in the reinvigoration of the EU’s externalisation policy. Even more, a critical approach to the EU-Turkey deal is now necessary since the EU is considering striking similar deals with countries such as Libya, Egypt and Tunisia.³³ But there are still two main questions to consider:

• Can the deal hold?
• Should the deal hold?

The answer to the question of whether it can, depends on:

• A further deterioration of conditions in Syria that might lead to a rising inflow of Syrians.
• Greece’s capacity to handle the situation further, regardless of its lack of administrative and financial capacities.
• Domestic issues in Turkey and the further deterioration of the country’s safety conditions.
• The possibility of serious social unrest between Turks and Syrians. So far it appears that the Turkish government has no problem with having so many Syrians within its borders. There are even draft proposals to provide them with Turkish citizenship. Meanwhile, neither has Turkish public opinion been overly negative about the situation so far, although the granting of citizenship is not viewed positively. Furthermore, the government has relocated Syrians to Kurdish areas in south-eastern Turkey, which could be construed as social engineering designed to stem the rising Kurdish nationalism. In this regard, social unrest might well be a possibility.
• The Turkish government’s reaction to unfulfilled promises. The country’s President has threatened the EU on several occasions with sending migrants on into Europe if the economic part of the deal is not complied with. The most important unfulfilled part of the deal is visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens. In general, the intention of linking the refugee deal and Turkey’s accession process to the EU ended up being more of a problem than a positive conditionality. The underlying logic was the rejuvenation of relations, or at least the maintenance of a working link. However, it led to a further deterioration in mutual trust and a greater estrangement between the peoples of Turkey and the EU.
• And lastly, it depends mostly on the current state of the relations between the EU and Turkey. At present, the relationship has worsened significantly, both as a whole and as regards specific tensions with certain member states, notably Germany and the Netherlands. There are currently discussions on a possible complete breakdown in the event of the ‘yes’ vote triumphing in the Turkish constitutional referendum, which has dramatically been criticised by the Venice Commission ‘as a dangerous step backwards for democracy’.³⁴ Should this be the case, there is likely to be a thorough reconsideration of the future of Turkey-EU relations.

All these points are vital for the deal to remain on track and they largely depend on domestic conditions in Turkey and Greece, the two key countries involved in the deal, in addition to on the relations between Turkey and the EU. Even if the deal survives for a while more, outsourcing the problem can never be a permanent or long-term solution.

As to the second question, whether the deal should hold, the answer comprises elements of realpolitik, humanitarian concern and the legal rights of refugees. The EU-Turkey statement has set a dangerous precedent by demeaning ‘the principle of the right to seek refuge itself’. It may well erode the EU’s image as a defender human rights, considering the closure of the Western Balkan route, the poor treatment of asylum seekers at the borders of European countries and the dire standards of living on the Greek islands.³⁵ For this reason, continuing the policy of externalisation may require the creation of a firmer legal framework.

As a concluding remark, the decline in the number of illegal crossings in the Aegean, which is considered the deal’s main positive result, needs to be critically assessed. It should have provided the EU with sufficient scope to further discuss a long-term solution to the migration crisis. It should be borne in mind that the EU-Turkey statement involves only Syrian refugees but not those of other nationalities. This is a further reason why the EU-Turkey statement should merely be considered a stop-gap measure that must be replaced with a more stable and longer-term strategy. However, facing one of the most critical electoral years in the EU’s history, it is unrealistic to expect a fair assessment of the current situation.

*About the authors:
İlke Toygür, Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @ilketoygur

Bianca Benvenuti, Istituto Affari Internazionali | @BeyazBi

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

Notes:
¹ İlke Toygür & Bianca Benvenuti (2016), ‘The European Response to the Refugee Crisis: Angela Merkel on the Move’, IPC-Mercator Policy Brief, June.

This week at the Voices for Creative Nonviolence office in Chicago, my colleague Sabia Rigby prepared a presentation for a local high school. She’ll team up with a young friend of ours, himself a refugee from Iraq, to talk about refugee crises driven by war. Sabia recently returned from Kabul where she helped document the young Afghan Peace Volunteers’ efforts to help bring warmth, food and education to internally displaced families living in makeshift camps, having fled the Afghan War when it raged near their former homes.

Last year Sabia had been visiting with refugees in “the Calais Jungle,” who were fleeing the Middle East and several African countries for Britain. Thwarted from crossing the English Channel, a large mass of people were stopped in this refugee camp in Calais, France, from which French authorities eventually evacuated them, defying their careful solidarity and burning their camp to the ground.

As part of her high school talk, Sabia prepared a handout to show where refugees are the most welcomed. One detail astonished her.

In FY 2016, the U.S. admitted 84,995 refugees, but Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world took in 117,000 new refugees and migrants in 2016, and hosts more than 255,000 refugees from Somalia. Yemen is now beginning to host the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. What’s more, the country is regularly targeted by Saudi and U.S. airstrikes.

Since we are also planning a week of fast and action related to the tragic circumstances Yemen faces, we were astounded when we realized Yemen is a path of escape for Somalis fleeing the Horn of Africa, refugees of one conflict, stranded in their flight, and trapped in a country where deadly conflict is precipitating into deadlier famine.

After years of U.S. support for dictator Ali Adullah Saleh, civil war has wracked Yemen since 2014. Its neighbor Saudi Arabia, itself among the region’s cruelest dictatorships and a staunch U.S. ally, became nervous in 2015 about the outcome and, with support from nine regional allies, began subjecting the country to a punishing barrage of airstrikes, and also imposed a blockade that ended the inflow of food and supplies to Yemen through a major port. This was accomplished with massive, ongoing weapons shipments from the U.S., which has also waged independent airstrikes that have killed dozens of civilians, including women and children.

Pummeled by airstrikes and fighting, facing economic collapse and on the brink of famine, how could this tiny, impoverished country absorb thousands upon thousands of desperate migrants?

Yemen imports 90% of its food. Because of the blockade, food and fuel prices are rising and scarcity is at crisis levels.

UNICEF estimates that more than 460,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition, and 3.3 million children and pregnant or lactating women suffer acute malnutrition. More than 10,000 people have been killed, including 1,564 children, and millions have been displaced from their homes, but worse is the groundwork laid for the far greater devastation of famine. Iona Craig, in the IRIN publication, recently wrote:

In the middle of a vast expanse of grey scrubland, a rapidly growing population of more than 120 families huddle under parched trees. Escaping the latest wave of conflict on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, they walked two days to get to this camp southwest of Taiz city.

But on arrival, the scores of women and children found nothing. No support from aid agencies. No food. No water. No shelter. The elderly talk of eating the trees to survive, while children beg for water from local farmers. A mother cradles her clearly malnourished baby in her arms.

Now comes word that on March 16^th, forty-two Somali people were killed in sustained gunfire from the air as they set forth in a boat attempting to flee Yemen.

“I took cover in the belly of the ship,” said Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, a Somali who survived the attack. “People were falling left and right. Everyone kept screaming, ‘We are Somali! We are Somali!’”

But the shooting continued for what felt like half an hour.

The attack on Yemen traps both Yemenis and fleeing Somalis in the worst of four developing crises which collectively amount, one U.N. official warns, to the worst humanitarian crisis in the history of the U.N. As of this writing, no one has taken responsibility for the strike, but survivors say they were attacked by a helicopter gunship. The boat was carrying 140 people as it headed north off the coast of Yemen.

Meanwhile, US weapons makers, including General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, profit massively from weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. In December, 2017, Medea Benjamin wrote: “Despite the repressive nature of the Saudi regime, U.S. governments have not only supported the Saudis on the diplomatic front, but militarily. Under the Obama administration, this has translated into massive weapons sales of $115 billion.”

At this critical juncture, all member states of the UN must call for an end to the blockade and airstrikes, a silencing of all guns, and a negotiated settlement to the war in Yemen. The worst malefactors, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, must abandon cynical maneuvering against rivals like Iran, in the face of such an unspeakable human cost as Yemen is being made to pay.

U.S. people bear responsibility to demand a radical departure from U.S. policy which exacerbates the deadly tragedy faced by people living in Yemen.

Choosing a path of clear opposition to U.S. policies toward Yemen, U.S. citizens should demand elected representatives stop all drone attacks and military “special operations” within Yemen, end all U.S. weapon sales and military aid to Saudi Arabia, and provide compensation to those who suffered losses caused by U.S. attacks.

Our group of activists long functioned under the name “Voices in the Wilderness,” a campaign to defy U.S. economic warfare against Iraq, a form of war through imposition of economic sanctions which directly contributed to the deaths of over 500,000 children. Lost in a culture of hostile unreality and unbearable silence concerning economic warfare, we were evoking, perhaps unconsciously, the plight of refugees seeking survival. We didn’t succeed in lifting the brutal economic sanctions against Iraq, but we surely learned harsh realities about how callous and reckless U.S. policy makers could be.

We must ground ourselves in reality and in solidarity with the greater part of the world’s people. As our neighbors around the world flee in desperation across borders or within the confines of their own countries, we must continually educate ourselves about the reality of what our nation’s actions mean to the world’s poor. Building toward a time when our voices may unite and be heard, we must raise them now in crying out for the people of Yemen.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Israeli ambassador in Moscow to demand explanations for the airstrikes Israel conducted near the Syrian city of Palmyra last week, the ministry confirmed.

Ambassador Gary Koren was called in by Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday after news about the strike emerged, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the media on Monday, confirming earlier media reports.

The embassy refrained from commenting on Koren’s visit over the weekend, but the Russian Foreign Ministry did say that the ambassador’s visit “was mostly to discuss the latest events in Syria and around it.”

Last Friday morning, Israeli planes attacked several targets in Syria, reportedly destroying advanced arms provided to the Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah. Syria’s air defense force fired anti-aircraft missiles at the planes as they were returning from the mission. Israel said it shot down one of the interceptors with its Arrow long-range SAMs.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to destroy Syria’s air defenses if the country attacked Israeli warplanes again.

“Next time, if the Syrian aerial defense apparatus acts against our planes, we will destroy it,” Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli Public Radio on Sunday. “We won’t hesitate. Israel’s security is above everything else; there will be no compromise.”

Israel has a long record of violating Syrian airspace with impunity that stretches back to before 2011, when the country’s current armed conflict began. Arguably the most famous incident occurred in 2007, when an alleged Israeli raid destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor governorate.

By Joyce Karam

Iraq’s prime minister, speaking on a high-level meeting to the US capital, has indicated that Baghdad seeks to “normalize” relations with Saudi Arabia.

Improved regional ties, the fight against Daesh and support from the US were all on the agenda during Haider Al-Abadi’s visit to Washington, which on Monday saw him meet US President Donald Trump for the first time in the Oval Office.

The prime minister struck a different tone to his predecessor Nuri Al-Maliki, in welcoming better relations with Iraq’s Arab neighbors including Saudi Arabia.

This comes a month after Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir visited Baghdad — the first such visit by a Saudi official since 1991.

Al-Abadi said the “Saudi relations are warming, and at a very good track.”

In a speech delivered to the United States Institute of Peace after his meeting with Trump, Al-Abadi spoke of “an opening for a very good neighborly relationship” with Saudi Arabia.

“Don’t forget no Saudi official has visited Baghdad since 1991, not even after 2003, this is the first time, we welcome it,” he said.

The visit by Al-Jubeir was good for Saudi Arabia “to see what is happening in Iraq”, he added. “Our Saudi friends used to think Iraq is under control of our Iranian neighbors, but we are not and they saw for themselves,” Al-Abadi told his US audience.

Saudi-Iraqi cooperation to boost commercial and humanitarian ties could be one outcome of the visit, the official suggested.

Al-Abadi said Riyadh wants to have a role “in providing reconstruction for areas that are liberated from Daesh, and this is welcome for us, we want to normalize the relations.”

He added that “our aim is to control and stop regional conflict in the region… We cannot move Iraq from the map, and we… are to live with our neighbors.”

Counter-Daesh summit

Al-Abadi’s visit coincides with the Trump administration’s counter-Daesh summit in Washington. It is expected to convene 68 dignitaries on the foreign ministry level, with the aim of agreeing on a holistic strategy against the terror group.

Buoyed by military advances in Mosul against Daesh and good relations with senior officials in the Trump administration, Al-Abadi is holding high-level US meetings during his second state visit to Washington, where he was promised a “bigger commitment” and “assurances” 14 years after the US invasion.

Al-Abadi held breakfast talks with Vice President Mike Pence and met lawmakers from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the US Congress. The advances in Mosul against Daesh were highlighted in the meetings.

Pence, according to the White House readout, “commended Iraqi Security Forces for their progress in western Mosul and thanked Prime Minister Al-Abadi for the sacrifices of the Iraqi people in our shared fight against Daesh.”

In the meetings with Trump and Pence, the US emphasized “opportunities to strengthen the bilateral relationship” and not allow any country to destabilize Iraq or its democratic institutions.

Both sides stressed as well a “commitment to the long-term partnership between the United States and Iraq grounded in the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement” without getting into actual numbers of new US deployments or forces that could stay in Iraq after the defeat of Daesh.

Negotiators of the European Parliament and the Council agreed Tuesday on a revised energy efficiency label and the relevant regulatory framework. The current A+++ to G labels for products will be replaced by a clear and easier to use A to G labels.

According to the negotiators, this will make energy labels more understandable for consumers and help them make better informed purchasing choices. The measure will be accompanied by the introduction of a public database making it easier for citizens to compare the energy efficiency of household appliances.

Consumer surveys show that about 85% of European citizens look at energy efficiency labels when they purchase products. Having the best performing ones in the A+ to A+++ categories was misleading and hid potential substantial differences in energy performance. Giving consumers more accessible information about the energy consumption of products and appliances will make it easier to identify the most efficient appliances.

According to Vice President for Energy Union Maroš Šefčovič, “Technological innovations allow European citizens to enjoy the most advanced products on the market; it was therefore high time to bring our labelling scale up to date. The new labels will be empowering consumers to take energy efficiency into account when choosing their next electric products.”

In the same vein, Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, Miguel Arias Cañete, added that, “This deal is good news for Europe’s consumers and businesses, our energy bills and the climate. The revised energy efficiency label – together with ecodesign – can save households close to €500 per year, increase manufacturers and retailers overall revenue by over €65 billion per year and save to the annual energy consumption of Italy and all the Baltic countries combined.”

Main achievements:

• A return to the clearer A to G class label, by removing the cumbersome A+ to A+++ classes from existing energy labels within a well-defined timeframe;
• The introduction of a product registration database to support market surveillance activities by the Member States;
• A public database containing all energy efficiency labels, giving consumers a better tool to compare the energy efficiency of household appliances;
• Future-proofing the legislation by introducing provisions on software updates and smart appliances, and explicitly banning the use of defeat devices.

European lawmakers voted on March 16 in favor of a resolution that would make EU electronics manufacturers to take responsibility for the origin of the minerals they import.

High-tech equipment such as smartphones, tablets and cars are able to run thanks to minerals and metals such as tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold, however, as their mining and illegal trade are often controlled by armed groups, they also help to feed a vicious circle of conflicts, said EU Members of Parliament (MEPs).

According to resolution author Iuliu Winkler, a Romanian member of the EPP group, “As the European Parliament we have the responsibility to break the link between the trade of minerals, which are very important for our industries, and the financing of conflicts.”

The regulation concerns tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold and applies to all conflict-affected and high-risk areas in the world, of which the most obvious examples are the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes region.

Products that use these minerals and metals includes jewellery as well as many high-tech devices created by the automotive, electronics, aerospace, packaging, construction, lighting, industrial machinery and tooling industries.

After negotiating with the EU Council and Commission since July 2015, MEPs have achieved their two main objectives:

• Make checks binding for smelters, refiners, and importers of minerals and metals. Only the smallest EU importers such as dentists or jewelers will be exempt from this obligation.
• The country of origin will not be the only indicator of risk as MEPs have also added information on transit or an irresponsible supplier as reasons to trigger a background check.

Belgian S&D member Maria Arena, who followed the negotiations on behalf of her group, said, “Our goal is to ensure that the entire chain is clean … all the way to the companies that ultimately sell our phones, tablets etc..”

Next steps

Companies will be required to check their supply chain in order to respect human rights and prevent them from contributing to conflicts from January 1, 2021.

EU countries will be responsible for ensuring companies comply.

The regulation will also have an impact beyond the EU, as smelters that want to supply to the European market will have to be certified.

By Michael Lelyveld

After two decades of investing in Central Asia’s energy sector, China appears to be shelving its gas pipeline expansion plans, prompting doubts about its economy and demand for the cleaner fuel.

According to Russian reports, the fourth branch of China’s far-flung pipeline system to carry gas from Turkmenistan through neighboring Uzbekistan has been put off “indefinitely.”

“The project has been postponed indefinitely with the agreement of the Chinese side,” an unnamed official of the state oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz told Interfax on March 2.

Chinese officials have yet to comment on the suspension.

Western media cited an initial report by Russian state news service RIA-Novosti that spending for the 210-kilometer (130-mile) Uzbek part of the project was left out of this year’s state investment program, despite a rescheduled start date in April.

After at least two previous delays since late 2015, the reports suggest that the planned project known as Line D, approved by President Xi Jinping in 2013, has been dropped.

If the largest planned link in China’s supply network from Central Asia has in fact been cancelled, it could mark a turning point on several levels as the country’s economy cools.

When gas started flowing through China’s first 2,000-kilometer line (1,242-mile) from Turkmenistan in late 2009, Chinese investment and future gas demand were regarded in the region as virtually limitless.

Everything has changed

But with declines in global energy prices and China’s lower economic growth rates, all that has changed.

Despite environmental pressures and bullish projections, China’s gas consumption growth has moderated since the start of the economic slowdown.

Consumption rose 5.6 percent in 2014, 3.6 percent in 2015 and 8 percent last year, reaching 205.8 billion cubic meters (7.2 trillion cubic feet), according to official data and estimates by Platts energy news.

The increases are a shadow of the double-digit growth rates of the previous decade.

In November, a researcher at state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) said the country could face a gas surplus of 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year by 2020 due to long-term contracts for imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipeline expansion plans, Platts reported.

The utilization of China’s import pipelines stood at “around 50 percent” last year, said Feng Chenyue, senior economist at CNPC Research Institute of Economics and Technology.

The outlook may have doomed the Line D project to add up to 30 bcm of annual capacity to the 55 bcm already in service from the three existing strands of the Central Asia system.

Last year, China imported 72.1 bcm of gas including LNG, according to Platts.

The numbers suggest that the Line D plan has become a casualty of the same overcapacity problem that has plagued the coal and steel industries, despite government efforts to switch more of China’s energy consumption to the cleaner fuel.

And although the government pushed CNPC to make big investments in the China-Central Asia system, it never devised a pricing policy that would avoid losses on gas imports or make the pipelines pay for themselves.

“The economic justification for Line D was always dubious,” said Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Aside from the economics, the Line D plan holds a special place in China’s regional policy because it called for a new route through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the Chinese border, unlike the first three strands through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

China’s routes from Turkmen gas fields had previously bypassed the two poorest countries in the region, in large part because of a history of diversions by Kyrgyzstan from Russia’s Soviet-era pipelines and fears of instability.

The calculations changed in 2013 after CNPC acquired a one-third interest in Tajikistan’s Bokhtar oil and gas field, which was said to be a giant discovery with 3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves.

The Line D route offered a chance for China to tap a major new regional resource and knit the region together at the same time. But prospects for Bokhtar development have been stalled by lack of financing and further complicated by legal disputes since last year.

Lower energy prices

The economics of the costly project also appear to have been overtaken by lower energy prices.

“I have to imagine, whatever the geological findings might be, that their exploration interests waned considerably after the drop in oil and gas prices last July,” Chow said.

The problems for Line D are reminiscent of the false start to China’s “go out” policy for Central Asian energy development in 1997, when it first promised to invest U.S. $9.5 billion (65.5 billion yuan) in Kazakhstan.

The plans were set back for years after the onset of the Asian currency crisis. If the Line D cancellation is a replay of the 1997 experience, it may also be a measure of China’s current economic concerns.

The indefinite postponement of the Line D project stands in contrast to official statements about China’s big investment in its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to promote trade routes and infrastructure for exports.

Speaking during China’s annual legislative sessions this month, a top planning official said the country had invested more than U.S. $50 billion (345 billion yuan) in “Belt and Road” countries since 2013.

He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said progress under the initiative was “better than expected,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Judging by the Plan D stoppage, the same does not apply to infrastructure investment for energy imports.

“This episode also raises questions about the Belt and Road strategy when political aspirations meet economic reality,” Chow said.

If the pipeline cancellation turns out to be a watershed for China’s energy investment in Central Asia, it may also be a turning point for its regional influence.

In 2013, the plan for a transit route through the previously bypassed countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan suggested that China might advance its hegemony in Central Asia and provide a measure of energy security. Unlike Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are importers of oil and gas.

During a visit to Kyrgyzstan in 2015, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov played up the security benefits of the Line D project.

“The issues we are discussing concern the energy security and transport corridors that are of great importance not only for the region but also for the whole world,” Berdymukhammedov said, according to an Interfax report at the time.

Pulling in its horns

As China pulls in its economic horns and limits foreign investment with tighter capital controls, those prospects for the region may be diminished.

Western reports have highlighted the negative fallout for Turkmenistan, which has become almost exclusively reliant on the Chinese market for gas sales after having lost its business with Russia and Iran.

China has made huge investments to support development of Turkmenistan’s vast but technically challenging gas resources since providing an initial U.S. $3-billion (20.7-billion yuan) loan for developing the Galkynysh gas field in 2009.

In 2011, China Development Bank agreed to lend an additional U.S. $4.1 billion (28.3 billion yuan) for second-stage development at the mammoth field, which ranks among the world’s largest.

In December, a CNPC official said gas imports from Turkmenistan had reached 152.9 bcm over the seven-year period, including 52.4 bcm produced by CNPC from Turkmenistan’s Bagtyyarlyk contract territory under a production-sharing agreement.

But if the Line D setback is a letdown for Turkmenistan, it may also be bad news for Russia, which has been investing in its Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China without the benefit of Chinese financial support.

By the end of February, Russian monopoly Gazprom had completed 500 kilometers (311 miles) of the 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) project, which would eventually deliver 38 bcm per year through an eastern route to the Chinese market.

Completion was initially scheduled for next year but initial supplies have since been predicted for 2019-2021. Whether China will need Russian pipeline gas by then remains to be seen.

Gazprom has more than doubled its budget for investment in the Power of Siberia project from 72.1 billion rubles (U.S. $1.2 billion) in 2016 to 158.8 billion rubles (U.S. $2.7 billion) this year. But the increase falls short of the 250 billion rubles (U.S. $4.25 billion) that the company had projected earlier, Interfax reported in January.

On March 10, the company announced plans to complete 663 kilometers (412 miles) of the Power of Siberia route this year.

But earlier this month, a Gazprom official indicated that prospects were poor for Russia’s preferred pipeline project to reach China from the west through Xinjiang due to weakening demand.

“The process of talks has slowed down a little bit due to objective reasons,” Gazprom deputy chairman Andrei Kruglov told the South China Morning Post.

Kruglov cited “transformational changes” in China’s economy as affecting gas demand, while the country’s gas industry was “undergoing reform,” the paper said.

Catholic journalists from countries around Asia gathered in Kuala Lumpur recently to talk about strategies to fight the spread of “fake news” especially on social media.

The meeting was convened by the World Catholic Association for Communication with the theme “Communicating Trust and Hope in our Time.”

The discussions highlighted what the group perceived as the spread of hoaxes and fake news across digital platforms that mislead consumers of news and media content.

In his address, Archbishop Julian Leow Beng Kim of Kuala Lumpur challenged journalists to be honest in their reporting.

“I know it’s difficult to be a journalist,” said the archbishop. “It’s an oxymoron sometimes to be an honest politician or to be a journalist that writes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” he added.

The prelate, however, urged members of the media “to be the message … through your lifestyle, your values, the person that you are.”

“The decision is yours to be a person of integrity and believe if you are honest,” he added.

“Are you a Catholic who happens to be a journalist? Or are you a journalist who happens to be a Catholic?” said Archbishop Kim.

Central banks play a critical role in forging the country’s international economic relations. Now, with the rule-based order being reset and new regimes getting established, they are better positioned to influence the playing field. It is, therefore, critical to strengthen the Reserve Bank of India so it can drive an agenda closer to the interests of emerging countries. This will also be a test of India’s future leadership capabilities.

By Bazil Shaikh*

The narrative regarding central banks has changed dramatically over the past few years. When the global financial crisis struck, they were seen as institutions that rescued banks, provided liquidity and kept the wheels of finance turning. In its aftermath, they were seen as critical to reviving the world economy. Central banks are now perceived as institutions that laid the seeds of the crisis, and, in its resolution, have acted on behalf of ‘the establishment’.

Populist movements see central bankers as a part of the global elite that has driven globalisation, a consequence of which has been growing income and wealth inequalities.[1] This has provoked criticism from the political left; issues of nationalism and definitions of self-interest have sparked a backlash from the political right.

Questions are now being raised regarding the central banks’ power and remit, their independence from government, as well as their democratic deficit where they, as unelected technocrats, make decisions that have distributional consequences.[2] Central banking has turned full circle.

This discordance in the discourse has found a resonance in India, with proposals to reimagine the Reserve Bank of India, its governance structure and its mandate.[3]

Decoupling and coupling into the global discourse

Modern banking in India has periodically coupled into and decoupled from the global discourse. When the Reserve Bank was established in 1935, it synchronised with worldwide initiatives to set up central banks as institutions.[4]

The Reserve Bank was well integrated into the global system. It had an office in London, its bank-notes enjoyed wide circulation in the Middle East and were legal tender in the Trucial States and Kuwait and it actively participated in the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.

Shortly after independence (1947), its trajectory deviated from the practices and knowledge legitimised by the West. The Reserve Bank drove innovations based on local structural factors, constraints and values and pioneered the development model of central banking, establishing institutions and channelising credit to prioritiy sectors.

This model was at variance with and ‘decoupled’ from the consensus of that espoused by the West. The Reserve Bank, thus, acted in what it deemed to be in the national interest and its decoupling initiatives were emulated by many central banks across the developing world.[5]

Indian commercial banks, which were well integrated into the international system in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, grew more insular after independence. The nationalisation of banks in 1969 commenced the first financial inclusion drive, taking banking from the ‘classes to the masses’.

The idea of statism in India reached its apogee around the early 1980s and gradually receded. The seeds of financial liberalisation and the move towards the market mechanism were sown in the mid-1980s.[6] With the balance of payments crisis of 1991 and the adoption of IMF policy reforms,—the Reserve Bank drove the pace and sequencing of banking sector reforms. It liberalised the sector, allowed entry of new private banks in 1993 to make it competitive, adopted global regulatory norms and put in place the financial infrastructure, to develop and gradually integrate its money, debt and forex markets domestically, and in a calibrated manner into the global markets.[7] Monetary policy evolved from ‘credit policies’ in an administered regime, to monetary targeting, and thence, to a multiple indicator approach.[8] By 2015, India adopted flexible inflation targeting, and in 2016, the the formation of a Monetary Policy Committee broadbased the decision making process.[9]

Central banking thought in India, thus, converged into the global discourse. The Reserve Bank’s membership of the G20 and other institutions with a mandate for global economic governance and cooperation brought India’s markets, payments system, regulatory oversight and governance structures in sync with global practices and aligned it squarely into the ‘liberal’ camp.

While muted voices were heard regarding the compliance costs and relevance of international regulations in the post-crisis scenario to the Indian context, the legal implications and extraterritorial jurisdiction of Inter-Governmental Agreements, such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the overwhelming consensus was that the benefits of legitimacy conferred by the international community overweighed the costs of being non-compliant.

Although India had a tradition of collaborative consultations between the Reserve Bank and Government, the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) sought to curtail the powers of the Reserve Bank Governor, narrow the remit of the Reserve Bank, reform governance structures, bring it under performance audit—which has resonances with “Audit the Fed”—and diminish the stature of the Reserve Bank, putting the monetary authority on par with any other regulator.[10]

The subsequent curtailing of the Governor’s powers to appoint deputies, also reflects tensions between the government and the Reserve Bank on issues of independence and regarding measures seen as politically expedient, but rooted in bad economics.

Today, new non-bank players such as peer-to-peer lenders, telecom companies, payment service and e-wallet providers, and issuers of alternate digital money are blurring the line between banks and non-banks and the concept of money. These disruptions call for new rules.

Turbidity, new regime formations and opportunities

With technology disrupting the rules of the game and international treaties being called into question,[11] the cohesion and convergence achieved in the past 25 years of globalisation are set to loosen. As the rule-based international economic order gets reset and new regimes get established, there lie opportunities to influence the playing field.

To perceive and grasp these opportunities, it would be in the national interest to strengthen rather than enfeeble the Reserve Bank to negotiate issues of international cooperation, such as, the responsibility of dominant countries regarding their monetary policies and sharing their spillover costs;[12] backstop and swap arrangements; issues and costs of over-regulation; money laundering compliance; and the extraterritorial jurisdiction of laws, amongst others.

About the author:
*Bazil Shaikh is presently researching a book on the History of Money in India. Before this, he was a central banker for over three decades, and held positions such as Principal Chief General Manager and Secretary to the Board of the Reserve Bank of India.

The Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue was co-hosted by Gateway House and the Ministry of External Affairs on 13-14 of February 2017.

Source:
This feature was originally written for Where Geopolitics Meets Business, Vol. 2, the compendium for The Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue.

References:
[1] Bourguignon, François, ‘Inequality and Globalization’, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2016 Issue, <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-14/inequality-and-globalization>, last accessed on January 2, 2017.

[2] ‘Blanchard and Summers warn on central banks’ democratic deficit’, Central Banking, 26 March 2013, <http://www.centralbanking.com/central-banking/news/2257620/blanchard-summers-warn-on-central-banks-democratic-deficit>, last accessed on January 2, 2017.

[3] Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Report of the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission – Vol I & Vol II, March 2013 <http://finmin.nic.in/fslrc/fslrc_report_vol1.pdf>

Balls, Ed, James Howat, and Anna Stansbury, ‘Central Bank Independence Revisited: After the financial crisis, what should a model central bank look like?’ M-RCBG Associate Working Paper No. 67, Harvard Kennedy School, 2016

[4] International Financial Conference, League of Nations, Brussels Financial Conference, 1920: the Recommendations and their Application, 1920 <https://archive.org/details/brusselsfinancia00leaguoft>

[5] Krampf Arie, ‘Translation of Central Banking to Developing Countries in the Post-World War II Period’, The Globalization of Knowledge in History, Jürgen Renn (ed.), Max Plank Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge, 2012 <http://www.edition-open-access.de/studies/1/24/index.html>, last accessed on January 2, 2017.

[6] Reserve Bank of India, Report of the Committee to Review the Working of the Monetary System, 1985 (Sukhamoy Chakravarty Report)

[7] Rangarajan C., ‘Banking Sector Reforms : Rationale and Relevance’, in Raj Kapila and Uma Kapila (ed.) Banking & Financial Sector Reforms in India, Academic Foundation, 1998.

[8] Mohanty Deepak, ‘Implementation of Monetary Policy in India’, Speech by Deepak Mohanty, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India, delivered at the Bankers Club, Bhubaneswar on 15th March 2010, <https://rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_SpeechesView.aspx?Id=498>

[9] Reserve Bank of India Annual Report, 2014-15 pg. 56 and Reserve Bank of India Annual Report, 2015-16 pp. 43.

[10] Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Chapter 11, 12 and 18 (the Note of Dissent by P J Nayak), Report of the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission – Vol I & Vol II, March 2013 <http://finmin.nic.in/fslrc/fslrc_report_vol1.pdf>

[11] Singh Harsha Vardhana, ‘How Donald Trump may re-negotiate the TPP’, Brookings India, December 2nd, 2016, <http://www.brookings.in/how-donald-trump-may-re-negotiate-the-tpp/>, last accessed January 2, 2017.

[12] Mishra, Prachi, and Raghuram Rajan, ‘Rules of the Monetary Game’, Reserve Bank of India ,Working Paper Series No. 04, March 2016, <https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/WPSN40395AE03EE364C8EA2474DFE24E28FD4.PDF>

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday, March 21 he would confront anyone trying to interfere in Iran’s May presidential election, in which conservative hardliners will seek to defeat moderate President Hassan Rouhani, Reuters reports.

Khamenei referred to major street unrest after the disputed 2009 presidential election as an overt attempt to manipulate the outcome, but said there had been other cases of attempted interference including in the 2013 vote won by Rouhani.

Khamenei, a hardliner who has the ultimate say on all major foreign and domestic policy in the Islamic Republic, did not specify what attempted tampering occurred in the 2013 election.

“I will confront anyone who wants to tamper with the results of the people’s vote. In previous years and previous elections …, it was the same. Some of it was in front of people’s eyes and they became aware of it. And some of it they were not aware of but I was informed about it,” he said in Iranian New Year remarks carried live on state television.

“It was revealed in 2009 – they came out and drew battle lines. And in other years in other ways, but in all these years I stood against them and said whatever the results of the election are, they must be carried out.”

Two of the candidates from the 2009 presidential election, which put hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into office for a second term despite large protests over alleged vote fraud that shook the Islamic Republic, have been under house arrest since 2011.

Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi were detained for calling for street protests at the same time that pro-democracy uprisings were convulsing Tunisia and Egypt.

In recent weeks, the hardline and moderate political camps in Iran have been gearing up for a showdown in the May 19 vote.

Rouhani has called for greater individual freedoms and highlighted the 2015 diplomatic breakthrough reached with world powers, in which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions, as a signature achievement.

Conservatives hope to stop Rouhani winning a second four-year term but have yet to name their presidential candidate.

They have denounced the nuclear pact as a form of capitulation, fearing it could open up Iran to Western political and corporate influence. They have also criticized Rouhani’s economic record, including difficulties in rebuilding foreign trade and investment despite the lifting of sanctions.

Khamenei has also faulted Iran’s economic performance under Rouhani. He said on Tuesday the government could have achieved more in stimulating the economy and cited unemployment as one of Iran’s biggest problems.

Iran’s jobless rate is 12.4 percent, according to state statistics, with about 3.2 million Iranians unemployed out of a total population of 80 million.