Joining the CPEC, as proposed by Mehbooba Mufti, cannot be done without weighing India’s long-term interests.

By Harsh V. Pant

In a significant though controversial policy intervention, Jammy and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti last week came out in support of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), saying it is time to “move beyond border skirmishes” to be partners in economic growth. She said that “J&K could become a corridor of economic activity in the region and the country could take huge benefit of the economic activities going on across the Line of Control. Why can’t we be partners in economic growth and share the benefits of projects like the CPEC?” In the past too, Mufti has commented on this. She has suggested the need for building a corridor between South Asia and Central Asia with Jammu and Kashmir as its “nucleus”, on the lines of the CPEC, underlining that such a corridor between the two emerging economic hotspots would help forge a new regional cooperation, energy transformation, trade and transit.

She has joined a chorus of voices in recent months who have argued that India’s official position on CPEC is untenable and will end up isolating India from the China-led connectivity transformation across the globe. India’s official position has been effectively articulated by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar at the 2017 Raisina Dialogue when he said, “China is very sensitive about its sovereignty. The economic corridor passes through an illegal territory, an area that we call Pak-occupied Kashmir. You can imagine India’s reaction at the fact that such a project has been initiated without consulting us.” Jaishankar added that India had not seen signs of China’s understanding India’s concerns about its sovereignty. India is not planning to be a part of the Silk Road summit in May in China as CPEC violates Indian sovereignty, running as it does as through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The advantages of joining China’s multi-billion dollar One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative are quite apparent and the economic logic is very compelling. But it remains far from evident how India can join the project without challenging the very foundations of its foreign policy. China’s objective in promoting the $46 billion CPEC, which links China’s Muslim dominated Xinjiang province to the Gwadar deep sea port in Pakistan, is clear and the rationale behind Beijing’s desire to pump in huge sums into a highly volatile Pakistani territory is also understandable. Beijing is not doing this from the goodness of its heart to promote regional economic cooperation. The challenges to the project are huge as underscored by its militarisation. Even as Pakistan has deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC, and is raising a naval contingent for the protection of Gwadar, China will also be stationing part of its growing marine forces at Gwadar.

Chinese state media has been urging India to be pragmatic about the CPEC and join the initiative. It has gone ahead and equated the status of the disputed region of PoK with Taiwan as a “sovereignty” issue and suggested that India join CPEC to gain economic benefits. Pakistan for its part has accused India of trying to sabotage the CPEC. India cannot be as ambitious as China is today in carving a global web of economic and trade relations through connectivity projects given its obvious limitations. And so it will have to think more creatively if there are certain aspects of the OBOR initiative that it can join without jeopardizing its sovereignty claims. It is a tall order but India has its own set of connectivity initiatives such as Myanmar’s Kaladan project, Chabahar port project with Iran, as well as the north south corridor with Russia which can be potentially leveraged.

However, India’s approach cannot be based primarily on the economic advantages that might accrue to it in the short term. The long term consequences of the OBOR project for India can be quite significant if it ends up allowing China to consolidate its presence in the Indian Ocean at the expense of India. A careful reassessment is needed. A hurried appraisal to either support the Chinese initiative or junk it altogether is best avoided at this juncture.

This article originally appeared in DNA.

By Fatjona Mejdini

After years of allowing its old association in the US Congress to lapse, the Senate Caucus has been reactivated to support the aspirations of Albanians and their influence in Washington.

Albania is trying to woo important friends in Washington DC at a time when the policies of the new White House under Donald Trump towards the Balkans are still unsettled and unclear.

Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati said a press release while on a US visit on Wednesday that the Senate’s Albanian Issues Caucus had now been reformed.

The group is led by Democrat Senator from Michigan Gary Peters and Republican Senator from Iowa Joni Ernst.

“Proud to join Senator Ernst to relaunch the Albanian Issues Caucus and support the democratic aspirations of Albanians in Balkan countries,” Senator Peters said on Twitter.

Michigan is home to a considerable number of 200,000 or so Albanians migrants that live in the US and who are fully or of partial Albanian descent.

The Senator from Iowa emphasized the need of the US to create stronger relationships with its known allies.

“It is crucial that we continue to strengthen our relationships with our allies in Southeast Europe,” she said in a press release published on her webpage.

“The Senate Albanian Issues Caucus will help to facilitate dialogue on critical issues facing the Albanian American community and countries in Southeast Europe with significant Albanian populations,” it said.

Moves to reform the Caucus started in April 2016 when Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the US.

The Albanian Caucus in Congress played an active role in US politics during and after the Kosovo war, culminating at the time of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008, which the US supported from the start.

After that, however, the caucus and other associations in the US became more passive, with no real agenda, goal or strategy over issues concerning Albanians in the region.

Avni Mustafaj, the former director of the National Albanian-American Council, told BIRN that Albania and Kosovo needed to work more closely with the Albanian-American community and strengthen relationships in Congress.

“Periodic visits to DC are not enough to to be effective. Caucuses stay active and committed through the Albanian-American community, who vote for these people and give financial contributions to their election campaigns,” he said.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albania-tries-to-reconnect-ties-in-washington-03-22-2017#sthash.2y4Y32pM.dpuf

By Andrey Devyatkov*

(FPRI) — Is Russian influence in Moldova expanding or declining? The real picture is mixed. This article argues that over the last ten years Russian influence has ceased to be exclusive, forcing Russia to adjust to a new situation in which it is only one of several players.

Yet, Moldova remains on the periphery of the Western economic and political system as well as a borderland between Russia and the European Union. This positioning means that Moscow retains many economic and soft power resources to influence Moldovan politics.

Declining Russian Influence in Moldova

Location of Moldova. Source: CIA World Factbook.

Several factors have undermined Russian power in Moldova. First, the Moldovan government is dependent on Western financial assistance, especially since 2010. This assistance is channeled through programs from European Union (EU), other financial institutions, and through bilateral deals with Western countries. It now amounts to 300-400 million euros per year. This financial assistance is important both for the Moldovan state and Moldovan elites: it helps stabilize the budget and the currency, as well as funding development projects. Economic aid also satisfies the financial needs of some interest groups in Moldova. This financial aid has increased Western influence tremendously.

Location of Transnistria. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Russia is not ready to compete with the West in this area. Moscow funds the de facto statehood of Transnistria via subsidized gas and by supplementing the Transnistrian pension system. But the Kremlin avoids giving the breakaway republic any substantial hard cash.

The last example of Russia using foreign aid as an instrument of influence in Moldova outside of Transnistria was a decade ago, when Russia’s budgetary resources were growing. Today, they are stagnating or even decreasing.

Second, energy has ceased to be a powerful tool for Russia in Moldova. Gas prices dropped from $400 to $190 per 1000 cubic meters in 2016. They continue to fall. Consequently, the issue of gas prices has all but disappeared from the bilateral Russian-Moldovan agenda. Recently, Russia and Moldova extended their gas supply contract until the end of 2019.

At the same time, the European Union is revolutionizing the energy sphere in Moldova. A Romanian-Moldovan gas interconnector from Iasi to Chisinau should be completed in 2020. It will be able to cover all of Moldova’s gas needs and will provide the country with the option of importing gas from either Russia or Romania. That reduces Russia’s ability to use gas as a political tool.

In addition, the European Union is pushing Moldova to fulfill its obligations within the EU Energy Community, which means implementing the EU Third Energy Package. Doing so will deprive Gazprom of its assets in Moldova’s gas transmission networks because EU law requires unbundling. Russia was powerful enough to stop Moldova’s implementation of the Third Energy Package in 2012 by threatening to stop supplying subsidized gas unless Moldova refused implementation. But now, Gazprom has few resources to prevent Moldova from implementing the Third Energy Package. It must accept direct financial losses.

Third, due to Moldova’s decision to join the EU system of autonomous trade preferences in 2005, Moldovan trade reoriented itself from dependence on Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) markets. For instance, in 2004, more than 50% of Moldovan exports went to Russia and CIS countries. Now, Moldova has more diversified trade relations. Exports to the EU managed grew from about $400 million in 2004 to $1.3 billion in 2016. The 2016 figures are double the size of Moldova’s trade with Russia in 2012, which reached only $655 million. And 2012 was the best year of Russian-Moldovan trade. The Russian import ban imposed on key Moldovan products in 2013-2014, which prohibited trade in wine, fruits, meat, and other food products, reduced Russian-Moldovan trade. So, too, did the economic crisis in Russia. Moldovan exports to Russia decreased to $230 million in 2016.

However, the Association Agreement that Moldova signed with the EU has not provided any further increases in EU-Moldovan trade. EU import quotas for agricultural products and the organizational and technological problems of Moldovan exporters limit trade growth with the EU. Nevertheless, in terms of trade, Moldova is gradually finding its place in Europe.

Finally, the role of Romania in Moldova should be mentioned. Bucharest sees the Europeanization of Moldova as in its own strategic interest. It focuses now not only on identity issues, but also on economic and soft power efforts to bring Chisinau closer to Europe. Romania is one of the key trade partners for Moldova, surpassing Russia and the biggest EU economies like Germany and France.

Russia’s Power Push in Moldova

Nonetheless, several factors continue to sustain Russian power in Moldova. First, Moldova remains—and likely will remain—on the periphery of the Western economic and political system. For now, the country has no prospects of becoming an EU member. Responsibility for the country’s development is in the hands of the local elites and the population. Political developments over the past few years, including oligarchic wars and billion-dollar thefts, demonstrate that local elites are not capable of developing the country. Moldova still suffers from overwhelming poverty and corruption, a deep cleavage between the cities and the countryside, huge emigration flows, and an oligarchic power system. The country urgently needs political and socioeconomic reform, but doing so would demand serious efforts and political will from the West.

While Brussels keeps Moldova outside of the EU, it nonetheless seeks to preserve the pro-European stance of Moldova. This explains why Western financial assistance and political presence are constantly growing. Yet, this Western presence is sufficient only for providing geopolitical loyalty, not for systemic development.

Frustration with the lack of economic development explains why “Soviet nostalgia” and leftist ideas are so widespread. Both of these trends are embodied by the current president, Igor Dodon. Moldovan elites are interested in Europe as a model of development, but for many ordinary Moldovans, Russia is attractive as a model of stability. For instance, according to a survey in April 2016, Vladimir Putin was the most popular foreign politician in Moldova. Putin gained support of 62% of respondents, while only about 30% backed Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany or then-U.S. President Barack Obama. The survey shows the same indicators regarding people’s preferences to join either Eurasian Economic Union or European Union.

On top of this dynamic, for ordinary people and business leaders (at least those not affiliated with oligarchic networks), Russian labor and trade markets are still extremely important. Legalization of Moldovan migrants in Russia affects up to 300,000 Moldovans living illegally in Russia or have been prohibited from returning to Russia due to breach of migration law. Even though trade with the EU has surpassed trade with Russia, the relaxation of Russian sanctions on Moldova may return it to being one of Moldova’s main trading partners. During Igor Dodon’s visit to Moscow on March 17, several Moldovan vineyards received access to the Russian market. These measures are intended to increase the popularity of Dodon before the 2018 parliamentary elections.

Second, Russian influence remains strong in Moldova since the country is a borderland between Russia and the European Union. People in Moldova are bilingual; the cultural space exists at the intersection of the Slavic and Romanian worlds. This factor is one of the reasons why Russian media is still popular in the country. The most popular TV stations that rebroadcast Russian TV channels—which are mostly owned by Vlad Plahotniuc, a powerful Moldovan oligarch—care about their commercial interests first and do not necessarily have any political aims. The fact that Romanian language content on local stations is still underdeveloped is best explained as a result of these channels’ unwillingness to invest and their inclination to simply rebroadcast foreign content. Romanian mass-media programs are seen as lower quality than their Russian competitors.

Last, it is important to consider instruments of Russian hard power in Moldova. This type of power, which is represented in Moldova by Russian military forces—both peacekeeping and those guarding the remnants of the former 14^th Army—has undergone a substantial transformation. Many analysts assume that Moscow tries to influence Moldova’s foreign policy by keeping the Transnistrian conflict unresolved and by stationing its troops in the region. This assumption is true to some extent, but primarily before 2010. Earlier, the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict was a priority for Moldovan governments. Negotiations were much more intense, and the conflict seemed to be solvable. Yet, after a pro-European government came to power in 2009, Chisinau decided not to pay much attention to reintegrating Transnistria because the region was perceived as a burden to Moldova’s integration into Europe. Instead, it promoted European integration for the rest of Moldova.

Despite Moldova’s recent lack of interest in Transnistria, Russia has not lost hard power resources in the country. Stationing of Russian troops there plays a role in terms of containing NATO, not only in Moldova, but also in Southeastern Europe in general. This is why Moscow stresses that the “constitutional neutrality” of Moldova is a prerequisite for resolving the Transnistrian conflict. But at the end of the day, Russian hard power is unable to influence political and economic processes in Moldova itself. Moldova has never sought to join NATO. Russia’s military only indirectly influences Moldova because its military presence and the unresolved conflict reinforce negative sentiments towards Russia itself.

The Role of Geopolitics in Moldova

Moldova’s status as a borderland has encouraged both Russia and the West to interfere in Moldovan affairs. For instance, the Obama administration, seeking to retain Chisinau’s pro-Western orientation after the Ukrainian crisis, forged close ties with the Pavel Filip government and with Vlad Plahotniuc. The European Union has tried not to diverge much from U.S. policy, but also has supported the right-wing opposition. After Igor Dodon failed to come to power in the aftermath of parliamentary elections in 2014, and even after the social protests in 2015-2016, Russia for some time abstained from interfering in Moldovan politics. The recent cancellation of trade and labor market restrictions and increasing media support for Igor Dodon are Russia’s attempt to increase its influence in Moldova in advance of parliamentary elections in 2018.

Geopolitics has always been a key issue for Moldovan internal politics, too. But geopolitical discourse cannot solve Moldova’s real problems. The omnipotence of “Moscow’s hand” in Moldovan politics is now increasingly doubted. During the last presidential campaign in 2016, this idea became widespread among many right- and even left-wing politicians. However, due to the political tactics of both Igor Dodon and the ruling Democratic Party, the geopolitical frame returned to Moldovan political discourse.

Local political forces used geopolitical arguments to manipulate public opinion. They also manipulate Russia, the U.S., and the EU into providing additional support for their efforts. Many observers even believe that Dodon and Plahotniuc—who are ostensibly political opponents—agreed to play up the geopolitical aspects of their campaigns, foregrounding the opposition between the “pro-European” and “pro-Russian” orientation of Moldova.

Such a move is useful for Moldovan political elites because it allows them to access foreign resources and distract Moldovans from the elite’s failure to reform the country. With parliamentary elections coming in 2018, Russia and the West may again split up along geopolitical frontlines. This struggle will be fruitful only for local political forces—not for Russia, the U.S., the EU, or for ordinary Moldovans.

About the author:
*Andrey Devyatkov is Senior Research Fellow, Center for Post-Soviet Studies (Institute of Economy, Russian Academy of Sciences) and Associate Professor, Chair of Regional Problems of World Politics, Lomonosov Moscow State University

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

The concept of saints and spirits has been a part of Moroccan religious beliefs and an influence behind cultural practices for as long as history can tell. The modern beliefs, traditions, and celebrations inspired by Moroccan beliefs in supernatural beings draw influences from early animism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (including from the Sunni, Shia, and Sufi sects).

Despite Morocco’s increasing modernization and industrialization, saints are still celebrated, and spirits continue to be an influence in everyday cultural practices. The Moroccan people continue to celebrate saints and spirits by preserving holy places, holding festivals (moussems), and observing practices to avoid the wrath of spirits (jnoun).

Ancient belief still strong

Saints and spirits are concepts often affiliated with local religious beliefs and figure prominently in most world religions. A saint refers to someone of the faith who is known to have been of exceptional righteousness. Many adherents to Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe that already-dead saints can still influence and bless the pious, and, therefore, shrines are often built to honor these great holy men and women.

Prayers often invoke the names of great saints. Edward Westermarck argues in his work Ritual and Belief in Morocco that the beliefs and traditions surrounding saints in Morocco are not Qu’ranic, but rather influences from earlier paganism. He continues to argue, however, that the strict monotheism of Islam gave rise to an increase in popularity of saint cults, as many believers saw an intercessor before God as necessary.i Catholicism within Christianity, Kabala within Judaism and Sufism within Islam highlight the importance of mysticism within religious belief and practice as well as in everyday life and culture.

A spirit in Morocco most often refers to a jinni, and spirits are recognized in the Qu’ran as malevolent beings. Anas Farahii argues in his paper “Spirits in Morocco” that the beliefs regarding the nature of the spirits in Morocco evolved from views of these spirits as individualized, African animistic spirits to the view of these spirits as the jinn mentioned in the Qu’ran. This evolution in belief is believed to have taken place after the Islamic assimilation of Morocco, when previous religious elements of Moroccan culture were integrated into the new, monotheistic religion of the region.

Before the arrival of the three Abrahamic religions, North Africa was mostly animistic in its beliefs, assigning spiritual qualities to animals and geographical features, such as rivers and mountains. The first monotheistic religion to establish itself prominently in Morocco was Judaism around 70 AD, and Moroccan Judaism adapted many naturalistic symbols that would become associated with its saints and spirits as the result of influence of Amazigh culture. After the arrival of Islam in the region in 711, Moroccan Islam and Moroccan Judaism shared veneration of certain saints.iii Those bestowed with sainthood in Morocco can vary in the reason for their Baraka, divine grace. Many other saints followed a more traditional Sufi lifestyle for which they are honored, a lifestyle involving humility and a way of life devoid of human possession. Most saints revered by Moroccan Jews were great Rabbis and, while those of the Jewish faith will never claim openly to be praying to a saint, yet many believe saints can be of assistance in the person’s supplications to God.

A well-entrenched belief in Moroccan culture

Jinn, along with saints, figure heavily in Moroccan folklore, due to influences from early animism as well as reinforcement in the belief in jinn found in the Qu’ran.iv The view Moroccans have of the jinn is often close to the beliefs their ancestors held of natural spirits. Some jinn are even named and given traits, such as Aisha Kandisha, a female jinni of incredible beauty associated with rivers and underground water sources taking a cue from early animistic beliefs. It is not unusual for a jinni in Moroccan folklore to be able to assume the form of a young, beautiful woman, or even a terrible crone. Jinn are often known to deceive and possess people, and while practices to prevent these situations vary from area to area, there is a strong belief in the jinn in Morocco.

Many Muslims in Morocco make pilgrimages to holy sites to venerate saints. Maraboutismv is a Moroccan term that refers to the recognition of the importance of the veneration of a saint and/or his or her burial place. Pilgrimages to sites believed to be the burial places of saints or places of importance to these righteous men and women is a common practice in Moroccan culture.vi These practices are popular during Eid al-Mawlid, the annual celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth. Saints in Morocco are often celebrated with moussems, or feast days, and almost every city has what can be called a “patron saint” (drawing parallels with the Roman Catholic Church).

The festival of Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouch is celebrated by Sufis to venerate a 17th century saint and his disciple and servant woman named Lalla Aicha, a Muslim princess saint believed to dwell in the spirit world and capable of interceding for her followers. Many believe that going to this festival can protect them from the jinn and that the saint’s baraka – divine blessing – can still influence their lives positively today. The celebration is held in Mghrassyine, where a shrine is dedicated to the saint.

In reference to the moussem of Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouch, Simon Martelli writes in Taipeitimes:vii

“The festival of Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouch brings Moroccans from far and wide to venerate a 17th century Muslim saint and his servant Lalla Aicha, a mythical Muslim princess from the desert who dwells in the spirit world and is a powerful unseen force for her followers.

Traditionally, worshippers have come to Mghrassyine for spiritual guidance and divine blessing, sometimes seeking higher states of consciousness through music and dance, as a form of communion with God. But for a growing number of people, the week-long religious festival, or moussem, is a journey into the supernatural world of genies, incantations and shawafa — women who claim to be able, for a fee, to help people find love and feel better, to maybe cast or break a spell.”

The pilgrimages of Jews to or within Morocco to holy sites associated with the Jewish faith are called hiloulot/hiloula. Some large Jewish pilgrimages to honor deceased rabbis are held in major cities like Meknes, Fez, and Marrakech, but the largest pilgrimages take place in Ouezzane and Ben Ahmed to which pious Moroccan Jews of the Diaspora flock every year relentlessly.

After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Moroccan Jews who lived in Morocco for over 2000 years started their Aliya to this new country and by 1970, 250,000 have become Israeli by nationality, but their heart, nevertheless, remained in Morocco and their culture was exclusively Moroccan. Very much like their Muslim brethren, they were very much immersed in the culture of sainthood and maraboutism. So, those who cannot afford coming to Morocco to honor their saints had “replacement saints” in Israel and this is well highlighted in an article by Joel Greenberg in the New York Times:viii

“Once a year in midwinter, this drab, remote town becomes a magnet for thousands of Jewish believers from around Israel. They flock to the tomb of a revered holy man in search of health, wealth and happiness.

The faithful are Israelis of Moroccan origin who in recent years have created an annual revival-style meeting at the grave of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzera, who in his life gained a reputation for having divinely endowed powers.

The mass pilgrimage is the most dramatic evidence of a resurging rituals surrounding a belief in saints among the more than 600,000 Israelis of Moroccan descent, a group that is dominant in this Negev town. The traditions mirror practices of Muslims in Morocco and bear some resemblance to the Christian worship of local saints.

Rabbi Abuhatzera, known here by the nickname Baba Sali, was believed to have the power to heal the sick, ward off misfortune and give those he blessed a healthy and prosperous life.

Baba Sali’s reputed powers are said to have passed to his tomb, which, since his death nine years ago at the age of 94, has become the center of a rapidly growing cult.

Some scholars say the surging popularity of such pilgrimages signals a new assertiveness by Moroccan Jews. When they began to immigrate to Israel in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Moroccans were overwhelmed by culture shock, economic difficulty and an official “melting pot” policy that frowned on their distinctive traditions.”

Importance of sainthood

Sahrawi tribal men performing the fantasia at the Tan-Tan Moussem in Tan-Tan, Morocco. Photo by Maxim Massalitin, Wikipedia Commons.

There are many other sites in Morocco dedicated to saints, including the burial sites of Moulay Idriss I in Zerhoun and his son, Moulay Idriss II in Fez (at whose shrine women pray for ease in childbirth). In Marrakech, one will find the tombs of the “seven saints” –sab’atu rijal– of Morocco: Sidi Yusuf ibn Ali Sanhaji, Sidi al-Qadi Ayyad al-Yahsubi, Sidi Bel Abbas, Sidi Mohamed ibn Sulayman al-Jazouli, Sidi Abdellaziz Tabba’a, Sidi Abdellah al-Ghazwani, and lastly, Sidi Abderrahman al-Suhayli. These seven religious men were and still are considered the patron saints of Marrakesh as well as different cities in Morocco, and it is widely believed that they will, one day, rise again and continue to work good deeds in the world. The mausoleums of Mohammed V and Hassan II are also places frequented on pilgrimages (as former kings are often granted saint-like status).

At such celebrations of saints and (sometimes) jinn, rituals are performed and forms of folk magic practiced. Potions are often created from traditional ingredients, harking back to earlier African influences. Trances are a common element associated with such Sufi celebrations, as well as self-mutilation with knives while under the supposed influence of a jinni or divine power. In regards to warding off evil spirits, evil eye pendants and the Hand of Fatima (the Khamsa) are symbols associated with protecting the innocent. Knives, also, appear to play an important role in Moroccan culture for warding off the jinn – it is believed by some that possession by jinn can be prevented by plunging a knife into the ground before the jinn can get close, or by placing it underneath the pillow of a person who is possessed or in danger of being possessed. Moroccans, also, avoid pouring hot water down the drain at night, a place which is supposed to be the parallel dwelling world of spirits.

After the marginalization of Moroccan Sufis under his father, King Hassan II, King Mohammad VI has made steps to reconcile with them. There has been a marked revival of Moroccan Sufism under the current monarch. Many activists praised King Mohammad VI when he appointed Ahmed Toufiq, a Sufi, as Minister of Awkaf and Islamic Affairs in 2002. Many believe the move to be a signal to encourage the growth of Sufism in response to the increased threat of Islamists in Morocco, and particularly in response to the 2003 Casablanca Bombings. The encouragement of the Sufi movement and culture has led to a recent increase of interest in Sufi pilgrimages and celebrations, giving rebirth to a rich tradition that dates back hundreds of years.

Final word

While spirits play an important role in the Moroccan rich culture, the combination of traditional beliefs surrounding spirits and the continued veneration of saints creates a more unique approach to the spiritual world compared to the rest of the Muslim world.

Morocco’s rich Jewish and Sufi traditions have melded their beliefs in saints and its animistic roots have been influential in the roles spirits come to play in Moroccan folklore. While many in larger cities might dismiss these beliefs as superstition, they, nevertheless, remain strong in the majority of the population’s beliefs and will continue to play a major role in Moroccan culture for years to come.

*Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.

Endnotes:
i. Cf. Westermarck, Edward. 2014. Ritual and Belief in Morocco: Vol. I (Routledge Revivals.) London: Routledge.
ii. https://www.academia.edu/5945343/The_Evolution_of_The_Belief_In_Spirits_as_an_Aspect_of_Cultural_Assimilation
iii. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4899/morocco-model-for-islam
iv. Cf. Chtatou, Mohamed, 1996, “Saints and Spirits and Their Significance in Moroccan Cultural Beliefs and Practices: An Analysis of Westermarck’s Work,”
In Morocco: Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies, 1:62-84.
v. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/07/190879/morocco-the-fascinating-kingdom-of-contrasts-and-contradictions/
vi. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/06/188587/is-sufism-truly-the-magical-antidote-to-islamism-in-morocco/
vii. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2014/01/29/2003582385
viii. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/14/world/in-israel-a-saint-brings-a-boost-to-a-minority.html

Sources:
Chtatou, Mohamed, 1996, “Saints and Spirits and Their Significance in Moroccan Cultural Beliefs and Practices: An Analysis of Westermarck’s Work,”
In Morocco: Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies, 1:62-84.
Issachar, Ben Ami. 1998. Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco. Wayne State University Press. 1-388. Print.

Kapchan, Deborah A. 2007. Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace. Wesleyan University Press. 1-362.

Roberston , Smith. 1849. Religion of the Semites. Transaction Publishers. 1-507. Print.

Westermarck, Edward. 2014. Ritual and Belief in Morocco: Vol. I (Routledge Revivals.) London: Routledge.

Westermarck, Edward. 2013. Ritual and Belief in Morocco: Vol. I (Routledge Revivals.) London: Routledge.

Westermarck, Edward. 1899. “The Nature of the Arab Ginn, illustrated by the Present Beliefs of the People of Morocco.” In Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Journal. 29: 252-269. Print

http://sacredsites.com/africa/morocco/sacred_sites_of_morocco.html
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/anasf/Final%20paper_history.pdf

Sorcery, spirits and sacrifice at Morocco Sufi festival

Aisha Kandisha: Spirits and Trance at the Moussem of Sidi Ali ben Hamdush

http://rickgold.home.mindspring.com/pilgrimage_to_tombs_of_jewish_sa.htm

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hosted Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval at the Pentagon on Friday to discuss the importance of the U.S.-India relationship and the role of both nations in cooperating to uphold international laws and principles, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement following the meeting.

“Democracies like ours need this sort of dialogue and we have had a strengthening of the relationship over the last several years,” Mattis said of the U.S.-India relationship during a media availability before the meeting.

During the meeting, the defense secretary specifically applauded India’s efforts to promote stability in the South Asia region, Davis said, and both leaders reaffirmed their intent to build upon the significant defense cooperation progress made in recent years.

“We share the values,” Doval told reporters. “We share the democracy. We all have the very common objective and interest, both for the region that I come from and also globally that’s able to work together, share our ideas and thoughts and bring about some new innovative changes and improvements.”

Mattis and Doval further discussed collaboration on a wide range of regional security matters, including maritime security and counterterrorism, Davis said, and the two leaders pledged to continue the strong defense partnership between both nations.

President Donald Trump has reportedly asked the House GOP leadership to pull a bill eliminating major financial provisions of Obamacare ahead of a scheduled vote, despite a week of intense negotiations involving Trump himself.

“We just pulled it,” Trump told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, adding that he doesn’t blame House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) for the bill’s failure.

he vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) was originally scheduled for Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, unofficially known as Obamacare. House GOP leadership postponed the vote until Friday after it became clear it would not happen until the middle of the night because they did not have enough votes.

“This is a disappointing day for us,” Ryan told reporters Friday afternoon, describing the setback as “growing pains” that come from moving from opposition to governing.

Ryan thanked Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney and HHS Secretary Tom Price for their support for the bill, and said the House Republicans just could not get enough of a consensus to proceed.

“There was a block of no votes that was the reason this did not pass,” Ryan said. “We’re going to live with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

The real losers of today’s drama were Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.

“Now they own Obamacare… for a little while longer, until it ceases to exist, which it will in the near future” he added.

Asked whether he felt betrayed by the House Freedom Caucus, Trump answered, “I’m not betrayed, I’m disappointed,” Trump said of the renegade Republicans who blocked the bill’s passage. “We could have had it.”

“I want great health care for the people of this nation,” Trump said when asked if it was fair to let Obamacare fail. “But it won’t do that, it’s imploding and soon it will explode.”

“Democrats will reach out when they’re ready,” Trump added.

One Republican lawmaker, however, did not place blame on the Democrats. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas said members of his party were perhaps less willing to own the political consequences of repealing Obamacare than they expressed under President Barack Obama.

“Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game,” Barton said, according to Talking Points Memo. “We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.”

Earlier on Friday, Ryan traveled to the White House to brief Trump that he didn’t think that there were enough Republican votes to pass the bill, even after making major concessions to conservative members, including eliminating a requirement to cover essential benefits.

When asked if the White House considered postponing the vote again when the whip count still did not appear to be in favor of the bill by Friday afternoon, press secretary Sean Spicer said no.

“At some point, we either have a deal or we don’t. And I think that’s where the president finally drew the line and said we’ve been having this discussion, we’ve had the meetings and we’ve done everything possible to address the concerns, and ideas and opinions that people have brought up,” he said. “At some point, there’s a political cost to dragging this out as well, and saying let’s just keep letting it go. And I think that’s where, you know, we came to a decision that it had gotten as far as it can go.”

After hours of debate on the House floor, voting was expected to start around 3:30pm local time. Instead, the lower chamber took a recess.

The AHCA required 215 votes to pass the House of Representatives and move to the Senate. There are 237 House Republicans, meaning that the party could afford 22 members crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats in opposing the bill. However, the number of renegade Republicans was believed to be anywhere between 24 and 36, according to mainstream media outlets.

“Never say never,” but “it certainly looks like” health care is dead for the current Congress, Representative Andy Barr (R-Kentucky) told CNN.

The White House repeatedly said that there was no plan B if the bill failed. Trump has “left everything on the field when it comes to this bill,” Spicer said before the AHCA vote was yanked. “You can’t force someone to vote a certain way.”

He added that Republican leaders had struck a balance between conservative requests and moderates who were worried that cuts were too draconian for their constituents. Sometimes a concession to get two conservative votes might have meant losing 14 moderates and vice versa, Spicer said.

“The American people expressed their support” for the Affordable Care Act, which “became very clear to our colleagues across the aisle,” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said.

Tourists and other foreign visitors are being kept away from the large Yachen Gar Tibetan Buddhist complex in western China’s Sichuan province, as authorities move to reduce its population of monks and nuns, a French journalist who traveled to the area says.

Yachen Gar, located in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) prefecture’s Palyul (Baiyu) county and founded in 1985, until recently housed an estimated 10,000 residents devoted to scriptural study and meditation, but received few outsiders due to its remote location.

Now, authorities have restricted access to the sprawling complex and areas nearby, Brice Pedroletti, a reporter for Le Monde, told Radio Free Asia.

“There are now heavy restrictions for tourists traveling in Tibetan areas, even when they carry visas allowing them to travel,” Pedroletti said.

“We told them that we were tourists with documents allowing us to visit Yachen Gar, but this did not convince them,” he said.

Members of Yachen Gar’s state-controlled management committee then arrived, and Pedroletti and his group were questioned for five hours, he said.

“They chased us away the next day, and we could not see Yachen Gar or the [Larung Gar] complex in nearby Serthar [Seda] county,” he said.

Restrictions on Yachen Gar and the better-known Larung Gar complex in Serthar are part of “an unfolding political strategy” aimed at controlling the influence and growth of these important centers for Tibetan Buddhist study and practice, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in a March 13 report, “Shadow of Dust Across the Sun.”

“[Both centers] have drawn thousands of Chinese practitioners to study Buddhist ethics and receive spiritual teaching since their establishment, and have bridged Tibetan and Chinese communities,” ICT said in its report.

Hungary’s strongly Euroskeptic prime minister Viktor Orban has made one of his most passionate denunciations yet of Brussels bureaucracy and globalist forces.

Speaking at a commemoration of the 1848 revolutions which swept Europe, including Hungary, Orban said Europe was in a “state of revolt” against Brussels, the “liberal media” and “insatiable global capital.”

Orban, who openly supports Donald Trump and sympathizes with Brexit, said the rebellion started in Britain and America and had now spread across the European continent.

As reported by the Visegrad Post:

Speaking in front of the National Museum, the prime minister said that European nations are in a “state of revolt”, with the “winds of 48 blowing again on the continent”.

Over the past years European nations once again revolted against “the hypocritical alliance of the Brussels bureaucrats, the liberal international media and the insatiable global capital,” Orbán said.

First the British, then the Americans rebelled, to be followed by others this year, he added. Orbán stressed the need for Brussels to take off the “masks of hypocrisy”, and opt for straight speech and an open discussion of the future.

Orbán emphasised that the resettlement of illegal migrants must be prevented, the network financed from foreign funds made transparent, and the right to regulate taxes, wages and utility prices kept in national competence.

(RFE/RL) — Belarusian opposition leader and former presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu has been detained upon arrival in Minsk after talks with Polish government officials in Warsaw.

Nyaklyaeu, who has been active in recent protests against a Belarus law on “parasitism,” was planning to lead a Dzen Voly (Freedom Day) protest on March 25 along with Social Democratic leader Mikalay Statkevich.

Nyaklyaeu had been scheduled to appear in court on March 24 to face charges of participation in previous protests, but the trial was delayed when he failed to show.

Statkevich said he still plans to attend the Freedom Day protest, although some supporters have expressed fears he could also be detained before the event.

The annual rallies mark the anniversary the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic, which existed for less than a year in 1918.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in the former Soviet republic in recent weeks to protest an unpopular labor law, in the largest antigovernment demonstrations in Belarus in years.

The protesters are unhappy about government plans to tax what it called “social parasites” — unemployed people. Protests have continued despite a rare decision by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to postpone the measure until 2018.

Belarusian human rights group Vyasna (Spring) said about 130 activists who have protested against the tax have been jailed for up to 15 days and will be unable to participate in the March 25 rallies.

On March 19, authorities detained at least three organizers of protests against the tax.

Viktar Marchyk, a politician with the opposition Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), was detained in the western city of Slonim, where several hundred protesters rallied.

Prior to a planned protest in Baranavichy, authorities detained the two main organizers: Mikalay Charnavus, a local BPF activist, and Ryhor Hryk, an independent trade union leader.

The United States and the European Union have sharply criticized Lukashenka’s government for its response to the protests.

On 23 February 2017, Indonesia published a presidential regulation concerning Indonesian maritime policy (Perpres 16/2017). Since President Jokowi first unveiled his vision of Poros Maritim Dunia (Global Maritime Fulcrum) on 15 November 2014, the concept has been dormant. Yet there remain conceptual and policy problems with this vision, especially with regard to the South China Sea.

By Yohanes Sulaiman*

Since it first unveiled by then newly-elected President Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) on 15 November 2014, the concept of the Global Maritime Fulcrum – Poros Maritim Dunia – has been dormant as a national policy. Indeed, there have been some fundamental problems with the idea itself.

To begin with, the very word “Poros” has been poorly defined and thought through, especially in its translation from Indonesian to English. When President Jokowi first announced his concept of the Global Maritime Fulcrum, both the Jakarta Post and the Jakarta Globe translated the word Poros as Axis.

Conceptual Problems

The word Axis itself, however, has some implications based on the historical precedent; notably ‘Axis’ is basically a military alignment with some countries. In 1965, then President Sukarno proclaimed the creation of the Jakarta-Peking-Pyongyang-Hanoi-Phnom Penh Axis. While it never really took off, this was supposedly an anti-colonialist front.

Thus the question arose as to who Indonesia’s military allies in this new “Axis” were and who Indonesia was balancing against. Considering Indonesia’s own strategic culture that abhorred the creation of military alliances, the idea of an “Axis” to refer to the vision of Indonesia playing a global maritime role should be dead on arrival.

The other translation is fulcrum, which is advocated by Andi Wijayanto and Rizal Sukma, the brains behind this concept, and used by the Indonesian foreign ministry. Fulcrum has less militaristic implications compared to axis, while the definition of fulcrum is “the point on which a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots”.

In a sense, for Indonesian foreign policy to behave as a fulcrum, Indonesia must actually actively confront and balance any power that seems to disturb the regional balance. That is actually the goal of Mr. Wijayanto and Mr Sukma in using the word fulcrum, that they want Indonesian foreign policy to be actively engaged with global developments.

There are, however, two main problems with this definition. First is the simple fact that as a fulcrum, Indonesia will, in the end, only react to other countries’ foreign policies. To some degree, this is in line with Indonesia’s own strategic culture of prioritising the principle of non-interference and its stated foreign policy goal in the Preamble of its constitution, notably “to contribute to the establishment of world order”. But, in my opinion, this definition, in essence, limits our foreign policy options.

The second problem is that Indonesia needs to reorient both its foreign and military policies to support the idea of being a fulcrum. That, unfortunately, is not evident from the recently published presidential regulation on Indonesian Maritime Policy.

“Fulcrum” or “Nexus”?

It is not that the regulation itself is problematic. There are 23 action plans for the foreign ministry and some, crucially, stress the need for Indonesia to definitely settle border and territorial disputes with its neighbours. But many of the action plans are already in process, such as cooperation and training between Indonesian and other countries’ navies, dealing with border disputes, etc.

While the regulation mentions the growing tensions in the South China Sea, there is no concrete action plan being proposed aside from “optimising diplomacy,” “active participation” in various international organisations, and “safeguarding Indonesia’s interests and enforcing Indonesia’s sovereignty in the South China Sea”.

Granted, Indonesia has been well involved in many maritime-oriented diplomatic activities, such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). Behind the scenes, Indonesia has also been playing a lot of important roles in trying to defuse the South China Sea tensions.

The problem, however, is that it is unclear whether those activities are really a part of a much bigger strategic plan to deal with the challenge of increasing regional and international instability, or simply ad-hoc policies.

Similarly on the issue of “Maritime Defence and Security,” while the regulation stresses the need to modernise and increase the number of ships in the Indonesian navy and upgrading its existing facilities, there is no explicit mention at all concerning adapting Indonesian military force to manage the instability in the South China Sea. In other words, there is simply not enough credible force to back Indonesia’s diplomacy should push comes to shove.

In essence, the current action plan is ill-suited to fulfill the goals of Indonesia as a fulcrum as both the plans for Indonesian foreign and military policies, to put it bluntly, simply fail to act as a fulcrum. Unlike in the past, Indonesian foreign and military policies seem inward-looking instead of dealing with regional security issues head-on, considering Indonesia’s strong geostrategic position.

Therefore, nexus is a more appropriate concept. As a nexus, Indonesia puts itself as a centre, a focus of maritime diplomacy but at the same time, maintaining its freedom of actions that it will pursue in regard to its national interests.

Grand Strategy

This, however, requires Indonesia to have a defined goal in both its foreign and military policies. In other words, Jakarta needs a grand strategy, which is defined by historian Geoffrey Parker as “the decisions of a given state about its overall security”. This encompasses the threats it perceives, the ways it confronts them, and the steps it takes to match ends and means.

It involves ‘the integration of the state’s overall political, economic, and military aims, both in peace and war, to preserve long-term interests, including management of ends and means, diplomacy and national morale and political culture in both the military and civilian spheres’.

The current presidential regulation concerning Indonesian Maritime Policy, while a good start, needs a clearer enunciation of Indonesia’s strategic interests and goals and how to coordinate the policies of various ministries and institutions to achieve that goal. Otherwise Indonesia’s current policies remain a patchwork of preexisting bureaucratic action plans stitched together.

It is hoped that the concept of Global Maritime Nexus in the end could be a starting point for the creation of an Indonesian grand strategy that clearly defines its national interests and foreign and military policies in short, medium, and long terms.

*Yohanes Sulaiman PhD is a Lecturer with the School of Government, General Ahmad Yani University, Cimahi, Indonesia. He contributed this to RSIS Commentary.

Russian State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin received on Friday the United States Ambassador to Russia John Tefft at the latter’s request.

The diplomats discussed international efforts in resolving the conflict in southeast Ukraine, and the developments in Moldova, according to the Russia Foreign Ministry.

They also took a look at relations with the South Caucasus states, including in light of preparations for a regular round of the Geneva talks on security and stability in the region.

A Cairo court’s decision on March 23, 2017 to postpone issuing its verdict in the case of Aya Hijazi and the Belady Foundation for Street Children casts a further shadow on the ability of Egypt’s judicial system to deliver justice in this bizarre case, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

Hijazi and her co-defendants, including her husband, have been held in custody since their arrest in May 2014, well beyond the two-year limit for pretrial and provisional detention under Egyptian law, and the frequently postponed proceedings have been marked by serious fair trial violations. The court provided no reason for postponing its verdict.

Hijazi, an Egyptian-American, and her husband, Mohamed Hassanein, an Egyptian citizen, are co-founders of the Belady Foundation, which provided services for Cairo street children. Police raided the foundation on May 1, 2014, without a judicial warrant, confiscated laptops and other equipment, and detained Hijazi, Hassanein, and several others, including a woman who provided meals, an artist who shared the premises, and the children present. Authorities charged the adults with human trafficking, sexual exploitation of children, using children in anti-government protests, and operating an unlicensed organization.

“The case of Aya Hijazi and her co-defendants has been nothing less than a travesty of justice,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “Defendants have been unable to meet privately with lawyers, hearings have been repeatedly adjourned for long periods, while the court has routinely rejected, without explanation, numerous requests for release on bail, resulting in what appears to amount to arbitrary detention.”

The proceedings against Hijazi and the others have violated the defendants’ rights to prepare a defense, to examine the evidence and witnesses against them, and to be tried without undue delay, Human Rights Watch said.

The arrests followed unfounded allegations by an Egyptian man that his son was being held without his consent on the foundation’s premises. A person familiar with the case said that the boy had never been at Belady and was later found in another governorate, something a journalist’s review of trial records appeared to corroborate.

At a minimum, the authorities should immediately release Hijazi and the others on bail or explain why their continued incarceration is warranted under the law, Human Rights Watch said. International standards require using pretrial detention only as a “last resort” to prevent flight or risks to victims or public safety.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on April 3rd. If neither president raises Aya Hijazi’s unjust and lengthy detention it will be yet another indication of their mutual avoidance of pressing human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

Egyptian human rights organizations that have monitored the case reported that the defendants were held at an undisclosed location for two days after their arrest. The first hearing in the case, nearly 10 months later, in mid-March, 2015, was immediately postponed, followed by numerous further postponements, often without explanation.

A person familiar with the court proceedings said that the defendants have not been allowed to meet privately with their lawyers at any point since their arrest or during trial proceedings. Consultations have been limited to exchanges in the prison visiting area in the presence of guards and others and through the cage in the courtroom in which all defendants are held. Most consultations occurred through the defendants’ families.

The entire trial has been held in closed sessions in the judge’s chambers rather than in public, which the judge said was due to the sexual assault allegations. In at least one instance, trial observers reported, the judge apparently met with the prosecution in his chambers but defense lawyers had no opportunity to approach him or to submit requests for bail or make other applications.

Of the prosecution’s 11 listed witnesses, only 1 appeared in court, in addition to the policeman who led the raid and a forensic examiner. The court apparently rebuffed defense counsel requests to cross-examine other purported prosecution witnesses. Their statements were nonetheless part of the prosecutor’s closing statement, said the person familiar with the court proceedings. The prosecution presented none of the children as witnesses, and several children have since recanted the testimony police recorded immediately after the raid. One of the children called in court as a defense witness stated that the police beat him to coerce him to say that he had suffered abuse at Belady, and a defense lawyer alleged in court that police had similarly abused other children.

The forensic expert’s report on which the prosecution relied for its allegation of sexual abuse was based on anal examinations of a number of children for evidence of sexual activity, a discredited practice that violates the international prohibition against torture. Egyptian human rights organizations that followed the case said that the forensic examinations found no evidence of coerced sexual activity. They said that in cases in which the expert claimed to find evidence of sexual activity, there was no indication that the sexual activity was not consensual or had even occurred at the foundation. One boy, called as a defense witness, apparently told the court that in his case it was consensual and that the foundation in no way encouraged or condoned it.

The prosecution claimed that its “technical committee” found two pornographic films on a confiscated Belady computer. The prosecutor in his closing statement referred to “foreign movies with sexual scenes.” The defense said that the laptops had not been properly sealed as evidence and were vulnerable to tampering. The defense lawyers were never given a copy of the technical committee’s report of its findings.

“The prosecution and trial of Aya Hijazi and her co-defendants, on top of all the due process violations, subjected children to anal examinations and published their identities and videos of their interrogation, and denied them a meaningful chance to defend themselves,” Stork said. “A trial that is supposedly about protecting children has amounted to years of state-sanctioned abuse against all concerned.”

Researchers with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and their collaborators, have successfully used facial recognition software to diagnose a rare, genetic disease in Africans, Asians and Latin Americans.

The disease, 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, also known as DiGeorge syndrome and velocardiofacial syndrome, affects from 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 6,000 children. Because the disease results in multiple defects throughout the body, including cleft palate, heart defects, a characteristic facial appearance and learning problems, healthcare providers often can’t pinpoint the disease, especially in diverse populations.

The goal of the study, published March 23, 2017, in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, is to help healthcare providers better recognize and diagnose DiGeorge syndrome, deliver critical, early interventions and provide better medical care.

“Human malformation syndromes appear different in different parts of the world,” said Paul Kruszka, M.D., M.P.H., a medical geneticist in NHGRI’s Medical Genetics Branch. “Even experienced clinicians have difficulty diagnosing genetic syndromes in non-European populations.”

The researchers studied the clinical information of 106 participants and photographs of 101 participants with the disease from 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The appearance of someone with the disease varied widely across the groups.

Using facial analysis technology, the researchers compared a group of 156 Caucasians, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans with the disease to people without the disease. Based on 126 individual facial features, researchers made correct diagnoses for all ethnic groups 96.6 percent of the time.

Marius George Linguraru, D.Phil., M.A., M.B., an investigator at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., developed the digital facial analysis technology used in the study. Researchers hope to further develop the technology – similar to that used in airports and on Facebook – so that healthcare providers can one day take a cell phone picture of their patient, have it analyzed and receive a diagnosis.

This technology was also very accurate in diagnosing Down syndrome, according to a study published in December 2016. The same team of researchers will next study Noonan syndrome and Williams syndrome, both of which are rare but seen by many clinicians.

DiGeorge syndrome and Down syndrome are now part of the Atlas of Human Malformations in Diverse Populations launched by NHGRI and its collaborators in September 2016. When completed, the atlas will consist of photos of physical traits of people with many different inherited diseases around the world, including Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the photos, the atlas will include written descriptions of affected people and will be searchable by phenotype (a person’s traits), syndrome, continental region of residence and genomic and molecular diagnosis. Previously, the only available diagnostic atlas featured photos of patients with northern European ancestry, which often does not represent the characteristics of these diseases in patients from other parts of the world.

“Healthcare providers here in the United States as well as those in other countries with fewer resources will be able to use the atlas and the facial recognition software for early diagnoses,” said Maximilian Muenke, M.D., atlas co-creator and chief of NHGRI’s Medical Genetics Branch. “Early diagnoses means early treatment along with the potential for reducing pain and suffering experienced by these children and their families.”

UNSW researchers have made a discovery that could lead to a revolutionary drug that actually reverses ageing, improves DNA repair and could even help NASA get its astronauts to Mars.

In a paper published in Science, the team identifies a critical step in the molecular process that allows cells to repair damaged DNA.

Their experiments in mice suggest a treatment is possible for DNA damage from ageing and radiation. It is so promising it has attracted the attention of NASA, which believes the treatment can help its Mars mission.

While our cells have an innate capability to repair DNA damage ? which happens every time we go out into the sun, for example – their ability to do this declines as we age.

The scientists identified that the metabolite NAD+, which is naturally present in every cell of our body, has a key role as a regulator in protein-to-protein interactions that control DNA repair.

Treating mice with a NAD+ precursor, or “booster,” called NMN improved their cells’ ability to repair DNA damage caused by radiation exposure or old age.

“The cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice, after just one week of treatment,” said lead author Professor David Sinclair of UNSW School of Medical Sciences and Harvard Medical School Boston.

Human trials of NMN therapy will begin within six months.

“This is the closest we are to a safe and effective anti-ageing drug that’s perhaps only three to five years away from being on the market if the trials go well,” said Sinclair, who maintains a lab at UNSW in Sydney.

What it means for astronauts, childhood cancer survivors, and the rest of us

The work has excited NASA, which is considering the challenge of keeping its astronauts healthy during a four-year mission to Mars.

Even on short missions, astronauts experience accelerated ageing from cosmic radiation, suffering from muscle weakness, memory loss and other symptoms when they return. On a trip to Mars, the situation would be far worse: five per cent of the astronauts’ cells would die and their chances of cancer would approach 100 per cent.

Professor Sinclair and his UNSW colleague Dr Lindsay Wu were winners in NASA’s iTech competition in December last year.

“We came in with a solution for a biological problem and it won the competition out of 300 entries,” Dr Wu said.

Cosmic radiation is not only an issue for astronauts. We’re all exposed to it aboard aircraft, with a London-Singapore-Melbourne flight roughly equivalent in radiation to a chest x-ray.

In theory, the same treatment could mitigate any effects of DNA damage for frequent flyers. The other group that could benefit from this work is survivors of childhood cancers.

Dr Wu said 96 per cent of childhood cancer survivors suffer a chronic illness by age 45, including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancers unrelated to the original cancer.

“All of this adds up to the fact they have accelerated ageing, which is devastating,” he said.

“It would be great to do something about that, and we believe we can with this molecule.”

An anti-ageing pill could be on the horizon

For the past four years, Professor Sinclair and Dr Wu have been working on making NMN into a drug substance with their companies MetroBiotech NSW and MetroBiotech International.

The human trials will begin this year at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston.

The findings on NAD+ and NMN add momentum to the exciting work the UNSW Laboratory for Ageing Research has done over the past four years.

They’ve been looking at the interplay of a number of proteins and molecules and their roles in the ageing process.

They had already established that NAD+ could be useful for treating various diseases of ageing, female infertility and also treating side effects of chemotherapy.

In 2003, Professor Sinclair made a link between the anti-ageing enzyme SIRT1 and resveratrol, a naturally occurring molecule found in tiny quantities in red wine.

“While resveratrol activates SIRT1 alone, NAD+ boosters activate all seven sirtuins, SIRT1-7, and should have an even greater impact on health and longevity,” he said.

An international team of astronomers has identified a record breaking brown dwarf (a star too small for nuclear fusion) with the ‘purest’ composition and the highest mass yet known.

The object, known as SDSS J0104+1535, is a member of the so-called halo – the outermost reaches – of our Galaxy, made up of the most ancient stars. The scientists report the discovery in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Brown dwarfs are intermediate between planets and fully-fledged stars. Their mass is too small for full nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium (with a consequent release of energy) to take place, but they are usually significantly more massive than planets.

Located 750 light years away in the constellation of Pisces, SDSS J0104+1535 is made of gas that is around 250 times purer than the Sun, so consists of more than 99.99% hydrogen and helium. Estimated to have formed about 10 billion years ago, measurements also suggest it has a mass equivalent to 90 times that of Jupiter, making it the most massive brown dwarf found to date.

It was previously not known if brown dwarfs could form from such primordial gas, and the discovery points the way to a larger undiscovered population of extremely pure brown dwarfs from our Galaxy’s ancient past.

The research team was led by Dr ZengHua Zhang of the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands. He said: “We really didn’t expect to see brown dwarfs that are this pure. Having found one though often suggests a much larger hitherto undiscovered population – I’d be very surprised if there aren’t many more similar objects out there waiting to be found.”

SDSS J0104+1535 has been classified as an L type ultra-subdwarf using its optical and near-infrared spectrum, measured using the European Southern Observatory’s “Very Large Telescope” (VLT). This classification was based on a scheme very recently established by Dr Zhang.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president overthrown in 2011 and the first leader to face trial after the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region, was freed on Friday, March 24 after six years in detention, his lawyer said, according to Reuters.

The 88-year-old was cleared of the final murder charges against him this month, after facing trial in a litany of cases ranging from corruption to the killing of protesters whose 18-day revolt stunned the world and ended his 30-year rule.

“Yes, he is now in his home in Heliopolis,” Mubarak’s lawyer, Farid El Deeb told Reuters when asked if Mubarak had left Maadi Military hospital in southern Cairo where he had been detained. Heliopolis is an upscale neighborhood where the main presidential palace from which Mubarak once governed is located.

Mubarak was initially arrested in April 2011, two months after leaving office, and has since been held in prison and in military hospitals under heavy guard.

Many Egyptians who lived through his presidency view it as a period of stagnation, autocracy and crony capitalism. Arabs watched enraptured when the first images of the former air force commander, Egypt’s modern-day Pharaoh, were beamed live on television, showing him bed-bound in his courtroom cage.

The overthrow of Mubarak, one of a series of military men to rule Egypt since the 1952 abolition of the monarchy, embodied the hopes of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook autocrats from Tunisia to the Gulf and briefly raised hopes of a new era of democracy and social justice.

His release takes that journey full circle, marking what his critics say is the return of the old order to Egypt, where authorities have crushed Mubarak’s enemies in the Muslim Brotherhood, killing hundreds and jailing thousands, while his allies regain influence.

Another military man, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, stepped into Mubarak’s shoes in 2013 when he overthrew Mohamed Mursi, the Brotherhood official who won Egypt’s first free election after the uprising.

A year later, Sisi won a presidential election in which the Brotherhood, now banned, could not participate. The liberal and leftist opposition, at the forefront of the 2011 protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, is under pressure and in disarray.

Years of political tumult and worsening security have hit the economy, just as Mubarak always warned. Egyptians complain of empty pockets and rumbling bellies as inflation exceeds 30 percent and the government tightens its belt in return for loans from the International Monetary Fund.

“The economic crisis we are living in and the high prices take priority over everything, as does the fear of terrorism. That is what preoccupies ordinary citizens, not Mubarak,” said Khaled Dawoud, an opposition politician who opposed the Islamists but also condemned the bloody crackdown on them.

“When you see the group of people who show up and cheer and support him, you are talking about 150, 200 people,” he said, referring to occasional shows of support outside the Maadi hospital when Mubarak was there.

Original article

On Thursday night’s Comedy Central “Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” the host abused a little girl and Pope Francis. It was the dirtiest assault on TV in some time. Even the audience winced at Noah’s filthy attack.

The show ran a video clip of a 3-year-old girl who was introduced to the pope. She grabbed his hat, leaving the pope in stitches. He kissed the girl as a sign of his affection. The clip was so cute that the media played it over and over, much to the applause of viewers.

But Noah is different. He took the opportunity to abuse the child and the pope by sexually exploiting the two of them. He commented, “I can see why this made the news—a child undressing a priest for a change.”

We urge everyone to demand that Noah apologize for his obscene remark.

Contact Jeremy Zweig, VP Corporate Communications: jeremy@viacom.com

Amy Schumer has parted ways with Sony’s live-action “Barbie” over a scheduling conflict, Variety has learned.

“Sadly, I’m no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts,” the actress said in a statement to Variety. “The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen.”

The big screen adaptation of Mattel’s iconic toy line was expected to start production this summer on June 23, but Schumer’s busy schedule includes a lengthy promotional tour for her new Fox comedy “Snatched,” which opens in May, as well as an upcoming shoot for Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me” opposite Steve Carell.

Sony needed to stick to its June 29, 2018 release date since Mattel already has merchandise and product cycles in motion–shifting the production to accommodate Schumer would have put on a strain on other partners on the film, according to insiders.

“We respect and support Amy’s decision,” a spokesperson for Sony said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing Barbie to the world and sharing updates on casting and filmmakers soon.”

Sony is still trying to find a director for the comedy. The “Barbie” movie is said to be in the vein of “Splash”, “Enchanted” and “Big.” In it, the main character gets kicked out of Barbieland for not being perfect enough and lands in a real-world adventure.

Schumer recently did a polish of the script. It’s unknown whether the same tone will be kept with the comedian no longer attached.

Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Amy Pascal are producing the film. Parkes and MacDonald initiated the original deal with Mattel in 2014.

Schumer can be seen next in the action-comedy “Snatched,” which opens on May 12, 2017, and also has “Thank You for Your Service” opening in October.

It is not just Donald Trump whose rhetoric is chronically bereft of reality. Politicians, reporters, commentators and academics are often similarly untethered to hard facts, albeit not for narcissistic enjoyment. There are many patterns of fact, relevant to a subject being discussed, that are off the table—either consciously or because they are deemed inconvenient. Rarely are there omissions due to the facts being hard to get or inaccessible.

That in mind, here are a few examples that warrant our scrutiny:

Consider the immense public attention to health insurance and health care and the recent struggles over Obamacare and now Ryancare. Conspicuously absent from the dialogues that pundits, politicians and reporters carry on is that the third leading cause of death in the U.S. is “medical error.” According to a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report last May, over 250,000 people lose their lives yearly in U.S. hospitals from “diagnostic errors, medical mistakes and the absence of safety nets” to stop hospital-induced infections, incompetent personnel, dangerous mixes of prescribed drugs and more. Yet in the debate surrounding the health care industry, this huge annual human casualty toll is unmentioned and, for many, intentionally “off the table.”

From a financial perspective, all the coverage of the costs of health insurance and health care excludes at least an estimated $340 billion (according to, among other sources, the leading expert, Professor Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard University)  lost annually as a result of computerized billing fraud and abuses—expenses for which taxpayers and consumers must eventually pay. All of this is “off the table.”

Despite all the attention currently being paid to Trump’s proposed $54 billion increase to the military budget, media coverage nonetheless neglects to mention the immense waste, fraud and redundancies already embedded in the roughly $600 billion that account for the Pentagon’s direct annual budget.

A mass of Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports for the Congress, Pentagon audits, and reports by reliable citizen groups regularly document this immense waste. Specifically, the annual cost of the anti-ballistic missile defense program in the Pentagon is over $9 billion—about the same as the budget of the lifesaving Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that Trump wants to cut by almost a third.

The anti-missile defense technology taxpayers are paying Raytheon and other defense contractors to work on is unworkable. Who says anti-missile defense programs are ineffective? The American Physical Society—more than a few of whom consult with the Department of Defense—as well as the very knowledgeable MIT professor Theodore A. Postol in his Congressional testimony, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Along with numerous other infirmities of this boondoggle, it is too easy to decoy the ballistic missiles, not to mention alternative ways for adversaries to endanger our country without signaling a return address as ballistic missiles would. Yet year after year, starting with Ronald Reagan, the money is automatically doled out uncritically by the Congress, backed by its generous contractors’ lobby, deeply entrenched in a system of unaccountable corporate welfare. For the gigantic Pentagon budget is unauditable, according to the GAO.

The Israeli/Palestinian struggle, when hostilities burst forth, is reported routinely as being one started by Palestinian “terrorists” versus Israeli defenders and retaliators. Little emphasized is the reality that the Israeli government is the illegal occupier, colonizer, invader and resource exploiter of the remaining Palestinian lands. Almost never mentioned is that, since 2000, the overwhelming majority of fatalities and injuries in the conflict have been innocent Palestinian civilians, including many children, at the hands of the powerful Israeli military.

Of course, readers can come up with their own examples arising out of local, state, national and international issues. When constantly subjected to a media and political system driven by distraction, one can’t help but ask the question, “Why are they focusing on this instead of that?” One reliable answer is that the powers-that-be work overtime to exclude such embarrassing realities, to assure that, as with corporate crime waves, they’re often not even counted or measured.

If you want a continuing frenzy of reality-exclusion, look no further than the Republicans and their forked tongues. They’re always complaining about deficits, while cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, overlooking real problems they pay lip service to such as “government waste.”

But here is what takes the cake. For six years the Republican House of Representatives has been slicing off more and more of the Internal Revenue Service’s slim budget. With Republicans now controlling both houses of Congress, they want to drive it below $10 billion for next year. Apart from resulting in your waiting forever to get someone from the IRS on the phone to answer your questions, there is the modest result of over $400 billion in yearly uncollected taxes.

When you ration tax collectors, how can you fairly enforce the law, reduce the deficit or, heaven forbid, repair America’s streets, bridges, drinking water systems, public transit and schools?

John Adams said that, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The verity of our second president’s words should serve as a call to action against the “alternative facts,” lies and myths, which have already come to define the current Trump administration and pose so grave a threat to our weakened democratic society and its level of freedom and justice.

In the South China Sea, a 2°C rise in the sea surface temperature in June 2015 was amplified to produce a 6°C rise on Dongsha Atoll, a shallow coral reef ecosystem, killing approximately 40 percent of the resident coral community within weeks, according to a study published in Scientific Reports this week.

Wind and waves churn the sea, flushing shallow-water coral reefs with seawater from the open ocean to help them stay cool. But according to new research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), when the weather turns still and these natural cooling mechanisms subside, just a few degrees of ocean warming can prove lethal to the corals that live there.

Scientists at WHOI studied this phenomenon in June 2015 while conducting research on Dongsha Atoll, an almost perfectly circular coral reef in the remote South China Sea. The findings, published in the March 24, 2017 issue of the journal Scientific Reports, highlight the devastation caused when global-scale ocean warming interacts with short-lived weather anomalies, and adds urgency to the question of how reefs will fare through the end of this century.

“Dongsha Atoll is typically hit with tropical storms and strong winds in June, which keep the corals as cool as the open ocean,” said Tom DeCarlo, lead author of the study and a then-graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography. “But in 2015, the weather in June was exceptionally calm — at one point, there was basically no wind and no waves. This had an amplifying effect on the water temperatures, which were already feeling the heat from global warming and El Niño. The whole reef became a giant swimming pool that just sat there and baked in the sun.”

According the DeCarlo, who is now a scientist with the University of Western Australia, it only took a few days of calm winds and waves before the reef lost its supply of cooler water from the open ocean. “We saw water temperatures surge to 36 °C (97 °F) – a full 6° C above normal summertime temperatures. This caused 100% of the corals to bleach, and 40% of them died,” he said.

Gone and back again

DeCarlo, WHOI scientist Anne Cohen, and dive master Pat Lohmann, witnessed the start of the mass die-off on the last day of their month-long field visit to Dongsha. They had just finished up an ecological survey of coral cover on the reef, and before heading home, jumped in the water to retrieve instruments they use to monitor water temperature, pH and currents. “That’s when we saw that all the corals had turned white,” said DeCarlo. “We had to catch our flights the next day, but the situation looked dire so Anne sent us back out to the site within a few weeks.

According to Cohen, the lead principal investigator on the project, the timing was remarkable given they were still on site when the bleaching started. “It’s quite uncommon to be out there in such a remote place as a massive bleaching event is actually happening,” said Cohen. “From Tom’s surveys, we knew what the healthy reef looked like just before the bleaching, so we could make a direct comparison with the post-bleaching data to assess the effects of the warming.”

Upon their return, the scientists boated back out to the reef and saw a green tint shimmering through the water – a possible sign that the corals made it through the bleaching event and were returning to a normal state. But when they dove in, they realized what they had seen was actually green turf algae covering dead corals. “This was the fastest-calcifying reef we’ve ever studied,” said DeCarlo. “So we thought it would have shown resiliency. But everything had come crashing down in the space of a few weeks.”

Cooling system shutdown

The team suspected the amplified warming was due to the weather lull, but they couldn’t automatically rule out the possibility that fewer clouds and more sunlight in 2015 versus previous years had caused the event. To test this hypothesis, DeCarlo and co-author Kristen Davis, using data recorded by instruments deployed on the reef, conducted a number of “heat budget” calculations to hone in on the specific factors that drove the extreme heating.

“We saw that air-to-sea heating mechanisms like sunlight and air temperature had remained nearly constant throughout June, but the wind- and wave-driven currents pushing in cooler offshore water were essentially turned off for a few days. This was the big change that caused the water temperatures to spike on the reef, so our hypothesis was correct – the unusually calm weather pattern was the primary culprit,” said DeCarlo.

Scanning history

Water temperatures stabilized in early July as the winds and waves finally kicked up. But the widespread damage had already been done. Given the magnitude of the event, the scientists wanted to know if this reef had experienced similar temperature extremes in the past, and if so, whether the corals recovered. According to Cohen, however, few historical bleaching data existed for the region.

“This is a super-remote place that takes two hours to get to by plane from mainland Taiwan,” she said. There were unpublished accounts of bleaching in 1997, but the severity and extent of that event were not quantified.

Without precise historical records, the team drilled core samples from corals living on the reef and used Computed Tomography (CT) scans to look for signals of thermal stress in the past. The scans, which look like an x-rayed mop handle, reveal annual rings or “bands” of varying densities in the coral’s skeleton.

“These bands are like a history book for coral reefs, allowing you to count back in time to specific years and events,” said Cohen, who attributes her lab’s unique “paleo perspective” to her background in paleo-oceanography. “The brighter, high-density bands, which we call ‘stress bands,’ are signatures of long and intense bleaching events. Based on cores we scanned, it appears there had been only three previous bleaching events between 1983 and 2015, each of which happened in El Niño years. But we detected very few stress bands in the cores, so while there had been bleaching, these events were not nearly as severe as 2015.”

Interpreting the CT scan data, DeCarlo says many corals that had bleached in the past appear to have recovered. “The skeletal records show that less than 50 percent of the colonies had bleached during these historical events, which is a stark contrast to the 100 percent bleaching we saw in 2015. This suggests that the area had not seen thermal stress this extreme in the last forty years at least – maybe even in the last 100 years.”

21st century reef

The study highlights the consequences for shallow-water coral reefs when global warming intersects with short-lived weather anomalies. But the scientists say their observations also suggest the possibility that climate model projections may underestimate what some coral reefs will experience as the ocean continues to warm over this century.

“The current global climate models and prognosis for reefs are based on a 2 °C warming scenario for the open ocean,” said DeCarlo. “But these projections usually don’t account for the kind of regional and local weather anomalies we saw at Dongsha. When you have weather amplification events superimposed on top of carbon dioxide-driven ocean warming, that’s when things can get really bad for corals. Models based on open-ocean warming already paint a dire picture for coral reefs, but the scary reality is that they may be too optimistic for many shallow reefs.”

“Projections based on open-ocean temperatures may not be 100% relevant to these shallow-water environments, where many coral communities live,” Cohen added. “It’s possible that coral reefs are in much more immediate danger than we have anticipated. When global and regional anomalies align, a seemingly-mild two-degree warming could be more like six degrees.”