By Pepe Escobar

Here’s the body count in the latest geopolitical earthquake afflicting the West: The Socialist Party in France is dead. The traditional Right is comatose. What used to be the Extreme Left is alive, and still kicking.

Yet what’s supposed to be the shock of the new is not exactly a shock. The more things veer towards change (we can believe in), the more they stay the same. Enter the new normal: the recycled “system” – as in Emmanuel Macron — versus “the people” — as in the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, battling for the French presidency on May 7.

Although that was the expected outcome, it’s still significant. Le Pen, re-christened “Marine”, reached the second round of voting despite a mediocre campaign.

She essentially reassembled — but did not expand — her voting base. I have argued on Asia Times that Macron is nothing but an artificial product, a meticulously packaged hologram designed to sell an illusion.

Only the terminally naïve may believe Macron incarnates change when he’s the candidate of the EU, NATO, the financial markets, the Clinton-Obama machine, the French establishment, assorted business oligarchs and the top six French media groups.

As for the stupidity of the Blairite Left, it’s now in a class by itself.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the domesticated hard-left of Insubordinate France, managed to equal the Catholic Right François Fillon in the final stretch. Yet the vapid PS candidate, Benoit Hamon, stole Mélenchon’s shot at hitting the second round.

As for Marine, she lost almost four points in the final tally. With one extra week of campaigning Fillon, despite Penelopegate, could have been equal with Marine.

Marine has only one extremely long shot on May 7. She will be frantically touring “deep France” to turn the second round into a debate on French identity and a clash of nationalists, patriots and sovereignists against pro-EU globalists and urban “liquid modernity” practitioners.

So what do they want?

Frontists are ready to rip Emmanuel Clinton’s neoliberal program to pieces, which will play very well in rural France and may even yield a few disgruntled Mélenchon votes.

Unlike Fillon and Hamon, he has not gone public calling his supporters to vote Macron. Disgruntled Fillon voters may also be inclined to switch to Marine — considering Fillon was viscerally opposed to someone he described as “Emmanuel Hollande.”

A quick look at the promises is in order. In a nutshell; Marine proffers a social model that “favors the French people;” Macron offers vague, “profound reforms.”

Macron’s plan to save 60 billion euros of public funds implies firing 120,000 functionaries; that is a certified recipe to a “see you in the barricades” scenario.

Marine only says she wants to reduce the public deficit — aiming at reducing state medical aid, the French contribution to the EU, and fiscal fraud.

Neither wants to raise the minimum wage and VAT. Both want to reduce the tax burden on companies and both want to fight the “Uberization” of work, favoring French companies (Marine) and European companies (Macron).

Marine’s absolute priority is to reduce social aid to foreigners and restitute “buying power” especially to pensioners and low-income workers. She’s vague about unemployment.

Macron’s “profound reforms” are centered on unemployment insurance and pensions. He’s keen on a universal unemployment protection managed by the state. Everyone would be covered, including in the case of being fired. Marine and Macron coincide on one point; better reimbursement of costly health benefits.

Europe is at the heart of the Marine vs Macron fight; that’s Frexit against a “new European project.”

Everyone in Brussels “voted” Macron as he proposes a budget for the eurozone, a dedicated Parliament, and a dedicated Minister of Finance. In short; Brussels on steroids.

Marine’s Frexit should be decided via a referendum — a direct consequence of the frontist obsession with immigration. Marine wants to reduce legal admission of immigrants to 10,000 people a year (it’s currently 200,000), tax employment of foreign workers, and suppress social aid. In contrast, pro-immigration Macron aims at what he calls an open France, “faithful to its values.”

On foreign policy, it’s all about Russia. Marine wants a “strategic realignment” with Moscow especially to fight Salafi-jihadi terror.

Macron — reflecting a French establishment as Russophobic as in the US — is against it, although he concedes that Europe must come to terms with Russia even as he defends the current sanctions.

About that Wall of Cash

If the coming, epic clash could be defined by just one issue that would be the unlimited power of the Wall of Cash.

Macron subscribes to the view that public debt and expenses on public service are the only factors responsible for French debt, so one must have “political courage” to promote reforms.

Sociologist Benjamin Lemoine is one of the few who’s publicly debating what’s really behind it — the interest of financiers to preserve the value of the debt they hold and their aversion to any negotiation.

Because they control the narrative, they are able to equate “political risk” — be it Marine or Mélenchon — with the risk to their own privileged positions.

The real issue at stake in France — and across most of the West — revolves around the conflicting interests of financial masters and citizens attached to public service and social justice.

The coming clash between Emmanuel Clinton and Marine LeTrump won’t even begin to scratch the surface.

By Terri Moon Cronk

During a visit to the headquarters of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Monday, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had stern words for the April 21 Taliban attack on an Afghan military base and mosque, in which more than 100 people were killed.

The secretary spoke at a news conference alongside Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of the Resolute Support mission and of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

“As if we needed a reminder of the type of enemy we’re up against, the killing of Afghan citizens and soldiers — protectors of the people — just as they were coming out of a mosque, a house of worship, it certainly characterizes this fight for exactly what it is,” Mattis said. “These people have no religious foundation. They are not devout anything, and it shows why we stand with the people of this country against such heinous acts perpetrated by this barbaric enemy and what they do.”

Talks With Afghan President

The secretary said he had met earlier with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and thanked him for his leadership in the midst of difficult times and for the inclusive approach of this unity government.

“We discussed his initiative to make the government … more responsive to all of the Afghan people, and we all recognize the challenges to this government of that effort presented by enemies of the Afghan people who refused to renounce violence,” Mattis said.

The secretary pointed out that President Donald J. Trump has directed a review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. “This dictates an ongoing dialogue with Afghanistan’s leadership,” he said, “and that’s why I came here: to get with President Ghani and his ministers and hear directly and at length from … General Nicholson to provide my best assessment and advice as we go forward.”

That advice, he added, will go not only to the president, but also to the NATO secretary general and all the troop-contributing nations with which the United States coordinates and collaborates.

The teamwork between the U.S. and Afghan governments, their diplomats and their international military contingents has achieved high levels of partnership, the secretary said. “In a word, I find it impressive,” he added.

2017: Difficult Road Ahead

The review in Washington of the Afghanistan mission is a dialogue that includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the president and his staff in the White House, and “I’d say we’re under no illusions about the challenges associated with this mission,” Mattis said

2017 will be another tough year for the Afghan security forces and the international troops who will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Afghanistan and against those who seek to undermine the nation’s legitimate government, Mattis said. He called on the Taliban to work honestly for a positive future for the Afghan people.

“They need only to renounce violence and reject terrorism,” he added. “It’s a pretty low standard to join the political process.”

(RFE/RL) — Russian warplanes last week flew near Alaska and Canada several times, prompting North American air defense forces to scramble jets for the first time in more than two years, the Pentagon said on April 24.

Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers were spotted in international air space three times — twice near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and once near mainland Alaska and Canada, the Pentagon said.

The flybys occurred April 17, 18, and 20, prompting on two occasions the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)to launch fighters to conduct intercepts, it said.

NORAD spokeswoman Lori O’Donley said a number of Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft were also spotted in international airspace in the same vicinity on April 19.

The White House has dismissed the importance of the flybys, saying “this is not highly unusual.”

“They were all conducted safely, professionally, and with respect for U.S. territorial airspace,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis.

But Davis said such flybys have not occurred off Alaska for years, possibly because the large, propeller-powered Tu-95s were grounded for maintenance.

“This was the first time in about two and a half years that we have seen Russia conduct long-range bomber missions like this in and around Alaska,” Davis said.

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s government has decided to launch one of the country’s biggest development projects with little or no input from the locality or the residents it would affect.

On April 1, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the cabinet-level State Council issued a circular announcing plans for the huge urbanization project to be known as the Xiongan New Area, 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Beijing.

The plan is part of an effort to shift non-capital functions out of congested Beijing by building a modern city center covering three sparsely settled counties of neighboring Hebei province.

Compared with Beijing’s population of about 22 million, the three counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin have a combined 300,000 residents with a gross domestic product of just 20 billion yuan (U.S. $2.9 billion), state media said.

Beijing’s GDP stood at 2.49 trillion yuan (U.S. $361.8 billion) in 2016, the 21st Century Economic Institute estimated last month.

China’s central government had already announced plans in 2014 to ease Beijing’s environmental problems by capping the population at 23 million, moving some businesses like wholesale food markets out of the capital and coordinating development with Hebei and the city of Tianjin.

In 2015, Beijing officials unveiled plans to create a “subsidiary administrative center” in the Tongzhou suburban district to the southeast as a partial solution to smog problems and other “urban diseases.”

Development of the Xiongan New Area is the next and likely much larger step in the process of reducing growth pressures on Beijing.

Plans call for initial development of a 100-square-kilometer (38.6-square-mile) zone with eventual expansion to 2,000 square kilometers, making it larger than the existing Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Pudong New Area of Shanghai.

Investment in Xiongan is expected to reach 4 trillion yuan (U.S. $580 billion) over the next two decades, the official English-language China Daily reported, citing a UBS Securities research note.

That total would put the investment on a par with the massive 4-trillion-yuan economic stimulus program announced by the government in response to the global financial crisis in 2008.

New opportunities for investors

Reports in China have focused on financial opportunities for publicly traded companies and investors in the new development area, as well as the excitement and surprise of local residents at the central government’s choice.

China Daily recorded the reactions of one local property owner upon hearing the news.

“First she was in disbelief. Then she was amazed. Then she realized everyone around her was talking about the same thing,” the paper said. The resident was reportedly “overjoyed.”

Official media reported that opportunity-seekers and state-owned enterprises have flocked to the area with inquiries about establishing businesses and offices there, although the government has said little about what its priorities are for the new zone.

“I hope specific plans for the area will be made public as soon as possible,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted one interested restaurant owner as saying.

“Location of the central area and industrial layout, among other details, have yet to be published,” the report said.

Speaking four days after the initial announcement, Hebei party chief Zhao Kezhi said the new zone would be “an innovation hub and a cluster for high-end, high-tech industries.”

But aside from the expected benefits, the announcement highlighted the central government’s process in making major investment decisions and economic policies.

Although the plan was reportedly considered for months, it appears to have been closely held among members of the Central Committee and the State Council, then sprung upon local citizens and provincial officials.

The official statement suggested that the decision was made ultimately by President Xi Jinping, who sees Xiongan as “a demonstration area for innovative development.”

The circular called it “a major historic and strategic choice made by the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core.”

“That seems to be a general characteristic of Xi Jinping’s leadership. He wants to concentrate power in the party and in the top levels of the party,” said Lowell Dittmer, a China scholar and political science professor at University of California Berkeley.

On April 13, Xinhua published another report stating that plans for Xiongan “are becoming more clear [sic],” but it provided few new details. The purpose was apparently to counter the impression that the plan was not carefully considered or complete.

“Under Xi’s direct guidance, the process began in February 2015, with the final proposal deliberated and agreed by the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee’s Political Bureau on March 24, 2016,” the report said.

Xinhua did not explain why local officials and residents were kept in the dark for over a year.

Months of secrecy

The project emerged less than three weeks after China’s annual legislative sessions, yet deputies of the National People’s Congress were apparently given no clue of the plan in the works.

The sudden news after months of secrecy set off a gold rush of real estate speculation as investors flooded into the backwater counties, bidding up property prices.

The central government has been trying for years to safely deflate the speculative bubble in big cities like Beijing. The last thing it wants is the same problem in the new development zone before it is even built.

Within three days of the announcement, authorities in the new area reported 765 cases of real estate violations, arrested seven people and ordered 71 sales offices to close, state media said.

The local Hebei Daily reported that seven suspects were charged with “illegal farmland occupation, illegal business operations and disturbing public order.”

Local governments have moved quickly to suspend new property sales and impose restrictions on development and residential permit registrations, the BBC said.

In an apparent contradiction, Xinhua’s report on April 13 stated that “purchases and projects related to land and property and changes to household registration have been blocked in the three counties since June last year.”

Last week, Zhao voiced support for the as-yet undisclosed construction plans in the area, indicating that they would involve displacement of citizens and businesses.

Policy making should be based on public opinion and “problems during the process of residents’ and enterprises’ relocation should be properly solved,” Xinhua quoted the provincial party secretary as saying.

The real estate sector should be under the “most strict [sic] control to prevent property speculation,” Zhao said.

Poorly coordinated announcement

But the real estate frenzy and the arrests suggest the announcement was poorly coordinated with provincial and local officials. It may have been accelerated by the need to show the public that the government was taking steps in response to Beijing’s winter smog crisis.

Unfortunately, the undertaking of such a huge development in a low-intensity area seems bound to have environmental consequences of its own.

It is unclear how closely the Xiongan New Area project will adhere to principles laid out in the government’s “national new-type urbanization plan” and a landmark joint study by the State Council’s Development Research Center and the World Bank in 2014.

The study called for big cities to “boost their role as gateways to the world, … moving increasingly into services, knowledge and innovation.” The concept may correspond roughly to the goal of ridding Beijing of non-capital functions and polluting business activities.

But the 2014 blueprint was also highly critical of urban sprawl, arguing that greater density “would reduce the energy intensity and car use in cities, thus improving environmental sustainability.”

The recreation of non-capital functions in a new 2,000- square-kilometer area seems likely to become a surefire formula for more urban sprawl.

The implied contradictions speak to the mixed motives behind any big investment plan in China that must gain political support.

While developing Xiongan and the Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin areas to ease the pollution burdens on the capital megacity, the plans are also seen as economic stimulus projects and investment opportunities with their own environmental impacts.

“China initiated in 2014 a strategy to integrate the development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei for a better economic structure, cleaner environment and improved public services,” said another Xinhua report on April 6.

“With that strategy, authorities intend to transform the region into a new growth pole as China’s economy slows,” the report said.

Lowell Dittmer said the announcement of the new project seems consistent with the government’s economic growth mission.

“They want to keep the economy booming at least through the party congress later this fall,” he said.

(Civil.Ge) — Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili paid a two-day official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran on April 22-23, where he held talks with President Hassan Rouhani, Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri and Majlis Chairman Ali Larijani.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes developing ties with Georgia in all fields,” President Rouhani said at his meeting with PM Kvirikashvili. “Iran and Georgia have great potential and capabilities for developing ties in the field of economy, science and culture,” he added.

At the meeting of President Rouhani and PM Kvirikashvili, special emphasis was drawn on the Persian Gulf-Black Sea transport and transit corridor. The Iranian President said on this matter: “today, transit is very important in the region and with regard to connecting Iran’s rail system to Astara (town in northern Iran) and Azerbaijan and good rail and road connection in Georgia, deepening Tehran-Tbilisi ties in this field can make great developments in the region.”

The Persian Gulf-Black Sea corridor featured at Kvirikashvili’s meeting with Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri as well. “The most important issue is the issue of North-South corridor and connection of the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea through Iran-Armenia-Georgia or Iran-Azerbaijan-Georgia,” Jahangiri was quoted as saying by Tehran Times.

According to the Vice President, Iran has already expressed it readiness to connect the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea through the North-South Corridor, which would connect Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran on its path.

PM Kvirikashvili’s administration said in its press release of the meeting, that the Iranian side expressed readiness to cooperate with Georgia in the energy sector, including electric power exchange and providing Georgia with Iranian natural gas.

Several memoranda of understanding and agreements were signed by Georgian and Iranian ministries and between private sector representatives, respectively.

As part of his visit to Tehran, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili also met with Majlis (Iranian Parliament) Chairman Ali Larijani.

Led by Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, the Georgian delegation included Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze, Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze, Economy Minister Giorgi Gakharia, Environment Minister Gigla Agulashvili, Agriculture Minister Levan Davitashvili, Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Tariel Khechikashvili and the Prime Minister’s Foreign Advisor Tedo Japaridze.

Kvirikashvili’s trip to Iran came three days after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s visit to Georgia.

(Civil.Ge) — Anatoly Bibilov, former head of the region’s legislature, who was declared the winner of the April 9 presidential election in South Ossetia, was inaugurated in Tskhinvali on April 21.

Vladimir Putin’s advisor Vladislav Surkov attended and spoke at the ceremony held at a local footbal stadium, congratulating Bibilov on behalf of the Russian President. Reading Putin’s message, Surkov pledged Russia’s continued support and stressed the need to implement Moscow’s “alliance and integration treaty” with Tskhinvali, signed on March 18, 2015. He also said that Moscow expected “necessary control over effectiveness of spending of funds provided from the federal budget of the Russian Federation.”

Surkov had also met Bibilov shortly before the ceremony, praising him for his “firm position on the maximum possible integration with Russia”, and saying that he and Bibilov were of the same mind, since both pursued the objective “to establish a common economic, legal, cultural space that would unite our peoples.” In his remarks during the meeting, Bibilov confirmed that he was going to continue with the “course of integration into the Russian Federation.”

Other speakers at the ceremony, besides Bibilov himself, included: member of Russia’s Federation Council Alexander Totoonov, leader of the Russian Federal Region of North Ossetia Vyacheslav Bitarov; former Tskhinvali leader Leonid Tibilov; Abkhaz head of government Beslan Bartsits.

Luhansk “people’s republic” (LNR) leader Igor Plotnitsky also made a speech. He thanked South Ossetians for recognizing LNR independence and for sending “volunteers” to fight against Ukraine in the Donbass region. Plotnitsky praised them, saying they “fought honestly, risking their lives.” He added that the presence of volunteers from “all regions and republics of Russia” in Donbass confirmed the existence of the “strong and powerful Russia, the united Russian world.”

The ceremony was also attended by representatives of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, Russian Duma and Federation Council delegations, as well as the Donetsk “people’s republic” (DNR) parliamentary speaker Denis Pushilin and delegations from Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh regions.

By Igor Spaic

Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders made a first joint visit to sites where war victims were massacred in Bosnia and Herzegovina in a bid to promote reconciliation.

In an effort to show respect for victims from each other’s communities, members of Bosnia’s Interreligious Council on Monday visited several locations where atrocities were committed against people from the country’s various ethnic groups during the 1992-95 war.

This was the first time that religious leaders from different faiths have jointly paid their respects to victims from each other’s ethnic groups.

“The time has come for everybody to honestly feel shame for all that has happened among us,” said Serbian Orthodox bishop Vladika Grigorije, Bosnian news site Klix reported.

Grigorije was accompanied by Catholic Cardinal Vinko Puljic, deputy Grand Mufti Husejin Smajic, a representative of the country’s Jewish Community, Boris Kozemjakin, and Bosnia’s Minister of Human Rights and Refugees, Semiha Borovac.

The clerics and the minister visited the Jewish Municipality of Sarajevo, the capital’s Kazani district, Krizancevo Selo, Kruscica and the Koricani cliffs, where they prayed for the souls of the victims killed there together.

The Koricani Cliffs massacre took place in 1992, when some 150 Bosniak and Croat civilian prisoners were executed and their bodies thrown into the ravine.

The number of Serbs and Croats killed in Kazani by Bosniak-led Bosnian Army troops in 1992 and 1993 has yet to be officially determined, but local media have estimated that it is about 30.

In Krizancevo selo, near the town of Vitez, Bosnian Army troops killed dozens of Croats in 1993.

The village of Kruscica was the site of a World War II concentration camp set up by Croats, where thousands of mostly Jewish victims were rounded up and died.

“We could say this is coming late – it is something they should have started to do right after the war in Bosnia,” Edina Becirevic, author of the book ‘Genocide on the Drina River’, told BIRN.

During the 1992-95 conflict, religion played a major role in the campaigns that nationalist parties from the different ethnic groups led against each other.

Religious sentiments have often been manipulated for political gain and local religious communities have been closely connected to the dominant ethnically-based parties, said Becirevic.

“The fact that they [the religious leaders] agreed to do this may also mean that ethnic parties might follow suit, and also have a more inclusive approach when it comes to reconciliation among the peoples,” she said.

By Derek Verbakel*

On 3 April, US President Donald Trump hosted the first ever visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the White House. Many observers have characterised Trump’s praise of el-Sisi’s authoritarian governance as engendering a significant policy shift from the more liberal administration of former US President Barack Obama. Yet, others have anticipated a mere extension of Washington’s longstanding pursuit of its perceived interests through supporting repressive regimes in Egypt.

This prerogative is less obscured by sophistry and indeed clearer in Trump’s conduct, and there are some differences in how the two administrations have engaged with and been perceived by Egyptian governments. Still, broadly, the Trump administration’s approach to Egypt appears to be more a continuation than a disjuncture from Obama’s; and Egypt is set to continue experiencing the long-underway entrenchment of el-Sisi’s authoritarian, anti-democratic rule.

For three decades prior to his ouster, Washington maintained a strategic partnership with the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, who in 2009 was called a family friend by the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During the January 2011 uprising, Obama was cautious and indecisive in backing the demonstrators; and US policy invited criticism as US-made military hardware was used against countless Egyptians who took to the streets calling for freedom and democracy. Before finally endorsing Mubarak’s immediate departure, the Obama administration attempted and failed to arrange a transition from Mubarak to his CIA-linked intelligence chief, whose ascension, it was hoped, would sufficiently safeguard ‘stability’ and simulate ‘change’.

Strong ties between Washington and Cairo transcended the overthrow of Mubarak, and later Mohammed Morsi – who, after one year as president, was viewed unfavourably by many Egyptians as advancing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood movement from which he came. The then US Secretary of State John Kerry had characterised the ensuing military coup led by el-Sisi against Egypt’s first elected president as a restoration of democracy. The next month, in August 2013, el-Sisi presided over the massacre of over 800 pro-Morsi demonstrators in a single day.

Following the coup and a months-long crackdown on political opposition, the relationship between the Obama administration and Cairo worsened. In October 2013, in an unprecedented move, Washington imposed a partial suspension of military aid to Egypt while both citing the need for more democratic governance and denying that the move was punishment. Aid that was deemed vital for counter-terrorism was exempted, and the vast majority of military assistance continued nonetheless, but Egyptian officials still lambasted the US for allegedly harming Egypt’s interests.

Military aid was reinstated in April 2015 at a time of heightening US security concerns due to Islamic State-linked insurgencies in the northern Sinai and Libya. This coincided with an intensifying crackdown by the el-Sisi regime on wide-ranging dissidents, which entailed widespread and severe human rights abuses. Indeed, aid suspension and reform-oriented discourse were more consequential in symbolic than material terms, but still the Egyptian government was displeased. Cairo signalled this to Washington by pursuing stronger ties with competing countries such as Russia, for whose leader it hosted a conspicuously adulatory state visit in February 2015.

Anticipating an even friendlier US administration, el-Sisi avidly pursued President Trump in recent months. The White House visit was considered an opportunity to improve Egypt’s regional geopolitical position in relation to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, and Turkey as well as to bolster support for the continued consolidation of power domestically. After Trump was elected, many officials in Cairo expected he would raise annual US military assistance to Egypt from $1.3 billion.

However, in some respects the more accommodating policy shift that el-Sisi had hoped for did not occur. Rather, in the proposed budget for 2018, US military assistance switched from a grant to a loan and economic assistance was cut completely. The Trump administration also maintained its backtracking – due to the Muslim Brotherhood’s regional political ties – from an initiative to follow Cairo in designating the group a ‘terrorist’ organisation.

Yet despite these developments, Trump’s rhetorical support has further validated the style and substance of el-Sisi’s governance, particularly in relation to combating ‘terrorism’. Since Morsi’s overthrow, el-Sisi has used countering extremism and ‘terrorism’ as a pretext not only to target the Islamic State and other militant groups that have in fact grown stronger largely as a result of his rule. Eased by measures such as the 2013 anti-protest law, 2015 anti-terrorism law, and 2016 NGO law, el-Sisi has instead placed priority on repressing those who pose a more significant challenge to his power: the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other activists of all kinds.

There are approximately 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, and Trump has outwardly registered no concern over this or the broader escalation of human rights violations by the el-Sisi regime. For el-Sisi, now free of even hollow remonstrations from Washington, welcome is the disabuse of America’s longstanding hypocrisy towards other states while reserving itself the option to violate human rights in the name of national security.

However, neither US policy shifts towards Egypt, nor their implications, should be exaggerated. The Egyptian state under el-Sisi will continue its years-long process of destroying or dominating rival centres of power and organisation – crushing political opposition, suffocating civil society, and deepening military involvement in the country’s fragile economy. However, as authoritarianism breeds disaffection and resistance, it promises to fuel extremism and instability in Egypt, rather than inhibiting it.

* Derek Verbakel
Researcher, IReS, IPCS
Email: derek.verbakel@ipcs.org

Two of the six spots renamed could be of significance, but the other four are simply points on a map. Is there a method behind this that we cannot discern at the moment?

By Manoj Joshi

Earlier this month China’s ministry of civil affairs, responsible for social and administrative affairs under its government, published a notification changing the names of six places in Arunachal Pradesh, which China has claimed since the 1950s and now says is South Tibet. According to the state-owned daily Global Times, this is a “move to reaffirm the country’s territorial sovereignty to the disputed region.” But there is little doubt that the step is a deliberate move aimed at punishing India for permitting the Dalai Lama to visit the Tawang monastery earlier in April.

China’s renaming places is part of what is called lawfare, where countries seek to get the legal high ground to press their claims. This is not a new feature for the Sino-Indian relationship. For instance, when China wanted to press a claim to Barahoti Pass in Garhwal, it renamed it as Wu Je. Likewise, Demchok, which is in Ladakh and claimed by China, was named Parigas. Similar examples abound in cases where China or other countries dispute territory. We are familiar with the Argentinian designation of Falklands Islands as the Malvinas, or the differing names used by the Vietnamese and Chinese for the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

Along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), where Indian and Chinese claims overlap, the naming and renaming is accompanied by another manifestation of the game – leaving behind tell-tale signs. Chinese patrols enter areas within the Indian claim line and leave behind newspapers, cigarette packets, old uniforms and so on. Often they paint rocks declaring it to be Chinese territory. Indian patrols do the same and whenever they come across Chinese tell-tale signs, they deface them and carry away or destroy the litter.

The Chinese ministry published its notification of April 13 giving the names in the Chinese, Tibetan and English scripts along with the latitude and longitude of the places. However, they did not indicate the original names of the places.

Plotting the Chinese given latitude and longitudes onto Google Earth results in a fascinating revelation – while two of the spots could be of significance, the other four are simply points on a map with no habitation and no prominent landmark. One would imagine that they are totally random, but perhaps, since this is just the first of many similar exercises, there is a method that we cannot discern at this stage.

Plotting “Wo’gyainling” (91° 52′ 25″E and 27°34’54″N) on Google Earth reveals a nondescript locality in Tawang 1.70 km from the monastery as the crow flies. However, some 300 metres away is the small but elegant Urgelling Gompa. Now there are scores of gompas all over the area, but the significance of Urgelling is that it is the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama.

“Mila Ri” (93° 52′ 25″E and 28° 03′ 06″N) – “ri” means mountain in Tibetan – is not even the highest point on a forested mountain slope. “Qoidengarbo Ri” (93° 45′ 57”E and 28°16′ 50”N) is clearly a peak, though its significance is not known to this writer. Maybe, it and Mila Ri are places of local religious significance.

“Mainquka” (94° 08′ 04″E and 28° 36′ 03″N ), or Menchuka as it is now known, seems to be just about the only place of significance renamed. It is a town with an airstrip just about 30 km from the LAC.

“Bumo La” (96° 46′ 25″E and 28°06′ 55″N) was initially assumed to the Bum La (27°43’31″N and 91°53″ 32’E), the pass north of Tawang where India and China have their routine military-to-military meetings. But the coordinates provided land you up at the eastern extremity of Arunachal Pradesh, some 24 km west of Walong, while Bum La is on the western extremity. Further, Bumo La does not appear to be a pass, as the suffix “La” would suggest; it is merely a point on the slope of a mountain.

“Namkapub Ri” (95° 06′ 05″E and 28° 12′ 49″N) is the big mystery. There was an assumption that this could be the Namka Chu ( 91° 40′ 40″E and 27° 49′ 18″N), which is in the western extremity of the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh. This was the site of the first attack by China in 1962. But the coordinates provided by the China’s civilian affairs ministry lands you on a forested slope where there are no distinct geographical features like a river, a mountain peak, pass or a dwelling of any kind.

This article originally appeared in The Wire.

Scientists have found that a caterpillar commercially bred for fishing bait has the ability to biodegrade polyethylene: one of the toughest and most used plastics, frequently found clogging up landfill sites in the form of plastic shopping bags.

The wax worm, the larvae of the common insect Galleria mellonella, or greater wax moth, is a scourge of beehives across Europe. In the wild, the worms live as parasites in bee colonies. Wax moths lay their eggs inside hives where the worms hatch and grow on beeswax – hence the name.

A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes.

Bertocchini, from the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria (CSIC), Spain, collaborated with colleagues Paolo Bombelli and Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry to conduct a timed experiment.

Around a hundred wax worms were exposed to a plastic bag from a UK supermarket. Holes started to appear after just 40 minutes, and after 12 hours there was a reduction in plastic mass of 92mg from the bag.

Scientists say that the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries, such as bacteria reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13mg a day.

“If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable,” said Cambridge’s Paolo Bombelli, first author of the study published today in the journal Current Biology.

“This discovery could be an important tool for helping to get rid of the polyethylene plastic waste accumulated in landfill sites and oceans.”

Polyethylene is largely used in packaging, and accounts for 40% of total demand for plastic products across Europe – where up to 38% of plastic is discarded in landfills. People around the world use around a trillion plastic bags every single year.

Generally speaking, plastic is highly resistant to breaking down, and even when it does the smaller pieces choke up ecosystems without degrading. The environmental toll is a heavy one.

Yet nature may provide an answer. The beeswax on which wax worms grow is composed of a highly diverse mixture of lipid compounds: building block molecules of living cells, including fats, oils and some hormones.

While the molecular detail of wax biodegradation requires further investigation, the researchers say it is likely that digesting beeswax and polyethylene involves breaking similar types of chemical bonds.

“Wax is a polymer, a sort of ‘natural plastic,’ and has a chemical structure not dissimilar to polyethylene,” said CSIC’s Bertocchini, the study’s lead author.

The researchers conducted spectroscopic analysis to show the chemical bonds in the plastic were breaking. The analysis showed the worms transformed the polyethylene into ethylene glycol, representing un-bonded ‘monomer’ molecules.

To confirm it wasn’t just the chewing mechanism of the caterpillars degrading the plastic, the team mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags, with similar results.

“The caterpillars are not just eating the plastic without modifying its chemical make-up. We showed that the polymer chains in polyethylene plastic are actually broken by the wax worms,” said Bombelli.

“The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut. The next steps for us will be to try and identify the molecular processes in this reaction and see if we can isolate the enzyme responsible.”

As the molecular details of the process become known, the researchers say it could be used to devise a biotechnological solution on an industrial scale for managing polyethylene waste.

Added Bertocchini: “We are planning to implement this finding into a viable way to get rid of plastic waste, working towards a solution to save our oceans, rivers, and all the environment from the unavoidable consequences of plastic accumulation.”

You wouldn’t think chili peppers and marijuana have much in common. But when eaten, both interact with the same receptor in our stomachs, according to a paper by UConn researchers published in the April 24 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research could lead to new therapies for diabetes and colitis, and opens up intriguing questions about the relationship between the immune system, the gut and the brain.

Touch a chili pepper to your mouth and you feel heat. And biochemically, you aren’t wrong. The capsaicin chemical in the pepper binds to a receptor that triggers a nerve that fires off to your brain: hot! Those same receptors are found throughout the gastrointestinal tract, for reasons that have been mysterious.

Curious, UConn researchers fed capsaicin to mice, and found the mice fed with the spice had less inflammation in their guts. The researchers actually cured mice with Type 1 diabetes by feeding them chili pepper. When they looked carefully at what was happening at a molecular level, the researchers saw that the capsaicin was binding to a receptor called TRPV1, which is found on specialized cells throughout the gastrointestinal tract.

When capsaicin binds to it, TRPV1 causes cells to make anandamide. Anandamide is a compound chemically akin to the cannabinoids in marijuana. It was the anandamide that caused the immune system to calm down. And the researchers found they could get the same gut-calming results by feeding the mice anandamide directly.

The brain also has receptors for anandamide. It’s these receptors that react with the cannabinoids in marijuana to get people high. Scientists have long wondered why people even have receptors for cannabinoids in their brains. They don’t seem to interact with vital bodily functions that way opiate receptors do, for example.

“This allows you to imagine ways the immune system and the brain might talk to each other. They share a common language,” said Pramod Srivastava, Professor of Immunology and Medicine at UConn Health School of Medicine. And one word of that common language is anandamide.

Srivastava and his colleagues don’t know how or why anandamide might relay messages between the immune system and the brain. But they have found out the details of how it heals the gut. The molecule reacts with both TRPV1 (to produce more anandamide) and another receptor to call in a type of macrophage, immune cells that subdue inflammation. The macrophage population and activity level increases when anandamide levels increase. The effects pervade the entire upper gut, including the esophagus, stomach and pancreas. They are still working with mice to see whether it also affects disorders in the bowels, such as colitis. And there are many other questions yet to be explored: what is the exact molecular pathway? Other receptors also react with anandamide; what do they do? How does ingesting weed affect the gut and the brain?

It’s difficult to get federal license to experiment on people with marijuana, but the legalization of pot in certain states means there’s a different way to see if regular ingestion of cannabinoids affects gut inflammation in humans.

“I’m hoping to work with the public health authority in Colorado to see if there has been an effect on the severity of colitis among regular users of edible weed,” since pot became legal there in 2012, Srivastava said.

If the epidemiological data shows a significant change, that would make a testable case that anandamide or other cannabinoids could be used as therapeutic drugs to treat certain disorders of the stomach, pancreas, intestines and colon.

It seems a little ironic that both chili peppers and marijuana could make the gut chill out. But how useful if it’s true.

One of the most successful techniques presently in use for detecting expolantes is the search for transits. Similar to the way the Moon cuts off the light of the Sun during an eclipse, a transit is produced when a planet orbiting a distant star cuts off a small fraction of its light when it passes between us and the star. There are many projects dedicated to detecting and monitoring small variations in the light from many stars in the hope of discovering an extrasolar planet.

One of these projects is MEarth, which uses a network of 40 cm telescopes to measure the light from hundreds of stars. In Setember 2014 MEarth detected a possible transit in the star named LHS 1140. Thanks to a thorough piece of research using data from MEarth-South, at the Interamerican Observatory of Cerro Tololo, Chile, and with the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6m telescope at the La Silla Observatory of the European Southern Observatory, ESO (also in Chile) a planet was confirmed orbiting around this star with a period of 25 days. This spectrograph was designed especially for the detection and study of extrasolar planets. An almost identical twin instrument is installed at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) at the Roque de los Muchachos Obseratory, in Garafía (La Palma).

The planet in question, given the name LHS 1140b is in orbit around an M-type star. This type of stars, with sizes and luminosities less than those of the Sun,are the most abundant stars in the Galaxy. This planetary system is at only 40 light years from Earth, in other words in the solar neighborhood.

An international team, of which the IAC researcher Felipe Murgas is a member, was able to establish the size and mass of the planet as 1.4 times the radius of the Earth, and 6.6 times the mass of the Earth, respectively. Because of its size, and high mass, it is very probable that the planet has a rocky composition.

“This is the most exciting exoplanet which I have seen in the last ten years,” said Jason Dittmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA), the first author of the article in Nature. “It would be difficult to find a better objective for carrying out one of the most important searches in science: for evidence of life beyond the Earth”.

Another important aspect of the discovery is that LMS 1140b is orbiting its star in the so-called “zone of habitability”, the region around a star in which the temperature makes it possible for water to exist in all of its three phases: solid liquid, and gas. This is, as we know, one of the requirements for the existence of life as we know it on Earth.

“Because it is at a distance from its star which permits relatively cool temperatures, and a mass which is big enough to prevent the evaporation of an atmosphere due to the wind of its star, LHS 1140b has become one of the most promising candidates for the detection and study of its atmosphere, using the next generation of telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST)and the European Extrmely Large Telescope (E-ELT),” concluded Felipe Murgas.

By Hari Bansh Jha*

In Nepal, the political atmosphere is rife with tensions on the issue of holding local level elections next month. The Madheshis, Tharus and other Janajati (indigenous) groups who form bulk of the nation’s total population have vowed to disrupt the elections as it intends to give legitimacy to new Nepalese constitution promulgated on September 20, 2015, which has not yet addressed their concerns.

In their bid to boycott the local elections, different protest programmes are being launched in Madhesh, Tharuhat and Limbuan (hills) belts. Indefinite strike will also follow as the date of election, May 14, nears. In such a situation, any attempt to impose elections in Madhesh against the will of the people is sure to invite fresh conflict both during the day of the elections, if not before.

As it is well known, the constitution was made without having any participation of Madheshis in it. Besides, their demands for redrawing provincial boundaries, population-based elections, proportional representation in state mechanisms, and citizenship related issues remained unaddressed. The constitution was amended last year, but it was merely eyewash.

Subsequently, the present government, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, tabled the second amendment bill in the parliament to resolve the Madhesh issue. A provision was made in the new amendment bill to make second province for the Madheshis in Terai as part of the effort to redraw provincial boundaries. The amendment bill also made a provision for constituting a commission to resolve the issue of those controversial districts in Madhesh that have been clubbed with hill provinces and are yet to be integrated with Madhesh province.

But the new amendment bill was not acceptable to the agitating Madheshi groups because of the trust deficit. The Madheshis don’t believe that the commission would ever do any justice with them. In 2008, the government of Nepal duly signed agreement with the Madhesh-centric political parties to grant one Madhesh province from Mechi river in the east to Mahakali river in the west, but later on it backed off and the Madheshis thus felt cheated.

And more than that there was little in the amendment bill to meet the core demands of the Madheshis. Even in the local level elections, only 35 per cent of the village councils/municipalities were given in Madhesh, though this region accommodates over half of Nepal’s total population of 28 million. Realising the fact that the second amendment bill would not satisfy the agitating groups, the government later on replaced the amendment bill with a new one. But the new bill also overlooked the issue of redrawing of the provincial boundaries, which angered the Madheshi and hill Janajati groups more.

Acceptance of local level elections in the way the government wants will never allow the Madheshis, Tharus and other Janajati groups to have due representation in the elections of 59-member National Assembly and also in the election of the President of the country. In addition, there would be less of resources for the development of Madhesh region. Therefore, the Madhesh-centric political parties wanted the amendment of the constitution first before conducting the parliamentary, provincial and local level elections in the country.

In 2015-16, nearly 60 people were killed and thousands of people were injured in the Madheshi protests against the constitution. Recently, on March 6 this year, the police shot dead five more Madheshi activists in Rajbiraj, a small township in Terai, closer to the Indo-Nepal border, when they were protesting peacefully against the imposition of the local elections.

Unfortunately, the government is not taking the demands of the Madheshis, Tharus and other Janajati groups seriously. Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Ajay Shankar Nayak termed the present protest programmes by the Madhesh-centric political parties against the upcoming local level elections as mere ‘drama.’

But the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimlendra Nidhi made crucial revelations that the security arrangement and necessary preparations needed to be made for conducting local level polls was not sufficient. Nidhi,  who represents Nepal’s largest political party, Nepali Congress, in the government, felt that political settlement of the Madheshi issue through dialogue was necessary for the successful completion of the elections.

Ever since preparation began for making constitution in June 2015, the major political parties have been making mistakes, one after the other, by excluding the Madheshis, Tharus and other Janajati groups in the constitution making process as well as in its amendment. Even this time, the government registered the constitution amendment bill in the parliament unilaterally without taking the Madhesh-centric political parties into confidence.

Therefore, fresh conflict in Madhesh and also in certain pockets of the hills seems to be inevitable as the government and some other political parties are in favour of holding the elections; while the Madhesh-centric parties and hill Janajati groups are in mood to disrupt it. Such a situation in the wake of the local level elections is not in the long term interest of the nation as it will further polarise the country that is already polarised on ethnic lines. It is better to make the constitution inclusive by amending it to the satisfaction of the agitating groups before holding elections for the parliamentary, provincial or local levels.

*The author is Professor of Economics and Executive Director of Centre for Economic and Technical Studies in Nepal

Professor of the Institute of Civil Engineering of Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) Andrey Ponomarev and a graduate student Alexander Rassokhin developed a new construction technology.

Scientists created several types of building blocks based on nanostructured high-strength lightweight concrete, reinforced with skew-angular composite coarse grids. The development has unique characteristics, enabling the increase of load-carrying capability by more than 200% and decrease in specific density of the construction by 80%. In addition, among the advantages, are resistance to corrosion, aggressive environments and excessive frost resistance.

Researchers calculated that the service life of the building structures, made with the use of this reinforcement system, will increase at least 2-3 times in comparison with its modern analogs.

“Such system allows to ensure the structure integrity even in conditions of seismic activity, since the load is distributed throughout the structure as a whole, and not by individual reinforcement bars. The invention can be used in the construction of bridges and pedestrian crossings, non-metallic ships, low-rise residential buildings” says Alexander Rassokhin.

The fundamentals of the research have been described in an article “Hybrid wood-polymer composites in civil engineering” at the Magazine of Civil Engineering.

Lebanese diva Elissa was a big winner at the first edition of the Arab Nation Music Awards ceremony, held in Beirut on Sunday.

It was a first-of-its-kind Middle East awards ceremony that represented the regional talent, and covered musical stars from North Africa to the Levant and the Gulf. The ceremony was attended by several political and media personalities from the Arab world, and hosted by Razan El-Moghrabi.

Elissa swept up awards in four categories, which include: best Arab artist, best song for an Arab soap opera (‘Ya Reit’), star of the host country, and star of social media.

The Arab singer thanked the audience, her fans and manager, who she said could not attend the ceremony because of personal reasons. Slamming her critics, she said those who called her album a failure are “sick” people.

The awards differ from any other musical award in Lebanon or the Arab world. They are more like Western music awards, as winners are selected based on the audience’s choice, and their performance and success.

The Arab Nation Music Awards was a star-studded event attended by the likes of Nassif Zeytoun and others.

Forced to acknowledge that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement it concluded two years ago with the world’s major powers, US President Donald J. Trump appears to be groping for ways to provoke Iran to back out of the deal. If successful, Mr. Trump could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East at a time that a Chinese agreement to build a drone manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia could initiate a similar drone race that threatens to take hostilities in the region to a whole new, more dangerous level.

Mr. Trump’s strategy stems from the realization that the United States would render itself impotent if he were to unilaterally terminate the agreement with Iran. America’s European allies as well as Russia and China would condemn termination, uphold their end of the agreement, and refuse to adhere by punitive measures the United States might adopt. With other words, termination would significantly reduce the United States’ ability to influence Iran.

As a result, Mr. Trump, who has described the nuclear agreement as “one of the worst deals I’ve ever seen” and vowed to “dismantle” it, has since coming to office taken steps to lower incentives for Iran to continue to adhere to the accord. The outcome of May 12 elections in Iran could play into Mr. Trump’s hands if a hardliner rather than incumbent President Hassan Rouhani were to emerge victorious.

At the same time, sticking to his desire to remain unpredictable, Mr. Trump has not ruled out terminating the agreement. Asked point blank by >the Associated Press whether he would stick to the deal, Mr. Trump replied: “It’s possible that we won’t.”

The president, besides charging that Iran has violated the spirit rather than the letter of the agreement and ordering a 90 day review that in the words of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will “evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States,” has also aligned the United States squarely alongside Saudi Arabia, which charges that the Islamic republic is the world’s foremost source of political violence. JCPOA is the acronym for the nuclear agreement or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Re-imposing US sanctions against Iran that were lifted alongside punitive United Nations measures would stop short of a unilateral termination of the agreement, but leave Iran no choice but to respond. It could retaliate with relatively meaningless sanctions of its own, but that would unlikely satisfy hard line critics as well as a sense that the agreement has so far failed to produce economic benefits for the average Iranian. On the plus side, cooler heads would likely counsel that US punitive action would allow Iran to play the international community against the United States.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis, on a visit to Riyadh last week, echoed the kingdom’s view of Iran, saying that “everywhere you look if there is trouble in the region, you find Iran.” Mr. Mattis went on to say that “it is in our interest to see a strong Saudi Arabia.”

Since coming to office, Mr. Trump has stepped up military support for Saudi Arabia’s troubled intervention in Yemen with increased strikes against jihadist targets, a loosening of the US rules of engagement, and a lifting of restrictions on US arms sales to the kingdom because of the high civilian casualty rates in the conflict.

“We will have to overcome Iran’s efforts to destabilise yet another country and create another militia in their image of Lebanese Hezbollah, but the bottom line is we are on the right path for it,” Mr. Mattis told the Saudis. Iran has backed Houthi rebels in Yemen whom Saudi Arabia accuses of being Iranian stooges.

Ironically, the staunchest opponents of the nuclear agreement, Saudi Arabia and Israel, have since its conclusion urged the Trump administration not to scrap the deal. Both countries remain critical of the agreement, but believe that it has bought them a decade of an Islamic republic deprived of a nuclear weapons capability. That approach has been reinforced by the rise of Mr. Trump and his tougher policy towards Iran.

Mr. Trump’s high stakes poker game that will likely embolden Saudia Arabia in what is for the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family an existential battle with Iran coupled with Chinese nuclear energy and military deals with Saud Arabia and Iran nonetheless threatens to spark a regional arms race with potentially dangerous consequences.

With the United States refusing to share its most advanced drone technology, China has agreed to open its first overseas defense production facility in Saudi Arabia. State-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) will manufacture its CH-4 Caihong, or Rainbow drone as well as associated equipment in Saudi Arabia. The CH-4 is comparable to the US armed MQ-9 Reaper drone.

The deal could spark an arms race in the Middle East with Iran and other states seeking to match the kingdom’s newly acquired capability to launch strikes from the comfort of a computerized, Saudi-based command-and-control centre without putting Saudi military personnel at risk.

Similarly, China signed an agreement on nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia during last month’s visit by Saudi King Salman. The agreement is for a feasibility study for the construction of high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) nuclear power plants in the kingdom as well as cooperation in intellectual property and the development of a domestic industrial supply chain for HTGRs built in Saudi Arabia.

The agreement contributes to Saudi Arabia’s effort to develop nuclear energy and potentially a nuclear weapons capability. Saudi officials have repeatedly insisted that the kingdom is developing nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes such as medicine, electricity generation, and desalination of sea water. They said Saudi Arabia is committed to putting its future facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA

A recent report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) concluded however that the nuclear agreement with Iran had “not eliminated the kingdom’s desire for nuclear weapons capabilities and even nuclear weapons… There is little reason to doubt that Saudi Arabia will more actively seek nuclear weapons capabilities, motivated by its concerns about the ending of the JCPOA’s major nuclear limitations starting after year 10 of the deal or sooner if the deal fails,” the report said.

China, unlike the United States, has to balance relations with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, with which it has had a far longer military relationship. To do so, China has moved cautiously to restore nuclear cooperation with Iran in the wake of the lifting of the UN sanctions. Iran’s government-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported this weekend that that China had agreed to
redesign Iran’s Arak nuclear reactor under US supervision.

China and the United States are pursuing different objectives in the Middle East and its dominant Saudi-Iranian dispute. In doing so, the two world powers risk however further destabilizing the region rather than contributing to ending debilitating disputes, reducing volatility, and putting an end to large scale bloodshed. As a result, despite their different goals, both powers’ approaches threaten to reinforce one another in putting the Middle East at greater risk.

International experts and politicians continue to discuss situation around the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), complicated after the US accused Syrian government of using chemical weapons in Idlib and attacked Shayrat air base with cruise missiles on the night of April 7.

This operation became the first attack by the United States against the positions of Bashar Asad and Donald Trump’s most radical military decision since his inauguration as the US president.

The Syrian government strongly denied the accusations of using nerve gas, placing responsibility for the incident with chemical weapons on the militants. At the same time, there is no objective data on the use of banned chemical agents, since the investigation was not conducted.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the American attack illegal and stated that the situation related to US missile strikes on Syrian air base should not be repeated.

“We consider it ultimately important to prevent any risks of any more of such actions in the future,” the minister said at the meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow on April 12.

Analyzing the actions of the United States, Justin Bronk, Research Fellow specializing in combat airpower and technology in the Military Sciences team at RUSI, said that the attack on Shayrat airbase using 59 Tomahawks had little to no military value but was intended as symbolic messaging to both the Assad regime, and also larger players in the world such as Russia and China.

“Donald Trump clearly wants to show that he is decisive and willing to use military force when he thinks it is necessary, without waiting for congress, a coalition or a UN resolution. Whilst on that level, he has probably made his point, the fact that he chose to use the low-risk, low effectiveness option of cruise missile strikes against one target, for limited military effect and with significant follow-on consequences in terms of the fight against Daesh [the Islamic State, ISIS; banned in Russia] shows that Donald Trump has little time for strategic thought,” the expert told PenzaNews.

According to him, the attack on Shayrat will have significant consequences for operations in Syria in future.

“Furthermore, Russia has said that it will now enhance the Syrian air defence network which is currently old, depleted and in poor condition. Therefore, any subsequent action against the Assad regime will be even more difficult and complex a task than it was prior to the cruise missile strikes. The presence of large numbers of Russian military personnel in Syria and in particular those embedded as advisors with Syrian government forces means that any Western attempt to remove Assad by force would require Russian consent or risking killing Russian troops which is politically not feasible,” Justin Bronk explained.

In his opinion, in the nearest future there will be little change on the ground in Syria.

“Even though the West would love to see Assad removed from power, the military options for trying to remove him, and the potential outcome scenarios for a post-Assad Syria remain as unappealing as ever,” the analyst stressed.

Meanwhile, Louis Fisher, former Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers at Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, pointed to the illegality of Donald Trump’s actions in Syria.

“Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its civilians justified a response to deter such actions in the future. However, the use was not directed at the United States, which would have justified military action for defensive purposes,” the expert said.

According to him, the decision to send missiles into Syria was an offensive action, which makes it unconstitutional.

Louis Fisher reminded that taking the country to a state of war is a power that the Constitution reserves to Congress, not to the President.

Moreover, beyond this constitutional question, there remains many important questions about the purpose and likely effect of the missile attack, he said.

“One need only recall the decision of President Obama in 2011 to use military force in Libya to push Qaddafi from power. It led not to a liberated country but one that remains seriously weakened politically, legally, and economically – certainly not a result that Obama expected and wanted. He has admitted that it was a mistake to have a Step One in Libya without having in place a thoughtful, constructive Step Two,” the analyst said and added that Donald Trump’s Step Two is still unknown.

Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project, also stressed that the use of chemical weapons in Syria does not excuse illegality in response.

“In the face of constitutional law barring hostile use of force without congressional authorization, and international law forbidding unilateral use of force except in self-defense, President Trump has unilaterally launched strikes against a country that has not attacked us […] Doing so violates some of the most important legal constraints on the use of force,” the expert said.

According to her, the fundamental principle of separation of powers lies at the core of the Constitution and is the foundation of the US democratic form of government.

“That is why, although the ACLU does not take positions on whether military force should be used, we have been steadfast in insisting, from the Vietnam War through the wars in Iraq and strikes in Libya and Syria by the Obama administration, that the decision to use military force requires Congress’ specific, advance authorization,” Hina Shamsi explained.

In her opinion, Donald Trump’s arguments in favor of strike do not provide justification for the president to do an end run around the Constitution – the basic law of the state, which has the highest legal force.

“As an initial matter, the hypocrisy of this rationale is galling. President Trump is invoking the Syrian government’s killing of helpless men, women, and children — beautiful babies, as he says — when his own Muslim travel ban would exclude those very people from the refuge of the United States,” the analyst added.

In turn, Demetris Papadakis, Member of European Parliament from Cyprus, stressed to the need to conduct an official investigation into the incident with chemical weapons before making any response.

“The US had to wait and see who was behind this criminal attack with chemicals in Syria and then reply with an attack,” the politician said.

In his opinion, the American attack will have a negative influence on the relations between the major actors as this will increase tense and create further problems in the fight against terrorism.

“I cannot make a prediction about the further development of the situation because nowadays we want to believe that we are going to have better relations between the two power countries — US and Russia. Surely I wish that a common language can be found for the good of humanity far away from cold war environments,” Demetris Papadakis said.

“I am sure that the only ones who are celebrating with further tense between the relationships of US and Russia are the terrorists,” MEP stressed.

Meanwhile, Pal Steigan, Norwegian politician, publisher, writer, independent entrepreneur in the field of culture and information technology, said the US strike on Syria was an act of aggression in total breach with the UN charter.

“Even if the Syrian Army had used chemical weapons, for which there is no proof, it would not have been the right of US to launch any attack. The UN charter reserves that right to the Security Council,” the expert said.

Moreover, in his opinion, the US attack in Syria also runs counter to the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal and is a war crime.

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” the expert quoted the text of the verdict.

From his point of view, such actions discredit the authorities of the US, because they contradict the provisions of the president’s election campaign.

“The attack is also a breach with the campaign promises of Donald Trump and even an about-face from the position he held even the week before. This act of aggression is therefore also a demonstration of how unreliable the US government is. The other powers must take that into account, not least Syria and Russia. They have no reason to trust any promise given by this administration,” Pal Steigan explained his view.

According to him, this increases the danger of all-out war even between the two biggest nuclear powers, the US and Russia.

“The further development of the Syria war is hard to predict. Syria is winning against the jihadis. This makes the US alliance desperate and they may act in very irresponsible ways. By the time of writing there are signals that the US may deploy as many as 50,000 troops to Syria, another gross breach of campaign promises and yet another huge war crime,” the Norwegian analyst said.

According to him, the world is balancing on the brink of a new world war and needs mass anti-war campaign.

“More than ever since Second World War we need a global anti-war mass movement. As long as the war mongers don’t meet any popular resistance they will go on escalating. This brinkmanship increases even the danger of world war by accident because all military systems now being on hair trigger alert,” Pal Steigan concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/63886-2017

The growing tension around the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 8 December 1987 continues to complicate the bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington, registering mutual complaints against each other over non-compliance with the document.

In March 2017, the Pentagon accused Russia of violating the “spirit and letter” of the INF Treaty and deploying banned ground-based cruise missiles (GLCM).

“The system itself presents a risk to most of our facilities in Europe and we believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility,” the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Russian leadership has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to the obligations under the INF Treaty.

“There were no violations on our part. The United States claim the opposite, but they do not provide any specific information that could be verified to clarify the situation,” he said to the Media.

Russia’s minister stressed that Moscow has very serious questions to the United States concerning certain ‘liberties’ with the implementation of this treaty by the Americans themselves.

“[This] concerns the program for creating ‘targets’ similar in characteristics to medium-range and shorter-range missiles; using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) falling under the definition of ground-launched cruise missiles with intermediate range, and launchers as part of ground-based anti-missile systems which can be used for firing cruise missiles,” Russian Foreign Minister explained.

Commenting on the difficult situation, Goetz Neuneck, deputy director and head of Interdisciplinary Research Group on Disarmament, Arms Control and Risk Technologies of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg, said that today the future of the INF Treaty is put into question.

“Since 2014 the US State Department claims that the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF treaty. Now it says that Russia has deployed two battalions of new SSC-X-8 GLCM, […] but details are not yet published. Russia has made counteraccusations: it claims that the US deployment of Mk 41 launcher tubes for the Aegis BMD interceptors are not INF-compliant because the launchers have been used for testing the Tomahawk GLCMs and could be used for the deployment of offensive GLCMs,” he told PenzaNews.

In his opinion, significant violation of the INF treaty by one of the state parties would make the other side withdraw from this historic treaty.

“This would mean an expensive and dangerous new arms race between the West and Russia which includes the deployment of new long-range INF systems of high accuracy and conventional payloads. The chance of the military use for a decapitation strike would increase drastically in Europe and in Asia. Additionally, the US and Europe would be pressed to develop BMD systems also against Russia,” Goetz Neuneck explained.

According to him, President Putin and President Trump should sit together to find ways out of this stalemate.

“If the political will is there, they could solve the problems in a very short time. Preserving the INF treaty is in the interest of both sides as well as in the European and Asian interest. Under the historic INF treaty the destruction of 2.692 Russian US INF nuclear tipped delivery systems were organized diminishing the nuclear threat significantly in Europe, Russia and Asia. By starting a serious dialogue, both government can solve these problems by a set of confidence building measures: for example, publishing data about the deployments, their military role or there deployment location and organizing visits of suspected objects,” the German analyst said.

This includes the controversial BMD sites in Romania and Poland, he said.

“The US claims that they are only directed against Iran. Now, with the Iran deal, there is no nuclear threat from Iran and the Poland site makes no sense at all and should be stopped,” he explained.

In his opinion, an additional protocol can be included in the INF Treaty document to prohibit the use of Unmanned Armed Vehicles of INF range.

“Autonomous drones are a future threat, because a machine, but not a human operator decides about life and death. Ethical rules, military engagement regulations and robot arms control can help to constrain such destabilizing developments. Today the armed drones which the US is using in the Middle East or in Asia are guided by an operator. There use is mostly justified by the war against terror. There are much doubts that the excessive use is not lawful. The psychological and civilian damage of these weapons is higher than we think,” Goetz Neuneck said.

Greg Thielmann, former top official at the US State Department specializing in political-military and intelligence issues, Senior Research Fellow at the Arms Control Association, also expressed the idea of the additional protocol to the INF treaty.

“Armed drones are perceived by US political and military leaders to be more discriminate in avoiding civilian casualties and more militarily effective in many scenarios because of their longer duration over their targets than manned aircraft. Armed drones are also obviously less risky for US military personnel than manned aircraft. […] Given some similarities with the GLCMs banned by the INF Treaty and air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) which are factored into strategic force balances, it would be helpful to agree on a differentiation of GLCMs and armed drones in the SVC process, perhaps as a protocol to the INF Treaty,” the expert said.

According to him, both Russia and the United States should immediately reconvene the Special Consultative Commission (SVC) to resolve compliance concerns.

“After a 13-year interval, a 2-day SVC session was held in November 2016 to exchange grievances, but no date was set for a follow-on session. The governments in Moscow and Washington should urgently prepare for another SVC session, directing their delegations, which include technical experts from the military services to develop plans for addressing the concerns of the other side,” Greg Thielmann said.

From his point of view, the most significant step could be the decision to conduct site inspections.

“This would include an invitation for the Russians to visit the Aegis missile defense facility in Romania, and receive an on-site explanation of why the Mark 41 launchers are incapable of launching GLCMs and how that incapacity can be verified by Russia in the future. It would also include an invitation for the Americans to visit the testing facility and the deployment facilities of the Russian GLCMs that the United States considers prohibited under the treaty,” Senior Research Fellow at the Arms Control Association said.

He also reminded that in implementing the INF treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union – later, Russia Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan – eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons and created important precedents in establishing verification measures, which were later used in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) process.

“If these compliance concerns are not resolved, or at least satisfactorily managed, the INF treaty is likely to be abandoned. It is not yet clear what the response of the Trump administration will be to what it considers and ongoing violation by Russia. Even if it does not lead to reciprocal deployments of banned GLCMs, it will lead to US military measures Russia would consider provocative and threatening. Moreover, it is clear that this perceived violation of the INF treaty will solidify opposition in Washington by both political parties to any extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” the analyst suggested.

In turn Lukasz Kulesa, Research Director and Head of the Warsaw Office of European Leadership Network, Former Deputy Director of the Strategic Analyses Department at the National Security Bureau, stressed that the future of not only INF, but also the whole US-Russia nuclear arms control system is at stake.

“The US has made very serious accusations of INF non-compliance towards Russia: that Russia has not only tested treaty-prohibited cruise missile system, but is deploying it with missile brigades. If confirmed, this would not only ‘kill’ the INF treaty, but also affect other arms control treaties like START, and make it difficult to agree new ones,” the expert said.

At the same time, according to him, one of Russia’s three counter-accusation towards the US, concerning launchers on Missile Defence system, also deserves close attention.

“There is a mechanism in the treaty to resolve compliance issues, including meetings of the Special Verification Commission. More meetings between experts will be necessary. On the issue of US accusations towards Russia, I think the two sides will need to go agree a special solution, including on-site inspections in Russia,” the analyst said.

He also stressed that there are already negative consequences of the INF crisis: it makes less likely that US and Russia would cooperate on other arms control issues.

“There are opinions – in Russia and in the US – that it is best to abandon the treaty, which can be legally done. However, this would only lead to worsening of the security situation. In Western Europe, a lot of countries would feel directly threatened by Russian missiles, and there would be a strong pressure on US and NATO to respond with deployment of similar systems. China would also most likely feel threatened by new class of Russian missiles,” Lukasz Kulesa suggested.

Meanwhile, the use of human-controlled combat drones and other similar systems is inevitable as part of the progress of military technology, he said.

“Trying to stop them would be like trying to stop introduction of combat aircraft 100 years ago. But there’s a problem with any future systems which may designed to act independently and not be controlled by human operator: here I fully support legal efforts to control and limit autonomous systems,” Research Director of European Leadership Network added.

In turn, Ilgar Velizade, Head of the Baku-based South Caucasus Club of Political Scientists, pointed to the special importance of the INF treaty.

“Despite the fact that the INF treaty was signed in 1987 and was in line with the policy of the Soviet Union and the United States to forge global political dialogue that put an end to the cold war, it has not lost its significance today. This treaty fulfills the role of an important tool restraining the arms race and is one of the basic elements of the modern security architecture in the northern hemisphere of the world,” the expert said.

He also added that according to the official information the terms of the agreement were fully implemented by June 1991.

“However, a new round of tension in relations between the US and Russia raised this issue and led to the suggestions of non-compliance to the treaty, in particular, of Russia. As I see it, this is about Moscow’s deployment of a new anti-missile defense system in the north-west of the country, in the Kaliningrad region. However, there was no substantive evidence of Russia resuming the production and deployment of small and medium-range missiles,” Head of South Caucasus Club of Political Scientists said.

In his opinion, it is difficult to talk about the creation of a monitoring group on this issue because of the actual freezing of the political dialogue between Washington and Moscow

“Meanwhile, in February this year, US senators and congressmen proposed the adoption of a law permitting the delivery of medium- and short-range missiles to Europe and other Washington allies. Undoubtedly, the denunciation of the treaty under the current conditions can be an irresponsible step that creates conditions for the ‘erosion’ of the modern pan-European security system and opens the way for a new round of the arms race that will lead to the intensification of existing hotbeds of tension not only in Europe but also in Asia,” Ilgar Velizade said.

“Washington’s accusations are politically motivated, but evidence and factology require objective analysis, supported by convincing confirmation in the form of photo and video documents, details, statements by political and military officials that somehow confirm the nature of military preparations. By now such evidence is unknown,” the analyst said.

In his opinion, the problem around drones is also quite serious in the absence of a legislative framework regulating the standards of their use.

“Unlike short- and medium-range missiles which have legal specifics, there are many controversial points regarding drones in international law that allow countries to circumvent the existing restrictions on the use of these UAVs. In addition, a sufficient number of countries have the technology for the production and use of drones, an even greater number of countries are actively purchasing them, and it is difficult to determine with any certainty which country they belong to. This makes it possible to avoid responsibility in case of violation of humanitarian norms, using this type of UAV,” Ilgar Velizade explained.

In order to ensure compliance with the basic requirements of the INF treaty it is necessary to conduct a thorough monitoring of the situation, he said.

“The work should be conducted with the participation of unbiased parties, possibly within the framework of the special OSCE mission, with the mutual consent of Moscow and Washington. To do this, it is enough to recall how the mission of inspectors worked while destroying small and medium-range missiles in the late 80s – early 90s of the last century. This is an integrated political solution based on a comprehensive agreement between Russia and the United States, which provides for the inspection of both Russian and American military installations. This in turn is possible only under the condition of a large-scale US-Russia dialogue, which is so far hoped to occur,” the expert concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/63846-2017

Tamil Nadu farmers on Sunday April 23 called off their Delhi strike after chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami promised to meet their demands of drought relief and farm loan waivers. Palaniswami, who arrived in the national capital yesterday, attended the NITI Aayog meeting along with chief ministers of other states.

More than 100 farmers from southern Tamil Nadu state had mounted an eye-catching protest in the capital, Delhi, more than a month ago. They brandished human skulls, held live mice in their mouths, shaved their heads, and slashed their hands.

CM Palaniswami had met the farmers who have been protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for justice. The chief minister assured the farmers that their demands will be met and urged them to call off their protest. The move came after Palaniswami met Prime Minister Narendra Modi today and highlighted the farmers’ issue. He had also discussed the issue with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The farmers’ union said if their demands are not met by May 25, they will resume their strike.

The Tamil Nadu farmers had been protesting at Jantar Mantar for the last 40 days. The farmers, who had staging a protest for more than a month demanding a Rs40,000 crore drought relief package, farm loan waiver and setting up of the Cauvery Management Board by the Centre, had earlier refused to end their agitation despite requests by several Union and state ministers. “We will be leaving for home today or tomorrow and we will be taking part in a state-wide bandh on 25 April in Tamil Nadu,” said Ayyakannu.

With 60 per cent deficit in rainfall, Tamil Nadu witnessed its worst drought in 140 year. The protesting farmers have been demanding a Rs. 40,000-crore drought relief package, farm loan waiver and setting up of the Cauvery Management Board by the centre. Over the last 39 days, they have shaved their heads, halved their moustaches, held mice and snakes in their mouths, conducted mock funerals, flogged themselves and even carried skulls of other farmers who had committed suicide due to debt pressure.

Calling the agitation a “success”, Ayyakkannu said the Centre had “undermined us and meted out step-motherly treatment”. “However, the agitation has become a success and has caught the attention of people across the world. We received support from youths and farmers across the country,” he said. “The chief minister and the union finance minister have the power to take a call on our demands. We have decided to call off the agitation for a period of one month based on the assurances given by our chief minister,” farmers’ leader P. Ayyakannu told reporters. “If the promises are not met, we would resume the protest in the national capital in a bigger way on 25 May.”

Ayyakkannu said the decision was taken also based on the assurances given by Leader of Opposition in the Tamil Nadu assembly M.K. Stalin, MDMK’s Premalatha Vijayakanth, Tamil Manila Congress chief G.K. Vasan and the BJP’s Pon Radhakrishnan.

Palaniswami, who took part in a Niti Aayog meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, said he had submitted a memorandum containing demands of the farmers to the prime minister. “Among other issues, we also raised the farmers’ issue in the meeting with the PM,” Palaniswami told reporters.

Earlier this month, dozens of protesters blocked all six lanes of Chennai’s arterial Kathipaara flyover by tying an iron chain to the poles on either side to express solidarity with the farmers protesting in Delhi. They were demanding waivers on farm loan repayments and relief funds, among other things. The Madras High Court, too, had directed state government to expand its farm loan waiver scheme to include farmers who own land over five acres. However, there is no relief for those who have borrowed from nationalized banks. The state had sought Rs. 40,000 crore from the centre, which sanctioned only Rs. 4,000 crore.

During the course of the protest, the farmers have turned to increasingly desperate measures to direct attention to their issues. They have shaved their heads and half their moustaches and kept mice and snakes in their mouths, conducted mock funerals, flogged themselves and even carried skulls which they claimed were of farmers who had committed suicide due to debt pressure.
Tamil Nadu is facing its worst farming crisis in decades because of lack of water due to poor rainfall, low crop prices, and dwindling access to formal credit.

More than 50 debt-stricken farmers have taken their lives in drought-affected districts since October, according to officials. A local farmers association insists the number of farm-related suicides and death of farmers is more than 250. The farmers are demanding ample drought relief funds, pensions for elderly farmers, a waiver on repayments of loans, better prices for their crops and the interlinking of rivers to irrigate their lands.

It appears to be a drought that India forgot, so Palanisamy and his spirited co-protesters mounted a unique, eye-catching protest to put pressure on the government to act.

They are demanding ample drought relief funds, pensions for elderly farmers, a waiver on the repayment of crop and farm loans, better prices for their crops and the interlinking of rivers to irrigate their lands. Wearing traditional sarong-like garments and turbans, these farmers have brandished human skulls that they claim belong to dead farmers.

Last week, a farmer Chinnagodangy Palanisamy, 65, held a live mouse between his teeth to draw the government’s attention to the plight of farmers in his native state of Tamil Nadu. “I and my fellow farmers were trying to convey the message that we will be forced to eat mice if things don’t improve,” he told me, sitting in a makeshift tent near Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory, one of the areas of the Indian capital where protests are permitted. The tatty tent and the street outside have been home to Palanisamy and his 100-odd fellow farmers for some 40 days now. They hail from drought-affected districts of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, one of India’s most developed states.

Fire-fighters rescued a protestor who tied a noose around his neck and tried to hang himself from a tree at the venue. Many of them have been taken to the hospital and treated for acute dehydration. The protesters have also eaten food off the road, and stripped near the prime minister’s office in the heart of the city after they were reportedly refused a meeting.

Some complain that the famously inward-looking Delhi media have painted their protest as an exotic freak show, often missing the pain and desperation driving it.
India is heavily dependent on monsoon rains, which have been poor for two years in a row. Draught is common issue for entire India. At least 330 million people are affected by drought in India, the government has told the Supreme Court. The government said that nearly 256 districts across India, home to nearly a quarter of the population were impacted by the drought. The drought is taking place as a heat wave extends across much of India with temperatures crossing 40C for days now. Authorities say this number is likely to rise further given that some states with water shortages have not yet submitted status reports.

Schools have been shut in the eastern state of Orissa and more than 100 deaths due to heatstroke have been reported from across the country, including from the southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh which saw more than 2,000 deaths last summer. The western state of Maharashtra, one of the worst affected by the drought, shifted out 13 Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches due to be played in the state next month because of the amount of water needed to prepare pitches. IPL is the worst form of cricket – the false entertainment being pampered as a profitable business by ht parliament and state assemblies infested with cricket mafia members. The government has asked local municipalities to stop supplying water to swimming pools and, in an unprecedented move, a train carrying half a million litres of drinking water was sent to the area of Latur.

There is growing public concern over the lack of water in many parts of the state following two successive years of drought and crop failures.

Drought-hit farmers in India have suspended a protest, after an assurance that their demands would be met. The farmers union said they would resume their protest if their demands were not met by 25 May.

Most villagers suffer from non-availability of drinking water. Safe drinking water has been a very serious problem Indians face.

Heath Mello has divided the Democratic Party. This is unusual given his low profile: he is running for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. What makes him controversial among Democrats are his pro-life convictions.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent, has taken the high road, prudently saying that although he favors abortion rights, there should be room for Mello in the Democratic Party. Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, disagrees—there is no room for people like him.

Perez speaks for the base of the Party. The Daily Kos initially endorsed Mello, but pulled its support once it learned that his idea of human rights begins when humans are conceived. NARAL Pro-Choice America, the extreme pro-abortion organization, sided with Perez, calling Sanders’ support for Mello “politically stupid.”

Is it okay to hold “personal beliefs” against abortion and be a Democrat? Perez says it is, just so long as those beliefs are not voiced. “If they try to legislate or govern that way,” he declared, “we will take them on.” In other words, keep your pro-life ideas to yourself or else.

So whatever happened to those grand ideas about diversity and inclusion? Perez just blew them up. Where does this leave Catholics?

Mello is described by the New York Times as a “practicing Catholic,” and  Perez is simply identified by the media as a Catholic; his practicing status is unknown. What is not in doubt is his complete rejection of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion. That teaching is not analogous to the Church’s endorsement of immigration rights: the Church labels abortion “intrinsically evil.”

It’s been a long time since Catholics have been welcomed in the Democratic Party. Geoffrey Layman of Columbia University cites 1972 as the pivotal year when secularists took command. So do Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio of Baruch College. That was the year Catholics were effectively driven out of command positions in the Party.

After Senator Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon in 1968, the McGovern Commission was established to reform the way presidential candidates were chosen. “Catholics had made up about one in four Humphrey votes in 1968,” observes author Mark Stricherz, “yet they received only one in fourteen slots on the commission in 1969.” When the voters went to the polls in 1972, secular Americans chose the Democrats by a margin of 3-1.

Fast forward two decades to 1992. According to Layman, “The Democratic Party now appears to be a party whose core of support comes from secularists, Jews, and the less committed members of the major religious traditions.” Similarly, Bolce and De Maio said, “60 percent of first-time white delegates at the [1992] Democratic convention in New York City either claimed no attachment to religion or displayed the minimal attachment by attending worship services ‘a few times a year’ or less.”

Why did this happen? Mike McCurry, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, explained it this way: “Because we want to be politically correct, in particular being sensitive to Jews, that’s taken the party to a direction where faith language is soft and opaque.”

Now the “faith language” is just about gone. In the 2016 Democratic Party Platform, there are 14 sentences on specific rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, and two vague sentences on “respecting faith” at home. Though LGBT rights are nowhere mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment protects religious liberty, the Platform warns against “the misuse of religion to discriminate” against LGBT persons. Religious rights are not mentioned at all, save for a line condemning ISIS.

Mello and Perez are equally Catholic, though not all Catholics are equal. The Democrats need to decide if there is room in their increasingly shrinking tent to house practicing Catholics, the ones most likely to see abortion as “intrinsically evil.”