When a group of researchers in the Undiagnosed Disease Network at Baylor College of Medicine realized they were spending days combing through databases searching for information regarding gene variants, they decided to do something about it. By creating MARRVEL (Model organism Aggregated Resources for Rare Variant ExpLoration) they are now able to help not only their own lab but also researchers everywhere search databases all at once and in a matter of minutes.

This collaborative effort among Baylor, the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School is described in the latest online edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Big data search engine

“One big problem we have is that tens of thousands of human genome variants and phenotypes are spread throughout a number of databases, each one with their own organization and nomenclature that aren’t easily accessible,” said Julia Wang, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Baylor and a McNair Student Scholar in the Bellen lab, as well as first author on the publication. “MARRVEL is a way to assess the large volume of data, providing a concise summary of the most relevant information in a rapid user-friendly format.”

MARRVEL displays information from OMIM, ExAC, ClinVar, Geno2MP, DGV, and DECIPHER, all separate databases to which researchers across the globe have contributed, sharing tens of thousands of human genome variants and phenotypes. Since there is not a set standard for recording this type of information, each one has a different approach and searching each database can yield results organized in different ways. Similarly, decades of research in various model organisms, from mouse to yeast, are also stored in their own individual databases with different sets of standards.

Dr. Zhandong Liu, assistant professor in pediatrics – neurology at Baylor, a member of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s and co-corresponding author on the publication, explains that MARRVEL acts similar to an internet search engine.

“This program helps to collate the information in a common language, drawing parallels and putting it together on one single page. Our program curates model organism specific databases to concurrently display a concise summary of the data,” Liu said.

Supporting researchers

A user can first search for a gene or variant, Wang explains. Results may include what is known about this gene overall, whether or not that gene is associated with a disease, whether it is highly occurring in the general population and how it is affected by certain mutations.

“MARRVEL helps to facilitate analysis of human genes and variants by cross-disciplinary integration of 18 million records so we can speed up the discovery process through computation,” Liu said. “All this information is basically inaccessible unless researchers can access it efficiently and apply it to their own work to find causes, treatments and hopefully identify new diseases.”

Collaboration

This project started as a necessity for the Model Organism Screening Center for the Undiagnosed Disease Network at Baylor, but as it grew, the group began reaching out to researchers in different disciplines for feedback on how MARRVEL might benefit them.

“This program is just the start. I think our tool is going to be a model for us to help clinicians and basic scientists more efficiently use the information already publicly available,” Wang said. “It will help us understand and process all of the different mutations that researchers are discovering.”

“The most exciting part is how this project is bringing so many different researchers together,” Liu said. “We are working with labs we might not have normally collaborated with, trying to put together a puzzle of all this data.”

By Siraj Wahab

A notorious sectarian leader in Iraq has claimed that the Shiite project of encircling and dominating the Middle Eastern states is on track.

Delivering a speech in Arabic, at a graduation ceremony of Shiite clerics in Iraq on Thursday, Asaib Ahl Al-Haq militia commander Qais Al-Khazali said: “The reappearance of Imam Mahdi will mark the completion of the Shiite project. Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Asaib Ahl Al-Haq and the Houthis are working hard to make the ground fertile for Imam Mahdi.”

Al-Khazali was referring to the Shiite belief that Imam Mahdi — the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century — will one day appear in order to bring justice to earth.

Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, which Al-Khazali leads, is one of the most violent Shiite militias in Iraq. It is aided and abetted by Iran. Al-Khazali reportedly said: “We’ll continue to work toward our project of a Shiite full moon, not a Shiite crescent as our enemies say.”

The phrase “Shiite crescent” was first coined by King Abdallah of Jordan 10 years ago. At that time, he meant Iranian control over Lebanon via Hezbollah, Syria via the Bashar Assad regime, and Iraq through the new Iran-allied government in Baghdad. Al-Khazali is now talking of a “Shiite full moon.”

“They (Iran and its allied militias) are looking for complete regional dominance,” said political analyst and former US diplomat Ali Khedery.

Talking to Arab News on Thursday, Khedery explained the background of Al-Khazali and the implications of his statement.

“Al-Khazali is the commander of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq. It used to be part of Muqtada Al-Sadr’s Jaish Al-Mahdi but then splintered off. It was specially cultivated by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ special forces unit, the Al-Quds Force.

“Asaib Ahl Al-Haq is one of the most violent Shiite militias that has operated in Iraq alongside, for example, Kata’ib Hezbollah and the Badr Corps, and they report directly to Al-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani,” said Khedery.

According to Khedery, Al-Khazali was responsible for the kidnapping and then the killing of five American soldiers from a joint Iraqi-American Operations Center in 2007 in Karbala.

“As a result of that kidnapping and murder operation, US forces arrested him and held him for several years in a facility called Camp Cropper — the same high-value detainee facility where the Americans held Saddam Hussein. Al-Khazali was later released at Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s personal request,” Khedery told Arab News.

He said during the Iraq war, the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq militia was responsible for killing and wounding hundreds, if not thousands, of US soldiers and then also kidnapping or killing probably thousands of Iraqis.

“After the rise of Daesh, it became very active again and is now part of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) to which the Iraqi government pays billions of dollars annually. It is now a virtual extension of the Iraqi Army,” he said.

Khedery said he would advise the international community against doubting the words and statements of these militia leaders.

“I take Iranian generals or the supreme leader or the militia commanders at their word because they have always — almost always — followed through on their threats. So, for example, when the Iranian supreme leader promises to wipe out Israel or when the Iranian defense minister threatens Saudi Arabia, or when Qassem Soleimani promises to change the regime in Bahrain or when Al-Khazali, in this case, promises to complete the Shiite crescent and make it a moon, I take them at their word,” said Khedery. “They are intent on exporting (former Iranian leader Ruhollah) Khomeini’s revolution across the Middle East.”

Since King Abdallah’s coinage of the phrase “Shiite crescent” 10 years ago, “the Iranians have unfortunately consolidated their grip over Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Iranian forces (have) further expanded into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now they take Pakistani and Afghan recruits and send them to wage Khomeinist jihad in places like Iraq and Syria,” said Khedery. “They want to keep going with the export of the Khomeinist revolution. So their next targets are Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and then probably eventually Qatar and the UAE. And obviously, the Iranian-allied Houthis have taken control of Sanaa.”

Harvard scholar and Iranian affairs expert Majid Rafizadeh echoed Khedery’s words and said Asaib Ahl Al-Haq was an Iranian-backed Shiite militia, which has reportedly received significant financial, military and political support from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Al-Khazali’s statement highlights three critical issues,” Rafizadeh told Arab News. “First of all, Iran and its proxies’ political agenda is anchored in sectarianism: Shiite versus Sunni. Second, although Iran views itself as leader of all Muslims, Tehran has been working effortlessly to export its particular version of Shiite ideology and revolutionary ideals. Third, Iran is determined to export its Shiite ideology through any possible means, including supporting many militias and designated terrorist groups.”

In Rafizadeh’s view, Iran’s Shiite proxies are determined and insistent on expanding Tehran’s political Shiite influence throughout the Muslim world as a means of dominating and controlling other populations.

Alice Cooper has announced his first new album in six years, Gigwise reveals.

The shock-horror rock star, who’s been known to spray blood on his audiences, will release a 12-track album of new material.

The album, which will be called Paranormal, will be released in July, and will be followed by an extensive world tour. It is the first record since Cooper signed with the record label, earMusic.

Recorded in Nashville, the album will be a follow up to ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ which saw Cooper tour with a special Halloween show. The follow up has long been predicted, with fans speculating about Cooper’s plans for a stage show to alongside the record.

Alice Cooper’s shows are famous for their theatrical elements, and in the past have included everything from guillotines, to electric chairs, snakes, and duelling swords.

The album was compiled with Cooper’s long-time collaborator, Bob Ezrin, who has also worked with the likes of Lou Reed, Kiss, and Pink Floyd.

Collaborators on the album include special guest appearances from U2’s Larry Mullen Jr., ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and Deep Purple’s Roger Glover.

For almost 50 years, the US economy and society has taken a great leap backward – accelerating during the past three Presidencies. Not only have we experienced the reversal of past socio-economic legislation, but also our presidents and Congress have dragged us into multiple aggressive wars. Now, the threat of a nuclear attack against our ‘declared enemies’ is ‘on the table’.

Since the end of the Viet Nam war, US military ‘interventions’ have become wars of long duration. These have cost millions of lives overseas, tens of millions of refugees and scores of thousands of American soldier deaths, permanent injury and serious mental and neuropsychiatric damage. There is no ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, to quote the US General William Westmoreland.

In retrospect, and after 50 years of decline, the much-maligned Presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon now stands out as a golden age of social, environmental and inter-racial advances, as well as an era of successful peace negotiations and diplomacy. President Nixon, never an ideologue, accepted the reality of a multi-polar world.

Of course, the Nixon Presidency was characterized by serious crimes against humanity, such as the CIA-sponsored coup d’état against the democratically elected Chilean President Allende, the bombing of Cambodia and the genocidal invasion of the newly independent country of East Timor.

Today, he is best known for the far-less consequential events around the ‘Watergate’ scandal and related domestic civil rights abuses and corruption. It was the mass media and Democratic Party politicos who have grossly inflated the election campaign chicanery, leading up to the bungled break-in of the Watergate Hotel headquarters of the Democratic Party, which led to Nixon’s impeachment and resignation. To today’s media spin-masters, ‘Watergate’ was the defining event of President Nixon’s Presidency.

Ironically, after Nixon resigned from office even greater disasters occurred. This paper will enumerate these and compare them with the Nixon presidency.

Far from pursuing diplomacy and peace, subsequent presidents, both ‘liberal’ Democrats and ‘conservative’ Republicans, invaded Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, and Angola and initiated a dozen other highly destructive and economically devastating wars. The two oligarchic parties took turns in shredding Nixon’s comparatively peaceful legacy.

President Nixon, under the advice of National Security adviser, Henry Kissinger, supported Israel’s invasion of the Arab countries in 1973 as well as the bloody Chilean military coup in 1973.

President Nixon cynically designed the ‘Southern Strategy’, which transformed the Democratic Party-controlled racist fiefdoms of the US South into racist Republican-controlled states.

Progressives, liberals and self-styled democratic-socialists have played a leading role in ignoring Nixon’s ‘golden years’ in terms of domestic and international policy achievements. Instead they focused on inane and infantile name-calling, like “Tricky Dick”, to describe the man. By doing so, they have failed miserably to discuss national and international issues of historic importance. They have deliberately fabricated a distorted picture of the Nixon era to cover-up for the gross failures of subsequent Democratic Party controlled Congresses and Democratic Presidents.

In this essay, we will briefly outline Richard Nixon’s policies and executive initiatives, which justify our designation of the Nixon’s ‘golden years’, especially in comparison to what has followed his era.

President Nixon: The Great Leap Forward

In the sphere of political, economic and social life, President Nixon pursued policies, which ultimately advanced peace in the world and social welfare in the United States.

In foreign policy and diplomacy, Richard Nixon ended both the draft of young Americans into the armed forces, as well as the decade-long US military occupation of Indo-China, effectively ending the war – and acknowledging the hard victory of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. The war had cost millions of Southeast Asian lives.

Nixon visited Beijing and recognized the ‘existence’ of the People’s Republic of China, effectively ending a quarter century of economic blockades and military threats against the billion-plus population of the PRC under three Democratic (Truman, Kennedy and Johnson) and one Republican (Eisenhower) Presidential Administrations. He established full diplomatic relations with China.

Nixon initiated the Security Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements with the USSR and developed diplomatic policies, which recognized the possibility and necessity of peaceful co-existence between different social systems.

On the domestic front, President Nixon established the Clean Water Act and established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with a Federal Government mandate to fight polluters and hold them accountable for the ‘cleanup’ of the environment.

Nixon proposed a National Health Insurance Program – an expansion of Medicare to cover the health needs of all Americans. This radical proposal (a version of ’single payer’) was attacked and defeated by the Democratic Party, led by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy who was backed by ‘Big Pharma’, the AMA and the growing corporate ‘health’ industry.

Nixon imposed price and wage controls that constrained inflation and price gouging and actively punished commodity ‘hoarding’. This was a time of rapid inflation and shortages due to the ‘Oil Embargo’. With these measures, he incurred the wrath of Wall Street, big business and the financial press.

Nixon promoted consumer rights, supplemental legislation to expand Social Security, especially for the handicapped, while defending the retirement age for pension eligibility.

Under Nixon, union membership rose to 30% of the workforce – its high point before its precipitous decline to 12% under subsequent US Presidents.

Nixon increased salaries of federal employees and real wages rose. In the following half-century real wages have declined to only 10% of their Nixon era value!

Nixon indexed Social Security to the real rate of inflation.

The Nixon Presidency initiated the Affirmative Action program and used the Federal Government to push for the desegregation of schools, leading to the first large-scale integration of public education in the South. President Nixon created the Office of Minority Business Enterprises (OMBE); the Occupation Safety and Health Agency (OSHA); and the Legacy of Parks Programs.

Nixon proposed a guaranteed annual wage for American workers, which both Democrats and Republicans rejected and defeated! He promoted Keynesian industrial policies against the financial elites with their mania for speculation.

President Nixon appointed four Supreme Court Justices during his term. Three of his appointees supported the groundbreaking ‘Roe versus Wade’ decision protecting women’s reproductive rights.

Under Nixon the voting age was reduced from twenty-one to eighteen years – giving millions of young Americans a greater political voice.

When Nixon spoke in favor of gun control, both the Republican and Democratic Parties opposed his proposals.

President Nixon supported the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the Endangered Species Act, which have remained critical to social and environmental justice.

Richard Nixon was not a ’single issue’ President. The span and depth of his progressive agenda, included fundamental changes in favor of environmental and racial justice, working class economic security and broad-ranging health issues, peace and co-operation with China and the USSR, women’s rights through Supreme Court decisions; pensioners’ rights, and animal rights advocacy. He reduced economic inequalities between the richest 1% of capitalists and the working class. Under President Nixon inequality and the concentration of wealth in the US were far less than they became with subsequent US Presidents and especially during the Obama Administration.

No President, with the possible exception of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Great Depression Era legislation, even remotely achieved Nixon’s domestic socio-economic successes. President Roosevelt, one must not forget, operated under the immense pressure of massive working class strikes and in preparation for World War II, while President Nixon achieved his policy advances during a time of relative ‘peace’.

The Post-Nixon Bi-Partisan Regression

In the 41 years since Nixon’s resignation (1976-2017) there has been a systematic rollback of virtually all of the Nixon agenda. Congress, the liberals, the mass media and Wall Street immediately switched from denigrating Nixon, to praising Democratic President ‘Jimmy’ Carter’s reversal of Nixon’s foreign policy achievements.

Contrary to his media-polished image as a ‘Bible-thumping champion of human rights’, President Carter dismantled Nixon’s policies promoting peace with the USSR and China, especially when he appointed the rabidly anti-Russian, anti-communist Zbigniew Brzezinski for National Security Adviser. The duet created the public image of Carter mouthing human rights rhetoric while Brzezinski formulated a policy of backing dictators and funding Islamist (jihadi) terrorists to undermine Soviet allies. The two-faced ‘Evangelical Christian’ Carter sent confidential letters of US support for the brutal dictator Somoza to prevent the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua, while issuing platitudes about peace in Central America.

Carter worked closely with the military dictatorship in Pakistan and the ‘head chopping’ monarchs in Saudi Arabia to launch the bloody forty-year war in Afghanistan, a Soviet Ally. The Carter-Brzezinski-promoted mujahidin war against secularism in Afghanistan led directly to the rise of Islamist terrorism, the Taliban and al Qaeda. Carter’s ‘freedom fighters’ systematically massacred secular schoolteachers for ‘the crime’ of educating Afghan girls in the countryside.

In order to undermine the USSR and other socialist or independent secular countries with Muslim populations, the Carter-Brzezinski duet financed and trained the Saudi-indoctrinated Al-Qaeda terrorists. They were delighted when it spread its poison across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Balkans and the Soviet Union promoting separatism and ethnic cleansing. Their cheers ceased somewhat on 9/11/2001.

Domestically, Carter’s deregulation of price controls led to double-digit inflation and set in motion the long-term decline in wages and salaries, which still plagues the American lower middle and working classes.

Carter appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, who implemented draconian anti-inflationary ‘austerity’ policies reducing domestic consumption and opening the way for the de-industrialization of the economy.

The seismic change in the US, the ‘financialization’ of the domestic economy started under Jimmy Carter and was deepened and expanded under the subsequent Presidents Ronald Regan, George H W Bush, Sr., ‘Bill’ Clinton, George W. Bush (Jr) and Barack Obama. Poverty and permanent unemployment followed.

With deindustrialization, labor union membership declined from 30% of the private labor force under Nixon to less than 7% today. Organizing workers was no longer a priority: The AFL-CIO leaders were too busy chasing after the Democrats for handouts (and get-out-of jail passes).

After Carter, the Republican President Ronald Reagan doubled military spending, brutally broke the strike of the Air Controller’s union by jailing its leaders, whipped up the revival of US interventionism by invading Grenada and sending Special Forces to join the death squads murdering tens of thousands of peasant activists in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

President Reagan’s ‘free market’ polices encouraged US multinational corporations to relocate their factories overseas to Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia, costing millions of US workers well-paying jobs and reducing the number of unionized jobs. The stock markets and profits rose while the ‘American Dream’ of lifetime stable employment in industry began to fade.

Reagan’s threats and his huge military build-up forced the USSR to overspend in arms and strangle its growing domestic consumer economy.

The Reagan-Thatcher (British PM) era marked the demise of social welfare. They imposed the doctrine of ‘globalization’ – in essence, the bellicose revival of Anglo-American imperialism and the end of domestic industrial prosperity.

George HW Bush ‘negotiated’ with Russian President Gorbachev the break-up of the USSR. Despite Bush’s promises not to place US-NATO forces in former Soviet-allied countries, the following period saw the huge US-NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Baltic states. President Bush (Sr.) invaded and savaged both Panama and Iraq, restarting the epoch of permanent US wars.

President George HW Bush promulgated the unipolar doctrine of US world domination, known as the ‘Bush Doctrine’.

The Reagan-Bush regimes emptied the content of the Nixon-era progressive agencies in terms of civil rights, consumer and environmental protection, and wage protection. Unionization declined by over a third.

After ‘war-monger’ President ‘Papa’ Bush, the Saxophone-playing President ‘Bill’ Clinton was elected. While crooning the words, ‘I feel your pain’ ,to American workers and racial minorities, Clinton unleashed Wall Street, ending regulation of banks and investment houses. He re-appointed Alan Greenspan to head the Federal Reserve, a proven master of grotesque financial speculation and the godfather of economic crisis (2007-2009).

President Clinton, passions aroused by the animal spirits on Wall Street (and inside his White House office), launched a vicious assault on the social welfare state, and in particular, low-income working families, single parents and African-Americans. Clinton’s promotion of “Workfare” forced single mothers to accept unsustainable minimum wage jobs under the threat of ending any welfare support, while not providing any mechanism for child care! This one policy savaged hundreds of thousands of vulnerable families. Under Clinton, the prison industry exploded as a multi-billion dollar business.

During the 1990’s, Clinton backed the most retrograde pro-business, debt-ridden regimes in Latin America. Hundreds of billions of dollars of Latin American wealth was transferred to the US. Clinton’s ‘Golden Years for Wall Street’ were a decade of infamy for Latin Americans and led directly to major leftist revolts by the end of the Clinton era.

President Clinton deepened and widened the US military drive for domination in Europe and the Middle East. Clinton bombed and invaded Yugoslavia, especially Serbia – destroying large parts of its capital Belgrade. He bombed Iraq on a daily basis and increased the starvation blockade of that nation. He invaded Somalia and backed Israeli land grabbing-settlement expansion in Palestine. He supported the Israeli savaging of Lebanon. He committed treason by submitting to Israeli blackmail over his sex-capers with Monica Lewinsky and trying to release Israeli spy-US Naval analyst Jonathan Pollard. It was only after an open threat of wholesale resignations by the CIA and other security agencies that Clinton withdrew his proposal to free the traitor Pollard.

Finance capital flourished as Clinton repealed the venerable Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 against bank speculation. He promoted the hugely unpopular NAFTA, (North American Free Trade Agreement) leading to the loss of over two million industrial jobs, as US multinationals absconded to Mexico, where wages were less than one-fifth of the US. NAFTA’s savaging of the Mexican agricultural sector and massive bankruptcies of small producers led directly to the flood of desperate Mexican migrants looking for work in the US.

The Georgetown-Harvard-Oxford trained ‘Bill’ Clinton was the grand wizard of talking like a ‘black preacher’ in southern churches while smoothly pursuing the ‘big bucks’ on Wall Street.

After Clinton, regressive policies increased sharply: President George W Bush (Jr), ‘First Black President’ Barack Obama and ‘First Billionaire President’ Donald Trump all supported the most virulent imperial war policies.

The two terms of President George (Jr) Bush (2001 – 2008) saw unending multi-trillion dollar-wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have destabilized two continents. Junior Bush presided over the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. His anti-Muslim ‘global wars on terror (GWOT)’ was launched under the influence of ‘Israel-First’ militarists who had inundated the Defense Department, National Security staff and Middle East policy and advisory staff in the State Department. Meanwhile, GW Bush deepened unemployment and allowed the mortgage foreclosure on millions of homeowners. The domestic economy was in severe crisis.

By the end of the George W. Bush Presidency, reinvigorated anti-war and social justice movements were gaining strength throughout the country. Arriving on the scene of growing social unrest and with perfect timing, the ‘community organizer’ presidential candidate Barack Obama won the presidency by promising a progressive agenda to undermine the mass popular radicalization against Bush’s unpopular wars, growing inequalities, endless bank swindles, foreclosures and blatant racist policies against Afro-Americans and Hispanics.

Once elected, the ‘First Black’ US President Obama immediately increased Bush’s militarism and handed the criminals on Wall Street a record two-trillion-dollar bailout, ripped out of what remained of public social programs. Elected on a pledge to overhaul the ridiculously inefficient, pro-profit, private health care system, Obama gave the electorate a program of greater complexity and rapidly increasing insurance premiums (’Obama Care’ or the ‘Affordable Care Act’), which ended with a negative impact on the nation’s health.

Under Obama, life expectancy, as well as, the income gaps between the rich and the poor grew at an alarming rate. Inequalities increased with a historic shift of national wealth to the top 1%. The class and health apartheid sharpened in the US. The transfer of jobs abroad accelerated. Multinational corporate tax evasion rose by hundreds of billions of dollars. The gap between African-American wages and white workers increased. Obama deported more immigrants, especially workers from Mexico and Central America, than all four previous presidents combined!

Elected on a pledge to ‘bring the troops home’, President Obama broke the record for waging simultaneous wars of all previous presidents! Obama launched or backed US wars and coups (’regime changes’) in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Honduras and Somalia. After receiving the Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize, President Obama provided advanced weapons to Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt. Obama financed and armed tens of thousands of mercenary terrorists who savaged the secular multiethnic Syrian republic. Furthermore, his administration cynically backed the separatist Kurds occupying Northern Iraq.

Hawaii born and bred, Harvard-educated President Obama had mastered the deep-voiced Southern preacher rhetoric to corrupt the leadership of the social justice and anti-war movements. He coopted the leaders of the mass popular movements to their eternal shame and the movements died. Even the short-lived anti-Wall Street ‘Occupy Movement’ received Obama’s expressions of ’sympathy’ as he backed the unleashing of police dogs and tear gas on the activists!

Obama’s reactionary military encirclement of Russia and China influenced the foreign policy views of a majority of US liberals as well as the mass media – turning them into ‘humanitarian interventionists’ and tools for empire.

Ever duplicitous, Obama signed a ‘unilateral nuclear disarmament agreement with Iran’ and then immediately broke the agreement by imposing new sanctions on Tehran’s banking and oil transactions.

There was great media fanfare when Obama re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba. This move facilitated the entry and funding of pro-imperialist NGO’s committed to ‘regime change’ along the same line as other ‘color revolutions’. Despite the photo-ops with the Cuban leadership, the US trade embargo against the Cuban people remained in place.

Obama’s State Department and Treasury were tasked with sabotaging and overthrowing the elected Chavez-Maduro governments in Venezuela promoting acts of violence, which have thrown the country into chaos. His Secretary of State Clinton orchestrated the violent removal of the presidents of Libya and Honduras and the installation of rabidly reactionary governments whose policies have created hundreds of thousands of refugees and the assassinations of tens of thousands of citizens, human rights and environmental activists.

Obama’s much-promoted corporate for-profit health program brought some degree of insurance coverage to just half of the uninsured poor within its first year. However, after the first year health premiums rose by 25% while deductibles increased beyond the capacity of many working families. Since then, premiums have risen astronomically and coverage is unaffordable or unavailable in many areas of the country. The debt burden of ill health or a sudden medical emergency has increased for the middle and working class under Wall Street’s ‘First Black’ President. No demographic measures of improvement, in terms of life expectancy or life quality, have been documented since the implementation of ‘Obama Care’. Indeed, these public health measures have deteriorated with an epidemic of suicides, opioid-related deaths and premature deaths of all types among the working and rural classes.

After 8 years, the core of the nation, the so-called ‘Flyover States’, where the downwardly mobile working and lower middle class white majority live, was fed up with Obama’s cant and blatantly elitist policies. In was in this context that the distasteful billionaire buffoon Donald Trump capitalized on mass popular discontent and rallied a populace in revolt against the previous ‘war and bankers’ presidents, by promising to end corporate export of jobs, Wall Street corruption, ‘Obama Care’, competition for jobs with undocumented cheap labor and endless overseas wars. Trump hit a raw nerve among scores of millions of voters when he accused the earlier Bush Administration of fabricating the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq as well as for security failures in the 9/11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

Within weeks after taking office President Trump gracefully performed an Obama-style ‘about-face’ and emerged a re-anointed warmonger of the Hillary Clinton variety: He celebrated his transformation by bombing Syria, Afghanistan and the defenseless, starving people of Yemen. He sent warships off the coast of North Korea, placed advanced missile installations in South Korea and threatened nuclear war in Asia.

Trump miserably failed to ‘reform’ the corporate health plan concocted by his smirking predecessor. He shed his promise to seek peaceful relations with Moscow and embraced the policies of the worst anti-Russian liberal warmongers groomed by Clinton and Obama. Obama’s overt war posturing had so deeply influenced African-American politicians that they loudly accused Trump of being ‘too soft on Russia’! Former civil rights leaders-turned politicians were calling for greater US military interventions – a spectacle what would have made our sacred civil rights martyrs rolling in their graves.

Trump, building on the immense power already entrenched in Washington, reinforced and expanded the role of finance capital and the Pentagon in determining US policy. Trump pledged to exceed Obama’s arrest and expulsion of immigrants – from 2.5 million workers in eight years to an additional 5 million in his first four-year term.

The US corporate mass media and the liberal left have been pushing the pro-business President Trump even further to the right – demanding the US escalate its nuclear threat against North Korea, mount a full invasion of Syria (for its ‘crimes against humanity’) and, above all, ‘tighten the military noose’ around Russia and China.

Conclusion

By any measure, the policies of President Richard Milhous Nixon were more socially progressive, less militarist and less servile to Wall Street than any and all of the subsequent US Presidents. This assessment is heresy to the current historical narratives promoted by both political parties and the corporate media-academic nexus.

But even during the Nixon Presidency there were already signs of an allied liberal-rightist attack on his progressive ‘conservative’ agenda. Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy blocked Nixon’s proposal for a universal national health system built on an expansion of the highly successful ‘Medicare Program’. Nixon’s proposal (a ‘Medicare For All’) would have been far more comprehensive, effective and affordable than the corporate boondoggles cooked up by the Clinton and Obama Administrations.

What accounts for the dramatic shift from the center left to the far right among US Presidents after the 1970’s? What explains the rise and demise of ‘Nixonian’ progressivism and the great leap backward in the subsequent four and half decades?

Personality and personal background are not irrelevant: Nixon’s class and work background and personal experience with the Great Depression framed some of his outlook despite his ‘conservative’ credentials. However, the social and political balance of forces played the decisive role. Richard Nixon came to national attention as a rightwing militarist and aggressive attack dog for Senator Joesph McCarthy during the 1950s and at the beginning of his Presidential term in the late 1960’s. However, the reality of the multi-million-person anti-war movement challenged American society and influenced the armed forces from within. Even sectors of the mass media became highly critical of the permanent war state. This movement filled the streets, divided families and influenced the institutions and communities leading to a dramatic change in Nixon’s politics toward peace and even toward social and racial justice. Nixon truly became a ‘realist’.

In those days, the industrial trade unions were powerful. Manufacturing formed the basis of the economy and determined the direction of the banking-finance sector. Wall Street played ’second fiddle’ to production.

Fed up with the lack of social progress and opportunity in their communities, African American revolts in the streets were far more effective than the tame black Democratic Party politicos in Congress.

The decline of the social movements and militant labor unions, as well as the retreat to electoral politics among the African American and anti-war movements, ended the independent popular pressure and facilitated the rising power of the pro-war, Wall Street-controlled parties linked to money and speculation. Labor unions became the fiefdoms of corrupt millionaire union bosses who bought protection from prosecution with multi-million dollar campaign donations to both Democrats and Republican politicians. They discarded the Nixon’s social agenda, using the ‘Watergate Scandal’ as a pretext to dismantle his advanced programs.

Presidents and Congresses became beholden to the bankers. The rise, dominance and deep corruption of the Wall Street speculators realigned the economy away from domestic manufacturing to international finance – leading to the great relocation of US factories abroad and the permanent marginalization of the once-organized American working class.

Voters were marginalized as active participants in their own public affairs. They alternated their disaffection between parties and candidates, between big and small spenders, indicted and unindicted swindlers, and exposed and unpunished perverts.

The domestic changes in the economy and social structure were the direct outcome of these shifts in the social and political struggles and organizations.

There is a dialectical relationship between socio-economic changes and the rise and fall of socio-political struggles.

These domestic shifts of power and policy were influenced by the major changes in global power, namely the demise of the USSR, the decline of secular-nationalist regimes in the Middle East, the defeat of the left in Latin America and, above all, the rise of the US imperial doctrines of unipolar power and the globalization. The ‘changing times’ explains everything and nothing! While the objective world determines politics, so do the subjective responses of Presidents.

President Richard Nixon could have escalated the Vietnam War up to a nuclear attack on Hanoi: This is what the current Obama-Trump militarist advisors now recommend for the North Koreans. Nixon could have followed the rightwing ‘free market’ ideology of the Republican-Goldwater faction. However, Nixon took a pragmatic, peace and social reformist position – which have brought us some of our most cherished programs – EPA, OSHA, SALT disarmament, relations with China, even Roe versus Wade, and an end to the military draft.

Subsequent Presidents, faced with the shifts in political, social and economic power, chose to re-direct the nation toward greater militarism and the domination of finance capital. They have systematically attacked and dismantled the social welfare programs, environmental protection, pro-industry legislation, diplomacy and peace pacts initiated by Nixon.

The aphorism, ‘man makes history but not of his own doing’, is central to our discussion of the Nixon legacy. The process of regression is a cumulative process, of leaps and steps. In recent years, regression has accelerated with devastating results for the domestic and world populations. Social power, concentrated at the top, weakens but also alienates power at the bottom and middle. The current configuration of power and policies cannot be permanent, even if the trajectory so far has favored the elite. Social classes and groups are not fixed in their orientations.

Twice in recent years, significant majorities voted for jobs, justice and peace (Obama and Trump) and instead got charlatans bringing greater inequality, injustice and endless wars.

Deception and deep commitments to reactionary politics have penetrated widely among the ‘discontented classes’. African-American political leaders and pundits now demand war against Russia following the pronouncements of their ‘Black President’, Barack Obama. Poor marginalized white workers still support their billionaire leader Donald Trump as he waltzes down Wall Street and into possible nuclear war.

The dialectic of discontent and resentment can lead to progressive or reactionary political and social alignments, even, or especially, in the face of history’s great leap backwards!

Indian Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnalil, kidnapped in Yemen more than a year ago has pleaded for the Indian government and the Catholic Church to do more to secure his release in a video message.

The video was posted on YouTube by the news site Aden Time May 8; Father Uzhunnalil is shown seated with a cardboard sign with the date April 15, 2017, Catholic News Service reported.

A similar video was posted in December.

An official at the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia, which includes Yemen, said May 9 the person in the video is the kidnapped Salesian.

Father Uzhunnalil was kidnapped in Aden March 4, 2016, in an attack in which four Missionaries of Charity and at least 12 others were killed at a home for the aged.

In the new video, Father Uzhunnalil began by thanking “my dear family people” for their messages of concern.

Without describing his captors or referring to them as such, he said, “they are treating me well to the extent that they are able.”

“My health condition is deteriorating quickly and I require hospitalization as early as possible,” he said.

Father Uzhunnalil said his captors have contacted Indian government authorities “several times” and the replies, which he said he has seen, were “very, very poor.”

“They also contacted the bishop, bishop of Abu Dhabi,” he said. “There, too, the response was not encouraging. Neither the bishop nor the Indian government authorities ask them what they really want to get me released. It is a poor response, and I am sad about that.”

Asking his family and friends to pressure the authorities, he said, “Please, please, do what you what you can to get me released. May God bless you for that.”

Macron’s priorities include reforms for France and rebuilding the means of future international influence.

By François Godement*

The international enthusiasm after Emmanuel Macron’s victory is as great as the pessimism generated by the rise of France’s far right. Indeed, while a Le Pen victory was always a low probability, nobody predicted a 2 to 1 margin for Macron. In this case, opinion polls erred against the liberal candidate, though they swung in his favor during the campaign’s final days.

Macron’s victory reverses a political slide that began decades ago.

First, let’s not exaggerate the relief. A quarter of French voters abstained – the highest percentage since the direct presidential vote was created, though still less than in any US presidential election, and 8 percent of those who voted voided their ballots – many from the left not wanting to “choose between a fascist and a banker.”

The size of the Macron vote nonetheless indicates clear rejection of the far right, recalling a Japanese proverb that says “You have to approach the gate of hell to turn back.” In this case, a single debate, 2 ½ hours, between the two run-off candidates did the trick. Marine Le Pen attacked relentlessly, often viciously, including fake news about a hidden offshore account and a stream of abuse intended to represent voters’ rage. Unwittingly, she helped answer a big question about Macron’s character. Young and not known as a great public speaker, he rose to the occasion, keeping a steely composure and fighting back with facts and Gallic logic. Short on facts and fuzzy on what she would actually achieve with a dual currency – a last-minute invention to allay fears over leaving the euro – Le Pen had reached her Peter Principle, revealing incompetence, or what has been mistakenly called in France her glass ceiling. For Macron, what was supposed to be a predictable but modest victory became a landslide. An 11th hour cyberattack designed to throw off his campaign, associated with Russian hacking, backfired.

The French don’t like to be told for whom to vote, apparently.

The lesson for democracy is clear. Macron did better with forthright debate, openly standing for Europe, calmly debunking the multiple electoral promises of his opponent, than he had done with a less clearly defined campaign. He showed authority, addressing a fundamental anxiety in today’s political democracies. Rigorous checks and balances, the rise of the media as an independent power and the advent of an individualist society may well have voided the role of politics. But there is a craving for guidance and leadership – a trend that usually favors more populist leaders. Macron, focused and assertive, defeated the trend even while critics judged him arrogant.

His final debate performance was previewed in another hour-long debate with aggrieved workers of a Whirlpool factory, slated by owners to relocate to Eastern Europe. Surrounded by a hostile and worried crowd, Macron began to speak, confronting jeers, and left with handshakes – accomplished without any formal promise to save jobs: he did pledge to take away any subsidies that may have been granted to Whirlpool, but explained market rules cannot work if a company is not allowed to disinvest, and made the case against punitive import taxes by citing factories nearby that export their production. Few politicians could achieve such a convincing argument, and given Macron’s mandarin background and lack of electoral experience, he was least of all expected to win such a contest.

Macron’s win was decisive, yet there is a dearth of predictions on the direction he will take or how he will exercise his mandate. This is a consequence of voters’ mood: They rejected the two parties that have structured French political life since 1958. Macron, like Le Pen, is a symbol of that rejection. A key consequence flows from this. He will attempt to revive the spirit of the constitution created by Charles De Gaulle, creating a parliamentary majority revolving around a new party that will be very much his own. He embraced an unearthly symbol by celebrating his victory in the heart of the Louvre – where I.M. Pei built the transparent pyramids that are a symbol of globalization, yet also a place where kings ruled and where the ministry of finance was long located. Macron requires candidates running for parliament under his banner to renounce other political affiliations. He and his inner circle have adopted the language of authority, denouncing the old-fashioned political crowd.

And indeed, Macron needs a strong base and authority to go with it. Both right and left are trying to capture a majority for the assembly – completely impossible for the left, not wholly inconceivable for the right. Macron’s game for the legislative elections that conclude June 18 is to pull as much as he can behind him and then balance both sides. Given his personal success, this is at least likely, as French voters usually confirm and amplify a choice they have just made – although another unfortunate statistic suggests that, several years later, they tend to go the other way.

Macron must meet two reality tests before early fall.

The first test will be over the liberal reforms that Macron, as candidate, only broadly described, but could push quickly in order to capitalize on his win – targeting labor market rigidities, opening  key professions from doctors to taxi drivers, creating equal retirement rights according to contributions instead of the present medley of regimes. He plans to abolish unemployment fees on payrolls, replacing them with an increase in France’s universal social tax on all income. He also intends to cut public jobs, although budget austerity is not part of his program. This is not a war on public spending, but these changes will inevitably create losers in the short term, who may be less than sensitive to future gains for all. It’s not true that France has failed to achieve reform over the past decades, but this has been with small and politically painful increments. Macron risks finding obstacles, not only the extreme left-wing and far right that have not disbanded, but segments of traditional parties who assume his appeal may pass quickly. Success is possible, but requires communication, negotiating skills and a loyal government.

The second test is that of Germany. Macron’s campaign has done more than any of its predecessors to advocate European unity and a deepening of common institutions. To achieve political success at reforms, he needs economic growth. And growth requires trust, but also continuation of the European Central Bank’s easy money policy and a shift towards greater consumption from Europe’s largest economy, that of Germany. A comparison might be made with the French reform process: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government have accepted many European developments they did not like – from bailing out Greece to ultra-low interest rates. But they did so slowly, reluctantly, with evident fear about being led down a path of budgetary irresponsibility by their fellow Europeans.

To convince Germany, Macron needs to demonstrate success at key reforms, financing France’s public spending with growth more than with the present near-zero interest rates. To succeed at these key reforms, Macron must show that he has Germany on his side – he recently said he is not facing Germany but standing by it, a description he undoubtedly hopes to be reciprocal.

The poison of nationalism and fear has produced its own antidote in France. France has never seen a man taking such political risks and become president. It has never seen such strong advocacy for Europe, although no previous president has been anti-European. It has never seen a president so keen to focus on domestic and European issues – the rest of the world exists as a backdrop, and unless forced to by circumstances, Macron is unlikely to spend as much time as his predecessor on foreign policy beyond Europe.

While the vote has been an endorsement of open society against chauvinism, reform at home will be the top priority and rebuilding the means of future international influence. The French may be divided now more between optimists and pessimists than by right or left choices. This moment has allowed President Macron to step on stage, where he must now prove his skills.

*François Godement is the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia & China program and a senior policy fellow. He is a non-resident senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, and an outside consultant for the Policy Planning Staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His last published book is Contemporary China: Between Mao and Market, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

By Brendan Brown*

The monetary consequences of the looming largely unfunded mega tax-cutting package will almost certainly trump all others. Its advocates make vital comparisons with the Reagan era. But they omit the key fact that fiscal shock then occurred within a rare episode of “hard money.” Paul Volcker, nominated as Fed Chief by President Carter in late 1978, was applying monetarist medicine to usher the US economy into a new era beyond the “Greatest Peacetime Inflation.” Even though the Volcker stabilization turned out to be deeply flawed and of short duration, its high tide coincided with the Reagan budget deficit explosion, holding in check any immediate build-up of inflation (in either of its two forms — goods inflation or asset inflation).

This Isn’t the 1980s

This time the budget shock is occurring far into another Great Inflation originating in the Federal Reserve, featuring prominently asset prices with goods inflation less obvious but present nonetheless. This is especially true if comparison is made with the downward rhythm of prices which would have prevailed under a sound money regime at a time of rapid globalization and economic weakness. The vast monetary experimentation has induced huge uncertainty. How deadly will be the end phase of this asset price inflation and what is the extent of potential goods inflation still to emerge in this cycle and future cycles? At worst the budget shock, by adding seriously to such uncertainty — in particular with respect to a possible late cycle emergence of strong goods inflation — would curb any possible stimulus even in the short-run.

Sound money advocates may consider an outbreak of virulent goods inflation a Good Thing on the basis that only this could bring a political climate favorable to an overhaul of the monetary system according to their prescriptions. Asset booms and busts on their own produce scapegoating of financial intermediaries and regulatory suffocation. Meanwhile, the monetary policy makers largely escape blame. Even so, all three occasions in modern US history when goods inflation break-outs have triggered monetary stabilizations (1919-20, 1951-3, 1979-83) have proved to be false dawns for sound money. The looming budget shock could set off a chain of monetary consequences which would end in similarly flawed reform.

The Chimera of the “Neutral Interest Rate”

The inflationary danger of budget shock resides partly in the fact that no one, not even the most talented Fed officials, can make a reliable assessment as to what budget shock means for the neutral level of interest rates. Yet present Fed policy making is predicated on the idea that the Fed’s bureaucrats can conduct a stability policy by steering rates along a path which is optimally positioned relative to the neutral level. But even at the most tranquil of times neutral is unknown with market rates tied to this loosely by trial and error together with market estimation.

Budget shock is the opposite of tranquillity. Commentators warn that if we discard the illusory “dynamic scoring” (which includes large tax revenues resulting from higher growth) the general government deficit in the US could expand from a present “full employment” level, of say 3.5-4%, to 5-6% of GDP. The influence on neutral rate levels depends crucially on how the private sector saves or dis-saves in response.

At one extreme, the boost to post-tax corporate earnings from the Trump fiscal package may be reflected in an equal jump of private savings as businesses use the tax relief to bolster their equity buy-back programs, share prices rise to reflect this, and households do not spend out of the related capital gains – perhaps out of caution about eventual big tax rises or an inflation pick-up. At the other extreme, anxiety about inflation would play little immediate role. There would be large wealth effects on spending and business investment could take off as economic activity returns to the US from previously lower tax jurisdictions abroad. The likely trigger to raised inflation fears — and these could be concentrated on the far-off future — is the scary arithmetic of the public debt.

Within a decade, the ratio of government debt to GDP might well grow to as much as 150% of GDP compared to say 110% without the tax cuts. Stabilizing the debt at that elevated level would be a daunting task in terms of necessary tax increases at that point (amounting to say 4% of GDP over a brief time span) and the temptation for the Fed and the government of the times as accomplices to “ease” the political shock via higher inflation would be great. That far off risk of a high inflation outcome could fuel asset price inflation further in the present as income famine and desperation for yield become even more prominent. That is, the eventual outcome to the present asset price inflation could be even more violent than otherwise.

As well as the raised inflation danger in the far-out future, there is the threat of increased monetary instability in the present due to the Fed following a false estimate of neutral interest rate. That danger was contained under the brief Volcker episode of monetarism where monetary base targeting replaced strict control of short-term interest rates as the key operating procedure of the Federal Reserve. This meant that interest rates were wholly market-determined (as is the case under an ideal gold standard) rather than heavily influenced by the Fed’s short-term interest rate signalling. That signalling has been a potent tool of both short and long-term interest rate management throughout the Fed’s history with the brief exception of the monetarist episode as above.

By the time the Fed realizes that its estimate of neutral is too low in the wake of the budget shock, inflation could have become much more virulent — both in the dimension of assets and goods. (Asset price inflation is measured by the power of irrational forces as unleashed by the monetary disorder, whether in the form of desperate investors frenzied by interest income famine and anxiety about future inflation danger searching for yield, or bold investors lulled by feedback loops from capital gains into to excess confidence about presently popular speculative narratives). And there is the ever-present possibility on top that a sudden dive in speculative temperatures could occur, marking the always impossible to predict onset of the end phase of a long asset price inflation.

The architects of the looming budget package and their supporters may indeed be sincere in their beliefs about the supply side benefits to come from mega tax-cuts concentrated on business profits and the potential for its America First slant to raise domestic investment and wages (which incidentally would likely go along with greater dis-saving as consumer spending would gain impetus). But in ignoring the key role of monetary discipline in holding back large potential negative consequences, they are underestimating the downside risks of the whole plan. In a classical liberal agenda, monetary reform would have preceded and constrained any great fiscal policy initiative. That was the Reagan way, at least to start with. It does not seem to be the Trump way.

About the author:
*Brendan Brown is the Head of Economic Research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Filip Rudic

Following a joint BIRN and OCCRP investigation, which revealed how weapons from Serbia end up in the hands of fighters in the Middle East, a Serbian ministry said no bar exists on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

Serbia’s Ministry of Commerce on Thursday said there was no ban on the export of weapons to Saudi Arabia after a BIRN and OCCRP investigation revealed how machine guns had travelled from a Serbian state-owned factory to Syrian rebels via a Bulgarian arms tycoon and a Saudi training camp.

“Exports to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are not prohibited by any act of the UN Security Council, the EU, or any other international organisation. Most EU countries (Germany, France, Italy) as well as the US are exporting weapons and military equipment to this country,” the ministry said.

BIRN and OCCRP traced traced the weapons directly from a producer in Central and Eastern Europe to Syrian rebels and provided the clearest evidence to date of an arms pipeline previously uncovered by BIRN and OCCRP.

The pipeline has carried to a 1.2 billion euros of weapons from the Balkans, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the Middle East, with Saudi money and, according to a former US, ambassador to Syria, using CIA logistics.

The story illustrated the systematic and illegal diversion of arms by the Saudi regime to places such as Syria, and how governments in the Balkans seem willing to turn a blind eye to this lucrative trade.

The Ministry of Commerce confirmed BIRN’s and OCCRP’s discovery that the buyer was the Bulgarian company, BIEM, and that the end user was the Saudi Ministry of Defence.

In a press release, the Ministry added that it considered the End User certificate, accompanied by a statement, to be sufficient guarantee that the arms would not be re-exported without Serbia’s written consent.

Asked how it intended to prevent abuses in the export of weapons, the Ministry insisted that it had “no legal jurisdiction to undertake other measures to prevent abuses in trade and redirection of weapons to other, unregistered locations”.

The Philippines has begun moving troops and equipment to a disputed island in the South China Sea which is claimed by both Manila and Beijing, a Philippines general said. It comes ahead of construction, including lengthening an airstrip on the island.

The troops and initial supplies arrived at Pag-asa Island last week, Lt. Gen. Raul del Rosario, head of the Philippine military’s Western Command, said as quoted by AP.

Some 1.6 billion pesos (US$32 million) has been set aside for construction on the island, which will include reinforcing and lengthening and airstrip and building dock, according to the official.

Solar power, a desalination plant and refurbishment of military housing, as well as sites for marine research and tourists, are set to be built on the island.

Earlier this month, Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua warned that any construction on the island, known internationally as Thitu, would be illegal.

“We view the occupation by the Philippine side of those islands as illegal. And so the building on it are also illegal,” he said, as quoted by the Manila Times.

Zhao added that China would give “warning” to any intruding aircraft in the island’s airspace, as well as any unwelcome planes which may fly in the airspace of the larger Kalayaan Island Group.

The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs shrugged off Zhao’s statements, with spokesman Robespierre Bolivar stating that the island and the Kalayaan Island Group are “a municipality of Palawan,” a province of the Philippines.

China protested a visit to the island by Philippines defense and military chiefs last month, weeks after Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte vowed to occupy and fortify islands in the South China Sea in order to make a “strong point” amid its territorial dispute with Beijing.

Pag-asa is the second-largest island in the Spratly archipelago, which is also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.

The Spratly Islands have long been a point of contention between the Philippines and China, as Beijing lays claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. It has tried to stake its claim by transforming seven mostly submerged reefs into island outposts – some of which have runways, radars and weapons systems.

The Hague Tribunal ruled last year that China has caused irreparable harm to the ecosystem of the Spratlys, and that its actions have breached the sovereign rights of the Philippines. Beijing rejected the verdict, with state media calling it “ill-founded” and “naturally null and void.”

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

The Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) sponsored by Saudi Arabia which is a misnomer as it is essentially a “Sunni Muslim NATO Alliance” has finally emerged in May 2017 commanded by former Pak Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif.

It would be fair to designate IMAFT as “Sunni Muslim NATO Alliance” as its 34 Muslim nations membership when reviewed comprises only Sunni Muslim nations. Shia –majority nations like Iran and Iraq stand excluded from this Alliance.

By its very exclusivity of being a sectarian Islamic Sunni military alliance it carries the portents of emerging as one more additional disruptive factor in the severe turbulence that plagues the Middle East and Greater South West Asia.

The above fact negates the very intent of IMAFT being brought into existence for a concerted effort by Muslim nations to fight terrorism. In effect “Sunni NATO” as better abbreviated, seems to have been the brainchild of Saudi Arabia as a combat instrument to fight Saudi Arabia’s proxy wars with its main Gulf rival and contender for regional power, namely, Iran.

Western media reports indicate that the US Trump Administration along with Israel have encouraged Saudi Arabia to go ahead with this project viewing it as another instrument to fight and destroy the ISIS. Saudi Arabia has been toying with this proposal from 2015 onwards but it found traction for forward movement in early 2017 when controversies broke out in Pakistan’s domestic politics of the wisdom of the Pakistan Government giving permission to recently retired Pakistan Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif to head the Sunni NATO Alliance on demands by Saudi Arabia.

The Headquarters of Sunni NATO Alliance is to be located at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. No further details of Sunni NATO Alliance in terms of its command and staff structure have yet surfaced in the public domain. It would be fair to assume that these would now be planned, worked out and put into place by Pakistani General Raheel Sharif as the C-in-C of this Alliance. Similarly there have been no firm details about the Charter of the Alliances or on the contribution of troop strengths for this Alliance by its Sunni Member nations.

Reviewing the Sunni NATO Alliance three major aspects need to be examined in relation to the underlying intent for the formation of this Alliance, its impact on Middle East dynamics and more importantly its implications for India’s national security interests.

The first aspect of the intention for formation of Sunni NATO Alliance has been indicated above in that it is primarily a geopolitical move by Saudi Arabia for a containment of Iran in concert with major Sunni nations. It has nothing to do with its lofty designation of an Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism even though it would be projected that the Alliance’s immediate task would be to counter the spreading tentacles of the ISIS in the Muslim world. Could not the existing Organisation of Islamic Countries served the same purpose by crafting a military arm for this purpose? That would however not have facilitated the exclusion of Iran and the Shia Muslim countries.

The second aspect of the impact of Sunni NATO Alliance on Middle East dynamics has many complicated facets. Firstly, it sharpens the cleavages between the Sunni Muslim nations and the Shia Muslim nations. This by itself creates additional challenges for any concerted moves within the region to find solutions for combatting the ISIS or conflict resolution in the Middle East.

Secondly, the United States putting its weight behind a Saudi Arabia sponsored Alliance commanded by a former Pak Army General positons the United States as not being an ’honest broker’ of Middle East peace processes.

Thirdly, a perceptional Saudi Arabia-United States combine to isolate Iran in the Middle East robs the United States of co-opting Iran as the leading regional power in the Gulf Region for a better and stable security environment in the Middle East. This by itself would expectedly lead to hardening of Iran’s positions in the Northern Tier of the Middle East and possibly spur Iran towards nuclear weaponisation.

The third aspect and the most disconcerting one, in terms of implications for Indian national security interest are worrisome. A host of questions strike one’s mind when reviewing the Sunni NATO Alliance character and its intent. The first and foremost is the ‘Pakistan Factor’ that dominates the command structure of the Sunni NATO Alliance. Then is the aspect of the possible interventions of this Alliance in India’s neighbourhood. Lastly, how does the backing by the United States for this Alliance affect Indo-US relations?

Pakistan’s centrality in terms of command of Sunni NATO Alliance by a former Pak Army Chief positions Pakistan in an advantageous position to distort the intended role of this Alliance. It follows that General Raheel Sharif will get his way in having the Staff of this Alliance predominantly from the Pakistan Army whose implications are obvious. It carries a host of connotations which can be addressed as a subject of a separate Paper.

In terms of Sunni NATO Alliance possible military interventions in India’s neighbourhood for so-called purpose of fighting terrorism in Muslim countries extends from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and possibly the Maldives. India has legitimate national security interest in these countries. Would the Indian Government of the day be in a position to forestall Sunni NATO Alliance military interventions on India’s doorsteps or be able to neutralise them once they take place? Indian contingency planning should commence even if the chances presently are remote.

India has all the right to be perturbed by United States history of past pro-Pakistan tilts which kept the world’s two prominent democracies estranged. The Sunni NATO Alliance inherently carries the seeds of estrangement once again not only because of geopolitical factors but more importantly because India has always abhorred Islam-centric military alliances or even multilateral alliances with predominant Islamic membership. That the Sunni NATO Alliance is not only exclusively Islamic but two steps ahead in terms of being Islamic-sectarian in composition aggravates the situation.

Before concluding two more questions need to be addressed and these are as to why Saudi Arabia specifically preferred to have Pakistani former Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif to head the Sunni NATO Alliance? Why did Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif buckle under Saudi pressure to be a prominent factor in this Alliance conscious that this would seriously impact Pakistan’s relations with its giant neighbour, Iran?

Pakistan it seems becomes a logical choice in term of Saudi Arabia’s preferential choices because of the IOUs that Pakistan and PM Nawaz Sharif personally owe to Saudi Arabia. In the same vein, it can be analytically expected that the Sunni NATO Alliance would be fleshed out in a major way by standing major troop contributions from the Pakistan Army with only token contributions by other major Sunni nations. It is within the realms of possibility that the Sunni NATO Alliance could possibly have a standing reserve of a Pakistan Army Brigade as a nucleus for any expeditionary intervention force at the command of the Sunni NATO Alliance.

Pakistan’s relations with Iran can be severely tested by not only Pakistan’s participation in a US-sponsored/backed Sunni NATO Alliance ostensibly aimed at Iran but also that it is headed by the recently retired Pakistan Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif noted for his hard-line attitudes not only towards India and Afghanistan but also towards Iran. Stiff opposition is being offered in Pakistani domestic politics as to how the Government deviated from established procedures to grant a ‘no Objection Certificate’ to General Raheel Sharif to assume command of the Sunni NATO Alliance.

Pakistan has resorted to feverish damage-control initiatives with Iran by a flurry of high level visits of Pakistani top officials. But this cannot make headway until Saudi Arabia agrees to shed the ‘Sunni Tag’ of this Alliance and welcomes Iran and other major Shia nations in its fold. This is highly unlikely and places Pakistan in a policy cleft-stick.

In conclusion, as a first attempt of solely analysing the inherent contradictions that could surface in the Sunni NATO Alliance to affect its military effectiveness in the near future as a potent Islamic military force, one cannot however rule out that the very concept of a Sunni NATO Alliance has the potential of being a disruptive element in the already severely turbulent Middle East and Greater South West Asia region.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

By Kazi Anwarul Masud*

While there can be no defense for the terrorism and despicable brutalities perpetrated by the al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS and their likes the international community should remain conscious of the risks of identity politics by marginalized segment of societies on grounds of religion.

Alarming reports continue to pour in of violence threatening to become structural in Western societies where many people have started to look at Muslims living for generations in their adopted countries with suspicion. When loyalty to the country is questioned then the emergence of identity politics becomes inevitable. Javier Solana, former Spanish Foreign Minister, Secretary General of NATO, and European Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy had observed that (Europe’s Jihadi Generation-January 27 2015) the story of exclusion has been repeated millions of times in the countries of Western Europe, with immigrants and their families ending up poor and excluded. In the worst-case scenario, they are recruited by extremist groups that seem to offer what they are missing: a sense of belonging, identity, and purpose. After a lifetime of marginalization, participation in a larger cause can seem worth the lies, self-destruction, and even death that inclusion demands.

Europe needs to take a good look at itself. It must recognize that second- and third-generation immigrants are susceptible to the blandishments of terrorist organizations because European citizenship has not translated into social and economic inclusion. Chicago University Professor late Iris Marion Young had described the aim of the adherents of identity politics was to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context. Members of that constituency assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination.

Identity politics as a mode of organizing is intimately connected to the idea that some social groups are oppressed that makes one’s identity peculiarly vulnerable to cultural imperialism (including stereotyping, erasure, or appropriation of one’s group identity), violence, exploitation, marginalization, or powerlessness. Professor Sonia Kruk (Oberlin College) added that what makes identity politics a significant departure from earlier, pre-identarian forms of the politics of recognition is its demand for recognition on the basis of the very grounds on which recognition had previously been denied. The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of “universal humankind” on the basis of shared human attributes; nor is it for respect “in spite of” one’s differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different? Apart from the differentiation cited by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, to name a few, Islamophobia and Eurobia appear to have attracted the imagination of Europeans, mainly the French as among European nations France has the largest number of Muslim population.

Huntington prefaced his thesis on Clash of Civilizations by stating “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural….

Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” Huntington was emphatic when he wrote “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people is convinced of the superiority of their culture and is obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” Both Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington influenced the Bush administration and other Western politicians leading to the invasion of Iraq and later on to the unraveling of the Middle East through the Arab Spring.

Overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not brought peace in Iraq but has resulted in sectarian conflict between the dominant Shias and the minority Sunnis; overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood President and the assumption of power by the military in Egypt; murder of Gaddafi in Libya and continuing civil war; the brutal civil war raging in Syria. Amanita M Kone in an article (America’s Misguided ‘War on Terror:’ Contrasting Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations with Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Solidarity-Inquiries 2013-vol 5 no 3 )wrote that the global war on terror has done little to eradicate terrorism and on the contrary “the number of terrorist attacks worldwide increased from under two-thousand in 2001, to a staggering five-thousand ten years later (START 2012). Late Edward Said in 2001 labeled Huntington’s thesis as Clash of Ignorance. Yet the diatribe against the Muslims continued as most recently seen in the French Presidential elections (though won by Emanuel Macron) and the one won by Donald Trump in the US.

One prominent commentator observed that “among a generation of Muslims born in Europe, significant number have nothing but contempt and disdain for their native lands and have allegiance only to the Muslim ummah and the lands of their parents”. He strongly criticized the Arab European League for rejecting any idea of assimilation or integration into European society and the AEL founder Abu Jahjah for terming assimilation as “cultural rape”. Such obnoxious comment challenging the loyalty of a citizen who had never seen the land of his/her parents or ancestors should hold in utter contempt.

In the same vein John Rex (National Identity in the Democratic Multi-Cultural State) suggests that national ideology established by the majority community may face corrosiveness by immigration of people from countries that have different culture and religion. He adds that many such migrants are likely to have a dual loyalty to their nations of origin and the nations amongst whom they settle. It is even more obviously true of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who migrate to Britain and, either directly or via Britain, to the United States. Members of the various sub-communities amongst these South Asian migrants may then feel that they belong to transnational communities spread across the world from Fiji to California.

The question is how such transnational communities should be conceptualized. The first thing to note is that the basic unit to which an individual feels attached is an extended family seeking to improve its economic estate. The second thing to note, however, is that faced with competition abroad these families may also feel that, amongst other competing families the markers of religion, language and shared customs may serve to indicate that some of the other competing extended families are also their potential allies in taking collective action in countries of settlement. While this may not mean a tight structured organization of the migrant community on ethnic lines, it does mean that individuals are conscious of ethnic boundaries.

The response to immigration by established societies to the presence of these minorities might take one of three forms. It may involve attempts to assimilate the minorities on equal terms as citizens; it may seek to subordinate them to a dominant ethnic group as second class citizens or, it may recognize cultural diversity in the private communal sphere while maintaining a shared public political culture. The refusal by European nations among the developed economies to recognize cultural diversity or multiculturalism by Angela Merkel, Berlusconi, and Giscard D’Estaing among other politicians strengthens resistance from the minority ethnic groups. The inevitable result of attempted subordination by the majority community has brought about chaos in the global society already afflicted with a real possibility of survival if the projections of climate change scientists were to be proven right notwithstanding the dissention on the question of historical responsibility of carbon emission. It is time, as Javier Solana pointed out, to accept that religion is not only a belief system; it is also an institution, a language, and even a kind of market actor, competing for supporters.

Radical terrorist groups attempt to consolidate their distorted version of “true” Islam as the only institution, imposing their language to win the entire Muslim market. Indeed, it was the failed transitions in Syria, Libya, and Yemen after the Arab Spring revolts that fueled the Islamic State’s emergence. Millions of young people, disillusioned by decades of social paralysis, unemployment, and brutal dictatorships, had dared to expect better. One simply cannot wish away about two billion Muslims through force. George Bush and Tony Blair tried and failed.

In their book cutting the Fuse by Robert Pape and James K. Feldman found that from 2004 and 2009 there have been a total of 1,833 suicide attacks around the world compared with a total of 350 during the period of 1980 through 2003. Between 2004 and 2009, 92 percent of attacks can be seen as anti-American. This startling jump seems clearly attributable to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and in particular, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan where most of the attacks have taken place. This statistic also further strengthens Pape’s earlier argument that the primary cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation. Besides contrary popular notion that the attackers come from poor and uneducated background Pape and Feldman argued then they should have come from Bangladesh, Sudan and Afghanistan. Those who did were opposed to foreign occupation and in the case of Iraq they perceived American presence as assisting subordination of the Sunnis by the Shias.

Unfortunately this inter-sectarian conflict originated after the death of Prophet Mohammed ( pbuh) over the question of who should lead the Muslim community. It is estimated that the Sunnis number between 85% to 90% of the Muslims. Though decades might have passed since the “arrival” of the first generation of immigrants the native Europeans may still be considering the socio-economic costs of immigration. It is generally believed that Immigration also has many possible costs (economic, social, national security, domestic security, liberty and congestion costs). These benefits and costs vary by type of immigrant — well-educated vs. uneducated, rich vs. poor, single vs. family, old vs. young, from countries in which there is a substantial amount of militant hostility against the Western developed countries vs. parent countries. In the case of Britain, for example, the Office of Budget Responsibility feels that immigration “does tend to produce a more beneficial picture” for the Government’s finances. “Because they’re more likely to be working age, they’re more likely to be paying taxes and less likely to have relatively large sums of money spent on them for education, for long-term care, for healthcare, for pension expenditure”( The Telegraph-January 2014). The Budget Office advised that Britain would need more migrants to finance the rising cost of pensions, social care and National Health Service. Without immigration national debt will soar to 175 % of the GDP in the next fifty years.

In the case of the US recent studies demonstrate that the higher earnings of legalized workers yield more tax revenue, more consumer buying power, and more jobs. American Immigration Council positively views immigration. One of the observations of the Council reports the example of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) demonstrating that workers with legal status earn more than workers who are unauthorized. And these extra earnings generate more tax revenue for federal, state, and local governments, as well as more consumers spending which sustains more jobs in U.S. businesses. Recent studies suggest that the economic value of a new legalization program would be substantial, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in added income, billions of dollars in additional tax revenue, and hundreds of thousands of new jobs for native-born and immigrant workers alike. In short, a new legalization program for unauthorized immigrants would benefit everyone by growing the economy and expanding the labor market. In a vicious commentary against “immigrationists”

Christopher Caldwell in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West–in the words of The Guardian (May 17 2009) “cuts to shreds the conventional wisdom of the “immigrationist” ideology – the view that mass immigration is inevitable and in any case a necessary injection of youth into our ageing continent. He shows, contrary to the immigrationists, that the flows of recent decades are unprecedented. He also demolishes the economic and welfare- state arguments for mass immigration and points out that in most countries there was no desperate need for extra workers in the 1950s – in Britain’s case, Ireland still provided a reserve army of labor”.

Fortunately wiser and saner people like Bruce B. Lawrence Emeritus professor of Religion at Duke University descried Caldwell’s diatribe as a full-throttle polemic, a mean spirited book meant to raise alarms, stoke fears, and tame a danger at once unseen and misunderstood yet pernicious and widespread. The danger is Islam, the villains are Muslim immigrants, writes Bruce Lawrence, the terrain is the West, and the outcome is certain defeat for European culture—unless the tide of Muslim immigration, which threatens to become a tsunami, can be stemmed. One hopes that the Muslims, and in particular Muslim Diaspora in the West, would not have to tread “the path of progressive alienation” and become a second class citizen in the country of their birth. The international community must realize and act in the belief that religion is a private matter for the individual and those trying to bring about an age of darkness have to be confronted and destroyed.

*The writer is a former Ambassador and Secretary in the Foreign Ministry of Bangladesh

By Jordan J. Ballor, PhD*

Fans of the critically-acclaimed Netflix original series House of Cards eagerly await the release of the fifth season later this month. Frank Underwood, masterfully played by the award-winning Kevin Spacey, embodies the corruption that so often attends to the pursuit of political power, and as the new season nears it’s worth looking back at where it all began for Francis and Claire Underwood.

The prophet Jeremiah lamented the apparent flourishing of evildoers, asking of God, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (12:1). Underwood’s career in the first season was one of prospering, at least in terms of political fortunes and influence, even if it wasn’t the most restful of sessions for the veteran congressman. Indeed, Underwood is like the wicked of the psalmist’s complaint, who “day and night prowl about” on the walls of the city without rest (Ps. 55:10), one of “those who are bloodthirsty, in whose hands are wicked schemes, whose right hands are full of bribes” (Ps. 26:10).

In their review of the show’s first season, David Corbin and Alissa Wilkinson rightly observe that the example of Frank Underwood provides an important negative lesson about the need for faithful and faith-filled politicians. House of Cards “presents an unlikely call for those claimed by Christ to stay within the messy world of politics,” they conclude. It is tempting perhaps to withdraw from the mire of mundane politics and wait for God to overturn the evildoers. This was the stance the prophet Jonah took toward Nineveh, for instance. But as Augustine observed, “It is beneficial, then, that good men should rule far and wide and long, worshipping the true God and serving Him with true rites and good morals.”

And indeed Abraham provides a better model for considering the morally corrupt centers of power in our own day. When God had planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he shared his intentions with Abraham. The patriarch interceded with God, asking, “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” (Gen. 18:23). Eventually, at Abraham’s imploring, God pledges to show mercy if just ten (not even fifty, forty, thirty, or twenty) righteous people are found in Sodom: “I will spare the whole place for their sake” (Gen. 18:26). It is all the more a damning indictment of the city that apparently no such ten were to be found, since in the next chapter Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed with “burning sulfur” (Gen. 19:24).

The first season of House of Cards ends with a prayer, but the godless prayer of one who, as Chad Comello puts it, uses “his persuasive prowess to bend people his way in his insatiable quest for power.” And yet even in the darkness of the District that is on full display in the show’s first season, there are a few rays of light that shine through as potential sources of moral and spiritual renewal.

The church where Underwood prays “to myself, for myself,” is also the place where the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ is (or at least ought) to be proclaimed each week. The Sunday corporate worship that Underwood observes only for ceremonial purposes offers what ought to be a respite from evil works. Underwood manages to remain immune to gospel preaching, however, even in diabolical fashion ascending the pulpit of a church in his home state to manipulate grief-stricken parents into some politically-expeditious reconciliation.

A similar twist occurs in Underwood’s relationship with Peter Russo, a troubled congressman that Underwood blackmails into submission. Russo becomes an expedient tool to further Underwood’s agenda, and Underwood enlists his right-hand man, Doug Stamper, to clean up Russo, even having Stamper act as his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. But this relationship, veiled in a shared commitment to reconciliation under the recognition of a “higher power,” becomes just one more avenue for manipulation, as Stamper’s intimate knowledge of Russo’s weaknesses of will and character are used to set up Russo’s final fall. Likewise Stamper’s seeming concern for the well-being of a prostitute turns out to be preparation for fashioning her into a means of revenge.

In House of Cards, we have yet to see someone that Underwood cannot find some way to cajole, coerce, or otherwise corrupt into serving his purposes. Frank can seemingly always find some way to extort or deceive. Everyone can be manipulated; everyone has weaknesses that can be exploited.

Frank Underwood has bought in to a fatal conceit: that seeking power to dominate and control others fulfills us and makes us strong. But as Augustine puts it, this is a basic “falsehood,” that “we commit sin so that things may go well with us, and, instead, they go ill with us. Or we sin so that we may fare better, and, instead, we fare worse.” Frank will ultimately be left with what Augustine observed about the fallen world: that “every disordered soul is its own punishment.”

The iniquity of the city of man on full display in House of Cards leaves us wondering whether there is even one righteous man for whom the city might be spared. But precisely in this way the sinfulness of human society points us towards the perfection of Jesus Christ, the one for whom and through whom God preserves and redeems the world of fallen man.

It turns out that one righteous man is enough to preserve our nation’s capital in the midst of our ongoing moral and spiritual crisis. It’s just that this man’s kingdom is not of this world.

About the author:
*Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is a senior research fellow and director of publishing at the Acton Institute where he also serves as executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

This commentary is adapted from an earlier review of season 1 of House of Cards.

Now that Hamas has officially changed its charter, one should not immediately assume that the decision is, in itself, an act of political maturity. Undoubtedly, Hamas’ first charter, which was released to the public in August 1988, reflected a degree of great intellectual dearth and political naivete. It called on Palestinians to take on the Israeli occupation army, seeking “martyrdom or victory,” and derided Arab rulers and armies: “Has your national zealousness died and your pride run out while the Jews daily perpetrate grave and base crimes against the people and the children?”

This may seem foolishly-worded now. But back then, the context was rather different.

The document was released a few months after the formation of Hamas, itself created as an outcome of the Palestinian uprising of December 1987, which saw the killing of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children.

At the time, the Hamas leadership was of a grassroots composition, consisting of school teachers and local imams and almost entirely made up of Palestinian refugees. While Hamas founders openly attributed their ideology to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, their politic ideology was, in fact, formulated inside Palestinian refugee camps and Israeli prisons.

Despite their desire to see their movement as a component of larger regional dynamics, it was mostly the outcome of a unique Palestinian experience. True, the language of their charter, at the time, reflected serious political immaturity, a lack of true vision and an underestimation of their future appeal. However, it also reflected a degree of sincerity, as it accurately depicted a rising popular tide in Palestine that was fed up with Fatah’s domination of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Fatah, along with other PLO factions, became increasingly disengaged from the Palestinian reality after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The invasion of Lebanon saw the dispersal of the Palestinian national movement abroad among various Arab countries, headquartered mostly in Tunisia. In Tunis, Palestinian leaders grew wealthy but offered nothing new, just tired cliches of a bygone era.

The 1987 intifada was a reflection of popular frustration, not only with the Israeli military occupation, but the failure, corruption and irrelevance of the PLO. Thus, the formation of Hamas in that specific period of Palestinian history cannot be understood separately from the intifada, which introduced a new generation of Palestinian movements, leaders and grassroots organizations.

Due to its emphasis on Islamic (vs. national) identity, Hamas developed in parallel, but rarely converged, with other national groups in the West Bank and Gaza. The national movements operated under the umbrella group the United National Front for the intifada, representing the PLO’s affiliates inside Palestine.

Hamas largely operated alone. Toward the end of the intifada, the factions clashed and directed much of their violence against fellow Palestinians. Thanks to internal divisions, the intifada was exhausted from within as much as it was mercilessly beaten by Israeli occupation soldiers from outside.

Yet, Hamas continued to grow in popularity. Part of that was due to the fact that Hamas was the reinvention of an older Islamic movement in Gaza and parts of the West Bank. The moment Islamic groups were rebranded as Hamas, the new movement immediately mobilized all of its constituency, its mosques, community and youth centers and large social networks to echo the call of the intifada. Hamas extended its influence to reach the West Bank through its student movements in West Bank universities, among other outlets. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, but especially the failure of the accords and the so-called “peace process” to meet the minimum expectations of the Palestinian people, gave Hamas another impetus. Since the period of supposed peace saw the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, the doubling of the number of illegal settlers and the loss of more Palestinian land, Hamas’ popularity continued to rise.

Meanwhile, the PLO was sidelined to make room for the Palestinian Authority (PA). Established in 1994, the PA was a direct outcome of the Oslo Accords. Its leaders were not leaders of the intifada, but mostly wealthy Fatah returnees who were once based in Tunis and other Arab capitals. It was only a matter of months before the PA turned against Palestinians and Hamas activists in particular.

Late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat understood well the need to maintain a semblance of balance in his treatment of Palestinian opposition forces. Although he was under tremendous Israel-US pressure to crack down on the “infrastructure of terrorism,” he understood that cracking down harshly on Hamas and others could hasten his party’s eroding popularity. A year or so after his passing, local Palestinian elections — in which Hamas participated for the first time — changed political power dynamics in Palestine for the first time in decades. Hamas won the majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

Hamas’ election victory in 2006 prompted a Western boycott, massive Israeli crackdown on the movement and clashes between Hamas and Fatah. Ultimately, Gaza was placed under siege and several Israeli wars killed thousands of Palestinians.

During the last 10 years, Hamas has been forced to seek alternatives. It was forced out of the trenches to govern and economically manage one of the most impoverished regions on earth. The siege became the status quo. Attempts by some European powers to talk to Hamas were always met by strong Israeli-American-PA rejection.

Hamas’ old charter was often used to silence voices that called for ending Hamas’ isolation, along with the Gaza siege. Taken out of its historical context (a popular uprising), Hamas’ charter read like an archaic treatise, devoid of any political wisdom.

On May 1, Hamas introduced a new charter, entitled: “A Document of General Principles and Policies.” The new charter makes no reference to the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, it realigns Hamas’ political outlook to fit somewhere between national and Islamic sentiments.

It consents to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state per the June 1967 border, although insists on the Palestinian people’s legal and moral claim to all of historic Palestine.

It rejects the Oslo agreements, but speaks of the Palestinian Authority as a fact of life, it supports all forms of resistance and insists on armed resistance as a right of any occupied nation.

Expectedly, it does not recognize Israel.

Hamas’ new charter seems like a scrupulously cautious attempt at finding political balances within extremely tight political margins.

The outcome is a document that is — although it can be understood in the region’s new political context — a frenzied departure from the past.

The Hamas of 1988 may have seemed unrefined and lacking political savvy, but its creation was a direct expression of a real existing sentiment of many Palestinians.

The Hamas of 2017 is much more stately and careful in both words and actions, yet it is adrift in a new space that is governed by Arab money, regional and international politics and the pressure of 10 years under siege and war. Indeed, the future of the movement and its brand of politics and resistance will be determined by the outcome of these circumstances.

Baclofen, a drug that has recently been used to treat alcohol dependence despite not officially being licensed for this condition, might also help stop stuttering, suggest researchers in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

But the findings, which are based on one person, would need to be confirmed in much larger clinical studies in people who are not alcohol dependent, before any firm conclusions could be drawn, they caution.

Baclofen is a muscle relaxant which is widely used for the treatment of stiff or heavy muscles caused by conditions such as multiple sclerosis and spinal cord diseases.

It has recently been used to treat alcohol dependence because it is thought to target the nerve centres in the brain involved in reward and addiction. As yet, the evidence for baclofen’s impact on curbing alcohol craving and improving abstinence has been mixed.

But it seemed to work for a 61 year old man who regularly drank 2-3 litres of wine every day and admitted to having had a problematic relationship with alcohol for 20 years.

The man had gone through several detox and rehab programmes, but afterwards had only managed to keep off the booze for a couple of years before resuming his excess alcohol intake.

As well as sleep problems and a history of depression, he also stuttered, which he attributed to difficulties finding the right words to express himself in Dutch, as this wasn’t his native tongue.

The potential impact of baclofen on stuttering came to light when the man agreed to take part in a clinical trial looking at treating alcohol dependence with the drug.

As part of the trial he ended up taking 120 mg of baclofen every day for 10 weeks. But once a daily dose of 90 mg had been reached, his doctors noticed that he had stopped stuttering.

Nevertheless, the man complained of sleepiness, stiff muscles and heavy legs on this dose, prompting his doctors to gradually taper down the dose to zero.

However, once he had stopped taking baclofen, he returned to his former level of drinking and his stutter re-emerged. He was therefore advised to continue taking the drug at a daily dose of 90 mg after which he stopped drinking for a prolonged period and his stutter disappeared.

“This case illustrates the potential efficacy of a high-dose baclofen treatment for patients with [alcohol dependency],” write the authors, adding that the drug may offer a new treatment option for stuttering.

But they point out that as the man’s stuttering always accompanied excess drinking, alcohol might have directly affected his speech patterns.

Nevertheless, they suggest that there are potentially plausible biological explanations for their finding, one of which is that muscle tension is a factor in stuttering, and therefore the muscle relaxant properties of baclofen could be acting on the respiratory muscles and/or those in the neck and face.

Secondly, some studies suggest that baclofen reduces anxiety in people who are alcohol dependent: anxiety is also associated with stuttering.

Another possibility is that baclofen may indirectly reduce production of the neurotransmitter dopamine: higher levels of this chemical are associated with the speech impediment.

By Anna Mikulska*

(FPRI) — Russian dominance over natural gas deliveries into Europe has been weakening, thanks in large part to the new ways in which natural gas can be transported as well as new sources of supply. These developments are transforming the geopolitics of natural gas in the Black Sea region. Turkey hopes to exploit its geographic position to become a natural gas hub for Europe.

New natural gas pipelines running from Russia and Azerbaijan towards the Black Sea region will certainly remodel the geopolitics of natural gas in Europe. Also, relations between Black Sea states will undergo important changes as Turkey grows in geopolitical importance for both the region and Russia, while Ukraine will lose prominence as a designated transit country for natural gas. Notably, Russia stands to lose some of its political influence in the region as new non-Russian sources of natural gas come online.

The Current Situation: Russia’s Role Reduced

Historically, Europe has depended on Russia for its natural gas supply, much of it shipped via the Black Sea region. European imports from Russia oscillated between 20% and 30%. And until the last decade, these deliveries were relatively stable and uneventful. Even during the Cold War, the Soviet Union refrained from deriving political benefits from Western Europe’s dependence on its natural gas.

But this stable relationship began to change as the iron curtain fell and Russia lost its grip on Eastern Europe. Reduced control over transit countries such as Belarus and Ukraine has disrupted stable deliveries of natural gas to Europe.

Consecutive breaks in Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine (2005/2006, 2007/2008, and 2008/2009) culminated in the total shutoff of natural gas supplies for Ukraine after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. These actions amplified European concerns about the security of the gas supply and encouraged Europe to reduce dependence on Russian gas. If unchecked, this dependence gives Russia too much influence over domestic policies, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, where some countries rely completely on Russian natural gas supplies.

Consequently, Europe has diversified its natural gas supply. The changing natural gas market has allowed Europe to diversify. Discoveries of natural gas in the U.S., Australia, and Azerbaijan, together with the advent of commercialized liquefied natural gas (LNG), gave natural gas a global reach. LNG reduced regional dependencies because gas no longer needed to be shipped via pipeline. Today, U.S. or Australian natural gas can flow freely to any place in the world in the form of LNG and can compete with the regional suppliers like Russia or Norway, which deliver gas via traditional pipeline infrastructure. Thus, today, the natural gas market is beginning to resemble the oil market, where price—rather than location—determines transactions.

Natural Gas Sources Expanding and Diversifying

Eastern European countries see these new conditions as an opportunity to reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas. Many of these countries, which have relied on Russia for much, if not all, of their supply, support diversifying away from Russia, including by increasing LNG imports. Lithuania and Poland have recently completed LNG import terminals and are planning to expand them. Poland aims to build another terminal by 2020. Estonia has two facilities slated for completion by 2020.

In addition, Eastern Europeans support importing natural gas from Azerbaijan via the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) that is under construction. Conversely, Eastern Europe is opposed to Nord Stream 2, which many people in the region argue will expand dependence on Russian gas into the future.

Western Europe, which consumes less Russian gas, focuses more on guaranteeing dependable supply rather than limiting Russian influence. Western Europeans generally tolerate diversification away from Ukrainian transit routes. For example Germany, which has strong economic ties to Russia, sees Nord Stream 1 and the planned Nord Stream 2 as a solution. These two pipelines would deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany via a route under the Baltic Sea. This plan is in line with Russia’s strategy to avoid using Ukraine as a transit country. This strategy also entails resurrecting Russia’s plans for South Stream, a pipeline that first intended to enter Europe via Bulgaria and Romania, but faced regulatory issues within the European Union. The new plans avoid the EU’s regulatory and compliance issues by re-routing the new pipeline through Turkey.

The Consequences: A Change in Roles for Russia, Ukraine and Turkey

The changing natural gas trade in Europe is re-shaping the Black Sea region. One consequence is that Russia’s position will weaken, creating a new role for Turkey as an intermediary between Russia and Europe. Another consequence is that Turkey will become a country where two major natural gas pipelines meet: TANAP and the Turkish Stream.

Russia. With new supplies of natural gas to Europe coming either via TANAP or in the form of foreign LNG, Russia’s dominance over Europe’s energy supply will weaken. As existing long-term contracts expire, Russia may have to cut prices if it is to remain competitive with LNG. Russia, eager to keep its reputation as a dependable natural gas supplier, will diversify its transit routes away from Ukraine. This plan includes swapping the South Stream for the Turkish stream. The move is important not only for Russia’s trade with Europe, but also for its future ventures. Lack of dependability and Europe’s move to reduce its dependency on Russian gas has already put Russia in a weaker position vis-à-vis China. According to analysts, the 10 year long negotiations that ended in a Sino-Russian gas deal in 2014 included more concessions from Russia than from China. Beijing realizes that Russia’s expansion into Asia is a necessary step given Europe’s move away from Russian gas.

Russia’s reputation for dependability is crucial as it enters other markets where no direct pipeline connection is possible. Russian operators Novatek and Gazprom plan new LNG export terminals, including Arctic LNG 2, three LNG trains in Yamal, two LNG trains on the Baltic Sea, and a Shtokman-Teriberka terminal on the Barents Sea.

Ukraine. Russia hoped that Kyiv’s long-term reliance on artificially low-priced Russian gas would help build Russian political influence. As Ukraine’s drifted toward the EU and NATO, Russia hiked gas prices in retaliation. At first, Russia demanded higher gas prices and prompt payment of old debts accumulated over previous gas supplies. Then, in 2014, Russia took it one step further when it attacked Ukraine and seized Crimea.

Ukraine is trying to wean itself from Russian gas by importing gas from the EU. And while the country still remains a transit route for some gas destined for Europe, Russia has reduced the volume there in favor of the Nord Stream 1 or the Opal pipeline in Central Europe. This change has hit Ukraine’s finances, with estimates suggesting that Ukraine will lose $2bn in transit fees each year.

Ukraine must rethink its strategy, especially given pipeline developments and new LNG deliveries. The government has plans to restructure the country’s energy sector. Ukraine is eager to hop on the “LNG train” and is planning new onshore and floating facilities in the Odessa area, which should open by the end of this decade. The current instability, however, has a highly negative impact on all these efforts, especially as Turkey positions itself as a potential contender to take over Ukraine’s place on the market.

Turkey. Turkey has the most to gain as it becomes the new natural gas corridor to Europe. With confidence in dependability of supplies from Russia and Ukraine dwindling, Turkey is becoming a major transit country for Russian gas as well as for Azerbaijani gas. The massive Shah Daniz natural gas and oil fields in Azerbaijan may become a staple of the European energy diet.

But how Turkey plays its cards will be crucial for its future relations with both Europe and Russia. Most importantly, the country must be vigilant not to fall into Russia’s sphere of political influence. Russia has already provided Turkey with lower natural gas prices and promised further discounts when the Turkish Stream becomes operational. But this seemingly beneficial deal may have far reaching consequences in terms of Turkey’s dependence on Russia for low priced gas and on transit fees as a source of revenues.

The Regional Impact

Turkey is moving in the right direction by diversifying beyond Russia via TANAP and investing in LNG import terminals. At the same time, an agreement to build Turkish Stream, an expensive and long-term infrastructure project, signals that Russia and Turkey hope for more friendly relations and stronger economic ties going forward.

Beyond the Russian-Turkish relationship, the move towards Turkey’s role as an energy hub will redefine the country’s position towards other Black Sea nations. It may be a sign of better relations between Turkey and Greece, engaged for years in a conflict over Cyprus. Because both the TANAP and the Turkish stream will resurface at the Greek border, the countries will have strong incentive to put animosity aside in order to benefit from energy cooperation. On the other hand, Romania and Bulgaria will be on the losing part of the equation as they fail to receive the benefits of hosting the cancelled South Stream pipeline.

The energy landscape of the Black Sea is changing rapidly. The traditional balance of power is changing as Russia loses some of its grip on natural gas supply, and as new transit routes are being drawn via Turkey. But it will take time before the pipelines are built and gas starts flowing. Until then, we should expect the geopolitical games to continue.

About the author:
*Anna Mikulska, Ph.D., is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and nonresident fellow in energy studies at the Baker Institute.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

A ransomware virus is reported to be spreading aggressively around the globe, with over 50,000 computers having been targeted. The virus infects computer files and then demands money to unblock them.

An increase in activity of the malware was noticed starting from 8am CET (07:00 GMT) Friday, security software company Avast reported, adding that it “quickly escalated into a massive spreading.”

In a matter of hours, over 57,000 attacks have been detected worldwide, the company said.

The ransomware, known as WanaCrypt0r 2.0, is believed to have infected National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the UK and Spain’s biggest national telecommunications firm, Telefonica.

According to Avast, the ransomware has also targeted Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan.

The virus is apparently the upgraded version of the ransomware that first appeared in February. Believed to be affecting only Windows operated computers, it changes the affected file extension names to “.WNCRY.”

It then drops ransom notes to a user in a text file, demanding $300 worth of bitcoins to be paid to unlock the infected files within a certain period of time.

By William Gallo

US President Donald Trump has escalated his feud with ousted former FBI director James Comey, implying there are secret recordings of one of their private conversations from earlier this year.

In an early morning tweet Friday, President Trump said, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

Trump on Tuesday fired Comey, who was leading an investigation into alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 election, as well as possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

White House officials insist the firing had nothing to do with the Russia probe, though the president appears to have undermined that assertion during a televised interview Thursday.

Much of the controversy centers around a White House dinner meeting earlier this year between Trump and Comey.

A New York Times report late Thursday said that Trump asked Comey to “pledge his loyalty to him” during the dinner meeting.

The report said Comey refused to make the pledge, but instead told Trump that he would “always be honest with him.” Trump pressed Comey several times for his loyalty, and finally Comey told the president he would have the FBI director’s “honest loyalty,” according to the newspaper account.

White House officials dispute the accuracy of that account, which relied on unnamed sources who reportedly have spoken with Comey about the meeting.

Comey himself has made no such allegations. In a farewell note to FBI staff, Comey played down the dispute, saying: “I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for not reason at all.”

The issue is unlikely to go away, however, especially in light of Trump’s tweet on Friday implying that the conversation had been recorded.

In a television interview Thursday with NBC News, Trump gave a different account of the dinner. The president said Comey requested the meeting because the FBI director wanted to keep his job. The president did not mention a loyalty pledge request.

The president also said he had asked the head of the nation’s prime law enforcement agency whether he was being investigated.

Trump said he asked Comey “if it’s possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, ‘You are not under investigation.’”

The president, in the television interview, repeated “I am not under investigation” when asked about Comey’s sworn testimony that there is an ongoing probe into his 2016 president campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government.

‘Highly inappropriate’

Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange “highly inappropriate” at a minimum.

“There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation,” Moss told VOA.

But Moss, deputy executive director of The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is “difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation.”

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter it is “now totally clear that Trump’s firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon.”

That is a reference to former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump asserts in Thursday’s interview he would have fired Comey even if top Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling former President Barack Obama’s appointee “a showboat. He’s a grandstander.”

Comey was directing investigations into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, along with possible meddling by Moscow in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the FBI chief and denied it tried to put the responsibility on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s memo for the abrupt removal.

“I don’t think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general” for Comey’s firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary.

Sanders, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and even Vice President Mike Pence earlier had asserted, though, that Trump’s firing decision was based on the deputy attorney general’s memo.

At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein was instructed to draft a memo justifying Comey’s dismissal or whether he decided to write the document without direction.

Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comey’s firing Tuesday, according to The Washington Post and ABC News.

Rosenstein’s memo mentioned Comey’s mishandling of last year’s investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Russian investigation

News media reports quote sources who assert Comey was ousted, however, because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation.

The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states also are calling for the appointment of a special counsel.

Comey was appointed by Obama in 2013. FBI directors serve 10-year terms to insulate them from political interference, but can be removed by presidents.

Until now, the only other time an FBI director had been dismissed was in 1993 when President Bill Clinton removed William Sessions, who refused to leave voluntarily amid ethical concerns.

Stronger and more frequent hurricanes may pose a new threat to the sooty tern, an iconic species of migratory seabird found throughout the Caribbean and Mid-Atlantic, a new Duke University-led study reveals.

The study, published this week in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PeerJ, is the first to map the birds’ annual migratory path and demonstrate how its timing and trajectory place them in the direct path of hurricanes moving into the Caribbean after forming over the Atlantic.

“The route the birds take and that most Atlantic-forming hurricanes take is basically the same, only in reverse,” said Ryan Huang, a doctoral student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the study. “That means these birds, who are usually very tired from traveling long distances over water without rest, are flying head-on into some of the strongest winds on the planet.”

“This is worrying because we know that as Earth’s climate changes, we expect to see more frequent and powerful hurricanes in the future — meaning that the chances of sooty terns being hit by storms will likely go up,” Huang said.

Hurricane season typically lasts from June to November, with peak activity occurring in August and September.

A new map produced by the research shows that sooty terns leave their breeding colony at Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys each June as hurricane season starts. They migrate southward and eastward across the Caribbean through summer and early fall, before skirting the northern coast of South America and arriving at their winter habitat off the Atlantic coast of Brazil in November.

Huang and his colleagues charted the migratory path by recording and mapping the dates and locations of all sooty terns banded for study at the Dry Tortugas since the 1950s but found dead elsewhere. They also mapped locational data retrieved from birds that were fitted with satellite-telemetry tracking tags. When they overlaid all this data with maps of hurricane paths from the same period, they discovered a striking correlation.

“While it’s impossible to say just how many of the birds died as a direct result of the hurricanes, we saw a strong relationship between the numbers and locations of bird deaths and the numbers and locations of hurricanes,” said Stuart L. Pimm, the Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke’s Nicholas School.

“What’s really interesting is that it’s not just the big category 4 and 5 storms that can kill large numbers of birds. A series of smaller, weaker storms may have the same impact as that of a single large, strong storm,” Pimm noted. “In September 1973, Tropical Storm Delia, a small storm in the Gulf of Mexico, killed a lot of birds because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Although sooty terns are neither rare nor endangered — 80,000 or more of them are estimated to breed in the Dry Tortugas each year — they have long been used by scientists as an indicator species to determine the health of the region’s marine environment.

“If there are changes taking place in the ocean, you’ll see corresponding changes taking place in the health of these tern populations, among other indicator species,” Huang said. “That’s what makes our findings somewhat concerning. If these birds are experiencing negative effects from changing ocean conditions, they are unlikely to be the only species affected.”

A core CPI that excludes rent is up by just 0.8 percent over the last year.

In spite of concerns about the economy approaching full employment, the Consumer Price Index continues to show no evidence of acceleration. The overall CPI rose by 0.2 percent in April while the core index rose by just 0.1 percent. Over the last year the overall CPI has risen 2.2 percent, while the core index increased by 1.9 percent. Comparing the average price level for the last three months with the prior three months, the core rate has risen at just a 1.8 percent annual rate.

The difference between the overall and core index is due to a 1.1 percent jump in energy prices after two months of sharp declines. With world oil prices falling again in recent weeks, this increase will not continue and may be reversed.

The main item pushing core inflation higher continues to be rents. The index for rent rose by 0.3 percent in April, while the index for owners’ equivalent rent rose by 0.2 percent. For the year they are up by 3.8 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively. The core index excluding rent is up by just 0.8 percent over the last year.

There were some anomalies in both directions in the April data. Prescription drug prices fell by 0.9 percent, leaving an increase of 3.1 percent over the last year. College textbook prices fell by 1.2 percent, putting the year over year increase at 4.6 percent. The price of physicians’ service fell by 1.2 percent, leaving a 1.9 percent year-over-year increase.

On the high side, hotel prices rose 2.1 percent in April, giving a year-over-year increase of 2.9 percent. This figure is always erratic due to the difficulty of seasonal adjustments. Cigarette prices rose by 4.5 percent, presumably the effect of taxes being raised in the month.

The price of new cars fell by 0.2 percent in April, leaving a modest 0.4 percent increase over the last year, while used car prices fell 0.5 percent. They are down 4.6 percent for the year. With demand for new cars appearing to weaken and a glut of used cars showing up on the market due to cars purchased with subprime loans being repossessed, it seems likely that prices will be flat or trending downward for the near future.

There is some modest evidence of inflationary pressures showing up at earlier stages in the production process.

Final demand prices in the producer price index rose by 0.5 percent in April, but this follows a 0.1 percent decline in March. They are up 2.5 percent over the last year, driven by higher energy prices. The core index for final demand prices rose 0.4 percent last month and is up by 2.3 percent over the last year. Among the items driving price increases in the final goods index are car prices, which rose by 0.4 percent in April, and cigarettes, which rose by 2.2 percent.

Over the year, car prices and cigarette prices are up by 2.1 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively. In both cases, prices are likely to increase at a slower pace in future months.

Import prices, excluding food and fuel, rose 0.3 percent in April and up 1.0 percent over the last year. Export prices excluding food and fuel fell by 0.1 percent in April. They are up by 0.6 percent over the last year. Core import prices had been falling between 2013 and 2016, putting downward pressure on inflation, but the recent increases are still lower than the rates in 2011 and 2012. The future course of prices will of course depend in large part on movements in the value of the dollar.

The basic story from the April price report is that inflation continues to be well under control with no real evidence of inflationary pressures building. The rate of inflation in the core CPI actually appears to be slowing slightly rather than accelerating. What little inflationary pressure exists is primarily coming from housing.

It seems that the United States and Israel are trying to intimidate Iran and want it to make the first move. If they succeed, in intimidating Iran, it would be easier for them to convince the world that Iran was the first to strike and they then have the reasons to attack the country. Both the United States and Israel have repeatedly declared that Iran is a threat to them and for the entire world. Until today Iran has applied restraint, but it is feared that repeated provocations may end Iran’s patience.

One of the moves in the recent past to bully Iran was the deployment of a made in United States F-22s, the most sophisticated stealth jet fighter, at Al Dafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, which is less than 200 miles from Iran’s mainland.

However, the US Air Force adamantly denied the presence of the jet in UAE presence is a threat for any country. Nevertheless, the Al Dafra Air Base is just a short hop over the Persian Gulf from Iran’s southern border.

Reportedly, a spokesperson of US Air Force avoided confirming the exact location of the F-22s, but said they had been deployed to a base in Southwest Asia. He also clarified that the F-22s were simply taking part in a scheduled deployment and were not a threat for Iran. However, he informed that it was a very normal deployment to strengthen military relationships, promote sovereign and regional security, improve combined tactical air operations and enhance interoperability of forces.

The spokesman declined to say what the Raptors’ mission was in the region this time around or how many planes had been deployed, citing operational security. However, he said because of the F-22’s next-generation capabilities, any number of planes deployed in the region is a significant move.

The F-22 has been officially combat-operational since December 2005, and have been used in Syria. However, when it comes to dealing with Iran, the US and its allied take extra care to avoid any embarrassment.

Lockheed Martin, in-charge of the F-22 program, said last year that the plane was perfectly suitable for undertaking more sophisticated adversaries and could be used in deep penetration strike missions in well-defended combat zones inside places like North Korea or Iran.

History tells that all the US missions against Iran have faced some kind of adversity and F-22 may not be an exception. The new deployment comes in the midst of the Air Forces’ continuing battle with a rare but sustained oxygen problem plaguing the F-22. Since 2008, nearly two dozen pilots have reported experiencing “hypoxia-like symptoms” in mid-air. The problem got so bad that the Air Force grounded the planes for nearly five months last year in an attempt to fix the problem.

The US Air Force says the F-22 is ready for war, should it be called. It says, “If our nation needs a capability to enter contested air space, to deal with air forces that are trying to deny our forces the ability to maneuver without prejudice on the ground, it will be the F-22 that takes on that mission.”

Often Pakistanis fail to understand why the Middle Eastern countries are extending support to the United States in a bid to make Iran bow down? Is the inherent dislike of Iran so high that they are ready to join any endeavor to wipe out the country that has withstood sanctions over the last 32 years?