By Thorsten Polleit*

You do not need to be a financial market wizard to see that especially bond markets have reached bubble territory: bond prices have become artificially inflated by central banks’ unprecedented monetary policies. For instance, the price-earnings-ratio for the US 10-year Treasury yield stands around 44, while the equivalent for the euro zone trades at 85. In other words, the investor has to wait 44 years (and 85 years, respectively) to recover the bonds’ purchasing price through coupon payments.

Meanwhile, however, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) keeps bringing up its borrowing rate; and even the European Central Bank (ECB) is now toying with the idea of putting an end to its expansionary policy sooner rather or later. Most notably, however, US long-term rates have come down since the end of 2016, despite the Fed raising its short-term interest rate. How come?

Presumably, investors seem to expect that the Fed might not hike interest rates much further, and/or that higher short-term interest rates will prove to be short-lived, to be reversed quite quickly. In any case, bond markets do not seem to expect interest rates to go back to normal levels — that is toward pre-crisis levels — anytime soon. Several reasons could be responsible for such an expectation.

First and foremost, the US economy appears to be addicted to cheap money. The latest economic recovery has been orchestrated, in particular, through a hefty dose of easy monetary policy. It is therefore fair to assume that market agents will have a hard time coping with higher interest rates. For instance, corporations, consumers, and mortgage borrowers, in general, will face higher credit costs and a less favorable access to funding if and when interest rates edge higher.

In particular, higher interest rates could send the inflated prices of stocks, bonds, and housing southward. For instance, expected future cash flows would be discounted at a higher interest rate, deflating their present values and thus market prices. The deflation of asset markets would hit borrowers hard: Their asset values would nosedive, while nominal debt would remain unchanged so that equity capital is wiped out — a scenario most investors might assume to be undesirable from the viewpoint of central banks.

Moreover, the yield curve has become flatter and flatter in recent years. This, in turn, suggests that banks’ profit opportunities from lending have been shrinking, potentially dampening the inflow of new credit into the economic system. A further decline of the yield spread could bring real trouble: In the past, a flat or even inverted yield curve has been accompanied by a significant economic downturn or even a stock market crash.

That said, investors might expect that central banks find it hard to bring interest rates back up, especially back to a level where real interest rates are positive. This holds true for the Fed as well as for all other central banks, including the ECB. This is because the monetary policy of increasing borrowing rates by a significant margin would most likely prick the “Super-Bubble” which has been inflated and nurtured by central banks’ monetary policies over the last decades.

However, it wouldn’t be surprising if, again, central banks, the monopolist producers of fiat money, turn out to be the major course of trouble. After many years of exceptionally low interest rates, central banks may well underestimate the disruptive consequences an increase in borrowing rates has on growth, employment, and the entire fiat money system. In any case, the artificial boom created by central banks must at some point turn into bust, as the Austrian business cycle theory informs us.

The boom turns into bust either by central banks taking away the punchbowl of low interest rates and generous liquidity generation; or the commercial banks, in view of financially overstretched borrowers, stop extending credit; or ever greater quantities of fiat money need be issued by central banks to keep the boom going, inflating prices so that ultimately people start fleeing out of cash. In such an extreme case, the demand for money collapses, and then a Super-Super-Bubble pops.

In this context, it is interesting to see that the price of Bitcoin has been skyrocketing in recent years. There are certainly several reasons for this. One reason is undoubtedly the fact that the cyber unit offers a potential “escape route” from fiat money. Bitcoin (and other cyber units as well) might well be seen, and increasingly so, as a “safe haven” in future times of trouble. And there will be for sure new waves of trouble going forward — whether central banks will tighten interest rates or not.

As alternatives to fiat money become increasingly accepted, positive spill-over effects can be expected for gold. Gold has always been the monetary prototype of a “safe haven.” It may be increasingly in demand for its store of value function going forward and, by making use of the blockchain, even as a digitalized means of payment representing a claim on physical gold. Once the Super-Bubble pops, we will see for sure what people demand as the ultimate means of payment: gold or cyber units, or both.

About the author:
*Dr. Thorsten Polleit, Chief Economist of Degussa and macro-economic advisor to the P&R REAL VALUE fund. He is Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

U2 have paid an emotional tribute to the late Leonard Cohen during a show in Toronto – with Bono hailing him as “an addiction I can’t give up”, NME reports.

The iconic Irish band, who are currently touring to celebrate the 30th anniversary of ‘The Joshua Tree’, paid tribute at a show in Toronto over the weekend.

Bono said: “Tonight we hold onto some things, as you let go of others. I’m not quite sure how to let it go, but I know tonight I’m holding onto the music of Leonard Cohen, thinking about it today. It’s been on my mind. He’s an addiction I’m not ready to give up, so I’m going to sing this one to Leonard Cohen.”

The singer then instructed the 50,000 fans present to light up the Rogers Centre with their phones – before launching into a cover of Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’. You can watch an excerpt of their cover below.

He said: ” Just think. Think of Leonard. He called us friends. Really, we were just fans. That was okay by me. For Leonard Cohen. Stay with me. That’s beautiful. Stars coming out for Leonard. Different part of the country, but you know he loved this city. Stay with me now. I want to try something.”

He also opened up on his friendship with the singer – and recalled his desire to smoke a cigarette on his 80th birthday.

” I asked him, ‘Leonard, what do you want to do on your 80th? Have you made any plans?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I want to smoke a cigarette.’ [I said] ‘But you’d given up cigarettes for 27 years,’ [and he said] ‘I’m just going to have one.’ We could all be so lucky to live a life like that.”

U2 are scheduled to bring their Joshua Tree tour to the UK next month – performing at London’s Twickenham Stadium on July 8 and 9.

The shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, are dry and inhospitable, with grasses as the dominant plant type. It hasn’t always been that way.

Over the last four million years, the Omo-Turkana basin has seen a range of climates and ecosystems, and has also seen significant steps in human evolution. Scientists previously thought that long-term drying of the climate contributed to the growth of grasslands in the area and the rise of large herbivores, which in turn may have shaped how humans developed.

It’s tough to prove that hypothesis, however, because of the difficulty of reconstructing four million years of climate data.

Researchers from the University of Utah have found a better way. By analyzing isotopes of oxygen preserved in herbivore teeth and tusks, they can quantify the aridity of the region and compare it to indicators of plant type and herbivore diet.

The results show that, unexpectedly, no long-term drying trend was associated with the expansion of grasses and grazing herbivores. Instead, variability in climate events, such as rainfall timing, and interactions between plants and animals may have had more influence on our ancestors’ environment.

This shows that the expansion of grasslands isn’t solely due to drought, but more complex climate factors are at work, both for modern Africans now and ancient Africans in the Pleistocene.

By Salvador Llaudes*

These are difficult times for the European Union. For the first time, a member state (the UK) has decided to abandon the project. In parallel, notwithstanding recent electoral setbacks, Eurosceptic voices remain prominent across the continent. Despite this, Spain is still a bastion of support for the integration process. Data from a new survey demonstrates this: 44% of Spaniards are convinced that the EU should have more competencies and finally become a United States of Europe, the highest of any country in the survey.

Traditionally, there have been no major Eurosceptic parties in the Spanish parliament. Even after the huge impact of the economic crisis and austerity measures, anti-European sentiment is still largely unacceptable in the politics of the country. The advantages associated with the European project are one of the most important reasons driving Spanish support for the EU. Compared to the other western European samples in the survey, a higher percentage of Spaniards believe they have benefited from being part of the EU (45% agree, against 25% who think the opposite). This attachment to the European project prevents political parties developing policies that are hostile towards the EU since there is little public appetite for these, as has been seen in recent elections in both 2015 and 2016.

The benefit of EU integration for Spain is, undoubtedly, material (it has been a net receiver of European funds for so many years). These funds have been instrumental in the modernization of the country and in providing new opportunities across society. But Spaniards also identify as especially successful EU policies some of the immaterial aspects of EU membership, such as the freedom to live and work elsewhere in the EU or the elimination of borders between member states. Decades of international isolation under a dictatorship help explain this: Spaniards know they are better off when they open themselves to the world.

Forty years of Franco’s regime explain many other aspects of the Spanish position towards the EU. For Spaniards, Europe means openness but also democracy, the rule of law and social progress. Despite the severe economic crisis, this is not so quickly forgotten, not least given a comparatively weak national identity and heavy reserves of scepticism towards Spanish politicians and institutions. The existent aversion to authoritarianism helps explain the practical inexistence of extreme right parties in Spain and the strong performance of the country in many social indicators, including tolerance towards homosexuals (71% of the Spanish people agree with same-sex marriage, with only 12% against) or acceptance of immigrants.

Spaniards are used to meeting foreigners in their daily life (Spain is the third most visited country in the world, with around 60 million annual arrivals) and they are aware of the huge economic benefits of tourism. More think that immigration has been good for the country than not (the only nationals in the survey, together with Britons, who think this way). Moreover, Spain is the only country in the sample that feels more positive than negative about accepting refugees (26% in favour, 25% against) and economic migrants (25% in favour, 22% against). There is another important factor that explains Spanish positive views towards migration: Spain itself has traditionally been a country of emigration, both to the rest of Europe and Latin America. This trend has reappeared as many people (especially young people) have left the country since 2008 following the economic crisis.

Some analysts have claimed that the positive attitude towards foreigners in Spain was not genuine but rather a consequence of the comparatively small amount of immigrants living in Spain, and/or the good economic situation of the country. The data prove them wrong. Since the turn of the century, several million people have moved to Spain, growing the number of immigrants by more than 10% in only a few years. The economic argument is also not very solid – there was no significant increase in negative attitudes towards foreigners when the economic crisis hit and unemployment levels reached historic highs.

Still, it is true that integration of foreigners has been facilitated by the fact that many share Spanish as their native tongue (those coming from Latin America) or are very fast at learning it (as is the case of Romanians, the largest foreign community in Spain). The integration of the second (and successive) generation of immigrants in both the public and private spheres will be a key question for the future.

The recent crisis has been a litmus test of Spain’s Europeanism. There has been neither a surge of Euroscepticism nor of anti-immigration sentiment in the country, although it is true that the so-called ‘naïf Europeanism’ which used to exist in the country (with no criticism of any decision taken in Brussels, no matter how good or bad it was for Spain) is no longer there either.  The European Union is seen as a project of not only economic benefits, but also of values, which Spaniards are willing to share with other countries aiming to join the EU (only 21% are against enlargement).

This vision stands with the fact that Spaniards believe that many existing problems require European solutions. For migration, 82% support a common policy (according to data from the autumn 2016 Eurobarometer), 83% support a common approach for security and defence, while 70% support the common currency as a solution to some economic issues. Equally importantly, immigration is not considered a problem, openness and tolerance are widespread (the EU and globalization are seen as synonyms of these), and there is an important aversion to authoritarianism. Finally, the electoral system has helped to weed out more illiberal political parties

About the author:
*Salvador Llaudes, Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @sllaudes<

Source:
This article can be found at Elcano Royal Institute, and was first published by Chatham House in June 2017 as part of the research paper “The Future of Europe: Comparing Public and Elite Attitudes”.

By Ben Sixsmith

Mitchell Blatt defends “Never Trump” neoconservatives from my argument that they are not conservative. It is a civil, spirited and substantive piece. I shall endeavour to uphold these virtues in my response.

I do not think neoconservatives are pseudo-conservative because they are “small government, pro-free trade” supporters of “a strong role for America in the world”. None of these positions are contrary to conservatism in broad terms but they can be depending on their particular forms.

There is a question of scale. Salt is important in cooking yet it can be overused. Supporting an American influence in the world can be conservative yet backing regime change and democratisation is not.

There is also a question of ends and means. Small government and free markets might be means of maintaining peaceful and prosperous societies but are not ends in themselves. They can produce positive economic outcomes but if these arrive too gravely at the cost of social cohesion, cultural standards, environmental preservation and personal fulfilment something can be wrong, or, at least, can be missing. 

I would like to admit to an error in my piece. Quoting the neoconservative Noah Rothman’s claim that “in terms of policy and governance, America in 2017 is a much more conservative country than it was in 1992” I all but ignored the first six words. So, Blatt is correct, for example, that replying to Rothman’s reference to the “revitalization of First and Second Amendment freedoms” by mentioning private censorship did not refute his claim.

But what inspired this error? The absurd narrowness of the point. The President Bush who signed the Immigration Act of 1990 was not especially conservative – and, besides, politics is about a great deal more than policy and governance. Culture matters. So, while the First Amendment is of course significant, being shouted down and sacked can have the same censorious effect as legal prohibitions.

Neoconservatives often indulge in excessive liberal individualism, and I believe that in this essay Mr Blatt has done the same. He says “it is not the government’s role, from a libertarian perspective, to control everyone’s personal choices”. True, but libertarians are not conservatives. Not for nothing did Russell Kirk describe them as “chirping sectaries”. There is also a certain Whiggishness in Blatt’s response to my concerns about Middle Eastern conflict. “The threat of dying in war and violence in modern times is at the lowest it’s been in history,” he writes. It is true, as Pinker claims, that violent deaths have declined but assessing the threat of violence must involve not just the past and present but the future. Social trends are reversible, and as we face border-hopping jihadist fanatics, sectarian strife and nuclear brinkmanship we must accept that the “Long Peace” is no exception.

Mr Blatt concludes:

Take the scope back to 1776: If conservatives believe that the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and support for immigration, trade, and bootstrapping American individualism are the values that made America successful, then those are the values they want to preserve.

One could quibble with this list of American virtues. In the eighteenth century, for example, naturalised immigrants had to be “free white persons”; mentioned not because I advocate the idea but because support for immigration on the scale that it exists today cannot pretend to have such age-old origins. But my real problem with this list is that is that while constitutional values are essential, they are one aspect of America. A nation is about far more than its governance. It is about its language, its literature, its art, its architecture, its family structures, its natural environments, its existential assumptions and its ancient myths. I do not list these because I think all policies must take them into account but as a nation’s values cannot be astracted from its culture, not its culture from its people.

Finally, what does conservatism mean, Sumantra Maitra asks. At the risk of being arrogant, I will take a stab.

The three essential conservative values are reverence, rootedness and realism: reverence for something that transcends quotidian existence, rootedness in our communities and realism about the objective facts of life.

Reverence connects us with civilisation (its religions, rituals, art, ideas and achievements). Roots connect with our kin (families, neighbourhoods and nations). Realism advises our efforts to aid them. Only when these values work in concert do we have enough insight and inspiration for effective conservatism.

Does this tell us where to set tax rates? Does it tell us how to combat global warming? Does it tell us how we could respond to an intelligence explosion? No. Nein. Nyet. But it does tell us a lot. “Never-Trump” neoconservatives lack rootedness, in their post-Enlightenment understanding of what constitutes a nation, and realism, in their hubristic ambitions for American military power.

They are not alone. The more ideological elements of the Alt-Right lacks rootedness and realism as well, in their fixation on race, abstracted from localities, and their belief that people can be drawn to their worldview.

Reverence is harder to define and defend – being less objective and more open to being exploited – but one thing we can be sure of is that no civilisations have survived for long without it.

This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

By Holly Ashe*

For a working-class girl, who’s studying and working at the same time, let me be honest about something that I always wanted to declare: “I am not a feminist.” That F word has been captured by the intersectional postmodern left, given a complete makeover, and is now heading the realm of an authoritarian and fascistic campaign while proclaiming to be an emancipatory reform movement. This once truly and proudly progressive word helped women win some of the biggest battles, including fairness and free speech, among many others. Now the neo-feminist establishment is tarnishing the work of our foresisters, destroying the foundations of what was being built to create a world that man and woman can live side by side in total fairness, while dividing the movement further in race and completely manufactured gendered terms.

The latest victim to be attacked by this aggressive and mephitic army, just because they simple don’t agree with the extremism and bigotry these people are preaching? Our very intelligent, sexy heroine Miss USA Kara McCullough.

For the uninitiated, McCullough works as an emergency preparedness specialist in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response after earning her Bachelor’s degree in chemistry; at the age of 25 years old she just won Miss USA, and has been inducted in the National Society of Black Engineers and the Golden Key International Honor Society. Not only is she incredibly intelligent, she is also fiercely independent. Standing in front of the world, in one of the biggest competitions of her life, being judged on the kind of person you are, she decided to not sugar coat her opinions on equality and feminism, saying the brave words I started this article with: “I am not a feminist.”

The internet obviously lit up instantly, with sisterhood trolls gathering together to coerce and attack the tenacious scientist. Blasphemy, heresy, stupidity… I read it all on our illustrious Twitter hashtags (we all know how much I adore hashtags) none truly informing us curious audience, as to why not being a “man-hating” feminist is a bad thing.

This isn’t unique. Recently in the West, the postmodern liberal left seems to have some curious ideas as to what constitutes as real problems for women in the real world. Dare to go against the conventional wisdom? You will be treated as a heretic–won’t matter even if you’re a woman. Men have a higher suicide rate by a huge gap, only 6.7% of the prison population are female in the US, and boys are coming out of school with less qualifications than girls are. Domestic violence towards men has risen, and issues like forced marriage, with one in five forced marriage victims being men.

You probably won’t hear that much. The PC crazy world we now live in have put pussy on a pedestal (so to speak!), so high that no one can reach their evangelical prowess. God forbid anyone with a penis say anything remotely sensible, without showing the deferential treatment, you get the bizarre charge of “mansplainin”. These neo-puritans have taken sexism to another level and reversed it.

It’s baffling that this needs to be mentioned, but if one compares the problems that women are facing around the world to these embarrassingly privileged liberal middle class sisterhood, the differences are startling. Just a couple of days back, I read Western feminists are fighting an existential battle against “manspreading”, the slightly irritating action of a man basically power posing on public transport, which arguably creates slightly less room. Feminists have taken to this with great aversion, especially in Madrid, where they are now “cracking down on manspreading”. Compared to that, in Turkey, a staggering 86% of women have suffered domestic abuse. Between 100 million and 140 million women are subjected to female genital mutilation around the world, but mainly in Africa. How about the abhorrent female rights in Saudi Arabia? Recently a 19-year-old Pakistani girl has been sentenced to death for being raped by her cousin at gun point.99% of women and girls in Egypt surveyed by UN Women had experienced some form of sexual assault with little to no help from their justice system.

Even being a hard-core feminist doesn’t exclude you from the imperious opinions from fellow hard-core feminists. Not even a woman’s march could satisfy some intersectionalists, as females there were apparently too able bodied and white.

A typical glimpse of the intersectional feminist world is the woman who aborted her baby because he was male. How have we gone from fighting for woman’s vote to being so disgusted and repelled to the opposite sex that we don’t even want to give birth to them? Is a feminist’s wet dream a world where the men are sent to a deserted waste land only used for their seed, while women live in a utopia of non-belligerence, and a society which is more interested in privilege then actual problems? Bit like a Rick and Morty episode I watched, where they send sex robots to the savage and feral men on the outside, get them to mate and impregnate the machine, then once the sex of the baby has been confirmed, they’d choose to either throw the baby away to the wasteland (if it was a boy) or keep it (if it was a girl).

If these are the women Kara McCullough, does not want to associate with, then let it be on record, that these are the same women I don’t want to associate myself with either. It’s hard to say you’re not a feminist, when you believe in fairness for women, but that does not mean women are superior to men, nor does it mean that every man is an evil misogynist who believes you belong in the kitchen.

This movement is not benefitting anyone. It isn’t out there making changes to women’s in needs lives. All it is doing is belittle my gender, the female gender. It’s logically contradictory to claim you’re weak and need safe space, but you’re also strong and needs to be respected. Life isn’t like that. It’s confirming the stereotypes of glamorized weakness and victimhood, that we women took so long to desperately shake off, that we are equal and we don’t have to be in a juvenile battle of sexes to prove that we’re capable enough to survive in this planet. If they put half the energy they use in moaning (yes, moaning) about mansplaining, why simultaneously moaning about men not helping them, and put that energy into highlighting the real inequality that is harming and killing women worldwide, maybe we would have a fairer world. And a less whinging one too.

About the author:
*Holly Ashe is a London based fashion and culture writer. She was previously published in Vogue International as a fashion designer and a start-up business entrepreneur. You can follow her on twitter @hollyroseashe

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

By Arnold Huijgen*

On May 6, the brand new House of European History in Brussels opened its doors. Since I happened to be in Brussels on the day of the opening, I decided to pay the House a visit. With respect to religion and religious liberty, I found an empty House.

The House – a project of the European Parliament – has been wildly controversial, not only because of its cost (€55 million, or $61.7 million U.S.), but also because of the ideology behind it. Ever since Hans-Gert Pöttering presented the idea of this House “to enable Europeans of all generations to learn more about their own history” in his inaugural speech as president of the European Parliament, there has been an intense debate about what parts of European history should be presented.

In itself, the setup of the permanent exposition is tasteful. But the first floor already hints at what is lacking in the soul of this European project. It is dedicated to various sorts of exchange across Europe: food, drink, ideas, and even fashion are highlighted as examples of European exchange. But it begs the question, “What makes all this typically European?” After all, other cultures trade goods and services, as well.

The overview of European history that is presented from the second floor upward is both typically modern and emphatically French and socialist. The French Revolution seems to be the birthplace of Europe; there is little room for anything that may have preceded it. The Napoleonic Code and the philosophy of Karl Marx receive a prominent place, while slavery and colonialism are highlighted as the darker sides of European culture.

One must give credit where it is due. The floors devoted to the atrocities of the twentieth century – the First and Second World Wars – are particularly impressive. One enters these parts of the exhibition in the dark, feeling disoriented. That is a physical experience of the mental state that one experiences walking past the House’s impressive exhibition on the Holocaust.

After these stirring images, the top floor is truly a disappointment. It is reserved for an overview of the European Union’s institutions, such as the European Parliament, the European Council, and the European Commission. This is literally the apex of the European Union’s narcissism, as if the high point of European history consists in an overview of the various responsibilities of the present-day bureaucracy.

But the most remarkable thing about the House is that, as far as its account is concerned, it is as if religion does not exist. In fact, it never existed and never impacted the history of the continent. On none of the many floors is any attention paid to the Reformation as the great divide between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, to religious wars between confessions, or the quest for freedom of religion that was at the heart of the Dutch Revolt. If one did not know that the Roman Catholic Church existed, one would not find it out in the permanent exposition of European history that the European Parliament seeks to present to every European (at that European’s expense). No longer is European secularism fighting the Christian religion; it simply ignores every religious aspect in life altogether.

Meanwhile, it is clear that religion did play a crucial role in European history. Social structures in southern European countries cannot be understood without the role of the Roman Catholic Church. The responsibility of the individual, stressed in Protestantism, is a central tenet of European culture. Calvinism may or may not be the fertile soil that buds forth capitalism as Max Weber theorized, but at least its role in creating the cultural structures of much of Europe needs to be discussed. Until the 1960s, at the very minimum, most Europeans understood themselves as Christians, and – to cite but one example – Christian Democratic political parties still play an important role in the politics of large European countries like Germany.

In modern, secular Europe, there is a tendency to ignore religion altogether. This is due, in no small part, to the rise of Islam and its potential demographic replacement of Christianity as the continent’s largest religion. When attention would be paid to religion in European history, this would result in a distinctly Christian focus, and those two millennia of history seems to be a heinous thing to many politicians. Whatever the cause, the European Constitution (the Treaty of Lisbon) does not mention God at all.

The impact of all this is not relegated to the past. Its greatest cost is in the present. When God and religion are no longer mentioned as part of public life, the technocrats can lay claim to control, and the European discourse is governed by experts in the fields of money and power. Instead of God, the European institutions of Brussels take center stage. Not surprisingly, these provide neither motivation nor enthusiasm to Europeans, which in turn stimulates right-wing populist movements, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France or Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) in the Netherlands. These populist movements seek to limit freedom in different ways than the technocrats, but often using the same mechanisms. At the end of the day, the erasure of religion from the House of European History undermines its powerful warnings against potentially violent movements and wars.

Without Christianity, Europe has no soul.

About the author:
*Arnold Huijgen, Ph.D., is a professor of Systematic Theology at the Theological University Apeldoorn, which is associated with the Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. He writes on Christians’ identity in Europe.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Pier Francesco Zarcone*

The Jihadist (that is, Sunni) terrorist acts of June 7 in Tehran have provoked a degree of anxiety in those Western media which considered Iran a kind of impenetrable fortress for Sunni terrorism. This was an impenetrability that could only seem real because of the lack of attention paid in the West to news diffused in Iran, where the activities of ISIS precede that of the attacks

ISIS is a source of problems for Iran’s capacity to cope with unrest among the Sunni minorities existing in the country. Saudi Arabia could also take action in these matters, and in this regard, it is worth recalling that in May Saudi Defence Minister Mohammad bin Salman had formulated explicit threats to Iran, warning: “We will not wait until the battle is in Saudi Arabia, but we will work so the battle is there in Iran.”

So, if the United States has been the great enemy of Iran since the Islamic Revolution, there are now two more in the field: ISIS and Riyadh.

Iran – Shiite heart and stronghold in the Muslim world – is not homogeneous from the ethnic or religious point of view. There are no official estimates, so we have to rely on data provided by the CIA (!): Persians are said to account for 61-65 percent of the population, followed by Azerbaijanis at 16 percent, Kurds at 10 percent, Lurs at 6 percent, Arabs, Baluchs and Turks at 2 percent, plus a remaining one percent divided among other minorities.

Two aspects should be mentioned about this composition: on the one hand, the level of integration among these ethnic groups is sufficiently high and, in fact, not all political and social leaders are Persians; on the other hand, there have been conflicts with independence movements in Khuzestan, Kurdistan and Baluchestan (regions with a strong Sunni presence), where fire smoulders under the ashes or is actually burning.

Integration affects religious differences less. The official religion in Iran is Twelver Shiism, accounting for  about 90 percent of the population belong, 8 percent are Sunni (mostly Khuzestani, Kurds, Baluchs and Turkmens) and the remaining 2 percent are divided among non-Muslim minorities (Zoroastrians, Baha’is, Jews, Eastern Christians, Yazidis, Hinduists, etc.).

For Iran, the Sunni jihadist threat began to materialise with the taking of Mosul by ISIS, which the Iranians responded to with a sort of “blocking” of the border with Iraq.

At the beginning of summer of 2014, Tehran’s Interior Ministry spokesman announced that there were no “voids of security” at that frontier, and the commander of the army ground forces, General Kiumars Heidari, reaffirmed the concept and denied that terrorists operating in Iraq were a threat to Iran. In July of that year, Iran’s Police Chief, General Ismail Ahmadi Moqaddam, announced that no ISIS armed group had crossed the border.

However, in May 2016, Iran established a 40 km-wide “zone of deterrence” in Iraqi territory, next to the border between the two countries: any violation would have resulted in an Iranian military response. Between 2014 and 2015, ISIS came within 12 km of that band, and five Iranian army brigades were alerted. However, at that time, there was no massive violation of the security zone.

Nonetheless, ISIS groups subsequently penetrated into Iran, and local cells tried to carry out terrorist actions in Tehran.

In May 2015, the Iranian authorities announced the arrest of ISIS cells before they could act, but in the meantime their adherents had been able to kill several teachers in the south-east of the country. Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi announced: “Not a single week goes by without an operation against internal security being discovered and neutralised.”

Before this episode, the security forces had eliminated Hesham Azizi, head of the Ansar al-Furqan group, along with several militants. In April, terrorist cells had been destroyed, again in the south-east, in Sistan and Baluchestan Province.

In November 2015, just before Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the country, other terrorists were arrested in the western Kermanshah region, some ISIS cells were dismantled in Sistan and Baluchestan  – with the seizure of explosives – and a cell was discovered in Iranian Azerbaijan.

In close proximity to Iran’s parliamentary elections in February 2016, even a training centre for the manufacture and use of explosive devices was discovered, and on February 26 (the day of the elections), terrorists preparing for attacks in Tehran the following month were arrested.

Successes against Sunni terrorists led the Iranian authorities to diffuse tranquilising communiques; thus, in April 2016, General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan claimed that ISIS had numerically insufficient forces to pose a threat to Iran, and that there was “no reason to worry because intelligence has complete control over jihadist forces in the region.”

It is however a fact that, despite the continued reassurance of the authorities, in 2016 more than 20 terrorist groups were dismantled – with dozens of terrorists imprisoned.

At this point, the problem for an external observer is whether the Tehran government can do anything to counteract the jihadist virus among its Sunnis, besides resorting to prevention and repression.

The most plausible answer seems to be negative, especially as many in the Iranian leadership (at least until yesterday) appear convinced that the solution to the ISIS problem lies in its military defeat in Iraq and Syria. There is no self-criticism (and perhaps there can be none) about discriminatory policies towards Sunni minorities.

It takes just a glance at the map to understand immediately that sources of instability are located in the interior areas of Iran close to the borders. To the east, Iran borders with Afghanistan and hosts small Pashtun communities; to the south-east is Baluchestan; to the south-west is the province of Khuzestan, with a strong Arab minority that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq tried encourage to rise up during the war against Iran in the 1980s.

Khuzestan. This is the region of allocation of Iran’s Arab minority, positioned on the border with Iraq and overlooking the Persian Gulf. It is a territory rich in natural resources, but the Arab population is poor.

Here the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (Harakat al-Nezal al-Ahwazi) was formed, which – with the financial and logistical support of the Arab petromonarchies – has carried out attacks on local oil installations. In January 2017, in addition to the destruction of some major oil pipelines, the group attacked an important military base in the Ghizaniya region.

Iranian Kurdistan. An autonomous party, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan is active here. In January 1946, it had formed an ephemeral independent Kurdish Republic, which was stamped out in December of the same year by the Iranian army. Repressed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it now has its headquarters in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, whose government has committed itself to not carrying out armed actions in Iran.

The Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) – an active combat group since 2004 – also operates here. It has bases in the mountains of northern Iraq for launching military action. Its goal is to establish an autonomous Kurdish entity in Iran – on the basis of the Iraqi model. It is a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. Fighting continues between this organisation (about 3,000 units of men and women) and the Tehran army.

A third group is the extreme-left Komala Party, which is also militarily very active..

Baluchestan. Here, a radical guerrilla group of the Sunni Jaish al-Adl (“Army of Justice”) – with bases in Pakistan – operates, and has intensified its operations against Iranian military and military installations since 2013, with a certain degree of effectiveness it must be admitted. This organisation has now become more radical Islamist than nationalist, opposing both Persian domination and the Shiism of Tehran.

A future full of difficulties

Such a situation is not at all reassuring; this does not mean that there are dangers capable of bringing down the Iranian regime, but they will affect the people in their daily lives.

The military defeat of ISIS will come sooner or later (in the meantime, Syrian troops have reached the border with Iraq), and among its architects – more than the “inconclusive” US-led coalition – there will be Hezbollah, Syrian and Iraqi Shiite militias and the Kurds. And this is exactly what will call the survivors of ISIS and sympathisers to revenge, especially if the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus-Baghdad axis manages to maintain Shiite hegemony over the region – or over much of it.

This means that the defeat of ISIS will lead to an increase in terrorism across the region, including Iran, and that – in parallel or in league with the political, economic and military initiatives of the Arab petromonarchies – the territories of action of the aforementioned separatist movements would become even more a hunting ground for jihadists.

Indeed, they are already a hunting ground: on June 9 came the news that, as a result of the confessions “obtained” from the terrorist captured in Tehran, some 48 people were arrested. The arrests took place in Tehran and in the provinces of Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Western Azerbaijan. They concerned almost all Sunni Kurds who had sworn allegiance to ISIS.

The future will be full of difficulties, but on the other hand, during the last thirty years Pandora’s box in the Middle East has been opened by the United States, and it will be a long and arduous task to destroy its content – which will continue to spread.

* Pier Francesco Zarcone, with a degree in canonical law, is a historian of the labour movement and a scholar of Islam, among others. He is a member of Utopia Rossa (Red Utopia), an international association working for the unity of revolutionary movements around the world in a new International: la Quinta (The Fifth). This article originally appeared in Italian under the title ”Jihad” in Iran in Utopia Rossa. Translated by Phil Harris.

(EurActiv) — London and Brussels clashed Monday over future residency rights for millions of Europeans as Britain outlined post-Brexit proposals that included a special new status for EU immigrants.

Prime Minister Theresa May fleshed out what she called a “fair and serious” offer to guarantee the rights of EU migrants in Britain once it has left the European Union.

“I want to completely reassure people that under these plans no EU citizen currently in the UK lawfully will be asked to leave at the point the UK leaves the EU,” she told parliament.

“We want you to stay,” May said, promising to end their “anxiety” after last year’s referendum vote to end Britain’s four-decade membership of the bloc put the future of 3.2 million EU citizens in doubt.

The government’s 17-page policy plan would allow Europeans to stay in post-Brexit Britain with broadly the same rights as British citizens, with access to healthcare, education, welfare and pensions.

But they would have to apply to join a new register conferring “settled status”, and would be subject to British law without recourse to the European Court of Justice.

Moreover, non-European spouses of EU nationals would not enjoy the same rights after Brexit.

They will have to show a minimum level of income, and remain subject to the byzantine immigration application that non-EU migrants have to complete nowadays.

The application process for the new “settled status” register for EU nationals will not be so complicated, British officials stressed, but the response from Brussels to the policy proposals was cool.

And May was heckled in parliament as opposition lawmakers accused her of using Europeans as “bargaining chips” by refusing to guarantee their rights until a reciprocal deal is struck for around one million Britons living elsewhere in the EU.

“EU goal on citizens’ rights: same level of protection as in EU law. More ambition, clarity and guarantees needed than in today’s UK position,” EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said in a tweet.

Hiding in sheds

The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, welcomed May’s proposal to simplify residency application procedures but said there were “a number of limitations” in the proposals.

He warned that “any degradation of the rights linked to freedom of movement” before Britain leaves the EU would violate EU law.

Resolving the issue is an early priority for both sides involved in the Brexit talks that began last week, but also threatens to become one of the biggest flashpoints, along with the financial bill that London will eventually owe to settle its EU liabilities.

“I believe it’s a generous offer,” May insisted to parliament, putting details on the framework after first outlining the offer at an EU summit last week, adding that it would provide “reassurance and certainty”.

But opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused of her of proposing “too little, too late”, adding: “This is confirmation the government is prepared to use people as bargaining chips.”

The3million, a lobby group for EU nationals in Britain, said they remained “in limbo” despite May’s proposals.

“British friends joke that they can hide us in sheds and hedges – it’s not funny! We’re people not Bargaining Chip(s),” the group tweeted.

One major point of uncertainty is still on the table: May did not specify the cut-off date after which new arrivals from Europe will be subject to tighter rules. The government said the matter was one for the negotiations with the EU.

EU citizens are currently free to move to Britain from the other 27 member states but this right will end with Brexit, forcing those in Britain who remain to apply for the new status.

Mass immigration from the EU was a key factor in last year’s Brexit referendum vote to leave the bloc.

The government also unveiled plans to exclude “serious or persistent criminals, and those whom we consider a threat to the UK” – which was a potent issue for “leave” campaigners.

European rules already allow member states to expel other EU citizens on security grounds, and between 4,000 and 5,000 EU prisoners were deported from Britain last year, according to the interior ministry.

By Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. and Ardian Shajkovci, Ph.D.*

During the 2016 campaign and in the early months of his presidency, President Trump made “defeating radical Islamic terrorism” a key part of his counterterrorism strategy. He also pledged to intensify operations against terrorist groups like ISIS/Daesh and al-Qaeda as well as refrain from large-scale military interventions that could put the lives of American soldiers in harm’s way.

In his State of the Union address to Congress, President Trump also promised to “make America first,” demanded that U.S. partners and allies shoulder more of the burden in fighting terrorism, and said the U.S. can no longer be the world’s policeman spending American treasure and spilling American blood overseas. During his campaign having already labelled Brussels, hash-tag hellhole, he began his first 100 days in office by reprimanding key European allies and expressing disdain for international organizations such as the U.N. and NATO. Although consistent with much of what he promised on the campaign trail, his decisions represented a more assertive shift in U.S. foreign policy and to combating terrorism compared to his predecessor, President Obama.

Yet, as the realities of his Presidential duties hit rhetoric, President Trump has been forced to come around to embracing NATO and reaffirm key alliances. He has also acted out his support for upholding international norms against the use of chemical weapons by bombing Syria. Despite complaining about U.S. responsibilities and his calls for more burden-sharing by U.S. allies, he has also sent more U.S. troops to aid in the fight against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. From a counter-terrorism perspective, it appears he has not yet hit the mark in terms of keeping Americans safer or in defeating “radical Islamic terrorists.” In fact, his policies and his “tough guy” stance as the spokesman for the U.S. may be making Americans less safe and fueling, rather than defeating, terrorist recruitment.

While the Obama administration ended the U.S. combat missions in Iraq in 2010 and Afghanistan in 2014, U.S. troops remained in both places, with estimates around 15,000 deployed when President Trump took office. Currently, under President Trump, their presence is increasing. There are at least 6,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and about 300 to 500 in Syria, and more than 8,000 in Afghanistan. President Trump is still playing policeman.

The 6,000 U.S. troops currently deployed to Iraq compares to the peak of approximately 166,000 troops during the surge in November 2007, 4 yet numbers continue to rise, and increasingly U.S. troops are involved in actual combat. Even though orders to U.S. troops in Mosul are to remain behind the forward front lines, military officials acknowledge that this line is constantly shifting while troops clear 200,000 buildings in the city and face IED’s and booby traps planted around the area.5 Referring to U.S. troops in Iraq at a March 28, 2017 reception for U.S. senators and their spouses, President Trump announced, “Our soldiers are fighting like never before.”6 According to Air Force Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for the military coalition fighting Daesh, U.S. troops in Iraq are not simply advisors or trainers anymore. They have come under fire at different times and have returned fire.7

Interestingly enough, the Pentagon’s record on transparency when it comes to divulging the numbers deployed to Iraq remains poor, a sharp divergence from policies under the Obama administration. Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman cited the following reasons for this failure to inform the American public: “In order to maintain tactical surprise, ensure operational security and force protection, the coalition will not routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations, or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria.”8 This policy, however, leaves the American people in the dark. It also reflects how deeply and committed the new administration is to troop deployment in Iraq, and now Syria as well.

Military attacks in Yemen, taking place shortly after President Trump took office in January 2017, resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer, William “Ryan” Owens. President Trump used this event to his advantage during his State of the Union Address by inviting and paying tribute to the SEAL’s widow, Carryn Owens. However, some argued that the Yemen raid was poorly planned and executed and that it unnecessarily risked civilian lives, including the lives of American soldiers.we should not, as President Trump may, naïvely expect for Daesh to disappear. Americans find military deployments shrouded in secrecy and some of their best dying in raids, it brings up the question of how President Trump is refraining from spilling American blood or putting “America first.”

In March 2017, deployments from Fort Bragg of 240 soldiers to Iraq from a Brigade of 2,000 soldiers at the ready for additional deployments reflects the freedom the Trump administration has granted to its commanders to move forces into the battle zone “without lengthy review in Washington.”10 The U.S also recently sent Army Rangers and a Marine artillery unit to Syria, with the Rangers “operating in the northern town of Manbij to deter Turkish-backed Syrian fighters from moving into the area” and the Marine artillery unit “providing firepower for the offensive to take the Tabaqa Dam and cut off the western approaches to Raqqa, which is being carried out by Syrian fighters backed by the United States.”11 In March of 2017, an Army platoon was deployed to Iraq to clear away roadside bombs12—a danger that will likely increase as Daesh cadres lose territory and increasingly revert to guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks on civilian targets. Approximately 2,500 U.S. Army paratroopers are also expected to receive orders to deploy to Iraq and Syria.13 Deployments continue to rise as the U.S. build-up of troops in the Middle East mirrors what happened during the Vietnam war; despite President Trump’s claims to put America first and not involve American troops in global conflicts.

Many military analysts and figures agree that the territorial defeat of Daesh in Iraq is nearly complete, especially in light of the success achieved in ousting Daesh from many areas of Mosul in Iraq.14 In Syria, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces recently launched an operation to seize the Tabaqa Dam, an area near Raqqa where the Daesh Emni (intelligence and external attack operations) had its headquarters.15 Both operations have been supported by U.S. airstrikes, artillery helicopters and U.S. troops acting as advisors, although also shooting and being shot at even inside Mosul. The numbers of U.S. troops operating in Mosul was doubled in January 2017.

While the defeat of Mosul and Raqqa will make it difficult for Daesh to hold territory and have any semblance of a state, we should not, as President Trump may, naïvely expect for Daesh to disappear. In our research interviewing Daesh defectors globally, we have been told the plan is to shave beards and blend into society mounting urban guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks17—like the one that occurred while we were in Baghdad in April, 2017. A truck bomb exploded at a checkpoint, igniting three additional tankers that were present to make that sort of conflagration. More attacks of this type are expected in Iraq, as Daesh has cleverly stored explosives in secret locations. In Syria, reports are that Daesh is training female cadres in combat operations, placing sticky bombs and training as suicide operatives.18 Total defeat of Daesh will not be simple.

We must also keep in mind that the very security violations that gave rise to Daesh in the first place are still rife in both Syria and Iraq. Sunnis in Fallujah, Mosul, and other areas of Anbar raise concerns about serious human rights violations, killings, and disappearances of Sunnis, even women by Shia death squads. Videos shown by a former Sunni resistance fighter in Amman in November 2017 depicting a teenage boy being dragged by Shia militia members to a tank and run over by it for suspicion of being in Daesh, are circulated in the Sunni parts of Iraq and beyond, creating horror, fear, and sectarian distrust among Iraqis. One press person we interviewed in April 2017, an Iraqi in Erbil, stated she often video recorded the ongoing battle between Shia forces and Daesh, especially in the Mosul areas, but was never allowed to interview the detained Daesh fighters as they were shot immediately without any trials by the Shia troops. Similarly, others have told of witnessing Shia forces dragging dead Daesh cadres through the streets of Mosul or letting their bodies rot in place. Such actions are unlikely to create any sense of trust or security among Sunnis for the government of Iraq.

Daesh, and al-Qaeda before them, have always been adept at using U.S. troop misdeeds and civilian kills as a tool to stir up anger against the West and garner more terrorist recruits. During the first three months of President Trump’s presidency, there also has been a “significant uptick in the number of airstrikes targeting terrorists in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan.” We must hope that civilians are not high among those killed as video footage of civilian victims is exactly what groups like Daesh use to incite hatred against Americans and fuel recruitment into their terrorist cause.

Thus, when a U.S. airstrike killed scores of Iraqi civilians in Mosul on March 17, 2017, it may have been exactly one of those events which the terrorist group can use for recruitment, even while it is losing territory.22 As more and more American troops get embroiled in Syria and Iraq, we must hope the military has ‘upped its game’ regarding a small footprint and for observing human rights. We cannot afford any major scandals like Abu Ghraib or the Marine rape and killings in Haditha that poured fuel on al Qaeda’s recruitment, though one remains concerned when senior White House officials make claims such as “Theater commanders have been unshackled. Everyone’s been unshackled to do their job,” referring to a lifting of many combat restrictions by the Trump administration over the military that were in place during the Obama administration. While that may be good for U.S. military morale, it creates dangers as well.

President Trump now allows counterterrorism airstrikes outside of a conventional war zone, such as Afghanistan, to be ordered without vetting by the White House and other agencies—also creating the possibilities of over doing it. On April 13, 2017, General John Nicholson ordered the dropping of the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S.’ arsenal to root out a complex of tunnels and caves in Afghanistan used by the Daesh affiliate in Afghanistan, Daesh-Khorasan. Some journalists reporting on the bomb’s nickname of the “Mother of All Bombs,” or MOAB, were quick to say “This is what freedom looks like” while President Trump praised the general’s decision to drop the MOAB on Daesh, which he and his administration believe sent a cautionary message to all of the U.S.’ adversaries.26 Indeed it did, although whether that message is what he and his administration hope it is, remains another matter. One can imagine Daesh and other terrorist groups playing such news footage with the voice-overs of “this is what democracy looks like” in their recruiting videos.

In the fight against terrorism, President Trump has mainly engaged in rhetoric that purports to make America safe and to put “America first.” In reality, however, his policies may be doing exactly the opposite. While nearly no one disagrees that Daesh’ ability to hold territory in Syria and Iraq should be seriously degraded, if not altogether destroyed, naïveté about whether that will be an end to Daesh is dangerous. In addition, heavy involvements of U.S. troops, particularly in combat roles, may fuel Daesh recruitment elsewhere. Given that Daesh is instructing its cadres to stay home and attack in place, this may lead to attacks similar to the ones recently witnessed in London, Stockholm, Brussels and Paris where Americans have also been killed. Keeping us safe means we can safely travel through European airports, shop and dine on tourist destinations without fear.

Equally important, President Trump’s poorly laid out immigration policies that targeted first six predominantly Muslim countries for the visa ban and later cut that to five may have played right into the hands of groups like Daesh. They argue that Islam, Muslim lands, and Muslims are under attack. These are groups who have long sought to create hatred and a divide between Muslims and the West to be able to recruit more Muslims to their cause. When President Trump speaks about banning access to Syrian refugees— many who are not terrorists, but are fleeing from terrorists—and refers to his fight with terrorism as against “radical Islam,” but fails to speak about the many Muslims who are also victims of terrorism, he is playing right into the hands of groups like Daesh. The same happens when he fails to speak against and pursue the right-wing terrorists who have killed innocent Muslims. He is playing the villain in their black and white view of the world and giving them cause to claim that Americans hate Muslims.

President Trump’s core personality-based leadership traits are often characterized as extreme and unusual for any presidential candidate. To succeed against terrorists, he needs to be able to think beyond himself, to get to the heart of the matter, and put himself in their shoes, such as in the case when he included Iraq in the visa ban. He and his administration failed to consider that Iraqis might retaliate and ban Americans working with NGOs and who, in many cases, are actually directly supporting U.S. military and U.S. combat efforts in Iraq. Iraqis are also a major partner in the fight against Daesh. He cannot often see beyond his own rhetoric, but to succeed, he needs to.

We need carefully thought out policies that do not inflame further tensions with our trusted allies. We also need carefully controlled troop deployments if we want to work effectively against the brand that Daesh is selling—that is, a promise of an alternative world governance which will continue to sell regardless of whether Daesh loses its territory in Syria and Iraq. We have seen upwards of 31,000 foreign fighters accept the Daesh dream of their so-called Islamic Caliphate and pour into Syria and Iraq from 86 countries. The Daesh brand continues to flourish despite their territorial setbacks, and their franchises operate in at least 30 countries. Unless we get smart and pull together, we will continue to see terrorist groups like Daesh winning in small victories and countless terrorist tragedies continuing to be enacted in our cities and airports and by extension witness larger tragedies involving hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who will continue to seek refuge in our Western countries. President Trump has now put a reasonable, seasoned General in charge of defense and another in charge of National security. Let us hope they advise him well going forward, and he does manage to defeat the current terrorist menace.

*About the authors:
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D.  Director, ICSVE and Non-Resident Fellow of Trends & Ardian Shajkovci, Ph.D. Director of Research/Senior Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE)

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy and first appeared as a chapter in The Changing International Order published by Trends Research and Advisory http://trendsinstitution.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Changing-International-Order-Master-File-Columns.pdf

By Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have cratered in recent weeks, dipping to their lowest levels in more than seven months and any sense of optimism has almost entirely disappeared. All signs point to a period of “lower for longer” for oil prices, a refrain that is all too familiar to those in the industry.

WTI dipped below $44 per barrel on Tuesday, and the bearish indicators are starting to pile up.

Libya’s production just topped 900,000 bpd, a new multi-year high that is up sharply even from just a few weeks ago. Libyan officials are hoping that they will hit many more milestones in the coming months. Next stop is 1 million barrels per day (mb/d), which Libya hopes to breach by the end of July.

U.S. shale is arguably the biggest reason why prices are floundering again. The rig count has increased for 22 consecutive weeks, rising to 747 as of mid-June, up more than 100 percent from a year ago. Production continues to rise, with output expected to jump by 780,000 bpd this year, according to the IEA. Ultimately, the shale rebound appears to have killed off yet another oil price rally, the latest in a series of still-born price rebounds since the initial meltdown in 2014.

Hedge funds and other money managers slashed their bullish bets on crude oil futures in the latest data release. Sentiment is profoundly pessimistic at this point, and because the IEA, OPEC and EIA recently published very downbeat assessments about the pace of rebalancing, a grim mood will be sticking around for a little while. The next reports from those energy watchers won’t come out for almost another month.

In the meantime, the weekly EIA data on production and inventories will have outsized importance, mainly because it is one of the few concrete indicators that comes out on a routine basis. Analysts are now worried that a string of bearish data could push prices down even further. “We cannot afford to have another build in crude or gasoline,” Bob Yawger, director of futures at Mizuho Securities USA Inc., told Bloomberg before the latest data release. “The market’s just dying for a reason to buy this thing, but you can’t really do that before” the EIA publishes its next batch of weekly data on Wednesday. Gasoline demand also looks weak, just as the summer driving season in the U.S. gets underway, a period of time that typically sees demand rise.

The market got a bit of a reprieve on Wednesday when the EIA reported some decent figures – a drawdown in crude oil inventories by 2.5 million barrels. Also, imports were flat and gasoline stocks fell slightly.

Still, the figures aren’t enough to put the market at ease.

Amid all this doom and gloom, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid al-Falih tried to put on a brave face, arguing on Monday that the market will “rebalance in the fourth quarter of this year taking into account an increase in shale oil production.” He waved away the recent price drop, dismissing the importance of such short-term movements in the market.

But with WTI dropping below $45 per barrel, most sober oil market analysts are not nearly as sanguine. OPEC’s objective of bringing global crude oil inventories back into five-year average levels is looking increasingly difficult to achieve, at least in the timeframe laid out by the cartel. “There seems to be very low conviction in the market that there really will be any inventory drawdown in the second half of the year,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB AB.

“This is like a falling knife right now, I genuinely haven’t seen sentiment this bad ever,” Amrita Sen, the co-founder and chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC on Wednesday. “We have had clients emailing saying they have been trading this for 20 or 30 years and they have never seen something like this.”

One pivotal factor that could really cause prices to plunge is if compliance with the agreed upon cuts starts to fray. There are several reasons why some participants might start to abandon their pledges. Russia, for example, tends to produce more oil in summer months, a fact that might tempt them to boost output. Iraq is also eyeing higher production capacity this year. In addition, weak prices could start to undermine the group’s resolve. “Lack of major upside price response to the OPEC output cuts upping the odds of reduced compliance to the agreement in our opinion,” Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy advisory firm Ritterbusch & Associates, wrote in a research note.

Moreover, simmering conflict in the Middle East could continue to grow, threatening to derail cooperation between OPEC members. The conflict between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies on the one hand, and Qatar and Iran on the other, could deteriorate. Although that could spark some price gains for crude oil if supplies are affected, it could also undermine the OPEC deal.

One unknown factor that could prevent oil prices from falling further is the possibility that prices floundering in the mid-$40s actually puts a lid on shale production. If U.S. shale underperforms over the next year, the OPEC deal could succeed in balancing the market. But if U.S. shale continues to rise, and OPEC fails to extend its deal beyond the first quarter of 2018, oil could fall to $30 per barrel, according to Fereidun Fesharaki, chairman of consultants FGE.

Soure: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Is-There-Still-Hope-For-Higher-Oil-Prices.html

The 2017 edition of the IWSR’s annual Top 100 rankings has been published this month in the IWSR Magazine. It lists the world’s 100 largest spirits brands by volume, pitting famous international brands against local spirits titans that dominate in their home markets. The Top 100 list is uniquely based on the IWSR’s proprietary database, the most authoritative source of beverage alcohol industry research.

This year’s Top 100 list brings into focus the defining role that emerging markets play in shaping the global spirits industry. The drinking population in India, Brazil and South East Asia, in particular, is growing each year. This keeps Indian whiskies, cachaça and soju/shochu brands in high positions on the list; population growth and wider distribution also help international brands to reach new consumers.

Selling well over 65m nine-litre cases in 2016, the South Korean soju brand Jinro once again becomes the world’s most popular alcoholic drink, maintaining the number one spot that it has held for many years. To put Jinro’s volumes into context, it sold more in 2016 than the brands in second and third place – ABD’s Officer’s Choice whisky (32.3m cases) and Thai Beverages’ Ruang Kao (31.2m cases) – put together. The Jinro brand makes up 2% of the global spirits market on its own; its sales of 65.9m cases come to considerably more than the total of the spirits markets of the UK, Germany, France, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Italy or travel retail to name a handful.

Owned by Hite-Jinro, Jinro’s phenomenal success owes to several factors. It has been by far the most visible brand of soju, South Korea’s national drink, in Seoul and the surrounding districts for decades. Changes in competition laws in recent years have allowed the brand to move into other parts of the country, whose LDA population is rising sharply each year. A favourite at mealtimes, soju’s low ABV (24%) makes it suitable for a range of other occasions as well – while efforts are being made to invigorate the category’s image in the on-trade.

The world’s second and third most-consumed spirits brands are Indian whisky Officer’s Choice and the Thai cane spirit Ruang Kao. Although both declined in 2016, they remain the largest brands in their home markets by huge margins. The decline of Officer’s Choice was the result of a difficult year for the Indian spirits market in general, notably the move to turn the north-eastern region of Bihar into a dry state. The demonetisation of the INR500 and INR1,000 notes also heavily restricted alcohol sales in the last three months of the year.

The markets for soju in South Korea, local whisky in India and cane spirits in Thailand are so vast that even the brands trailing far behind Jinro, Officer’s Choice and Ruang Kao sit comfortably within the global top 10. The soju brands Chum Churum (owned by Lotte, 26.2m cases) and Good Day (Muhak, 19.1m) rank fifth and ninth respectively, while the Indian whiskies McDowell’s (Diageo, 25.6m) and Imperial Blue (Pernod Ricard, 18m) are at number six and 10. Number eight on the list is Thai Beverages’ Hong Tong Liquor (20.7m cases).

If the top 10 is dominated by giant domestic Asian brands, the international bestsellers are not far behind. Iconic drinks such as Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky (11), Bacardi rum (13) and Jack Daniel’s whiskey (16) do not completely rule their home markets as they face more competition from other international spirits brands – but their global reach ensures that they are still available to hundreds of millions of potential consumers, and generally at affordable price points.

Eighteen of the brands in the Top 100 belong to Diageo, making the British company the most-represented owner among brands selling over 3m cases. They are followed by Pernod Ricard with eight brands. Campari has four brands in the list, although none rank higher than 77th place (Skyy vodka).

Reflecting its status as a highly aspirational drink in the developing world, whisky is the most represented category in the Top 100, with 28 brands featured. There are 19 vodkas on this year’s list, but only four of them – two American and two Ukrainian – managed to improve on their previous ranking. Tito’s recorded stunning growth of 37.8% to leap 47 places to 46 from 93, while Gallo’s New Amsterdam rose again to 85th place.

The list features six rums. Bacardi stays at 13, Captain Morgan drops to 24 from 21, and Havana Club remains at 68. By contrast, some categories are conspicuous by their near absence. There is only one tequila – Jose Cuervo in 47th position – among the world’s Top 100 brands, and only two bitters, Jägermeister (35) and Fernet-Branca (53). This perhaps indicates that in many parts of the world these drinks have no rival and have become the market leaders to such an extent that they define the whole category.

EnQuest said that first oil from the Kraken development in the UK North Sea was delivered on June 23. During the initial ramp-up period, the 13 wells that have been drilled and completed to date, comprising 7 producers and 6 injectors, are being brought online in a phased manner, to maximize long term productivity and value, the company said.

EnQuest has an interest of 70.5% in Kraken, with its partner in the development Cairn Energy PLC having the balancing 29.5%.

EnQuest CEO, Amjad Bseisu said: “EnQuest is delighted to confirm that first oil has been achieved on the Kraken development, delivered on schedule and under budget. Drill centers 1 and 2 are fully complete and work continues on drill center 3; as a result, further production capacity will come online into 2018 as these further wells are put onstream.”

Kraken is a large heavy oil accumulation in the UK North Sea, located in the East Shetland basin, to the west of the North Viking Graben, approximately 125 km east of the Shetland Islands. The field contains c.128 MMboe of gross 2P reserves, making it one of the largest new oil fields to come onstream in the North Sea since Buzzard. Gross peak oil production expected to be approximately 50,000 barrels of oil per day. The gross capital costs of the development are currently estimated to be approximately $2.5 billion, down from $3.2 billion at the time the project was sanctioned; good planning and project execution including good progress on drilling and on the execution of the subsea programme were key factors in the capex savings.

Drilling and formation evaluation have shown excellent correlation with pre-sanction subsurface expectations, said EnQuest.

According to Bseisu, “Kraken is a transformational project, made possible by EnQuest’s differential capabilities; the right mix of integrated technical capabilities, high levels of efficiency and cost discipline. With production from Kraken, EnQuest is moving from a period of heavy capital investment, to a focus on cash generation and deleveraging the balance sheet.”

UK Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said, “This is a landmark project for EnQuest and the UK oil and gas sector as one of the largest new oil fields to come on-stream in the North Sea in a decade. This has been made possible through significant UK government support to encourage investments of this type in the North Sea, supporting thousands of highly-skilled jobs.”

According to UK Oil & Gas Authority Chief Executive, Dr Andy Samuel, “As one of the most significant oil field projects in the UK Continental Shelf, successful production from Kraken is positive news for the whole basin. It has the potential to open up additional heavy oil opportunities in the Northern North Sea, with other developments in the pipeline. It’s particularly pleasing to see a project delivered under budget, having clearly benefitted from a strong partnership between operator and key service providers.”

Kraken is EnQuest’s seventh operated production hub. At the time the development was sanctioned, using Oil and Gas UK’s reporting metrics it was estimated that the development would support more than 20,000 UK jobs during the construction period of the project and an average of approximately 1,000 operational jobs in the UK for each year of the Kraken field’s life of over 20 years.

Pakistan created history, if not a miracle, at The Oval on June 18 by winning the ICC Champions 2017 Trophy — and they did so by thrashing a formidable team from India.

Eventually, the bowlers won the Trophy for Pakistan. Re-energized bowler Mohammad Amir tore through the India top order to cripple Indian “prowess” and force the “defending champions” to a meager 54-5. India eventually limped to 158, thanks to Pakistani team decision, after taking a dominant winning position, to take its neighbors beyond 150 runs.

Yes, a strong Indian cricket fort has decisively been breached by Pakistan in England to clinch the prestigious ICC Champions Trophy 2017, trouncing the “defending champions” and in doing so it emerged as a formidable team for the first time in years — notwithstanding the fact that the nation has been undergoing destabilization process led by the USA-NATO on the one hand, and by India and the UK, on the other.

Pakistan won by 180 runs to take their first global 50-over title since 1992. The rest of the Pakistan attack was irresistible, backed up by excellent fielding, all in front of a vibrant, raucous and enthusiastic capacity crowd. That Pakistan lifted the trophy was surprising enough — at eighth in the world they began as the lowest-ranked team in the tournament — but it is the way they demolished the strong favorites that will live long in the memory.

When both the bowlers and batboys from Pakistan play well working in tandem, Pakistan can win any trophy. As the Pakistani team came with a well-knit plan and unitedly executed it on the field, all ‘sensible’ knocks of Rohit and Dhawan and Kolhi became irrelevant and their consistency had no place in front of Pakistani bowlers.

India’s humbling defeat in recent years took place at the Oval in England where the tournament took place as Pakistan shocked the world by producing an incredible display of bowling-bating capability to thrash fierce rivals and the defending Indian team,  which betting agencies had projected as the favorites and to win the Champions Trophy. Nevertheless, inspired Pakistan thrash India by 180 runs. (Pakistan 338-4 (50 overs): Fakhar 114, Azhar 59, Hafeez 57. India 158 all out (30.3 overs): Pandya 76, Amir 3-16, Hasan 3-19)

As PM Modi and Indian corporate lords were busy with their visit to the US to meet a confused Trump, India hoping to outsmart the Green team and let Pakistan score a big total 339 runs. Thus Pakistan set Kohli’s side what India thought was a “competitive” target of 339. This kind of total is unusual and it cannot be chased down by the Indian opponents without help from the Pakistani bowling team. But Indian batboys did not expect a serious bowling team of Pakistan emerging right in the tournament. India upon managing the toss asked Pakistan to bat first and Indian batboys were sure of easily chasing down whatever target the bowlers offer to Pakistani batboys.

Fortune favors the brave, it is said, and so it proved for Pakistan — Fakhar finding his touch eventually to smite his way to 114 off just 106 balls – a maiden ODI hundred plucked straight from one of his wildest dreams. Batboy Fakhar Zaman hit a spectacular century to propel Pakistan to 338-4 in the scorching south London sunshine, a maiden century coming in his fourth ODI after Pakistan was invited to bat. Fakhar flayed the ball all around the Oval. Fakhar was installed at the top of the order, man of the tournament Hasan Ali fronted a talented pace attack and energetic captain Sarfraz Ahmed marshaled a team that grew in confidence and momentum.

Pakistani batboys did shine as the Indian bowling unit failed to grasp the rising power of Pakistani team in the tournament already defeating better teams Sri Lanka, England and South Africa. World number ones South Africa were beaten in the rain before Pakistan edged past Sri Lanka to reach the last four. England, the much-fancied hosts, was brushed aside in Cardiff before an incredible performance in the final – their biggest margin of victory over India in an ODI.

Young batboy Fakhar Zaman, who was yet to play for his country when the tournament began, showed early on just how clearly the day would always be Pakistan’s. In the fourth over he was out caught behind. Except he wasn’t, Bumrah had bowled a no ball — fate had other plans.

Though Fakhar had illuminated The Oval, there was confidence in Indian camp and a suspicion around that Pakistan’s total was within reach of India’s stellar batting. That was until Amir got to work. He routed Indian bating bones and nerves by taking quick 3 wickets of top batboys. Rohit Sharma was pinned lbw by the third ball of the innings, only for Azhar Ali to spill a straightforward first-slip chance off India captain and master run-chaser Virat Kohli. However, from the very next ball, Kohli was squared up and athletically held at point by Shadab Khan, before Shikhar Dhawan edged behind. After Yuvraj Singh was given lbw on review to leg-spinner Shadab and MS Dhoni holed out off the pace of Hasan, the contest was as good as done.

A quarter-of-a-century ago, Pakistan came from the brink of elimination to win the World Cup, inspired by captain Imran Khan telling them to “fight like cornered tigers”. Here, they recovered from a humbling defeat by India in their opening game with similar tenacity. Bowler Aamir led the team to reach the final and then continued to lead it to win the trophy as well.

Indian strategy

India started off on a strong note with a commanding win over Pakistan in the Group B match, but Pakistan extracted revenge rather emphatically in the summit clash of the tournament, pulling off a 180-run win. The tournament saw its share of ups and downs — from rain spoiling the proceedings in most games, top sides such as South Africa and Australia getting knocked out in the first round to Bangladesh reaching the semi-final of an ICC tournament for the very first time, and Pakistan scripting a fairy tale.

India was sure and upbeat about its chances to retain the Trophy. The other competitor was England. Pakistan was nowhere in the picture until all of a sudden it won the title. Luck favored them.

Pakistan did not let India shine even a little – let alone too much. India may have won the toss, but it was of no concern to Pakistan, they only dealt in certainty. Indian agenda of winning the final easily with at least 2 full hundreds, maybe one each for Kolhi and Rohit or Dhoni fizzled out. Dhoni thought Pakistan would let him shine with non-stop 6s and 4s so that he could take all the credit for the trophy. But no, that was only a pure imagination of Indians. …

When Pakistan thrashed England at the semifinals, India also wanted similar win and Bangladesh that played the semifinals with India helped the latter to achieve that objective. Now Bangladesh or West indies would first help India n batboys to shine before India could face Pakistan.

Possibly India tried for quick wickets but failed and began offering big runs. Ideas were to feed Pakistani batboys well so that Indian batboys also would be given enough runs in return. India gave a 100 to a new Pakistani batboy and expected return favors to Koli, Rohit and Dhoni. That was a miscalculation. Not only Pakistani batboys enjoyed a big score with so many 6s and 4s and flue gifts, their bowlers also enjoyed removing the batboys in a sustained manner and refused to throw easy balls to Dhoni for 6s and 4s. Dhoni, like Kohli, is fond of hitting 6s and 4s but Pakistani bowlers were not quite impressed by their interests.

India, favoring a chase, gave up the chance to bat first on a run-filled surface and were made to pay by left-hander Fakhar. He was reprieved on three, caught behind off a Bumrah no-ball, and went on to carve, slice and belt his way to a 92-ball century. Fakhar shared an opening stand of 128 with Azhar Ali and, after a mix-up that saw Azhar run out, sprang to life. At one point, he took 32 runs in the space of eight legal deliveries. When Fakhar miscued the impressive Bhuvneshwar Kumar to a back-tracking Ravindra Jadeja at point, India pulled themselves back into contention. Mohammad Hafeez made an unbeaten 57 from 37 balls and Babar Azam 46 from 52, but India’s canny death bowling seemed to have kept them in contention. As it turned out, Pakistan had far too many for them.

Interestingly, even while batboys were falling, Indian cricket commentators kept on assuring the fans on TV that India would emerge victorious. When Dhoni came to the crease they said that now Dhoni would the needful to steady lead the team to victory. But he also fell quickly, disappointing the Indian government and BCCI.

However, India is happy that at least Hardik Pandya got a 50 from Pakistan but his six-hitting in a 43-ball 76 always seemed likely to be in vain. It was not long after he was run out that last man Bumrah flapped at Hasan – and the Pakistan celebrations begun.

Pakistan’s day

The Oval in Great Britain was always destined to belong to Pakistan even much before the final match was to begin. Pakistan was upbeat and more confident than a hitherto formidable India. Pakistani body language revealed that they had a foolproof plan which it executed perfectly.

Pakistan is qualitatively and emotionally different from Bangladesh and did not let India shine.

A pathetic looking and badly composed Pakistan entered the tournament of ICC title as its lowest ranked side and without any homework to target each player of the opposite camp. But India always works overnight to identify the weaknesses of batboys and bowlers as well as their strengths.
Apparently India and England competed for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and made strenuous efforts to keep other top competitors like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In many ways they helped the opponents to defeat teams like South Africa so that both play the final. But to their shock Pakistan came up fast and played the final with India, England having been kicked out by Pakistan.

Obviously, the entire cricket world stands shocked and England cannot digest this and so is India which is unable understand the Pakistan phenomenon even after several decades of fights on the borders and cricket fields now. And obviously India cannot take the crushing defeat by India kindly and would wait for opportunities so to defeat Pakistan in a similar fashion. That is the mindset of India.

One can guess it’s going to be your day when Mohammad Hafeez — ODI strike rate 75.58 — makes an unbeaten 57 off 37 balls. But when the ball cannoned into his stumps only for a bail to cheekily hop up out of its groove and land straight back in it again, they should really have started engraving Pakistan’s name on the trophy.

However, this was no fluke from Pakistan, rather a match where they forced fortune to wear green and white for the day, an opening salvo from Mohammad Amir all but finishing the game off inside the first nine overs. There was still time for Shadab Khan, the youngest man to ever play in an ICC final, to pick up a couple of scalps, the first requiring admirable confidence to unequivocally ask for a review when his LBW shout against Yuvraj Singh was turned down. Shadab, along with man of the match Fakhar and man of the tournament Hasan Ali, showed the impact the Pakistan Super League has already had on the fortunes of the national team, the triumvirate all coming to prominence thanks to performances in the fledgling T20 competition. For Hasan the acclaim was well deserved, he ended as leading wicket-taker in the competition, fittingly finishing things off when he got Jasprit Bumrah caught behind — the match, the day and the tournament destined to be never anything else but belonging to Pakistan.

Amir has potential to be the greatest bowler!

Mohammad Amir, the target of Indo-England to cripple Pakistan bowling unit, is a big match player. Ever since his comeback from the “spot-fixing” ban, Amir hasn’t lived up to the high hopes and expectations of the cricketing world. He’s sparkled in bits with breathtaking spells, providing the ‘WOW’ moments. But somewhere down the line consistency and a match-winning performance were missing.

When the games are on the line and the bigger the game, the more he performs and the more amped up he gets. He doesn’t shy away from pressure situations and big games. He provides the defining moment of the match, sending back the best ODI chaser in the world and giving a complete performance that the country was yearning for. He’s got proper big match temperament. From anguish to joy in a matter of seconds, Amir has gone through a whole range of emotions just like he has throughout his bumpy career so far.

The story was the same before the final in this Champions Trophy. He had scalped just two wickets from 28.1 overs at 67.50 and a strike rate of 84.5. His most telling contribution came with the bat where he played a sensible knock of 28 against Sri Lanka to guide Pakistan past the finish line in a tense chase along with Captain Sarfraz Ahmed. Then onwards, Pakistan was moving ahead.
On a sunny Sunday the June 18, the Oval was amidst the cacophony of 25,000-odd vociferous fans, watching the collapse of Indian batting line up. Aamir, the sleeping giant, woke up on the big stage to bowl one of the most crucial spells of his life — 6-2-16-3. It broke India’s spine and they never recovered. This was the Amir that Pakistan was craving for. The Amir phenomenon could destroy the opposition with consummate ease and put his hand up when Pakistan required him the most. The Amir who could win matches for Pakistan. He even made a nostalgic Wasim Akram tweet, “You little beauty reminded me of my days.”

At the Oval, on can feel the adrenaline pumping as Aamir turns at the top of his mark against India. There is a genuine sense of belief that Pakistan could pull something special out of the hat. Amir sets the tone by setting up Rohit Sharma beautifully. Two outswingers are followed by an inswinger to trap the in-form opener on the crease and dismiss him LBW. The partnership that had amassed the most runs in the tournament is broken. Amir lets out a roar. Rohit trudges back in disappointment. Shikhar Dhawan was his next target. He’s bowling in the corridor of uncertainty with substantial pace. Dhawan, the highest “run-getter” in the tournament, is slowly getting into the groove but six overs later, Amir outclasses the southpaw with a cross-seam delivery which generates extra bounce to catch his outside edge.

There is still that thrill and excitement factor related to Amir every time he runs in to bowl. After quick wicket of Rohit, Mohammad Amir had already set off in celebration. But each time Pakistani fielder drop catches of his ball, Aamir is in disbelief with a ‘you’ve dropped the Champions Trophy’ look on his face. After the dropped catch, Amir walks back, kicking the field probably wondering whether a unique record — that of the number of catches dropped off his bowling — could be created. Amir’s aeroplane celebration takes off. Arthur is up on his feet applauding. Kohli walks off in disbelief shadow practicing the shot again. Kohli was out and he returned to pavilion, totally disillusioned.

And again bowler Aamir played very vital role in quickly removing the top three batboys from the crease without giving them any real runs even as many India’s former cricket gods led by S. Tendulkar witnessed the collapse of their team without getting any support from Pakistani bowlers. Blessing of Tendulkar as god did not work in India’s favor.

The top order has been India’s lynchpin throughout the tournament. The trio of Dhawan, Rohit and Kohli has scored a staggering 81 percent (874/1074) of the team’s runs before the final. Amir, with three wickets, has virtually forced India into submission inside the first powerplay, on a batting paradise. “We spoke about it actually in the team meeting. We thought that if we could get through that Indian top order early, we could probably expose that middle order that hadn’t batted a fair amount. And Amir was the guy who could do that for us,” coach Arthur says in the post-match conference. “In the first two games he didn’t get any wicket but he had bowled particularly well. We were always thinking there was one spell in him somewhere and the spell came thankfully today. At the start of the final, we put India on the back foot which certainly gave us an upper hand.”

First he got Rohit Sharma LBW with a perfect swinging delivery. Then in his next over he bowled two balls that perfectly encapsulated the entire cricketing history of Pakistan. Despair followed by elation, as Virat Kohli was dropped in the slips only to be caught off a leading edge the very next ball. With Kohli gone, so too did Indian hopes of chasing down Pakistan’s total, followed a bit later by many of their fans pouring out of The Oval, their places in the stands taken in many cases by Pakistan fans who had been waiting outside the ground.

Former England captain Alec Stewart on Test Match Special: “That was Aamir single handedly dong everything for the team. Brilliant from Pakistan’s point of view – their bowling was high quality. “Former England captain and now a commentator Nasser Hussain said “He loves a challenge, Kohli. He loves doing things that people can’t do.” But very soon Kolhi was back in his seat at the pavilion. Minutes later, Amir sends Kohli back into the hut, but not before Kohli has been dropped. It’s not often that someone forces Kohli to make mistakes twice. Amir does. Aamir sent him back quickly enough. Indeed Kolhi and other batboys do not love or appreciate challenges from bowlers. They can shine and hit only if bowlers are weak or “arranged” to offer big scorers. The best example is how Bangladesh bowled India to a handsome win at the semi-final, letting it reach the final as the “going” team.

Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis are two of the all-time greats but Amir is showing he has the same potential.” Pakistan legend Wasim Akram on Twitter: “Wow, wow, wow – unbelievable performance by team green. It feels like deja vu after winning the 1992 World Cup. I am over the moon.”

Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed: “After the India match when we lost in the group stage, I told my boys the tournament hadn’t finished yet. “Credit goes to my boys. Fakhar is a great impact player; he played like a champion batsman. Amir bowled brilliantly but all my bowlers bowled really well. We have a young team and credit to my boys.”

Former Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq on Twitter: “Congratulations to the Pakistan team and the whole country for such a great win. Boys, you made us happy and proud. Up and above from here!
However, Misbah wants the cricket matches to be won by batboys and he never gives credit to bowlers. India captain Virat Kohli: “Pakistan had a good performance, I congratulate them. They deserve to win. They need victories like these. Things weren’t happening for them and then they win a tournament.”

India and UK lose cash in bets

Neither India nor England could win the trophy. England’s fans also supported India in the final. Not just that. Both lost a lot of money in bets.

With deteriorating diplomatic ties preventing the two from facing each other in a bilateral series, India vs Pakistan is one of the most anticipated and most watched fixtures in the cricketing world. Some may say it’s even bigger than the Ashes. As it was the first major final between both these nations since the 2007 World T20 final, the prospect of watching the two face-off in an ICC Champions Trophy final only raised the expectations of fans.

When India faced Pakistan at the Oval, national pride apart, a lot of money too was at stake, Rs 2,000 crore to be precise, according to a report in Times of India. Gambling like sex market is legal in England and Indians can bet on the match through international cards and e-wallets. According to estimates by the AIGF, roughly Rs 2,000 crore will be bet on the match. Rolland Landers, CEO of AIGF (All India Gaming Federation) was quoted saying to the Times of India, “It has been estimated by many studies that roughly a total of Rs 2 lakh crore is wagered on all matches that India play throughout the year. And since this is the first time India and Pakistan will be meeting in the final of a cricket tournament in around 10 years, the bets are high.” Cricket bosses, experts and fans have predicted India to win the match and the bet odds that have been offered reflect the same.

Observation

ICC Champions Trophy 2017 belongs to Islamabad but that is not everything.

Bowler Aamir makes Pakistan a serious contender for titles in future. Only a team spirit and perfect home work on video clips should do a lot of good for them and positive attitude would provide inspirational guidance.

Pakistan who lost their opening game to India by 124 runs to sweet revenge at the finals’ show with its mammoth total of 330 runs with a win margin by 180 runs at the Oval.

That is the real show of strength and display of united will of the team. No one expected this kind of disciplined show of performance in unity. This was indeed monumental from Pakistan, who in dispatching India by 180 runs seemed to almost bend the will of the Indian and global cricket gods, cricketing or otherwise, with the unstoppable force of their performance.

Pakistanis are now somewhat perfect in bowling that gave extra force to its batboys to play better and the team played the best and the 2017 ICC Trophy home. This time, Pakistani batboys avoided runouts. Hence one early run out by the opener possibly was deliberate. In the 50th over, Pakistan did not lose any wickets and kept the remaining 6 wickets intact. This upset Indian team leaders Kolhi and Dhoni and caused negativity in them in the next session where entire team collapsed cheaply.
Pakistan had to offer 50 to Pandya as a gift to India as they apparently wanted to give at least 150 runs to India. Otherwise Pandya could not have got so many runs when the top players like Kolhi and Dhawan and Rohit could not get any such runs.

Pakistani cricketers are not supposed to help Indian batboys, unlike other foreign bowlers and even batboys who work for Indian causes as the IPL members bought by Indian compote lords and black monied billionaires, like international fraud BJP MP Mallya, who is now wanted by Indian courts but now enjoys life in London with UK-Indian joint state protection.

Once again, it has been proven that by and large the bowlers decide the outcome of cricket matches. If the bowlers are fools and offer big and quick runs, batboys would enjoy their stay at the crease and hit 50s, 100s, etc and throw away their wickets to their favorite fielder when they amass runs in 6s and 4s. If bowlers refuse runs to the batboys, even the top most batboys would collapse and return to pavilion. Indian returned to the pavilion that way. Tendulkar stopped paying cricket that way.

Yes, devils know all tricks and use them weaken any good, talented worker.

In the latest IPL India, it was vividly clear that from the semi-level onwards the batboys were not allowed to enjoy at the case and they lost their wickets soon as bowlers were somewhat serious about their profession.

India cannot just take cricket defeat kindly, especially against Pakistan and that too losing a very important ICC trophy for which India was well prepared. India would frantically looking for opportunity to pay back. First, it would secure 100s and 50s for their defeated batboys in the scheduled tours. South Africa Bangladesh would help India overcome the ICC cup agony to some extent. Hence Pakistan also needs to be up to date in skills and trainings.

Batboys hit only if bowlers are fools or pretend to be so. Pakistan should make bowling their main fort and train more bowlers. Usually, bowlers are told to take wickets and offer too many runs in 4s and 6ds so that batboys survive as favorites of the regimes and compote media for awards.

This scenario must change. Bowlers should be told not to focus on bogus wickets but on dotball techniques to deny easy runs to the batboys. Let the batboys struggle to get runs. ^s and 4s are illegal as if ball is het directly outside the boundary line that should be signaled OUT. And there should not be 4s as well. Batboys must earn runs in the proper way by running between the wickets.

Aamir should henceforth be very cautious as Indo-UK would try new tricks to trap him and remove him from the cricket field once for all so that there is no real threat to batboys who crave for 100s by mischievous means. Already he had a bitter experience with these two nations and because of them he had to suffer.

In the Western dominated world order, the Eurasian states have always tried to create a regional organization to maintain a balance of power and their wish has finally achieved fruition in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The SCO consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

At the Ufa summit in 2015, the SCO officially adopted a resolution which started the process of admitting India and Pakistan into the organization. Both countries will finish the procedure of accession to the SCO in the SCO summit on June 8-9 in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Their inclusion will extend the geographical range of the SCO and will establish better connectivity between South Asia and Central Asia.

In the last six decades, India and Pakistan have been embroiled in conflicts and disagreements over their shared boundary line.

Due to their massive attention to this historic hostility, both states have become a hub of nontraditional security issues.

The goals of the SCO are to strengthen relations among member states; promote cooperation in political affairs, economics, trade, scientific, technical, cultural and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism and environmental protection; safeguard regional peace, security and stability; and create a democratic, equitable international political and economic order.

Their full membership into the SCO will be beneficial for both India and Pakistan.

For India, it would open new opportunities to intensify relations with Eurasian states. India can thus develop strong relations with Eurasia to address shared security concerns, especially in fighting terrorism and containing threats posed by the Taliban and IS.

India could also gain advantage from tapping into the current SCO procedures such as the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure that gives key intelligence and information regarding terrorists and drug traffickers. After becoming a full member, India will formally participate in the annual SCO counter-terror exercises and military drills that would help Indian armed forces better understand operational tactics.

From Pakistan’s perspective, full membership into the SCO could build trade links with many landlocked Central Asian countries. It could also raise socio-economic connectivity between Pakistan and Central Asian states. Moreover, it could open doors for Pakistan to avail itself of a cheap energy supply from Kyrgyzstan.

For the SCO, fastening India and Pakistan will add fresh strength, ensuring greater status and voice to the group.

After their inclusion, the SCO will become one of the largest organizations in the world and will represent about 43 percent of world’s population.

If India and Pakistan really want to avail themselves of the opportunity for full membership in the SCO, they should take a position of peaceful cooperation.

It will also be a great test for China and Russia to make sure that all sides act in accordance with the norms of the SCO. Moreover, all new and existing members should work together and make this organization a comprehensive regional platform.

Apart from the SCO, the Belt and Road initiative (B&R) provides increased potential to reconnect India and Pakistan.

B&R would open new development opportunities for both rival nations provided they engage in peaceful cooperation.

Currently both nations do not have amicable relations with each other. The SCO meeting may provide the breakthrough they need to overcome their traditional obstacles. While joining the SCO will not immediately see an end to their traditional hostility, it will hopefully provide a new platform to gradually resolve their mutual disputes.

Originally published at Global Times

Of late, there has been an increasing amount of thrust at the political sphere towards the role of the border states in India’s foreign policy. Geo-strategically, Assam has a significant role to play in India’s 21st century foreign policy towards the East. The fact that Assam is a peripheral state that shares international borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh makes it very significant in this aspect.

In the recent history of modern South Asia, Assam has been one of the most volatile and sensitive regions engraved with insurgencies and ethnic conflicts. For long the state has been delinked from its neighbours due to security and migration issues. After many years of India’s prolonged campaign for conflict management, the state still shows signs of volatility on the occasional grounds. Nonetheless, there has been a considerable change in its outlook as a conflict prone state, as the issue of insurgent activity and the level of violence have been decreasing over the years. Today, the Indian state is more confident than ever before which is quite visible from the various policy statements and the governmental actions in Assam vis a vis in the northeast region. It is in this aspect that Assam has been put at the forefront of India’s ‘development paradigm’ in northeast region.

India’s post-cold war strategic foreign policy – the Act East Policy, considers reviving old ties and once existing communication networks between India’s peripheries in the northeast with East and South East Asia. This makes Assam a crucial player in India’s greater connectivity policy. Such recognition has come in action when the present government concluded a land boundary agreement (LBA) with its eastern neighbour Bangladesh in the year 2015 that had lasted over four decades. The passage of the enabling legislation (the One Hundred Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment Act of 2013) in the parliament paved the way for the operationalization of the 1974 India-Bangladesh LBA, including the exchange of enclaves and “adverse possessions” from the Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and West Bengal (Haidar 2015). India had to make sure that Assam as a key border state is on board for the agreement, as it required the consent at least half of the state legislatures before becoming law considering that it was a constitutional amendment (Kaushal 2015; see also Jacob 2016: 10). Thus, Assam is a regional foreign policy connector for India that played a major role in negotiating and signing the LBA.

Similar position holds for India’s policy towards Bhutan. India aspires to connect with Bhutan through the opening a road, linking strategic Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh with Assam via Eastern Bhutan. It is envisaged that “the road will enhance cultural exchange, boost trade with Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal and improve security coordination in border areas” (Mitra 2016). Connecting with Bhutan is also crucial for India due to the fact that India’s security concerns in Assam can better be addressed through cooperation. In fact, Bhutan has been very significant in the past for India as cooperation with Bhutan helped to flush out Assam’s prominent militant groups like United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). For instance, India received cooperation during the counter insurgency operation – ‘Operation Flush Out’ from the Royal Bhutan Army in 2003 which helped in containing United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) to a large extent.

Assam also becomes crucial for India’s regional connectivity policy through proposed corridors such as Guwahati-Chittagong Corridor and Guwahati-Kunming Corridor. The Guwahati-Kunming Corridor covering a distance 2276 kilometres, starts from Guwahati in Assam and goes across Nampong in Arunachal Pradesh and Shindbwiyang, Bhamo and Myitkyina in Kachin (Myanmar) linking the Ledo-Burma road junction through Wanding and Yunnanyi to the city of Kunming in China (Pattnaik 2015). These corridors have the potential to be materialized for sub-regional cooperation such as BCIM, Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), SAARC and Greater Mekong Sub-region Cooperation (GMS).

Although connectivity with Bangladesh or Bhutan is of not much relevance for rest of the country, but it is of great significance for Assam in particular and India’s Northeast region in terms of ensuring better security and economic development. Therefore, it is both the security and economic imperatives that makes Assam crucial for India’s foreign policy to get operationalized at full scale. In the year 2015, India became more pragmatic when it considered moving from looking at the East to acting at the East. From ‘Look East’ to ‘Act East’ premising on the Gujaral doctrine has been viewed as India’s policy in relation to changing geo-strategic environment in the Asia Pacific region. The AEP envisages for deeper economic engagements with ASEAN in terms of commerce, culture and connectivity. The policy was ‘originally conceived as an economic initiative, but it has gained political, strategic and cultural dimensions including establishment of institutional mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation’ (Government of India, Press Information Bureau 2015). Through AEP, India considers the NER to be a gateway for economic growth and development. It is envisaged that connectivity will transform the region into an economic corridor and which will eventually lead to a development corridor by connecting the region with its neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal.

However, the role of India’s north-eastern border states in the foreign policy has not been explored to its full potential yet. Moreover, it is argued that even after the two decades of India’s post-cold war strategic foreign policy, India has not been able to reap the benefits of this gateway the way it should have as a majority of the economic transaction with South East Asia do not involve this continental route. As Hazarika puts it, “the policy till date has benefitted the coastline states of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu because international trade is predominantly moved by sea; much less goes by land, be it road or rail” (Hazarika 2016: 8).

For India, one of the important challenges has been developing infrastructure in the border states of northeast region. The region continues to suffer from the infrastructure and communication bottlenecks. For instance, many of the road communication networks within the state of Assam are in pathetic condition that needs utmost attention. The on-going physical connectivity projects are running at a very slow pace suggesting that the benefit of regional economic integration is still a distant dream (Sahrma and Singh 2017). Therefore, India’s quest for connectivity requires completion of major infrastructure initiatives at the earliest and recognition of the development needs of Assam. A better communication network and economic development of Assam is essential for India’s foreign policy to get success.

One crucial lacuna in India’s drive for regional integration having border state like Assam on board is that the border states do not have a say when it comes to matters of national interest or sub-regional initiatives such as cross-border economic trade. This is quite the opposite in the case of China. For instance, the Yunnan province of China enjoys provincial autonomy in matters relating to China’s sub-regional integration. In fact, the provinces in China have their own Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Commissions (FTECCs) and Foreign Affairs Offices (FAOs) to engage with sub-regional partners (Zhimin and Junbo 2009). It is argued that Yunnan has been instrumental in the success of Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) that includes Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. Today Yunnan is reaping the benefits of sub-regional economic integration notwithstanding the fact that it was once a disturbed and economically poor region. Similar connotation can be raised for border states in India’s northeast region as well. Thus, India needs to consider these aforesaid issues so that it can augment its current vision towards the East.

*Indrajit Sharma is a Ph.D. research scholar and a senior research fellow (UGC) at the Centre for Security Studies, School of International Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar

References
Government of India (2015), Act East Policy, Ministry of External Affairs, Press Information Bureau. Accessed on June 2, 2017, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=133837

Hazarika, Sanjoy (2016): “Inclusive Growth and Peace: Levers to Opening up Regional Economy,” Yojana, Vol. 60, pp. 7-9. Accessed April 20, 2017, http://yojana.gov.in/17-3-16%20YOJANA%20APRIL%202016%20FINAL.pdf

Haidar, Suhasini and Anita Joshua (2015), “Assam Included in Bill for Land Swap With Bangladesh,” The Hindu, May 5. Accessed April 21, 2017, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indiabangladesh-land-deal-centre-includes-assam-in-itsbill/article7173440.ece

Jacob, Happymon (2016), Putting the Periphery at the Center: Indian States’ Role in Foreign Policy, Washington: Carnegie Endowment.

Kaushal, Pradeep (2015), “Assam in, Govt OKs India-Bangladesh Border Swap Deal,” Indian Express, May 6, Accessed April 21, 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/assam-ingovt-oks-india-bangladesh-border-swap-deal/

Mitra, Pratyaksha (2016), “India and Bhutan discuss strategic road linking Tawang to Assam,” News cast Pratyaksha, July 5, Accessed April 22, 2017, http://www.newscast-pratyaksha.com/english/india-and-bhutan-discuss-strategic-road-linking-tawang-to-assam/

Pattnaik, Jajati K (2015), “Act East through the North-East”, Mainstream, Vol LIII, No 16. Accessed April 22, 2017, http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article5596.html

Sharma, Indrajit and N. Mohandas Singh (2015), “What Ails India’s Connectivity Strategy in the Northeast?” South Asian Voices. Accessed May 25, 2017, https://southasianvoices.org/what-ails-indias-connectivity-strategy-in-the-northeast/

Zhimin, Chen and Jian Junbo (2009), “Chinese Provinces as Foreign Policy Actors in Africa”, South African Institute of International Affairs, Occasional Paper No 22. https://www.saiia.org.za/occasional-papers/128-chinese-provinces-as-foreign-policy-actors-in-africa/file

Most discussions on India concentrate solely on its economic growth. However, if only this mattered, India would seem set to be a prosperous nation. But, India’s growth story is not equal across geographies. Large swathes of the population have been left out of its skewed growth. Achieving prosperity for a broader set of people, the middle-class and the poor, would need India’s economic story to be equitable and not just about high-growth.

Uncontrolled urban migration and its ramifications

Economic distress is a prime reason for migration from small towns and rural hinterlands to large cities. This leads to the creation of unplanned urban clusters. Data reveals how the 2001-2016 CAGR is higher in most cities than the 1991-2016 CAGR, so migration has intensified in the last 15 years. This rapid increase in migration has also made these cities vulnerable to crime. The widening socio-economic imbalance between the haves and have-nots, coupled with the growing pressure on infrastructure and amenities along with the growing culture of instant consumer gratification, is causing crime.

The International Conference on Gender Equality’s Status of Women in India report showed how rapes in India have doubled from 2001 to 2014. National Crime Records Bureau data showed Delhi and Pune amongst the most rape-prone cities. Anecdotal evidence shows the culprits in few cases were migrants. Unfortunately, that builds a bias against all. In any case, there is also no guarantee that migrating gives them productive employment for 365 days of a year.

Tackling sluggish growth of tax revenue

Sluggish taxes pose a formidable challenge since more public investment is needed to push growth, given that private investment has not moved in recent years. RBI’s data of gross fixed capital formation to GDP shows a dip from 36% in 2011 to 31% in 2014. So how does the government address the risk of sluggish income tax revenue? While economic growth made people more prosperous than the earlier generations, the question is for how many? If a larger group of people are becoming net poorer due to sluggish income growth, will they yield more tax?

One solution may be to create a wealth tax or inheritance tax to tax the rich, who are becoming more concentrated each year. Credit Suisse data shows the richest 1% Indians owned 58% of the country’s wealth in 2016, up from 36% in 2000. The rich often use creative accounting to evade income tax and get away due to their clout. But, unless such sensitive issues are tackled by a strong government, the country’s development may suffer due to sluggish tax revenue from a broader base of its population each year.

Generational variations and growing financial dependencies

Census data shows the proportion of married people increased from 44% in 1981 to 48% in 2011, a 30-year period signifying a generational change. But, more couples are delaying bearing children, as the ratio of children aged 0-4 years dropped from 13% to 9% in the same period. This is because the costs of education and healthcare have also increased over the last decade. So, the number of working couples has proliferated as the income of a single-earner is insufficient now.

Financial dependencies of elder generations, who lived and worked before this economic growth of post-1991, may delay that decision further. Given that Indian couples have fewer children now, they cannot depend on their children as their parents did on them. In this society in transition, either the economic growth story is equitable for a broader set of the current generation, or else it better be stronger for the next generation so they can support the current generation. There have been talks of increasing the retirement age in certain jobs; that may be one way to stretch the productive years. But, it is critical a broader set of this generation can net save more now.
The bottom line

In conclusion, the Modi government has taken initiatives to ensure more Indians participate in the economic story. This includes skill-training, gold loans for small businesses, start-up funding, financial inclusion, rural investments and the ‘Make in India’ initiative. But, the conversion has to materialise into a large scale as “better-paying” jobs across “all the regions”. This may sound like the basics of public policy, but maybe that is what the need of the hour is.

*Sourajit Aiyer is the author of 2 books with publishers in UK and Germany and has written for 35+ publications of 13 countries. He has worked with financial companies in Mumbai, London, and Delhi, and has been invited to speak at conferences in India and abroad.

This article appeared at The Indian Economist

By Wael Mahdi*

Saudi Arabia has a new crown prince, the 31-year-old Mohammed bin Salman, it emerged last week.

The promotion of Prince Mohammed bin Salman comes at a time when all the financial gauges for oil are bearish, and many hedge funds and speculators are cutting their bullish bets on prices.

As soon as the news of his promotion came out, many analysts turned bullish and started to talk about the return of geopolitical risks to the oil markets. This in part has to do with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s stance on Iran and Qatar, two neighboring oil-producing countries that also happen to be fellow members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Despite this, the oil market seems to be indifferent about the geopolitical discourse as there is already too much oil in the market, which OPEC and its allies are still struggling with. The situation in the market last week saw speculators cut their net-long position in US benchmark futures to the lowest in 10 months, and in North Sea Brent to the lowest since January 2016, as exchange data from London and New York showed on June 26.

Speculators do not seem to worry much over adding a few dollars of risk premium to prices. However, it is highly important to understand how Crown Prince Mohammed will reshape the global energy market.

The crown prince is on a mission to end his country’s dependence on oil as the main source of state revenues. Yet this does not mean he does not need oil.

In fact, his plan to free his country from its addiction to oil is resting on selling a stake in the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, to the public. This sale will require oil prices to be at a good level to fetch a higher valuation for the company. It will equally need a stable oil market and a stable Middle East region so that investors will feel comfortable holding shares for years to come.

Saudi Aramco’s sale process is central to the crown prince’s short-term oil policies. And higher oil prices are needed for the initial public offering (IPO) of the company more than they are needed for the state’s budget.

In an interview with Al Arabiya and Saudi TV in May, the prince said: “As you know, in the fiscal balance program there were three scenarios of oil prices: Low (pessimist) $45, medium (average) $50 and high (optimist) $55.” Seemingly, the country is already building its fiscal budget on more than one scenario and the likelihood of “lower for longer” is already factored in.

A stable oil market also means cooperation with other producers inside and outside of OPEC. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman understands this factor very well and it can be seen in his recent statements.

In the same interview, he acknowledged that the current production cut agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries “is what enhanced our position and made it very positive on the level of the government’s oil revenues.”

As the IPO process of Saudi Aramco marches forward, more cooperation is expected as Saudi Arabia discovered that it and its OPEC members could no longer do the re-balancing job of the global oil market alone.

The prince even said that going forward, Saudi Aramco’s production policies after the IPO would be set in coordination with others. The policies will be “governed by supply and demand and coordination with OPEC and non-OPEC countries in order to coordinate the quantity of supply and demand so there is no collapse or confusion in oil prices,” he told Al Arabiya.

Now, there are still geopolitical risks due to Saudi Arabia’s assertive foreign policy in the region and the current situation with Iran in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere. Also, no one knows how Qatar’s crisis will unfold. But these risks will not deter Saudi Arabia from pursuing its long-term goal of moving the economy away from oil.

The crown prince is decisive and very focused on achieving his goals. In April last year, he could not reach a deal with Iran over freezing production. A few months later, he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China and they laid the foundation for the current alliance. OPEC has been in harmony since then, even as the rift with Iran is still widening.

So the real challenge for the crown prince is not in having high oil prices, but it is in keeping politics away from oil. So far he has done a good job and this is good news for market bulls, as they should expect Saudi Arabia “to do whatever it takes” to balance the oil market.

• Wael Mahdi is an energy reporter specializing on OPEC and a co-author of “OPEC in a Shale Oil World: Where to Next?” He can be reached on Twitter @waelmahdi

By Lisa Ferdinando

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived Tuesday in Germany, where he will meet with his German counterpart and highlight the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.

Speaking to reporters en route to Europe, Mattis said he will meet with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to discuss issues of concern. He described the talks as the start of a strategic dialogue.

“By that I mean we’re going to sit down with my counterpart and talk about issues that are on her mind about the German-U.S. relationship,” he said.

Mattis is to deliver remarks Wednesday at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, an international security and defense studies institute founded as a partnership between the U.S. and German governments.

The center, located in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, is the only regional Defense Department center that is shared with another nation, Mattis said.

The Marshall Plan initiative provided more than $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild western European economies after the end of World War II.

NATO Meeting to Discuss Afghanistan

Mattis said he travels on to Brussels for a NATO ministerial session, pointing out it is the first such official meeting since Montenegro joined the alliance earlier this month.

The ministers are expected to cover a range of security topics to include Afghanistan, Mattis said, noting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, traveled this week to Afghanistan for an assessment of military and ancillary efforts.

Mattis said he plans to have private talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the NATO forum.

A large-scale cyberattack is working its way through a number of Ukrainian and Russian targets today (June 27). So far, in Russia, oil producer Rosneft and metal company Evraz have been affected by the attack. In Ukraine, Boryspil airport, the banking system, a state power distributer and even the Ukrainian government have been hit, Engadget said.

While the attacks have affected banking operations in Ukraine and will likely lead to some flight delays out of Boryspil airport, they don’t seem to have impacted services on a grander scale. Rosneft said on Twitter that because it had switched to a reserve control system, its oil production wasn’t stopped. And a spokesperson for the Ukrainian power distributor Ukrenergo told Reuters that the attack hadn’t affected its power supplies or broader operations.

Ukraine was the target of a slew of cyberattacks last year. The country’s power grid and weapon supply were hacked and Boryspil airport was hit with an attack as well. Those instances were all thought by Ukraine to have originated in Russia. But the origins of today’s attacks, which have hit both Ukrainian and Russian infrastructure, aren’t yet known.

There are also reports that a ransomware called “Petya” is ravaging a number of countries throughout Europe, but it’s as of now unclear if the “unknown virus” reported to be affecting the Ukrainian and Russian companies is the same one.