By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein*

It would be hard to deny that rhetoric on and around the Korean peninsula is at a high mark. United States President Donald Trump’s words about “fire and fury” aimed at North Korea sounded almost like the typical rhetoric coming from North Korea. North Korea’s response, seemingly implying a threat of bombing Guam, was unusually direct and concrete.

Still, it is important to remember one key fact that has gotten lost in the bluster and chatter: Neither Trump’s statement, nor North Korea’s response, imply any change of the status quo.

Trump’s words were dangerously crude, and struck a tone that previous American presidents have not taken toward North Korea. At the end of the day, however, striking North Korea has never not been an option for the Unites States. Within the strategic confines of the North Korean nuclear issue, it has always been implied that the U.S. would consider striking North Korea should it sense serious, imminent and tangible threats against itself or its allies. That is what overflights of bombers over the Korean peninsula—which the U.S. has often conducted after North Korean provocations and did only a few days ago—intends to signal. Trump’s statement was reportedly spontaneous, rather than a result of newly calculated U.S. language or new red lines. In other words, it was not intended to signal a change of policy.

Similarly, North Korea’s threat against Guam was not a shift of position. The whole point of North Korea demonstrating its ICBM-capacities is to show the U.S. that it has the capacity to strike its mainland, or islands such as Guam. It is worth re-reading the central passages in full:

The KPA Strategic Force is now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 in order to contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam including the Anderson Air Force Base in which the U.S. strategic bombers, which get on the nerves of the DPRK and threaten and blackmail it through their frequent visits to the sky above south Korea, are stationed and to send a serious warning signal to the U.S.

The plan is to be soon reported to the Supreme Command soon after going through full examination and completion and will be put into practice in a multi-concurrent and consecutive way any moment once Kim Jong Un, supreme commander of the nuclear force of the DPRK, makes a decision.

The execution of this plan will offer an occasion for the Yankees to be the first to experience the might of the strategic weapons of the DPRK closest.[1]

Note the following:

1. The KPA (Korea People’s Army, North Korea’s military) is, according to KCNA, “carefully examining the operational plan” for striking Guam. That’s not exactly a threat of imminent bombing. Rather, it is simply stating that North Korea has plans readily available for how it would attack Guam, should it choose to do so. Anything else would be surprising given North Korea’s tense relationship with the United States, and its heavy emphasis on missiles in its strategic doctrine.
2. That the plan is to be reported to Kim Jong-un, and will be put into practice if Kim Jong-un decides it should be, is also not a change of policy. Remember: Kim Jong-un is the supreme commander of the North Korean military. He could order any attack he wants at any time. This fact was true yesterday, and will likely be true tomorrow as well. Of course, the wording of the statement makes it sound as if though North Korea might launch an attack in the near future. But North Korea threatens its neighbors and adversaries in regular intervals. Consider the following paragraph from a news report in the spring of 2013, another time when tensions ran high between North Korea and the U.S., citing a North Korean statement:

“We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its reckless nuclear threat will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means of the DPRK and that the merciless operation of its revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified,” it said. “The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation.”

In other words, North Korea regularly makes it a point to remind its adversaries of its capabilities. In terms of pure language, this time appears to be no different.

None of this is to say that the current tensions are not dangerous. Words eventually need to be backed up by action for them to carry any meaning. In situations like this one, the danger of escalation beyond the point of no return, and of miscalculation, is grave and serious. That is precisely why words and rhetoric must not be overblown, and understood in their proper context.

About the author:
*Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein is an Associate Scholar with FPRI, focusing primarily on the Korean Peninsula and East Asian region. He is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he researches the history of surveillance and social control in North Korea, and a co-editor of North Korean Economy Watch. He publishes regularly on Korean affairs in publications such as IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review and The Diplomat, and has previously worked as a journalist, and has been a special advisor to the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1] Source: Korean Central News Agency, “U.S. Should Be Prudent under Present Acute Situation: Spokesman for KPA Strategic Force,” August 9, 2017. North Korean outlets always write Kim Jong Un’s name in bold, and in a larger font.

In one of his press conferences in the 1980s of the last century, the late visionary King Hassan II of Morocco said that the Semitic cousins of the Middle East i.e. Arabs and Jews will resolve their feuds and get together as one family. At the time, pan-Arab nationalists chuckled at the idea and called the Moroccan monarch a mad politician and a traitor of the Arab cause.

Today, Saudi Arabia has unofficially entered into an alliance with its hitherto arch-enemy Israel. For Michael J. Totten, it is a cold alliance:i “The Saudis are congenitally incapable of saying anything friendly about Israel in public—behind closed doors, the Saudis get along with Israel fine…”

However, one wonders, quite rightly, what on earth makes the leader of Sunni Islam accept to seek the friendship of the “Zionist entity”ii kiyan sahyuni and enter secretly with it into some sort of a league. In the Middle Eastern tribal language this practice can be explained by the sacrosanct maxim: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The enemy in question is no other than Iran that is duly growing itself nuclear teeth, slowly but surely, and posing an existential threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Sunni world.

Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Israel was a staunch ally of the Shah’s regime and may have even engaged indirectly in some of the sordid acts of torture of the infamous secret police Savak.

When Khomeini came to power he adopted the Palestinian cause for selfish purposes and called Israel in its official literature and propaganda terminology “little satan.”

Initially, all Palestinians were ecstatic about this political change over, but when the Iranian started making plans to export their revolution to the Sunnis, the PLO pulled slowly out of their love affair with Islamic Iran and the latter threw their support behind Hamas and financed generously its military operations against Israel incurring the cold shoulder and the ire of the Gulf countries.

President Barack Obama kept his electoral promise made to the American people during his first bid to get elected to the White house in 2008 by disengaging American troops from Iraq and allowing Iran through its militias to fill the vacuum.

It was the beginning of a grand design of the Islamic Republic to convert Sunni lands to Shia religion and the last manifestation of that is the open rebellion of the Houthis in Yemen and their control of the country with the help of the militias of the dictator Ali Saleh who fell with the Saudis.

The last straw was the Obama Administration nuclear treaty with theocratic Iran that has, somehow, allowed it to become a major regional player. In the Middle East this realignment of American policy is synonymous of the weakening of the traditional alliance US-Gulf States. In the face of this new reality, the Gulf monarchies had no choice but to seek an alliance with their Semitic cousins of the Jewish state but discretely.

Given that Israel has been playing this “game of discreetness” with the Arab neighbors since 1948, to the extent that it has become an inherent etiquette of its foreign policy, accepted wholeheartedly to stand on the side of the oil-rich sheikhs and defend them.

For Kalman Sporn, Obama has achieved the impossible; he has managed to unite Saudi Arabia with Israel:iii “So after all this Iranian potential nuclear bomb has some positive side effects that is not of the reactive quality but of proactive nature.”

For Leon T. Hadar:iv

After all, if Iran poses an “existential” threat to Israel and to the Arab-Sunnis, perhaps the time has come for them to reach a deal on the Palestinian issue? Or is that again something that the Americans are obligated to deliver to them?

Indeed, an Arab-Israeli peace ceased to be a core U.S. interest. It’s in the interest of the Arab and the Israeli leaders to make peace and work together to secure a stable regional balance of power in face of the challenges posed by an assertive Iran. If they can’t do that, they should pay the price and not expect Washington to get them out of the mess they helped create.

From that perspective, the Iran deal may be the first step in a process that would allow Middle Easterners to finally start writing their own histories instead of expecting Washington to continue running the show for them.

However one wonders what does this cold alliance mean to Israel in the long run and would Israel be willing to pay the price to honor this Confederation of the Semites?

Clearly it will mean accept the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002v for the resolution of the Palestinian predicament with its painful aggregates, mainly the “Right of Return,” the return to the pre-1967 borders and the two-state track. In return, the Sunni Arabs will recognize the existence of Israel and sign a peace treaty with it.

The territorial loss of Israel in this deal will be immediately compensated by an economic bonanza and the demonization of Hamas if they persist to stay a strip of land client of Iran.

Realizing that this alliance is taking shape slowly and surely, Hamas is acting accordingly by siding with Israel as reported by the very serious Jerusalem Post on May 1, 2016 that sported a catchy title “An unlikely trio: Israel, Hamas and Egypt align against ISIS in Sinai”:vi

Israel, Egypt and Hamas have aligned their strategies and formed an unlikely alliance against the Islamic State in Sinai, who are planning increasingly sophisticated and daring attacks in the region, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

This new alliance is welcomed and championed by the Trump administration that wants to isolate Iran and weaken its resolve to get nuclear. In this policy approach an alliance between Arabs and Israelis could well serve the purpose of Washington in the Area. In this regard John R. Bradley argues in The Spectator:vii

This new geopolitical reality was championed last month by Donald Trump during his visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel. There, he too singled out Iran as the main instigator of terrorism and instability in the region. He gave King Salman (whom he had damned as a promoter of global Wahhabi terror and hatred just months earlier) a huge bear hug. Then he was symbolically flown on Air Force One from Riyadh to Tel Aviv, the first direct flight between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Trump, of course, did not write the speech he had been prepped to read. Truth be told, he would probably not have understood it if he had been in the audience. During the election campaign, he brazenly admitted that he had absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the difference even between (the Shia, Lebanon-based) Hezbollah and the (Sunni, Gaza-based) Hamas. Not since George W. Bush has the White House been inhabited by such an inarticulate, manipulable President with zero foreign policy experience.

Final word

In view of these interesting developments in the Mideast, the late King Hassan II is surely reveling in his grave at this given that he has often called on the Arab peers to marry Arab money with the Israeli genius to develop the area.

Will this happen? Only time can show.

Endnotes:
i. http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/cold-arab-israeli-alliance-against-iran
ii. A common phrasal expression used by Arab countries in their official media to make reference to Israel.
iii. http://observer.com/2015/05/obama-achieves-the-impossible-hes-united-israel-and-saudi-arabia/
iv. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leon-t-hadar/post-iran-deal-time-for-t_b_7843728.html
v. The Arab League members unanimously endorsed the peace initiative on March 27, 2002. It consists of a comprehensive proposal to end the entire Arab–Israeli conflict. It provides in a relevant part:
(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon; (b) Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194. (c) Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In return the Arab states will do the following: (a) Consider the Arab–Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel, and achieve peace for all states in the region; (b) Establish normal relations with Israel within the framework of this comprehensive peace.
vi. http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/An-unlikely-trio-Israel-Hamas-and-Egypt-reportedly-form-alliance-to-fight-ISIS-in-Sinai-452779#xtor=EPR-1-[Newsletter]
vii. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/unlikely-allies-israel-and-the-saudis/

The US government is declaring war on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Since 2014, 11 US states have enacted legislation to criminalize the movement, which uses non-violent means to put pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestine. Washington is now leading the fight, giving federal legitimacy to the anti-democratic behavior of individual states.

Senate Bill 720, or S.720, also known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, would amend a 1979 export trade law to make it a federal criminal offense to support a boycott of Israel, punishable by a fine of up to $1 million and up to 20 years in prison. The bill was drafted largely by Israel’s powerful lobby group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and having it passed is AIPAC’s top priority.

If these efforts are successful, US democracy will take yet another step back, and many good people could be punished for behaving in accordance with their political and moral values. Worse, the legislation before the Senate is a clear violation of the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Since AIPAC appears to have a stranglehold on the elected representatives of the American people, it is no surprise that 42 Senators and 247 members of the House of Representatives support the bill, which was introduced in March. Congress has habitually backed Israel and condemned Palestinians, and any politician or entity that dared to recognize Palestinian rights. With this bill, however, they have gone too far.

Both Republican and Democratic politicians often act in ways contrary to the interests of their own country, just to appease the Israeli government. That is no secret. However, this bill takes traditional blind allegiance to Israel to a new and dangerous level, where the federal government threatens to punish people and organizations for the choices they make, the values they hold dear or the expression of an opinion on an issue they find compelling.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a letter last month calling on politicians who signed the Senate bill to reconsider. “The bill would punish businesses and individuals, based solely on their point of view. Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment,” the ACLU said.

After meeting the ACLU, one of the bill’s sponsors, the Democrat junior New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, withdrew her sponsorship. She said she supported the bill’s intentions but was concerned that it could be viewed as infringing civil liberties. AIPAC immediately urged its army of supporters to pressure her to reinstate her name on the list.

Dire as it may seem, there are two positive aspects to all this. First, Israel and its cheerleaders have denied for years that soliciting American support for its actions against Palestinians and Arabs constitutes meddling in the US political system or undermining US democracy. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, however, is such an egregious intervention that it cannot be defended: It not only negates the First Amendment, the very foundation of American democracy, but uses America’s own democratic institutions to do so.

This bill gives human rights advocates an opportunity to champion not only BDS and the rights of the Palestinian people, but also the rights of all Americans. Thus the fight for Palestinian rights can be openly discussed and placed in a context that most Americans find relevant to their everyday lives — one of the aims of BDS from the start. The boycott and de-legitimization of the Israeli military occupation are at the core of the civil society movement, but BDS also aims at generating an urgent discussion on Israel and Palestine. Albeit unintentionally, Congress is now making this very much possible.

There is a second bright spot. The bill, and other such legislative efforts in the US and Europe, recreates in the Middle East the events that preceded the demise of apartheid in South Africa.

It is telling that the US, UK and Israel were the most ardent supporters of that odious regime. The US and British governments, in particular, opposed the South African liberation movement, condemned the boycott of the country and backed the racist authoritarian rule of P.W. Botha to the very end. President Ronald Reagan viewed Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, and he was not removed from the US terror list until 2008.

Now, history is repeating itself. The Israeli version of apartheid wants to colonize all of Palestine, mistreat its people and violate international law without a word of censure. The US government has not changed much, either. It carries on supporting the Israeli form of apartheid, while shamelessly paying lip service to the legacy of Mandela and his anti-apartheid struggle.

For true champions of human rights, regardless of their race, religion or citizenship, this is their moment. No meaningful change ever occurs without people being united in struggle and sacrifice. As the American abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

The US Congress, with the help of AIPAC, is criminalizing this very demand of justice. Americans should not stand for it, if not for the sake of Palestinians, then for the sake of their own democracy.

By Cheryl Pellerin

With 50 percent of Raqqa, Syria, now under the control of Syrian Defense Forces and holding forces in place in Mosul, Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has no safe haven left in either country, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman said Thursday.

Army Col. Ryan S. Dillon, briefing the media live from Baghdad, gave an update on operations in Syria and Iraq, noting that determined SDF fighters continue to make progress against ISIS as they fight block by block in Raqqa.

“The SDF has now cleared more than 50 percent of the city from terrorists,” Dillon said.

“The SDF are in a fierce urban fight and have almost managed to link up their forces along the eastern and western axes as they conduct deliberate clearance operations of areas under their control,” he added.

Syria Operations

Fighting in the tightly packed old city is difficult because buildings and even corpses are rigged with improvised explosives by ISIS to stall the SDF advance, the colonel said.

In the past week, ISIS has used car bombs to attack evacuating civilians and working journalists. In attacks two days in a row, ISIS used armored vehicles packed with explosives to kill six noncombatants and wound five reporters, he said.

The Raqqa Internal Security Force, otherwise known as the RISF, now more than 1,000 strong and composed mainly of Arabs from the Raqqa area, is filling in behind the SDF to provide security and prevent ISIS from returning to cleared neighborhoods, Dillon said.

In southern Syria, near the Iraq-Syria border, there were clashes Monday between ISIS and militia groups, he said, noting that there were initial allegations of coalition strikes on Iraqi popular mobilization forces.

“We verified that the coalition did not conduct air or ground artillery strikes in that location at that time,” the colonel said. “This has since been confirmed and corroborated by Iraqi security forces and Iraqi popular mobilization forces.”

Rebuilding Iraq

Holding forces are in place in Mosul, Dillon said, and the federal police, the 16th Iraqi Armored Division and some Counter Terrorism Service battalions remain in eastern and western Mosul to provide security as the cleanup begins and civilians start rebuilding their lives.

“We have seen the resilience of the Moslawis in East Mosul and we are beginning to see it in the west as markets open and people begin to return … to their neighborhoods. The coalition continues to support the [Iraqis] as they reset and prepare for follow-on operations in Tal Afar,” he said.

The coalition conducted more than 50 strikes in the past week against ISIS defensive positions, headquarters, weapons caches and vehicle bomb and road bomb factories in Tal Afar and Kisik Junction, which is about 30 kilometers east of Tal Afar, Dillon said, where ISIS is defending the approach to the city.

The coalition estimates that about 2,000 ISIS fighters are in and around Tal Afar, and the colonel said the fight to root them out from one of ISIS’ last Iraq strongholds is expected to be difficult, he said.

“In former ISIS strongholds, where local Iraqis are back in control and taking care of their people, we see continued progress,” Dillon said.

In Tikrit, liberated in April 2015, more than 95 percent of those who fled the city have returned, the colonel said. In Ramadi, liberated in February 2016, more than 300,000 displaced persons have returned, and 20 schools, 18 health centers and 250 houses are rehabilitated, he added.

In Fallujah, liberated in June 2016, 400,000 displaced persons have returned, clean water is pumped to 60 percent of residents, and projects have begun to rehabilitate more than 10,000 houses over the next 18 months, Dillon said.

After ISIS is removed from an area, it is cleared of hazards, international aid and local governance resumes, he said.

Degrading ISIS Finances

Highlighting success in degrading ISIS financial resources, Dillon said the coalition conducted precision airstrikes on five ISIS financial centers in Iraq and Syria over the past two weeks.

“In southern Syria, two airstrikes in Abu Kamal destroyed an ISIS financial headquarters and a bulk cash depository, and another ISIS financial headquarters was destroyed in Deir ez-Zor. Two airstrikes in Iraq destroyed ISIS financial centers in Huwayjah and al-Muthanna,” the colonel said.

The coalition is disrupting ISIS financing across Iraq and Syria to keep the terrorist organization from raising, moving and using the resources to pay for fighters and fund terrorism around the globe, Dillon said.

The coalition has struck about 30 ISIS banks and financial centers over the past three years, destroying tens of millions of dollars, and Iraqi government has cut off more than 90 bank branches inside ISIS territory from global financial systems, he added.

ISIS also is under significant pressure because the coalition is targeting its oil and other revenue streams, the colonel said.

“They have been forced to cut fighter pay by half, and having lost Mosul, and with the SDF making steady progress in Raqqa, ISIS has lost much of its revenue base,” Dillon explained.

ISIS is becoming increasingly desperate and resorting to more arbitrary taxation and extortion, undermining credibility with the local population and attractiveness to recruits, he added.

These efforts along with ISIS battlefield losses, leader deaths and degraded propaganda all contribute to a losing organization, Dillon said.

“ISIS does not have the same level of leadership it once had. They do not have the same level of grandeur. People just no longer want to come and join these terrorists. And they do not have the resources they once had,” he noted.

“ISIS is losing [and] it will continue to lose under the pressure of our partner forces and the coalition until they are defeated in Iraq and Syria,” Dillon said.

The gene-editing technology called CRISPR has revolutionized the way that the function of genes is studied. So far, CRISPR has been widely used to precisely modify single-celled organisms and, more importantly, specific types of cells within more complex organisms. Now, two independent teams of investigators are reporting that CRISPR has been used to manipulate ant eggs–leading to germline changes that occur in every cell of the adult animals throughout the entire ant colony. The papers appear August 10 in Cell.

“These studies are proof of principle that you can do genetics in ants,” said Daniel Kronauer (@DanielKronauer), an assistant professor at The Rockefeller University and senior author of one of the studies. “If you’re interested in studying social behaviors and their genetic basis, ants are a good system. Now, we can knock out any gene that we think will influence social behavior and see its effects.”

Because they live in colonies that function like superorganisms, ants are also a valuable model for studying complex biological systems. But ant colonies have been difficult to grow and study in the lab because of the complexity of their life cycles.

The teams found a way to work around that, using two different species of ants. The Rockefeller team employed a species called clonal raider ants (Ooceraea biroi), which lacks queens in their colonies. Instead, single unfertilized eggs develop as clones, creating large numbers of ants that are genetically identical through parthogenesis.

“This means that by using CRISPR to modify single eggs, we can quickly grow up colonies containing the gene mutation we want to study,” Kronauer said.

The other team, a collaboration between researchers at New York University and the NYU School of Medicine, Arizona State University, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University, used Indian jumping ants (Harpegnathos saltator).

“We chose this species because they have a peculiar feature that makes it easy to transform workers into queens,” said Claude Desplan, a Silver Professor at NYU and one of the senior authors of the second study. If the queen dies, the young worker ants will begin dueling for dominance. Eventually, one of them becomes a “pseudoqueen”–also called a gamergate–and is allowed to lay eggs.

“In the lab, we can inject any worker embryo to change its genetic makeup,” Desplan said. “We then convert the worker to a pseudoqueen, which can lay eggs, propagate the new genes, and spawn a new colony.”

Desplan, co-senior author Danny Reinberg, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at NYU Langone, and Shelley Berger, the Daniel S. Och University Professor in the departments of Cell and Developmental Biology and Biology at Penn, began studying these ants several years ago as a way to learn about epigenetics, which refers to changes in gene expression rather than changes in the genetic code itself.

“The queens and the worker ants are genetically identical, essentially twin sisters, but they develop very differently,” Desplan said. “That makes them a good system for studying epigenetic control of development.”

The gene that both research teams knocked out with CRISPR is called orco (odorant receptor coreceptor). Ants have 350 genes for odorant receptors, a prohibitively large number to manage individually. But due to the unique biology of how the receptors work–a great stroke of luck, in this case–the investigators were able to block the function of all 350 with a single knockout.

“Every one of these receptors needs to team up with the Orco coreceptor in order to be effective,” said Waring Trible, a student in Kronauer’s lab and the first author of the Rockefeller study. Once the gene was knocked out, the ants were effectively blind to the pheromone signals they normally use to communicate. Without those chemical cues, they become asocial, wandering out of the nest and failing to hunt for food.

More surprisingly, knocking out orco also affected the brain anatomy in the adult animals of both species. In the same way that humans have specialized processing centers in the brain for things like language and facial recognition, ants have centers that are responsible for perceiving and processing olfactory cues that are expanded compared to other insects. But in these ants, the substructures of these sensory centers, called the antennal lobe glomeruli, were largely missing.

“There are many things we still don’t know about why this is the case,” Kronauer said. “We don’t know if the neurons die back in the adults because they’re not being used, or if they never develop in the first place. This is something we need to follow up on. And eventually, we’d like to learn to what extent the phenomenon in ants is similar to what’s going on in mammals, where brain development does depend to a large extent on sensory input.”

“Better understanding, biochemically speaking, how behavior is shaped could reveal insights into disorders in which changes in social communication are a hallmark, such as schizophrenia or depression,” Berger said.

In a third related study from the University of Pennsylvania, researchers led by Roberto Bonasio altered ant behavior usingthe brain chemical corazonin. When corazonin is injected into ants transitioning to become a pseudo-queen, it suppresses expression of thebrain protein vitellogenin. This change stimulated worker-like hunting behaviors, while inhibiting pseudo-queen behaviors, such as dueling and egg deposition.

Further, when the team analyzed proteins the ant brain makes during the transition to becoming a pseudo-queen, they found that corazonin is similar to a reproductive hormone in vertebrates. More importantly, they also discovered that release of corazonin gets turned off as workers became pseudo-queens. Corazonin is also preferentially expressed in workers and foragers from other social insect species. In addition to corazonin, several other genes were expressed in a worker-specific or queen-specific way.

“Social insects such as ants are outstanding models to study how gene regulation affects behavior,” said Bonasio, an assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. “This is because they live in colonies comprised of individuals with the same genomes but vastly different sets of behaviors.”

Papers Cited:

1. Cell, Trible et al: “orco mutagenesis causes loss of antennal lobe glomeruli and impaired social behavior in ants.”  http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30772-9
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.001

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, a Searle Scholar Award, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, a Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, a Leon Levy Neuroscience Fellowship, a Kravis Fellowship, and a National Research Service Award Training Grant.

2. Cell, Yan et al: “An engineered orco mutation produces aberrant social behavior and defective neural development in ants.  http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30770-5
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.06.051

This research was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and one of its Collaborative Innovation Awards (HCIA) and the National Institutes of Health.

3. Cell, Gospocic et al.: “The neuropeptide corazonin controls social behavior and caste identity in ants”  http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30821-8
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.014

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Searle Scholars Program, the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation, and a Linda Pechenik Montague Investigator Award.

A study conducted by TU Wien and 30 European partners shows that the timing of the floods has shifted across much of Europe, dramatically in some areas. When a major flood event occurs it is often attributed to climate change. However, a single event is not proof, and so far it has been unclear whether climate change has a direct influence on river floods at large scales in Europe.

A large international project led by Prof. Guenter Bloeschl from the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at TU Wien has now collected and analysed 50 years of data from over 4,000 hydrometric stations from 38 European countries. This is an unprecedented dataset in terms of coverage across Europe and the sheer number and diversity of river systems that have been included.

The result: Climate change has a real impact on flood events in some regions. This has been seen by a shift in the timing of floods over the years. Depending on the cause of the flood events, they occur earlier in some regions, in others they occur later. The results have now been published in Science journal.

The magnitude does not tell you everything

“In flood research, we are often concerned with the annual probability of the occurrence of floods,” said Prof. Guenter Bloeschl from TU Wien. “By observing their magnitudes one can estimate a one hundred-year flood as a high-water event that occurs with a probability of one percent in any one year.”

However, while probabilities and magnitudes are an essential aspect of flood risk management, they are not necessarily the most sensitive characteristics for detecting the impact of climate change, as they do not only depend on the climate: “If one only examines the magnitude of flood events, the role of the climate can be masked by other effects,” explained Guenter Bloeschl. “Land use change by urbanisation, intensifying agriculture and deforestations are other factors affecting flood events.”

The timing provides information on the influence of the climate

In order to understand the connection between climate and floods, Bloeschl and his team looked closely at the timing of the flood events in different regions of Europe. “The timing of a flood provides information about its likely cause,” says Bloeschl. For example, in much of north-west Europe and the Mediterranean, floods occur more frequently in the winter, when evaporation is low and precipitation is intense. In Austria, on the other hand, the highest magnitude floods are associated with summer downpours. In North-Eastern Europe, the risk of flooding is at its highest in spring because of snow melt. The timing at which floods occur is thus much more directly related to the climate, in contrast with the absolute magnitude of the flood event.

Flood data from all over Europe have been meticulously compiled, screened and statistically analysed. These show that the floods in Europe have indeed shifted considerably over the last 50 years.

“In the north-east of Europe, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States, floods now tend to occur one month earlier than in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, they typically occurred in April, today in March, “said Guenter Bloeschl. “This is because the snow melts earlier in the year than before, as a result of a warming climate.”

In parts of northern Britain, western Ireland, coastal Scandinavia and northern Germany, on the other hand, floods now tend to occur about two weeks later than they did a couple of decades ago. Later winter storms are likely to be associated with a modified air pressure gradient between the equator and the pole, which may also reflect climate warming. The study sheds light on the complexity of flood processes in north-western Europe; on the Atlantic coasts of Western Europe, ‘winter’ floods in fact typically occur earlier, in the autumn, as maximum soil moisture levels are now reached earlier in the year. In parts of the Mediterranean coast, flood events occurring later in the season are aligned with the warming of the Mediterranean.

“The timing of the floods throughout Europe over many years gives us a very sensitive tool for deciphering the causes of floods,” said Guenter Bloeschl. “We are thus able to identify connections that previously were purely speculative.”

The advances in flood research have been made possibly by an ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Guenter Bloeschl in 2012, which allowed him to establish numerous international co-operations across Europe and thus closely examine the connection between climate and floods.

The overall rate of stroke in the United States has been declining in recent years and while that has been good news, a new study suggests it may be primarily good news for men. The research, published in the August 9, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that while the stroke rate for men declined during the study period, for women it remained the same.

“For years, women have had a lower overall rate of stroke compared with men, but now men appear to be approaching similar rates. While any decrease in rates of stroke is of course a good thing, it leaves one to wonder why women’s rates are not going down to the same extent,” said study author Tracy E. Madsen, MD, ScM, of the Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I. “At the end of our study, stroke rates for men and women were nearly the same.”

Recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that stroke has decreased to the fifth leading cause of death for men yet it remains the fourth leading cause of death for women.

For the study, researchers collected data on adults with stroke from a population of 1.3 million people living in a five-county area of southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky between 1993 and 2010. They then looked at hospital, clinic and coroners’ records to determine how many people had a first-ever stroke during four different one-year time periods, spaced approximately five years apart, during that time frame.

A total of 7,710 people had a first stroke, and 57 percent of those were women. Women had an average age at first stroke of 72. Men had an average age of 68.

Researchers found that overall stroke rates declined significantly for men but not women. For men, the rate went from 263 strokes per 100,000 men at the start of the study to 192 per 100,000 at the end of the study. For women, the rate went from 217 strokes per 100,000 women to 198 per 100,000, which is not a statistically significant difference.

When looking at specific kinds of stroke, researchers again found that the rate declined for men but not for women for ischemic stroke, resulting from a lack of blood flow to the brain caused by clots or blocked arteries. The rate for men declined from 238 per 100,000 to 165 per 100,000. For women, the rate went from 193 per 100,000 to 173 per 100,000, which again was not statistically significant. For bleeding stroke, rates remained stable for women and men.

“The overall decrease in stroke was driven by men having fewer ischemic strokes, a type of stroke caused by a lack of blood flow to a specific area of the brain,” said Madsen. “What is not clear is why stroke rates for women remained stable while the rates for men decreased.”

One possible explanation for the study findings could be that stroke risk factors are not as well controlled in women as in men, though this would require more studies to determine, Madsen said. Another possible reason for the more pronounced rate decrease in men may be changes in the study population over the time period. The percentage of people who were able to live independently decreased significantly over time and more so in women than men.

Limitations of the study include that information was not collected on risk factors that are unique to or more common in women, such as migraine and the use of hormone replacement therapy.

Occasionally, a controversial issue will arise that draws inane comments from all sides. Such is the case of artwork hanging in the Santa Ana office of Rep. J. Luis Correa: The painting depicts the Statue of Liberty wearing a hijab.

A group of local conservatives, We the People Rising, is demanding that it be removed, saying it violates separation of church and state.

A conservative pundit, Katherine Timpf, replies that the painting does not violate the First Amendment, arguing that “trying to use the Establishment Clause to remove this painting is far more egregious than trying to use it to remove someone’s office nativity scene.”

The liberal congressman, Rep. Correa, defends the portrait saying that determining “what is proper [and] what is not” would violate the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.

A liberal pundit, Chelsea Hassler, defends the portrait saying it is a “display of multiculturalism and tolerance.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) branded criticism of the artwork “Islamophobic.”

All five are mistaken.

The artwork does not violate the Establishment provision of the First Amendment. Indeed, it does not come close to being a state-sponsored religious exhibit. We the People Rising ill serve the conservative cause by trying to make this a constitutional issue.

Timpf is correct to contend that the position adopted by We the People Rising is flawed, but so is her position. To say that invoking the First Amendment to remove this painting is far worse than seeking to remove a nativity scene from a congressman’s office is astounding. Not to Christians it isn’t. Her interpretation of this artwork as a political statement, rather than a religious one, is irrelevant: there are plenty of good reasons why this painting does not belong in a congressman’s office.

Rep. Correa’s notion that judgments over “what is proper” would violate the First Amendment is ludicrous. He has a right to decide what pictures he wants in his office, but no artist has a right to have his work hung there. Denying a submission is not a constitutional violation.

Hassler’s remark that the painting is an expression of “multiculturalism and tolerance” is just as risible. To reconfigure a universal patriotic symbol to have a sectarian message is a demonstration of intolerance.

CAIR’s labeling of the artwork’s critics as suffering from Islamophobia is nonsense. Those who object to playing games with our national symbol—they would include millions of veterans—are acting rationally when they express their dissatisfaction. There is nothing phobic about objecting to offensive fare.

Rep. Correa’s legal right to have the hijab-adorned Statue of Liberty is only part of this issue: reasonable Americans have every right to question the moral propriety to hijacking our national symbol to make a cheap point. Whether that point is religious or secular does not matter. Tampering with the Statue of Liberty is what matters.

One month and two nuclear tests — the nuclearization of North Korea has made the situation vulnerable in East Asian region. On July 28, Pyongyang successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile “HWASONG-14”. This was the second successful (ICBM) test by North Korea. Earlier, an ICBM test was conducted on July 4.

These tests have raised the concerns of international community that the North Korean missile tests hamper the deterrence stability of the Korean peninsula. China called the test “absolutely intolerable,” France asked UN, “to take up the violation of its resolutions,” while South Korea, Japan and the USA highly condemned these tests

The missile tests affected not only the allies of North Korea, but in general those of the USA, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. The missile flew about 45 minutes going 3,700 kilometer high in the space with a distance covering some 1,000 kilometers carrying a large-sized heavy nuclear warhead.

North Korea’s nuclear tests cause questions to be raised about the security and stability of the Korean Peninsula, especially on the backdrop of the tenacity of that country to be a protagonist in the region as a trouble creator. Subsequently at one side it’s a blow to the non-proliferation regime, with the peace and strategic environment of the Korean Peninsula being disturbed, and North Korea’s allies are facing criticism for aiding its ambitions, and major global power rivalry is increasing.

Moreover, it will be more difficult for the countries that are trying to obtain NSG membership as the non-proliferation regime will be more strictly monitoring activities on behalf of de-facto nuclear weapon countries.  The tests would not only suggest a stern warning for the region about the strength of North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities, but also would feed talk regarding the legitimacy of North Korean missiles in the weapons proliferation regime.

Pyongyang is clearly giving a message to the world that it has acquired nuclear technology; Kim Jong-Un said that the nuclear weapons program is “a precious asset”. North Korea is materializing a strategic nuclear deterrence in the Korean Peninsula in contradiction to its present and potential adversaries. Kim has been quoted as saying that, “the whole US mainland is now within North Korea’s reach.” This will intensify the xenophobia in the entire North Korean nation with a surge of nationalism as a strategy to counter the international pressure. Moreover, it’s claimed that the missile has the range that  can target all the major cities of USA including Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago as well as New York and Boston. Unites States condemned the missile tests with US President Donald Trump stating that, “The United States will take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the American homeland and protect our allies in the region.”

An arms race in the region might increase barricading the efforts towards the arms control and further hampering the deterrence stability of the Korean Peninsula. The escalation control depends upon the prevailing of deterrence stability. However, North Korea’s nuclear test (HWASONG-14) test gives an impression that it’s hard to achieve an escalation control. Most probably to counter this move North Korea will need to face further sanctions.

The most serious concerns might be for Japan and South Korea. HWASONG-14 has the ability to reach Japan and United States. It can hit 200 miles towards Japan’s north most island i.e. (Hokkaido) in the west of Shakotan peninsula, within Japanese special economic zone. Japan has already bee a victim of nuclear weapons and it would not allow a repeat of Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Fukushima. To date, Japan has established on a non-nuclear posture for its national security policy.

Similarly, South Korea will have to consider the costs and benefits of going nuclear. Both the states terminated their nuclear program on the United States’ assurance of peace and security for them. Japan and South Korea have apprehensions to call for a secure and active extended deterrence.

North Korea’s nuclear pledge has put its allies Russia and China at risk and under immense pressure. Both China and Russia have condemned the North Korean ballistic missile tests.

China’s Foreign Minister Geng Shuag said, “China is opposed to North Korea’s launch activities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and against the will of the international community”.

China faces much of the burden, maybe even more then North Korea, as it is being compelled to assert sanctions against North Korea to discontinue itsactions. Chinese Ambassador to the UN Liu Jieyi, is president of the Security Council, and has said that North Korea’s nuclear test are against UNSC resolutions.

The current situation might be critical for China to choose between  its old friends, while maintaining its position in international settings

In that vein, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has argued that, “Much of the burden of enforcing UN sanctions rests with China”.

China is currently largest goods trading partner of United States. In 2016 China-US trade reached  $578.6 billion. Exports and imports between China and US totaled $115.8 billion and $462.8 billion, respectively, while US trade deficit with China was $347.0 billion in 2016.

Considering China’s trade with North Korea, it was worth $2.6 billion in the first half of 2017 with a growth of 40%.

In other words, North Korea’s nuclear test actually could affect trade between China and USA — and which would affect the Chinese economy largely.

The US has warned China and Russia to cut off  trade with North Korea. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “as the principal economic enablers of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development program, China and Russia bear unique and special responsibility for their growing threat to regional and global stability.”

Bearing the sanctions, while intimidating the international community, these weapons and tests will further isolate North Korea, while deteriorating its economy and robbing the nation. Meanwhile the splashes of the test are not only limited to the North Korea. Additionally, it allies and other regional countries will also be affected thus creating an atmosphere of distress and uncertainty in the Korean Peninsula.

*Qura tul ain Hafeez has done M Phil in international relations from Quaid-I Azam University Islamabad. She is currently working as a researcher at Strategic Vision Institute Islamabad. Her domain of work includes China as an emerging global power, Sino-Pakistan strategic and civil nuclear relations, South Asian strategic issues, regional integration, nuclear issues including nuclear non-proliferation and NSG, Foreign Policy analysis, and international politics.

President Donald Trump’s administration has passed the 200 day mark, a milestone that might make it reasonable to look at what he’s accomplished after making big promises in his campaign. No Obamacare repeal. No tax reform. No NAFTA repeal. No wall. No immigration reform (although he did issue some executive orders that were partially undone by the courts).

Unless one counts the excitement of reading President Trump’s often-amusing tweets, the first 200 days of his administration hasn’t brought with it many changes.

In fairness to the president, many of the policy changes he campaigned on are not within the power of the president to change. The lack of progress in Trump’s agenda is (partly? mainly?) a result of the checks and balances that are a built into the constitutional design of our government. Regardless of one’s views on Trump’s campaign promises, the constitutionally limited powers of the president must be viewed as a desirable feature of our government–one worth preserving, even though it has been eroded over the centuries.

As a corporate CEO, Trump faced fewer checks and balances. Whatever he said, those below him acted on. In business, the “check and balance” is the bottom line. Businesses that produce more value than they take out of the economy enjoy profits; those that don’t suffer losses. What the boss says, goes.

Government isn’t like that in the United States, at least not yet. We are not like Putin’s Russia, or Maduro’s Venezuela.

I’m not sure Trump had a good understanding of the limited power of the presidency when he took office, or the need to cooperate with legislators to push his agenda. But that’s a bit of a tangent from the point I want to get across here.

The checks and balances we have in government are valuable because they keep us from becoming like Putin’s Russia, or Maduro’s Venezuela, and they have been weakened since the Constitution was written.

President Obama didn’t get everything he wanted, to the disappointment of some; President Trump isn’t getting everything he wants, to the disappointment of others. But everyone should realize that eventually, someone they don’t like will get elected president, so everyone should support maintaining and strengthening the checks and balances designed into the Constitution.

We don’t want it to be easy for politicians to redesign public policy. I liked some of Trump’s campaign promises and didn’t like others, but I’m not unhappy that he’s facing (constitutionally designed) difficulties turning his promises into realities.

“I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ve long ago given up trying to interpret what he says.” -— Senator John McCain on President Donald J. Trump, Aug 8, 2017

Moral equivalence is the enemy of the noble and the exceptional, and the screeching rhetoric currently being fired across the diplomatic bows of Pyongyang and Washington have become mirrors of brute behaviour.

The reasons for this spike came after another round of spanking sanctions on the North Korean regime, a move that did have the reluctant blessing of China on the UN Security Council. Such a move would effectively strip Pyongyang’s coffers of $1 billion, making the point that Washington may well not so much bomb North Korea to the negotiating table as bankrupt it into a bargain.

The evident flaw in this strategy is simple: sanctions have succeeded in reducing a desperate population to an even more impecunious position while entrenching the regime. All the while, these moves have boosted the nuclear weapons drive.

The note on sanctions marked a particularly aggressive mood of participants at the ASEAN foreign minister’s summit over the weekend, one flavoured by the combative sprigs of Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, spat the potty-mouthed, drug pusher killing strongman, was a chubby faced “son of a bitch” prone to “playing with dangerous toys”.[1] It was soon evident to reporters that a self-portrait was being sketched. (It takes one to grudgingly know one.)

Duterte did, however, make the needless point that any nuclear confrontation on the peninsula was bound to inflict a geographical calamity of some consequence. “A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I don’t know what will happen to us.”

Chinese delegates had been keen not to put too many noses out of joint, given South China Sea tensions and the vast elephant in the room that is Beijing’s ambitions. The final joint communiqué of the ministers on August 5 called for “non-militarisation and restraint” regarding the contested area while avoiding any specific mention of Chinese actions.[2]

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s cup of praise brimmed, describing the summit as a “successful meeting with [a] very positive and friendly atmosphere”. In rather jejune fashion, Wang claimed that the China-ASEAN strategic partnership had “entered a new stage of comprehensive development.”[3]

On Sunday, Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, expressed her satisfaction at Beijing’s warming to the US position. “The fact that the Chinese were helpful and instrumental in setting up this really sweeping set of international sanctions shows how they realize that this is a huge problem they need to take on, that it’s a threat to them and their region.”[4]

In absentia, albeit very much present, was the regime of the DPRK. Having effectively gathered a noose, the US-led effort generated a predictable response. “Packs of wolves,” went a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, “are coming in attack to strangle a nation. They should be mindful that the DPRK’s strategic steps accompanied by physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilisation of all its national strength.”

It took a matter of hours for the White House occupant to respond. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” exclaimed President Donald Trump to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He [Kim] has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

It did not take long for the Kim regime to put out word that it was considering the possibility of a military deployment using the Hwasong-12. One suggestion was a missile strike on Guam in the Western Pacific, home to the Anderson Air Force Base.

This would involve, in the bombastic wording of a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army, initiating a plan that would be “put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment once Kim Jong-un, supreme commander of the nuclear force of the DPKR, makes a decision.”

The nuclear playground is proving busier than ever. Ballistic missile tests are met by air-force fly overs and further military exercises. These, in turn, are met by more tests, spruced with the necessary, inflammatory rhetoric of incineration. The sand pit is being turned over.

Instead of pushing an agenda of recognition that would entail the survival of the Kim regime, rather than its annihilation let alone more genteel overthrow, asphyxiation is being pursued. Desperation is being fed its disturbing rations.

What matters now is which bully will call the other’s bluff. Will the ghost of pre-emption be made a blood-spilt reality? Pyongyang remains the better placed one, noting the old adage that leopards don’t tend to alter their indelible spots. (Remember Iraq, remember Libya.) But it is Trump who persists in showing that a bully’s restraint and measure of self-control is taking a heavy toll.

Notes:
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/03/chubby-fool-duterte-lambasts-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-for-nuclear-ambitions

[2] http://asean.org/storage/2017/08/Joint-Communique-of-the-50th-AMM_FINAL.pdf

[3] http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/wjbzhd/t1482778.shtml

[4] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/north-korea-defiant-as-china-agrees-to-tough-new-un-sanctions-2017-08-06

By Michael Lelyveld

Last September, a sudden surge in coal prices caught China’s government by surprise, forcing it to boost production at a time when it had ordered the industry to cut back.

This year, China’s economic planners have been surprised again as prices neared record levels in July, triggering more production despite government orders to close surplus mines.

The two episodes are the result of different circumstances, but they both point to policy problems and pollution concerns with China’s heavy reliance on coal.

Last year, prices spiked when stockpiles at coal-fired power plants ran low before the start of the winter heating season after China’s top planning agency pressured mines to move faster on cutting excess production capacity.

The short-term needs, sparked by growing demand for electricity and steel, clashed with the government’s longer-term goal of curbing China’s production overcapacity, which had depressed prices and profits for years.

Responding to the crisis, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) authorized mines to increase output, in some cases at pits that had just been idled or closed.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), coal production officially fell 9.4 percent in 2016. But production rose sharply from month to month throughout the year, while northern cities were smothered by clouds of coal-fired smog.

This year, coal prices and production have been on the rise once more, and the government claims that cuts in excess capacity are ahead of schedule again.

On July 17, Reuters reported that benchmark thermal coal prices briefly touched 614.6 yuan (U.S. $90.81) per metric ton, soaring far into the “red” zone established under an NDRC regulatory plan announced in January.

Under the plan, the agency has tried to keep prices within a “green” range of 500-570 yuan (U.S. $74.06-84.42) per ton, considered acceptable for most producers and industries.

In the “blue” range of 570-600 yuan (U.S. $84.42-88.87) or 470-500 yuan (U.S. $69.62-74.06), the NDRC enhances “market supervision” and offers “guiding measures,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

In the red zone, the government can order “adjustment” of “abnormal prices” and production levels. The zone also applies to low prices under 470 yuan per ton.

With high prices and production adjustments, China’s coal production rose 5 percent in the first half of this year, including monthly double-digit increases in May and June, according to the NBS.

Combination of factors

This year’s coal squeeze is the result of a combination of factors including high economic growth rates and a 6.3-percent rise in first-half power consumption, driven in part by heat waves and air conditioning demand.

Alternating dry spells and floods have added to the problems of keeping coal-burning and prices under control.

Despite expectations that high water levels would lead to more hydropower and less coal consumption, the opposite has proved true.

Hydropower output was down 4.2 percent at midyear, while coal-fired generation was up 7.1 percent from a year before.

Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at National University of Singapore, said that cleaner hydropower has suffered from both drought and flooding so far this year.

“Drought lowered reservoir levels earlier this year, then heavy rains and floods led the government to order the dams to store the water to prevent exacerbating the flooding downstream,” Andrews-Speed said by email.

In July, flooding forced cuts in generating capacity by as much as two-thirds at the Three Gorges and Gezhouba hydro plants to ease downstream pressure on the Yangtze River, Reuters reported.

As power demand increased, coal production rose 9.9 percent in April from a year earlier, 12.1 percent in May and 10.6 percent in June, the NBS said.

The increases threatened to break a string of reported annual declines in coal production and consumption, which have been hailed by environmental groups.

Sketchy data

While China has won praise for its progress on reducing coal use, the supporting data has been sketchy at best.

In March, the NBS said in its annual statistical communique that coal consumption dropped by a substantial 4.7 percent last year, without citing a tonnage figure.

The omission raised doubts, in part, because the China National Coal Association (CNCA) said consumption fell 1.3 percent from 2015, according to a Shanghai Daily report on Feb. 22.

The claims of reduced coal use have been hard to reconcile with last winter’s increased outbreaks of smog.

In a rare update of consumption data, a National Energy Administration (NEA) official said that first-half coal use stood at 1.83 billion tons, accounting for 59.8 percent of total energy, Xinhua reported on July 22.

The official said the share was down by 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier but did not say whether coal consumption rose or fell.

The apparent reluctance to release complete and consistent data on coal consumption suggests that revisions may be in the works. The NBS has made major retroactive adjustments in the past.

The lack of consistent data poses a problem for climate researchers, since conclusions about greenhouse gas emissions may rely on China’s official coal consumption reports.

But gaps in the data may also be causing problems for the coal market and regulatory efforts, which frequently seem blindsided by consumption conditions and demand growth.

Late reactions

While the causes of the price spikes last year and this year may differ, regulators appear to be in the dark until power plants complain about coal costs or supplies run low.

Regulatory reactions often come too late to avoid setting off a complicated chain of effects.

On July 19, for example, Reuters reported that at least six provinces had raised coal-fired power prices after the government cut surcharges for their environmental programs to help generators cover the higher coal costs. The cut left the provinces to fund the programs with their own rate hikes instead.

Partial data also appears to be a problem for the government’s plans to reduce mining overcapacity.

The industry is believed to have so much excess capacity that it can meet the government’s annual targets for cuts without affecting its ability to raise output as needed to meet sudden increases in demand.

That may be the case, but two years of price spikes in a row suggest that the NDRC cannot effectively manage the capacity cuts, production increases and prices at the same time.

Last year, the price crisis started after the agency complained that mines were moving too slowly on shutting down surplus capacity, spurring a rush of capacity cuts.

By the end of the year, the industry had eliminated 290 million tons of capacity, overshooting its annual target of 250 million tons. By then, coal prices had jumped by over 70 percent.

This year, the NDRC appears to be repeating the process.

Last month, the agency said the industry had achieved 74 percent of its 2017 target for cuts by midyear, eliminating 111 million tons of capacity. Shanghai Daily said the pace was “worsening the supply shortage to drive up the coal price sharply.”

Effects of regulation

The effects of regulation are hard to assess, since the government does not disclose regular estimates of China’s total coal production capacity.

In 2015, the official English-language China Daily cited a CNCA overcapacity estimate of 1.5 billion tons, including “around 4 billion tons” of existing capacity, 1.1 billion tons more under construction and annual imports.

According to past NDRC figures, China consumed 3.96 billion tons of coal in 2015.

If that estimate holds true, China may have used 3.77 billion tons last year, based on the NBS statement, while overcapacity could still exceed 1.2 billion tons.

Despite the annual cuts, the NDRC expects production capacity to rise by a net 200 million tons this year as increases at more “advanced” mines exceed shutdowns of outmoded facilities, Argus Media said.

But without better estimates, the NDRC may still be focused on managing short-term production levels while running the risk that overcapacity cuts will keep upsetting the market.

“If the government chooses to control coal prices by limiting production, then any sharp rise in prices will result in an order to raise production,” said Andrews-Speed.

“In this case, rising demand for electricity and a temporary suspension of some hydro capacity has created the problem, but all sorts of other ‘unexpected’ events could trigger such a situation,” he said.

Understanding the gravity of the situation where India loses nearly 10,000 people to electrocution deaths annually, a civil society group is raising its voice for a total rearrangement of the power supply system in the country.

Endorsed by Gandhian Natwar Thakkar, civil liberties campaigner Dr Gopal Krishna, senior advocate Upamanyu Hazarika, eminent author-journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Monalisa Changkija with many others, the group also bats for a national debate to change the standard domestic supply voltages from 240 to 120 or even lower in volt differences.

“India as a nation witnesses not less than 10000 people killed annually because of electrocution. Accidental electrocution (including few suicidal attempts) cases are reportedly high in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Kerala, Odisha, Uttarkhand, Assam etc,” said a statement issued by Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA).

Expressing great concern over the human deaths, the forum also highlighted that the faulty high voltage wiring arrangement kills dozens of animals including elephants, tigers, sloth bears, monkeys, flamingos, peacocks, etc.

Not less than 350 elephants died in the country because of electrocution during the last five years. The list includes casualties of over 180 flamingos, 65 leopards, 20 tigers, 15 sloth bears, 10 lions etc in the same period, it added.

Though low compare to many other states in the country, Assam loses 50 to 90 people annually to electrocution deaths. Over 975 human lives were snatched away by the electricity related accidents in Assam since 2001, where the highest number of electrocution casualties (88) was recorded in 2016. The first half of 2017 witnesses the electrocution deaths to around 60 human beings.

“The statistics relating to electrocution deaths remain appalling. We believe that a pragmatic action plan over the layout of high voltage live wires, its timely maintenance, adequate public awareness over the use of electrical appliances safely in the country becomes the need of the hour,” asserted the PPFA statement.

Supported by many qualified engineers including Er Tridip Sarma, Er Islamul H. Mandal, Er Vikramjit Kakati, Er Kushal Chandra Deka etc, the statement added that the use of bamboo or other living trees to carry out the electrical wires should (must) be stopped and the Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd must replace all such temporary poles across the State with prescribed posts at the earliest.

The forum also insists on using proper fuse wires (or other protective systems) as a precautionary measure in all electrical systems. Replacing thin fuse wires of low current rating with aluminum conductors (or other wires) of high current rating in low to medium voltage electrical equipment is nothing but inviting a disaster, it claimed.

“As the electrical wiring can create public health hazards, the concerned authority must deal with the safety issue in right perspective. The State electricity departments should create a responsive safety department along with trained safety officers at the earliest,” pointed out by Dr SI Ahmed, Dr Jagadindra Raichoudhury, Dr Buljit Buragohain etc on behalf of the forum.

Mentioning about the future need of energy, the PPFA opined that the government should encourages more alternate sources like solar power in the country, particularly for northeastern States with hilly terrains, forest covers with visible presence of wildlife, where the laying of high voltage wires for longer distances always faces difficulties.

Where it is possible, the underground laying of live wires, instead of overhead electrical distribution system, should be encouraged, it argued adding that the underground wiring system should be separated from other utility services including the sewage canals by a reasonable margin to avoid adversities.

“Finally India should debate whether 110/120 volt (alternate current with 50 hertz) may be an adoptable option in place of present 220/240 volt to reduce the fatality of the system to many extent. At least developed nations like USA, UK and even our Asian friend Japan use lower volt lines to reduce the risk factors,” stated the forum.

Otherwise, two independent live/phases (each of 110/120 volt) with one neutral wire arrangement can be adopted where the customers may opt for single phase line only to use in lighting (preferably with LED bulbs), digital screening of television, computer, mobile phones etc and low watt fans. Others, who prefer to use heavy electrical appliances, may go for multi-phase supply lines, it explained.
“We understand that it would be a major policy shift for a country like India involving a huge volume of resources with adequate preparedness. But if India as a nation prefers to put its weight in favour of precious human lives, we must actively debate over the matter,” vowed Rupam Barua, Bidhayak Das, Dhiraj Goswami, Pramod Kalita, Anup Sarma, Ujjal Saikia etc for the PPFA.

They also commented that the qualified and practicing engineers across the country should come out with pragmatic ideas for an adoptable resolution for the benefit of the nation.

By R. Upadhyay

A soft approach of a sizeable section of Muslim intelligentsia in Kashmir including the political players towards the seditionists confirms the fact that despite accession of the biggest Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir to India under Indian Independence Act 1947, they are still carrying the mental baggage with the feeling of the Muslim-majority Kashmir’s separateness from the Hindu-majority India.

This was first generated by Sheikh Abdullah himself when he was the founding president of Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference in 1932.

Irrespective of their political affiliation many of the leaders from Kashmir were found to be avoiding a direct reply when confronted in TV debates of the exposure of the separatist leaders’ link with the terrorists operating in Kashmir. Their vague and irrelevant reaction over the arrest of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani who was exposed as ‘chief of all terrorist groups operating in Kashmir’ and other separatist leaders suggests their soft attitude towards the separatists.In post-accession political history of Kashmir, no Muslim political leader from Sheikh Abdullah to Mehbooba Mufti, the present Chief Minister ever gave up their feeling of Kashmir’s separateness from India. After exposure of seditionist leaders for their Hawala connection and use of Haj money for financing the ongoing violence in Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti went to the extent of saying that if special status to Kashmir is withdrawn, there will be no one to hold the tricolour flag in Kashmir. So much so in her party rally at Srinagar on July 29 she said, “You cannot kill an idea. You cannot jail an idea”. It gives rise to the suspicion that she too perhaps has a soft corner for those who are behind the idea of Azadi’(Independence) though factually, technically and legally the State of Jammu & Kashmir became free from the suzerainty of British Empire as well as from the rule of Hindu monarchy; the day its ruler Hari Singh signed the instrument of accession to accede to India. Such an attitude of Muslim intelligentsia in the valley appears to be a major blockade to resolve the Kashmir problem.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has a history of troubled times ever since the Muslim conquest of this region and mass conversion of its people to Islam particularly in the valley. Since then, the Kashmiri peasantry have suffered from the repressive Mogul, Afghan and other rulers. It is a historical irony that since 13th century when Kashmir became a Muslim majority region, the syncretistic culture of Kashmir like other parts of India which the natives called as ‘Kashmiriyat’ started losing its shine to ‘Muslimiyat’ or hate non-Muslim which dominated the administrative policy of the Muslim rulers. However, despite the peoples’ representative government in Kashmir following the instrument of accession to India signed by the Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 and Jammu & Kashmir becoming part of the democratic and secular India, the descendents of the Hindus now want to restore the administrative policies of the Muslim rulers.

It is a fact, though it may be vigorously denied that of the Muslim leaders- particularly Sheikh Abdullah due to his political ambitions to become the ruler of this former princely state played the politics of Muslim separatism and kept the Muslims of this region alienated from India. The problem started there and could he be called as the ideological father of the separatists?

About Sheikh Abdullah even the Central Intelligence Agency in its ‘special report on Sheikh Abdullah and Kashmir issue’ dated April 24, 1964 which was approved for release in December 1999 suggests that Sheikh Abdullah though agreed to Kashmir’s accession to India never gave up the idea of independent or quasi independent role for Kashmir. The report says: “Abdullah was also moved strongly by Kashmir’s feeling of separateness. Conversations with him in 1947 – and more particularly with his wife and some close associates – bear out that he then favoured some solution in which state will go its own way. He seems to have agreed to accession to India out of his regard for Nehru and his fear that otherwise the state would be overrun by Pakistan” (https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000283431.pdf)

Although, Sheikh Abdullah realised the political reality of the day and had entered into an accord later with Indira Gandhi the then Prime Minister in mid seventies, a group of self-seeking and politically ambitious group under the patronage of Pakistan continue to harp on Azadi.

After the end of the Muslim rule, though ‘Muslimiyat’ took a back seat following the rule of Sikh and Hindu rulers, it again raised its head during India’s freedom movement against British Empire particularly after the formation of All India Muslim League. Drawing inspiration from the communal ideology of AIML, the Kashmiri Muslim youths under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah formed the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference to launch a movement against the then Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh of this State with an objective to restore the lost Muslim rule, revive ‘Muslimiyat’ as administrative policy and to represent the hopes and interests of the Muslims. Abdullah’s speeches always started with verses from Quran indicating. One need not guess that he carried the day with Islamism in his consciousness. This was the beginning of Kashmiri Muslims of being encouraged to feel of having a separate identity.

The present separatist movement is in fact rooted to the same ‘Muslimiyat’ ideology of Muslim Conference and of the Muslim rule in the region when Islamists’ cruelties were carried out on the non-Muslim subjects for the purpose of their conversion to Islam. Driving out the Kashmiri pundits from the valley in 1990 was also a planned campaign of the Islamists which was rooted to the ethnic cleansing to free the valley from the Hindu minority and carry forward the legacy of ‘Muslimiyat.’

Sensing the trouble from his Muslim subjects, Maharaja Hari Singh armed himself with J & K constitution effective from September 1939 with all the powers including legislative, executive and judiciary vested in him and thereby became an absolute monarch of the State. Sheikh Abdullah reportedly on the advice of Nehru with a view to hide the communal image of his political organisation is said to have changed its name from Muslim Conference to National Conference in 1939. It was a tactical move of Sheikh Abdullah to project a secular character of the party by dropping the word “Muslims” from the title and opening its membership for Hindus and Sikhs also. He however, didn’t give up his feeling of separateness of the Muslim-majority Kashmir and always remained obsessed with ‘Muslimiyat’.

Thus, from All Jammu & Kashmir Muslim Conference to National Conference there was hardly any change in the ideology of restoring ‘Muslimiyat’ in Kashmir. He favoured an ultimate solution in which this Muslim-majority state will go its own way.

Ironically, even after Kashmir’s accession to India, Sheikh Abdullah remained obsessed to the ideology of independent Kashmir and influenced Nehru for a special status to his Muslim-majority state after incorporation of Article 370 in Indian Constitution.

Although, there were many political players besides Sheikh Abdullah who were responsible for the Kashmir problem but the closeness between Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah is said to be the one of the major reasons behind the initial indecision and hesitation of Maharaja Hari Singh to accede his State to India.

“Maharaja Hari Singh’s indecision to cast his lot with Indian dominion before the dead line of 15th August 1947 did complicate the matter. His initial indecision and hesitation to accede his state with India was due to his presumed hostility of Nehru towards him. This in effect was the beginning of the Kashmir problem, which we are facing even today…”

Nehru’s insistence that power in the state should be transferred to Sheik Abdullah, before the Indian dominion accepts J&K accession and Maharaja’s distrust of Sheik Abdullah and fear of his own abdication were responsible for the Maharaja’s initial hesitation”. (http://www.scoopnews.in/det.aspx?q=14754)

It is a fact that the State of J & K acceded to the Dominion of India under unique circumstances when many political players particularly Maharaja Hari Singh, Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru, Lord Mountbatten, Sheikh Abdullah and Mohammad Ali Jinnah played their respective politics and created such a problem for this State that even after its seven decades old accession the successive governments have failed to resolve it.

Incorporation of Article 370 in Indian Constitution and addition of Article 35A by a Presidential Order provided a special status to this State and power to its legislature to define ‘State’s permanent residents’ and special rights and privileges created a political and emotional gap between J & K and rest of the states in the country. People of India including Kashmir are paying for this political blunder committed by the then political leadership which encouraged a section of Kashmiri Muslims including politicians, intelligentsia and a few seditionists for talking about their separate identity. They are raising slogans for Azadi but are not clear about its meaning. If they want an independent sovereign state, it is not clear as to why their supporters are raising the slogan of Pakistan Zindabad?

It is unfortunate that the Muslim political leaders of this state are not even ready to debate the two controversial Articles which were intended to be transitional and temporary in nature. Sooner the continuance of these Articles are debated and reviewed, the better is the prospect for the development and progress of this State at par with other states in India. Simultaneously, the trouble makers including a section of Kashmiri Muslim intelligentsia under the patronage of Pakistan should be strongly dealt with as per law. Their complete isolation from the Kashmiri masses to transform the prevailing mindset of the Muslims in the State from ‘Muslimiyat’ to ‘Kashmiriyat’ is also the need of the hour to integrate them emotionally with rest of the country and bring peace in the region.

Embattled climate scientists working in 13 various US government agencies threw down the gauntlet before the Trump administration by releasing an over 600-page report on climate change in the US, the work of several years intended to comply with a Congressional requirement for such a report every four years.

The scientists involved in releasing the leaked document — the fifth draft of the 2018 report — told the Times they were releasing the document early in draft form for fear that the Trump Administration and Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, climate change denier Scott Pruitt, would attempt to deep-six, or at least drastically revise their work and conclusions.

Their fears are understandable. Trump has called climate change a hoax and a Chinese conspiracy designed to harm the US, and Pruitt, while recently at least acknowledging that the global climate is getting hotter, claims that it is both impossible to know to what extent human activity is to blame, and that the trend going forward is impossible to predict.

The latest report, however, debunks all of those ignorant assertions by the country’s current leadership, warning that the warming trend both globally and in the US is undeniable, and dire.

According to the document, which is dated June 28 and titled “US Global Change Research Program: Climate Science Special Report” (CSSR):

“Since the last National Climate Assessment was published (in 2014), 2014 became the warmest year on record globally, 2015 surpassed 2014 by a wide margin; and 2016 surpassed 2015. Sixteen of the last 17 years are the warmest years on record for the globe.”

The report goes on to state that “many lines” of scientific evidence “demonstrate that it is extremely likely” (meaning 95-100% certain) “that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” They explain that “There are no convincing alternative explanations supported by the extent of the observational evidence. Solar output changes and internal natural variability can only contribute marginally to the observed changes in climate over the last century, and we find no convincing evidence for natural cycles in the observational record that could explain the observed changes in climate.”

The grim picture looking out to 2100, which it must be noted is easily within the lifetime of children living today:

“With significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, the global annually averaged temperature rise could be limited to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or less. Without major reductions in these emissions, the increase in annual average global temperatures relative to pre-industrial times could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit or more by the end of this century.”

Think about that last number. Imagine average temperatures where you live in summer rising by 9 degrees. This year, the temperature in Phoenix has been hitting 120. Adding nine degrees to that would make it a fatal risk to go outside for most people, even briefly. Even in the Northeast, it would mean many 100+ degree days in summer, which would preclude outdoor work like construction, roadwork, yard work or farming.

The study, in terms of its global conclusions, was based upon the last report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in 2014. That data, though, has already been overtaken by events, from the unanticipated thawing of the ice sheet in Antarctica, to the ongoing pace of melting of both the ice sheet on Greenland and the ice sheet that covers the Arctic Ocean, now close to disappearing during the summer months, and even this past winter suffering some melting episodes. Also not anticipated in the last IPCC report was the dramatic melting of permafrost, both in the Siberian and North American tundra regions, and also under the shallow parts of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, Alaska and Canada. That melting is starting to release vast quantities of long-trapped CO2 and worse yet, methane gas — a global warming chemical that is anywhere from 20-80 times as powerful as carbon dioxide and which could set off a runaway warming that could make the planet more like Venus than Earth.

The government scientists don’t talk about that possibility, but they do say that a 9-degree increase in global and US temperatures by then end of this century is a possibility if nothing is done soon to slow or reverse the continued pumping of more carbon into the atmosphere. And that is now increasingly likely given the Trump administration’s troglodyte and anti-science insistence on rolling back all Obama and Bush-era efforts to reduce carbon-based fuel use in cars, trucks and power plants.

But the report doesn’t limit itself to talking about temperatures rising.

It talks too about sea-level rise, increasing ocean acidification, and weather changes such as more powerful storms, worsening droughts and flooding, and of course threats to food supplies as droughts and intense weather events expand and increase in severity and frequency.

In the case of sea-level rise, the report says seas worldwide have risen an average of 7 inches since 1900. That might not seem like a lot to an landlubber, but for someone with a home near the shore it can mean the difference to having your house survive a major storm or wash away. Furthermore, they note that sea levels are rising at the fastest rate they have risen in 2000 years, and that the pace is accelerating. Using 2014 IPCC data, the projections are for sea level to rise by another 1-4 feet by 2100, but that doesn’t include new evidence of melting in Antarctica, which if it continues could mean a sea-level rise of 8 feet globally by the end of this century! Moreover that would not be the end of it. The rise would continue as increased global warming in turn leads to an increased rate of ice melting at both poles (which between them have enough water to raise the world’s oceans by over 200 feet.

Perhaps more serious for the US over the near term, is the potential slowing down and reduction in volume of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), of which the Gulf Stream is a major part, the part which keeps the winters moderate along the Eastern Seaboard and in the UK and western Europe. “Under the high emissions scenario,” the scientists write dryly, “it is likely that the AMOC will weaken over the 21st century by 12% to 54%.” (A few years ago, a branch of the Gulf Stream that cuts across the mid-Atlantic to Europe simply stopped for a few weeks, to the consternation and terror of oceanographers, who couldn’t explain it, but breathed a sigh of relief when it started back up again.)

Turning to ocean acidification — which is increasing as the oceans have absorbed a quarter of the increased human-caused atmospheric carbon over the past century — the report notes that while this process has helped keep climate change in check for the past century, at the same time it has increased the acidity of the ocean at a rate not seen since the end of the dinosaur age 66 million years ago. That acidification is expected to continue to increase by 100-150% over the rest of the century, with devastating consequences for marine life and ultimately life on land too, from sea birds to humans. The base of the marine food chain is plankton most of which construct calcium-based exoskeletons which are now being eaten away by the increasing acidity of the water. If the plankton die, so do the fish that feed on them, and on up the chain to mammals and of course us humans. Dissolved oxygen in the oceans is also in decline, down by about 3.5% over the past decades, because of warming waters and decreased circulation, they note.

The government scientists, for the first time in such a document, also warn about the risks posed by the melting permafrost and the almost inevitable release of vast quantities of currently frozen and locked up carbon and methane gas. As they put it:

“Rising Alaskan permafrost temperatures (they don’t mention the must vaster permafrost regions in Canada and Siberia) are causing permafrost to thaw and become more discontinuous; this process releases additional carbon dioxide and methane resulting in additional warming. The overall magnitude of the permafrost-carbon feedback is uncertain; however it is clear that these emissions have the potential to complicate the ability to meet policy goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas concentrations.”

That’s an understated way of saying: All the plans, promises and commitments of the Paris Agreement could be pointless if the methane starts pouring out of the ground in the currently frozen but thawing north. And indeed, recent images of huge craters in Siberia, apparently caused by giant bursts of erupting methane, suggest that a catastrophe is already in the making in those regions.

Finally, in their executive summary, the scientists issue a warning, which the Trump administration, and the American people as a whole, including all those who put Trump in the White House, and climate denying Republicans in charge of Congress, deny at their own and all of our peril. They say:

“Humanity is conducting an unprecedented experiment with the Earth’s climate system through emissions from large-scale fossil-fuel combustion, widespread deforestation, and other changes to the atmosphere and landscape. While researchers and policymakers must rely on climate model projections for a representative picture of the future Earth system under these conditions, there are still elements of the Earth system that models do not capture well. For this reason, there is significant potential for humankind’s planetary experiment to result in unanticipated surprises — and the further and faster the Earth’s climate system is changed, the greater the risk of such surprises.

“There are at least two types of potential surprises: compound events, where multiple extreme climate events occur simultaneously or sequentially (creating greater overall impact), and critical threshold or tipping point events, where some threshold is crossed in the climate system (that leads to large impacts). The probability of such surprises — some of which may be abrupt and/or irreversible — as well as other more predictable but difficult-to-manage impacts, increases as the influence of human activities on the climate system increases.”

It’s too much to hope that a president who thinks and functions in 140-letter Tweets, and who cannot seem to keep his mind focussed in speeches through one complete sentence, will read even the 23-page executive summary of this frightening report by “his” own scientists, much less the whole 600 pages of the full thing. His EPA stooge Pruitt probably will be too busy trying to find and punish the leakers to even look at it beyond the first pages listing the authors and contributors. But unless some people in government read it and understand its clear warning, and unless American newsrooms move beyond their breathless focus on alleged Russian meddling in the last election and on the latest Bachelorette scandal, the question will not be whether America can be “great again,” but whether there will be any America at all to speak of, come 2100.

By Bhaskar Roy*

The recently released Vision-2030 document of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) demands some deep thought and assessment. The 256 paragraph document would suggest that a massive genetic transformation is on in the second largest party of Bangladesh. It is basically a road map for the 2018 end general elections, projecting and tempting rosy picture of the nation, if the people brought the BNP back to power next year. Reportedly, many BNP members are rubbing their eyes in disbelief after reading the document. Of course, at the end the document admits “Realization of our vision is difficult but not impossible”.

The ruling Awami League leaders and their alliance partners in the government have dismissed this document as a “stunt”. Many were not even interested in reading the document. Veteran Awami League reader Tofail Ahmed reacted to the Vision-2030 document, saying it had divided the BNP leaders. This could be because the document raises questions over the party’s ideology, its history and alliance partners like the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) and other radical parties which were against liberation.

BNP’s Vision statement appears to be playing catch up with Prime Minister Sk. Hasina’s Vision 2021 with its 23 point manifesto, which helped propel the Awami League to power in the 2009 elections. Her manifesto was bereft of fat, specific and limited to achievable but very important or rather critical goals.

One of them was rooting out terrorism from the country and terrorism that affected other nations in South Asia. The other focus was development and empowerment of the youth through education and employment. In both areas she made significant progress. She saw to it that no neighbouring country suffered from terrorism and militancy emanating from Bangladesh’s soil. On development, social indicators have been applauded internationally. Limited goals and sincerity in application did the trick.

On the other hand BNP leaders and cadres have other reasons for hesitation. The road map charted by the BNP chairperson Bagum Kaleda Zia and her close advisors appears to have lost a sense of reality. The promises made are unachievable by 2030, and many of them are vague. They will have to answer the people who will start questioning them in the run up to the 2018/19 elections. Also, how will the BNP match their past track record, especially during their rule in 2001-2006? A Pandora’s box will open up!

It would be pertinent to discuss a few of the subsections of the vision statement. Under the heading “Terrorism, Extremism and Militancy”, it says that at present, under the Awami League led government, “Terrorism, Extremism and Militancy have become a perilous problem for the nation”. It goes on to say, “BNP shall not tolerate any such activity on the soil of Bangladesh”.

However, BNP’s track record says otherwise. Terror and political assassination of the opposition, especially of Awami League leaders, was the hallmark of their rule in alliance with the JEI.

A stark example of BNP terrorist activity is reflected by the grenade attack on a public gathering by the Awami League on August 21, 2004 in Dhaka. The main target was Sk. Hasina. Although she narrowly escaped with her life, she was seriously injured and had to be treated abroad for a long time. Ivy Rehman, member of the Awami League Presidium was killed, along with 22 others. Scores were injured.

Mufti Hannan, the commander of the outlawed terrorist organisation Harkatul Jihad al Islami (HUJI) was the chief executor of the attack. Following his arrest after the BNP lost power, Hannan gave a sworn affidavit to a magistrate, detailing the conspiracy behind the attack. The details are worrisome. The kingpin was Tareque Rehman, the elder son of Khaleda Zia, then prime minister of Bangladesh. Tareque ran his office from a building called Hawa Bhaban. He virtually ran the government from there. Ministers of the government closely involved were Lutfozzaman Babar, then Minister of state for Home (Khaleda Zia kept the main portfolio for Home with herself), and Abdus Salam Pintu, a deputy minister. Two intelligence officers of Brigadier rank and one Commissioner were also involved from the government side, according to Hannan’s statement. It was Pintu who supplied 15 grenades to Hannan and his accomplices. They were assured of all protection. Several terrorist leaders including the Amit of HUJI were involved.

There were over 200 Islamic terrorist organisations active during the BNP-JEI rule. Most destructive among them was the Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Their near simultaneous bombing in 63 out of 64 districts in Bangladesh in August 2005 terrified the people of Bangladesh. Lutfozzaman Babar was one of their patrons. Money from NGOs of the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia flowed in quite easily through banks in Bangladesh, especially through the Islamic Bank of Bangladesh.

It was only after a strong warning from US President George W. Bush that the government cracked down on the JMB. Its top six leaders were arrested and later executed. The BNP had taken the country of the verge of being declared a state sponsor of terrorism. If that had happened, it would have been an ignominy that not only was difficult to live with, it would have made Bangladesh an internationally Pariah state.

Once the seeds of extreme Islamic ideology are planted, they are like poisonous weeds very difficult to uproot. They morph into different forms, as is being witnessed in the recent years and currently, too. The security agencies are hunting them down, but they seem to sprout like mushrooms in the rainy season. The culture and politics of Bangladesh has been severely damaged by BNP-JEI combine. Evidence suggest that these parties have not yet discarded this line.

In dismissing the appeal of two BNP members for permanent residency in January this year, a judge of the Federal court of Canada wrote that “BNP was a terrorist organisation”. The judge based his judgement on the interrogation of these two individuals by a Canadian Immigration officer.

In March last year a New York Court sentenced Rizwe Ahmed Caesar, FBI agent Robert Lustiyik and another American citizen to different terms in jail for accessing privileged information from the FBI about Sajeeb Wazed Joy. Joy is the only son of Sk. Hasina. The court concluded that the intention was to harm Joy physically. Ahmed Caesar is the son of BNP’s US unit head, Mohammed Ullah Mamun. At least two other Bangladeshi journalists were arrested in connection with the conspiracy.

This suggests that the BNP has not discarded its practice of political assassination.

Between 1987 and 2015 at least 23 attempts were made on Sk. Hasina’s life in Bangladesh. Why? Because she is the symbol and flag bearer of Bangabandhu Sk. Mujibur Rehman, the father of liberation. Pakistan’s army and the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) are yet to forget their defeat in 1971 and the break up of Pakistan. Sk. Mujibur Rehman was assassinated in August 1975 in another conspiracy between Pakistan and some officers of the Bangladeshi army, and some of Sk Mujib’s own cabinet members.

The BNP Vision 2030 has a paragraph on foreign policy which states certain things in camouflaged language. While it says BNP will not interfere in the internal affairs of any other country neither will it create any security threat to any other country; it will also not tolerate interference in Bangladesh’s internal affairs. Then it says that across the borders it will have friends but not masters.

The reference is clearly to India. Bangladesh has land borders only with India and Myanmar, but Myanmar is not so significant. The policy towards India during BNP-JEI government (2001-2006) must be recalled even if briefly. Indian militants and separatists like the ULFA, the NSCN (1/11) and others of north-east India were given sanctuary and support. And that too quite brazenly, cocking a snook at India. Leaders of these organisations visited China on Bangladeshi passports in different name to procure arms and ammunition.

One landmark case was the clandestine import of ten truck loads of arms and ammunition from China in 2004 to support separatists like the ULFA. They were brought in through Chittagong Port, and accidently discovered by two patrolling police officers. This was a huge conspiracy. According to Bangladesh to media reports following interrogation of suspects after the BNP-JEI lost power, it was reported the Babar, JEI leader Nizami, Tareque Rehman and some intelligence officers were behind the conspiracy. It was also reported that the ISI was involved and provided financial support.

One of the immediate casualties if the BNP returns to power in the 2018/19 elections will be India-Bangladesh relations. Both the BNP and ISI resisted several aspects of the growing India-Bangladesh relations under Sk. Hasina. The transit facility given to India through Bangladesh to its north-east was resisted on the grounds that if an India-China border war broke out and India transported troops through Bangladesh, the Bangladesh-China relations would be hurt. BNP continues to oppose the Ramphal power project alleging environmental degradation of the Sunderbans. Of course, if it is a threat to the environment or ecology, its demands questioning. But it must be backed by solid scientific evidence.

The 2001-2006 BNP-JEI government took the bilateral relations to unprecedented depths, though the Indian policy was to hope Bangladesh would ultimately realise and return to a cordial relationship. That did not happen. If the BNP and its alliance still nurture their visceral antipathy towards India they would suffer. India would continue to grow on its own. Mortgaging Bangladesh to Pakistan and China to spite India would be a disastrous policy.

The rest of the BNP Vision-2030, to say the least, is anodyne. It does not inspire confidence. Rather, it is futile, and indicates retardation of a resurgence for which Bangladesh has been appreciated internationally and by international financial and development institutions.

Sk. Hasina and her government appears to be hamstrung by the powerful donor countries protecting Tareque Rehman and Khaleda Zia.

The next general election is critical for the future of Bangladesh, and the basic aspirations of liberation. Prime Minister Sk. Hasia will have to work very carefully hence forth. Time is of essence.

*The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohart@yahoo.com

A global peace network called on the Philippines to take advantage of martial law in Mindanao “to get rid of illegal guns” and reduce the possibility of them being recycled.

Ed Quitoriano, consultant of the non-government group International Alert, proposed that the government “kick-start the nationwide capture, inventory, and immediate destruction of illegal guns” in Mindanao.

“Martial law presents a unique window of opportunity,” said Quitoriano in Manila on Aug. 9.

Francisco Lara Jr., country manager of International Alert, said the “time is ripe” for President Rodrigo Duterte to follow-through with his promise to eliminate loose guns.

“The Philippine government needs to create a bulletproof plan to strengthen gun policy and institute a gun management mechanism that will empower state authorities to seize, properly store, and obliterate illegal weapons,” said Lara.

International Alert said that in 2014, Filipinos owned an estimated 3.9 million firearms, some 2.1 million of which were illegal, while the police and the military possess less than a million guns.

“State forces are clearly outgunned,” said Quitoriano. “The sheer number of illicit weapons poses a serious challenge to the government’s monopoly of the use of force to protect its citizens,” he added.

By Matt Hadro

Dialogue and prudent actions to uphold international resolutions are key to maintaining peace amid rising tensions between North Korea and the international community, one theologian said.

“Dialogue is critical to resolving this particular issue,” Dr. Joseph Capizzi, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America, told CNA. “We have kicked the can down the road for 50-plus years, with regard to Korea.”

“And the further we kick the can down the road, the more difficult the situation becomes, the less solvable it becomes by the use of force. So dialogue is more essential now than it ever was before.”

The Vatican has shown concern over the developing situation and has also expressed the need for dialogue between countries. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, former Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, said on Wednesday that the “way of conflict is always the wrong way.”

“The way forward is not that of having the latest military technology, but of having an approach of inclusion,” the archbishop said, as reported by Vatican Radio.

In July, North Korea successfully tested ballistic missiles that had the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, following a series of launches of medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles earlier this year.

Then on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that North Korea had produced a small-enough nuclear warhead that could be placed inside a missile, according to intelligence analysts. North Korea reportedly has as many as 60 nuclear weapons, according to one United States estimate.

On Wednesday, DPRK state media reported that the Kim Jong-Un regime was considering a strike against the island of Guam in the West Pacific, the westernmost U.S. territory and one from which B-1 bombers have flown over the Korean peninsula in military exercises. The AP followed up on Thursday by reporting that a plan for North Korea to launch four missiles aimed to land in the ocean within 25 miles of Guam, as an exercise of its threat to the U.S. territory, had been hatched and could be submitted for approval in the next week to Kim Jong Un.

Because of North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup and its ballistic missile tests, the UN Security Council unanimously voted last weekend to impose more sanctions on the Communist dictatorship.

President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that if North Korea continued to threaten the United States, they would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a Wednesday press conference that “what the President is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”

“I think the President just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime on the U.S. unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies,” he said.

The need for dialogue carries with it the importance of prudence and “sobriety” in the rhetoric of U.S. and world leaders, Capizzi said.

“We do want to engage them,” he said. “We’re trying to pull back some of the incendiary nature of the rhetoric. And then to have the President immediately follow that up with the ‘fire and fury’ comment, it makes us seem erratic. It makes us seem inconsistent,” he said.

Yet, he added, “action is much more important here than rhetoric.” The international sanctions, and the unanimous vote of UN Security Council members – including even Russia and China — to impose them, were an important step to take, he said, “to induce North Korea to stop testing missiles.”

Also, the actions that have not been taken are important, he said, like an overly aggressive mobilization of U.S. military forces. “You don’t see our military or our navy sort of ratcheting up right now,” he said.

“That’s what we really need to keep our eyes on, is what is our military doing? Where are our ships going in that part of the world? What is Japan doing?” he said. “And so far I think everybody recognizes there’s nothing to gain by pushing this further. What we really want to do is sit down and see if we can negotiate out of this.”

Pope Francis, in an April 29 in-flight press conference during his return from Egypt, said that regarding the escalating international tensions with North Korea, “the path is the path of negotiation, the path of diplomatic solutions.”

“This world war in pieces of which I’ve been talking about for two years, more or less, it’s in pieces, but the pieces have gotten bigger, they are concentrated, they are focused on points that are already hot,” he said.

“Things are already hot, as the issue of missiles in North Korea has been there for more than a year, now it seems that the thing has gotten too hot.”

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, told UN News this summer “general disarmament — that is a priority this year.”

“There is no doubt that the Catholic Church, Pope Francis now in particular, is very much against not only the use but also the possession of nuclear weapons,” he said.

Leaders for the U.S. and European bishops also called for nuclear disarmament in a July 6 statement “Nuclear Disarmament: Seeking Human Security.” Bishop Oscar Cantu, chair of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee, signed the statement along with Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions.

“For many, the horror of a potential nuclear war receded from consciousness with the end of the Cold War, but recent geopolitical developments remind us that our world remains in grave danger,” the bishops stated.

“Even a limited nuclear exchange would have devastating consequences for people and the planet. Tragically, human error or miscalculation could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”

While the United Nations conference to negotiate the multi-lateral and legally-binding Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was wrapping up in July, the bishops said, the U.S. and “most European nations” were noticeably absent.

122 countries present voted in favor of the treaty, with one, the Netherlands, voting against it and Singapore abstaining, the UN reported.

“Nuclear states are making significant new investments to modernize nuclear arsenals. These costly programs will divert enormous resources from other pressing needs that build security, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” the bishops stated.

“The indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of nuclear weapons, compel the world to move beyond nuclear deterrence. We call upon the United States and European nations to work with other nations to map out a credible, verifiable and enforceable strategy for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”

“Background noise,” was the way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the decision of his former chief of staff, Ari Harow, to become a state witness. The following day, the prime minister’s press officer declared–for the hundredth time–that “Nothing will happen, because nothing happened.” Despite the relentless effort to paint a business-as-usual atmosphere, this time it looks as if Netanyahu is actually going down.

At least two probes dealing with serious allegations of bribery, breach of trust and fraud seem likely to end with an indictment against Israel’s premier. In “Case 1,000,” police suspect Netanyahu accepted lavish gifts from wealthy businessmen, while, in certain instances, he even provided services in return.

“Harow,” as one prominent Israeli columnists explained, “is the game changer.” Before becoming chief of staff, he was responsible for maintaining Netanyahu’s connections with several billionaires, and he is likely to possess incriminating information about his former boss’s relations with these affluent figures.

But even before Harow flipped, the police divulged that Netanyahu had intervened on behalf of Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who, for years, had given Netanyahu and his family presents worth hundreds of thousands of shekels. According to the police, the prime minister had approached both former US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and Secretary of State John Kerry to help precure a ten-year visa to the US for Milchan. The police also noted that Milchan holds a 9.8 percent stake in Israel’s Channel 10, which is subject to regulation by Israel’s Ministry of Communications, which, as it happens, until recently was headed by Netanyahu.

The second probe, called “Case 2,000,” focuses on recordings the police obtained after confiscating Harow’s personal computer and phone. Capturing conversations between Netanyahu and Arnon Mozes, the publisher of the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and the popular Ynet News website, the recordings reveal that just before the 2015 Israeli elections, Mozes offered to help Netanyahu stay in power “for as long as [he] want[s].” In a quid pro quo deal, the publisher requested that Netanyahu pass legislation limiting the ability of Yedioth Ahronoth’s main competitor, the pro-Netanyahu Israel HaYom newspaper, to distribute papers for free.

According to the transcripts, the two went so far as to discuss which pro-Netanyahu columnists Yedioth Ahronoth would hire. Netanyahu then said he would discuss the legislation with the “redhead” — referring to Israel HaYom’s publisher, the American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is also a Republican kingmaker and known contributor to Trump’s presidential campaign. In fact, during a recent police interrogation, Adelson confirmed that Netanyahu had asked him to consider cancelling the paper’s weekend edition.

These probes are perhaps the most incriminating, but, as the noose tightens, Netanyahu will have to deal with a number of other legal inquiries as well. The prime minister’s personal attorney is one of the major suspects in “Case 3,000,” which is looking at suspicious acquisitions on the part of the Israeli military involving alleged bribe and fraud. According to Ha’aretz, “Netanyahu’s personal lawyer was due to earn tens of millions of shekels from an agreement, since suspended, to buy three submarines from Germany.” The personal lawyer, however, is not the only link between Netanyahu and the corrupt transaction, since the deal seems to have been supported by the prime minister and approved behind the back of the previous Defense Minister, who had opposed the procurement of the submarines.

Lastly, the police have recommended pressing charges against Sarah Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, for misusing state funds, including the movement of furniture from the prime minister’s official residence to her private home and paying an electrician to rewire her private abode at the taxpayers’ expense. Israeli newspapers suggest that she is likely to be indicted soon.

Netanyahu’s eleven-year rule thus appears to be fast approaching an inglorious end.  The more interesting question now, however, is what the significance of these developments will be. Two points are worth making.

First, Netanyahu is not really an outlier. Many leaders and politicians across the globe, particularly those who, like Netanyahu, have managed to stay in power for many years, have also become corrupt by abusing the privileges and responsibilities bestowed upon them by their office. Yet, what is relatively unique about the Israeli case is that some of the corrupt protagonists actually end up in jail.

Indeed, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was recently released from prison after serving 16 months for corruption charges, and, over the past two decades, several ministers have also sat in prison cells, at times for years on end. Even though the circumstances are quite different, the fact that former President Moshe Katsav sat several years behind bars for rape is yet another sign that in Israel top-ranking individuals are not immune from judicial review. The relative autonomy of the judicial system from the executive institutions alongside the ability–and willingness–to imprison high-power individuals is not something to take lightly.

The second point has to do with the impact of Netanyahu’s potential collapse on Israel’s colonial project. In this regard, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Politically, those in a position to replace Netanyahu at the helm of Israel’s government–whether from within the Likud’s ranks or from other parties–are either even more extreme than the prime minister (e.g., Likud prince Gideon Sa’ar or Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett), hold nearly identical views (Labor leader Avi Gabbay), or, as we say in Hebrew, are made of Teflon, meaning that they have no backbone at all (Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid). None of these political leaders will challenge Israel’s colonial project, needless to say “acquiesce” to the Palestinian demand of self-determination and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Ideologically, the problem is even more severe. As the public and political response to the Elor Azaria murder trial reveals, the Palestinians are considered by many in Israel to be sub-human and thus killable subjects. These sentiments—as the court’s sentence of a mere year and a half for murder and the widespread call for a pardon for Azaria reveal—are part of Israel’s dominant ideology and common sense, which Netanyahu has actively encouraged over the years through his hate speeches towards Palestinians. Even the same judicial system that imprisons politicians, is the handmaiden to settler colonialism when it comes to Palestinians.

To create an ideological shift, it is insufficient to cut off the king’s head; rather, what is needed is a sea-change in public opinion. Tragically, even if Netanyahu ends up behind bars, it appears that the colonial common sense will continue to reign for many years to come.

First published in Al-Jazeera

By Kishore Jayabalan*

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Vatican-based newspaper La Civiltà Cattolica published  “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,”  basically attacking American religious conservatives for practicing an “ecumenism of hate.” It drew immediate criticism from many, including Acton Institute’s Director of Research Samuel Gregg, Fr. Raymond de Souza of Canada’s Convivium, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. A few, such as the National Catholic Reporter’s Sean Michael Winters, offered praise.

The article is so shoddy in tone and substance that it really should not be taken seriously. It’s as if it were written just to add fuel to an already raging partisan fire in the Catholic Church in the United States. The only reasons it has drawn so much attention are that its authors are known to be close friends of Pope Francis and that La Civiltà Cattolica is essentially vetted by, and therefore unofficially representative of the views of, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

So rather than debate whether American conservatives are caught in “a complicated political and religious web that would make them forget they are at the service of the world” or if the Church Militant website speaks for anyone I know (it doesn’t but I’m sure it has benefited from the increased traffic), I’d like to ask how and why such views exist in the Vatican at all.

I spent five years working at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace during the pontificate of John Paul II. (It has since become part of the newly-formed Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development because justice and peace weren’t difficult enough to achieve!) It was generally known as the Vatican office where lefties could feel like good Catholics. We avoided talking about the Church’s retrograde sexual teachings and focused on trendy issues like the environment and disarmament and how wonderful the United Nations would be if only …

For an American conservative, it was a deeply penitential experience that I hope will merit reduced time in Purgatory. Early on, at a plenary assembly of bishops and others from around the world, I worked up the gall to say that the Church shouldn’t presume that business and profit-making are inherently evil; I could hear the gasps ricocheting around the salmon-colored room. No one wanted to engage or discuss the matter any further, however. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I had to convince my colleagues that it was useless to plead the United States from going to war because the war had already started. And I did my best to explain that supporting the Kyoto Protocol was not evidence of moral virtue, let alone holiness. I would have mentioned that the death penalty may be justified in some cases, but that was a bridge too far even for me.

I knew I was on my own but somehow enjoyed the devious nature of it all. No one expected that a young dark-skinned fellow with an Indian name could actually be an American conservative and agreeable at the same time. If a colleague or, God forbid, one of my superiors agreed with me, they would have to come and tell me privately, sotto voce. Due to the international nature of the issues we dealt with, we often collaborated with the second office, which covered foreign affairs, of the Secretariat of State and the diplomatic corps, where there would also be a secret conservative or two. The few of us knew each other and formed a little club of heretics among the prevailing left-wing Eurocentric political culture of the Roman Curia.

You may be asking yourself: Maybe this is possible under Pope Francis, but how could it be under John Paul II, who knew what communists and socialists were up to in Poland? How could anyone be left-wing and Catholic in those days? The answer I got from colleagues at the Secretariat of State was that the Church’s strict teachings on marriage and family issues aligned it with the right, so in order to avoid being partisan, the Church had to align itself with the left on other issues.

In fact, I was once chastised for creating tensions on family issues with the European Union at a UN conference on housing. Fair enough, if one is thinking about the diplomatic need for ideological balance. But it comes across as a hedge rather than anything having to do with the way things actually are. Unfortunately for social-justice Catholics, there is in fact only one form for marriage and the family, while there are many ways of helping the poor, protecting the environment, promoting justice, etc.

It is understandable why the Church does not align itself with a single political party, despite the fact that a party may, at certain times, be friendlier to the Church as an institution. For example, the Democratic Party used to be the natural home for many Catholics, so much so that voting Republican may well have been material for confession. Christian Democratic parties in post-WWII Europe were opposed to the Socialist and Communist parties on the left but seem to have lost their reason for being since the end of the Cold War. (Did La Civiltà Cattolica warn its readers about the Manichean theocracy of former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti?) As much as we would like to keep religion and politics separate, they always find ways of becoming intertwined.

This fact should be obvious to a publication like La Civiltà Cattolica, which is what makes its recent article so absurd. Are its authors surprised by the existence of Evangelical fundamentalists or Catholic integralists (i.e. true believers) or that they would form alliances when necessary? Religion should have a public, political element to it; otherwise, it would be merely a matter of individual preference, like having a favorite ice cream flavor. Modern politics, with its ideologically-driven parties, is also a matter of public debate of deeply-held beliefs about society. Politics is not simply a matter of holding to certain principles but also of adapting to changing realities and allegiances. If everyone held the same beliefs about God and politics, we wouldn’t have much to live or die for, and the world would be a much less interesting place.

Ultimately, denying religious and political differences is a cowardly retreat from the world, born of a desire to avoid messy and sometime violent conflicts, of which Europe has seen its share. America is both a result of and a reaction to this European way of thinking. On the one hand, many Americans are proud of their European heritage and continue to come here for educational and cultural reasons; on the other, they left their old countries in search of a better life with more opportunities for advancement and growth. Americans are therefore much more willing to express their differences openly and work together in spite of them. This often strikes Europeans as uncivilized if not dangerous to the common good, but it accounts for much of the misunderstanding I’ve witnessed both personally and professionally.

The misunderstanding applies to everything from religion and politics to crime and punishment and economics. Americans embrace pluralism while Europeans first ignore, then placate before becoming alarmed and finally destroy each other over their differences. At least they eat, drink and dress well and leave behind some very impressive works of art. Vive la différence!

About the author:
*Kishore Jayabalan is director of Istituto Acton, the Acton Institute’s Rome office. Formerly, he worked for the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as an analyst for environmental and disarmament issues and desk officer for English-speaking countries. Kishore Jayabalan earned a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In college, he was executive editor of The Michigan Review and an economic policy intern for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He worked as an international economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. kjayabalan@acton.org

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute