By Gabriel F. Barbosa*

Brazil’s Congress is rushing to approve a series of legislative reforms to update the country’s electoral system ahead of next year’s general election, when voters are scheduled to choose a new president, 27 governors, 54 senators, 513 representatives to the Chamber of Deputies, and 1,059 state legislators. Public demand for a reformation of the country’s political system gained momentum during the 2013 street protests, when then-President Dilma Rousseff proposed to call a constituent assembly exclusively to discuss the issue, but was blocked by efforts of Brazil’s former vice president and current controversial President Michel Temer.[i] [ii] For Temer, any solution that includes direct popular participation would be considered unconstitutional. Instead, in his view, attempts to reform the existing constitutional order would require going through the current elected legislature represented by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

What does electoral reform in Brazil add up to?

From Congress’ perspective, electoral reforms have become increasingly urgent as the ongoing Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) made public the potential involvement of a slew of the country’s elected officials in massive bribery schemes in state companies. A recently released official document from Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin lists an array of politicians, from all political backgrounds, potentially involved in the scandal. The list includes the Speakers of both Houses, Senator Eunicio de Oliveira and Deputy Rodrigo Maia, besides 24 senators and 42 members of the Chamber of Deputies, the majority which is composed of Temer’s congressional base.[iii] In addition, relentless media exposure from the ongoing investigations has, along with a number of highly unpopular austerity measures, contributed to sink Temer’s approval rating to 2 percent as of early July of 2017.[iv]

An unpopular illegitimate president coupled with an untrustworthy Congress poses a conundrum to current legislators who are thinking ahead of next year’s election. They need to dissociate themselves from the Temer administration, while responding to public demands for a reformation of the country’s political system in ways that would allow them to maintain their current offices, or at the very least, retain their chances for reelection.

Proposals being currently debated in Congress reflect this concern. While many proposed bills are not expected to be encoded next year, two intrinsically linked initiatives, regarding a new congressional electoral system and a new system of public financing of campaigns, have already gained a good deal of political support and were approved by the lower house special commission on electoral rules this month.[v] As such, if these bills were approved by October 7 of this year, these new rules would already be valid for the 2018 elections.

Campaign Finance

The upcoming 2018 elections will be the first general elections since the re-democratization period of 1985 in which corporations will not be allowed to donate to support political campaigns. In September of 2015, the country’s Supreme Court ruled it illegal for corporations to donate money to political campaigns.[vi] This is a major shift from the 2014 general elections, when corporate donations amounted to close to four billion BRL, not including additional funding provided by the federal government.

In response to these new rules, politicians have been searching for alternative ways to fund their own campaigns. The initial proposal from the Chamber of Deputies Commission on Electoral Reform included the creation of the National Fund for Democracy, with the intention to fund future elections, equivalent to 0.5 percent of the country’s net tax revenue in 12 months.[vii] However, in a series of recent debates, Congress voted to remove this percentage requirement, in a 441 vote to one, responding to negative public reactions regarding the proposition. [viii] The controversy is based on the fact that, considering the projections for 2017 revenues, the fund could potentially amount to a staggering 3.6 billion BRL, or approximately $1.9 billion USD, in value.

Moving toward the Distritão Electoral System

In addition to campaign financing, the other issue put forth by the Commission on Electoral Reform, which is currently under debate in the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, is the reformation of the electoral system for Brazil’s legislative bodies.

In the current system, members of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as state legislatures, and city council members, are elected on . Different from majoritarian systems, proportional representation allows voters to cast votes for either their preferred candidate, or their favorite party. [ix] Seats are then allocated using the Hare quota according to the total number of votes received by the party, or a multiparty coalition.[x] Candidates who receive the most votes within the party or the coalition are selected to fill in the seats. This has contributed to the emergence in Brazil of a phenomenon referred to as the “celebrity effect,” in which parties select former celebrities or professional athletes to run on the top of their in the hopes of attracting many total votes . It is worth noting that Brazil is one of a few countries to use a pure proportional system based on districts that juxtapose state or provincial geographical borders. At the same time, it is the only country to have utilized such a system for such a lengthy period (since 1992) with such a large electorate, 115 million in 2002. This is in contrast to other countries that adopted the same model the year before, such as Poland (24 million), Peru (14 million), or Chile, (8.1 million).[xi]

The most controversial proposition that was recently rejected by legislators to replace the official model is a modified version of FPTP named distritão. Under this other system, members of the Chamber of Deputies, and other local legislative houses could be elected solely on the number of votes received by the candidate, rather than the party, making state borders the de facto electoral districts for the Chamber of Deputies races, and city limits for city council ones.

This is the second time that the distritão is rejected on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies in two years. In 2015, under the leadership of former Speaker of the House, Eduardo Cunha, the proposal had already been shut down by the majority of representatives.

Made for Each Other

The distritão system requires the proposed additional campaign funds. It is true that the distritão would not alter current district size, but the problem is that candidates would now need to compete for more votes, against each other, without being able to rely on a party, or coalition vote sharing. This would inevitably make campaigns far more expensive — especially for federal legislators who would need to cover more ground in a state-wide majoritarian race.

Overall, elections have become too costly over the years. Partly because of the lack of public scrutiny over the use of corporate sponsorship has led to the abuse of professional marketing strategies, which helped to cover up the lack of political substance; and partly because of quid pro quo arrangements between candidates and donors.[xii] However, instead of making campaigns cheaper, legislators are just trying to compensate for the loss of corporate financing. In 2014, federal funds available for political campaigns amounted to over 300 million BRL, or $100 million USD at the time, while the current proposal would potentially increase that amount by as much as 10 times. [xiii] Since the projected value of the proposed fund is set at about 3.6 billion BRL, the cost of public financing of the 2018 election would equate to that of 2014.

Criticism

Most of the criticism directed at the distritão system have focused on three main points. First, the system would prevent congressional composition renovations. According to a recent doctoral thesis published by Marcio Carlomagno of Universidade Federal do Parana (Federal University of Parana, UFPR), had the distritão system been in place in the last elections, between 88 and 92 percent of congressional members would have been reelected.[xiv] However, the concern behind this argument is only valid if we consider the current, or more recent congressional composition. Undoubtedly, today’s Congress is one of, if not the worst, in terms of political inaptitude, or academic credentials. For instance, there are only 36 members of congress, or 6.19 percent hold a Master’s degree, while 49 percent come from political dynasties whose parents or grandparents serve or have served as congress members.[xv] [xvi] Consider, for example, one controversial proposal by congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro of the Partido Social Cristao (Social Christian Party PSC), whose father Jair Bolsonaro serves as a federal deputy in the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, and younger brothers Flavio and Carlos Bolsonaro serve in state and municipal legislatures in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In November of 2015, he put forth a proposition that the State should lend firearms to individuals whose license had been revoked or whose weapons had been confiscated.[xvii] Moreover, an even more latent example of the inaptitude of current legislative officials for holding public office is former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. After being elected as one of the most voted-for members of Chamber of Deputies in 2014, whose mandate was revoked two years later, and who now serves a 19-year prison sentence for his involvement in the Car Wash scandal for money laundering, and other corruption practices.

On the other hand, not too long ago, between the late 1980s, and early 2000s, the Brazilian congress enjoyed the presence of distinguished members such as former president and union leader, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva; the first and only congressman in the history of Brazil of Indigenous descent, Mario Juruna; and anthropologist and former vice-governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Darcy Ribeiro, besides countless other prominent lawmakers like economists Roberto Campos and Delfim Netto. Therefore, congressional membership renovation for renovation’s sake is an innocuous criticism that fails to render any credence in the absence of necessary foundational institutions to produce qualified politicians. Former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and presidential candidate, Ulysses Guimaraes, once famously noted that “

Second, all sides of the political spectrum have attacked the distritão system based on the fact that it is only utilized in a handful of “insignificant” countries. Take for instance the following statement from Poder 360, an influential Brazilian political blog: “There is a vast shortage of potential supporters of this tragic innovation… since it is in usage in only Muslim [author’s emphasis), and 2 insular – Afghanistan, Jordan, Vanuatu, and Pitcairn Islands.” [xviii] Or, consider this statement, made in a highly ironic tone, taken from a YouTube promotional video by a progressive state legislator from Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Freixo of the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Liberty Party PSOL): “Where is the distritão system applied today? Only in Afghanistan, Jordan, and two small countries in Oceania.”[xix] Such a line of argument is not only intellectually lazy, but also loaded with prejudice, to say the least. Simply because one system is restricted to only a few places does not necessarily mean that such a system is unworthy of consideration. For instance, the distritão could make perfect sense for small republics, where there may be difficulties in congregating enough people under a single ideological banner to form a party such as ancient city-states like Athens or modern-day Pitcairn Islands. Conversely, if another system is commonly replicated, it does not make it automatically suitable. Instead, countries should adopt, the argument follows, models from consolidated democracies, as if such models do not present grave problems in themselves. The issue here is that it distracts the public from comprehensively understanding the serious issues posed by the distritão system by steering the debate with empty rhetoric and abstract terminologies.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, FPTP systems have an inherent bias to replace the party with the individual. Since the system shifts the distribution of congressional seats from proportional to majority allocation, it turns the political campaign into individual competition rather than ideological contestation. Furthermore, because of its winner-take-all voting system, FPTP favors larger parties in detriment of smaller parties and minorities, forcing a natural gravitation toward a broadly based two-party system.[xx] Such a tendency is only aggravated under presidential systems where broader coalitions could become harder to form. And since parties are becoming ideologically broader, they have a propensity to form internal factions in lieu of what would have been the role of smaller parties under proportional representations. This can potentially discourage the need for party unity in congressional voting.[xxi]

Next, in the second article of this series on the Brazilian Political system, we will discuss the foundational problems that exist in the current system to illustrate that the political crisis in Brazil is not limited to one country or another. Rather, it is a crisis rooted on the shortcomings of liberal constitutional democracies in both the developed and developing worlds.

*Gabriel F. Barbosa, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Aline Piva, Assistant Deputy Director and Head of Brazil Unit, and Liliana Muscarella Research Fellow

[i] IBOPE “85% da população é a favor da reforma política” 08/06/2013 http://www.ibope.com.br/pt-br/noticias/Paginas/85-da-populacao-e-a-favor-da-reforma-politica.aspx

[ii] Lourenço, Luana Agencia Brasil 06/25/2013 “Temer diz que Constituinte específica para reforma política é “inviável” https://agencia-brasil.jusbrasil.com.br/noticias/100580346/temer-diz-que-constituinte-especifica-para-reforma-politica-e-inviavel

[iii] G1 Globo http://g1.globo.com/hora1/noticia/2017/04/lista-de-fachin-tem-governadores-senadores-deputados-e-ministr.html

[iv] Telesur 06/21/2017 http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Michel-Temer-Hits-a-New-Low-With-a-2-Approval-Rating-20170621-0031.html

[v] Fernanda Calgaro G1 Globo http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/comissao-da-reforma-politica-aprova-distritao-para-eleicoes-de-2018-e-de-2020.ghtml

[vi] Renan Ramalho G1 Globo http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/09/supremo-decide-proibir-doacoes-de-empresas-para-campanhas-eleitorais.html

[viii]Fernanda Calgaro G1 http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/camara-retira-da-reforma-politica-valor-de-fundo-para-custear-campanhas.ghtml

[ix] Majoritarian elections, also known as winner takes all result in elections where the candidate with the highest percentage of votes is elected to office.

[x] The Hare quota is an equation often used in political science as a benchmark to determine election results in proportional representation systems.

[xi] Nicolau, Jairo “The Open-List Electoral System in Brazil” Dados – Revista de Ciencias Sociais v.49 n.4 pp.689-720 2006.

[xii] Fernanda Krakovics and Chico Goes O Globo 08/06/2014 https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/empresa-jbs-friboi-a-maior-doadora-das-campanhas-de-dilma-aecio-13517327

Erich Decat and Fabio Fabrini Estado de Sao Paulo 05/07/2015 http://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,empreiteiras-do-cartel-doaram-r-78-milhoes-a-pt-e-psdb-em-2014-imp-,1682741

[xiii] Justica Eleitoral do Brasil http://www.justicaeleitoral.jus.br/arquivos/tse-distribuicao-do-fundo-partidario-duodecimos-2014

[xiv] http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2017/08/1910993-citado-em-parecer-da-reforma-politica-diz-que-distritao-e-desnecessario.shtml

[xv] Congresso em Fogo “Congresso: 652 parlamentares, apenas 1 pos-doutarado” June, 2011 http://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/novo-congresso/congresso-652-parlamentares-apenas-1-pos-doutor/

[xvi] Medeiros, Etore Agencia Publica de Reportagem e Jornalismo Investigativo February 2016 http://apublica.org/2016/02/truco-as-dinastias-da-camara/

[xvii] Revista Super Interessante https://super.abril.com.br/ideias/os-piores-e-os-mais-curiosos-projetos-de-lei-dos-nossos-deputados/

[xviii] Luis Costa Pinto Poder 360 08/11/2017 https://www.poder360.com.br/opiniao/congresso/distritao-e-a-tragica-perpetuacao-do-mal-na-camara-dos-deputados/

[xix] Marcelo Freixo Midia Ninja 08/18/2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H8IsRAgUjI

[xx][xx] Salomon Orellana “Electoral Systems and Governance: How Diversity can Improve Decision Making” Routledge Press New York, NY 2014

[xxi] Arend Lijphart “Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in 36 countries” Yale Press New Haven, CT 2012

By Jonathan Cook*

The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.

Last week these cheerleaders for Jew hatred described 27-year-old Yair Netanyahu as “awesome” and “a total bro” for posting a grossly anti-semitic image on social media.

It depicts an Illuminati-like figure and a reptilian creature controlling the world through money and dark arts. Alongside them are a cabal of conspirators, their faces altered to show Netanyahu’s main opponents. They include George Soros, a Holocaust survivor who has invested billions in pro-democracy movements, and Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister turned government critic.

This is not Yair’s first troubling outburst. Last month he emulated US President Donald Trump in decrying demonstrators who opposed a rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left a woman dead.

These might be dismissed as the immature rantings of a wayward son, had Yair not been groomed by his father as Israel’s “crown prince”. Netanyahu Jnr was supposedly behind an online media strategy that steered Netanyahu to electoral victory in 2015. He can be seen at his father’s side at meetings with world leaders.

The Israeli media were shocked not only by the post but Netanyahu’s determined refusal to criticise his son. An editorial in the Haaretz daily concluded that the prime minister’s silence signalled his “consent to the ongoing demonization of anyone who doesn’t get in line with the Israeli right”.

Yair’s choice of targets was revealing, particularly the image’s “Grand Jew” – George Soros.

In July, Netanyahu met his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, an ultra-nationalist who has led a xenophobic campaign against immigrants. In a bid to crush opposition, the Orban government has vilified Soros, an American-Hungarian who promotes progressive causes. A billboard campaign against the billionaire unleashed a wave of anti-semitism across the country.

As leader of a Jewish state professing to be the world’s only refuge against anti-Semitism, Netanyahu ought to have rushed to Soros’s defence. Instead he echoed Orban’s incitement. Soros, he said, had “undermined” and “defamed” Israel too – by funding human rights groups opposed to the occupation.

Sympathy with the European and US far-right is not restricted to the Netanyahu camp. It is moving into the Israeli mainstream. Last week the Herzliya conference – an annual jamboree for Israel’s security establishment – invited Sebastian Gorka as a keynote speaker.

Gorka, another American-Hungarian and Trump’s former terrorism adviser, is a figurehead of the alt-right, a term for US white supremacist groups. Gorka told the conference that Israel and the US were “founding members of the Judeo-Christian civilization” and would defeat their “common enemies”.

Meanwhile, another US alt-right leader, Richard Spencer, appeared on Israeli TV last month to call himself a “white Zionist”.

The affinity between Netanyahu’s Israel and the west’s far-right is understandable. Both detest a human rights discourse they have yet to crush. Both mobilise their supporters with dog-whistle Islamophobia. Both prefer militarised, fear-based societies. And both share an obsession with Jew hatred.

Israel is so esteemed by white supremacists because it offers a double whammy of anti-semitism. For decades Israel has sought to persuade the west that it faces an endless war against Arab and Muslim “terror”; while Israel also declares itself the only true home for Jews.

For an alt-right bristling with hatred for all semites, Jews and Muslims alike, this is manna from heaven. It too wants an apocalyptic battle against Islam, and it too is happy to see the west cleared of Jews by herding them into the Middle East.

At first sight, that has created an ideological inconsistency on the Israeli right that Yair Netanyahu’s meme highlights.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly called on all Jews to come to Israel, claiming it as the only safe haven from an immutable global anti-semitism. And yet Netanyahu is also introducing a political test before he opens the door.

Jews supporting a boycott of Israel are already barred. Now liberal Jews and critics of the occupation like Soros are increasingly not welcome either. Israel is rapidly redefining the extent of the sanctuary it offers – for Jewish supremacists only.

The paradox may turn out to be more apparent than real, however. For Netanyahu may believe he has much to gain by abandoning liberal Jews to their fate, as the alt-right asserts its power in western capitals.

The “white Zionists” are committed to making life ever harder for minorities in the west, in a bid to be rid of them. Sooner or later, on Netanyahu’s logic, liberal Jews will face a reckoning. They will have to concede that Israel’s ultra-nationalists were right all along, and that Israel is their only sanctuary.

Guided by this cynical convergence of interests, Jewish and white supremacists are counting on a revival of anti-semitism that will benefit them both.

(A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.)

* Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net.

A melancholy saying reminds us that you can’t go home again. I know I can’t. My parents have been dead for decades, and my brother Bill, my only sibling, died three years ago. Moreover, the house in which we lived when I was growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s has been wiped from the face of the earth. Only a few old timers might recall that on a certain spot of now-bare ground once stood the house in which Jess Higgs and his family flourished some sixty years ago.

Yet, if you cannot go home again, it may happen that home can come to you, as it has come to me in a heart-warming way since my emigration to Mexico two years ago. Here in Mexico I live in a remote place with very limited local availability of groceries and other ordinary consumer goods. Fortunately, however, three times each week Lucio, an enterprising fellow from Bacalar, a town a hundred miles away, comes to my gate with his pickup loaded with fresh produce, eggs, pastries, tortillas, and other goods. (If we ask him to bring something he would not ordinarily bring, he brings it on a later trip.) Among the goods I routinely buy from him are cantaloupes, and often the label on the melons indicates that they were produced by Pappas Family Farms of Mendota, California.

Which takes me back to my boyhood. I grew up on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, on a ranch about eight miles east of a little town called Firebaugh, which is itself about 45 miles or so west of Fresno. When I was growing up there, Firebaugh called itself the “Cantaloupe Capital of the World.” (I notice that recently this claim is being made by Mendota, a town about nine miles down the road from Firebaugh.) During the summers of several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I worked at General Box Company’s facility just outside Firebaugh, where materials were prepared for the shipping of cantaloupes packed in wooden crates loaded into iced-down railroad cars. (That technology has been superseded in more modern times.) Among my jobs at General Box was operating a machine that put labels on the end slats of the crates. These labels were colorful and artistic identifications of the various growers, including Pappas Farms.

So, today, when I buy a cantaloupe brought to me in the far reaches of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, I immediately feel a link to my boyhood and relive at least for a few moments the youthful joys of that long-ago time and far-away place.

I recognize, too, with immense gratitude the debt I owe, along with many others, to the entrepreneurs who make the world of commerce serve the needs of consumers so beautifully. George Pappas, who founded Pappas Family Farms, back in the 1930s, had immigrated a few years earlier from Greece. Like so many other immigrants, he did not settle for being a lifelong wage worker, but ventured to take the risks and make the demanding efforts required to establish a successful firm. The longevity of his creation speaks for itself. But let us not forget my amigo Lucio while we are celebrating and expressing gratitude for entrepreneurship. Lucio is never going to rival Bill Gates in his accumulation of wealth, but he works wonders to make life in my little community here in Mexico more livable and joyful.

Thank God for the entrepreneurs, both those who immigrate from distant lands and those who work among us every day to keep the wheels of commerce rolling. Today’s world is utterly reliant on entrepreneurs. Their willingness to bear risks and their skill in appraising how they might best serve consumers make life possible, not to mention comfortable and often delightful, for the earth’s huge human population. They are at work everywhere—in the USA, in Mexico, and in the enormous movement of goods and services between these two great economies.

It is nothing short of tragic, as well as utterly foolish, that the Trump administration is devoting itself to impeding and distorting such commercial entrepreneurship between the USA, Mexico, and other countries. Let us hope that even in Washington, D.C., some of the economic dullards and political opportunists will rouse themselves and decide to desist from their current, destructive policies.

This article was published by The Beacon.

Total said Friday that its subsidiary, Total E&P USA, has entered into an agreement to capture 7 prospects operated by Chevron in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. The agreement covers 16 blocks.

According to Total, the associated prospects are located in two promising plays and areas of the GoM: Wilcox in Central GoM next to the Anchor discovery, and Norphlet in Eastern GoM nearby to the Appomattox discovery. Total’s participation in these wells will be between 25% and 40%.The first of these wells was spudded late July on the Ballymore prospect in Mississippi Canyon.

“This agreement, together with the recently announced participation in the Jack field as part of the Maersk Oil acquisition, increases Total’s footprint in the USA GoM where it can apply its exploration expertise and deepwater technologies. Total values Chevron’s performance as a GoM deepwater company and this agreement expands a successful co-ownership already in place on the Tahiti field”, stated Arnaud Breuillac, President Exploration & Production. “As a continued effort to highgrade its portfolio, Total won six offshore exploration licenses in the August Lease Sale.”

In the Gulf of Mexico, Total focuses on the deepwater with a participation in two producing fields, Tahiti with 17%, operated by Chevron, and Chinook with 33.33%, operated by Petrobras, as well as in the world-class discovery of North Platte with 40%, operated by Cobalt International. As part of the acquisition of Maersk Oil company, Total will also become a 25% partner in the Chevron operated Jack field. Total also has a participation in over 160 exploration leases.

Both units at Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power plant are back in production after their annual maintenance outages. The annual outage of Unit 1 lasted approximately 22 days, until August 27. All scheduled work at Unit 1 was completed on time. However, the total duration of the annual outage was exceeded by approximately two days due to malfunction of a valve during start-up. The maintenance outage of Unit 2 lasted approximately 17 days, until 21 September. All scheduled work was completed one day ahead of schedule. Start-up of unit 2 was prolonged 12 hours due to trip of feedwater pumps during turbine start-up.

According to Fortum, this year both units underwent a refueling outage. In conjunction with the annual outages, about one quarter of the fuel in both units was replaced.

In addition to the normal periodic maintenance tasks and refueling, the most significant work on both units this year is the renewal of the high-pressure safety injection pump motors. At Loviisa Unit 1, also a modernised high-pressure turbine was installed and at Unit 2, two turbine moisture separators were replaced.

“This year several challenging projects were successfully implemented at both units, thanks to high quality planning. Overall, the work went smoothly,” said Anssi Laakso, Manager, Plant Lifetime Management and Maintenance unit.

Good results have been achieved in the long-term development efforts to lower the radiation levels at the plant during the annual outage. Thanks to the continuous development work, the collective radiation doses for personnel during annual outage at Unit 1 were the lowest in the plant’s history and among the lowest for Unit 2 compared to similar types of outages.

“At the power plant, tidiness and good order are prerequisites for an efficient and safe working environment. In our daily operation we pay attention to them, and especially during annual outage when the number of employees and work to be done is multiplied in comparison with normal operation. A great step forward was taken in managing the premises and work sites. This is one of the contributing factors why no injury related loss of workdays occurred during this annual outage,” Laakso said.

A total of some 700 external employees participated in the Loviisa power plant’s annual outage that started in August and in ongoing modernisation projects. About 80 percent of the workers were Finnish subcontractors. There are approximately 500 Fortum employees and some 100 permanent contractors working at the Loviisa power plant year round.

In the recorded history of mankind, many civilizations have come to exist, thriving for generations before falling into decay and eventually dying out. While some have been forgotten over time, others are remembered more vividly even today, thanks to the practice of extensive record keeping which commenced with the invention of writing on cuneiform tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, papyrus in Egypt and culminating in the introduction of paper by the Chinese.

Multiple aspects of civilizational history, be it political, social, religious or intellectual came to be recorded widely as various civilizations progressed. The quest for search of ancient materials and records continues even in current times for the purpose of study by scholars across the world in order to try and improve man’s understanding of the world inherited from past generations. While political, social and religious history of a place could be influenced or skewed by the ideology of its patron who usually was a reigning king or emperor, intellectual knowledge has traversed beyond the boundaries of petty power politics considering the fact that it was aimed at solving universal problems of life and not restricted to a particular​ ​empire​ ​or​ ​class​ ​of​ ​people.

Succeeding civilizations have gone on to improve and build upon the works of their predecessors by preserving and studying writings produced on multiple subjects. From the age of cuneiform tablets to the introduction of paper, whether it was the ​”Code of Hammurabi” from ancient Babylon, the first ever written law code or Brahmagupta’s magnum opus ​“Brahmaphut-siddhanta” which influenced Al Khwarizmi’s mathematics or even the fables of ​“Kalila-Wa-Dimna”​, the Arabic version of ancient Indian texts of ​“Panchatantra”, ideas have traveled far and wide by breaking the shackles of political boundaries.

Had it not been for the preservation of Greek philosophy and ideas by medieval Islamic scholars through the famous “translation movement” during the Abbasid era, the history of European renaissance and enlightenment as​ ​we​ ​know​ ​today​ ​would​ ​have​ ​been​ ​a​ ​very​ ​different​ ​story.

Just as ancient Greeks cannot deny the importance of Babylonian ideas in shaping Greek sciences and Arabs cannot overlook the importance of Greek, Indian and Persian contribution towards their progress, similarly it would be naive to ignore the contribution of medieval Islamic civilization towards the advancement of modern western civilization. A famous Sanskrit phrase from the Maha Upanishads ​“Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” which means, the world is one family might seem like a distant dream when it comes to the political, religious and social history of the world, but holds​ ​true​ ​in​ ​the​ ​case​ ​of​ ​intellectual​ ​human​ ​history.

Along with the history of shared intellectual heritage, “religious syncretism” has also been an important force of unification for mankind since ancient times. The assimilation of a new religion and its beliefs with the customs and traditions of regions where it spread produces a unique fusion that lends credence to not only the new faith being introduced, but also keeps the local customs and practices in tact, which may have existed for centuries. In the annals of history, there are multiple examples of the successful assimilation of a religion with local customs which has led to the formation of peaceful and harmonious societies. An obvious example would be the ​Islamic or Jewish Mysticism or even ​Christian Gnosticism, which has given importance to the spiritual aspects of religion vis-a -vis the ritualistic and have been seen as a powerful force preaching unification of humanity.

A visit to famous Sufi dargahs across Asia will bring to one’s notice a display of local customs such as lighting of oil lamps and putting palm-imprints of sandalwood paste on flags before hoisting them, a practice that is a continuation of pre-Islamic customs in places such as Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Moreover, people of all different faiths are free to visit these dargahs irrespective of their belief system. Millions of Hindus, Christians and Muslims visit these dargahs regularly during the annual Urs festival across India exhibiting communal harmony.

Similarly, ​Kabbalah (or Jewish Mysticism) and ​Sufism are quite similar to each other as both systems practice worshiping by becoming completely absorbed in the repetition of the name of God (known as dhikr in Islam), accompanied by musical​ ​and​ ​physical​ ​exertions​ ​which​ ​can​ ​last​ ​for​ ​hours​ ​at​ ​a​ ​stretch.

A lesser known example of religious fusion is that of the ​“Satpanthis” which means true followers, who are a group of ​Ismaili Sufis​. They have syncretized their practices with the customs of Hinduism after conversion to Islam by Islamic saint ​Pir Sadruddin (1290-1367) almost 700 years ago and continue to coexist with other faiths in India. Similarly, the Ahmadiyya Muslim community whose practices and beliefs have been deemed heretical by mainstream Muslims is another vivid case of an attempt made to syncretize Hinduism and Sikhism with Islam.

Other examples of syncretistic movements in the east would be a) Manichaeism​, which spread into ancient Persia and came to be found as an amalgamation of ideas taken from Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and, b) ​Sikhism, which combined elements of Islam and Hinduism,​ ​hence​ ​giving​ ​it​ ​a​ ​unique​ ​identity.

Buddhism is another interesting case of successful religious and cultural blending. A primary reason for the survival of Buddhism even after facing severe religious persecution in ​Nalanda ​at the hands of white Huns and Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji has been its willingness to adapt and syncretize its practices with elements of Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism and Korean shamanism to make it compatible with the prevailing cultural practices of East Asian countries it moved into eventually.

The experience of persecution in India is one of the primary reasons for Buddhism having shifted its base towards the periphery of India leading to a much larger presence in countries such as China, Korea, Burma and Sri Lanka even though the country of its origin was India. According to a census conducted in 2011, out of a global population of 495 million Buddhists only 8.5 million reside in India, which is less than 2 percent of the​ ​followers​ ​of​ ​Buddhism.

The use of prayer beads and the practice of circumambulation is a perfect example of ritualistic syncretism across all religions. Although the exact history of the origin of ​prayer beads is unknown, earliest historical references lead to its origination in Hindu prayers, a concept that was borrowed by Buddhism later on. Famous medieval Islamic saint, ​Hasan Al Basri is known to have introduced prayer beads into Islamic religious practices in the 8th century.

Similarly, the practice of ​”circumambulation” which is an act of moving around a sacred object or idol is common practice in all major religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam although ritualistic practices might vary across different faiths. Human history holds testimony towards various attempts made to unite humanity in the realm of religion and intellectual scholarship even though these attempts may seem insignificant to the modern​ ​eye​ ​considering​ ​the​ ​bloodshed​ ​and​ ​division​ ​that​ ​exists​ ​today.

Unfortunately, syncretistic movements have always been seen as a threat to mainstream religious practices and therefore have been a target of political persecution by kings and rulers throughout history who preferred to use mainstream religions as a tool for achieving political unification of its subjects against rival civilizations. Very rarely in history have syncretistic religious forces received political patronage for reasons that ​are​ ​obvious.

An insatiable human quest for power and domination over others has been one of the major reasons in undoing the efforts made to unify mankind.The history of empires and its rulers has been one of mass bloodshed and brutality in order to achieve territorial and economic goals while using religion as a prime force for political unification of territory and in the process distorting the essence of faith being propagated to suit political goals.

Distorted accounts of history have been written with the intention of highlighting chapters and events which gave prevailing powers of the era an aura of superiority over their contemporaries or rivals in the eyes of posterity. Attempts have been made to go to the extremes of wiping out the history of enemies completely by burning and destroying records in order to put a break on continuity of rival civilizations which sows the seed of a cyclical process of avenging injustice done when the fortunes are reversed as has historically been the case.

According to a recent survey, out of approximately ​7,000 world languages ​that exist in the world today almost fifty percent are expected to die out by the end of ​21st Century primarily under the influence of more dominant cultures and languages, a pace which is much faster than the extinction of species.

While in medieval times, languages of conquered lands were consciously replaced by that of victors leading to its gradual but progressive extinction, in modern times the force of globalization has been a major reason for replacement of native​ ​languages​ ​with​ ​the​ ​ones​ ​which​ ​are​ ​more​ ​universal​ ​in​ ​nature.

Civilizations have been silent victims of aggression perpetrated by political forces who are self acclaimed torch-bearers or representatives of their subjects, fighting a rival empire in order to fulfill political ambitions. As the famous American biologist, ​Edward. O. Wilson​, who is also known as the father of sociobiology and biodiversity says, ​“War is humanity’s hereditary curse.”

The first recorded war in history was held in ​Mesopotamia in 2,700 (BC) between Sumer and ​Elam​, a legacy which is carried forward to the modern day by US coalition’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 (CE). According to extensive study undertaken in human psychology, a plethora of reasons have been attributed to the launching of wars such as desire for territorial or economic gains, ambitions to dominate other cultures, forceful imposition of religious beliefs, civil wars or even avenging a past historical humiliation.

Thanks to advancement in technology and industrialization in modern times, wars have become much more deadly, destructive and geographically widespread than they have ever been in the past. All wars come at a heavy price, which may not be confined to humanitarian, social and economic aspects alone. Instead, a much more lasting and long term damage is inflicted by the destruction of historical and cultural heritage of the lands and people attacked. Such destruction of ancient monuments, manuscripts, libraries and archaeological sites inflicts an irreversible and permanent damage on a civilization which cannot be resuscitated by doling out packages of economic​ ​reconstruction​ ​as​ ​witnessed​ ​more​ ​recently​ ​in​ ​Iraq.

At times, such damage is collateral in nature but in certain cases where the enmity between two sides is more historic and deep-rooted there is a conscious attempt made to wipe out history of rivals which lends a sense of continuity to civilization and its people. Thousands of world heritage sites, precious manuscripts and other pieces of literature have been consistently lost to warfare and vandalism.

Whether it was the blowing up of 6th Century ​Buddha statues at Bamiyan by Taliban in 2001 or the destruction of the great ​Al Askari mosque of Samarra ​and the famous Sumerian city state of ​Ur ​(which is also considered to be the birthplace of ​Abraham​) in ancient Mesopotamia during the American invasion of Iraq, the loss to ancient heritage has been immense and irreversible.

Many sites of significance to Islam in modern Saudi Arabia have been consciously destroyed over the past couple of centuries, which includes mosques, tombs, cemeteries and other historical sites of religious significance. Mosques and tombs of important Islamic figures in early Islam such as ​Imam Jafar Al Sadiq, Salman Farsi, Fatima Zahra have been destroyed in modern times deeming the practice of visiting tombs and saintly intercession as heretic. Even ​Prophet Muhammad’s mother Amina Bint Wahb’s grave was bulldozed by the authorities in 1998. According to a British newspaper, The Independent, ​House of Mawalid where Prophet Muhammad is known to have been born is likely to be replaced by a huge royal palace, as part of a multi-million dollar construction project. These are just a few of many such sites of religious significance​ ​which​ ​have​ ​been​ ​destroyed​ ​over​ ​time.

Libraries have continued to lend voice to the history of various civilizations that have walked on this earth. Works preserved in these libraries have been invaluable in helping to carry out productive inter-civilizational dialogue which becomes even more important in a globalized but more polarized world of today. Literary and intellectual works of great ancient and medieval scientists, philosophers and mathematicians such as ​Galen, Aristotle, Ibn Sina, Al Farabi, Al Khwarizmi, Descartes and Immanuel Kant ​have continued to influence many generations from China in the east to US in the west and have continued to benefit mankind immensely thanks to the preservation of their​ ​works​ ​through​ ​libraries.

Translations of Buddhist religious texts by the great Buddhist scholar, Kumarajiva into Chinese allowed for the assimilation of Buddhist ideas and teachings into ancient China, which has allowed for the cross-pollination of Indian and Chinese civilizations. Similarly, Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliori’s Urdu translation of ancient sanskrit yogic texts of ​Amrita-kunda allowed for the fusion of yogic practices with Islamic sufism.

With all the benefits knowledge has accorded to mankind in the form of libraries, unfortunately even these reservoirs of knowledge have become targets of destruction during wars. More than 50 world-class libraries are known to have been pillaged, destroyed and vandalized in the course of past millennium which turns the work produced over centuries of research into heaps of ashes overnight.

In medieval Baghdad, ​House of Wisdom ​(also known as ​Bayt Al Hikma​), was one of the best libraries of its time having a vast collection of books and manuscripts translated from Greek, Persian and Indian sources. Its racks were stacked with works of great authors such as ​Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Euclid, Aryabhata and other top scholars of the time. This was destroyed during the ​Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 and is considered by historians as one of the many spokes in the wheel of Islamic intellectual decline. The period followed by the disintegration of Abbasid Caliphate​, also known as the ​“Iranian Intermezzo” gave rise to many smaller empires such as ​Buyids, Tahirids, Sallarids and Saffarids in Iraq and Iran which were previously under the subordination of Abbasids. With the Abbasids significantly weakened, these empires became more independent, becoming embroiled in continuous warfare among each other for political gains. Some very important libraries of the day possessing thousands of scrolls of scholarship were lost to this period of incessant warfare which included the Library of Ray, Ghazna, Nishapur and the library of great medieval Persian polymath, ​Avicenna​. These acts of destruction were carried out by rival factions either for the purpose of erasing rival political history or pronouncing the works preserved​ ​in​ ​these​ ​libraries​ ​as​ ​heretical​ ​deserving​ ​destruction.

The ​Royal Library of Ancient Alexandria, ​which was one of the largest and most significant library in the ancient world and flourished as a major center of scholarship during the ​Ptolemaic dynasty, was lost to arson. It was known to have stocked approximately ​400,000 scrolls ​of writings on topics as diverse as medicine, astronomy, mathematics, literature and philosophy. There are various conflicting accounts of how it was burned. While certain sources claim it was the army of ​Julius Caesar ​that set the great library on fire in 38 BC, others blame ​Aurelian (270 AD) for the destruction. Books, manuscripts, papyrus and parchments of knowledge accumulated over centuries of scholarship were lost overnight.

The Library of Nalanda in ancient India which was known as ​“Dharmaganja” (Piety Mart) was an architectural marvel of its time. It consisted of three multi-storied buildings known as ​Ratnasagara, Ratnodadhi and Ratnaranjaka. ​Among these, ​Ratnodadhi ​was nine stories in height and housed the most sacred Buddhist texts such as ​“Prajanyaparamita Sutra” and ​“Guhyasamaja.​” It also housed a vast collection of texts on subjects such as medicine, astronomy, astrology and logic. This library became a victim of white Hun and Turko-Mongol invasions during ancient times. A Persian historian by the name of ​Min haj Siraj i​n his book “Tabaqat I Nasiri” ​gives an account of ​Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji’s invasion of ​Nalanda who under the orders of the ruler of ​Awadh destroyed and pillaged the monastery. Buddhism moved to the peripheries of India following this persecution while remaining a minuscule​ ​minority​ ​in​ ​India​, ​which​ ​happens​ ​to​ ​be​ ​the​ ​country​ ​of​ ​its​ ​origin.

In modern times, an example of wide scale heritage cleansing that stands out vividly in the annals of history is the case of Iraq and Syria, which have not only been cradles of Islamic civilization but also ancient pre-Islamic ​Sumerian, Akkadian and Syriac ​history. Mesopotamian heritage is important not only for the Middle East, but equally relevant for the history of the entire world.

The damage inflicted on cultural heritage of Iraq and Syria with the commencement of ​“Operation Iraqi Freedom” has been unimaginable, a situation that has only worsened with the unending civil war following the American troop exit. Iraqis picture George W. Bush as a modern day reincarnation of ​Hulagu Khan​, the famous Mongol ruler who sacked Baghdad in 1258 sending a once thriving civilization into precipitous decline.

Back in 2003, immediately after the American invasion more than 15,000 invaluable Mesopotamian artifacts in the national museum of Baghdad went missing along with thousands of others from multiple archaeological sites which were left unguarded post invasion. Unfortunately, many of these precious artifacts were smuggled and auctioned abroad by professional antiquity dealers while others were sold on the internet for great sums. Many futile attempts were made by members of ​Archaeological Institute of America to apprise the US State Department and Pentagon officials of the need to ensure deployment of tight security at museums and archaeologically important sites to protect the heritage from looting and pillaging but it was largely ignored.

Important sites of historical significance such as ​Ur, Babylon and Samarra were converted into military bases. The creation of bases required digging, bulldozing and carrying out excavation for plumbing and sewerage works that has led to serious damage of precious heritage on these sites. ​

Professor Elizabeth Stone, Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University ​analyzed satellite images of almost 2,000 sites in Iraq where she found extensive plundering and looting over an area of six square miles ranging from small towns to buried ancient cities by Iraqi looters bused in by antiquity dealers. Artifacts ranging from Babylonian seals to cuneiform tablets have disappeared by the thousands leaving empty dug-up pits. Most of these have landed in multiple countries across the world after being sold to businessmen, rulers and politicians for unimaginable prices becoming a piece of decor in their living rooms. According to ​Archaeological Institute of America revenue from looted antiquities is estimated to be in the range​ ​of​ ​USD​ ​10​ ​to​ ​20​ ​million​ ​annually.

In the ongoing civil war, ISIS militants have destroyed many mosques, churches and other shrines of importance to Abrahamic religions over the past few years. A major recent blow has been the destruction of the Tetrapylon and parts of the Roman theater in the ancient city of ​Palmyra in Syria, which was a major heritage sites designated by UNESCO.

The exit of coalition forces turned Iraq into a sinking hole with the country divided on sectarian lines into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions embroiled in an unending civil war inflicting further damage to not only human life, but also the prized heritage of Iraq and Syria. Mass displacement and migration of populations to Europe and other parts of the world has been the norm over the past few years. Along with armed conflict, many Heritage sites and artifacts are becoming victims to natural calamities​ ​too, such​ ​as​ ​flooding​ ​or​ ​earthquakes.

The preservation of Heritage is important not only for providing future generations with a sense of ancestral history, but it can also play a vital role in bridging gaps and fissures created over centuries of enmity and warfare by making an attempt to bring out aspects of shared history that have worked as a unifying and not a divisive force. These heritage sites can also be a good source of potential revenue from international tourism​ ​provided​ ​they​ ​are​ ​preserved​ ​and​ ​maintained​ ​well.

A critical problem that contemporary world continues to grapple with is that countries such as Greece, India, China, Iraq, Iran and Egypt, which have been cradles of ancient civilizations, have either fallen into decay with time or belong to the category of developing countries with low per capita incomes.

Large native populations coupled with receding GDP and rising budget deficits makes poverty reduction and sustenance a primary goal of representative governments in these countries whereas insignificant budget allocations are made for the upkeep and conservation of historical heritage.

Various government funded bodies and institutions in countries such as China, India, Egypt, Iraq and Iran that are responsible for the preservation of Heritage are inadequately funded, understaffed and highly bureaucratic in nature leading to mediocre standards of work being carried out towards Heritage preservation and restoration. This has led to an incessant deterioration in the condition of Heritage sites in these countries and unless major steps are taken to arrest this downward trend important Heritage is in the danger of being lost forever. Most archaeologists and anthropologists depend on private funding to carry out research work as funding from government for such projects is hard to come by.

A recent example is that of an ​Asclepio​, an ancient healing center in Greece, that has not been recorded in any modern or ancient sources. This ancient Greek healing center was discovered by a veteran Greek archaeologist ​Xeni Arapogiani, however, to carry out extensive excavation work on the site she had to rely on private funding as the Greek government was unable to fund such work due to severe austerity measures.

Professional archaeologists and anthropologists in these developing countries face innumerable challenges due to inadequate government support and crumbling infrastructure. Famous Heritage sites in India such as ​Ajanta and Ellora caves are in a very poor and dilapidated condition and unless timely measures are taken to resuscitate it, this much prized gem of Indian​ ​heritage​ ​is​ ​likely​ ​to​ ​be​ ​lost​ ​forever.

A fundamental problem plaguing these countries is the deteriorating standard of education in subjects of humanities and social sciences which is no longer considered to be a lucrative career option due to limited job opportunities and poor pay structures. Most of the youth in India and China today prefer to undertake studies in subjects such as management or engineering with the sole aim of bagging high paying jobs in multinational corporations. Unless steps are taken to revive an interest in the study of humanities and social sciences by creating collaborative programs with international universities, reducing the teacher student ratio to improve quality of engagement, making research grants available for high quality scholarship and making these subjects a viable long term career option the situation is likely to go from bad to worse.

As the scenario currently stands, most government funded universities that offer programs in subjects such as ​history, sociology, anthropology and archaeology have become silent and incompetent dungeons. The annual student intake is lesser than available capacity due to flagging student interest which has led to hardly any new research and scholarship being produced by these universities. Age old textbook methodologies of teaching without paying attention to evolving global standards produces very sub-standard graduates and has made these universities nothing more than crumbling edifices limited to the extent of fulfilling a social responsibility of churning out graduates who may​ ​not​ ​possess​ ​skills​ ​relevant​ ​to​ ​the​ ​trades​ ​studied.

The twin task of Heritage restoration (through adequate budget allocations and infrastructure support) and creating conditions for making the study of social sciences a viable career option across the world is very important to revive the fading Heritage of countries that were once the cradles of human civilization, pioneering the evolution of civilized existence. The resuscitation of this legacy becomes a matter of pivotal importance in the modern age of globalization and inter-civilizational dialogue to achieve everlasting peace which has continued to elude mankind​ ​forever.

*Azfar Mohammad is an independent analyst, researcher and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and Islamic Civilization History. Based in Dubai over the past 12 years, he works in the private sector. During the course of his professional career he has traveled extensively across the GCC region, which has given him the opportunity to get a first-hand experience of the economic, social and political landscape. He has extensively studied the region from the foreign policy perspective and is now working on a PhD on the subject.

By Jayshree Sengupta

Recently the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) resumed premium processing of all H1 B visas after suspending it for six months. In April 2017, the agency had said that it would take six months to process existing applications but now it has resumed the premium processing for a fee of $1,225 in only 15 days. H1B visas are used by Indian technical professionals to go to US to work and Indians utilise 70 per cent of the visa quota every year. This move by USCIS shows that are no major hitches in the Indo-US economic relations under Trump administration. Modi wants to accelerate trade to the US to $500 billion. Currently, the total goods and services trade is at $114.8 billion ( 2016) . Unlike China, America buys more from India and US exports to India were at $42 billion whereas imports from India were at $72.8 billion. US trade deficit with India is around $24 billion.

What should please Mr. Trump most is the fact that Indian investment in the IT sector in the Silicon Valley has created 52,000 jobs in 2016. Also Boing is going to get a huge order from India for civilian planes. Indian Airlines and SpiceJet have ordered 205 planes and Jet Airways has ordered 75 planes. Under India US defence cooperation, there will be collaboration between Tata and Lockheed Martin to produce F16 fighter jets in India.

There is going to be a big collaboration between India and the US in the energy sector and GAIL has signed a 20 year supply agreement to buy 5-8 tonnes of US LNG with Cheniere Energy. India already has undertaken delivery of one commissioning cargo of gas from the US.

India is trying to woo US investment because of its Make in India initiative which will help create jobs. There are a number of glitches which need to be looked into before one can hope that American investors will prefer India to other investment destinations.

One of the irritants in US-India trade has been the sudden price control that Indian government imposed on stents — a medical device used in heart surgery. It is considered to be an anti-trade measure by the US. Many of these stents are imported from the US and the companies supplying them have been hit by the nearly 80 per cent cut in prices by the Modi government. True these devices are now widely used and are unaffordable by ordinary people and now with prices slashed, it has helped many ordinary Indian citizens. But this regulatory practice is controversial and 18 members of the US Congress have appealed against such control. Recently, the government of India has agreed to review the whole business of stent pricing in February 2018 otherwise the US companies will call it quits.

Similarly, Monsanto has suspended plans to introduce upgraded version of GM cotton in India because of ‘the business and regulatory environment.’ Indian government slashed its seed price after it was found to be ineffective against a new kind of pest disease. Monsanto started its business with great fanfare in 2002 and India’s cotton exports soared due to the introduction of Bt cotton that resulted in a rise in production.

One other regulatory measure that is not liked by the US government is about protecting India’s agricultural sector. There was a dispute at the WTO regarding India banning chicken leg imports and later, India lost the battle. India has also had trouble with the US solar panel makers on grounds of ‘local content’. The US also went to the WTO dispute settlement body and India lost its case once again. US government has given December 2017 as the deadline for India to remove the mandatory requirement of local sourcing.

US business is most uncomfortable about the Intellectual Property Rights infringements in India. US business wants strong enforcement of IP protection which can only be achieved through fast track judicial processes. In India IP infringements are not considered serious and there are few disincentives in the system for such infringers. To be able to win the confidence of American investors infringement in the digital environment has to be checked. Indeed India’s score in the Intellectual Property Index is at the bottom. It is 43^rd out of 4 5 countries. The Indian Copyright Act of 1957 has been amended in 2012 and monetary and criminal sanctions can be used against those circumventing digital rights. Yet the whole area of IPR protection needs more attention.

The perception of American doctors is somewhat coloured by this notion and they often do not prescribe drugs made in India. This perception has to change for Indian drugs to do well in the US market.

Most investors will look at the Ease of Doing Business index when deciding to choose a country for setting up ventures. India’s rank at 130 is low compared to other BRICS members but the government is hopeful that with the introduction of GST and 20 other reforms in various sectors and the bankruptcy code being in place, the ranking will go up to 100. Modi wants it to go up to 50^th position. Yet key areas that are important in the computing of the index have not progressed at all in the last one year (from 2016 to 2017) and have in fact gone down to a lower position are– paying taxes, trading across borders, getting credit and construction permits.

The US businesses which went to China, made products which could be exported back home and became a part of the global value chain. For India, problems in physical infrastructure and low human development are major inhibitors for American FDI to come to India and need to be addressed.

A recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip has revealed that an overwhelming majority have lost faith in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with two-thirds of poll participants demanding his resignation.

The poll, which was conducted between September 14-16 and published on Tuesday, revealed that a majority of the population in the West Bank and Gaza are worried about the future of civil liberties in the territories, amidst a rise in the arrest of journalists and activists who speak out against Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Abbas’ new Cyber Crimes Law, which has been described by rights groups as “draconian” and “the worst law in the PA’s history.”

According to the center’s findings, “a large majority believes that Palestinians cannot criticize the PA without fear. In fact, half of the public believes that the PA has now become a burden on the Palestinian people,” with the center adding that these fears “might be responsible for the increase in the demand for the resignation of President Abbas.”

Current poll numbers stated that 67 percent of the public want Abbas to resign, while 27 percent want him to remain in office, compared to three months ago, when 62 percent said they wanted Abbas to resign.

The center highlighted that demands for Abbas’ resignation stand at 60 percent in the PA-administered West Bank and at 80 percent in the Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip. Three months ago demand for Abbas resignation stood at 55 percent in the West Bank and 75 percent in the Gaza Strip.

In their findings, the center went on to declare that if presidential elections were to be held today, across the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas movement leader Ismail Haniyeh would win against Abbas, noting, however, that the Fatah movement still remains more popular than the Hamas movement in the West Bank.

According to the center, the most serious problem confronting Palestinian society today is poverty and unemployment in the eyes of 26 percent of the public; 25 percent believe it is the spread of corruption in public institutions; 23 percent say it is the continuation of occupation and settlement activities; 20 percent say it is the siege of the Gaza Strip and the closure of its crossings.

By Ana Maria Touma

Romanian anti-graft prosecutors informed Deputy Prime Minister Sevil Shhaideh on Friday that she is a suspect in a corruption file.

Romania’s National Anti-Corruption Directorate, DNA, summoned Deputy Prime Minister Sevil Shhaideh for a hearing on Friday to inform her that she is a suspect in a graft case.

Shhaideh, who also heads the Ministry of Regional Development, told journalists she is not at liberty to disclose more information because the investigation is underway.

“I know my rights and I will discuss all the documents with my lawyer,” she added.

The Deputy Prime Minister in January 2017 was the governing Social Democratic Party’s first choice to lead the government, but her nomination was rejected by President Klaus Iohannis.

Anti-graft prosecutors have summoned other Social Democrat figures for investigations in the past two weeks, including two former prime ministers, Sorin Grindeanu and Victor Ponta, last week.

They said they were called in as witnesses and also refused to disclose any details about the cases.

A few days before the hearings, anti-graft prosecutors announced that they had opened an investigation into possible fraud over European Union funds committed by a road infrastructure constructor whose management is close to the Social Democrat leader, Liviu Dragnea. The prosecutors also raided the company’s headquarters.

Dragnea has denied any ties to the company.

Over the last 12 days, 400,000 Russians have been evacuated from approximately 1,000 facilities in 80 cities after anonymous callers had warned that bombs were set to go off in them. Officials, who so far haven’t identified let alone arrested those responsible, say there are no signs the bomb scares are letting up (tass.ru/proisshestviya/4583551).

The central government media have devoted relatively little attention to this wave, although a Duma committee is considering tougher penalties for what has now come to be known as “telephone terrorism” and the Kremlin has been forced today to say that it is too early to say anything about what is going on (fedpress.ru/news/77/policy/1861027).

What makes this such a big and serious problem as the emergency services minister said (themoscowtimes.com/news/the-mass-evacuations-in-numbers-59017) is that the authorities have little choice but to evacuate buildings if they receive warnings and that whoever started the calls, others may join in a kind of copycat crime.

Consequently, even if the authorities do identify one or another of the callers or those behind that individual or group, others are likely to make use of the same tactic, against which at least for the time being the Russian authorities appear powerless to stop, however much economic damage these evacuations may cause.

But far more significant than any economic costs, of course, are the political ones. Vladimir Putin has sold himself to the Russian people as a guarantor of order, as someone who ended the “lawless 1990s.” If Russians conclude that he is no longer able to do that, they may conclude that their version of “the mandate of heaven” has passed from him.

And that in turn suggests that some opponents of Putin and his regime may continue to make such calls, even if the risks of engaging in “telephone terrorism” are increased, as Russia edges closer to the presidential elections early next year and enters a new and more complicated political season.

For decades, the factors that decided what noteworthy stories would not find their way into print or on the air came down to the media’s ignorance, laziness or from advertising restraints. How else can one explain the many years that passed before the tobacco, auto and junk food industries became the subject of regular consumer reporting? For too long, the explosive material for good journalism in these and other areas had remained hidden in plain sight.

With the intensification of soundbite journalism, fueled by audiences’ increasingly short attention spans, twitter addiction, the stupefaction of video culture and a willful disregard of both history and contemplation, a new form of censorship has emerged. The domination of “breaking news”—increasingly defined by episodes of violence, natural disasters and celebrity/political outrages and lurid scandals—is rampant.

When any one of these sensationalized episodes is seen as the “big story,” its massive over-coverage crowds out much of what normally would be communicated through the media. At their most frenetic periods, Fox News and CNN represent the worst of these lucrative culs de sac.

More and more, this phenomenon of fewer and fewer types of stories crowding out diverse and crucial reporting has become contagious. Our self-selecting social media bubbles further isolate us by validating, but not challenging, our opinions. Sunday morning network television “news” shows display the same subject, the same invited guests that were in that week’s newscasts. It has become almost impossible to introduce any subject matter, especially fresh disclosures and reports, outside of this tightening circle of opinion oligopolists.

Notice the near maniacal focus on Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, which amplified his insults, falsifications, howls of outrage and damaging rhetoric. Shut out was any attempt by civic groups to widen the election period’s public discussions of important topics that were taken off the table by the two parties and unchallenged by a dittohead media.

When I ask modestly liberal syndicated columnists why they are not writing about what in earlier times would have been their chosen stories, they tell me that editors demand that they address what has already been “in the news.”

I began to notice our various citizen groups experiencing difficulty in getting “newstime” or “newsprint” because their subjects—clearly newsworthy and affecting people directly—weren’t already in the corporate news media by some high profile story. Among the many severely neglected topics are looted pensions, food and auto safety, hospital malpractice, a predatory pharmaceutical industry, massive billing frauds, the dark sides of corporate welfare, an unauditable Pentagon budget and the devastation caused by stock buybacks. The paucity of “beat” reporters due to ever-winnowing newsroom populations has worsened this spreading blackout. Meanwhile, thousands of commercial radio stations using our public airwaves for free are increasingly syndicated and automated.

This contagion has spread to public radio and public broadcasting. They too have to be, to use the current euphemism, “contemporary.” More experienced and thoughtful perspectives, expressed in paragraphs rather than Tweets, are not “contemporary.” Former regular guests on NPR and PBS, if they are not part of the commentariate for the day’s “breaking news” are no longer regular. Even the prime national and state programs for NPR and PBS are falling in line. Check out the exclusion on Charlie Rose and Judy Woodruff’s Newshour.

Last year, the mass media declined to cover any part of 8 days at our “Breaking Through Power” convocations at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. These were gatherings of more accomplished civic doers and advocacy leaders—many having fundamentally shaped our country for the better— mobilizing around more reforms and redirections than ever brought together in modern American history. They came prepared to share their compelling stories, warnings and plans for action with an eager press. They were not seen as breaking news and therefore “not contemporary” (see breakingthroughpower.org).

Even the estimable Minnesota Public Radio has narrowed its vision. I had complained about the cessation of interviews for my books, reports and commentaries in recent years. Nancy Cassutt, executive director of news and programming for Minnesota Public Radio explained: “we prefer to pick show topics using our editorial judgment about what is in the national conversation, once we do that we search for the voices with diverse opinions and backgrounds to build the show.”

Unfortunately it is not Minnesota Public Radio that determines what is in the national conversation. That choice comes from a very select group of producers, editors, performers and corporate advertisers from Washington, DC and New York City.

In today’s media ecosystem, I could not, for example, have been invited on Meet the Press to introduce my charges against the auto industry’s unsafe vehicles. Scientist Michael Jacobson could not have gotten national media for his revelations concerning the lethal effects of sugar, fat and salt in processed, non-nutritious foods. Likewise Dr. Sidney Wolfe could not have reached millions of people through national news networks and the Phil Donahue Show to alert the public about dangerous medicines. Because they were able to reach and inform the public, their groups expanded and changed America for the better.

Alas, no more such access. The fractured, increasingly cluttered and trivialized Internet is no substitute. The trends are getting worse, especially for younger people. Enough of us, individually or in new organizations, must reclaim the use of our FCC-licensed public airwaves, demanding conditions for serious programming in our community cable contracts and creating a climate for reading and contemplation in our educational institutions.

Remember the high points of American history. Major justice movements were achieved with one percent or less of the population serving as active citizens reflecting majority public opinion. That is what will lead to a more serious media and redefine for them what is truly “contemporary”, because what is portrayed as “contemporary” in the media should reflect the necessities of the people, and not the whims of media executives and advertisers.

If you want a different example of what is newsworthy, tune in to my weekly radio show, the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

Dear Sir,
I am writing this open letter to you in light of a matter of profound significance.

Most news papers have just now published probably the most telling health-benefit news of the day, may be of the year. The largest scientific study of physical activity of over 1,30,000 persons in 17 countries including four low-income countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe) published in The Lancet concluded that globally, 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week could prevent one in 12 deaths due to cardiac diseases. The evidence to this fact is unassailable.

Sir,

If you could induce our compatriots to do 30 minutes physical activity 5 days a week we could prevent one in 12 cardiac deaths. This will have the greatest social and beneficial health impact in the country. Carrying out regular physical activity is the cheapest and most universally affordable measure to prevent substantial number of cardiac deaths.

Let the initiation of a dedicated “daily physical activity” routine by people be the topic of discussion in one of your forthcoming Mann Ki Baat program.

You have already taken many profound, nation-wide, measures vital for the health and well-being of our people. Encouraging Yoga, cleanliness and sanitation drives among others,

The following chilling facts from review article titled “Cardiovascular Diseases in India Current Epidemiology and Future Directions” in CIRCULAION (2016;133:1605-1620) aptly highlights the reason why you must take the lead in popularizing the daily physical activity program.

• “Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) is no longer a disease of the rich; it equally impacts the poor, with a higher CVD mortality among men of lower socioeconomic status.”
• “The early occurrence of CVD in Indians and the high case fatality attributable to CVD is ominous and merits special attention”.
• “In comparison with the people of European ancestry, Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) affects Indians at least a decade earlier and in their most productive midlife years.”
• “…in Western populations only 23% of CVD deaths occur before the age of 70 years; in India, this number is 52%.”
• ” The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that, with the current burden of CVD, India would lose $237 billion from the loss of productivity and spending on health care over a 10-year period (2005–2015).”

The gruesome impact of the death of a breadwinner or a young mother at the prime of his or her life on their children and others is indescribable

Other conclusions from the study

The study also found that we could prevent 5% of cardiovascular diseases if we carried out physical activity of 150mins per week. The type of activity did not matter-it could be going to the gym, walking to work, or household chores. Regular Physical activity is the cheapest method to prevent heart disease.

“Being highly active(750mins a week) is associated with an even greater reduction, and the authors found that this was more achievable for those who built physical activity in to their day through active transport, job type, or house work ” a press release from the journal said.

“The study confirms on a global scale that physical activity is associated with a lower risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease (including death from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, or heart failure), irrespective of a person’s home country, other risk factors for disease, the type of physical activity and whether the activity is for leisure or if it is taken as part of daily transport, at work, or housework,” the release added.

Earlier studies of this type addressed the physical activity of people in high-income groups. Interestingly, we might consider the present study as global as it covered three high income countries (Canada, Sweden, United Arab Emirates); seven upper-middle-income countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Poland, Turkey, Malaysia, South Africa); three lower middle-income countries (China, Colombia, Iran); and four low-income-countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe).

In 2010, after a detailed review, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended levels of physical activity for three age groups -5 -17 years old; 18-64 years old and 65 years old and above.
The WHO recommended that the adults aged 18-64 years, should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, as well as muscle strengthening exercises at least two days a week.

The researchers stated that 23% of the world’s population is not meeting the physical activity guidelines.

“Meeting physical activity guidelines by walking for as little as 30 minutes most days of the week has a substantial benefit, and higher physical activity is associated with even lower risks,” the press release from the journal quoted the lead author Dr Scott Lear, Professor of Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Pfizer/Heart & Stroke Foundation Chair in Cardiovascular Prevention Research at St. Paul’s Hospital in Canada.

“The affordability of other cardiovascular disease interventions, such as generic drugs and consuming fruits and vegetables, are often beyond the reach of many people in low-income and middle-income countries. However, physical activity represents a low cost approach to preventing cardiovascular disease, and our study provides robust evidence to support public health interventions to increase all forms of physical activity in these regions.” he clarified.

When the study began, each participant gave information on their socioeconomic status, lifestyle behaviours, medical history, family history of cardiovascular disease, weight, height, waist and hip measurements, and blood pressure. They answered questions on physical activity they completed over a typical week.

The participants met the research team for follow up at least once every three years to record information on cardiovascular disease and death for 6.9 years. The team estimated the rates of cardiovascular events (including death from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, or heart failure) and deaths.

Of the 106,970 people who met the activity guidelines, 3.8% developed cardiovascular disease, compared to 5.1% of people who did not.

People who did not meet the recommended amount of activity had higher risk of deaths – 6.4% compared to 4.2% for people who met guidelines.

The results suggest that, if the whole study population met the physical activity guidelines, 8% of deaths and 4.6% of cardiovascular disease cases could be prevented. In addition, if the entire population was highly active (completing more than 750 minutes of physical activity a week), 13% of deaths and 9.5% of cardiovascular disease cases could be prevented.

“The clear-cut results reinforce the message that exercise truly is the best medicine at our disposal for reducing the odds of an early death, If a drug company came up with a medicine as effective as exercise, they would have a billion-dollar blockbuster on their hands and a Nobel prize in the post.” The New Scientist journal quoted James Rudd, senior lecturer in cardiovascular medicine, at the University of Cambridge

Mathematicians have opened a new chapter in the theory of moonshine, one which begins to harness the power of the pariahs – sporadic simple groups that previously had no known application.

“We’ve found a new form of moonshine, which in math refers to an idea so farfetched as to sound like lunacy,” says Ken Ono, a number theorist at Emory University. “And we’ve used this moonshine to show the mathematical usefulness of the O’Nan pariah group in a way that moves it from theory to reality. It turns out that the O’Nan group knows deep information about elliptic curves.”

Nature Communications published the representation theory for the O’Nan group developed by Ono, John Duncan (also a number theorist at Emory) and Michael Mertens (a former post-doctoral fellow at Emory who is now at the University of Cologne).

“We’ve shown that the O’Nan group, a very large pariah group, actually organizes elliptic curves in a beautiful and systematic way,” Duncan says. “And not only does it organize them, it allows us to see some of their deepest properties. It sees infinitely many curves, which allows us to then use our moonshine to make predictions about their general behavior. That’s important, because these objects underlie some of the hardest questions at the very horizon of number theory.”

Elliptic curves may sound esoteric, but they are part of our day-to-day lives. They are used in cryptography – the creation of codes that are difficult to break.

An elliptic curve is not an ellipse, rather it is a complex torus, or doughnut shape. “You can think of it as a doughnut together with specific, delicate configurations of rational points that are very carefully placed,” Duncan says. “So, in the simplest of terms, it’s like a doughnut that you eat, that may have sprinkles on it. The whole game in the math of elliptic curves is determining whether the doughnut has sprinkles and, if so, where exactly the sprinkles are placed.”

Unlike an edible doughnut, however, these mathematical doughnuts are not visible.

“Imagine you are holding a doughnut in the dark,” Ono says. “You wouldn’t even be able to decide whether it has any sprinkles. But the information in our O’Nan moonshine allows us to ‘see’ our mathematical doughnuts clearly by giving us a wealth of information about the points on elliptic curves.”

The findings are especially surprising since none of the pariahs, as six of math’s sporadic simple groups are known, had previously appeared in moonshine theory, or anywhere else in science.

Math’s original moonshine theory dates to a 1979 paper called “Monstrous Moonshine” by John Conway and Simon Norton. The paper described a surprising connection between a massive algebraic object known as the monster group and the j-function, a key object in number theory. In 2015, a group of mathematicians – including Duncan and Ono – presented proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, which revealed 23 other moonshines, or mysterious connections between the dimensions of symmetry groups and coefficients of special functions.

In theoretical math, symmetry comes in groups. Symmetrical solutions are usually optimal, since they allow you to divide a large problem into equal parts and solve it faster.

The classification of the building blocks of groups is gathered in the ATLAS of Finite Groups, published in 1985. “The ATLAS is like math’s version of the periodic table of the elements, but for symmetry instead of atoms,” Duncan explains.

Both the ATLAS and the periodic table contain quirky characters that may – or may not – exist in nature.

Four super heavy elements with atomic numbers above 100, for example, were discovered in 2016 and added to the periodic table. “People have to work hard to produce these elements in particle accelerators and they vanish immediately after they are constructed,” Ono says. “So you have to wonder if they really are a part of our everyday chemistry.”

The pariah groups pose a similar question in math. Are they natural or simply theoretical constructs?

“Our work proves, for the first time, that a pariah is real,” Ono says. “We found the O’Nan group living in nature. Our theorem shows that it’s connected to elliptic curves, and whenever you find a correspondence between two objects that are seemingly not related, it opens the door to learning more about those objects.”

After an election year marked by heated exchanges and the distribution of fake news, Twitter bots earned a bad reputation–but not all bots are bad, suggests a new study co-authored by Emilio Ferrara, a USC Information Sciences Institute computer scientist and a research assistant professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science.

In a large-scale experiment designed to analyze the spread of information on social networks, Ferrara and a team from the Technical University of Denmark deployed a network of algorithm-driven Twitter accounts, or social bots, programmed to spread positive messages on Twitter.

“We found that bots can be used to run interventions on social media that trigger or foster good behaviors,” said Ferrara, whose previous research focused on the proliferation of bots in the election campaign.

But it also revealed another intriguing pattern: information is much more likely to become viral when people are exposed to the same piece of information multiple times through multiple sources.

“This milestone shatters a long-held belief that ideas spread like an infectious disease, or contagion, with each exposure resulting in the same probability of infection,” said Ferrara.

“Now we have seen empirically that when you are exposed to a given piece of information multiple times, your chances of adopting this information increase every time.”

To reach these conclusions, the researchers first developed a dozen positive hashtags, ranging from health tips to fun activities, such as encouraging users to get the flu shot, high-five a stranger and even Photoshop a celebrity’s face onto a turkey at Thanksgiving.

Then, they designed a network of 39 bots to deploy these hashtags in a synchronized manner to 25,000 real followers during a four-month period from October to December 2016.

Each bot automatically recorded when a target user retweeted intervention-related content and also each exposure that had taken place prior to retweeting. Several hashtags received more than one hundred retweets and likes, said Ferrara.

“We also saw that every exposure increased the probability of adoption – there is a cumulative reinforcement effect,” said Ferrara.

“It seems there are some cognitive mechanisms that reinforce your likelihood to believe in or adopt a piece of information when it is validated by multiple sources in your social network.”

This mechanism could explain, for example, why you might take one friend’s movie recommendation with a grain of salt. But the probability that you will also see that movie increases cumulatively as each additional friend makes the same recommendation.

Aside from revealing the hidden dynamics that drive human behavior online, this discovery could also improve how positive intervention strategies are deployed on social networks in many scenarios, including public health announcements for disease control or emergency management in the wake of a crisis.

“The common approach is to have one broadcasting entity with many followers, but this study implies that it would be more effective to have multiple, decentralized bots share synchronized content,” said Ferrara.

He added that many communities are isolated from certain accounts due to Twitter’s echo chamber effect: social media users tend to be exposed to content from those whose views match their own.

“What if there is a health crisis and you don’t follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention account? By taking a grassroots approach, we could break down the silos of the echo chamber for the greater good,” said Ferrara.

By Bhaskar Roy*

After over two month long military stand-off, the soldiers of India and China on the Doklam Plateau (claimed by Bhutan and also by China), disengaged almost simultaneously, both capitals would have heaved a huge sigh of relief.

During the face-off, the Chinese foreign ministry, the defence ministry, and Chinese official media, along with experts shouted, and even held out threats of war if Indian troops did not withdraw. Publicly, the Chinese rebuffed India’s offer of talks, holding on to their demand of withdrawal first by India. Quiet diplomacy, however, continues below the public gaze. These discussions did not take place always in New Delhi and Beijing, but also in third country meetings in places like Hong Kong and elsewhere.

The Chinese are known for their hard and protracted negotiating tactics. This time, however, time was of essence as well as substance, at least for the Chinese. India took a mature, principled position, refusing to be drawn into rhetoric and sharp exchanges, taking the wind out of the Chinese propaganda sail.

The main Indian interlocutors interfacing with their Chinese counterparts are hard boiled professionals who did not have a touch-me-not approach to Beijing. For years, if not decades, the Indian government’s approach was not to “provoke” China, brushing all Chinese misdemeanours under the carpet. It was a major mistake in 2003 to allow China to establish a Consulate General in Kolkata, hoping China would allow India to establish a Consulate General in Lhasa. Somebody read history backwards!

China needed a face saver, and India wisely gave it to them. Beijing’s domestic propaganda machinery propagated Indian troops withdrew first(August 28). New Delhi was gracious. “Face” is a very critical political issue in China, and no top leader can afford to lose face.

President Xi Jinping is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). He has also had himself declared as the “Core” of the leadership, a title given to Mao Zedong posthumously. Deng Xiaoping, father of China’s modernization had it thrust upon himself because of the power struggle between the left conservatives and the more economic liberals led by Deng. Jiang Zemin, Deng’s hand-picked top leader, also had “core” title, but wore it lightly.

Xi had several challenges coming up. The BRICS summit was coming up on September 4-5, in Xiamen China. If Indian Prime Minister did not attend because of Doklam, the summit would collapse. Xi would face a political embarrassment both internally and externally. The 19th Congress of the CPC Central Committee is scheduled for October 19, where he would be questioned where he was taking China. There are several other challenges like the North Korean nuclear issue, Taiwan, South China Sea and Hong Kong among other issues.

Under such circumstances would Xi agree on a small misadventure like in Doklam? Impossible. He is too astute a leader, although no soft-liner, to risk such an incident. Xi Jinping is caught in a power struggle with the Jiang Zemin faction, and he may be slowly winning.

Jiang Zemin was instrumental in making Xi Jinping the Party chief, President and Chairman of the CMC – the Party’s top post. At the same time Jiang surrounded Xi with his own people. Of the seven Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) members, at least three – Zhang Dejiang, Lin Yangsheng and Zhang Gaoli are Jiang’s people. Xi as the number one, has the chief of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), Wang Qishang firmly on his side. Yu Zhang Sheng’s leaning is not very clear. Premier Li Keqiang is neither on Jiang’s side nor on Xi’s. A leader of the Communist Youth League (CYL) faction, he has been cut by both. Four members are set to retire at the 19th Party Congress starting October 18, because of age. Only Xi and Li will remain.

Wang Qishan has brought down more than 300 high to middle level supporters of Jiang. Xi reorganized the PLA to scatter Jiang supporters and brought down at least two of Jiang’s hand-picked top level officers, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxing, both Vice Chairmen of the CMC. But their acolytes are still serving,

The spider web has been widely damaged, but the spider (Jiang Zemin) is still alive. The battle is won, but the war is still not over. Internal challenges to Xi Jinping have been brought down from critical to red.

The external challenges are no less. The North Korean nuclear issue is threatening to boil over. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un conducted the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test yet, recently. Pyongyang claimed it was a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb. Their intermediate range and long range missiles are being test launched regularly. With US President Donald Trump threatening to destroy the Kim regime, and Kim responding in equal measure, China is almost at a tipping point. If there is a nuclear fallout China will not remain unaffected.

North Korea was, and continues to be, politically and geopolitically important to China, especially against the US-Japan alliance. Pyongyang’s programme grew under China’s nose, literally. If Beijing thought a nuclear North Korea would be a nuclear Pakistan in North East Asia, the plan has back fired badly. Japan may go nuclear, and may be followed by South Korea, in some way or the other. Beijing stands to be the biggest loser.

Relations between China and Japan are acrimonious. With the return of the DPP to power in Taiwan, relations across the Taiwan Strait have deteriorated. It is interesting and worth noting, the Chinese official daily, the Global Times, said that Wang Zaixi, the former Deputy Director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of Mainland China (the office that conducts relations with Taiwan), said in an interview that the possibility of a peaceful reunification was “slowly disappearing”, hinting that the military option was becoming relevant (Chinascope, September 6, 2017).

Did Wang Zaixi try to plant another irritant to Xi Jinping’s strategy ahead of the 19th Party Congress on behalf of the “Spider Web”? It has been done before with Taiwan, and Hong Kong has been injected with the seeds of pro-democracy to pro-independent political values.

If shots were fired in Doklam, the situation could have gone out of control along the India-China border. The Indian government was in no mood to bend, but neither was it willing to escalate the situation.

A short article by Major General Qiao Liang in the Global Times (September 12, 2017) is revealing. Titled “War must always be the last resort in disputes”, Qiao argues that even if a cause is right, “It is also not to do the right thing at any time.

He goes on to underline “Only doing the right thing at the right time is correct”. Qiao makes it very clear that China could not afford to enter into a military conflict with India at this point of time. That would only harm China.

Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” (rejuvenation of China), making China a middle income country and his “two centuries” programme were all at stake. India was no longer a struggling poor country, but a power whose voice was being heard the world over. They are concerned about an unwritten India-US-Japan strategic conjunction, something which Beijing has worried about for years. This triangular relationship has been developing at a rather fair pace to China’s discomfort.

To note, Qiao has put the Doklam issue to the future and not off the table, for the “right time”.

Two things are pertinent to note. First, Qiao Liang is a serving Major General and serving officers are not allowed to write in the media unless cleared at a very high level. Next, the Global Times was the most aggressive and threatening during the Doklam stand-off. The editor of the newspaper would have been ordered to carry the Qiao article, changing the tone of the newspaper.

Qiao Liang generally maintains a low profile. But he is a brilliant strategic thinker, highly respected both in China and abroad.

In 1999, Qiao as a colonel, co-authored with another colonel Wang Xiangsu, the book “Unrestricted Warfare” which its American publisher subtitled as “China’s master plan to destroy America”.

The core philosophy of the book is that the weak can defeat the strong, and for that everything and every instrument can be used including terrorism. There are no boundaries.

Al Santoli, who wrote the preface of the American print, wrote that in 2002 the Washington Times reported that the US intelligence had confirmed that before the “9/11” terror attacks, China’s military provided military training to the Afghan Taliban and its Al Qaeda supporters. Some question if this was a chapter of “Unrestricted Warfare”.

In an interview with the Oriental Outlook Weekly in 2014 Qiao urged strategic patience. Getting the Diaoyu Island and the South China Sea islands were not China’s core interests now, he argued. In his view what China needed now was another 20 years of economic development (for Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream). Then choose the right time to strike.

The way the Doklam issue was finally resolved by the Chinese points to the view of Qiao Liang. It has soft pedalled Japan a bit, been quiet on Taiwan, and a little nervous with the developments in Hong Kong.

China appears to be exercising strategic wisdom or strategic patience. India must not fall into complacency, Strike they will. The Indian government and strategists must be acutely aware of one more thing- high technology guerrilla warfare, another strategic vision of Major General Qiao Liang.

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

U.S. President Donald Trump will likely visit China in November to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the shadow of a looming nuclear crisis in North Korea, official state media reported.

Trump will meet Xi while on a trip to an ASEAN summit in the Philippines and an APEC summit in Vietnam. The two presidents met initially in April at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida.

While Trump claims a warm personal relationship with Xi, Washington has since launched trade investigations into Chinese practices via the World Trade Organization.

Trump has also stepped up pressure on Beijing to do more to rein in North Korea, while Beijing has said it is already doing all it can, calling for a return to the negotiating table.

“There are many tensions in the U.S.-China relationship right now,” Xia Ming, a political science professor at the The City University of New York, told RFA in a recent interview.

“This visit will be a test for both leaders, whether or not they can stave off a major crisis of this kind, and whether U.S.-China cooperation can survive it without leading to conflict or clashes,” he said.

“That’s basically the bottom line in this relationship.”

In Washington, the Treasury Department continues to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services, or technology with North Korea, banning them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.

“Foreign financial institutions must choose between doing business with the United States or facilitating trade with North Korea or its designated supporters,” the order says.

It also imposes a 180-day “quarantine” on vessels and aircraft that have visited North Korea.

Reports indicate that confidential discussions are under way regarding the cutting off of the Chinese banking support on which Pyongyang depends for its finances, although few details have emerged.

China accounts for around 90 percent of North Korea’s trade, and serves as the country’s conduit to the international banking system, and the cutting off of financial backing could hamper Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons development.

Support from China

Wu Fan, editor in chief of the U.S.-based Chinese-language magazine Chinese Affairs, said state-owned Chinese entities have long supported the North Korean regime.

“Certain Chinese companies and banks have been supporting [North Korea]. This has now been revealed,” Wu said. “So it’s a lie to claim that this has nothing to do with China.”

“Where are they getting the materials? To start with, it was from the Soviet Union, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they’ve been getting them from China,” Wu said, citing recent reporting in The New York Times.

“Ever since North Korea began developing nuclear weapons in 1994, they have had Russian support, and they have also had Chinese support,” Wu said. “[Former presidents] Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao both supported this.”

The Associated Press quoted U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday as saying that China had begun the process of restricting banking transactions in “a somewhat unexpected move and we appreciate it.”

In Beijing, foreign minister Wang Yi repeated the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official line that negotiations are the “only way out” of the nuclear standoff, but Chinese officials have declined to confirm or deny reports that China has already taken steps to restrict banking transactions with its neighbor.

‘Slander, intimidation’

Official North Korean media on Friday hit out at Chinese state media outlets on Friday, accusing them of coming out to “seriously slander and intimidate our line and system.”

“The People’s Daily and its sister paper the Global Times … [are] ignoring the legitimacy of [North Korea’s] possession of nuclear weapons and the self-defensive nature of its consolidation of the nuclear armed forces of the state,” the Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.

“The People’s Daily and its affiliates … are continuing to spout the senseless, unjustified stories that would make even Trump’s twitter articles blush,” the article said.

Meanwhile, residents of Heilongjiang’s provincial capital Harbin, which have North Korea as a neighbor, staged a rare public demonstration against Pyongyang’s recent nuclear tests this week.

On Sept. 18, Harbin resident Li Keren and friends walked through the downtown area of the city, holding up a placard protesting the tests.

“We walked through the streets in order to get out a very urgent message,” Li said. “We did it quickly, so the police didn’t have chance to come and stop us. Then we left.”

Rights activist Yu Yunfeng said he had staged a similar protest in Harbin the week before.

“I raised my placard on Sept. 15, and I received a number of phone calls from the police on the 16th,” Yu said. “Any one of us could become a victim of these tests.”

“The police said they understood this, but that I wasn’t allowed to do it anyway.”

“The North Koreans have carried out six nuclear tests so far, and the central government has done nothing, so we need to get together and protest,” Yu said.

Reported by Lin Ping and C.K. for RFA’s Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Armenia has established diplomatic relations with five countries on the 26th anniversary of its independence.

Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, who is attending the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York, met top diplomats from the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Micronesia, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Central African Republic.

Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations were signed with all the five countries.

Nalbandian will meet his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov to discuss the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict on Saturday.

By Celia Luterbacher

It’s one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet Switzerland is struggling to maintain stocks of 16 key vaccines, forcing doctors to adapt their practices. What’s causing the shortfall, and what’s being done about it?

Primarily affected are ‘combination’ vaccines, which protect against multiple diseases – for example diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis (whooping cough), and a form of meningitis – with a single jab.

With restricted access to these critical vaccines from pharmaceutical manufacturers, doctors have been left to tap into their own local clinic or hospital reserves, or to rely on the remaining stocks from wholesalers.

But it’s not just Swiss healthcare providers who are struggling to make ends meet.

“This isn’t a Swiss problem – it’s an international problem. However, I can’t remember a situation like this in my 30 years of professional life as a vaccination expert,” Daniel Desgrandchamps, a paediatrics and infectious disease specialist, told swissinfo.ch.

According to the World Health Organizationexternal link, in 2015, 77% of European countries reported experiencing a shortage of at least one vaccine since the beginning of the year.

Growing demand

Vaccine production is struggling to keep up with an increasing global demand, due in part to large-scale vaccination programmes being deployed in African and Asian countries. Production is also becoming more centralised, with just a few large pharmaceutical companies – like Switzerland’s Novartis and Roche, as well as Pfizer and Sanofi – controlling most of the market.

Then there’s the question of profit. According to a report by Swiss public television, RTS, vaccines – which are administered at only a few key points in a person’s life (birth, injury, international travel, etc.) – may be viewed as less profitable prospects by pharmaceutical companies than drugs that are taken on a more regular basis. Testing and approval processes for new vaccines are also very costly and time-consuming for companies.

Desgrandchamps adds that Switzerland’s small size may also play a role in the domestic shortage.

“We have a very small market for pharmaceutical companies, and so producers might feel reluctant to submit vaccines for testing and approval by the authorities,” he says.

Combinations, alternatives, and delays

In July, the Federal Office for Public Health and the Federal Vaccination Commission issued recommendations for doctors to help them adapt their immunisation practices. The Swiss Society for Infectious Disease has also suggested alternatives to certain vaccines.

With combination vaccines in short supply, an obvious solution might seem to be to give several individual vaccines rather than one multi-purpose shot. But these so-called ‘monovalent’ vaccines are rarely manufactured anymore, having fallen out of favour with the convenience of combination vaccines.

This phenomenon has complicated the shortage problem. For example, Switzerland recommends that patients hospitalised with injuries receive tetanus vaccinations. The standard dose also contains diphtheria protection, which “piggybacks” on the tetanus vaccine to help reinforce immunity in the general population.

So, what are doctors to do when the combined diphtheria-tetanus vaccine runs out?

“You have to switch to a different diphtheria-tetanus combination vaccine with an additional polio or pertussis component. You end up having to give polio or pertussis vaccine to a person who doesn’t necessarily need it. It’s not dangerous, but you don’t like to have that because you just want to give patients the things they need,” Desgrandchamps says.

Doctors must also decide whether a vaccine is indispensable in the first place. For example, polio vaccination is recommended for adults travelling to certain countries. But without adequate supplies, doctors must decide, based on an individual’s risk of contracting the disease, between skipping the vaccine or using a formula designed for children – which can potentially have more severe side effects in adults. In some cases, alternative travel vaccines, which aren’t covered by Switzerland’s basic health insurance plan, may also cost more.

A final option is to delay vaccination in some individuals in favour of patients whose need is more urgent.

“The Federal Office of Public Health recommends vaccinating all young people between the ages of 25 and 29, as well as pregnant women during the second or third trimester, against pertussis. But we’re currently saving the remaining doses for pregnant women, so they can pass the antibodies on to their babies,” explains Laurence Rochat, Assistant Clinical Director of the Vaccination and Travel Medicine Center at the Policlinique Médicale Universitaire in Lausanne.

She adds that in her experience, most patients adapt fairly easily to these changes.

“I would estimate that we have to adapt our vaccine schedule every three or four consultations. Most people cope well with the situation, accept the proposed alternative, and don’t complain much about extra costs,” Rochat says.

Cabinet recommendations

The recent implementation of two recommendations from the Swiss cabinet, issued last year as part of a report on national vaccine storage and distribution best practices, show promise for improving the situation in Switzerland.

First, all vaccine shortages likely to last more than 14 days are now published online by the Federal Office for National Economic Supply. Second, manufacturers are required by law to submit enough vaccines to a central stockpile to meet national demand for three to four months.

So far, due to the supply bottleneck, progress in building up the stockpile has been slow – and for some critical vaccines, supplies are still non-existent. But Desgrandchamps is hopeful.

“I am confident that central storage will ameliorate the situation. There are still open questions, but I think it is a major step forward,” he says.

A possible future strategy for Switzerland, he adds, could be following the example of Austria and the UK and establishing centralised vaccine importation. This would involve making a deal with a specific company to provide a certain number of vaccines for a set price. Failure to supply the agreed number of doses would result in a fine for the manufacturer.

“Currently, companies deliver vaccines first to countries where they have an agreement for global supply, to avoid penalties. Countries like Switzerland with an open market usually come last,” Desgrandchamps explains.

Vaccination facts

No vaccine is compulsory in Switzerland, so it’s up to the patients to decide if they want to get vaccinated. However, the Swiss Vaccination Plan recommends immunisations for various diseases at different stages of life, both for the general population and certain at-risk groups. Recommendations are formulated based on the regularly updated opinions of experts from the Federal Vaccination Commission, Federal Office of Public Health, Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, Swissmedic, and the World Health Organization.

The cost of most basic vaccines is reimbursed by Swiss compulsory health insurance. There are some exceptions, such as the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine, which may be covered by certain cantonal programmes; and vaccines recommended for international travellers, which are usually covered by a complementary insurance plan

By Cheryl Pellerin

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis welcomed his Polish counterpart, Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, to the Pentagon Thursday to discuss strengthening the two countries’ military relationship, defense capabilities and NATO interoperability.

Mattis and Macierewicz last met at a June gathering of the NATO defense ministers in Brussels, a meeting focused on adapting the alliance to threats from Russia and from terrorism.

“As we were listening to the national anthem out in front of the Pentagon, I was reminded that Poland and the United States have a very long shared history of military cooperation,” Mattis said in remarks after the honor cordon held for Macierewicz.

In Washington, he said, this is demonstrated by statues to Gen. Casimir Pulaski, who served next to George Washington, and to Gen. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a military engineer who contributed to a first major victory, both in the Revolutionary War.

“These were officers that came to our aid … when our upstart little country decided to rebel against a king in Europe,” the secretary said.

“Today you’re a valued member of NATO and Poland leads by example,” he added. “And an American-led NATO battle group, with troops from the United Kingdom and Romania, stands with your nation that came to our aid in 1776.”

Protecting Freedom

The work to protect freedom continues as the U.S. and Poland stand together against any threat from the East — two countries bound by democratic values and by the NATO alliance, Mattis said.

“Our government here in Washington notes proudly that Poland continues to meet the NATO pledge, leading by example.”

In his remarks, Macierewicz told Mattis, “It was in our history, which you described, and it will be our future.”

On behalf of Poland, the minister thanked the American soldiers serving in Poland for their excellent cooperation and the efforts they make to defend the eastern flank of NATO, and Poland.

“The main goal of my visiting Pentagon is the same as the main goal of the Polish security police: to consolidate the strategic Polish-American alliance, which is fundamental to safeguarding peace in Poland and the entire eastern flank of NATO,” Macierewicz said.

“In our view,” he added, “broader U.S. military presence in our country will be required to ensure that. … We are building up our army to 200,000 soldiers and we are equipping it with the most modern weapons produced both in Poland and in the United States. For [that] I want to thank you especially.”

The decision to invoke martial law in Mindanao, Philippines, entailed a familiar quandary between military expediency and maintaining relationships of trust between state institutions and society. Mindanao’s experiences in this regard demonstrate the importance of fully independent and neutral humanitarian aid in maintaining that trust.

By Martin Searle*

Following the outbreak of violence in Marawi City on 26 May 2017, the Philippine authorities coordinated the setup of several evacuation centres in the province of Lanao del Norte, mostly in and around nearby Iligan City. From 29 May, they began receiving support from the Mindanao Humanitarian Team, which comprises several UN agencies as well as international and local non-governmental organisations.

Later, the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance in Disaster Management (AHA Centre) deployed its first conflict-related humanitarian response, which is to be welcomed. Further donations have come from several countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, and from further afield.

Challenges from Displacement

The speed and scale of displacement resulted in several substantial challenges, in particular water and sanitation. For example, Balo-i evacuation centre for some time had only two toilets shared by approximately 1,000 people; the minimum accepted standard is one toilet per twenty people.

In addition, jurisdictional problems stemmed from basing the humanitarian response in Lanao del Norte, which remains a constituent part of the Philippine federal hierarchy, while operations were entirely within Lanao de Sur, which is part of the autonomous region of Mindanao. Nonetheless, the short-term state-led response to the humanitarian crisis is reported by agencies on the ground to have been generally well conducted.

Independently, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that had a team conducting an unrelated distribution in nearby Butig at the moment that hostilities began, were able to mobilise very quickly. Together with the Philippine Red Cross, they mounted humanitarian operations between Iligan City, Marawi City, and areas outside of Marawi City where many of those displaced had fled, providing evacuation, healthcare, shelter, and food distributions.

Such independent and neutral components of the humanitarian response are always important. However, due to its potential impact on trust between communities and the state, martial law has rendered aid that is separate from both state authorities and the UN – which itself is a state-led inter-governmental organisation – crucial.

Trust and Receiving Aid

Martial law’s suspension of several civil and legal rights creates specific difficulties for state agents seeking to provide aid. Evacuees have expressed to some non-governmental organisations engaged in the response that they fear arrest simply for having come from Marawi. These concerns are exacerbated by the fact that many left without identification documents, and talk of terrorists mixing amongst those fleeing the city alongside unconfirmed rumours that subsequent mass arrests have already been carried out.

In such a tense environment, some predictably avoid police and other government employees, including those providing aid, as a precaution. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported one month into the emergency that 94% of displaced were lodging with other residents in Iligan City, rather than in the government-run evacuation shelters.

While the proximity of Marawi and Iligan cities mean many of those fleeing likely had personal networks to host them, this is still strikingly high. No matter how well the state provision of aid is managed, trust may not be forthcoming, particularly following the trauma of such a sudden attack and escape, and the uncertainty and tension that follows.

By creating space for independent and neutral organisations, the state likely mitigated the impact of this challenge. This is particularly evident in Saguiaran, to the northwest of Marawi City, where 30,000 people fled after violence broke out. Together with the 15,000 pre-existing residents they were largely cut off from assistance; the area was considered too dangerous. The ICRC was able to negotiate safe passage relying on pre-established recognition of its independence and neutrality. The water and sanitation systems it was able to put in place likely averted a significant disease outbreak.

Trust and Negotiating Access

Martial law can complicate these access negotiations. As this is a non-international armed conflict, international humanitarian law does not require the state to facilitate humanitarian access. States face a dilemma: having independent humanitarian organisations negotiate access to opposition-held areas risks a diversion of aid towards their opponents’ war effort; it provides an element of legitimacy to secessionist groups by creating a formal relationship between them and other recognised global governance institutions; and it further helps them provide services characteristic of government, important in any effort for hearts and minds.

This could lengthen the conflict. However, prohibiting contact denies assistance to people trapped in territory temporarily under opposition control. This can further play into narratives that the state does not care about those local populations, thus losing hearts and minds. Again, this can prolong fighting.

The Philippines has experience with this dilemma. There are four active non-international armed conflicts on Mindanao. Some have been running for many years. Over time, the state has allowed ICRC to develop requisite relationships with the Philippine civil and military sectors and, crucially, with armed opposition groups also. These relationships – generated by local ICRC staff members – were critical for the organisation to get access so quickly to places others, including state personnel, simply could not.

Trust and Martial Law

Martial law impacts these relationships.

Several members of the Maute group have been arrested and found with numbers of ICRC personnel in their mobile phones. This might ordinarily be considered grounds for suspicion, which is further exacerbated by community tensions following the violence and the suspension of several rights and protections under martial law.

Without pre-existing trust between humanitarian workers and the military, such suspicion would likely have ended attempts to negotiate access to areas where opposition groups are present.

These considerations demonstrate the primacy of trust under conditions of martial law. While aid is no universal panacea for this, humanitarian assistance that is independent of states and neutral to their endeavours bolsters that trust. The navigation of this period of martial law in Mindanao, while still ensuring meaningful humanitarian aid is delivered and expanded, is the result of trust born of long-term and strategic engagement between humanitarian groups, including international ones, and the Philippines.

*Martin Searle is Associate Research Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Programme, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in Singapore.