Catalonia’s pro and anti-independence parties are supported by almost the same amount of people, a latest opinion poll has shown. If new regional parliamentary elections were held now, it could see pro-unity parties winning, but with an advantage of less than one percent.

Parties opposing Catalonia’s independence from Madrid attracted 43.4 percent support in the poll conducted by Sigma Dos for the El Mundo newspaper. Those in favor of the region’s secession from Spain were supported by 42.5 percent.

One thousand respondents “throughout the community” were interviewed for the poll organized by the newspaper which generally opposes the independence movement. It reported that the survey was held this week, between 23-26 October, a day before the parliament of Catalonia declared independence.

However small the pro-unity’s lead, pro-independence lawmakers could lose their current absolute majority in the 135-seat parliament, according to the findings.

With at least 68 seats required to secure a majority, the hardline independence party, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) would win seven seats (three down), while two other parties supporting secession, the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCat) and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) currently represented in the Junts pel Si alliance with 62 seats, together would win between 54 and 58 seats, the poll showed.

Since the latest Catalan regional elections held in September 2015, the three pro-independence parties have had 72 seats in parliament. The CUP has already announced it would not take part in any new elections set by Madrid. The parties who have expressed support for unity with Spain – the Citizens Party (Cs), the Socialists’ Party of Catalonia (PSC) and the People’s Party (PP) received 39.1 percent of the votes in 2015.

Spain’s central government this week ordered the snap vote for December 21 to decide a new regional parliament, having dismissed the current government led by Carles Puigdemont. The move came immediately after Catalan lawmakers announced independence Friday, based on what they call a “mandate to secede” following the October 1 referendum. The plebiscite was declared illegal by Madrid. The Puigdemont parliament also claims it still holds power.

Spain has been swept by protests ahead of and after the vote on Catalonia’s independence. Hundreds of thousands have since taken to the streets, with both pro and anti-independence protesters consistently rallying across the country.

On September 25, the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly ended with no major results as the General Assembly co-chairs just “ticked” their work plan. Nevertheless, it is a common knowledge that the session agenda included projects of two resolutions called, “The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan” and “Protracted conflicts in the GUAM area and their implications for international peace, security, and development.”

Once again Azerbaijan seized the opportunity to bring to the attention of the world community the fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh region and the adjacent territory were under occupation.

Listening to the speech of Mr. Aliyev the co-chairs did not show that they were interested. Should Azerbaijan hope further that the UN will help to achieve the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and control the execution of requirements for the armed forces of Armenia to leave immediately Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrail, Gubadli, and Zangilan?

As the documents accepted by the Assembly remain only on paper, it is obvious that the UN General Assembly is just a “discussion club” that negotiates problems without achieving any results.

During this session in New York, Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov met with representatives of GUAM and the US. Apparently the US was the initiator of the meeting. It is its second attempt to “revive” the GUAM in 2017. The first attempt was made in Kiev in March and was mainly dedicated to the discussion of implementation of the agreement on the Free Trade Area (FTA) establishment within the GUAM signed 15 years ago.

In Ukraine they say that the FTA will be formed by the end of 2017. Will it be really done, if we should consider that Ukraine and Moldova have the association agreement with the EU unlike Azerbaijan and Georgia?

Besides, Ukraine and Moldova continue to be in the FTA of the CIS, provided the FTA between Russia and Ukraine is suspended from January 1, 2016. This means that the GUAM members will face complications in their own FTA creation because the GUAM members’ statuses are different.

The GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development has existed for 20 years. Is the GUAM profitable for its members? The GUAM FTA creation will not guarantee that the economic indexes of members will grow a lot. We see that the import volume from Azerbaijan to Ukraine and Moldova is not significant.

It turns out that the GUAM has once again demonstrated its inadequacy from the point of view of economic and political interaction.

This organization has not confirmed its efficiency during 20 years. Indeed, during these 20 years its activity has been placed on hold many times.

Is there a possibility that the political interaction will change for the better? The four countries are involved in the frozen and active conflicts. The GUAM headquarters is located in Ukraine and consequently Ukraine manages to make the members support its territorial integrity. Azerbaijan hopes that its “allies” who are concerned about their own internal problems will help to restore the territorial integrity, but in vain.

Of course during the recent session the GUAM and US representatives allegedly showed that they were ready to protect the interests of Azerbaijan. But how are they going to do this? Perhaps and indication can be found in the statement made on September 25, on the UN General Assembly’s closing day, by the Chairman of Parliament of Georgia Irakli Kobakhidze who said that all parliamentary forces of his country, “considered that the relations with Armenia should be fraternal and it was necessary to take steps to strengthen them.”

Iraqi government troops have retaken the oil-rich northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk from the Kurds, who had controlled the province since June 2014 when the Islamic State overran Mosul. What exactly transpired is still unclear but the two Iraqi factions of the Kurds, the Erbil-based KDP Kurds and the Suleimaniyah-based PUK Kurds, are accusing each other of abandoning their positions and leaving the city vulnerable to a takeover by the Iraqi troops.

The causes of the defeat of well-armed and well-trained Kurdish Peshmerga militia at the hands of Iraqi government troops and allied Shi’a militias will come to light in due time, but what we now know for sure is that Masoud Barzani’s referendum for independence gambit has dismally backfired on the Kurds. Indeed, Barzani has now said that he will step down as President of the autonomous region.

In order to understand the Kurdish factor in the Syria-Iraq equation, bear in mind that there are four distinct types of Kurds: first, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Kurds of Iraq led by Masoud Barzani; second, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Kurds of Iraq who were led by Iraq’s late president Jalal Talabani; third, the PKK Kurds of Turkey; and fourth, the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria.

The Barzani-led KDP Kurds of Iraq have traditionally been Western allies who have formed a strategic alliance with the US and Israel since the 1990s during the First Gulf War. All other Kurds, however, have traditionally been in the anticolonial socialist camp and that’s the reason why PKK has been designated a “terrorist organization” by NATO because Turkey has the second largest army in NATO and it views the separatist Kurds in Turkey’s southeast with suspicion.

Unlike the Barzani-led Kurds of Iraq, however, the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, who are ideologically akin to the socialist PKK Kurds of Turkey, had initially formed an alliance with the pro-Russia Assad regime against the Sunni Arab militants in return for limited autonomy; the aforementioned alliance, however, was not just against the Islamic State but against all the Sunni Arab jihadist groups operating in Syria, some of which have been supported by NATO and the Gulf Arab states.

It was only in August 2014, after Washington’s declaration of war against the Islamic State, that the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria switched sides and now they are the centerpiece of the US policy for defeating the Islamic State in the region. One can’t really blame the Kurds for this perfidy because they are fighting for their right of self-determination, but once again the Western powers have executed their tried-and-tested divide-and-rule policy to perfection in Syria and Iraq to gain leverage and to turn the tide despite the dismal failure of their stated policy of “regime change” for the initial three years of the Syrian civil war from August 2011 to August 2014.

Until August 2014, the declared US policy in Syria was “regime change” and the PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria had formed a defensive alliance with the Assad regime against the Sunni jihadists to defend the semi-autonomous Kurdish majority areas in Syrian Rojava; that equation changed, however, when the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened Washington’s most steadfast ally in the region Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the United States made an about-face on its “regime policy” in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

That policy reversal in turn led to a reconfiguration of alliances among the regional players and the PYD/YPG Kurds broke off their previous arrangement with Assad regime and formed a new alliance with Washington against the Islamic State. Unlike their previous defensive alliance with the Syrian regime, however, whose objective was to protect and defend the Kurdish majority areas in Syria from the onslaught of the Sunni Arab jihadists, this new Kurdish alliance with Washington is more aggressive and expansionist, and its outcome is obvious from the October 2015 Amnesty International report on the forced displacement of Arabs and demographic change by the Kurds in Iraq and Syria.

Regarding the three-way ethno-sectarian conflict between the Sunni Arab militants, the Shi’a-dominated governments and the Sunni Kurds in Syria and Iraq, according to reports, the government-allied militias in Syria and Iraq are comprised of local volunteers as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iran and even the Hazara Shi’as from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And similarly, Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the battlefield in Syria and Iraq for the last several years. A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Islamic World where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace for centuries.

Moreover, unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anti-colonial and anti-Zionist rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of Sunni Arab militant groups operating in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism,” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Although the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it has been comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists and armed tribesmen who have been generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by their regional and international patrons.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of numerous Syrian militant outfits, others being: al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the Sunni Arab militant groups that are operating in Syria are just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The only feature that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded.

The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other Syrian militant outfits only have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria, while the Islamic State has established a global network of transnational terrorists that includes hundreds of Western citizens who have become a national security risk to the Western countries.

Finally, regarding the much-touted “liberation” of the Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa, by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to a recent report by a humanitarian initiative REACH, only a few thousand residents have remained in Raqqa from a prewar population of more than 300,000. Since January, the US has bombed the city so heavily that not a single building has remained intact.

Thus, though the US might have comprehensively defeated the Islamic State, but as far as the people of Syria and Iraq are concerned, the US has not liberated the cities inhabited by people; rather, it has “liberated” the rubble of the cities of Mosul and Raqqa that once were hustling, bustling cities and had a history and heritage to rival Cairo and Istanbul.

It was indeed a landmark moment when Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz landed in Russia with an entourage of 1,500 people to ink various preliminary agreements and discuss regional issues, the first reigning Saudi monarch to do so since the establishment of their relations in 1926.

The visit portends significant changes in the geopolitical landscape of the conflict ridden Middle East, with Russia increasingly being accepted as credible role player in shaping events thereby effectively outplaying the US.

During the four day trip several projects ranging from space exploration, nuclear energy, oil and most importantly arms deals worth $ 3 billion dollars were agreed upon. Under the arms deal Saudi Arabia would buy the S-400 air-defense system, antitank Kornet-EM rocket systems, TOS-1A (multiple rocket-launcher) systems, AGS-30 automated grenade launchers, and Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles.

Moreover, leaders of the two largest oil producing states also developed consensus to coordinate their efforts in production and supply of Oil so that stabilization in the dwindling oil prices could be ensured. Cooperation in these domains may help Saudi Arabia diversify its predominantly oil based economy while providing Russia crucial leverage over US in dealings with one of the largest oil producing country which also has considerable influence over other Gulf monarchies.

The visit surprised many of those aware of the troubled history of Saudi-Russia relations. Despite the fact that the erstwhile Soviet Union was the first state to recognize the kingdom of Hijaz and Najd (name of KSA until 1932), the two states mostly found themselves on opposite sides on various regional and international matters, particularly during the cold war era. Lately, the Syrian conflict witnessed the two supporting rival groups, Russia backing Assad regime and Saudi Arabia backing the rebels. Thus, in this backdrop, visit of a long-time ally of US to one of its longest and fiercest opponents reflects shifting geopolitical realities and Russia’s successful demonstration of its military and diplomatic clout in Middle Eastern politics.

The potential shift in balance of power can partly be attributed to the relative disengagement of the US from Middle East starting with Obama administration, and its nuclear agreement with Iran. This has disillusioned Israel and Saudi Arabia (staunch opponents of Iran). Currently, President Donald Trump’s apparent failure to evolve any effective Middle East policy has further alienated US allies in Middle East, thus giving way to Russian ingress.

A region deeply divided on religious, ethnic, sectarian and political lines cannot be dealt as a single entity as has been a cardinal feature of US Middle East policy. This inherent weakness of US Middle East strategy was exposed when Qatar, host to largest US military base, faced diplomatic isolation in Jun this year by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations. US support for either party entailed risk of alienating one ally at the cost of others and hence it’s reluctant response at the price of being perceived as weak, unreliable or at worse useful to none.

Yet another reason that explains the emerging geopolitical shift on the horizon of Middle Eastern politics is the fact that Russia has effectively capitalized on failures and policy confusions of the US and has adopted a more flexible approach. This has enabled Russia to interact with all the stakeholders without losing credibility. For instance, Russia has been persuasively reassuring Israel regarding its concerns that Iran may use Syrian territory as a military base to attack the Jewish state, while at the same time allowing Iran’s presence in Syria.

In the case of Syria, by turning the tide against anti-Assad forces and establishing de-escalation zones Russia has proved its military and diplomatic clout. Thus, Saudi King’s expressed desire to reach a final agreement on regional issues including Syria during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is reflective of the realization that his country can no longer afford to ignore Russia. This realization may result in an agreement between the warring factions over Syria and thereby restoring a fragile balance and status quo.

Saudi Arab seeks to secure its interest vis-à-vis Iran and other potential regional rivals by diversifying its alliances and ameliorating its relations with Russia. The Kingdom feels threatened by Iran’s growing missile program and its regional influence as manifested in the form of Iran’s military and financial support to Houthi rebels in Yemen and Bashar al Assad regime in Syria. Thus, considering the common grounds Russia shares with Iran, it’s not inconceivable that in future Russia would act as a mediator and bridge between the two which are engaged in deadly proxy wars against each other. This would require Saudi Arab to stop kowtowing dictates of US and strike a difficult balance between Russia and US in the region. In reciprocity Russia has to ensure that Iran avoids interfering in the Saudi circle of influence. This is challenging but not impossible.

Thus the changing geopolitical arena of Middle East, characterized by waning US hegemony and growing Russian influence, appears to herald a new chapter not only in Russia-Saudi relations but also the larger balance of power equation in the volatile and war ravaged Middle East and Persian Gulf.

The fact that unlike US, Russia has a flexible and more inclusive rather than ideologically burdened strategy for Middle East suggests its prudence and this appears to be the source of its strength instead of weakness. Contrary to US, which has wrought havoc in Middle East in the name of human rights, democracy and terrorism, Russia has presented itself as a stabilizer, balancer and an effective deterrent to unilateral, interventionist policies of the US. However, this needs to be seen whether Russia would be able to keep the source of its strength and credibility intact in the long run by keeping balance between some of the historical and arch rivals; for instance, Iran and Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

*Nisar Ahmed Khan is a Research Affiliate at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI).

The President of the United States Donald Trump called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), adopted by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the high representative of the European Union, Germany and Iran in 2015, “one of the worst” and the most unfavorable deals Washington has ever entered into, and condemned the withdrawal of sanctions from Tehran.

“We got weak inspections in exchange for no more than a purely short-term and temporary delay in Iran’s path to nuclear weapons. […] That is why I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal’s many serious flaws so that the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons,” Donald Trump said in his TV speech on 13 October 2017.

Commenting on the statement of the American leader, the speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani said it was irresponsible.

“It seems that Mr. Trump not only does not adhere to international agreements, but does not feel respect for the UN and demonstrates to all countries that the US government will not adhere to any obligations,” the Iranian politician said at the Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in St. Petersburg.

In turn, the leaders of France, Britain and Germany expressed confidence that the agreement meets “shared national security interest” and stated that they are concerned about Donald Trump’s decision on Iran.

“We, the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom take note of President Trump’s decision not to recertify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to Congress and are concerned by the possible implications,” President Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Theresa May said in a joint statement.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also commented on the US position on the JCPOA announced by the head of the White House.

“Two years ago, an agreement was reached on the Iranian nuclear program, and it was approved by the UN Security Council, the whole world welcomed it. Now Washington is withdrawing from it, this is again the problem of negotiability as a foreign policy value,” he said at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi.

Meanwhile, Israel and Saudi Arabia, which are known for their attitude towards Iran, welcomed the new approach of the United States in this matter.

Analyzing the difficult situation around Tehran, Azadeh Zamirirad, Senior Associate, Research Division Middle East and Africa, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the JCPOA is the most effective tool we currently have to verify that Iran´s nuclear activities are for civilian – peaceful – purposes only.

“Without it, we would go back to a state of uncertainty among the neighbors, thus adding to the risks of nuclear proliferation in the region. Decertification as part of a new US strategy does not have to end in the dissolution of the agreement. As long as Washington does not re-impose nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, there is still a good chance to keep the agreement intact and strive for common solutions,” the analyst told PenzaNews.

She also reminded that the JCPOA is not a bilateral agreement between the US and Iran.

“The nuclear agreement is the product of intensive negotiations among not two but eight parties and is backed by a UN Security Council resolution. The United States cannot single-handedly topple the deal if all other parties are serious about remaining committed,” Azadeh Zamirirad stressed.

Joe Brazda, Research Associate, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, called the JCPOA a landmark agreement.

“When it was first revealed as the Joint Plan of Action in 2013, myself and my colleagues did not believe the Iranians would agree to even a small percentage of its provisions. Not only did Iran agree to limit their enrichment levels, reduce their stockpile to 300kgs and remove more than two thirds of their centrifuges, they also agreed to allow inspections on centrifuge production facilities, the machines that form the cylinders to be declared and monitored and inspections at their uranium mines. With these provisions in place it would be extremely difficult to develop a clandestine facility and the IAEA would know immediately,” the expert said.

According to him, the decision to de-certify the Iran deal will have negative consequences.

“Donald Trump is listening to the same hawks that has resulted in the DPRK nuclear weapons program. There was an agreement between the DPRK and the US that prevented the North from getting a weapon for almost ten years. Then hawkish politicians came into power and ended the agreement. The Iran deal is working and to de-certify it is an extremely bad policy. Trump will not be supported by our partners. If the rest of the partners in the deal agree it is working and the Iranians agree to abide by the provisions, then I believe the deal will survive. Both Iran and the EU have agreed to stay in the deal. It would be difficult to see the Russians or Chinese support a withdrawal while the deal is working. They and the EU have already entered into numerous agreements with Iran on energy, infrastructure development, coalition building, oil and arms trade. This could be devastating for US foreign policy as it will completely discredit the US as a negotiating partner and any hope of resolving the DPRK crisis through diplomacy will diminish,” Joe Brazda explained and added that blowing up the nuclear deal can only create another crisis.

Meanwhile, his colleague, Director of the Middle East Nonproliferation Program in James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Chen Kane said that the JCPOA has “very narrow and specific objective, it aims at constraining Iran’s nuclear weapons activities.”

“It doesn’t solve other issues related to Iran’s behavior such as Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region, Iran’s repressive behavior at home, or its missiles program. Whether we like it or not, the JCPOA was not intended to address these issues. It addressed only Iran’s nuclear program and aimed at blocking Iran’s ability to have nuclear weapons for at least 15 years. So far, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the international body responsible of verifying the agreement has confirmed 8 times Iran has been living to its commitments,” the analyst reminded.

In her opinion, the new strategy of the White House should be a comprehensive review, addressing not only the JCPOA or Iran’s nuclear program.

“However, so far the Administration failed to deliver any practical and achievable policy on any of its promised ‘reviews’, be it tax reforms, health bill, or North Korea. We will have to see if beyond rhetoric, they offer any concrete, practical and achievable steps. Decertification of the deal does not mean by itself collapse of the deal. It puts Congress in charge of whether or not to follow up with action, triggering a 60-day window for lawmakers to re-impose sanctions against Iran that were suspended in 2015 as part of JCPOA. But it is unclear what is the purpose of decertification aside of domestic politics,” Chen Kane said.

Not only it won’t serve any of US national interests to destroy directly or indirectly the deal without having a viable, workable and achievable alternative; in fact, it will risk US’ and our allies’ interests and national security, she added.

In turn, Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California and an analyst of Iran’s nuclear program and its political developments, stressed that the JCPOA has contributed significantly to stability in the Middle East because it has greatly reduced the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the region.

“Before the JCPOA was signed, some Arab nations of the Persian Gulf area had explicitly or implicitly threatened that they would pursue their own nuclear program, but now they no longer have that excuse, nor are they pursuing it,” the analyst said.

He also said the US policy toward Iran has been a total disaster for over 60 years.

“The US has tried to isolate Iran, has imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran, has threatened it with military actions, and in 1988 even shot down Iran’s passenger airliner over the Persian Gulf that killed 290 people, including 65 children. It has also helped consolidate Iran’s hardliners’ power that are very unpopular in Iran, but have used US policy to justify crackdown at home,” Muhammad Sahimi explained.

In his opinion, the new strategy will not lead to the collapse of JCPOA, if Europe abides by its obligation toward Iran, and supports Iran in its confrontation with the US; while the United States itself risks becoming isolated.

“US hawks will try to ratchet up their rhetoric and propaganda against Iran over the coming months. They want to push Iran out of Syria and Iraq, force it to stop supporting the Lebanese Hezbollah, and terminate their ballistic missile program. Iran will resist in all areas, and therefore tension will rise greatly,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, according to Baqer Moin, Former head of the BBC’s Persian service, the JCPOA adopted in 2015 was the beginning of the road to confidence building measures between Iran and others.

“Development of the situation around the JCPOA in the US depends on the composition of opinion in the congress the way it is going to deal with the JCPOA in two month time. Trump’s policy has postponed any chance of improved relations with Iran for many years to come and may lead to conflicts in the region. On the other hand, as he is not steady policy-maker he may suddenly for some reason decide to get a grand bargain with Iran so his will be regarded as the man who restored relations with Iran as [Richard] Nixon did with China,” the analyst suggested.

In his opinion, the US can make the JCPOA meaningless if the Congress decides to reimpose the nuclear related sanctions on Iran.

“Development of the situation is difficult to predict. Iran is not going to give up its presence in the Levant easily. Saudi, Israeli and US will attempt to curtail Iran’s influence. Whatever happens, it would be difficult to see any solution to reconciliation in Syria, Iraq and Yemen without some form of cooperation between Iran and others,” Baqer Moin stressed.

Tytti Erasto, researcher on nuclear weapon issues, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the Trump administration’s Iran policy is short-sighted and irresponsible.

“The deal is being constantly undermined by hostile rhetoric and actions — decertification is the latest and the most serious example. While hostility with Iran has deep roots in the United States, the sudden disregard for nuclear non-proliferation is inconsistent with previous US policy. By jeopardising the hard-negotiated limits to Iran’s nuclear program, the United States risks going back to the time when it could do nothing about Iran’s expanding uranium enrichment program,” the analyst said.

Meanwhile, according to her, the main problem is that the US can reimpose extraterritorial sanctions, thus interfering with economic cooperation between Iran and third parties.

“In such a situation, the EU’s role would particularly crucial: if the EU opposes extraterritorial US measures by offering legal protection to its businesses and financial institutions, Iran is likely to continue JCPOA implementation. If not, Iran is likely to pull out, which would mean collapse of the deal,” Tytti Erasto said.

“I hope that Republicans in the US Congress — despite their previous opposition to the JCPOA — understand the risks of pulling out from the deal. However, as far as they are under the illusion that more sanctions or even military action could produce a better outcome, they might be more concerned about the reputational costs of pulling out than the fate of the JCPOA. In that case, they might decide to continue waiving sanctions, and instead seek to provoke Iran in other ways — with the objective of making it pull out, and thus taking the blame internationally,” the expert added.

In her opinion, the future of the JCPOA largely depends on other countries that are parties to the agreement along with the United States.

“Others might genuinely want to keep the JCPOA, but still support hard line policies on Iran, assuming this will not endanger the deal. Whatever their motivations and decisions in the coming months, the JCPOA will continue to be under threat until there is a significant change in US-Iranian relations, which have gone downhill since the election of President Trump. Other JCPOA partners will need to think of creative ways to maintain the nuclear deal in this context,” Tytti Erasto concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/64647-2017

In this article we shall try to explain how to get your Environmental Impact assessment certification for your new thermal power plant investment in a country which is desperately in need of more energy generation.

An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report is a written document of the possible impact—positive or negative—that a proposed project may have on the nearby environment, together consisting of the natural, social and economic aspects, plus populations, fauna, flora, air, soil, water, humans, landscape, cultural heritage.

The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision makers consider the ensuing environmental impacts to decide whether to proceed with the project. Our local norms are copied from the current European Union norms in principle, even a bit more flexible. Any new thermal power plant project needs EIA certification for initiation of the investment in our local market. It is certified under the scrutiny and supervision of the EIA general Directorate of Ministry of Environment and Forestry. There is a public regulation for that process.

You should first find a competent environmental engineering company, preferably based in the capital city, with good relations in the respective Ministries, and Public workers, close to the current administration, with many similar references in the past. Those companies are all well known by the sector. You can reach them by simple Google search.

That engineering company normally has sample master EIA document with approximately 200-300 pages, created with copy/ paste method, from various similar sources. They use “replace” mode in “word” software and create a new version for the new thermal power plant investment. In this report, you read local populations, fauna, flora, air, soil, water, humans, landscape, cultural heritage, simply speaking insects, birds and flowers of the subject environment. Then the document starts to describe the thermal power plant in loose format, with general explanations of the technical details with no commitment no binding to any technology now to any supplier. Graphs, drawings, charts are all in primitive format, too simple in appearance, within capability of high school education.

These explanations are so simple and so funny that you will enjoy a lot while reading. Those are written usually by social scientists with non-technical educations, from non-related Internet sources. Many technical terms are false. It is clearly written that the investor does not have any commitment to any supplier nor to any technology, all loose information. There is plenty of talk about local employment opportunities with no firm commitment. In project execution, the investor places the order to the lowest price supplier, mostly to the cheapest Far East company with one third of the world prices as if it is a virtue without caring the technical details, then the plant will be constructed by 2000+ Chinese leaving no employment opportunities to the job hungry locals, whereby it is worse to see that the same plant is operated by foreign workers of the same foreign contractor for the next years.

EIA reports declare that you will create employment for the local people. In the end, the investor creates employment for the foreign workers with the lowest ridicules price declaring Far East company. The cheap price will certainly have lower life time in operation just to pass the guaranteed period of 2-3 years.

All these documents are collected, and shall be submitted to the public authorities. The technical details are not important, so are the company’s financial status, or experience, or past references. The important thing is creating the required documents in full compliance to the regulations. If there is a certified commercial company in application, then it is enough to have certification for competence.

The authority reads and evaluates the EIA report in a certain period of time. Normally they do not read the same wording on birds, insects, and flowers since they have had enough exposure to that rubbish wording so many times in the past. The important thing is to satisfy a higher authority.

Then a “Public information Meeting” is scheduled in the nearest settlement town or village close to the thermal power plant site, serving tea, coffee, and cakes and empty wording, with explanations how wonderful and friendly would be the thermal power plant for the locals. The EIA report is released in the Internet with the possible short period of time, without awakening the local NGOs nor the chambers of engineers, nor environmental organizations.

If those environmental organizations, Chambers of Engineers somehow learn and attend the meeting, and if they declare their objections on the EIA, lack of necessary filtration, lack of enough space for ash dam, inability to conform with deep sea water discharge, danger to underground water for the nearby agricultural activities in one place, danger to the air traffic in the nearby airport landing corridor in another, these objections will be noted with care and said to be evaluated. As in one case, “Public right not to get informed” is noted, or in  the statement “the meeting will be on hold”, enters into the public record.

Then that EIA report is approved, and certified, so EMRA (Energy Markets Regulatory Agency) license is released based on that EIA certification together with many other registration forms already filled in full compliance with the regulation without sound scrutiny of financial status, or capability, or experience or similar references in the past. Public disapproval to the application is so rare.

The investor asks the public administration to expropriate the land they require for the power plant without caring the chosen land covering forest or agricultural activities. That is so easy.

Investors’ consultants will then go to the market for shopping for the cheapest price without caring the quality, appropriate technology. They can not monitor or evaluate the technology since all technical drawings are in the original language of the cheap Far East contractor, only a few English wording appears on the title block of the technical drawings. There is limited, or mostly no access to the technical manuals since they are all in the foreign language of the Foreign Far East company with no intention to make English translations. These cheap Far East originated plants operate for almost 2-3 years just to past the guaranteed period under the full operation with the foreign crew of 500+ foreign contractor/ operator team. Then the failures start in the dust filters, in the safety valves, in the fuel injection burners, then in the coal mills, in the ash disposal systems. Most of the time the plant has no spares since there is no emergency spare-part policy of the contractor. The investor does not request one because they do not know that they will need spare parts in the long run. These are all new for the investor, and spare part list is an unnecessary cost item in the initial cost of the plant in early comparison.

The Thermal Plant starts to pollute the nearby environment, local people react in desperation, in the mean time, the investor generates electricity and sells in the local market with a high market price while polluting the air, sea and the land. Penalties are not deterrent, the plant is never closed due to ever increasing electricity demand f the local market. The plant shut down is temporary. It is normally re-opened in a short period of time after paying the ridiculous penalties.

Coal power plants are operated with a staff of approximately 500 employees, similar output capacity combined cycle power plant works with 50 qualified staff. Local people can only work at the door and just outside of the fence as security personnel.

For how long? Until the time comes for a new political formation which protects the local employment, which restricts the employment of foreign workers, cares the expectations of the local community and responds to the local voters.

There are cheap 135 MWe CFB and 600 MW pulverized Chinese design thermal power plants with lots of construction and operational problems. All technical drawings are in Chinese, so there is no possibility of local workers to operate the plants.

We Mechanical Engineers, are not against the construction of thermal power plants. We are educated to make construction of the thermal power plants in compliance with the technical quality of our local coal. We want to use the maximum local engineering, local design, local resources, local fabrication and local manpower, in compliance with environmental norms and regulation with the least harm to the nearby environment.

We try to design the environmentally friendly equipment to collect maximum amount of dust, ash, NOx, SOx, reduce the noise to lowest level, appropriate and clean deep sea water discharge, collect all ash and bottom ash in ash dams, keep the air clean, stack clean, coal stock area non-polluting.

EIA approvals, environmental controls are too important and should not be left only to the care and regulations of the public agencies. Turkey’s energy policy, should not be “more energy and electricity generation no matter what the cost to the nearby environment” as the public institutions have now been implementing.

Our energy policy should be, “to generate energy and electricity in respectful to the environment, with maximized use of local fuel, with best local design engineering, fabricated with maximized local portion, installed by the local contractors, with local labour, built at environmental appropriate areas”.

We engineers cannot be against the thermal power plants. On the contrary it is engineers’ job to design with the latest engineering and the best capability to meet the firing maximized local coal, to inform and enlighten the society how to reach to that target.

Pulverized coal-fired thermal power plant coal combustion technologies should be abandoned, new clean coal technologies, CFB, IGCC, Oxy-firing, underground gasification systems must be applied. Combined cycle power plants should be designed to have the best sea water plant cooling system, with minimum damage to marine life, with deep sea discharge properly designed, to the sea water temperature. Dust, ash, NOx, SOx emissions should be kept under control. The plant should not be placed in the forest land.

Without energy and electricity production, a society can not develop, can not raise the level of her prosperity. You can not live comfortable life. You can not watch opera, cinema, TV, without electricity. You can not drive on the freeway without traffic lights, you can not live warm, comfortable environment in your home at night. Newspapers can not be printed, Planes can not fly nor land.

More energy production is essential, increase in power production is required. Everybody wants electricity, want more power, but no one wants the thermal power plant in their own backyard, even wind power plants since they make too much noise.

How shall we fix this dilemma? This dilemma will be fixed. Investors will make investments on appropriate design plants in correct place, environmental friendly, employ more local people, with sufficiently big dust filters in operation, designed to deep sea discharge properly. They will not cheat the local people. Plant will not be in the forest land, nor in agricultural neighborhood. All depreciation of the nearby land value will be repaid. A new thermal power plant can be constructed next to an old thermal power plant since the local plant around an old plant is used to the presence of a thermal power plant. They worked there for many years. They accept the investment much faster.

Investors are to pay attention to the environmental issues, care to respond to local engineering and local employment expectations, if they wish to have minimum problem with the locals in the long term operation of the plant. We engineers want all parties to earn money. If the local people can not earn money, while only investor earns money, this is not fair. This one-way happiness can not continue forever. We engineers want all parties to earn money, and the thermal power plant investment should bring wealth to the community and o the investor both. Local NGOs and chambers of engineers should have regulatory and supervisory role for the project at all times.

What happens next after all? If the local people are mostly comprised of highly educated retiree/ pensioner population with sufficient environmental organizations, fully informed of the details of the new investment project, they apply to local courts for cancellation of the investment certificate. Since the EIA report is not so complete, it is weak in content, ill-prepared, with many deficiencies in technology, courts declare cancellation of execution.

However the construction is not ceased. Investor and the constructor continue the site activities. The investor completes the deficiencies and applies to the administration for renewal of the certification and the license. The public office re- issues the certification in time. The investor spends a little more money, without any change in design and details of the equipment at site.

The investor with no care in public relations, continues to make mistakes with applications to courts for compensation of the extra costs. It is funny, but a reality. It there any other similar court case in the world that an investor goes to court to sue a local person who goes to the court to ask real value for the land which is expropriated??

That is poor practice public relations, too absurd, and the initiator pays back unnecessary consequences in the long term at all times, since be sure that nobody gets intimidated.

We engineers would not ride on trains if we were scared of the iron, we would not go to mines if we were scared to get dirty, we would not work on off-shore platforms if we were scared from water. (This is a local saying created in recent years). May God give wisdom to investors for better risk assessment in their thermal power plant investments. Your comments are always welcome.

With each passing day, Europe, once referred to as the cradle of freedom and democracy, is rapidly turning into a continent where far-right wing, racist and sometimes openly fascist views are in vogue and are gaining in popularity. Meanwhile, Islamophobia, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments are following a parallel course. More precisely, these have emerged as the elements that fuel the far-right.

In Holland, Geert Wilders went as far as to demand the Qur’an be banned. The Hungarian party Jobbik set up a militia force to patrol Roma neighborhoods, while Denmark’s Nationalist Party made a proposal to confiscate the possessions of refugees.
As we can see in France in particular, at least 30 million European voters have voted for far-right political parties in the last five years. In the last elections, nationalist parties received 18% of the votes in Finland, 13% in Sweden, 21% in Denmark, 29% in Switzerland, 35% in Austria, 14% in France, 10% in Holland, and 21% in Hungary. Although President Macron has assumed the office in France, Le Pen’s racist party is still on a rapid rise.

In the elections held in Austria on October 15th 2017, the far-rightist Freedom Party of Austria became the second party as the Peoples Party won the elections. Sebastian Kurz who is the youngest leader of Europe is presumed to form a coalition with the far-rightist Freedom Party of Austria. It seems that the FPÖ, founded by a former SS officer is becoming the kingmaker. This ascent reinforces the introverted tendencies of the EU, which will likely cause harsher debates concerning Turkey’s membership.

Following the German federal elections held on September 24, 2017, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party was elected into the Parliament, bringing the rise of the far-right in Europe to the fore once again.

The AfD, notorious for its enmity towards Islam and foreigners, received 12.6% of the votes, increasing its vote share by 7.9% in this election. The collapse of the German voters’ support for the mainstream political parties and the AfD’s entering the Federal Parliament – with 94 members as the third biggest political party – have raised concerns over Germany’s gradual slide towards the far-right. In the latest elections, over 100 seats that were lost in the parliament by the mainstream parties have largely gone to the AfD.

The nationalist and racist discourse adopted by the far-right AfD throughout the election campaign such as “Trust Yourself Germany”, “Germans should be proud of the German soldiers’ achievement in the two world wars”, “Aydan Özoğuz -the German government’s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration- should be disposed of in Anatolia” have aroused concern and disquiet, especially among the Turks residing in the country. The AfD is also the kind of party that suggests the border police should be empowered to shoot illegal immigrants if necessary.

Experts give the coalition between the CDU, the FDP (Free Democratic Party) and the Greens -which appears to be Merkel’s sole alternative- a maximum of two years before it likely collapses and fresh elections will have to be called. This potential union, which is also called the Jamaica coalition due to the combination of the party colors, is predicted to have a difficult time finding a common ground on issues such as economy, energy and state structure.

Dr. Roy Karadağ, the Head of the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremenemphasizes that the AfD has brought with it considerable uncertainty and concern, and that this may lead to great changes in Germany.

One of the major advantages the far-right enjoys is that it brings together those who are dissatisfied with the current system, and who are disappointed with the parties and ideologies that have been tried to this day. That is why the far-right and racism is a trend that has been on the rise not only in Europe, but throughout the entire world over the last 30 years: The world has been anxiously following the racist developments in the USA in recent years.

Social democracy and other socialist movements have been on a constant decline. The Scandinavian states, which had been under social-democratic rule for years, have come under the sway of rightist parties. The right’s ascent is paving the way for certain pro-violence, racist groups. Here, it would serve us well to remember the horrifying massacre perpetrated by the Norwegian extreme rightist Anders Breivik.

Europe has a deep-rooted criminal record for racism. Racist massacres, genocides, wars, concentration camps, artificial famines and the slave trade that took place in Africa, Southeastern Asia, the Indian Peninsula, Australia, and North and South America are among the more shameful pages of European history. Likewise, policies built upon racism, extreme nationalism and violence pursued by the various fascist movements that rose in the European countries during the World War II cost the lives of millions.

While criticizing the far-right, it is important to prevent misunderstandings; the leftist ideology is not the alternative to the far-right. Today, as well as in the past, the biggest disasters that befell every society have all been brought about by leftist ideologies. What is meant here is a management system with a good sense that places importance on humans, and the spiritual and moral values.

It seems quite inconsistent for Europe, a trailblazer in art, science, technology, democracy and human rights, to be so quickly overcome by such extremist, deviant trends within its own society. European society must contemplate hard on this discrepancy. If this dilemma, which is a clear betrayal of its own core values, is not resolved, it will not take very long before Europe enters into an incredibly dangerous and destructive process.

*Harun Yahya has authored more than 300 books translated into 73 languages on politics, religion and science. He tweets @harun_yahya.

The “anthem protests” have gone on for two years now, but so far the players have not presented a specific set of demands.

Why?

Do the players simply want to use Sunday football as a platform for raising awareness of racial injustice and police brutality or is there something else going on here?

If the players wanted change, they had the perfect opportunity last Tuesday when they joined the team owners for the NFL’s quarterly meetings in lower Manhattan. But nothing really came of it, because the players were not prepared to take their protests to the next level. Take a look at this summary of the meetings by a from a report by 247 News:

“After a meeting Tuesday between the NFL and its players, the league claimed that the two parties “had a productive meeting focused on how we can work together to promote positive social change and address inequality in our communities”. But to hear former Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets offensive lineman Willie Colon talk, you would be led to a picture that was quite different.

…Colon stated that his sources told him that the players in attendance at the league’s New York City offices felt that “nothing was accomplished…the owners just want this to go away, but they don’t know how to put out this fire”. Colon also made a damning statement that the league and its owners completely dodged the subject of estranged quarterback Colin Kaepernick by calling for a bathroom break, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ended up reading the newspaper as opposed to addressing the issue.” (Willie Colon: “Nothing got done” at NFL meetings, 247sports.com)

This is ridiculous. What did the players expect, a pat on the back and a big “Hurrah” for racial justice?? These are billionaire landsharks they’re dealing with not their buddies at the local sports pub. Get it together, fer godssakes.

Of course the owners don’t like Kaepernick. Why would they? His actions have cost them a heckuva lot of dough and dragged the leagues reputation through the mud. Are they supposed to be happy about that?

Look: The guys who own NFL teams are not social justice warriors, they’re hard-nosed businessmen who make a bundle gouging credulous sports addicts on overpriced tickets, exorbitant Cable contracts and garish football jerseys that make grown men look like imbeciles. Did the players think these football moguls were going to give away the farm just because they showed up at their lousy “quarterly” meeting?

Give me a break The players need to grow up and state their case. They need to distill the vague racial rhetoric into a list of ironclad demands that will have an impact on the criminal justice system, the prosecution of killer cops, compensation for victims families and reductions in sentencing for non violent offenders. That’s what they need to do, take the protest to the next level!

It’s frustrating watching this whole thing unfold.

Why?

Because the protestors have these fecking bigshot tycoons over a barrel and they don’t seem to know it, that’s why. Just look at how this thing is going down: Ticket sales are flagging, TV ratings are plunging, and the NFL’s brand has suffered a major black eye. On top of that, many of the leagues most devoted fans have ripped up their season’s tickets, turned off their TV sets, burned their official-NFL jerseys, and vowed never to watch another professional football game in their lives. And the ructions are all traceable back to the anthem protests and the actions of a few determined players.

Get the picture? The owners need this whole anthem-thing to vanish pronto or their glorious business model is going to go down in flames. So what they’re looking for is someone on the players side who knows how things work. You don’t show up at a gun fight with a knife. You hire the best civil rights and labor attorneys available, you focus your sites on the goals you really hope to achieve, and then you hammer out the best damn deal you can possibly get making sure that your opponent is writhing on the floor in agony before you sign on the dotted line. That’s how you negotiate with bigshots, you sock it to them bigtime. It’s called “winning”, which is something the players should understand. But do they? Check out this comment by protest leader Michael Bennett who was trying to explain the larger objectives of the protests:

“It’s always been broader,” he said. “It’s always been about justice and discrimination in America, police brutality, women’s rights; all those different issues. Clean water; Flint, Michigan. Issues that are pertaining to America that we all need to pay attention to because it’s not until it happens to one of us that it’s important, but it’s important every single day regardless of what we have going on.”

What a bunch of baloney. The protests are NOT about “women’s right” or freaking “Flint, Michigan”. And if the players waste their time on unrelated gobbledygook like that, they’re going to miss a golden opportunity to “stick it to the man” and reach a meaningful settlement that could have lasting impact on sentencing guidelines, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system.

Bennett is also worried about Kaepernick getting another job quarterbacking in the NFL because the players think Kaepernick has been blackballed by the owners. Which he probably has been.

So what? The bottom line is that the owners will find Kaepernick a job IF THEY HAVE TO, and they will have to, because the players have a gun to their heads and they’re in the drivers seat. The owners are going to do whatever they’re told to do (within reason, of course) if they want this protest nightmare to go away. And they do want it to go away.

So just don’t blow it. It’s not often that black protestors get the opportunity to utilize the raw power and political connections of billionaire businessmen who can impact the legislative agenda in Washington and push through reforms that could possibly effect policing on a community level.

The anthem protests could very well produce results that no one could have ever imagined. It’s worth a shot at least.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the offspring of nearly 800,000 ethnically cleansed from their homes in Palestine during the 1948-50 Nakba, are today variously labeled by their Lebanese hosts as refugees or sometimes described as a particular category of “quasi-residents.” Or as “foreigners” or sometimes during Arab emotional nationalist events or rising national sentiments or Israeli attacks, Palestinians have been described more congenially as “Arab residents” or “Arab brothers.” Or at other times they are claimed by‘Resistance” factions as “Our religious, moral and political duty to liberate and return to Palestine.” And sometimes Palestinians in Lebanon are labeled by yet other “Resistance Brand” elements as “Sunni Terrorists” and “Takfires”who support other ‘terrorists’(rebels and civilians) in the Syrian Civil war next door. Consequently they must be eradicated per certain questionable Hadith offerings weakly attributed to Mohammad the Prophet (PBUH).

But whatever the label pasted on Palestinian refugees in sectarianized and Shia-Sunni split Lebanon, they are today often thought of by certain sects with power in Parliament as some kind of parasitic outlaws. Nothing could be further from the truth and this assertion is repudiated beyond cavil once Lebanon understands the benefits that will accrue to their economy if Palestinians are granted their internationally mandated civil right to work.

As noted in Part I of this report, Lebanon’s economy continues to weaken as foreign investors pull back, internal sectarian turmoil swells and World Bank and IMF indexes of Lebanon’s economic future increasingly reminds one of the 2009 economic shut-down in Greece.

Politicizing Palestinian access to Lebanon’s economy

Today, approximately 230.000 Palestinian refugees are housed in 12 camps and 42 gatherings across Lebanon. The vast majority live under harsh deteriorating conditions with high poverty rates, and collapsing infrastructure and housing conditions. They have very limited access to quality services and social protection. In addition they are subjected to discriminatory laws and regulations including being denied by Lebanon’s Parliament the internationally mandated civil right to work or own a home outside of their squalid camps.

Historically the Palestinians and the Lebanese have had deep economic relationseven prior to the exodus of Palestinians from their sacred homeland. Thousands of Lebanese sought employment opportunities in Palestine. And because they were granted the same civil right to work that today Lebanon is legally obliged to grant Palestinians, the Lebanese were well integrated within Palestine’s economy and many prospered. Allowing Palestinians in Lebanon the right to work is viewed by most people of goodwill and virtually all tenets of international humanity law, as simply fair based on this fact alone.

Expulsion from their lands and homes forced the entry of Palestinians into Lebanon which began five years after Lebanon had proclaimed its independence from France. As argued by many who have studied the subject including scholar and this observer’s student, JaberSuileman, the arriving Palestinians provided capital and labor which in large part helped build the Lebanese economy. In addition to augmenting the labor force, Palestinian refugees had been owners of banks, companies, heavily involved in trade, and known for their business acumen. During 72 months of their ethnic cleansing by occupying Zionist gangs, Palestinians transferred more than 200,000,000 sterling pounds into Lebanon. This cash infusion was vital to the new state of Lebanon and exceeded by four times the then value of the Lebanese economy.

Roughly two decades later, the PLO fueled economy in Lebanon had grown massively with scores of thousands of job creations and its budget exceeded that of the Lebanese state itself. However, given other exigencies, the PLO leadership was not much involved with long term investments but rather focused on providing for the short-term needs of the camp residents. And since the PLO was the major employer they did not feel particular urgency about developing a long term plan to guarantee, by Parliamentary decree, the enactment of the civil right to work for Palestinians in Lebanon. Frankly it was not a big issue at the time given the political and economic power of the PLO and the reality of the Lebanese job market being fully open to Palestinians.

Yet, as all dear readers know, times change. With the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon in August of 1982, (with this observer on one of their boats headed to Tunis), as a consequence of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Israel’s local and international allies which included certain Lebanese sects, a reign of terror was organized by Lebanon’s Deuxiume Bureau (Military Intelligence). It was during this period that the Amal Militia under the leadership of Lebanon’s current Speaker of Parliament now in his 25th year sinecure commanded the 1985-88 Palestinian Camp Massacres, on instructions emanating from elements in Syria. The tradeoff was cover for Nabeh Berri’s knowledge of the Imam Musa Sadr murder in Libya a few years earlier. Berri profited financially and politically from pleading ignorance about “the vanished Imam” during the subsequent four decades about who ordered Libya’s Gadhafi to ‘disappear Imam Sadr.” Consequently Berri was green-lighted to assume the leadership of Musa Sadr’s Amal organization and the post of Speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament. Imam Musa Sadr’s murder changed the course of Middle East history for the worst, given his ability and commitment to bridge building among Sunni, Shia and Christians and his general moderation and rejection of Political Theocracy which is so rampant today. Sadr was a supporter of Palestinians refugees having the right to work.

A reign of terror in post PLO power targets Lebanon’s Palestinians

As the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were increasingly targeted after the PLO leadership withdrew, a decision was taken to exclude them from internally mandated civil rights that every refugee on the planet is accorded. Among the employment doors shut for Palestinians, which would substantially block they from growing Lebanon’s economy via employment and job expansion,isthe right to work in 20 professions. In order to exclude Palestinians, all main professions require that applicants have Lebanese nationality.Professional Associations now barred to Palestinians in Lebanon include those in which they have historically excelled. The professions in Lebanon which by political design excludes Palestinians are Lebanon’s Bar Association, Association of Doctors, Pharmacists, Dentists, Engineers, Media, Association of Editors, Banks, Association of Manufacturers, Accounting, Associations of Hospitals, Tourism Agencies in Lebanon (ATTA1), Association of Printing, Syndicate of Hotels Owners in Lebanon , Syndicate of Pilots in Lebanon, Association of Insurance Companies, Syndicate of the Manufacture of Gold and Jewelry, Syndicate of Public Works and Constructing Contractors in Lebanon, Association of Licensed Topographers in Lebanon, and Association of the Union of Publishers.

Palestinian refugees being allowed to work in these professions would, according to several studies grow Lebanon’s economy quickly and significantly create quality of life improvements including infrastructure revamping and economic and political stability for all in Lebanon. Moreover, were Lebanon’s Parliament to comply with International law, its own Constitution and US law, Lebanon’s economy could be salvaged and grow significantly according to various ILO and World Bank analyses.

Over worked and poorly paid–but still contributing

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are overworked and poorly paid. The average monthly income of Palestinian workers is below the Lebanese minimum wage and based on 2007 data represents less than 80% of the average monthly income of Lebanese. Participation of Palestinian women in the labor force is also very limited and as in a majority of countries women are paid less than their male co-workers, receiving approximately 82% of men’s income.

Sadly, but correctable, Lebanon’s Palestinian workforce has become less educated and lacking in previous skills. Most are engaged in fairly menial jobs concentrated in commerce and construction. When a Palestinian can find work it is often on a daily, weekly, or productivity basis. Job security is unknown. The blocking of fair job opportunities and decent work is exacerbating and accelerating the cycle of impoverishment and vulnerable existence that Palestinians endure all across Lebanon.

Despite some optimism about improvements from the 2010 Parliamentary amendments related to improving the conditions of Palestinian refugees, no significant benefit resulted on their right to work or quality of life status. Work permits are still very difficult to secure despite the cancellation by Lebanon’s Parliament of work permit fees. Work permits are not required by most menial occupations performed by Palestinian refugees and fewer than 2% of refugees have acquired one. Half of the Palestinian refugees are employed by another Palestinian and approximately 30% work only inside the camps. Roughly 50% of Lebanon’s employed Palestinians work in construction and commerce activities such as wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles of repairing household appliances, often longer than ten hour days and where the majority earn less than the daily Lebanese minimum wage or about 20,000 LL which equals $14 USD per day or $ 1.20+ per hour.

The above noted weak 2010 refinement of Lebanese law makes plain that Lebanon’s Parliament was not willing to fulfill Lebanon’s duties toward Palestinian refugees. But to its limited credit it did decide on cancelling the principle of Reciprocity since it is not applicable to Palestinians because they are refugees. It kept the discriminatory work permit but cancelled the fee to obtain one. It also allowed the right to work in a few parts of the private sector including the right to end of service and work emergency compensations. However, this responsibility must be held by the employer most of whom indicate they will avoid it. Parliament also blocked Palestinian employees from any benefit from the social security fund and sending the matter to UNRWA arguing that it alone is responsible for Palestinian health, educational, and social condition.

Consequently, the informal economy is currently the only viable option for Palestinians to obtain jobs in Lebanon. The majority of Palestinians are employed in the informal sector due to being both socially and economically confined. But working in the informal economy is not a solution. Most Palestinians working in the informal economy are denied many rights, including social security or receiving a guarantee on pensions and as noted above are being much underpaid. In addition this employment is not included in Lebanon’s national economic assessments. Notwithstanding that Palestinians already constitute an important part of the Lebanese work force their contribution is not currently included in any formal economic assessment.

Conclusion

For too long, the debate surrounding the right of Palestinians to work in Lebanon has been perverted by domestic politics and the tendency to conflate employment rights with a right to naturalization, or tawteen. Those who have lived in Palestinian camps and followed this issue know the absurdity of this proposition. With every Palestinian birth in Lebanon the resolve for Full Return deepens. Wishfully thinking were the occupiers of Palestine’s prediction that “the old will die and the young will forget.” Let them come to the camps of Lebanon and Syria and interview the youth about this prediction.

Lebanon’s ailing economy is in no small measure the result of discriminatory laws and practices that have hindered Palestinians from legally joining the Lebanese labor market and growing Lebanon’s economy. As a result leaving major economic contributions to Lebanon’s economy by Palestinians underutilized.

Palestinians have not been and are not today an economic burden to Lebanon. They are a potential major boon. Several economic growth periods benefiting the country were primarily due to Palestinian entrepreneurial capital being invested across Lebanon. Part of which is the fact that in contrast to other foreign workers in Lebanon, Palestinian labor constitutes the only group which spends essentially their entire earnings in Lebanon without sending them as remittances abroad.

As noted in a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) study, achieving fair treatment for Palestinian workers in Lebanon by Lebanon’s Parliament removing flagrantly discriminatory legal and administrative obstacles that block Palestinians from working will reap major economic benefits. At the same time Lebanon’s government must engage in constructive dialogue with all concerned stakeholders and sectarian interests across Lebanon on granting Palestiniansthe full right to work. The benefits that will result toward rebuilding Lebanon’s economy can resolve many of Lebanon’s economic, social and sectarian problems, while bringing Lebanon into compliance with international humanitarian law required for the treatment of refugees.

Several current sectarian political leaders in Lebanon ignore the difference between the two sets of rights which Palestinians seek and are entitled to. In point of fact on the one hand, the rights of Palestinians as refugees focus on their Human Right of Return to their homes and the right to receive compensation for their losses. These rights are absolute and cannot be either abrogated or negotiated away on their behalf.

The second sets of rights are their Civil Rights within Lebanon or any country where they currently reside. The belief that extending elementary civil rights to Palestinians will in some way block Lebanese nationals from their economic rights is a mistaken one. Palestinian refugees also possess, whether citizens or non-citizens, Human Rights, both as refugees and as human beings and the enjoyment of both sets of rights is in no way mutually exclusive.

Enshallah, Lebanon’s deeply polarized and politicized sects will come to a decision to put their country and its economy first and allow their Palestinian sisters and brothers to help make it happen.

By William R. Luckey*

Christians are generally aware that they have an obligation to assist the poor. It is preached from pulpits, written in books, taught in schools. The issue becomes more contentious, however, when discussion turns to the best method for doing so. Too often, advocates for the poor ignore the foundation for poverty relief: the production of goods. If Christians are serious about improving the lives of the poor, we must be serious about understanding the sources of wealth creation.

The Engine of Wealth Creation: The Pursuit of Goods

When an economist says “good,” he is not necessarily speaking of “tangible goods” such as a washing machine or a car. For Austrian economists and others influenced by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, a good is that which we believe is “good”: anything that will satisfy a need that a person has. This good is seen in a subjective sense: There are objective goods in the universe, but to desire this or that objectively good good, I must subjectivize it; that is, I must actually see it as a good for me at this particular time.

The needs that people experience can be almost anything: education, love, food, culture, or the above-mentioned washing machine. There are two types of goods for our purposes: free goods, that is, things that are part of our natural environment and that we can have whenever we want, such as air; and economic goods, that is, goods of which there are not enough to satisfy our desires. Because our desires have no real limit, while economic goods are finite, the latter must be economized. This means that they cannot be handed out indiscriminately, because the supply would vanish quickly.

Most of the time, the goods we need are down-to-earth things such as food, clothing, and shelter. We need cars to get to work and the store and church, we need medical care and dental care, books to read, paper to write on.

In fact, since man is co-creator with God, as Pope John Paul II said (Laborem Exercens, nos. 12-13), he creates his own society which will serve his ends, most of which are only intermediate ends, which should, in turn, serve his ultimate end. Hence, society, and the economy are spontaneous orders driven by the things human beings need. The novel Robinson Crusoe is a good example. Crusoe finds himself on an island, alone, with virtually nothing for his survival. He immediately begins to provide for his first necessity, food, and then other needs such as shelter. When Friday shows up, he makes arrangements with him to develop things that make life somewhat easier. The more complex this society becomes, the more things are available to enhance human flourishing. In the novel, Crusoe finds a bible among the ship’s material, and becomes a Christian and then converts Friday. So the social and economic relationships tend to higher things, such as one’s eternal salvation.

It is natural for human beings to want to bring themselves and their families to a state of affairs that is better than the present one. It does not matter if one speaks of finances, education, health, religion, or living conditions; people generally try to move to a better situation in all these areas and many more. If a person was completely content with his current state of affairs, that person would not do anything to change it.

The effort to better one’s state of affairs requires belief in cause and effect. One must be able to predict that there are actions that will bring about a better state of affairs. In addition, there must be the possibility of performing those actions. In many underdeveloped countries, options are constrained for various reasons, diminishing the likelihood that people will (or can) take actions to better their condition. In the West, and places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan, such actions are usually available. In these places, there may be other reasons that people do not strive to better their condition, including apathy and the existence of perverse incentives (a weakening of the cause and effect relationship that normally motivates action).

When considering strategies for increasing wealth, then, this natural human drive to better one’s condition is the engine that must be fueled. Approaches and policies that diminish this drive or redirect it in fruitless ways will end up being counterproductive. Without this natural drive to better our condition, the world would never have risen out of barbarism. If we destroy it, the world may turn back in that direction.

Conditions for Wealth Creation: Capital and Property

If a person merely gathers food to survive, there is no way that his standard of living will increase. All his goods are used for current consumption. But if he possesses some goods that will be used to produce consumer goods for future consumption, he possesses capital. For example, if the food gatherer invents a type of plow, he will plant some of the grain he would have consumed to begin to grow his own grain, rather than stripping the land bare and moving on. The plow is a capital good. But how did he acquire this good? He had to spend time actually thinking about his invention and how it could be made and used. To do this, he had to refrain from consuming some of his current supply of grain and save it so as to feed himself during the invention-making period, where his time would be spent making and testing the plow. We call this savings. All increasing of production requires savings.

Saving implies a kind of morality. The willingness to consume less than one earns requires self-restraint. While in the prosperous West we are bombarded with constant pleas to purchase this or that, this in no way compels us to do so. Many complain about advertising “forcing” us to buy things we do not need. But all purchases are free-will actions of rational creatures. The problem is not the ads, but a materialistic mindset that, as Pope John Paul II wrote (Centesimus Annus, no. 36), has a person defining himself by what he has, not what he is.

What are the motivations to save? First is a return on one’s money. Businesses will borrow money from savers for a price, interest. The interest is the incentive for the saver to sacrifice current goods for future goods. The second incentive to save is so that a person will have a fund for emergencies. Another is so that the person will have money to live on in retirement.

Regardless of the intention of the saver, savings goes to expand industry, or education, or other productive endeavors. In other words, without savings, there would be no new things: no more labor saving devices; no better and safer cars; no central heating or running water and the sink, tub and toilet fixtures to control it; no central air conditioning or electric elevators; no advancements in medical diagnostics and treatments or new medicines.

Another indispensable factor is the protection of private property. The seventh commandment exists for a very good natural reason. If the goods of any of us were fair game to others, we would find that it is hardly worth it to work. If, as soon as I came home from work with my pay or from a store with my purchases, someone could take my money or my things, I would quickly develop a cynical attitude. I would likely decide that the more effective way to maintain or better my condition would be to steal others’ things, and try to defend my stolen items as best as I could from other roving thieves.

But there is another side of this problem that is important for economic development. Not only is a person not allowed to give away a thing he has stolen; he cannot even sell it. I cannot sell what I do not own. I am not allowed to give you money entrusted to me by another. Even if I use a truck to transport air conditioners for the company for which I work, I can only use the truck for the purpose that owner assigned to me. I am not allowed to take it off-roading or enter it in a NASCAR event. The point here is the importance of the sacredness of private property for the working of the market. Without the assurance that my property, including my money, is secure, theft will abound, and economic development will grind to a halt.

So economic development, and therefore wealth creation, requires savings, which comes from people who make more than they consume, and where their right to keep what they make and dispose of it is protected by law and/or custom. Also, there needs to be a hope that they will be rewarded with a decent return when they invest the excess that they made over what they consumed. Without these factors, stagnation and widespread poverty will result.

There are many obstacles to wealth creation that lay beyond the scope of this discussion, among them political strife; the confiscation of wealth by tyrants; forced industrialization of agrarian societies; overregulation by government; and high taxation. Solving these problems is no easy task. But the monumental job of curing poverty cannot conclude successfully if does not begin with an accurate understanding of how to create wealth.

About the author:
*William R. Luckey is professor of economics emeritus at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. This commentary is excerpted and adapted from volume 24 in the Acton Institute’s Christian Social Thought Series, Wealth Creation: The Solution to Poverty, now available on Amazon.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

Researchers have pinpointed the date of what could be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded. The event, which occurred on 30 October 1207 BC, is mentioned in the Bible, and could have consequences for the chronology of the ancient world.

Using a combination of the biblical text and an ancient Egyptian text, the researchers were then able to refine the dates of the Egyptian pharaohs, in particular the dates of the reign of Ramesses the Great. The results are published in the Royal Astronomical Society journal Astronomy & Geophysics.

The biblical text in question comes from the Old Testament book of Joshua and has puzzled biblical scholars for centuries. It records that after Joshua led the people of Israel into Canaan – a region of the ancient Near East that covered modern-day Israel and Palestine – he prayed: “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.”

“If these words are describing a real observation, then a major astronomical event was taking place – the question for us to figure out is what the text actually means,” said paper co-author Professor Sir Colin Humphreys from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, who is also interested in relating scientific knowledge to the Bible.

“Modern English translations, which follow the King James translation of 1611, usually interpret this text to mean that the sun and moon stopped moving,” said Humphreys, who is also a Fellow of Selwyn College. “But going back to the original Hebrew text, we determined that an alternative meaning could be that the sun and moon just stopped doing what they normally do: they stopped shining. In this context, the Hebrew words could be referring to a solar eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and the sun appears to stop shining. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated ‘stand still’ has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses.”

Humphreys and his co-author, Graeme Waddington, are not the first to suggest that the biblical text may refer to an eclipse, however, earlier historians claimed that it was not possible to investigate this possibility further due to the laborious calculations that would have been required.

Independent evidence that the Israelites were in Canaan between 1500 and 1050 BC can be found in the Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian text dating from the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah, son of the well-known Ramesses the Great. The large granite block, held in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, says that it was carved in the fifth year of Merneptah’s reign and mentions a campaign in Canaan in which he defeated the people of Israel.

Earlier historians have used these two texts to try to date the possible eclipse, but were not successful as they were only looking at total eclipses, in which the disc of the sun appears to be completely covered by the moon as the moon passes directly between the earth and the sun. What the earlier historians failed to consider was that it was instead an annular eclipse, in which the moon passes directly in front of the sun, but is too far away to cover the disc completely, leading to the characteristic ‘ring of fire’ appearance. In the ancient world the same word was used for both total and annular eclipses.

The researchers developed a new eclipse code, which takes into account variations in the Earth’s rotation over time. From their calculations, they determined that the only annular eclipse visible from Canaan between 1500 and 1050 BC was on 30 October 1207 BC, in the afternoon. If their arguments are accepted, it would not only be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded, it would also enable researchers to date the reigns of Ramesses the Great and his son Merneptah to within a year.

“Solar eclipses are often used as a fixed point to date events in the ancient world,” said Humphreys. Using these new calculations, the reign of Merneptah began in 1210 or 1209 BC. As it is known from Egyptian texts how long he and his father reigned for, it would mean that Ramesses the Great reigned from 1276-1210 BC, with a precision of plus or minus one year, the most accurate dates available. The precise dates of the pharaohs have been subject to some uncertainty among Egyptologists, but this new calculation, if accepted, could lead to an adjustment in the dates of several of their reigns and enable us to date them precisely.

Madagascar’s Cat-sized greater bamboo lemurs are considered one of the most endangered primate species on Earth. They almost exclusively eat a single species of bamboo, including the woody trunk, known as culm. But they prefer the more nutritious and tender bamboo shoots and use their specialized teeth to gnaw on culm only when necessary, during the dry season.

Now, reporting in Current Biology on October 26, researchers provide evidence to suggest that as Earth’s climate changes, bamboo lemurs will gradually be forced to eat culm for longer periods. Ultimately, they suggest that, based on an analysis of anatomical, behavioral, paleontological, and climate data, the lemurs could slowly starve.

“For extreme feeding specialists like the greater bamboo lemur, climate change can be a stealthy killer,” said Patricia Wright at Stony Brook University, one of the authors. “Making the lemurs rely on a suboptimal part of their food for just a bit longer may be enough to tip the balance from existence to extinction.”

Wright and her colleagues from Finland and Australia first showed that the greater bamboo lemurs are equipped with highly complex and specialized teeth, just like giant pandas — the only other mammal capable of feeding on culm. These teeth make it possible for them to consume and survive on woody culm for parts of the year.

To find out more about the greater bamboo lemurs’ feeding habits, the researchers spent hours watching them in their natural habitat in Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park over a period of 18 months. They collected more than 2,000 feeding observations in total. Those data showed that the lemurs spend 95 percent of their feeding time eating a single species of woody bamboo. But they only eat the culm from August to November, when dry conditions make tender shoots unavailable.

An analysis of the greater bamboo lemur’s current distribution on the island of Madagascar compared to its distribution in the past, as inferred from fossils, suggests that the lemurs used to live over a broader range. The bamboo lemurs remain only in parts of the island where the dry season is relatively short. In other words, it appears that a short dry season has been crucial to the survival of greater bamboo lemurs in the past.

But the researchers have bad news: climate models suggest that the areas where the lemurs currently are found are likely to experience longer and longer dry seasons in the future. As the lemurs are left with only culm to eat for longer periods, it could put their survival at risk.

The findings may have implications for understanding the fate of bamboo-feeding giant pandas, too, the researchers say. Giant pandas are threatened by deforestation and changes in the distribution of bamboo. But the new data suggest that a changing climate may also endanger bamboo feeders in a more subtle way, by affecting the seasonal availability of preferred and more nutritious bamboo parts. Other animals with highly specialized diets may prove similarly vulnerable.

“By studying specialists like the greater bamboo lemur, we can identify the different ways that climate change can cause extinction,” said author Jukka Jernvall at University of Helsinki. “And if we do not study these endangered species now, they may go extinct before we know all the reasons why, and we’ll be less able to protect what remains.”

The researchers say they now hope that this expanded understanding of the greater bamboo lemurs, together with climate predictions, can be applied to building bamboo corridors, with the goal of connecting isolated lemur populations and expanding their habitats.

Screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) should begin at 45 years of age to match rising mortality rates in young adults, research presented today at the 25th UEG Week Barcelona reveals.

Scientists in France analysed 6,027 colonoscopies and found a 400% increase in the detection of neoplasia (the new, uncontrolled growth of abnormal tissue) in patients aged between 45-49 in comparison to patients aged 40-44. The neoplasia detection rate was also 8% higher in people aged between 45-49 than it was between 50-54, leading to calls for CRC screening programmes to begin at 45 years of age.

The mean number of polyps (growths on the inner lining of the colon that can turn cancerous if left untreated) and the adenoma detection rate (proportion of individuals undergoing a colonoscopy who have one or more adenomas detected) also increased by 95.8% and 95.4% respectively between the 40-44 and 45-49 age groups. This was far more substantial than the increase between the 45-49 and 50-54 age groups, which was 19.1% and 11.5% respectively.

Lead researcher, Dr David Karsenti explained; “These findings demonstrate that it is at 45 years old that a remarkable increase in the colorectal lesions frequency is shown, especially in the detection rate of early neoplasia. Even when patients with a familial and personal history of polyps or cancer are excluded from the findings, there is still a noticeable increase in detection rates in patients from the age of 45.”

CRC is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in Europe, killing 215,000 Europeans every year, with research recently revealing that three in ten CRC diagnoses are now among people younger than 55. There is strong evidence to demonstrate that screening for CRC reduces incidence and mortality rates, yet there are vast inequalities in CRC screening across Europe with both organised and opportunistic schemes, different types of tests and varying participation and detection rates. Despite the dramatic rise of CRC in young adults, the vast majority of screening programmes throughout Europe commence between the ages of 50 and 55, with some not beginning until the age of 60.

Dr Karsenti added, “Regardless of the type of screening that is in place, the results of our research strongly indicate that screening for colorectal cancer should begin at the age of 45. This will this help us to increase the early detection of colorectal cancer in young adults and also enable the identification and safe removal of polyps that may become cancerous at a later date.”

References:
1. Karsenti, D. et al (2017), Adenoma detection rate according to age: colonoscopy screening should start at 45 years old, Presented at the 25th UEG Week Barcelona, October 30, 2017.

2. Epidemiology of colorectal cancer: international comparison, 4th European Colorectal Cancer Days 2015. Available at: http://www.crcprevention.eu/index.php?pg=colorectal-cancer-epidemiology

3. Dramatic rise in colorectal cancer in younger adults (2017), Medscape. Available at: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/876409

Women’s empowerment will take another step forward at the beginning of 2018 when families are permitted inside stadiums and other sports facilities.

It was one of a raft of decisions announced on Sunday by Turki Al-Asheikh, chairman of the General Sports Authority, aimed at supporting and stimulating the sports sector.

The authority “will start rehabilitating the main stadiums in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah to be ready to receive families starting in 2018,” Al-Asheikh said.

The move is part of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to engage women in society as an integral part of the development process.

This month Al-Asheikh, who is also president of the Saudi Olympic Committee, appointed Princess Reema bint Bandar president of the Saudi Federation for Community Sports.

Princess Reema has also opened the new Studio 5 gym in Jeddah. She seeks to encourage women to take exercise in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Last month, women were invited with their families to a sports stadium for the first time to attend annual National Day celebrations. Such venues had previously been male only.

By Kerry Boyd Anderson

Polling data from the Pew Research Center this month confirmed what many Americans already believed; the political divides between them are widening and intensifying. On 10 political values issues that Pew has surveyed since 1994 — including views on immigration, racial discrimination and the role of government in helping those in need — the most recent poll found that “the average partisan gap has increased from 15 percentage points to 36 points.” While Republicans’ and Democrats’ negative views of the other party have increased, the number of Americans holding moderate or mixed ideological and political views has declined, with more people on the right and left of the political spectrum adhering more strongly to conservative or liberal views.

Furthermore, these political divides have now become far more important in terms of creating gaps between Americans’ political values than more typical socioeconomic categories, such as age, race, income, gender and degree of religious observance.
In addition to the divides between Republicans and Democrats, the Pew data shows growing divisions within the parties, too. The traditional coalitions binding together Republicans and binding together Democrats are shifting, driven by growing internal divisions around age and other factors.

These divisions are not new. Most have existed in some form for decades. However, the Pew data shows that the gaps dividing Americans began to widen significantly during Barack Obama’s presidency. Donald Trump did not create these divisions, but he exacerbates them. Trump has an instinctive feel for where the fault lines lie in American society, and he constantly pushes on them.

This Trump effect is further pushing Americans apart. According to the Pew data, the partisan gap in Trump’s job approval ratings is larger than for any president in six decades, with high approval ratings from Republicans and very low ones from Democrats. Many liberals who strongly disagreed with President George W. Bush still had respect for their Republican relatives, friends and colleagues, but many of these same liberals today are struggling with how to respect people who voted for Trump.

Many conservatives rejoice to see the way that Trump insults liberals and other opponents of the Republican party, and the way he goes after moderate Republicans as well. Some other Republicans are not fans of Trump but feel defensive when they hear liberals condemn him. Many Americans today feel it is far harder than ever in their lifetime to have civil political conservations with people they disagree with.

This widespread, strongly felt division has left many Americans — and political analysts and pundits — questioning why Americans have become so divided. The answer is far too complex and multifaceted to fully address here, but one important factor is self-sorting.

Many writers and data analysts have talked about the trend of self-sorting in the United States, and there are various definitions. The term dates from at least 2004. In terms of understanding the political divide, the main point is that Americans have increasingly been choosing to live in places where people around them are likely to share their cultural and political views. This was seldom driven by a conscious choice to live with Republican or Democratic neighbors; rather, Americans sought to live in places with lifestyles they enjoyed. Political identity and lifestyle choices have become more closely entwined. For example, Pew data has found that Republicans tend to prefer living in places with more space while Democrats tend to prefer places where they can walk to schools, shopping and work. Of course, these are generalizations; there are still lots of Republicans who like cities and plenty of Democrats who prefer smaller towns.

Nonetheless, looking across the country, there are clear trends linking lifestyle preferences and political identity.

News and entertainment preferences are an important part of this self-sorting, too. Since the creation of conservative Fox News in 1996, the US media landscape has shifted from a few dominant players that tried to provide balanced reporting (although some conservatives and liberals would argue otherwise) to a more diffuse landscape with far more media outlets, many of which intentionally provide news with a strong conservative or liberal slant. Americans no longer share a common understanding of facts and basic political realities. This makes civil, constructive debate far more difficult.

Social media has intensified this problem, making it very easy for people to receive and share news, memes and other political statements that support what they want to believe.

Even beyond news, there is a growing alignment between political identity and entertainment choices. The New York Times’s The Upshot showed in December 2016 that voting preferences and TV entertainment choices closely align. FiveThirtyEight demonstrated in September that even Americans’ sports preferences are often aligned with their political party.

Other factors are driving the growing political divide, including demographic changes, economic shifts and the need by many people for a sense of “sameness” and “unity.”

Underlying these factors are macro-level trends that are affecting much of the globe, including urbanization and the effects of globalization.

Many Americans are asking how the political fabric might be stitched back together. This has prompted small but important efforts to encourage dialogue, often led by churches, mosques and synagogues, podcasters, community leaders and others. There are efforts in media to create platforms for presenting different perspectives, such as AllSides.com. Such efforts are important but are small and dispersed. They are struggling against the flow of growing division.

•  Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 14 years experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risks. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica and managing editor of Arms Control Today. Twitter: @KBAresearch

ASEAN should enhance its ability to respond to challenges involving regional security. While preserving its practice of consensus, ASEAN should propose that the ‘ASEAN minus X’ formula, already agreed to and used on economic affairs, be extended to include specific security matters, notably, terrorism and preventive diplomacy.

By Ralf Emmers*

The practise of consensus has been at the core of the ASEAN decision-making process since its formation in 1967. While slow, it often produces good decisions supported by and resulting from intensive dialogue. During the process of consultation, consensus is built up between all the member states through the avoidance of officially stated disagreements.

Rather than suggesting unanimity, this practice of negotiation requires willingness by the members to compromise on their own national interests for the sake of the larger region. This approach to decision-making has long been seen as the only option to consolidate the national interests and domestic legitimacy of the member states while at the same promoting regional interests. The consensus decision-making model is still necessary to address the differences that exist across ASEAN.

Something Wrong With Consensus?

The consensus decision-making process has come at a cost. It has led to the adoption of collective decisions based on the lowest common denominator. Individual members have at times constrained attempts at enhancing regional cooperation due to a narrow understanding of their own national interests.

This was illustrated, for example, by ASEAN’s failure to issue a joint communiqué, a first in the organisation’s history, at the end of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) in July 2012 in Phnom Penh. The Philippines had insisted on a reference to an incident between Manila and Beijing at Scarborough Shoal earlier in 2012 but Cambodia, acting as the ASEAN chair, refused on the grounds that the territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea is bilateral.

A close economic partner of China, Cambodia sought to appease Beijing by minimising the internationalisation of the South China Sea issue at the expense of ASEAN unity.

In light of deepening economic and diplomatic ties with China, there is concern that other members may endorse Beijing’s preferences and stop ASEAN from taking decisions. Moreover, the consensus decision-making process has been undermined by a divergence in strategic outlooks in ASEAN and a series of financial, political and humanitarian crises.

The process of consultation and the achievement of consensus have therefore become painstakingly slow in light of rising intra- and extra-mural challenges.

Should ASEAN-X Be Extended?

Analysts have called on ASEAN to change, or at the very least adjust, its decision-making process. A shift has already happened through the adoption of the ASEAN minus X (A-X) formula. The latter currently governs economic issues by enabling two or more ASEAN states to move ahead in economic liberation on the basis that the other members will follow at a later stage.

A-X has been applied on an ad hoc basis to other areas of cooperation. For example, the ASEAN Convention on Counter-Terrorism came into force before its full ratification by all the 10 members in 2013. Can A-X govern security on top of economic affairs? Can it be done without undermining ASEAN’s cohesion?

Changes to the decision-making process must be carefully thought through. All members have national interests on which they cannot make concessions. National priorities include the core principles of national sovereignty and territorial integrity but also a series of other issues that are more specific to the individual members. Any attempt at curtailing such principles through A-X would disunite the member states and split them into opposing groups.

Which Security Areas?

ASEAN can widen A-X to specific security areas while preserving the overall practice of consensus. Rather than traditional security concerns, the extension of A-X should at first focus on niche areas to enhance ASEAN’s response to particular security challenges.

The way the ASEAN Convention on Counter-Terrorism entered into force suggests that counter-terrorism is an area where some members are keen to move faster than others. This was illustrated by the Marawi siege on the Philippine island of Mindanao when some ASEAN members offered to assist the Philippine security forces.

Besides counter-terrorism, A-X can be applied to preventive diplomacy. The latter refers to actions undertaken by sovereign nations to prevent inter-states disputes from escalating into armed conflict. Such an extension will demand flexibility. The High Council, ASEAN’s mechanism of mediation and consultation, requires the consent of all the parties to a dispute and this clause has undermined its implementation.

A-X can empower the ASEAN chair to conduct preventive diplomacy through confidence-building, shuttle diplomacy and fact-finding with or without the endorsement of all the members. This happened in the midst of the Preah Vihear dispute but outside the auspices of ASEAN. Then Indonesian Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, conducted shuttle diplomacy between Cambodia and Thailand to de-escalate the border conflict.

Chances of Success

Important questions remain. How does one amend the ASEAN Charter to extend A-X to include security? Can an extended A-X be invoked by an absolute majority (ASEAN-6) or would unanimity be required? Finally, how do we go from establishing a new rule to using it when facing a crisis?

The consensus decision making process remains a mechanism to address the differences that exist in Southeast Asia. Yet it needs to be adjusted to cope with certain security challenges. Extending A-X to counter-terrorism and preventive diplomacy would be a step in the right direction.

*Ralf Emmers is Professor of International Relations and Associate Dean at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He concurrently heads the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS) at RSIS.

Green defence technologies may hold the answer to meeting military requirements for future forces. There are three areas where green defence could enhance operational readiness for armed forces of any size. There are, however, challenges in the implementation of green defence.

By Zoe Stanley-Lockman*

For economic, strategic and operational reasons, militaries have begun to incorporate ‘green defence’ initiatives into their plans for future forces. As armed forces around the globe use more defence electronics and more complex systems, operating costs for the equipment upon which personnel depends have skyrocketed. Fuel convoys have become targets in expeditionary operations, also reducing troop safety. Nation-states dependent on energy imports worry about the autarky of their armed forces and their insatiable appetite for fuel – which has proven enormously expensive.

In recent years, biofuels have proven capable of powering supersonic flight for Navy aircraft, solar cells have kept unmanned aerial vehicles in the air and powered defence electronics on the ground, and hybrid electric drive has demonstrated cost savings for army-grade vehicles. Alternative energy resources and sustainable technologies, driven by research and development in commercial and military spheres alike, are increasingly recognised as useful to the armed forces.

Advantages of Going Green

Green defence offers to rebalance forces so the logistical ‘tail’ does not outweigh the ‘tooth’ of combat forces. But in its current and projected states, do green technologies live up to these promises? The short answer is: it’s too early to tell. Nonetheless three key takeaways have emerged, all pointing toward laudable operational advantages from green technologies.

The first is that certain green defence technologies to generate, store and distribute power increase portability for the armed forces. Replacing cumbersome and ineffective chargers and batteries, wearable solar cells and methanol-based fuel cells have already demonstrated their usefulness by lowering the loads that soldiers have to carry and elongating mission duration with electronics that stay powered on for longer periods of time.

With the ability to operate and communicate more effectively, for longer and with greater agility, units can achieve more distributed manoeuvre. When applied to bases, distributed power generation are also less vulnerable to cyber and natural disaster risks than more centralised systems currently in use.

The second advantage is that alternative energy sources make it harder for adversaries to detect the location of forces. In addition to generating energy nearly silently, chemical energy from fuel cells does not produce heat – therefore being stealthier against thermal imaging cameras capable of picking up on the heat that mechanical energy generates. Across all domains, this means stealth could be ‘emancipated’ to assets of all size.

Lastly, green defence technologies have developed in tandem with unmanned technologies. Alternative energy sources could become a force multiplier for unmanned systems, in particular by extending flight time of aerial systems, capable of remaining airborne for weeks or months without the need to refuel. Further, some prospective green technologies offering higher torque and higher thrust.

Already various forms of unmanned vehicles are powered by alternative energy sources, ranging from the hydrogen-powered prototypes for a UAV from Boeing with payloads in excess of 450 kg to fuel cell-powered micro-UAVs developed in Singapore.

Clear Advantages, But Challenges of Going Green

The three advantages outlined here are consistent with transformation plans that several militaries are undertaking to modernise their forces for the battlefields of 2030 and beyond. Aimed at distributing manoeuvre so smaller units work more effectively together, as well as the improving upon unmanned systems’ utility as they increasingly perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks and operate in combination with manned systems, the applicability of green technologies across the spectrum of military activities is promising.

Despite their potential, initiatives aimed at incorporating green technologies have encountered obstacles that, while not insurmountable, are challenging at present. The largest obstacle is, and will remain, the economic viability of green technologies. While market forces have served to drive prices down for solar panels, other alternative energy sources, such as hydrogen energy, are prohibitively expensive and difficult to transport.

The tradeoff between quality and price will always have to be taken into account. Algae-derived biofuels have garnered much attention, but significant cost barriers will have to remove before they become scalable for use in the armed forces.

But in other cases, economic effectiveness is also a game of calculation. The level of ambition of the largest green defence initiative to date – the US Navy’s Great Green Fleet – has been dampened due to an overemphasis on alternative energy source prices compared against oil and gas prices. The Great Green Fleet eventually met opposition in the form of Congress prohibiting the Navy from procuring biofuels when they were more expensive than oil.

Not only did this fail to capture the unquantifiable operational benefits, including safety and force rebalancing, but the short-sighted price comparison also ignored the higher return-on-investment offered by alternative energy sources. The lesson of politicising green defence appears unlearned as of yet.

Another challenge is that not all green defence solutions will work everywhere. Geographical constraints determine which renewable energy options are available in each given context. At present most of the statistics about energy and cost savings achieved by green technologies are from tests or are specific to operational conditions in the greater Middle East.

Generating and utilising alternative energy sources for military use will differ given each country or region’s specificities. Just as biofuel production requires enough landmass for facilities and solar energy clear skies, other options such as tidal or wind energy cannot be harvested everywhere.

Future of Going Green

Green defence already takes several forms today. If lowering costs is the primary goal of green defence initiatives, then one answer lies in greening bases and estates through measures such as installing LED lighting or encouraging behavioural changes of personnel. Another option is to simply use equipment less frequently, for example reducing carbon emissions and saving jet fuel by using flight simulators for training.

Such measures liberate resources to be re-allocated elsewhere, but green defence also purports benefits emblematic of military transformation at large. Capitalising on the operational benefits of burgeoning green technologies, an ambitious green defence agenda could help define the force of the future as one that uses sustainability to enhance readiness for units of all size.

*Zoe Stanley-Lockman is an Associate Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS). She was recently a Visiting Research Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Seven obstacles block success for Modi’s “Make in India” campaign and encourage India’s growing trade imbalance with China.

By Farok J. Contractor*

Gaily colored resin figurines of Hindu gods are plentiful in India’s hundreds of thousands of bazaars. Most shopkeepers do not know where the figurines were manufactured or, if they do, will not tell. India increasingly imports mass-produced idols of Hindu deities from China – by the millions since 2000.

Demand is growing for such household deities, along with rising incomes and a spirit of Hindu nationalism. Most Indians, 82 percent of the population, practice Hinduism and have a prayer area in their home. Even the poor – about 500 million Indians earn less than $2.75 per day – can afford a few such items, with retail prices starting at $3.

Questions emerge about why don’t Indians manufacture their own figurines and how do Chinese producers undersell local manufacturers, considering transportation and a tariff of 10 percent? Some of the merchandise made in China, including locks or jewelry, is made with raw materials supplied by India. Indian shops and street vendors are awash with inexpensive Chinese goods of reasonable quality including LED lighting, electronics and smartphones. India has talented and hard-working entrepreneurs, and as labor costs escalate in China, India could also become a “manufacturer for the world.”

But in 2016, Indian merchandise exports to the world were $264 billion, while China’s were $2,098 billion. The China-India bilateral trade balance is skewed in favor of China by a ratio of 4 to 1 overall. For goods, the imbalance is even worse, about six to one.

India’s government under Narendra Modi had hoped to turn such imbalances around by launching the “Make-in-India” campaign in September 2014, taking advantage of his country’s low labor costs for manufacturing: 92 cents per hour compared to China’s at more than $4 per hour for workers along the eastern seaboard where most Chinese manufacturing takes place, according to the Conference Board.

India’s economists scramble to explain the ballooning trade deficit, and here are seven leading factors:

Scale: Most manufacturing in China is done on a large scale – for example, an Indian producer may have three plastic injection-molding machines, whereas a Chinese counterpart has more than 70. Larger scale means that overhead and fixed costs can be spread over more units of production, thereby reducing cost per unit.

Productivity: A McKinsey report notes that “…workers in India’s manufacturing sector are almost four and five times less productive, on average, than their counterparts in Thailand and China, respectively.” Chinese workers may be paid four times the Indian hourly wage, but if output per worker is more than five times greater compared with workers in India, then China has a competitive advantage. Analysts suggest the problem rests with management and regulations, not labor. According to the McKinsey report, Indian factories lag in automated equipment, capacity utilization, supply chains and quality control. For example, few successful factory owners expand plants beyond 99 workers. Labor regulations are more complicated for plants with more than 100 employees where government approval is required under the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947 before laying off any employee, even if demand drops. Firms can go bankrupt, forced to pay monthly wages for years following a plant closure. Likewise, the Contract Labor Act of 1970 requires government and employee approval for simple changes in an employee’s job description or duties.

Corruption: India and China both rank 79^th out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2016. The tie in rank masks differences. Corruption in China occurs at a higher level, with less frequency and little impact on day-to-day operations. By contrast, bribery in India is petty and frequent, impinging on everyday actions such as getting an electricity connection, changing a job description or paying a bill. Ultimately, India’s pervasive corruption is more psychologically and economically debilitating than China’s.

The Modi government has promised to amend labor laws to reduce the number of strikes and slow-downs. With more than 16,000 distinct unions, each affiliated with a plethora of political parties, the Indian economy loses up to 23 million person-days each year from labor actions. China does not release such figures, but its unions report to the single government-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions.

Transport: The distance from Guangzhou in China to Mumbai is five times greater than that between Delhi, to Mumbai. But cargo costs for the 7,300 kilometers by sea are roughly comparable to truck freight for the internal, 1,400 kilometers by road. Assuming 25,000 Hindu figurines per container, with ocean freight costs averaging $1,000 per container from Guangzhou to Mumbai, the transport cost per unit is around 4 US cents. Assuming two 9-ton capacity trucks needed between Delhi and Mumbai, the cost per unit is also just under 4 cents, for less than one-fifth the distance.

Electricity: Nominally speaking, electricity costs for industry are comparable in China and India at about 8 cents per kilowatt hour. But Chinese businesses enjoy a continuous supply of power whereas India suffers from chronic blackouts and shortages because demand outstrips supply. Some factories have power cut off for a few hours each day. Even worse, interruptions are often not announced in advance, causing havoc with production schedules.

Bureaucracy: The real constraint on starting a new business in India is its multiethnic, democratic and compassionate traditions, manifested in regulatory procedures that continuously hamper business operations. For example, acquiring land is more difficult in India than in China. Both countries have populations of more than 1 billion, but India has a third of China’s total land mass. Delays and bureaucracy, as much as costs, add impediments to expanding in India. By contrast, government fiat in China is sufficient to immediately displace thousands, if needed.

The World Bank compares 189 nations on “Ease of Doing Business” and shows a more benign business climate for China with fewer regulations, lower costs of compliance, shorter times for approvals, and better legal recourse. On most indicators, Chinese businesses have a much easier time than their Indian counterparts in securing permits with fewer procedures.

Subsidies: Many of the 50-odd companies in China that produce Hindu figurines attend trade fairs not only in India, but also in Frankfurt and Las Vegas. Besides Hindu deities, they produce Christian and Buddhist figures and other household decorations. Marketing expenses are tax deductible, sometimes subsidized, and a culture of international marketing savvy extends to even smaller enterprises in China.

Like many other nations, China supports its exporters. Around 45 percent of Chinese company output is state-owned. Favored companies can get inexpensive land, low borrowing rates, and, in some cases, subsidized power and assurances of government purchases of future output. The Wall Street Journal suggests that as much as 14 percent of listed, non-financial companies’ profits can be attributed to government support.

Of course, India also provides export-oriented incentives – including rebates on tariffs, land and tax incentives in free trade zones, reduced state tax levies, financial support for attendance at international trade fairs, market development grants and low-cost loans.

All said however, subsidies and incentives represent but a small part of the explanation for China’s export success. Despite Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, India’s trade imbalance with China and the world has only worsened.  Eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic interference could help to turn India into a factory for the world someday.

Farok J. Contractor is a professor in the Management and Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School. He has researched foreign direct investment for three decades and also taught at the Wharton School, Copenhagen Business School, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Nanyang Technological University, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and other schools and conducted executive seminars in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia. He produces a blog on Unbiased Perspectives on Global Business Issues. 

Price stability is an explicit target for the ECB, but the definition of the 2% target is less clear in its monetary policy stance over time. This column presents two alternative interpretations of the ECB’s definition of price stability. First, the ECB dislikes inflation rates above 2% more than rates below 2%. Second, the ECB’s policy responses to past inflation gaps are symmetric around a target of 1.6% to 1.7%. Out-of-sample predictions of the reaction function based on the second interpretation track well an estimated shadow interest rate during the zero lower bound period.

By Maritta Paloviita, Markus Haavio, Pirkka Jalasjoki and Juha Kilponen*

In 1998, the ECB’s Governing Council defined price stability as “a year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%”. In 2003, the Governing Council clarified that “in the pursuit of price stability it aims to maintain inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term”. In a new paper, we shed light on this definition by estimating a large number of competing specifications of the ECB’s reaction function (Taylor 1993)  (Paloviita et al. 2017). Our analysis makes use of quarterly Eurosystem/ECB staff macroeconomic projections of inflation and real GDP growth over the 1999Q4-2016Q4 period. Our results are largely based on reaction function specifications including a so-called monetary policy credibility loss term, which accounts for a possible credibility loss due to persistent deviations of inflation from the target.

Convergence of inflation projections

Eurosystem/ECB staff macroeconomic projections of inflation and GDP growth are important inputs presented to the ECB’s Governing Council when it assesses the general economic conditions and eventually decides on the monetary policy stance in the Eurozone. Figure 1 shows two separate medians and a min-max range of the inflation projections over our data sample. We have classified the inflation projections based on a simple criterion of whether the latest observed inflation rate during each projection exercise has been above or below 1.9%.

Figure 1 Median inflation projections conditioned on the latest observed inflation rate during each projection exercise

According to Figure 1, the median of projections made at times when the recent observed inflation rate is high (i.e. higher than 1.9%) converge to 1.7-1.8%, whereas the median of projections starting from lower inflation conditions (i.e. 1.9% or lower) converge to slightly lower rates around 1.6-1.75%. Lower medians converge to their eventual rates in a linear fashion, while the higher medians have a somewhat different shape – the median projections after one year are slightly below the medians at the end of the forecast horizon, i.e. inflation is projected to temporarily undershoot when inflation has been initially above 1.9%. Regardless of the current level of inflation, after about six quarters the median inflation projections are already in the proximity of their levels at the end of the forecast horizon. When compared to the actual realised inflation, the projected inflation exhibits clearly stronger and faster mean reversion. The same pattern applies to the GDP growth projections as well.

Monetary policy credibility loss

In addition to the real-time projections of inflation and GDP growth used in the estimation of the ECB reaction function, we consider a possibility that the ECB reacts to past deviations of inflation from the target. Following Neuenkirch and Tillmann (2014), we calculate the credibility loss term as the average of past deviations of inflation from the target.1 A positive (negative) credibility loss term indicates that past inflation has been above (below) the inflation target on average during a specified time period. This nonlinear term penalises large deviations of inflation from the target more than small ones. The general idea is that when inflation has been close to the target, the degree of credibility is high and the central bank just needs to keep the inflation rate stable in order to maintain credibility. Instead, when the central bank has missed the target in the past, it has to convince the public that it remains committed and it will gear inflation back to the target. Otherwise, there is an increasing risk of de-anchoring inflation expectations (e.g. Lyziak and Paloviita 2017).

Figure 2 presents the values of the credibility loss term for the inflation targets of 1.7% and 2.0% using seven lags over which the average past inflation is measured. The past deviations of inflation from the target have been pronounced around 2002, 2009, 2011, and 2013, and again after 2014 when the nominal interest rate hit the lower bound and inflation slowed down persistently. Especially the relatively large (and persistent) inflation gaps in the post-2009 period may have had a significant impact on the monetary policy of the ECB. Augmenting the reaction function with the credibility loss term allows us to test whether this is the case.

Figure 2 Values of the credibility loss term

In our estimations, we allow this credibility term to enter into the reaction function either symmetrically or asymmetrically. In particular, we allow for a possibility that the ECB dislikes past positive inflation deviations from the target more than negative ones. We also augment the reaction function with a long run ex-ante or ex-post real interest rate, as a proxy for the natural real interest rate.

What does below, but close to, 2% mean?

Our idea is to analyse how the ECB conditions its policy decisions both on the future outlook of inflation and growth, and on the deviations of past inflation from the inflation target. It may set a higher (lower) interest rate today if the inflation gap has been positive (negative) in the past, even if inflation is expected to be at the target in the future. Our dependent variable is the EONIA interest rate and we allow for interest rate smoothing. After experimenting various projection horizons for inflation and real GDP growth, as well as alternative lengths of the time span over which the credibility loss term is measured, we choose to focus on reaction function specifications based on one-quarter-ahead real GDP growth and four-quarter-ahead inflation projections. As for the credibility loss, the time span of close to two years produces the most satisfactory results.

Using the chosen forecast horizons and lags in the credibility loss term, we then attempt to quantify the gist of the expression “below, but close to, 2%”, by allowing a point inflation target to vary at 1.6-2.% in the estimated reaction function. As mentioned above, we also allow for asymmetric policy responses to positive and negative deviations of inflation from the targeted level.

In-sample predictions

In-sample predictions of alternative reaction function specifications are shown in Figure 3 for the estimation sample 1999Q4-2014Q2. The in-sample predictions of the asymmetric reaction function deviate at times significantly from the EONIA rate and predictions of the two other specifications (linear and symmetric with a low de facto target). This is especially the case at the beginning of the sample, when Eurozone inflation was quite high. During 2005-2007, in turn, the asymmetric reaction function tracks relatively well the EONIA rate. In mid-2008, it misses the increase in the EONIA rate, and from there on it stays most of the time above the EONIA and also above the predictions of the two other reaction function specifications. At the same time, both the symmetric rule with a target inflation rate of 1.7% and the linear reaction function would have implied a stronger interest rate hike prior to the financial crisis, but in general more lax policy after 2009.

The linear reaction function, which only responds to projected inflation and real GDP growth and not at all to past inflation gaps, generates the lowest interest rate path at the end of the sample. The symmetric reaction function with a low de facto target inflation generates a similar path, but on a higher level, because the reaction function puts weight on a past positive inflation gap (see Figure 2) and less weight on a projected slowdown of inflation. Excluding the end of the sample, the symmetric and linear reaction functions give rather similar predictions for the interest rate path until about 2012. Furthermore, according to the symmetric and linear reaction functions, the zero-lower bound would have been reached much earlier, already in 2009, while according to the asymmetric reaction function it would not have been reached at all.

Figure 3. Dynamic in-sample predictions of different reaction function specifications

In summary, in-sample predictions based on both the asymmetric rule and the symmetric rule with a low de facto inflation target seem to give a fairly good description of the interest rate setting until mid-2014.

Out-of-sample predictions and comparison to a shadow rate

In order to analyse the most recent period when the standard interest rate policy has approached its effective lower bound, we evaluate the performance of our estimated reaction functions by comparing their out-of-sample predictions to a shadow interest rate estimated by Kortela (2016). A shadow rate is a summary measure of monetary policy stance, capturing unconventional as well as conventional policy measures. It can be used to show how much a central bank would have lowered the interest rates had the zero-lower bound not been binding its behaviour, i.e. it provides a mapping between a standard policy interest rate and, say, large scale asset purchases.

We use our estimated ECB reaction functions as shown in Figure 3 to produce out-of-sample forecasts for the time period 2014Q3-2016Q4. In this exercise, we predict the interest rate path using the estimated reaction functions given the projected inflation and GDP growth and the proxy for the natural real rate of interest.

In Figure 4, the interest rate implied by the baseline linear rule remains negative and stable around -1% throughout the whole period – it is roughly 1% below the EONIA rate, but considerably higher than the shadow rate for most of the period.

The reaction functions taking account of a credibility loss imply falling interest rates over the period 2014Q3-2016Q4.  We find that the symmetric reaction function with a low de facto inflation target of 1.7% tracks the shadow rate considerably better than the asymmetric reaction function with an inflation target of 2%. This suggests, tentatively, that the ECB’s definition of price stability is best characterised by an inflation target that is markedly below 2%, but the ECB is symmetric in its reactions to past inflation gaps. If we consider the symmetric reaction function based on a lower inflation target of 1.6%, which is also a plausible target rate according to our estimation results, the implied predictions are even more close to the shadow rate (see Figure 4).

Figure 4 Shadow rate and predictions based on different reaction functions

4a. Our preferred specification of the symmetric reaction function

4b. Alternative specification of the symmetric reaction function with a lower inflation target

Conclusions

The Governing Council of the ECB “aims to maintain inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term”. This definition of price stability is ambiguous and potentially problematic. According to our analysis, the ECB’s monetary policy can be characterised by either as having the de facto inflation target reasonably far below 2%, or as reacting asymmetrically to inflation rates around 2%.

The ECB’s asymmetric response to inflation and/or low de facto inflation target may hamper its ability to achieve price stability.  First, when approaching the inflation target from below, the central bank may need to tolerate inflation rates above the target. Overshooting the target for a limited time may facilitate the central bank to achieve its price stability objective faster and more efficiently, when the interest rates are at the zero-lower bound. Under credible monetary policy, overshooting the target raises inflation expectations and lowers the ex-ante real interest rate. This boosts consumption and investment and therefore reduces economic slack. Second, for a given equilibrium real interest rate, anchoring of inflation expectations to a relatively low level also leads to low nominal rates over the business cycle. This increases the likelihood of hitting the zero lower bound and reduces the scope to absorb shocks in severe economic downturns, like the ones the Eurozone has experienced since the Global Crisis.

Authors’ note: The views expressed in this column are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bank of Finland or the Eurosystem.

*About the authors:
Maritta Paloviita, Adviser, Monetary Policy and Research Department, Bank of Finland

Markus Haavio, Adviser, Monetary Policy and Research Department, Bank of Finland

Pirkka Jalasjoki, Economist, Monetary Policy and Research Department, Bank of Finland

Juha Kilponen, Head of Forecasting, Monetary Policy and Research Department, Bank of Finland

References:
Kortela, T (2016), “A shadow rate model with time-varying lower bound of interest rates”, Bank of Finland Research Discussion Paper No. 19.

Łyziak, T, and m Paloviita (2017), “Anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area: Recent evidence based on survey data”, European Journal Political Economy, 46, 52-73.

Neuenkirch, M, and P Tillmann (2014), “Inflation targeting, credibility, and non-linear Taylor rules”, Journal of International Money and Finance, 41, 30-45.

Paloviita, M, M Haavio, P Jalasjoki, and J Kilponen (2017), “What does “below, but close to, two percent” mean?”, Bank of Finland Discussion Paper No. 29.

Taylor, J B (1993), “Discretion versus policy rules in practice”, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series in Public Policy, 39, 195-214.

Endnotes:
[1] More specifically, the credibility loss term is defined as an average deviation of past inflation from the target times the absolute value of that deviation.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “not interested in” legislation that would make sitting prime ministers immune to criminal investigations, he said in a meeting of Likud ministers Sunday, undermining coalition chairman David Bitan’s threats to call an election if the other parties in the government don’t support it.

“About the ‘French bill,’ I want to say clearly: I am not interested in any law relating to investigations happening now that are connected to me, or that are happening now and are not connected to me,” Netanyahu stated.

The “French bill” is an amendment to Basic Law: Government, proposed by Likud MK David Amsalem, gives sitting prime ministers immunity from criminal investigation, with exceptions including crimes that endanger national security. It is based on a French constitutional provision protecting the French president.

The prime minister’s comments came as Bitan publicly said he would call an election if coalition partners do not support the bill.

In the same meeting of Likud ministers, Jerusalem Minister Ze’ev Elkin, a former coalition chairman, questioned Bitan’s strategy.

Last week, coalition partners made clear more than once that they would not allow the bill to pass, but Bitan continued to bring it up.

The Bayit Yehudi party decided to exercise the veto power over Basic Laws and amendments to them that all coalition parties have, and Kulanu gave its lawmakers freedom to vote according to their conscience. MKs in both parties expressed discomfort with passing the immunity bill now when Netanyahu is under multiple investigations.

Bitan and Bayit Yehudi reached an agreement that, instead of the “French bill,” they would promote legislation that would prohibit police from making recommendations when they give the attorney-general evidence at the end of an investigation. On Saturday night, Bitan threatened to call an election because Bayit Yehudi was backing down from the agreement, but Bayit Yehudi said nothing had changed on their end.

The coalition chairman was heard raging at Bayit Yehudi outside Sunday’s cabinet meeting.

“Bayit Yehudi are a bunch of liars. If they want, we will bring down the government over the bill to prevent the prime minister’s investigations,” Bitan shouted, according to Army Radio.

Meanwhile, Bitan decided to freeze all non-ministerial legislation coming from the coalition, so the Ministerial Committee for Legislation only voted on three out of 38 bills on its agenda.

Among the bills that were frozen was the Greater Jerusalem bill, which would annex settlements near the capital, creating a larger metropolitan area. However, that freeze was planned before Bitan’s threats, at the request of US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who asked Jerusalem to coordinate with Washington.

“We’re in touch with the Americans,” Netanyahu said. “The Americans asked us to help them understand the meaning of the bill. Just as we’ve cooperated with them until now, we should talk and cooperate with them. We are acting to promote and develop settlements, and not to promote other interests.”
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