Quantcast
Channel: Eurasia Review
Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live

Philippines: Duterte’s Evangelical Backers Join Outcry Against Killings

0
0

By Joe Torres

Filipino evangelicals who supported the candidacy of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 are now condemning killings that have been linked to the president’s all-out war against narcotics.

The two largest non-Catholic church groups in the country exhorted the president and other government leaders “to uphold God’s agenda for the country.”

Leaders of the Philippines for Jesus Movement and the Philippine Council for Evangelical Churches challenged Duterte to honor his commitment to God and the people.

At the 39th anniversary celebration of the Jesus is Lord Church on Oct. 27, church founder and leader Eddie Villanueva expressed “grave concern” over the killings.

He told close to a million followers who attended the event in Manila to “to stand on the tenets of Christian faith” amid the challenges being faced by Filipinos.

Villanueva, who endorsed the candidacy of Duterte in 2016, said he is alarmed at the reported involvement of government officials in the trafficking of narcotics in the country.

He said that even though he supported Duterte’s stance against drugs, “[it] should not be at the expense of the rule of law.”

“No one has the right to take another person’s life,” said the charismatic church leader.

Villanueva’s statement was the strongest he has issued so far against Duterte and his administration.

He said he and his followers voted for Duterte “but the problem [are the] killings right and left.” He said that as a Christian “I can not accept this.”

“I believe in my heart, the president does not know this. These could be abuses of some scalawag members of the police system who decided to impress their superiors,” said Villanueva.

He said some policemen even confessed that they “could not stomach [the killings] and they are planning to resign” from government service.

Villanueva’s Jesus is Lord Church, established in 1978, now claims to have at least five million followers in 60 countries.

The Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, a member of the World Evangelical Alliance, has an estimated 11 million Filipino members in Protestant churches and 210 “para-church organizations.”

In 2016, Villanueva “anointed” Duterte’s presidential ambition and the support of the evangelicals after he promised that he would uphold God’s agenda for the country if he wins the presidency.

In his inaugural speech, the president emphasized that his adherence to due process and rule of law will be “non-compromising.”

A year later, however, human rights groups and Catholic Church leaders have blamed Duterte’s “all-out war” against drugs for the death of close to 12,000 suspected drug users and dealers.

The Philippine National Police claimed only 3,800 were killed in legitimate police anti-narcotics operations. The other cases fell under the category of “deaths under investigation.”


Ex-Catalan Leader Puigdemont To Stay In Belgium, Accept Snap Election

0
0

By Catherine Stupp

(EurActiv) — Dismissed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is not seeking political asylum in Belgium and will not return to Spain until he is guaranteed a fair trial, he told a packed news conference in Brussels’ European quarter on Tuesday (31 October).

Puigdemont, who had been off the radar after Spain deposed him and took control of the region last Friday, said he had fled “not to Belgium but Brussels, it’s important to say that because it’s the capital of Europe”. He also stressed that he would take part in an election called by Madrid and accept its result.

The former president of Catalan’s regional government did not specify how long he plans to stay in the country but said he would return “immediately” when he and other Catalan politicians receive assurances of a fair trial.

He said that he will remain the president of Catalonia and that he was in Brussels “to explain the Catalan problem in the institutional heart of Europe”.

“We want to denounce the politicisation of the Spanish justice, its lack of impartiality, its pursuing of ideas, not crimes, and to explain to the world the serious democratic deficiencies the Spanish state has.”

Spanish Attorney General José Manuel Maza announced charges against Puigdemont and 19 other Catalan politicians on Monday. For the most serious crimes they are charged with, rebellion and sedition, the Catalan politicians could face up to 30 years in prison.

Since then, Catalan leaders and the Spanish government have been in a standoff. On Friday (27 October), the Catalan parliament declared the region’s independence from Spain.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy immediately responded by sacking Puigdemont and the rest of the Catalan regional government. Rajoy called a snap election to be held on 21 December.

Puigdemont appealed to the international community and “especially Europe” to react and take a stand against what he called the Spanish government’s suppression of democracy and freedom of expression.

He also dismissed rumours that he is mingling with the Flemish nationalist party NVA. Belgian Junior Minister for Asylum Theo Francken, a member of the NVA, told TV station VRT on Sunday that Puigdemont may request asylum. Puigdemont arrived in Brussels on Monday with a delegation of Catalan politicians.

“This has nothing to do with Belgian politics,” Puigdemont said. He denied that he has met with Belgian politicians since arriving in Brussels.

Paul Bekaert, the lawyer representing Puigdemont in Belgium, told Reuters before the news conference that the politician was considering applying for asylum.

Bekaert has previously represented Basque separatists who fought extradition from Belgium to Spain in the 1990s. But he told Reuters that it would now be more difficult to reject extradition since the European Arrest Warrant was introduced in 2004. Spain has not yet issued such a warrant for the Catalan politicians.

Puigdemont spoke to the press for around 40 minutes in Spanish, Catalan and French, and briefly responded to a question in English.

A crowd of an estimated two to three hundred people filled a small room for the news conference, which was held across the street from the European Council headquarters and close to the European Commission at the Brussels Press Club. The Press Club is privately owned.

After the news conference, Puigdemont was escorted past a crowd of protestors and drove away in a Brussels taxi cab. Most protestors waved Spanish and EU flags, while three who stood outside the building held Catalan flags.

One protester with a Catalan flag said he is Flemish and wants his own region to secede from Belgium. Dimitri Hoegaerts told EURACTIV.com that he hopes Belgium will recognise Catalonia’s independence; he showed his European Parliament access badge for lobbyists to clarify spelling of his name.

Daily newspaper La Libre Belgique reported before the news conference started that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel had rejected a request from organisers for Puigdemont to speak in a different building, the nearby Residence Palace, which is owned by the Belgian federal government.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Michel said, “The same rights and duties as any European citizen for Mr Puigdemont, not more or less.”

The Belgian prime minister tried to stifle uproar after Francken spoke out on Sunday, warning the Flemish politicians not to “add fuel to the fire”. Michel’s liberal party is in a governing coalition with the NVA.

Right-Handed Baseball Players More Successful When Batting Left-Handed

0
0

It is known that baseball players who bat left-handed are overrepresented in the sport. But new research by David Mann (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Florian Loffing (University of Oldenburg) and Peter Allen (Anglia Ruskin University) shows that baseball players who bat left but throw right-handed have a surprising advantage, and have a more successful career, than players who bat and throw left-handed.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reanalyzed data from a similar study released in 1982, and used new data from every major league baseball player from 1871 through 2016. According to the new findings, the advantage of throwing right-handed but batting left not only increases the likelihood of players becoming professional players, but also improves a professional player’s likelihood of being one of the top hitters in the Major League.

According to David Mann, from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, “Baseball players who adopt a left-handed stance enjoy a range of potential benefits, but the players who bat left and throw right-handed have a very large and additional advantage when batting.”

Only 2% of the general population throws right-handed and bats left, yet 12% of Major League players throw right and bat left. Incredibly, 32% of the best ever major league batters throw right and bat left. This suggests that right handers who adopt a left-handed stance have a greater chance of becoming a very good professional batter.

The research team conjecture that players who throw right-handed and bat left enjoy a biomechanical advantage, with the dominant (throwing) hand being placed further from the hitting end of the bat, providing a longer lever with which to hit the ball.

In 1982, scientists John McLean and Francis Ciurczak claimed in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine that baseball players who bat and throw left-handed should have an advantage when batting because they possess less hemispheric lateralization than right handed people, meaning that the functions of the right and left brain hemispheres are less likely to differ in left-handers. In baseball this would have meant that a lack of lateralization provides a relative advantage to batters who both throw and bat left-handed.

McLean and Ciurczak found an overrepresentation of players who bat left in professional baseball, relative to lesser-skilled controls, and higher batting averages among professionals who throw lefthanded and bat left than among those who throw right-handed and bat left or those who throw righthanded and bat right. However, the current reanalysis by David Mann (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Florian Loffing (University of Oldenburg) and Peter Allen (Anglia Ruskin University) shows an oversight that supports the opposite conclusion.

Many Prescription Drug Users Not Aware Of Driving-Related Risks

0
0

A large portion of patients taking prescription drugs that could affect driving may not be aware they could potentially be driving impaired, according to research in the November issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Nearly 20 percent of people in the study reported recent use of a prescription medication with the potential for impairment, but not all said they were aware that the medication could affect their driving, despite the potential for receiving warnings from their doctor, their pharmacist, or the medication label itself.

The percentages of those who said they had received a warning from one of those sources varied by type of medication: 86 percent for sedatives, 85 percent for narcotics, 58 percent for stimulants, and 63 percent for antidepressants.

In the report, researchers used data from the 2013-2014 National Roadside Survey, which asked drivers randomly selected at 60 sites across the United States questions about drug use, including prescription drugs. A total of 7,405 drivers completed the prescription drug portion of the survey.

Although it is unclear if the study participants actually received the warnings, or if they did receive the warnings but didn’t retain the information, the authors say this scenario is in need of further research.

“We were very surprised that our study was the first we could find on this topic,” says lead researcher Robin Pollini, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Injury Control Research Center at West Virginia University. “It’s a pretty understudied area, and prescription drugs are a growing concern.”

In this study, the type of medication in question was also related to drivers’ perceptions about their impairment risk. They were most likely to think that sleep aids were the most likely to affect safe driving, followed by morphine/codeine, other amphetamines, and muscle relaxants. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications were viewed as least likely to affect driving risk. Sleep aids were also viewed as the most likely to cause an accident or result in criminal charges, and ADHD medications were viewed as the least likely.

Pollini says she hopes this research will lead to increased warnings provided by doctors and pharmacists, as well as improved labeling for medications that are likely to impair driving. She says it’s not yet clear what the optimum messaging would be. But she is encouraged by the fact that patients who are prescribed these medications have several points at which they could receive this important information.

“The vast majority of drivers who are recent users of prescription drugs that have the potential for impairment have come into contact with a physician, a pharmacist, and a medication label,” says Pollini. “There’s an opportunity here that’s not being leveraged: to provide people with accurate information about what risks are associated with those drugs. People can then make informed decisions about whether they’re able to drive.”

A related commentary by Benedikt Fischer, Ph.D., of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada, and colleagues expresses concern that increased warnings and interventions may be insufficient to reduce the chances of driving while impaired. These authors point to the issue of alcohol-impaired driving to suggest that only deterrence-based measures–such as roadside testing, license suspensions, and increased insurance premiums–have the potential to change behavior.

Spooky Conservation: Saving Endangered Species Over Our Dead Bodies

0
0

The secret to the survival of critically endangered wildlife could lie beyond the grave, according to a University of Queensland researcher.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions’ Dr Matthew Holden suggests revenue from human burials could fund nature reserves and parks for threatened species, effectively amounting to dead humans protecting living creatures.

Dr Holden said conservation burials’ would go a step further than natural burials which already occur throughout Australia.

“Cemeteries could do more than prevent environmental damage caused by traditional burials which use embalming chemicals such as formaldehyde and non-biodegradable materials,” Dr Holden said.

“They could improve the environment by offering conservation burials– where the burial fees are used to help buy and manage new land.

“The nature reserve could be placed in an area that specifically maximises benefits for endangered wildlife, or also in cities to increase the societal benefits of natural urban greenspace.”

Dr Holden from School of Mathematics and Physics and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences researcher Dr Eve McDonald-Madden evaluated the biodiversity and human health benefits of conservation burials.

“They could generate revenue that exceeds the amount of money needed to save every threatened species on the planet,” Dr Holden said.

“In the US alone, 2.7 million people die each year, with an estimated funeral revenue of US$19 billion – far more than the estimated $3-$5 billion required to protect every threatened species listed by the international Union for the Conservation of Nature.

“While not every threatened species can benefit directly from conservation burials, the hypothetical revenue demonstrates substantial potential for increased biodiversity.”

Dr Holden said Halloween was the perfect time to urge the public and government and non-government organisations to contemplate how death could support future life on earth through conservation from the grave.

“If conservation burials became as commonplace as similar types of after-death charity, such as organ donation, the biodiversity benefits would be enormous,” he said.

US conservation burial cemeteries include Honey Creek Woodlands, Georgia; Ramsey Creek Preserve, South Carolina; White Eagle Memorial Preserve, Washington; Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve, New York; Foxfield Preserve, Ohio; Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve, Florida; and Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, Florida.

‘Monster’ Planet Discovery Challenges Formation Theory

0
0

A giant planet – the existence of which was previously thought extremely unlikely – has been discovered by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.

New research, led by Dr Daniel Bayliss and Professor Peter Wheatley from the University of Warwick’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, has identified the unusual planet NGTS-1b – the largest planet compared to the size of its companion star ever discovered in the universe.

NGTS-1b is a gas giant six hundred light years away, the size of Jupiter, and orbits a small star with a radius and mass half that of our sun.

Its existence challenges theories of planet formation which state that a planet of this size could not be formed by such a small star. According to these theories, small stars can readily form rocky planets but do not gather enough material together to form Jupiter-sized planets.

The planet is a hot Jupiter, at least as large as the Jupiter in our solar system, but with around 20% less mass. It is very close to its star – just 3% of the distance between Earth and the Sun – and orbits the star every 2.6 days, meaning a year on NGTS-1b lasts two and a half days.

The temperature on the gassy planet is approximately 530°C, or 800 kelvin.

Dr Daniel Bayliss, the lead author of the research, commented:

“The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us – such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.

“Our challenge is to now find out how common these types of planets are in the Galaxy, and with the new NGTS facility we are well-placed to do just that.”

The researchers spotted the planet using the state-of-the-art Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) – a wide-field observing facility made of a compact ensemble of telescopes, designed to search for transiting planets on bright stars – run by the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, Queen’s University Belfast, Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin and Universidad de Chile.

The planet orbits a red M-dwarf – the most common type of star in the universe, leading to the possibility that there could be more of these planets waiting to be found by the NGTS survey.

NGTS-1b is the first planet outside our solar system to have been discovered by the NGTS facility, which is situated at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Northern Chile.

Professor Peter Wheatley, who is from the University of Warwick and leads NGTS, commented:

“NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible that there are many of these giant planets waiting to found.

“Having worked for almost a decade to develop the NGTS telescope array, it is thrilling to see it picking out new and unexpected types of planets. I’m looking forward to seeing what other kinds of exciting new planets we can turn up.”

The researchers made their discovery by monitoring patches of the night sky over many months, and detecting red light from the star with innovative red-sensitive cameras. They noticed dips in the light from the star every 2.6 days, implying that a planet was orbiting and periodically blocking starlight.

Using these data, they then tracked the planet’s orbit around its star and calculated the size, position and mass of NGTS-1b by measuring the radial velocity of the star – finding out how much the star ‘wobbles’ during orbit, due to the gravitational tug from the planet, which changes depending on the planet’s size.

The research, ‘NGTS-1b: a hot Jupiter transiting an M-dwarf’, will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Why Did Saudi Arabia Give A Robot Citizenship? – OpEd

0
0

By Ty Joplin

Sophia’s eyes stare blankly ahead.Though they do blink, it happens slowly and deliberately. When she smiles after telling a rehearsed joke, her expression morphs from cold and neutral to one that reflects a panicked mania, until her machinery sets her face back right again.

Sophia recently had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address a crowd of investors as a Saudi tech conference, something most women in Saudi can never dream of doing.

But here’s the thing: Sophia is a robot.

Designed by a Hong Kong-based firm, and she is the first robot to ever be granted citizenship by a country. At a conference designed to attract investors to the desert kingdom, Saudi Arabia announced it would make Sophia a full-fledged citizen.

In what can be called ‘techwashing,’ this stunt is just one of a series of developments from Saudi where the Kingdom appears to be using its technological ambitions to gloss over its various human rights violations and oppression of its own population.

Immediately after the announcement, critics called into the question the decision to grant a female-appearing robot citizenship while its own female citizens continue to suffer a kind of second-class citizenship.

Sophia was seen without a male guardian, without any head covering and presumably left Saudi without needing the express approval or guardianship of a male to accompany her.

Ironically enough, the Saudi government’s allowance of the robot to bypass the inhumane laws regulating women’s actions and appearance shows they are not seriously considering her as one of their own.

Sophia’s newly-acquired citizenship comes just weeks after Saudi announced it would allow women to drive after over 40 years of prohibition, and comes around the same time as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced that a new megacity will be built and will be mostly comprised of robots.

The announcement that a foreign-made, English-speaking robot named Sophia would become Saudi is just the latest in a plan masterminded by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to transform Saudi from a land of oil-rich, conservative hermits to one that is economically diverse and globally integrated.

Earlier in October, bin Salman told The Guardian that he is seeking to return Saudi to ‘moderate Islam:’ “[w]e are simply reverting to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately.”

The reform efforts also limited the power of Saudi’s religious police. Bin Salman’s masterplan for Saudi is to be funded by a massive Initial Public Offering (IPO) of 5% of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company.

Though Saudi’s critics are right to point out the empowerment of Sophia while the same government keeps laws that actively harm women, they are missing a key part of Saudi’s motivation and strategy–one that helps explain their motive but still remains flawed.

Sophia’s newfound citizenship is a PR stunt–that goes without saying. But it wasn’t merely a PR stunt.

Sophia’s modern look, her international-background, her well-spoken albeit pre-programmed nature, the fact that she seems futuristic–this is bin Salman may want Saudi’s people of the future to look like.

In this way, granting this robot citizenship is Saudi’s way of signaling to the world who and what they are aspiring to be.

But if Saudi is relying on a robot to be their new model citizen, it simply poses further problems.

Actual people cannot be programed, and continue to live under an extraordinarily strict interpretation of Islam that forbids women to receive the same inheritance as men, travel without a man’s permission, or exist in public spaces unveiled if they so choose.

For these rights restrictions, Saudi’s biggest obstacle is its own religious/political doctrine. A head-on confrontation with itself currently being deflecting onto this robot who is only symbolically Saudi and largely falls between the cracks of Sharia law and Saudi’s overall governance system.

In showcasing the future of Saudi with a robot, bin Salman may have accidentally signalled that he is using tech and not his own people as the new standard-bearers of Saudi.

Original source

What Caused The Reformation? A Catholic Explainer

0
0

By Mary Rezac

One fated Halloween, 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle in a dramatic act of defiance against the Catholic Church.

Or, he may have just hung it on the doorknob. Or mailed out copies.

Or, if he did nail it, the act of the nailing itself would not have been all that significant, because the door may have been used as a bulletin board where everyone was nailing announcements.

And he probably wasn’t all that defiant; he likely had the attitude of a scholar trying to raise questions and concerns. At that point, Luther didn’t know how defiant he would eventually become, or that his act, and his subsequent theological work, would lead to one of the greatest disruptions of unity in the Church’s history.

“This was not a declaration of war against the Catholic Church, nor was it a break,” Dr. Alan Schreck with Franciscan University of Steubenville told CNA.

“It was a concerned, Augustinian monk and biblical scholar correcting an abuse, and it was really a call for a dialogue.”

However, it took fewer than five years for this call for dialogue to transform into schism, rejection of the authority of the Church’s tradition and bishops and most of the sacraments, and a growing number of Protestant communities, united only by their rejection of the Catholic Church.

While historians debate just how dramatic was the actual posting of the 95 theses, its anniversary is an occasion to look back at what the role of the most popular Protestant was in the movement that ultimately split Western Christendom in two.

Who was Martin Luther?

Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, the oldest son of Hans and Margarethe Luther. His father, a successful business and civic leader, had grand visions for his eldest son’s life and sent him to school with the hopes he would become a lawyer.

While Luther completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree according to his father’s plan, he dropped out of law school, finding himself increasingly drawn to the subjects of philosophy and theology.

Soon after leaving law school, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery, a decision he would later attribute to a vow he made during a precarious horseback ride, when he was nearly struck by lightning in the midst of a storm. Terrified that he was about to die, the 21-year-old Luther cried out to St. Anne, promising that he would become a monk if he survived. He felt it was a vow he could not break; his father felt it was a waste of his education.

By all accounts, Luther was a Catholic success story before he became the leading figure of the Reformation. He joined the monastery in 1505, and by 1507 he was ordained a priest. He became a renowned theologian and biblical scholar within the order, as well as a powerful and popular preacher and lecturer at the University of Wittenberg in Germany.

During his years of study and growing popularity, Luther began developing the groundwork of his theology on salvation and scripture that would ultimately become deal-breakers in his relationship with the Catholic Church.

The offense of selling indulgences

But it wasn’t strictly theological ideas that first drove Luther to the ranks of reformation ringleader – it was his critique of the practice of selling indulgences, the central subject of his 95 theses, that catapulted him into the limelight.

According to Catholic teaching, an indulgence is the remission of all or part of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been forgiven, and can be applied either to the person performing the prescribed act or to a soul in Purgatory.

To obtain an indulgence, one must complete certain spiritual requirements, such as going to the sacraments of Confession and Communion, in addition to some other act or good work, such as making a pilgrimage or doing a work of mercy.

But even years before Martin Luther, abuses of indulgences were rampant in the Church.

Instead of prescribing an act of prayer or a work of mercy as a way to obtain an indulgence, clerics began also authorizing a “donation” to the Church as a good work needed to remit the temporal punishment due to sin.

Increasingly, people grew critical of the sale of indulgences, as they watched money gleaned from people’s afterlife anxiety go to fund the extravagant lives of some of the clergy. The money was also often used to buy clerical offices, the sin of simony.

During Martin Luther’s time, in northern Germany, the young and ambitious prince-Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg was offered the position of the Archbishop of Mainz, but was unwilling to relinquish any of his previously-held power.

Meanwhile in Rome, Pope Leo X was demanding a considerable fee from Albrecht for his new position, as well as from the people of his dioceses for the fund to build St. Peter’s Basilica. Albrecht took out a loan and promised Rome 50 percent of the funds extracted from – as critics would describe it – preying on people’s fear of Purgatory.

For the St. Peter’s fund, the Pope had employed Dominican friar Johann Tetzel to be the Grand Commissioner for Indulgences for the country of Germany.

According to historians, Tetzel liberally preached the indulgence, over-promising remission of sins, extending it to include even future sins one might commit, rather than sins that had already been repented of and confessed. He even allegedly coined the gimmicky indulgence phrase: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from Purgatory springs.”

It was Tetzel’s activities that ultimately pushed Luther to protest by publishing his 95 theses.

The 95 theses and the seeds of reform

“When he posted the 95 theses, he wasn’t a Lutheran yet,” said Michael Root, professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America.

“In some ways they get things rolling, but what’s important is what happens after the 95 theses when Luther gets pushed into a more radical position.”

Regardless of how dramatically they were posted to the door of Wittenberg Castle on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed not only his theses but the feelings of many faithful at the time who were also frustrated with the corruption and abuse they saw in the Church.

Christian humanists such as Erasmus and St. Thomas More were contemporaries of Luther who also objected to abuses within Church while not breaking from it.

Meanwhile, Luther’s already-established reputation as a respected professor, as well as access to the printing press, allowed his theses and ideas to spread at a rate previously unmatched by previous reformers who had similar critiques of the Church.

“Clearly there was a kind of symbiosis between Luther and the development of the printing press,” Root said. “What he was writing was able to engage lots of people. Many of them were short pamphlets that could be printed up quickly, they sold well…so he was on the cutting edge of technology and he fit what the technology needed – short, energetic things people wanted to read.”

Most historians agree that Luther’s original intent was not to start a new ecclesial community – that idea would have been “unthinkable at the time,” Root noted. “So that’s too much to say; however, it’s too little to say all he want to do was reform abuses.”

By 1518, his theses spread throughout Germany and intellectual Europe. Luther also continued writing prolifically, engaging in disputes with Tetzel and other Catholic critics and further developing his own ideas.

For its part, the Church did not issue an official response for several years, while attempts at discussions dissolved into defensive disputations rather than constructive dialogue. As a result, early opportunities to engage Luther’s criticisms on indulgences instead turned into arguments about Church authority as a whole.

Swatting flies with a sledgehammer – Luther becomes a Lutheran

One of Luther’s most well-known critics was Catholic theologian Johann Eck, who declared Luther’s theses heretical and ordered them to be burned in public.

In 1519, the two sparred in a disputation that pushed Luther to his more extreme view that scripture was the only valid Christian authority, rather than tradition and the bishops.

“The Catholic critics quickly changed the subject from indulgences to the question of the Church’s authority in relation to indulgences, which was a more dangerous issue,” Root said. “Now you’re getting onto a touchy subject. But there was also an internal dynamic of Luther’s own thought,” that can be seen in his subsequent writings.

In 1520, Luther published three of his most renowned treatises: The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, On the Freedom of a Christian Man, and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.

By that time, it was clear that what Luther thought was wrong in the Church was not just the abuse of indulgences, but the understanding of the message of Christianity on some basic levels. Besides denouncing the Pope as a legitimate authority, Luther also declared that faith alone, sola fide, was all that was necessary for salvation, rather than faith and good works.

“Luther was definitely trying to fix what was a legitimate problem, which was pelagian tendencies, or people trying to work their way into heaven,” said Dr. Paul Hilliard, Assistant Professor and Chair of Church History at Mundelein Seminary. It had created a “mercantile attitude” in some people at the time of Luther – “if I do this, God will do this.”

“So Luther was trying to correct these things, but the phrase I sometimes say is that Luther swatted the fly of pelagianism with a sledgehammer. In order to keep any trace of humans earning salvation out of the system, he changed the system.”

Luther’s distrust of human beings did not particularly spring from his criticisms of indulgences and the subsequent pushback from the Church – it was in line with most anthropological thought at the time, which tended toward a very negative view of human nature. Therefore, in his Protestant views, he sought to get rid of any human involvement wherever possible – particularly when it came to interpreting scripture and salvation.

“On the scale of beasts to angels, most people (at the time) would have us a lot closer to beasts,” Hilliard noted.

The Catholic Church officially condemned Luther’s theses in a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, promulgated in June 1520, and in part authored by Eck. The declaration afforded Luther a 60-day window to recant his positions, lest he be excommunicated.

But by the time the papal bull was issued, Luther had not only denounced the authority of the Pope, but had declared him an anti-Christ. The window for reconciling views was all but closed.

The popular and political reforms

Despite Luther’s increasingly radical claims against the Pope and the Church, his popularity spread, due to his compelling and prolific writings and, to Luther’s dismay, his populist appeal.

Luther popularized the idea of a “priesthood of all believers” to the exclusion of an ordained, ministerial priesthood. Rather than bearing an indelible mark on their soul, in Luther’s view ministerial priests did not differ from the “priesthood of believers” except in office and work. This, along with his personality and background, appealed to the poor and working class of the time who were frustrated with the lavish lives of Church hierarchy, which typically came at the expense of the poor in rural areas.

“Luther was very much a populist, he was a man of the people, he was scruff, he came from sort of peasant stock, he spoke the language of the people, so I think a lot of the common people identified with him,” Shreck said.

“He was one of them, he wasn’t far away in Rome or a seemingly wealthy bishop or archbishop…so he appealed particularly to Germans because he wanted a German liturgy and a German bible, and the people said, ‘we want a faith that is close to us and accessible’.”

But Luther balked when his religious ideals spurred the Peasant’s War of 1525, as peasants in rural areas of German revolted, motivated by Luther’s religious language of equality. The year or so of subsequent bloody war seemed to justify those who dismissed Luther as nothing more than a social movement rather than a serious religious reformer.

In order to maintain the esteem of those higher up, Luther disavowed the unruly peasants as not part of the official reform movement, laying the groundwork for the Anabaptists to fill in the religious gaps for the peasants in the future.

However, the Peasant’s War wasn’t the only time the Reformation got political – or lethal. Because of the vacuum of authority that now existed in Luther’s pope-less, emerging ecclesial community, authority was handed over to the local princes, who took advantage of the reformation to break from the fee-demanding Pope.

Much of Germany had embraced Lutheranism by the mid 1500s, though some parts, such as Bavaria, retained their Catholic faith.

For his part, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V officially condemned Luther’s theology at the 1521 Diet of Worms, a meeting of German princes, during which Luther famously refused to recant his position with the words: “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”

Despite Charles V’s opposition to Luther’s views, he allowed for Luther’s safe passage from the diet, rather than enforcing the customary execution of heretics, and thus forfeited his best chance for stomping out the Reformation at its roots.

Historians speculate that while Charles V personally opposed Luther’s views, he let him live because he also saw the decentralizing of power from the Vatican as something of which he could take political advantage.

Reformation fever was also catching throughout Europe, and soon Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and England were all following Germany’s example of breaking from the Catholic Church and establishing state-run, Protestant ecclesial communities.

“I like to think of the story with the little Dutch boy with his the finger in the dyke,” Shreck said. “Once the breach was made, others follows his example. Once Luther did it, it was like the domino effect.”

“In a book by Owen Chadwick, he said the Reformation came not because Europe was irreligious, but because it was fervently religious,” Shreck added. “This was after the black death and a lot of social turmoil – people really wanted to turn to God and seek solace in faith.”

But the reformers were not all agreed on their beliefs, which led to the rise of numerous sects of Protestantism, including Calvinism, Anglicanism, and Anabaptism.

“Protestantism became very divided, though they all claimed to be doing the right thing because they believed they were maintaining the purity of the faith,” Schreck said.

Root noted that once the Protestant-Catholic divide “got embedded in political differences, between southern Europe and northern Europe, between Spain and England, and so the religious differences also became national differences, that just made matters far worse.”

“Once you have the wars of religion in 1546, then attitudes become very harsh. Once you start killing each other, it’s hard to sit down and talk,” he added.

The wars over religion would become especially pronounced in the 30 Years War of the 1600s, though at that point, religion had become more of a political tool for the state, Hilliard said.

“The 30 Years War is a really good indication that while religion was important, it was not the most important thing – it was a war between different competing princes to gain greater control of territories, during which religion was thrown into the mix,” Hilliard noted.

Could the Reformation have been avoided?

The million-dollar question at the center of Reformation history is whether the Reformation and the splitting of Western Christendom could have been avoided.

“Some would say by two years into the Reformation, the theological differences already ran very deep and there was no way you were going to get reconciliation,” Root said.

“But there are others who would argue that as late as the 1540s it was still possible that perhaps the right set of historical circumstances could have brought people together, and there’s no way of knowing, because you can’t run history again and change the variables.”

“Whether one could have settled it all then short of war, there were missed opportunities for reconciliation, that’s clear,” he added.

Luther’s fiery and rebellious personality, matched with the defiant and defensive stance that the Catholic Church took in response to his ideas, created a perfect storm that cemented the Protestant-Catholic divide.

Much of Luther’s thinking remained Catholic throughout his life, Schreck noted, including his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“I think if there had been a sincere effort on the part of the Catholic hierarchy that his concerns were legitimate, history might have gone in a different direction.”

It wasn’t until Pope Paul III (1534–1549), 17 years after the fated theses first made their rounds, that the Catholic Church as a whole took a serious and official look at its own need for reform, and its need to respond to the Protestant Reformation.


The Future Of Work: New Underclass, Dystopian Reality? – Analysis

0
0

The dust will take decades to settle on the key issue of precisely how much technology and artificial intelligence (AI) will displace human labour. It is clear the near future will see a sizeable proportion of jobs worldwide threatened and substituted by automation, machine learning, or both. What does this mean for national security?

By Shashi Jayakumar and Eugene Goh*

It is increasingly apparent that jobs commonly reckoned to be “safe” may in fact be candidates for an AI – Artificial Intelligence – takeover, with many knowledge workers themselves candidates for displacement. Research by McKinsey from 2015 suggests that current technologies alone could automate 45% of the paid activities. Some experts believe the effect will be comparable to the industrial revolution. Concurrently, workers are demanding, and companies are offering, greater flexibility in work arrangements.

Unlike the past, when the vast majority of work was full-time employment, bundled with benefits such as pension and healthcare, the future will be much more varied. There will be full-timers, part-timers, freelancers, contract workers, and other forms of relationships between companies and labour. Work hours may be shift-based, flexible, self-determined, or totally undefined, so long as agreed output is delivered timely. Historically, people have moved to new jobs as old ones are destroyed. Some believe this will continue, while others suggest that the outlook is less positive now. We should ponder the future for both the winners and losers, particularly if the intensity of disruption increases.

The Haves

The future will see a great deal of knowledge work automated. IBM’s Watson computer, which won the American TV quiz Jeopardy in 2011, is now being used to devise treatments for some cancer patients in the United States. AI is even making inroads into journalism, with some attempts showing that machines are almost on par with human writers. This does not necessarily spell disaster for humankind.

There will be an elite that manages to ride the AI wave. Individuals in this group will have skills – creativity, abstract thinking, intercultural sensitivity, and the ability to thrive in ambiguity – which AI will take much time to master. There will also be opportunities in tech-enabled growth areas like computer science, robotics, education and healthcare, in particular catering for an ageing population, possibly working alongside AI.

The Have Nots

There are two groups of people of concern. First, those who risk seeing their skills become obsolete and have difficulty picking up new skills, which is likely to be more challenging for older and less educated workers. The Singapore Government has put in place significant infrastructure to support training and empowerment through the SkillsFuture programme. This recognises that companies alone cannot be responsible for post-education skill creation in the economy. Instead, individuals must drive their own development.

Secondly, we should also scrutinise the seeming promise of jobs in “the gig economy”. It does have its benefits – in supplementing income, buffering against unemployment, and providing flexible work options. More broadly, the sharing economy, enabled through platforms like AirBnB allows the monetisation of assets.

The story in the long run may be different. Companies are turning to services that match employers with freelancers, even as the risk for lower wages and inequality is growing. Most gig economy workers do not qualify for statutory benefits such as paid leave, medical leave and health insurance.

The net effect is a transfer of risk and cost from corporations to individuals. This group – particularly those for whom such gigs are their sole source of income – are badly hit by the combination of volatility in the income stream, and the lack of statutory benefits. Besides these losses, individuals caught in these jobs often have less incentive to upskill themselves.

Guy Standing, professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, has pointed to the dangers of a coming “precariat”, which he defines as an emerging global class with no financial security, job stability or prospect of career progression. Far from delivering utopia, technology and flexibility in how we work could ironically perpetuate an underclass.

Creating Permanent Underclass

There may be national security implications. The risk is that the gig economy creates a permanent underclass of people who do not see any way out of it and feel a sense of anomie. Their futures, from their own vantage point, will be debilitating and uncertain.

At the macro level, it is possible that there will be a permanent strata of groups campaigning in the name of social justice – for those who have been left out of the technologically-enabled future. There are already people arguing for universal basic income. Consider for example recent disruptive protests over local politics, gentrification, and the cost of living that have surfaced in San Francisco, targeting the giant tech companies based in Silicon Valley.

Might we also see a revanche to the Luddites of the 19th century – individuals seeking to wreak revenge on technology? These individuals lived in an era of “reassuringly clear-cut targets—machines one could still destroy with a sledgehammer”, notes Steven E. Jones in his 2006 book Against Technology.

But the technology that takes over jobs will not present such clear-cut targets. It is likely that these forces may try to find other targets and ally with other ideologies – even metastasising into violent action. Security officials at present tend to gloss over these possibilities, preoccupied with Islamic State and other “mainstream” forms of extremism.

Don’t Underestimate Tech Threat

But the threat is real. In 2010, Swiss police intercepted an explosives-filled car destined for an IBM facility. The individuals apprehended were green activists. In 2012, anarchists claimed responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, an Italian nuclear engineering executive.

The faint but growing signals of anarchists returning to the national security radar should concern us. They are not necessarily redundant due to automation, but convinced, perhaps, that existing governments have failed in the high-tech globalised age.

John Maynard Keynes took the view that technology and machines would increase productivity to a degree that an abundance of leisure time would be people’s main challenge. That utopia has yet to materialise. He also theorised that as a greater proportion of the population found themselves liberated from the “economic problem” of struggling for subsistence, society might suffer from a “general nervous breakdown”, not knowing how to readjust.

A sort of breakdown might come to pass, but not the one Keynes envisioned. Instead, a real issue of our times may be how people involuntarily displaced by technology and unable to adapt respond, and the implications for the rest of society.


*Shashi Jayakumar
is head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) and executive coordinator, Future Issues and Technology at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Eugene Goh is chief operating officer of a leading shift-worker hiring and management software startup based in Singapore. A longer version of this piece was published in Channel News Asia Commentaries on 15 October 2017.

China’s New Military Leaders: Civil-Military Relations In Xi Jinping Era – Analysis

0
0

The recently-concluded 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has confirmed Xi Jinping’s dominance over the trident of party-state-military power. The downsizing of the Central Military Commission and its appointment of Xi’s favoured generals endorsed his status as China’s new strongman. Whether Xi can translate his huge clout into a fundamental transformation of the Chinese military remains to be seen.

By James Char*

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) recently concluded 19th Congress all but confirmed Xi Jinping’s status as China’s new paramount leader since Deng Xiaoping. Alongside the promotion of his key aides – namely, Li Zhanshu and Zhao Leji – to the apex of Chinese politics that is the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, a cohort of new civilian leaders associated with Xi also gained membership in the elite 25-member Politburo.

The incorporation of the Chinese leader’s eponymous governance philosophy Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the Party constitution was seen by analysts as conclusive evidence of his unassailable position in the CCP hierarchy. Besides rejecting the succession norms established by Deng, Xi’s pre-eminent status in Chinese domestic politics is reflected in the revamped Central Military Commission (CMC) – the highest military authority that runs China’s nearly 2.3 million-strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for which Xi is commander-in-chief.

New Central Military Commission

Apart from reducing the number of uniformed members on the CMC from ten to six – Xu Qiliang, Zhang Youxia, Wei Fenghe, Li Zuocheng, Miao Hua and Zhang Shengmin – Xi has further boosted his own politico-military clout whilst enhancing the efficiency of Chinese national security and foreign policymaking.

It is no coincidence that the new CMC membership is stacked with Xi Jinping’s favoured generals. While the two CMC deputies – Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia – share a long association with Xi, the remaining members had either served in the former Nanjing Military Region (MR) encompassing Xi’s former Fujian and Zhejiang strongholds; or have been groomed for higher office since Xi assumed the CMC leadership.

The career path of Xu Qiliang – now the CMC first vice-chair – had crossed with Xi’s when the former PLA Air Force (PLAAF) commander was based in the 8th Corps in Fuzhou. A trusted general of Xi, Xu was made executive deputy leader of the Leading Group for National Defence and Military Reform even though he was then ranked below general Fan Changlong in the CMC.

Indeed, knowledgeable sources also attest to the PLAAF’s role in providing Xi’s security detail when he first became CMC chair. Additionally, in appointing Xu as China’s top soldier, Xi has underscored that the PLA will shift from being a predominantly land-based power to a ‘joint’ military force.

The second-ranked Zhang Youxia is another core member of Xi’s military allies. As a fellow princeling, Zhang shares close family ties with Xi since their fathers had been comrades-in-arms during the Chinese Civil War. An experienced and influential army officer, Zhang is believed to have been a key supporter of Xi’s efforts to dismantle and reorganise the PLA’s former general headquarters, military regions and service branches.

As the former director in charge of military hardware, Zhang can be also expected to play an important role as the PLA continues to improve its ability to conduct informationised warfare.

Rise of Xi’s Younger Generals

As the first officer to be promoted by Xi to the rank of general, Wei Fenghe, who oversaw China’s nuclear arsenal as chief of the PLA Rocket Force; and Miao Hua, a political commissar who rose from the 31st Group Army in the former Nanjing MR, are expected to improve the PLA’s combat readiness and tighten the CCP’s political control over the PLA, respectively.

Given how former political officers had failed in their duties to uphold the Party’s ideological guidelines, Miao’s role in strengthening CCP control over PLA organisational cohesion and personnel management will be especially crucial to Xi.

Li Zuocheng’s inclusion also comes as no surprise in keeping with the commander-in-chief’s calls for the PLA to become a modern military by 2035 and a world-class force by 2050. Appointed the head of the Joint Staff Department just prior to the recent congress, and as one of two CMC members with combat experience (the other being Zhang Youxia), Li is an ideal candidate to enhance PLA professionalism.

Lastly, the elevation of Zhang Shengmin to the grade of CMC member also empowers the discipline and inspection functions of the CMC as the military continues to deepen its anti-graft drive.

Problems and Prospects in China’s Civil-Military Relations

Whilst some pundits have questioned Xi Jinping’s ability to assert civilian control over the PLA – with one analysis going as far as speculating that the recent China-India standoff in Doklam was the result of willful disobedience on the part of a former CMC member – such an assumption, however, cannot be verified. Truth be told, the CCP’s civilian oversight over the PLA in the post-Reform era has never been stronger.

Since becoming CMC chairman, Xi has assiduously worked to harness the PLA as his personal powerbase by emphasising the ‘CMC Chairman Responsibility System’ (军委主席负责制) as well as enhanced the power of his office. Indeed, the trimming of the CMC follows his previous criticism that military elites (prior to the recent PLA reforms) had “accumulated too much power, gained too much autonomy and affected the CMC’s unified leadership”.

Just as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping had owed their political longevity to absolute authority over the Party’s armed servants, Xi also appears to have won the PLA’s backing to dominate China’s political landscape for the foreseeable future. Xi achieved this through a combination of psychological intimidation and institutional mechanisms, embodied respectively in his signature anti-corruption campaign and unprecedented military reforms. In China, then, as it is now, whoever controls the PLA controls the CCP.

Notwithstanding the reliability of the new CMC members in enacting their chairman’s directives to the best of their abilities, however, the risk of groupthink cannot be entirely discounted. Furthermore, Xi will also need to reconcile the competing needs for the Party’s army to be both red and expert, as the politicization of an increasingly professional corps continues to intensify.

The real problem for Xi then, perhaps, is that when he does decide to retire, the centralization of power in himself will lead to civil-military challenges for his anointed successor.

*James Char is an Associate Research Fellow with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Career Prospects In Spain Continue To Improve In 2017

0
0

The Meta4 IDL labor dynamism indicator for Spain reached 22.8 percent in the third quarter of 2017, the highest value ever recorded. This means that between July and September, nearly one in four workers experienced a change in their work status that was unrelated to the creation or elimination of jobs.

The indicator, measured by Meta4 and analyzed by IESE, continues to show an increasingly high rate of dynamism in the Spanish job market. It climbed more than 18 percentage points from early 2011 to mid-2017.

This growth reflects high levels of activity within many companies as they implement different measures to help promote increased employment flexibility.

According to the report, the total rate of new hires and terminations has stabilized at around 30 percent of the existing jobs, 22.8 percent of which are due to labor dynamism — i.e., they are not linked to the creation or elimination of work positions.

Increased Voluntary Turnover

The seventh edition of the report presents the first analysis of a key factor contributing to this trend — voluntary turnover — which is considered an indicator of the health of the job market.

In fact, it highlights that the number of workers who voluntarily left their jobs increased sixfold from 2010 to 2017. Whereas in 2010, only 1 out of 600 employees voluntarily left their job, in 2017, it was 1 out of 100.

The Meta4 IDL also examines the distinctive characteristics of companies with higher rates of voluntary turnover.

The research shows that, until 2012, about the only people who voluntarily left their jobs worked for companies with high percentages of temporary employees. However, as of 2014, those working for companies with lower ratios of temporary workers also began to voluntarily leave their positions.

This trend has persisted, reaching its all-time high in the summer of 2017, probably due to improved job opportunities. Thus, we could conclude that Spanish workers are currently witnessing the best career prospects seen in recent years.

Methodology, Very Briefly

The Meta4 IDL analyzes labor mobility as workers retire, resign voluntarily or are dismissed from their positions. It also measures changes in employment contracts (from fixed-term to permanent, full-time to part-time, from one function or department to another, etc.). Importantly, it picks up on job movements that are not outright job creation or elimination.

For the seventh edition of the indicator, data was gathered from 58,000 employees at 314 companies operating in Spain.

Algeria: Surge In Deportations Of Migrants, Says HRW

0
0

Algerian authorities have been rounding up sub-Saharan Africans in and around Algiers and have deported more than 3,000 to Niger since August 25, 2017, without giving them an opportunity to challenge their expulsion, Human Rights Watch said. Those expelled include migrants who have lived and worked for years in Algeria, pregnant women, families with newborn babies, and about 25 unaccompanied children.

“Nothing justifies rounding up people based on their skin color, and then deporting them en masse,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “A country’s power to control its borders is not a license to treat people like criminals or to assume they have no right to be there because of their race or ethnicity.”

Trusted sources in Algiers told Human Rights Watch that those detained initially included 15 refugees and asylum seekers. All were later released after the authorities ascertained their status.

Ahmed Ouyahia, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s cabinet chief, said on July 7 that migrants are a “source of criminality and drugs,” and that the authorities need to protect the Algerian population from this “chaos.” On July 11, Foreign Affairs Minister Abdelkader Messahel said that migrants “represent a threat to national security.”

During successive waves of arrests, security forces rounded up sub-Saharan migrants on the streets, on construction sites where many work, and in their homes. The migrants were taken to a facility in Zeralda, a suburb of the capital, where they spent one to three days in crowded halls with no mattresses and little to eat during the day, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The migrants were then bused 1,900 kilometers south to a camp in Tamanrasset, then expelled to Niger, witnesses and local sources said.

Three sub-Saharan migrants interviewed separately by phone told Human Rights Watch that they believe gendarmes targeted them based on their skin color. “When black workers there saw the gendarmes, they tried to flee but the gendarmes chased them and forced them into the van,” said one migrant who was arrested earlier and forced into the gendarme’s van. “They arrested seven men.”

A nongovernmental organization based in Gao, Mali, said that several Malians were also expelled at the Algeria-Mali border, an insecure region with minimal government presence where armed groups, including some linked to Al-Qaeda, are active.

Those expelled have included both Nigeriens and hundreds of citizens of other countries such as Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea – all nationals of sub-Saharan countries, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which runs an assistance program for migrants in Agadez, Niger. The IRC told Human Rights Watch that migrants were expelled in successive waves. The first convoy arrived in Agadez on August 25, and the most recent one on October 25. The IRC registered 3,232 migrants arriving from Algeria, among which 396 were women and 850 children, including the 25 unaccompanied children.

Under international law, Algeria has the authority to control its borders and to remove people not in the country legally, but should give each person an opportunity to challenge their removal. It should not discriminate based on race or ethnicity or subject migrants to arbitrary detention, inhuman and degrading treatment.

As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1987 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Algeria is barred from forcibly removing any refugee, asylum seeker, or anyone else to a place where they would face a threat of being persecuted, tortured, or subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The claims of anyone expressing such fears should be examined in full and fair procedures while the person remains in the country.

Algeria is also a party to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which prohibits collective expulsions of migrant workers and their families and requires examining and ruling on each potential expulsion individually. The convention applies to all migrant workers and their families, irrespective of their legal or work status.

Human Rights Watch documented a previous roundup of more than 1,400 sub-Saharan migrants in December 2016. At least several hundred were deported to Niger.

Soccer Penalty Shootouts: How To Reduce An Unfair Advantage By 74 To 85 Percent

0
0

What’s at stake if you miss when your team is already trailing in a penalty shootout? Just ask Roberto Baggio of Italy’s national team, who was lionized in the press for his performance in the 1994 World Cup — until one key slip-up in the final penalty shootout against Brazil.

“I take that penalty with me always,” he told an Italian TV show no less than 20 years after the historic defeat.

Choking under pressure is very real. And in penalty shootouts, where an average of 75 percent of shots score goals, going second is a serious disadvantage. If the first kicker is successful, pressure is on the second kicker not to perform worse by comparison.

Yet this second-kicker disadvantage could be mitigated with a change in kicking sequence. The math of the possible pressure points, and other factors involved, interested Tom Vandebroek, Brian McCann and Govert Vroom as a topic of study. Using advanced mathematical modeling, they were able to create an extended tree diagram for all 1,024 possible situations for a five-round shootout and quantify the effects of several types of psychological pressure in terms of influencing the final outcome of a shootout. Their analysis also provides insights regarding the optimal placement of a star kicker.

Model Moves

In this model, team advantage is calculated based on the empirical fact that playing catch-up is psychologically more difficult in shootouts. With their approach, these researchers appear to be the first to be able to calculate that a new penalty shootout proposal, already being tested by the English Football League (EFL), reduces the first-kick advantage by a resounding 74 to 85 percent when there is a lagging-behind effect in play.

The new rule proposal follows the tennis tie-breaker model. That is to say, after the first team kicks (team A), the second team (team B) gets to kick twice. The pattern looks like ABBA ABBA for the first four rounds of kicks (compared with ABAB ABAB in the standard rules). As of fall 2017, there have only been a few test matches, but the proposal is supported internationally by FIFA.

Another important discovery is that there are even fairer ways to structure shootouts in soccer than the ABBA sequence currently being tested in play. Vandebroek, McCann and Vroom test a more complex sequence, so-called Prouhet-Thue-Morse, and find that it reduces first-mover advantage even further.

Well, there will always be one team that gets an edge by going first. But after that, research can level the playing field as much as possible.

Methodology, Very Briefly

Published in the Journal of Sports Economics, this article presents a formal model of soccer penalty shoot-outs to determine the links between psychological pressure and first-mover advantage. With their model, the authors show that this relationship varies according to the specific rules governing the shoot-out and the nature and magnitude of the pressure. They, essentially, provide a tool allowing for quantification of the effects of pressure on first-mover advantage according to these specific circumstances.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project ECO2015-71173-P) at the Public-Private Sector Research Center at IESE.

Xi Jinping’s Thoughts On New China Will Spur India’s Stride For Strategic Partnerships With Global Leaders – Analysis

0
0

Xi Jinping’s thought on new China escalates paradox of concerns for global powers. He pitched for socialism with Chinese characteristics, global power with non-confrontation and inclusiveness through Belt and Road initiatives (BRI). He asserted to establish a modern socialist country by 2050 and emphasized that China would have a world class armed forces by then. His thoughts are viewed reminiscent of combination of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping ideologies that China would be ruled by Central leadership with market economy, with an alternation that China would not take old and traditional path for global leadership. China would avoid confrontation.

The western elites are unlikely to believe the Chinese proclamation for world power committed to peace with “win- win cooperation”. In the recent visit to India, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson emphasized for deeper cooperation with India “in the broader Indo –Pacific region”. Close on the heel, Japanese Foreign Minster Taro Kondo proposed a top level dialogue with US, India and Australia, unleashing alarm over China’s aggressiveness in maritime expansion under BRI.

India considered China’s modern socialistic characteristics was a domestic problem. “Seeking inclusiveness by releasing influences though Belt and Road initiative” was a ruse. India refused to join BRI. Because it violated India’s sovereignty and integrity by launching CPEC project ( China – Pakistan- Economic – Corridor) – the master deal of BRI. CPEC passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, which is located in Pakistan- occupied Indian territory of Kashmir, India alleged.

The core issue was Chinese economy, which is bogged down by uneven growth in the domestic economy and protracted plight of over- capacity in the manufacturing sector.

The “ new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics “ is to pursue more balanced growth in the domestic economy, a shift from Deng Xiaoping policy of development, which focused on development of coastal regions in the east.

China’s assertiveness for global power through BRI should lend a new thought for India’s foreign policy. In the wake of China becoming the game changer in the polarization of global power, India’s mandate for non-alignment movement, the underlying pivot for foreign policy, underwent into depletion. Modi’s avoidance of 17th NAM summit in Margarita in Venezuela in September 2016 was the clear indication of sidelining the Nehruvian legacy for non-alignment movement and Congress led foreign policy.

Challenging China’s proclamation for global economic power through BRI, India considered China’s rise in power through BRI will escalate more threat than cooperation. In this paradox, India has no other choice but to engage more in strategic partnerships with military and economic prowess, such as USA and Japan, including the nations who are at the brink of falling prey to BRI paranoia( like Vietnam).

Offering American military bases in India and refurbishing India- Japan bilateral relations with defence cooperation are the manifestations for special strategic relations to counter-balance China’s surge in power in Asia-Pacific region. In 2016, India allowed military basing facilities to USA. It was first time that India allowed military basing facilities for a foreign army. It signed Logistic Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with USA , which would allow USA to use Indian ports and military bases. It was viewed a great alliances between India and USA to counter China’s military clout.

Close on the heel, new dimensions in Indo-Japan strategic relation for global partnership are considered green shoots to strengthen India’s clout to counter-balance Chinese aspiration in Asia – Pacific regions. The deepening relation with Japan in defence cooperation and transregional economic partnership in Asia – Pacific region are the manifestations for stronger India- Japan relation. The region has emerged an important turf for Modi’s Act Asia policy. The joint partnership will get a further boost since it has enough opportunities to be embedded in Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor initiative, an initiative of USA to exercise its assertiveness in Asia Pacific.

The Indo-Pacific Corridor initiative can be traced back in ‘US rebalancing’ and ‘Pivot to Asia Strategy” in 2011 under Obama administration. In 2013, under “USA – India Strategic Dialogue “ Indo- Pacific Economic Corridor was hailed as ‘New Silk Road’, which would seek connect India with South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia through Myanmar.

The deepening relation between India and Japan escalated a new concern for China. It suspected that India-Japan partnership for Asia-Africa- Growth- Corridor project (AAGR) was a ruse and depicted it an attempt to counter China’s OBOR. Eventually, AAGR will overlap OBOR route. The Global Times – a English version of China’s official media – jeered at the connectivity , saying “ AACG – connectivity project jointly forged by India and Japan – is an oppositional vision intended to counterbalance China’s Belt and Road initiative”.

Development of Chabahar port in Iran is another case for India’s shifting to strategic partnership with nations other than militarily prowess to counter China’s might. The significance of the port is that India can bypass Pakistan in transporting goods to Afghanistan. It will dwarf Chinese presence in Arabian sea, which China is trying to ensure by developing Gwador port in Pakistan. It is less than 400 km from Chabahar port by road and 100 km by sea. With this , Iran emerges a military ally to India.

Engaging into Comprehensive Strategic partnership with Vietnam during Modi’s visit to Vietnam in September 2016 was another attempt to harness India’s penchant for strategic partnership and counter China’s maritime bully. This rebooted ten year old strategic partnership between India and Vietnam, unleashing deeper meaning for all round cooperation between the two countries. In this respect , India’s commitment for US $ 500 million line of credit for procurement of defence equipment from India and implementation of India- Vietnam Defence Relations underpinned India’s bigger role as a strategic partner of Vietnam in South China sea. In 2014, a dispute erupted in between Vietnam and China over the maritime right when Chinese oil rig company conducted oil drilling inside the Vietnam ‘s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEC).

In summing up, India’s foreign policy will closely be toed on modern China concept and its aspiration for global power. This will led more strategic partnerships with militarily and economically prowess and the nations in the BRI fray. Also, this will usher strengthening defence and more foreign investment in defence manufacturing to bolster strategic partnerships.

Views are personal

ESCAP-China Partnership To Strengthen Public Private Partnerships In Asia-Pacific

0
0

China and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) have signed a new agreement to strengthen Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the region, with a key focus on improving access to infrastructure services such as water, energy and transport.

PPP involves the private sector in infrastructure development, which can improve quality and address development finance gaps. However, these projects must be properly managed to deliver sustainable development outcomes. ESCAP’s partnership with the China PPP Center will help other countries in the region to develop PPP projects that will contribute to regional connectivity, including as promoted by the Belt and Road Initiative. As China has become the largest PPP market in the region, it is well placed to take the lead in this area.

At a signing ceremony on the sidelines of the 3rd China Public-Private Partnership Financing Forum in Shanghai today, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Dr. Shamshad Akhtar highlighted that PPP can be a powerful tool for effectively pursuing sustainable development.

“Developing Asia will have to invest $26 trillion in infrastructure between 2016 and 2030 to effectively support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This scale of investment requirement far exceeds the limited public budgets so raising public revenues and leveraging private finance and skills through public-private partnerships is vital,” said Dr. Akhtar.

This substantial investment is equivalent to some 6 per cent of GDP annually, when incorporating the cost of building climate friendly infrastructure, and more than 2 per cent of GDP above the current investment levels. Financing gaps for least developed, landlocked and small island developing countries are steeper at roughly 10.5 per cent of GDP.

ESCAP’s partnership with the China PPP Centre will strengthen a network of PPP units in the region to support exchange of best practices from Asia and the Pacific. It will also facilitate the identification of PPP models for developing infrastructure networks that can contribute to regional connectivity and the 2030 Agenda.


Laura Ingraham’s Catholicism Under Fire – OpEd

0
0

It is hardly a secret that many on the Left are militant secularists who hate religion, saving a special loathing for Roman Catholicism. The latest evidence appears today online by Joe Lapointe.

I had to look him up. He was a “segment producer” for the always-fired Keith Olbermann, which means he did not have a full-time job. He also  “taught journalism” at New York University, which means he did not have a full-time job. No matter, this struggling part-timer has now caught our eye at the Catholic League.

Laura Ingraham’s new show on Fox News started last night. Lapointe begins his screed calling her “The Church Lady.” He says she “appeared before us in purple vestments that highlighted the gleaming gold cross on her chest.”

The cross. That is what set him off. Had Laura been a Jew wearing a Star of David he would have said nothing about it. But the cross is different—radical extremists have killed over it, and are doing so again today.

Lapointe expressed his anger at Laura for telling White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that there are “very few Christians” being helped by U.S. immigration policy. The gypsy scholar did not dispute her statement, because he could not. So he called her a “fundamentalist Catholic extremist.” Why? The cross. It’s the cross that drives him mad.

Today is Halloween. Good time to recall that the only thing that scared Dracula was the cross. Which in my book makes Lapointe Son of Dracula.

Watch out for the bats tonight—it could be Lapointe in disguise.

Contact: editorial@observer.com

Digitization: Why Developing Nations Must Invest Now – Analysis

0
0

One of the biggest stories of the year that has barely registered on the blips of policymakers and the wider public is the phenomenal growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). Its market size is expected to grow from $625.2 billion in 2015 to a whopping $1.29 trillion in 2020. But make no mistake – the IoT goes far beyond the offbeat smart speaker you can talk to and get today’s weather. In fact, its biggest disruptive potential lies in the way smart devices could address seemingly insurmountable developmental challenges. Healthcare, water, natural resource management, resiliency to climate change are just some of the areas where IoT devices could play a starring role. But is the developing world ready to embrace this second digital revolution in as many decades?

The exponential growth of the digital economy in recent years has been accelerated by the fact that as Internet access has expanded, the cost of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure, equipment and software has gone down. The proliferation of high-speed broadband was accompanied by an overall decline in the average cost of one gigabyte of hard drive storage capacity from a ludicrous US$400,000 in 1980 to US$0.02 in 2016.

Unsurprisingly, developed nations have thus far benefited most of all from this. In 2016, for example, 95% of firms in OECD countries had access to high speed Internet, up from 86% in 2010. Meanwhile, developing countries are lagging far behind, but that doesn’t only serves to highlight IoT’s massive potential?

In fact, there are many applications of IoT which can be especially useful in the developing world, ranging from the most basic to highly sophisticated tasks: flow meters could be used to assess whether hand pumps are working properly; farmers could manage the irrigation of their plots from a distance using their smartphones; and sensors monitoring supply and storage temperatures of highly critical medications, such as the Vaccine Wastage Sentinel Monitoring System pilot project in Ghana, can reduce vaccine wastage and save lives.

As these examples show, the potential is most definitely there. A report by McKinsey even estimates that developing economies could generate nearly 40% of value in the international IoT market. However, these countries can only reach this potential if the right infrastructure is in place – and that’s where things get complicated.

The reasons for this are, as the World Economic Forum so redundantly puts it, “big, complex and multidimensional”. But it’s clear that the lack of adequate infrastructure development required to fully exploit IoT’s benefits plays a pivotal part, and keeps holding developing countries back. A report by the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development found that of the 3.9 billion people in the world still not online, the vast majority is in the developing world. The report estimates that by the end of 2017, Internet penetration will reach only 17.5% across the least developed countries.

This shortfall is largely attributable to poor government policies, which have failed to recognize that getting a nation online is inextricable from enabling it to get ahead. As the International Telecommunications Union correctly points out, a starting point for the proliferation of IoT is simply setting aside telecommunications spectrum dedicated to handling traffic from such devices.

A prime example of this is Bangladesh. Ranking 145th out of 175 countries, the country has long floundered among the lowest ranking countries in the ICT development index (IDI). Although Prim Minister Sheikh Hasina embarked on a digitization program in 2010 in a bid to diversify its economy, not much headway has been made. While the government’s intentions were good, its execution was terrible.

After attempting to auction 3G spectrum blocks at exorbitant prices in 2013 resulted in large amounts remaining unsold, the Bangladeshi government is trying the same thing for 4G in an auction planned later this year. By setting the spectrum price above the market rate, and in addition charging a spectrum conversion fee of $7.5 million for each MHz of spectrum operators already hold in the 900MHz and 1800MHz band in order to be able use the spectrum for 4G services , the country’s top three mobile phone operators, Grameenphone, Robi and Banglalink, were prompted to write to the government and express their concerns about these unrealistic prices.

By hoping to unduly profiteer over the launch of 4G, Bangladeshi policy-makers risk stalling a digitization project before it has even begun. Dhaka’ failure to get its 4G network off the ground is even more worrisome when compared to other developing countries, where governments showed a more sensible attitude towards establishing a functional policy framework to help stimulate the growth of the digital economy.

The Philippines, a country not known for measured policy decisions, posted the strongest Internet speed growth in the Asia-Pacific region after its government became acutely aware that connectivity is key to future economic fortunes. To increase speeds, Manila established an ICT Department and aggressively pushed for telecom operators to invest in network technology. Consequently, both fixed and mobile speeds are improving. Following a report into the state of the Internet in his country, President Duterte also approved a plan to deploy a national broadband network in the next three to five years at a cost of $4.0 billion. Farther afield, the government in Botswana is similarly engaged. Having invested some €60 million through the Botswana Fiber Networks (BoFiNet) since 2014 as part of its ‘backbone’ project, Internet access has proliferated throughout the nation and connected hitherto offline communities. These national broadband networks in the Philippines and Botswana go hand-in-hand with policies that allow and encourage mobile operators to invest in the deployment of broadband fibre networks.

Both countries still have a long way to go, yet they demonstrate that governments with a holistic view of connectivity and ICT can put in place policies that will benefit them in the future. The digital policies of today cannot be extricated from future development goals; only nations with reliable, affordable Internet will be able to attract the investment they need to drive growth and become part of global IoT networks.

*Alicia Conway is currently undertaking a Master’s in Economics and Management in London

Balfour Declaration, Racism, Propaganda And Wars – OpEd

0
0

This week, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which promoted giving Palestine to the Jewish people, will be celebrated in London. Around the world, there will be protests against it calling for Britain to apologize for the damage it inflicted. Students from the West Bank and Gaza will send letters to the British government describing the negative impacts that the Balfour Declaration, and the Nakba in 1948, continue to have on their lives today.

As Dan Freeman-Maloy describes, the Balfour Declaration is also relevant today because of the propaganda co-existing with it that justified white supremacy, racism and empire. British imperialists believed that democracy only applied to “civilized and conquering peoples,” and that “Africans, Asians, Indigenous peoples the world over – all were … ‘subject races,’ unfit for self-government.” That same racism was directed at Jewish people as well. Lord Balfour preferred to have Jewish people living in Palestine, away from Britain, where they might serve as useful British allies.

In the same time period, Bill Moyers reminds us in his interview with author James Whitman, the  laws in the United States were viewed as “a model for everybody in the early 20th century who was interested in creating a race-based order or race state. America was the leader in a whole variety of realms in racist law in the first part of that century.” This includes immigration laws designed to keep “undesirables” out of the US, laws creating second class citizenship for African-Americans and other people and bans on interracial marriage. Whitman has a new book documenting how Hitler used US laws as a basis for the Nazi state.

Injustice is legal

The US government and its laws continue to perpetuate injustice today. For example, contractors who apply for state funds to repair damage from Hurricane Harvey in Dickinson, Texas, are required to declare that they do not participate in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement. And Maryland Governor Hogan signed an executive order this week banning any state contractors from participating in the BDS movement, after local activists defeated similar legislation for the past three years.

Participation in boycotts should be protected under the First Amendment, as the right to protest Israeli apartheid should be. But, that right may also be taken away. This week, Kenneth Marcus was made the top civil rights enforcer at the Department of Education. He runs a group called the Brandeis Center for Human Rights, which actually works to attack individuals and groups that organize against Israeli apartheid on campuses. Nora Barrows-Friedman writes that Marcus, who has been filing complaints against pro-Palestinian student groups, will now be in charge of investigating those cases.

Dima Khalidi, the head of Palestinian Legal, which works to protect pro-Palestinian activists, explains that in the United States, “talking about Palestinian rights, and challenging Israel’s actions and narrative, [open] people up to a huge amount of risk, attacks, and harassment – much of it legal in nature, or with legal implications.” These attacks are happening because the BDS movement is having an impact.

This is just one obvious area of injustice. Of course there are others such as immigration policies and travel bans. And there are racist systems in the United States that are not based in law, but are enshrined in practices such as racially biased policing, slave-wage employment of prisoners and the placement of toxic industries in minority communities. The Marshall Project has a new report on racial bias in plea bargains.

In considering why “the public is quiet” about the United States’ unending wars, the New York Times (10/23/17) fails to examine the failure of leading media outlets to actually oppose these wars.

War propaganda

The media, as it did in the early twentieth century, continues to manipulate public opinion to support military aggression. The NY Times and other mass, corporate media have promoted wars throughout the history of US empire. From the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam and all the way back to ‘Remember the Maine’ in the Spanish-American War, which began the modern US Empire, the corporate media have always played a large role in leading the US into war.

Adam Johnson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) writes about a recent New York Times Op Ed: “Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial.” Johnson points out that the New York Times never questions whether wars are right or wrong, just whether they have Congressional support or not. And it promotes the “no boots on the ground” view that it is fine to bomb other countries as long as US troops are not harmed.

FAIR also points out the media’s false accusation that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile there is silence about the secret Israeli nuclear weapons program. Iran has been compliant with the International Atomic Energy Agency, while Israel has refused inspections. Eric Margolis raises the critical question of whether the Trump administration put the interests of Israel, which opposes Iran, before the interests of the US when he refused to certify the nuclear agreement with Iran.

North Korea is a country that is heavily propagandized in the US media. Eva Bartlett, a journalist who has traveled to and reported extensively about Syria, recently visited North Korea. She presents a view of the people and photographs that won’t be found in commercial media, which give a more positive perspective on the country.

Sadly, North Korea is considered to be a critical factor in the US effort to prevent China from becoming the dominant world power. Ramzy Baroud writes about the importance of a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the US and North Korea because otherwise it will be a long and bloody war. Baroud states that the US would quickly run out of missiles and then use “crude gravity bombs,” killing millions.

The recent re-election of Shinzo Abe heightens conflict in that region. Abe wants to build up Japan’s small military and alter its current pacifist Constitution so that Japan can attack other countries. No doubt, the Asian Pivot and concerns about tension between the US and other countries are fueling support for Abe and more militarization in Japan.

US aggression in Africa

The US military presence in Africa came into the spotlight this week with the death of US soldiers in Niger. Although it was heartless, perhaps we can be grateful that Trump’s gaffe with the newly-widowed Myeshia Johnson at least had the impact of raising national awareness about this secretive mission creep. We can thank outlets such as Black Agenda Report that have been reporting regularly on AFRICOM, the US Africa Command.

It was a surprise to many people, including members of Congress, that the US has 6,000 troops scattered in 53 out of 54 African countries. US involvement in Africa has existed since World War II, largely for oil, gas, minerals, land and labor. When Gaddafi, in Libya, interfered with the US’ ability to dominate African countries by providing oil money to them, thereby freeing them from the need to be indebted to the US, and led the effort to unite African countries, he was murdered and Libya was destroyed. China also plays a role in competing with the US for African investment, doing so through economic investment rather than militarization. No longer able to control Africa economically, the US turned to greater militarization.

AFRICOM was launched under President George W. Bush, who appointed a black general to lead AFRICOM, but it was President Obama who succeeded in growing the US military presence. Under Obama, the drone program grew in Africa. There are more than 60 drone bases that are used for missions in African countries such as Somalia. The US base in Dijbouti is used for bombing missions in Yemen and Syria. US military contractors are also raking in huge profits in Africa.

Nick Turse reports that US military conduct an average of ten operations in Africa daily. He describes how US weapons and military training have upset the balance of power in African countries, leading to coup attempts and the rise of terrorist groups.

In this interview, Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire, speaks about the long and brutal US history in Africa. He concludes:

“Washington must close down its bases, drone stations, airstrips, joint military operations, consulting projects and training programs with all African Union member-states. None of these efforts have brought peace and stability to the continent. What has happened is quite the opposite. Since the advent of AFRICOM, the situation has been far more unstable in the region.”

Building a global peace movement

The insatiable war machine has infiltrated all aspects of our lives. Militarism is a prominent part of US culture. It is a large part of the US economy. It cannot be stopped unless we work together to stop it. And, while we in the US, as the largest empire in the history of the world, have a major responsibility to act against war, we will be most effective if we can connect with people and organizations in other countries to hear their stories, support their work and learn about their visions for a peaceful world.

Fortunately, there are many efforts to revive the anti-war movement in the United States, and many of the groups have international ties. The United National Anti-War Coalition, World Beyond War, the Black Alliance for Peace and the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases are groups launched in the past seven years.

There are also opportunities for action. Veterans for Peace is organizing peace actions on November 11, Armistice Day. CODEPINK recently began the Divest From the War Machine Campaign targeting the five top weapons-makers in the US. Listen to our interview with lead organizer Haley Pederson on Clearing the FOG. And there will be a conference on closing foreign military bases this January in Baltimore.

Let’s recognize that just as wars are waged in order to dominate regions for their resources so that a few may profit, they are also rooted in white supremacist and racist ideology that believes only certain people deserve to control their destinies. By linking hands with our brothers and sisters around the planet and working for peace, we can bring about a multi-polar world in which all people have peace, self-determination and live in dignity.

Straining Pakistan-US Relations – OpEd

0
0

A friend in need is a friend indeed. However, in case of US-Pak relations, this proverb may prove wrong. Pakistan assumed itself a good friend of US from the last couple of decades. But the current scenario shows that there is a shift in United States policy towards South Asian Allies. Because today America do not acknowledge this friendship or the past efforts made by Pakistan for war on terror.

There was a time when United States was supporting Pakistan against the terrorist groups and Pakistan has done a remarkable job against its war on terror. Instead of recognizing the efforts and sacrifices, the US ambassador to UN called Pakistan, “a state sponsoring terrorism” and “Washington cannot tolerate any government that shelters terrorists”. Perhaps, the US is now chastising Pakistan because of its new regional friend i.e. India.

While ignoring Pakistan’s efforts and hard work against WOT, the US alliance with India became stronger, thus resulting in the Indo-US nuclear deal and NSG wavier. It allowed India to access international nuclear market. Instantaneously United States allowed India embark upon gigantic militarization, and facilitated in mounting close relations with Afghanistan in wake of bringing peace in Afghanistan. Indo-US partnership is further evolving with the major aim to counter China. Moreover it reveals an operative solicitation for India to perform an even inordinate role in South Asian region. The US unambiguously identify India’s domination over South Asia and wants India to become a regional safeguard United States ambassador to UN Nikki Haley gave a very harsh speech against Pakistan, which raised the concerns of Pakistani nation and hurt the sentiments of the Pakistani people who sacrificed their lives in American imposed war against terrorism. Maybe, Nikki is being loyal to her parental country India as she belongs to an American Sikh family of Indian origin, however, the UN forum is not established for the demonstration of personal affiliations.

In her statement, she claimed that United States is “really going to need” India’s help in stabilizing Afghanistan”. In such a case, tje question gets posed as to what has the US been doing in Afghanistan the last 17 years? All the national security issues which Pakistan has been facing from past decades are due to the consequences of its war against terrorism. To do further damage, India exploited the situation and sent a spy into Pakistan to carry out terrorist activities as evident by the confession made by the spy.

Miss Nikki is evidently buttering India while saying that ,“US needs India’s help to keep an eye on Pakistan.” But one cannot be sorry to raise the questions such as “Is India rally that much capable and does it deserve that respectable status to Keep an eye on Pakistan? Here is an effective reminder for Miss Haley in the face of Indian spies carrying terrorist activities in Pakistan’s different areas, Kashmir, Baluchistan province, and near Pakistan’s boarder adjacent to Afghanistan. Starting from Serbijit Singh, Kashmir Singh, Ravindra Khushik, Sheikh Shammim to Khulbushan Yadhav who were responsible for terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s soil.

Apparently India shows that it has been playing its part to manage the instability in Afghanistan but actually Indian influence is becoming a primary source of instability and insecurity in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. This situation leads to various questions such as ‘why India is doing so and America is supporting the cause? Are India and America playing the policy of divide and rule? Both countries have their hegemonic interest in the region and India doesn’t want Pakistan to influence the region owing to its deep rooted hostility with Pakistan.

The current scenario shows the unabated geo-strategic importance of Pakistan due to CPEC project. In the long term counter policies against China and Pakistan, India does not want Pakistan and Afghanistan to be united. Simultaneously, United States wants to contain China’s presence in the region. Therefore, the US is using India as an instrumental counter-force against Chinese influence in the region.

Supporting her arguments the United States ambassador to the UN said that, “India is a nuclear power and nobody gives it a second thought. Why? Because India is a democracy that threatens no one,” this statement has two aspects. One is that does India really not threaten any one? According to an estimate of South Asian terrorism Portal 2014, there are more than 180 terrorist insurgents and extremist groups who have been operating in India from past 20 years. Moreover as per the United States’ Department of State most of them have been blacklisted by United States itself and European Union in 2012. More ever Modi government and NSCM-K is a declared terrorist organization as per India’s Act, 1967. NSCN (K) has resorted to terrorism by killing innocent civilians and security forces and engaged in other violent activities. A few years back Modi was blacklisted and prohibited to travel US. Then how can one expect from such government who sponsors terrorism, to keep an eye on a country from whom it has been in hostile relation since its independence. Keeping in mind the details mentioned above one cannot categories India as a state who promotes peace and do not threaten any one.

While concluding the above analysis, one can infer that the United States criterion for terrorism is very biased and it changes its allies with its changing interests with the passage of time. Pakistan has always been against the terrorism and it will continue its efforts against this root cause to cure its national security objectives. The objective behind United States policies for Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, is to prevent these countries from enjoying the prosperity. Because, once they rise they will become competitors against the US and its European allies.

Fortum To Sell Head Office Campus In Keilaniemi, Espoo

0
0

Fortum and Fortum’s Pension Fund will sell Fortum’s current head office campus in Keilaniemi, Espoo, to Regenero Oy. The transaction includes the head office buildings and the plots.

Fortum announced earlier this year that the company’s head office will move at the turn of 2017-2018 to a refurbished multi-space office in Keilaniemi, Espoo. In addition to Fortum, the new head office building will house Tieto Oyj and Microsoft Oy. At the same time the company also announced that it was reviewing the continuation of its current head office. The primary alternative was to sell the building.

“We are pleased to have reached this point in the project. The new owner can now start the work to develop the iconic high-rise and the surrounding area. We will focus on our core business and will move into premises in Espoo that will better accommodate our current operations,” notes Risto Penttinen, Senior Vice President, Strategy, People and Performance, Fortum.

“Regenero’s goal is to develop the entire Keilaniemi area. With the real estate acquisition, Regenero can create a sustainable, multi-use urban environment close to excellent public transportation services that are continuing to develop with the Western Metro Extension,” says Juha Kostiainen, Chairman of Regenero’s Board of Directors.

“Fortum’s head office move is part of a broader corporate culture change, which will strengthen innovativeness and support open interaction between employees and a modern management approach. Our intention is to get the best possible benefit from new technologies in our daily work. We also want to promote the work wellbeing of our personnel by offering an inspiring working environment and the opportunity for flexible working,” says Risto Penttinen.

The value of the transaction is about EUR 74 million. Fortum will record the profit from the sale in its first-quarter 2018 financial result.

Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images