The media have had plenty of time to discuss Devin Kelley’s atheism and the role it may have played in gunning down the faithful during a religious service in a Texas church. But few have shown much interest in doing so.

This carries even more weight when we consider what was reported on “Good Morning Washington.” The story said, “a family member says he was an atheist who doesn’t like the church and hated religious people.” Kelley didn’t dislike religious people—he hated them.

The following media outlets cited Kelley’s atheism:

ABC (“Good Morning America”)
Boston Globe
CNN
CNN Wire
Fox News
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
TMZ
Washington Times

The following did a profile of Kelley’s background, but said nothing about his hateful brand of atheism:

Associated Press
CBS
cbsnews.com
NBC
PBS
USA Today
Time.com
Washington Post

The following left-wing Internet sites covered Kelley’s background, but did not report his militant atheism:

Alternet
Daily Beast
Daily Kos
Huffington Post
Mother Jones
Salon
Slate
Think Progress

Kelley’s murderous acts were clearly due to a range of variables, but not to mention that he “hated religious people” is irresponsible.

Had he been an ex-altar boy who attended a Catholic college, it would have been the subject of extensive coverage and unyielding analysis, complete with cheap shots at Catholicism. But because he shared the same animus harbored by many in the media, it wasn’t worth noting.

As the news about diversion of water of Brahmaputra published in Chinese media on 29 October ’17, it invites much repercussion from different fields in India and Bangladesh. People have expressed deep concern over diversion plan of China. Though China denied the report as false and baseless, it fails to nutralise the concern.

According to the published report China plans to divert waters of the river to drought effects Xinjiang and Taklimakan desert in the region. Chinese engineers have submitted a plan of building a 1,000 km tunnel to divert from Tibet to arid region in the north of Tibet, reports Stephen Chen.

The South China Morning Post, opines the plan if approved, would have huge ramifications for downstream India and Bangladesh, envisages building the world’s longest tunnel to carry billions of tons of water from Tibet to the nothern arid region.

Wang Wei, a researcher who helped draft the latest Tibet-Xinjiang water tunnel proposal, which was submitted to the central government in March, said more than 100 scientists formed different teams for the nationwide research effort. The researchers estimated the tunnel would be able to carry 10 billion to 15 billion tonnes of water from the Yarlung Zangbo (Tsangpo) River to the Taklimakan Desert each year.

The team he was part of was led by China’s top tunnelling expert, Wang Mengshu. It suggested the government drain the Yarlung Tsangpo River at Sangri county in southern Tibet, near the disputed border with India.

It is said an artificial island would be built in the middle of the river to create rapid turbulence, which could filter out sediment, and direct water to a well. The well could control the amount of water flowing into the tunnel.

The Brahmaputra project’s enormous cost, engineering challenges, possible environmental impact and the likelihood of protests by neighbouring countries have meant it has never left the drawing board, but Zhang Chuanqing said China was now taking a quiet, step-by-step approach to bring it to life. Chuanqing is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics in Wuhan who is involved in the Yunnan plan.

Researchers revealed building the Yunnan tunnel would be a “rehearsal” of the new technology, engineering methods and equipment needed for the Tibet-Xinjiang tunnel, which would divert the Yarlung Tsangpo River in southern Tibet to the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang.

The Brahmaputra is a rain-fed river and it carries rain water during winter also. It is possible because the a huge amount of rain water stored underground and it gives rivers water during winter when rain is rare. Moreover a substantial amount of glacial water comes from Tibet. In India, specially Assam gets a huge volume of water in Brahmaputra which is many times more than the water enters in Indian from Tibet. Of course, in winter, large amount of water comes from Tibet which is glacial water. Brahmaputra flows through economically less developed ethnic minority regions of India, Bangladesh and China.

China’s cutting off the flow of a Brahmaputra tributary is just the latest example of its emergence as the upstream water controller through a globally unparalleled hydroengineering infrastructure centred on dams.

Earlier, Beijing itself highlighted its water hegemony over downstream countries by releasing some of its dammed water for drought-hit nations in the lower Mekong basin.
Blocking the flow of the Xiabu river, a Yarlung Zangbo tributary, through a dam project is a significant development, a forewarning that China intends to do a lot more to re-engineer flows in the Brahmaputra system by riding roughshod over the interests of the lower riparian, India and Bangladesh.

On the Mekong, China has erected six giant dams, with the smallest of them bigger than the largest dam India has built since Independence.

For the downriver countries in that basin, the release of water from the Chinese dams to combat drought was a jarring reminder of not just China’s newfound power to control the flow of a life-sustaining resource, but also of their own reliance on Beijing’s goodwill and charity.

Armed with such leverage, Beijing is pushing its Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) initiative as an alternative to the lower-basin states’ Mekong River Commission, which China has spurned over the years.

China is a dialogue partner but unfortunately not a member of the Mekong River Commission, underscoring its intent to stay clued in on the discussions, without having to take on any legal obligation.

Asia’s water map changed fundamentally after the communists took power in China in 1949. It wasn’t geography but guns that established China’s choke-hold on almost every major transnational river system in Asia, the world’s largest and most-populous continent.

Beijing’s claim over these sprawling territories, which make up more than half of China’s landmass today, drew from the fact that they were imperial spoils of the earlier foreign rule in China.

Before the communists seized power, China had only 22 dams of any significant size. But now, China boasts more large dams on its territory than the rest of the world combined. If dams of all sizes and types are counted, their number in China surpasses 85,000. Strongman Mao Zedong initiated an ambitious dam-building programme, but the majority of the existing dams were built in the period after him.

Despite its centrality in Asia’s water map, China has rebuffed the idea of a water-sharing treaty with any neighbour. Concern is thus growing among its downstream neighbours that China is seeking to turn water into a potential political weapon.

China is clearly not content with being the world’s most dammed country, and the only thing that could temper its dam frenzy is a prolonged economic slowdown at home.
Flattening demand for electricity due to China’s already-slowing economic growth, for example, offers a sliver of hope that the Salween river could be saved from the cascade of hydroelectric mega-dams that Beijing has planned to build on it. Even so, China’s riparian might will remain unmatched.

Terming the Lalho dam project on the Xiabuqu river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra which is locally called as Tsangpo, as an important livelihood project to address food security and flood safety in Tibet, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the tributary river is located completely within the Chinese side. China announced the blockade of Xiabuqu river in Tibet as part of the construction of its “most expensive” dam project. The Lalho project on Xiabuqu River a tributary in Xigaze in Tibet involves an investment of USD 740 million.

India has already expressed concerns about a dam that was built upstream in Zangmu, Tibet, in 2010, which China says is a run of the river dam for hydropower generation that doesn’t store large volumes of water and hence has a limited impact on downstream flows. Since then, three other dams have been given the green light on upper and middle reaches. It is sure, if the government approves the Brahmaputra tunnel, this would have huge ramifications for India and Bangladesh.

The Zangmu dam is located in a gorge 140km southeast of Lhasa at an altitude of 3,260m, it will be 116m high and 390m long. Its capacity will be 540MW. The first set of generators at Zangmu became operational in 2014. It’s the first dam in a series of five planned in the same region at Lhoka. The others will be located at Gyatsa, Zhongda, Jiexu and Langzhen. Stating that Brahmaputra is rich in water and a major hydrological resource for Tibet, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had claimed the development and utilisation of the Chinese side at present was just one percent.

India is also not lagging behind China building dams and blocking tributaries. There has been a strong anti-dam agitation going on in Assam and Arunachal. Pradesh by the Central Water Commission point out that the 44 dams planned within India will change the natural flow of the water in 29 rivers and streams. As of now, these rivers and streams stretch over 514 kilometres. The Arunachal Pradesh government has signed MoUs for 168 hydel projects on the rivers in the state.

The proposed Brahmaputra (Siang) project is estimated to be 300-metre high dam with power generation capacity of 10000MW. The project, being a multipurpose project, will moderate flood and erosion, providing relief in downstream river reaches of Arunachal and Assam. Siang Lower Hydro Electric Project, Siang Upper Stage II and Siang Upper Stage I are planned to cover almost the entire length of the Siang in India. 208.5 km of the river will be converted into one continuous reservoir as all three projects are planned back-to-back without any free flowing intermediate river stretch.

Siang region belongs to East Himalayan region. The Siang basin is home to 11 different kinds of forests, 1,349 plant species and 1,197 animal and fish species. The official assessment of the dams’ cumulative impact predicts that much of this wildlife will migrate, some perhaps forever. Fish species too would find life more difficult once the natural flow of water changes.

Once the dams are built, all of it will be altered — 353 kilometres will turn into reservoirs, and close to 161 kilometres will be converted into tunnels.This would inevitably change the basin’s 15,000 square kilometres of forest.

We see huge volume of water in the Brahmaputra in Assam which is many times more than the volume of water enters into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet. The actual Brahmaputra starts in Assam at Kobu Chapori confluence where Siang joins with Dibang and Luit, two other tributaries. Yarlung Zangbo or Siang contributes only 20 per cent of water to the Brahmaputra in Assam the river come down to India from Tibet it becomes wider and volume of water increased.

It is easily understandable that most amount of water contributed by tributaries in Assam. So it is a vague idea that the river will do dry if China uses water in their part. Dr. B P Duarah, the Head of the Department of Geology, Gauhati University supports this facts. But China must use its water informing details to downstream countries and rampant activities must not affect the river system and the ecology and geology.

Both India and China must be responsible towards exploitation of water resources of the Yarlung Zangbo, and carry out a policy of actual development and protection at the same time. China claim scientific planning, adequate justification, prudent decisions and orderly exploitation are in line with international practice, but we have not seen these in practice.

Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) on trans-border rivers between India and China hasn’t been carrying out good cooperation on trans border rivers for a long time. China stopped to provide water data after Doklam dispute and military tension since last June. Earlier China claimed that proceeding from the larger picture of China-India friendship and from the humanitarian angle, the Chinese side had overcome all kinds of difficulties, and had provided services to the Indian side such as flood season hydrological data and emergency management, and played a positive role in areas such as flood and disaster control along the banks of the relevant rivers. But China is willing to continue relevant cooperation with the Indian side through the existing expert level mechanism on trans-border rivers.

There is no single water sharing pact between China and India. Moreover both these countries have been avoiding rights and problems of Bangladesh even it is also a riparian development. Legitimate use of the river water and hydrological resources is an important component of the rights of the people including millions of people living downstream along the banks of Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh.

An honest study of the holy Quran and Sunnah demonstrates the fact that terrorist groups like ISIS act in complete disagreement with the injunctions of Islam. The Quran, for example, equates killing of one person to the elimination of all mankind (5:32), and describes persecution and disorder on earth as an even worse offense (2:217). The study of the ahadith [plural of hadith in Arabic] also shows that the beloved Prophet warned us of the evolution of religious extremism and violence 1400 years ago in astonishing detail. For instance, he prophesized that a time would come when nothing would remain of the true spiritual essence of Islam except the word ‘Islam’, nothing of the Quran except its word and many “Mosques would be well-furnished but bereft of the guidance” (see the book of hadith “Mishkat Al-Masabih”).

The beloved Prophet went on to describe the terrorist groups such as ISIS that at the time of tribulation [fitna] there would appear “a group of young people who would be foolish and immature in thought”. They would “use the beautiful speech” but perpetrate the most heinous crimes. They would recite the Quran and call people to the Quran but its “teachings would not go past their throats” i.e. they would have nothing to do with the message of the Quran in reality. The beloved Prophet described these terrorists as “the worst of the creation”.

Relatively speaking, one hadith that a number of Arab and non-Arab Islamic clerics and scholars are quoting to refute ISIS and debar Muslim youth from joining the ISIS militants is as follows:

Arabic Text:

حَدَّثَنَا الْوَلِيدُ، وَرِشْدِينُ، عَنِ ابْنِ لَهِيعَةَ، عَنْ أَبِي قَبِيلٍ، عَنْ أَبِي رُومَانَ، عَنْ عَلِيِّ بْنِ أَبِي طَالِبٍ، رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ قَالَ: «إِذَا رَأَيْتُمُ الرَّايَاتِ السُّودَ فَالْزَمُوا الْأَرْضَ فَلَا تُحَرِّكُوا أَيْدِيَكُمْ، وَلَا أَرْجُلَكُمْ، ثُمَّ يَظْهَرُ قَوْمٌ ضُعَفَاءُ لَا يُؤْبَهُ لَهُمْ، قُلُوبُهُمْ كَزُبَرِ الْحَدِيدِ، هُمْ أَصْحَابُ الدَّوْلَةِ، لَا يَفُونَ بِعَهْدٍ وَلَا مِيثَاقٍ، يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْحَقِّ وَلَيْسُوا مِنْ أَهْلِهِ، أَسْمَاؤُهُمُ الْكُنَى، وَنِسْبَتُهُمُ الْقُرَى، وَشُعُورُهُمْ مُرْخَاةٌ كَشُعُورِ النِّسَاءِ، حَتَّى يَخْتَلِفُوا فِيمَا بَيْنَهُمْ، ثُمَّ يُؤْتِي اللَّهُ الْحَقَّ مَنْ يَشَاءُ»(كتاب الفتن للعلامة الحافظ أبي عبد الله النعيم بن حماد المروزي، الجزء الثالث ، باب “في خروج بني العباس” رقم الحديث 573 (

English Translation:

It is narrated on the authority of Hadhrat ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (may Allah ennoble his countenance): “When you see the black flags, then remain on the ground, and do not move your hands or your feet. Thereafter there shall emerge a weak folk to whom no concern is given. Their hearts will be like the iron rods. They shall be the people of the State (Ashab al-Dawla). They will fulfill neither covenant nor agreement. They will invite to the Truth, though they are not from its people. Their names will be with ‘kuna’ [plural form of kunya; a teknonym in Arabic names. A kunya is expressed by the use of ‘Abu’ that means ‘father’], and their ascriptions will be to villages (or places) [i.e., al-Misri, al-Harrani, al-Baghdadi, etc.]. Their hair will be long like that of women. [They shall remain so] till they differ among themselves, and then Allah will bring the truth to whomever He wills.”Kitab Al Fitan (Book of Tribulations) by Nu’aym ibn Hammad)

Imam Nu’aym ibn Hammad, who is the Shahikh of Imam Bukhari, mentioned this hadith in the book of Tribulations [Kitab al- Fitan]. This means that this hadith is all about the people of Tribulations, or in other words, about those people who incite terrorism, violence and radicalism.

When pondering over the hadith, some questions strike us; what are the signs of these people holding the black flags and causing great tribulations? Who are these people? Do they exist today? Can we say that these people are none other than the ISIS militants? In order to resolve such questions, let us ponder over the same hadith into parts:

1. This hadith says to Muslims, “When you see the black flags, then remain on the ground, and do not move your hands or your feet.” This hadith suggests Muslims to remain where they are, when they see the black banners.  We can see that the ISIS has the black banners; so the Muslims should not rush to join the ISIS.

2. It also says, “Thereafter there shall emerge a weak folk to whom no concern is given. Their hearts will be like the iron rods”.

When ISIS appeared as a small group of militants, no concern was given to it. However, with their brutal and merciless deeds, the ISIS gained power and captured some parts of Iraq and Syria by terrorizing, mutilating, beheading the citizens. Their hearts are merciless and as hard as iron rods just like the hadith tells us; so they kill everyone who goes against them.

3. The most important part of the hadith is that “They shall be the people of the State (Ashab al-Dawla)”

Interestingly ISIS refers to itself as “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” or Dawla al-Islamia in Arabic. The Arabic word “al-Dawla” mentioned in this hadith means ‘State’.

4. The hadith says, “They will fulfill neither covenant nor agreement”

From this perspective, we find that ISIS has fulfilled neither covenant nor agreement i.e. the covenant of peace, while it is incumbent upon Muslims to be loyal to the peace-treaty.

5. The hadith says, “They will invite to the Truth, but they are not from its people”.

This completely pertains to the habit of the ISIS. Even the elementary students of Islam can tell you that the ISIS militants are misguiding the people in the name of Truth, Islam, Jihad, and by misinterpreting the Quran and Sunnah. They apparently invite to Islam, but their merciless crimes and false creeds bear witness to the fact that they are not Islamic.

6. Another important sign of the ISIS that the hadith narrates is that “Their names will be with ‘kuna’ [plural form of kunya; a teknonym in Arabic names. A kunya is expressed by the use of ‘Abu’ that means ‘father’]”.

This holds true for the ISIS leaders and militants that their names are preceded by ‘kuna’ i.e. ‘Abu’ such as;

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ (leader)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (founder; killed in 2006)

Abu Ayyub al-Masri (killed in 2010)

Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi (killed in 2010)

Abu Suleiman al-Naser (head of military shura; killed in February 2011)

Abu Muhammad al-Shimali (key leader in ISIL’s Immigration and Logistics Committee and responsible for facilitating the travel of foreign fighters primarily through the border Turkey/Syria)

Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajer (spokesman, appointed in December 2016)

Abu Talha al-Almani

Abu Luqman, governor of Raqqah

Abu Yusaf (senior security official)

Abu Yusaf (senior security official)

Abu Ahmad al-Alwani (Member of Military Shura)

Abu Muhammad al-Jazrawi, head of Hisbah (Islamic religious police)

Abu Jandal al-Masri, Chief of Information in Raqqa

Abu Ali al-Shishani

Abu Ahmed (senior official interviewed by the Guardian)

Abu Mohannad al-Sweidawi (Member of Military Shura; killed in November 2014)

Abu Sayyaf (senior leader overseeing ISIL’s gas and oil operations, killed in May 2015)

Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, deputy leader in charge of Iraq; killed on 18 August 2015)

Abu Nabil al Anbari (Leader of ISIL in Libya, killed in an air strike in November 2015)

Abu Saleh, senior Iraqi leader (killed in 2015)

Abu Atheer al-Absi (governor of Aleppo province and coordinator of the Islamic State’s media operations)

Abu Ala al-Afri (also known as Abu Ali al-Anbari, Deputy Leader of ISIL, killed in March 2016)

Abu Waheeb (commander in Al Anbar, Iraq; killed in May 2016)

Abu Omar al-Shishani (field commander in Syria, killed in July 2016)

Abu Wardah Santoso, senior leader in Sulawesi, Indonesia (killed in July 2016)

Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, (official spokesperson and senior leader, killed in August 2016)

Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, (second-in-command in Syria, killed in December 2016)

Ahmad Abousamra (chief editor of Dabiq, killed in al-Thawrah, Syria in January 2017)

Abu Khattab al-Tunisi, (third-highest ranking commander in Syria, killed in June 2017 in Raqqa)

Abu Anas al-Shami (Strategist, and Al-Zarqawi’s adviser, killed in 2004)

Abu Azzam (killed in 2005)

Abu Omar al-Kurdi (captured in 2005)

Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (captured in 2006)

Abu Yaqub al-Masri (killed in 2007)

Abu Usamah al-Maghrebi, (military commander, killed in March 2014)

Abu Jurnas (Mosul Governor, killed in December 2014)

……….. (Ref: List of ISIS members Wikipedia, Dabiq, Rumiya)

7. Another important sign of the inciters of tribulations mentioned in the above referenced Hadith is that “Their ascriptions will be to villages (or places).”

If we look into the names of ISIS militants, we find that they ascribe to the places, villages and cities such as al-Misri, al-Harrani, Zarqawi, al-Baghdadi, al-Kurdi, al-Iraqi, al-Maghrebi, al-Kurdi, al-Alwani, al-Jazrawi, al-Shishani, al-Almani etc. To see more, please see the list of ISIS members mentioned above.

8. The hadith says, “Their hair will be long like that of women. [They shall remain so] till they differ among themselves, and then Allah will bring the truth to whomever He wills.”

Please search the pictures of ISIS members on internet, you will find that their hair is long like that of women.

Given the signs of the inciters of tribulations clearly mentioned in the referenced hadith above, one cannot deny the fact that this hadith relates to the ISIS militants. As for the message taken out of this hadith in the present context, it suggests Muslims to remain on the ground or wherever they are, that is, the Hadith prevents Muslims from joining ISIS.

A regular Columnist with www.NewAgeIslam.com (which published this article), Ghulam Ghaus Siddiqi Dehlvi is an Alim and Fazil (Classical Islamic scholar) with a Sufi background, Islamic writer and English-Arabic-Urdu Translator.

1. ISIS, Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Other Islamist Terrorists are Kharijites? An Analysis of 40 Major Characteristics of Kharijites

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/isis,-taliban,-al-qaeda-and-other-islamist-terrorists-are-kharijites?-an-analysis-of-40-major-characteristics-of-kharijites/d/106173

2. ISIL Militants Killing Muslims in Iraq will Taste the Hellfire

http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/isil-militants-killing-muslims-in-iraq-will-taste-the-hellfire/d/97833

3. The Self-Proclaimed ‘Caliphate’ of Daesh or ‘ISIS’: A Gross Distortion of the Rightly Guided Caliphate and Thus a Neo-Kharijite Organization

http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/the-self-proclaimed-‘caliphate’-of-daesh-or-‘isis’–a-gross-distortion-of-the-rightly-guided-caliphate-and-thus-a-neo-kharijite-organization/d/102853

4. Refutation Of Raymond Ibrahim’s Article Entitled ‘Islamic State Beheads, Mutilates, As The Quran Instructs’ – Part 1: Don’t Ignore The Context Of Quran’s Verses Or The Asbab Al-Nuzul

http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/refutation-of-raymond-ibrahim’s-article-entitled-‘islamic-state-beheads,-mutilates,-as-the-quran-instructs’—part-1–don-t-ignore-the-context-of-quran-s-verses-or-the-asbab-al-nuzul/d/100105

5. Refutation of Raymond Ibrahim’s Article Entitled ‘Islamic State Beheads, Mutilates, As the Quran Instructs’ – Part 2: The Dreadful Story of Abu Jahl’s Torture of Early Muslims

http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/refutation-of-raymond-ibrahim’s-article-entitled-‘islamic-state-beheads,-mutilates,-as-the-quran-instructs’—part-2–the-dreadful-story-of-abu-jahl’s-torture-of-early-muslims/d/100166

6. Refutation of Raymond Ibrahim’s Article ‘Islamic State Beheads, Mutilates, As the Quran Instructs’ – Part 3: Associating Terrorism With Islam Is Complete Distortion Of The Religion; Evidence from Qur’an

http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/refutation-of-raymond-ibrahim’s-article-‘islamic-state-beheads,-mutilates,-as-the-quran-instructs’—part-3–associating-terrorism-with-islam-is-complete-distortion-of-the-religion;-evidence-from-qur’an/d/100290

7. ISIS: The Knife That Slaughters Islam And Muslims

http://www.newageislam.com/books-and-documents/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/isis–the-knife-that-slaughters-islam-and-muslims/d/107144

8. Unmasking Ideological Origins of ISIS; Refutation of Its Deviant Theology Alone Can Defeat This Evil

http://www.newageislam.com/books-and-documents/ghulam-ghaus,-new-age-islam/unmasking-ideological-origins-of-isis;-refutation-of-its-deviant-theology-alone-can-defeat-this-evil/d/107242

9. Suicide Attacks By ISIS or Any Other Muslim Militants Are Brazenly Un-Islamic and Categorically Forbidden [Haram] Under All Circumstances: Evidence from the Quran and Hadith

http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/ghulam-ghaus-siddiqi,-new-age-islam/suicide-attacks-by-isis-or-any-other-muslim-militants-are-brazenly-un-islamic-and-categorically-forbidden-[haram]-under-all-circumstances–evidence-from-the-quran-and-hadith/d/107985

10. Refuting ISIS’ Magazine ‘Rumiyah’ That Ignores the Context of Quran’s Verses To Forcefully Justify its Atrocities

http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/ghulam-ghaus-siddiqi,-new-age-islam/refuting-isis’-magazine-‘rumiyah’-that-ignores-the-context-of-quran-s-verses-to-forcefully-justify-its-atrocities/d/111524

The U.S. Census Bureau is preparing for its next constitutionally mandated national head count, to be held in 2020.

Unfortunately, the Bureau’s 2020 Operation Plan reveals that an actual enumeration of the population—the only thing constitutionally permitted—will be but a small part of the overall effort.

The 192-page document filled with bureaucratic gobbledygook reminds us why the census should return to its original simplicity.

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution states that “Representatives … shall be apportioned among the several States … according to their respective Numbers.”

It further requires that “the actual Enumeration,” or headcount, shall be made every ten years, in such Manner as Congress shall by Law direct.

In proposing legislation for the first census, James Madison suggested that the government gather other “useful information” that would assist Congress in learning about the country and in crafting legislation.

The first Congress, however, rejected Madison’s grandiose plans for the census. Instead, the 1790 census was a model of simplicity that asked five questions focusing on a general count of the population.

The 2020 Operation Plan eschews a mere count and seeks information that will be used to calculate everything from employment and crime rates to health and educational background.

The Bureau even asserts that decennial data is necessary so private businesses can examine it “to make decisions about whether or where to locate their restaurants or stores.”

In other words, the Bureau appears to believe that without government intrusion into our lives entrepreneurs will be struck blind and thus be unable to allocate capital toward beneficial projects.

Such wild claims are preposterous. Moreover, going further than the enumeration exceeds constitutional authority and undermines provisions of the Bill of Rights, which is meant to secure our liberties against governmental encroachment.

For example, the First Amendment to the Constitution seeks to protect the people’s right to freedom of speech. By forcing people to answer questions beyond a humble count, the Bureau compels people to engage in speech.

The idea that the First Amendment prohibits government from compelling speech has deep roots in American constitutional law.

Indeed, in 1943, in a case known as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court relied upon this doctrine when it struck down a school policy requiring all children to salute the flag.

The Fourth Amendment secures the people in their homes against unreasonable searches and seizures. A core principle of that amendment is personal privacy—the right to be let alone.

The great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once observed that to secure this right “every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

The Census Bureau should recognize that questions beyond an enumeration intrude upon our right to be let alone and thus should form no part of the census.

There is also a real threat that government can misuse information collected from the census, as the Roosevelt administration did when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it used census data to locate Japanese Americans and facilitate their relocation to internment camps.

This mass deprivation of civil rights was a dark blot on the otherwise heroic efforts of the so-called Greatest Generation.

The decennial census is a constitutional necessity, but it need not be an informational fishing expedition. The first census asked five questions and the process of counting has not changed in the last 227 years to require more.

Let’s go back to a simple enumeration and stop compelling speech and invasion of privacy.

By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.*

It’s hardly a secret that free markets have fallen out of favor among conservatives throughout the West in recent years. Whether it’s Britain’s Theresa May, Germany’s Angela Merkel, or Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, many center-right politicians have quietly re-embraced some of the economically-interventionist polices that prevailed between the 1940s and the 1970s. Likewise, important segments of conservative intellectual opinion, such as the American journal First Things, have substantially qualified their formerly strong support for market economies.

There’s many reasons for this. One is growing worries about some of the apparent social and cultural effects of free markets. Another is the undeniable spread of economic nationalism, fueled by the sense that free trade has undermined entire communities’ well-being. Nor did the 2008 financial crisis help the cause of free markets inasmuch as economic liberalization was perceived to be the prime culprit.

I use words like “apparent,” “sense,” and “perceived” because, in many of these cases, what matters is perception. The reality is often rather different. Unfortunately such realities—such as the extent to which the 2008 recession was facilitated by factors such as flawed monetary policy and government efforts to socially engineer the American housing market—don’t get anywhere near the attention they deserve among some conservative skeptics of markets.

But, I’d suggest, this turn against markets among some conservatives is principally derived from a desire for something that has grown in our era of economic globalization. And that is a widespread and perfectly reasonable yearning for stability. The immense economic growth and poverty-reductions generated by global markets requires acceptance of the constant upheaval that’s part-and-parcel of free competition and economic creativity. In the long-term, the overwhelming majority consequently become much wealthier. The downside is considerable instability, and all of us need and want a certain degree of certainty in life, including its economic dimension.

This presents particular dilemmas for conservatives. After all, conservatism emphasizes the benefits of permanency, order, tradition, and strong and rooted communities. Conservatives who believe that free markets are the most optimal of imperfect economic systems thus need to rethink about how to integrate their case for markets into the broader conservative agenda. And here, I’d argue, the man whose thought gave birth to modern conservativism has much to teach us.

Enter Burke

Though widely considered modern conservatism’s intellectual progenitor, Edmund Burke’s economic views generally receive sparse attention. Burke’s conservatism is mainly linked to his religious orthodoxy, his defense of what he called “ancient liberties,” and his relentless criticism of the French Revolution’s destruction of many of the institutions that protected freedom and social order.

Rather fewer people know that Burke was a committed free trader, a strong defender of private property, and a skeptic of government economic intervention. He once described Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations as being “in its ultimate results,” “perhaps the most important book ever written.” Burke’s literary executors, French Laurence and Walker King, even claimed that Burke “was also consulted, and the greatest deference was paid to his opinions by Dr. Adam Smith, in the progress of the celebrated work on the Wealth of Nations.” When Smith’s magnum opus appeared in 1776, Burke reviewed it for the widely-read Annual Registrar. He sang the book’s praises as a text which managed to achieve that most difficult of goals: to “teach things that are by no means obvious.”

Yet even before The Wealth of Nations’ publication, Burke was arguing the case for greater commercial liberty. In parliamentary debates during 1772, for example, he insisted that the best way for society’s poorest segments to receive enough bread was through a market free of legislative interference. Over twenty years later, in the midst of Britain’s epic struggle with Revolutionary France, Burke penned a carefully-worded memorandum entitled Thoughts and Details on Scarcity to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in 1795. Here he explained why the state generally shouldn’t interfere with the market-price of goods, services, and labor.

Burke’s strong belief in economic liberty and the institutions and habits which sustain it are not in doubt. The real question is why he held these views. It turns out that Burke’s support for extensive commercial freedom wasn’t chiefly based upon what we today would call libertarian premises. His main reasons for embracing free markets were those of a conservative.

Focusing on the Short-term is Irresponsible

In many ways, conservatism is all about the long-term. The conservative looks back into history to recall the wisdom of the past. Conservatives are also skeptical of responding to immediate concerns, real or otherwise, by acting in defiance of truths knowable by reason and/or historical experience. For the conservative, this outlook is a matter of prudence, perspective, and good government.

These concerns are all found in Burke’s most lengthy reflections on the importance of economic liberty, free exchange, and free prices. The context of his 1795 memorandum was one in which William Pitt’s government was confronted with a scarcity of food throughout Britain after a poor harvest. Like governments everywhere in time of crisis, Pitt’s administration was under enormous pressure to “just do something.”

Some were proposing that the government address the problem by granting subsidies to bolster laborers’ wages. Others wanted Pitt to establish an effective government monopoly of the grain-market in order to set fixed-prices for this commodity. These schemes were accompanied by a rhetoric which decried wealth-differentials and emphasized growing antagonism between the poor and the rich. The implication was that if Pitt didn’t act, Britain could witness the type of extreme social disorder which had manifested itself in France.

Part of Burke’s advice to Pitt involved explaining the economic difficulties with the proposals under consideration. Burke repeated, for example, his 1772 argument that a free market in grain was more likely to meet the needs of the poor than other economic arrangements. State efforts to manipulate the market price of commodities, he noted, were bound to make it harder and harder for consumers and producers to “mutually discover each other’s wants.” Attempts to fix the distorting effects of such interventions upon the price-mechanism via more interventions would, Burke said, just make it even more difficult for people to know the real market-price of any given commodity. The result would be misallocated resources and growing shortages.

Burke’s memorandum also argued against demonizing the large wealth-disparities associated with the accumulation of capital. Capital-accumulation was, he claimed, essential for the type of investment that facilitates the growth which helps those whom Burke called the “laboring people” to find work and escape poverty. In his own lifetime, Burke said, he had noticed how the spread of commercial freedom and the growth of accumulated capital had helped increasing numbers of once-poor people become wealthier, to the point whereby they were developing their own capital-reserves.

These observations were not simply those of someone who grasped the often-counterintuitive insights of modern economics as expounded by Smith. They were also conservative inasmuch as they cautioned governments against acting rashly to appease those who don’t know—or don’t care—about the likely negative impacts of particular policy-choices upon the nation’s well-being.

It wasn’t a question of being elitist. To Burke’s mind, it was a matter of helping policy-makers and electorates understand that certain economic truths (what Burke called “laws of commerce”) don’t change in the face of what he called “idle tales”, “foolish good-intention,” and “the malignant credulity of mankind.” In such conditions, the government’s first responsibility to the people “is information”—i.e., the truth—“to guide our judgment.”

A focused, but limited State

There is, however, another aspect of Burke’s free market beliefs which are rooted firmly in his conservatism: his view of the state’s role vis-à-vis the economy.

In his Thoughts on Scarcity, Burke articulated the principle that he had developed as a way of determining which particular functions were legitimately carried out by governments. As he put it:

“the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.”

This was not an attitude of a priori hostility towards government. For Burke, what mattered was that the functions being performed by the state really were tasks which only governments can accomplish: national defense, the administration of justice, law and order, etc. While Burke was prepared to “admit of exceptions” to this rule, they remained exceptions.

Burke’s reference to “public prosperity” might seem to open the door to extensive state interference in economic life. Burke, however, made it clear that the state’s economic role was limited by three considerations.

The first was that governments should hesitate before embarking upon legislation which seeks to influence directly the exercise of legitimate property-rights and the workings of private contract. Excessive government involvement in these areas, he maintained, could substantially undermine (1) the security provided by property and (2) the freedom of individuals to negotiate agreements in ways which mutually benefit all parties to a given contract. Resolving any subsequent disagreements among the relevant parties, Burke commented, was the judiciary’s responsibility: not government ministers.

Second, Burke thought that the more national governments involved themselves in local and provincial affairs, the more distracted they would become from carrying out their primary responsibilities. This conviction was reinforced by Burke’s third and related consideration: that certain welfare functions were better undertaken by non-state entities.

“Without all doubt,” Burke regarded assistance to the needy as “a direct and obligatory duty upon Christians.” At the time, that designation included almost everyone in Britain. Nonetheless, he added, “the manner, mode, time, choice of objects, and proportion are left to private discretion.”

Burke’s point was that London-based officials simply couldn’t know enough about the nature of poverty in Inverness or Galway to act effectively. By contrast, private individuals and groups close to a given problem were likely to possess deeper insights into the nature of the difficulty than national governments. The latter, Burke implied, should be far more humble about their capacity to assist those in need.

All these reflections on Burke’s part add up to a classic conservative case for the free market. Far from being doctrinaire, Burke’s position underscored the importance of prudence, paid attention to crucial insights outlined in Smith’s Wealth of Nations, insisted that local communities and non-state institutions remain free to address local problems, and stressed that governments should focus on their core functions and have the humility to know their limits. Above all, Burke believed that economies needed to be grounded in certain truths about the human condition which utopians and romanticists of all stripes are inclined to ignore.

If that doesn’t amount to a distinctly conservative argument for free markets, one which compliments the rest of conservatism’s political agenda, I don’t know what does.

This article first appeared in the Burkean Journal on Nov. 2, 2017.

About the author:
*Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Richard M. Ebeling*

November 7, 2017, marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Russian (or Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia that happened on that date in November 1917, which lead to the communist “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ushered in an epoch of totalitarian tyranny and mass murder both in Russia and in every other country where socialism was put into practice.

Historians estimate that as many as 150 million people, if not more — innocent men, women and children — were killed in the name of building the collectivist utopia. They were shot, tortured, worked or starved to death in prison cells, in interrogation rooms, in labor camps, or just in the places where they lived. “Socialism-in-practice” created a chamber of horrors in which the individual was reduced to a mere expendable “cog in the wheel” to serve the collective good, or made into “enemies of the people” to be eliminated as the prelude to building the “bright, beautiful communist future.”

Power, Privilege, and Terror as Socialist Reality

In the name of a “classless society,” communism created the most minute and granulated system of privilege, favor, and power, depending upon where the individual stood in the hierarchies of the Communist Party and the management of the vast central planning bureaucracy. “Special” food and clothing stores, “special” clinics and hospitals, “special” apartments and country houses, “special” resort and recreational facilities and vacation sites, “special” opportunities (with Party permission) to visit the forbidden and decadent “West,” and to bring back some of the “bourgeois” goods unavailable in the “workers’ paradise.”

The Communist Party did all in their power to control and confine the minds of those over whom they ruled into narrow corridors of knowledge and belief so little or no doubt could arise that theirs was the best of all worlds, and far more “socially just” and materially better than anything existing in the reactionary and corrupted capitalist parts of the globe.

If for a younger generation born after 1991 — the year the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the world map — this all seems like ancient history that has no relevance or meaning for their lives (and especially so since so little is told about that Soviet chamber of horrors in school history books, or the mainstream opinion magazines and newspapers), its significance is no less important to know and a lesson not to be forgotten.

Prophets of the Socialist Destruction and Dictatorship-to-Come

Six years before Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published their famous, The Communist Manifesto, in 1848, the renowned German poet, Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), wrote the following in 1842:

Communism is the secret name of the dread antagonist setting proletariat rule with all its consequences against the present bourgeois regime. It will be a frightful duel. How will it end? No one knows but the gods and goddesses acquainted with the future. We only know this much: Communism, though little discussed now and loitering in hidden garrets on miserable straw pallets, is the dark hero destined for a great, if temporary, role in the modern tragedy. … Will the old absolutist traditions reenter the stage, though in a new costume and with new cues and slogans? How could that drama end?

Wild gloomy times are roaring toward us, and a prophet wishing to write a new apocalypse would have to invent entirely new beasts. … The future smells of Russian leather, blood, godlessness, and many whippings. I would advise our grandchildren to be born with very thick skins on their backs.

Others gave warnings about what would be in store if the false fantasies of socialism were to be followed and introduced into any society. The nineteenth century French classical liberal economist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843-1916), gave warning in his important work, Collectivism (1885):

How can liberty exist in a society in which everyone would be an employee of the state brigaded in squadrons from which there would be no escape, dependent upon a system of official classification for promotion, and for all the amenities of life! . . . The employee (and all would be employees) would the slave, not of the state, which is merely an abstraction, but of the politicians who possessed themselves of power.

A heavy yoke would be imposed upon all, and since no free printing presses would exist, it would be impossible to obtain publicity for criticism or for grievances without consent of the government. The press censure exercised in [Imperial] Russia would be liberty itself compared to that which would be the inevitable accompaniment of collectivism. … A tyranny such as has never been hitherto experienced, would close all mouths and bend all necks.

Never were there prophecies more prescient than Heine and Leroy-Beaulieu’s many decades before the Bolshevik Revolution. The stench of oppression and death surrounds the notion of how socialism views man and mankind. The noted Russian mathematician, Igor Shafarevich (1923–2017), who spent years in the GULAG labor camps for his opposition to the Soviet regime, concluded his study of The Socialist Phenomenon (1975) with this telling interpretation of the nature of the communist system:

To begin with, most socialist doctrines and movements are literally saturated with the mood of death, catastrophe and destruction. … The death of mankind is not only a conceivable result of the triumph of socialism – it constitutes the goal of socialism. …

Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism of non-individual features, such as production or class interest.

It is often rightly said, “Never Again,” when pointing to the madness and mass murders, especially against the European Jews, under German National Socialism (Nazism). This is equally as true when pointing out the horrors and mass murders of Marxian socialism and Soviet communism.

Indeed, one of the reasons why the Marxian variations on the socialist theme appealed to so many around the world was due to its more universal attraction compared to National Socialism. The Nazi ideal was reserved for a “racially pure” German people, with the rest of humanity viewed as genetic inferiors to be slaughtered or enslaved for the benefit of a “master race.”

Marxian-type socialism, on the other hand, claimed to be speaking for the large mass of humanity  — against a handful of profit-oriented exploiting capitalists (the “one percent”). Thus, it called upon all people, everywhere, suffering under the minority of property owning capitalists, to rise up in the name of “social justice” and a collectivist utopia that promised a “better world” for all mankind (except for the minority of “exploiters” everywhere who were to be expropriated and liquidated).

National Socialism was never going to attract followers, fighters and fanatics outside of those who were classified and identified as among the chosen, based on “genes” and “blood” making them part of the German master race.  But Marxian socialism called upon all people, everywhere, who were “the workers” forced to be “wage slaves” at the command of the narrow “social class” of capitalist owners of the means of production to rise up and throw off their “chains” in a revolution for a “workers’ state” of collective ownership and central planning for the benefit of “the masses.”

This is what made Marxian socialism in its manifestations of political states such as the Soviet Union a universal threat to individual liberty and economic freedom. Its followers could be and were everywhere. Their ideological fanaticism on behalf of totalitarian collectivism made them place no value on truth, humanity or individual life, even their own. Sacrifice for “the collective” made them and all others expendable for the utopia to come. This is what led to the willingness to kill tens of millions. If the group — the “social class” — is what really exists and has meaning and value, then the individual is the illusion and has no worth and significance. On to the ash heap of history go those who must be sacrificed for wonderful world to come.

Though Soviet communism came to an end slightly more than a quarter of a century ago, the ghost of the spirit of communism lives on around the world. It is not so much that many people intentionally want to be straightjacketed within the confines of a Soviet-style totalitarian state, or that they wish to wait on the tiring and unending lines at “people’s” retail stores for meager supplies of everyday necessities of life as was the case behind “the Iron Curtain,” or exist in fear that it could be tonight that the secret police might come to take you away to an unknown but frightfully imaginable fate.

Most people, especially in the United States, don’t see this as the inescapable future of a socialist system fully imposed and implemented because so few have any knowledge or awareness that this was how tens of millions, hundreds of millions lived under socialist regimes as the coerced and controlled worker bees in the collectivist hive commanded by the ruling Communist Party “vanguard of the revolution.”

The “specter” of communism, nonetheless, continues to haunt the world in the form of the Marxian critique of capitalist society: Workers are exploited by the capitalist employers; profits are ill-gotten gains at the expense of the rest of society; a handful of property owning capitalists rule over the mass of society with no benefit for “the people” from their manufactured and marketed goods; the capitalist property owners plunder the earth and spoil the environment; the capitalist system is inherently racist and sexist in its structure and methods. The list could go on and on.

The battle between the ideologies of freedom and individualism versus political planning and collectivism, therefore, continues in slightly different forms and permutations than those expressed in the communist slogans and ideological language of 1917 and after. But the combat is no less real and is no less the same at its foundational basis.

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation. 

About the author:
*Dr. Richard M. Ebeling is the recently appointed BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. He will be conducting courses such as “Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Capitalist Ethics” as well as “The Morality and Economics of Capitalist Society.”

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

In March 2011, inflamed by the popular uprisings then spreading across the Middle East, 15 boys from a Syrian village scrawled on a wall some graffiti in support of the so-called Arab Spring. They were arrested by Syrian security forces and brutally tortured.

One of them, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, was killed. Protests erupted across the country. The response by President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces was to kill hundreds of demonstrators and imprison many more. Opposition to Assad hardened, and in July defectors within the military announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a rebel group dedicated to overthrowing the government. Syria slid into civil war.

The UN Security Council viewed the situation developing in Syria with alarm, and on October 4, 2011 put to the vote a statement expressing grave concern, maintaining that the solution to the crisis was “through an inclusive and Syrian-led political process with the aim of effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the population.” The resolution was vetoed by both China and Russia.

The position adopted by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was dictated by his belief that the rapidly worsening Syrian crisis provided him with a major political opportunity.

Historically, Russian influence has been strong in Syria. It extends back to before Syria emerged from French control as an independent sovereign state in April 1946. Two months earlier an agreement between the USSR and Syria had already guaranteed Soviet support for Syrian independence. No surprise, then, that in 1971, under an agreement with President Hafez al-Assad, the Soviet Union was allowed to open a naval base in Tartus, a facility which Russia continues to regard as vital to its national interests. The collaboration deepened. In October 1980 Syria and the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation providing for regular consultations, coordination of responses in the event of a crisis, and military cooperation. That treaty remains in force.

This is the background to Putin’s declaration, early in 2012, of his firm support for Assad in the civil conflict then raging in Syria. Shortly afterwards Russia began supplying him with large quantities of arms. On August 20, 2012, moved no doubt by suspicions that chemical weapons were being deployed by the Assad regime, US President Barack Obama declared: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Just a year later, on August 21, 2013, suburbs around Damascus held by forces opposed to Assad were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll ranged up to 1,729.

Despite his clear warning, Obama wavered and wavered over his response. Putin, however, sprang into action. Setting himself up as an honest broker, Putin succeeded in diverting Obama from taking military action by convincing him that Assad had agreed to dismantle and dispose of his chemical arsenal – the arsenal that Assad had denied owning in the first place.

In the event Assad did nothing of the sort. Chemical stockpiles were retained, production of nerve gas maintained and its deployment continued. Despite this, Russia has subsequently vetoed no less than nine Security Council resolutions that sought to condemn Assad’s government for its conduct of the war, impose sanctions or refer it to the International Criminal Court.

Putin’s latest blocking action is particularly egregious.

In April 2017 there was a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that left dozens of civilians dead and hundreds wounded.

Back in 2015 the UN had set up its Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) specifically to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks, and to assign accountability for human rights abuses that have drawn international condemnation. The mandate of the JIM. which was to report on the nerve agent attack on Khan Sheikhoun by the end of October, was due to expire in November. On October 24 a resolution intended to extend the JIM’s mandate was put to a Security Council vote. It was vetoed by Russia.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria is tasked with probing war-crimes allegations, and its investigators had already formally accused the Syrian government of using sarin in that attack. Their report added that this was one of over 20 Syrian government attacks involving chemical weapons since March 2013.  This report, too, was rejected by Russia.

Moscow’s veto decisions have been condemned by the US, Britain and others as an attempt to shield the perpetrators from answering for the most controversial human rights abuses of Syria’s six-year civil war.  But in the realpolitik world of the Middle East nothing succeeds like success. When Putin sent his forces into Syria on September 30, 2015, he had two main objectives in view – to establish Russia as a potent political and military force in the region, and to secure his hold on the Russian naval base at Tartus and the refurbished air base and intelligence-gathering centre at Latakia. He achieved both, as he launched massive air and missile attacks mainly against Assad’s domestic enemies, namely the rebel forces led by the FSA.

With the sustained support of Russia, allied to the huge self-interested Iranian military effort, Assad has succeeded, against all the odds, in retaining his grip on power and in winning back large areas of Syria once overrun and occupied by Islamic State. As a result his hand has been greatly strengthened in the Geneva-based peace negotiations with the various rebel factions.

Assad continuing as president of Syria, even in the short-term, would guarantee Putin’s military presence and consolidate his increasing political clout in the affairs of the Middle East. It would also raise the prospect of replicating the old Cold War alignments, with the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and its allies in one camp, and Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Shi’ite world of Islam in the other. Fortunately that outcome is not really in prospect because Russia’s relations with Israel, a matter of commercial self-interest on both sides, are particularly close, centred as they are on the natural gas deposits in Israeli waters. In that lies the hope of a non-confrontational outcome to the Syrian tragedy.

By Kia Rahnama*

On July 14, 2015, the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran reached an agreement under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The agreement stipulated that all UN Security Council sanctions as well as all multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program would halt in exchange for a commitment from Iran to roll back its nuclear activities.

Subsequently, on January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its first report finding Iran in compliance with its international obligations under the agreement thereby triggering the removal of sanctions. Since then, similar finding by the Department of State has further assuaged concerns that misgivings by the country may undermine the deal. Yet the initial agreement and its relative success, despite contributing to the softening of tensions between Iran and many of the European allies, have not convinced the new Administration to continue partnership with Iran. The new Administration’s approach to trade with China remains equally unresolved. Future viability of U.S. partnership with both countries relies on outlining government-wide missions that can take advantage of the newly created diplomatic and political space between the countries and ensure that U.S. national interest is best served. There is time for forging an alliance that today might seem as amorphous as the transatlantic alliance might have when General George Marshall sketched out the Marshall Plan.

The United States government can play a supportive role in assisting the regional allies that desire economic partnership with Iran and china; this policy should contain Iran and China’s geostrategic ambitions but attempt direct any post-sanction economic goals toward those ends that serve peace and stability in the region. One such opportunity will include determining the U.S. policy towards Iran’s decision to reshape its energy sector and reinvigorate regional trade. More specifically, Iran has shown desire to join the “international liquefied natural gas (LNG) club” and has expressed its ambition for finalizing the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline and developing the plans for the Iran-Turkey-Europe (ITE) natural gas pipeline. Cautious supervision of the post-sanction regime coupled with U.S. support for its allies’ participation in these projects can serve a number of U.S. objectives by (1) advancing American goals and commitments under international agreements regarding energy reform and climate control; (2) facilitating Iran’s transition toward friendly trade on the global stage; and (3) assisting the goals of energy security for U.S. allies by reducing Russia’s influence in the region.

Implementing a broad policy of economic reintegration for Iran through direct involvement by the U.S. government remains challenging because of the requirement for public and legislative support. Obtaining congressional approval for broad reforms in this area is still unlikely until Iran has shown true progress and firm commitment in implementing the agreement. However, more feasible short-term strategies for promoting economic reintegration can still be adopted.

Iran is the world’s top holder of gas reserves with 33.8 trillion cubic meters, and it has a high success rate of natural gas explorations, estimated to be at around 79% compared to the world average of 30%, rendering the country a uniquely attractive destination for European and American companies. Iran’s natural gas industry was negatively affected by American and European sanctions, but Iran has recently expressed a strong willingness to return to the international export arena. Traded gas is expected to expand globally by 30% by 2025, and the European Commission has suggested that Iran’s large gas and oil reserve can strengthen Europe’s energy security. In line with this trend, comes the timely affirmation that Iran has seized this opportunity in increasing its gas production to 5 billion cubic meters in the first five months of the current fiscal year.

International climate change agreements envision a healthy role for natural gas as one of the primary fuels in combating climate change and compliance with recent agreements including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as COP21 or the Paris Agreement, requires favorable natural gas policies. Despite the current administration’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, senior officials have stressed the Administration’s willingness to support India and China’s role in combating climate change, including transition from coal to more efficient forms of energy. China and India have shown cooperation in this transition, and the International Energy Agency has projected that growth in natural gas demand will be mainly driven by China and the Middle East, attesting to the viability of natural gas projects in the region. Given these countries persistent reliance on the dirtiest forms of energy such as wood and coal, support for this project advances a sober idea purposed by energy scientists such as Vaclav Smil: Global environmental goals can most realistically be achieved through a system where every country moves one step up on the energy trade, with advanced economies switching to renewable energies, such as nuclear, and countries like Iran and China trading the least environmentally friendly energy sources like coal for cleaner forms of fossil energy. North Korea continues to be one of China’s main trade partners in coal, and supporting China’s transition to natural gas will inevitably lead to more cooperation with the Trump administration’s goal to isolate North Korea.

Aware of the opportunities in this growing market, Iran has expressed its intention to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which links the largest natural gas-producing region in western China with the Gwadar deep-sea port in Balochistan, running through Pakistan. Iran’s involvement will include connecting the pipeline to the Chabahar port in the Gulf region. Both the international sanctions imposed on Iran and Pakistan’s financial deficiencies originally delayed the progress of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, but, today, China’s initiative in financing parts of the project have brought the project closer to reality. Nonetheless, the Department of State’s unclear stance on how the remaining Iran sanctions and the possibility of a “snap back” in sanctions can affect the project has added to Pakistan’s hesitant approach in resuming the project. India also receives 70% of its electricity from coal and has previously shown interest in extending the pipeline to reach the country. India’s desire to join the project provides an opportunity for increasing peace and cooperation between India and Pakistan by relying on the economic interdependency that will result from the contract.

At the same time, Iran and Turkey have already laid the initial steps for an Iran-Turkey-Europe (ITE) pipeline, connecting Iran to Turkey’s border with Greece. In 2013, the Turkish government approved the urgent expropriation of land along the proposed route for the pipeline. Among the countries that rely on gas imports from Iran, Turkey is assessed to face the most significant supply challenge, should its trade with Iran be restricted. Both technical problems inside Turkey and spikes in domestic demand for gas inside Iran have recently caused instances of shortfall in gas exports to Turkey. This problem then reverberates to Greece, as Turkey attempts to remedy its shortage in gas by limiting its re-exports to Greece. Both countries, therefore, have more incentive to facilitate their trade with Iran, as their demand is projected to grow.

Additionally, other key American allies such as South Korea are likely to reap some of the economic benefits that might arise from a growing gas market in Iran. Qatar, another American ally in the region, is collaborating with Iran in developing 24 phases of one of the largest gas fields in the world, the South Pars, which will be fully operational in 2018. Currently 90% of Iran’s natural gas exports go to Turkey, shaping the incentives for the ITE pipeline that will extend this relationship to Europe. European demand for gas is projected to increase by 15-20% by 2025, and introducing an alternative market can reduce the European allies’ reliance on the Russian market. The geopolitical benefits of such transition for America is highlighted by the evident reluctance among European allies to enforce stringent sanctions on Russia for its recent recalcitrant behavior in Ukraine; a pattern that has its roots in the allies’ concern for Russia’s perceptible power in influencing the European energy market. If Russian provocations in Eastern Europe persist, the most likely victims are countries such as Belarus that have shown willingness to pivot towards the EU coalition but are partially tied back because of their energy ties to Russia. Belarus, as an example, is estimated to owe close to 15% of its GDP to trade transit activities linked to Russia’s transport of oil and gas to other European countries.

Iran has already taken affirmative steps in implementing domestic reform to its energy sector subsequent to the lifting of the sanctions. The country recently introduced a new model petroleum contract that is intended to encourage more foreign investment in its energy sector by removing barriers for reimbursing foreign investors. Iran also agreed to amend its Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) with Pakistan to give the country more time to finalize the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project. Policies from the White House can reinforce these positive steps at normalizing trade security for American allies in the region. A U.S. policy favorable to finalizing these projects can also provide a platform for expanding negotiations with Iran beyond the nuclear issue.

The Administration has a number of different pathways available. First, the Department of State’s involvement can include an active engagement from high level diplomats and special envoys for international energy affairs in the Bureau of Energy Resources (ENR) to sensitize other regional powers such as Pakistan, India, and Turkey to the diplomatic benefits of proceeding with their prospective plans for partnership with Iran. The Bureau’s recent successful attempt as an intermediary in initiating and concluding the gas trade partnership between Israel and Jordan is surely a laudable precedent. The State Department’s success in brokering the gas trade between Israel and Jordan, despite the political pressure from inside Jordan to refuse the deal, attests to the ENR’s influential role in using diplomatic channels to bypass regional hostilities. Similarly, the Department of Energy’s role can be utilized through coordination of its USAID program and increasing support for private sector partnerships in Pakistan that can be tailored to encourage investments in natural gas and enhance the expertise and infrastructure in this field.

Finally, a more direct involvement by the Administration can entail consideration of relaxing specific sanctions pertaining to the exchange of advanced technology. LNG requires access to advanced technology that is only available from limited number of European and American companies. The Iran Sanctions Act which shaped the core of U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran’s energy sector originally did not cover investment in Iran’s development of its LNG program. The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA) later amended this language to sanction investments in Iran LNG’s sector. In addition, other legal authorities sanctioning exportation of goods and technologies remain in place pursuant to the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR). The Administration preserves a waiver power under CISADA, and the Department of Treasury controls a general licensing program for providing exemptions from ITSR. In this context, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) can review its policy toward granting export licenses to U.S. persons and foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies that seek joint ventures or transfer of technology to Iran limited to the specific field of LNG exploration. OFAC most recently exercised this power to relax restrictions on exportation of commercial passenger aircrafts and related services to Iran.

Finally, other attempts by the Treasury Department to further clarify the exact bounds of the Administration’s enforcement policy with regard to the remaining Iran sanctions can introduce more predictability and reduce uncertainty for foreign companies attracted to investment opportunities in Iran’s gas market. Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has noted that “precise assurances” from the U.S. government to the European banks about engagement with Iran can ease some of the remaining uncertainty about Iran-EU joint ventures. As the most marvelous chapters in the history of American diplomacy, such as the Marshall plan, suggest, often the greatest achievements lie in the courage to envision the opportunities that can be unlocked through international economic partnerships. In an unlikely region and among unlikely partners, another opportunity for a grand American diplomatic bargain is waiting to be seized.

About the author:
*Kia Rahnama is a student of international law at George Washington University. He frequently writes about politics and cinema and can be found on Twitter at @KRahnama

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

A total of 208 individuals have been called in for questioning so far in Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on corruption, in which seven have been released without charge, according to the nation’s Attorney General, adding that at least $100 billion in funds has been misused.

“The investigations of the supreme anti-corruption committee are proceeding quickly,” said Sheikh Saud Al Mojeb, Attorney General of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and member of the supreme anti-corruption committee, reports the SPA news agency.

Al Mojeb said the potential scale of corrupt practices which have been uncovered is very large. “Based on our investigations over the past three years, we estimate that at least $100 billion USD has been misused through systematic corruption and embezzlement over several decades,” Al Mojeb said.

“The evidence for this wrongdoing is very strong, and confirms the original suspicions which led the Saudi Arabian authorities to begin the investigation into these suspects in the first place,” Al Mojeb said.

Given the scale of the allegations, the Saudi Arabian authorities, under the direction of the Royal Order issued on November 4, has a legal mandate to move to the next phase of investigations, and to take action to suspend personal bank accounts.

Al Mojeb said that on Tuesday, the Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), agreed to his request to suspend the personal bank accounts of persons of interests in the investigation.

There has been a great deal of speculation around the world regarding the identities of the individuals concerned and the details of the charges against them.

But Al Mojeb said that to ensure that the individuals continue to enjoy the full legal rights afforded to them under Saudi law, they won’t be be currently revealing any more personal details at this time. “We ask that their privacy is respected while they continue to be subject to our judicial process,” Al Mojeb saod.

Al Mojeb stressed that only personal bank accounts have been suspended. Companies and banks are free to continue with transactions as usual.

A Russian poet in his early 20s has been accused of killing a woman and “eating her brain piece by piece.” The man, who met his victim through social media, has now been judged to have been of “sound mind,” local media report.

The blood-chilling episode played out earlier this year in the town of Valday in northwestern Russia, where the man was having a date with the 45-year-old victim. What was supposed to be a romantic encounter for the woman, was set for March 8, marking International Women’s Day.

However, the date went horribly wrong after the two had a row and the young man smashed the woman’s head with bottle of wine, according to the regional Investigative Committee. What followed, would send shivers down the spine of the most avid horror enthusiasts.

The man finished his victim off with a knife. He then used a hammer to open her brain case and started eating its contents “piece by piece,” washing it down with the woman’s blood, investigators graphically described the sequence of events.

The young man, who, according to local media was hailed as ‘Poet of the Year’ by Russia’s writers union in 2016, was detained shortly after the gruesome incident. The walls in the apartment where the horrific events unfolded were covered in bloody inscriptions, investigators said, adding that “evidence of cannibalism” was immediately determined.

The suspect confessed to the crime and a medical examination was arranged to determine his sanity. Months into the case, it was “ultimately” concluded the crime had been committed “in sound mind,” Lenta.ru reported Thursday, citing the local investigative committee. The criminal case will now be sent to court.

By Bill Law*

The air, land and sea blockade imposed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt – otherwise known as the Quartet – has significantly impacted Qatar’s economy, but not nearly as much as the four had both hoped for and expected. Following the initial shock, Qatar responded to the blockade with alacrity. A look at one of the Arabian emirate’s key businesses, Qatar Airways, gives an insight into how the Qataris, with little fanfare, have demonstrated their resilience.

For several years prior to the embargo, Qatar Airways had an annual growth rate of 20 percent. The airline ordered new planes at an aggressive rate, including a 100-aircraft deal for USD 18 billion with Boeing, announced last year. In doing so, Qatar Airways challenged the market dominance of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s Emirates and Etihad airlines. In the eyes of Qatar Airways executives, the blockade was designed to do significant harm to their business at a time when both Emirates and Etihad were feeling commercial heat from their Gulf rival.

At a meeting with UK parliamentarians in late September, senior executives of the company described how they had coped when flights already in the air on June 5 were being denied clearance to land at Quartet airports. With 100-plus flights daily to 18 different cities across the four countries, the first concern was for the passengers already in the air or waiting to board flights.

The Qatar Airways website had been blocked, so the company told passengers to use Facebook as a means of making arrangements. During the course of the day, several thousand flights were rebooked. Meanwhile, the airline’s offices in the Quartet countries had been locked and sealed. The company had to deal quickly with 500 employees who, without warning, were denied access to both their offices and their work. Qatari citizens were given two weeks to leave, while nationals found themselves not only without jobs but also under a cloud of suspicion. The airline has continued to pay the wages of those affected, while working out a long-term strategy for its employees in the Quartet countries.

Qatar Airways responded to the blockade of food – roughly 40 percent of the country’s food supplies entered across the land border with Saudi Arabia – by deploying its fleet of 22 air freighters. Working closely with the Turks and the Iranians, the threat of severe food shortages was averted within 48 hours of the implementation of the blockade. The early images of bare shelves and panic buying, much circulated by Quartet media outlets, quickly disappeared.

At the meeting with UK parliamentarians, the airline executives acknowledged that the crisis had hurt the company. Qatar Airways has lost 20 percent of its passenger traffic. Business flights are taking longer because the planes have been denied air space and are being rerouted over Oman, Iran, and Turkey, making them less attractive options. The tenor, however, has not been downbeat. If anything, the company’s leadership is displaying a quiet determination. Having managed the early impact well, it is now determined to work pretty much to a mantra of business as usual.

That confidence was underlined later the same day when Qatar Airways announced that it had acquired a 49 percent stake in the Italian airline Meridiana. The negotiations, which had been ongoing for a year, were clearly not affected by the blockade. Qatar Airways said it planned to deploy 20 of its new Boeing 737 MAXs to Meridiana in 2018.

Meridiana is Italy’s second largest carrier after Alitalia, which is partly owned by Qatar Airway rival Etihad. Alitalia went into administration for the second time in May of this year and could be shuttered within months. If that happens, Etihad will be left with more than a little egg on its face. Time will tell if the Qataris have made a shrewd business investment with Meridiana, but the acquisition does underline the confident and determined mood of the company’s executives to ride out the blockade, despite sustaining economic losses.

In other sectors, the message is much the same. The economy is resilient and the country will survive the embargo. While it is true that growth in Qatar has slowed primarily due to the blockade, the slump from 2.5 percent y/y in Q1 to 0.6 percent y/y in Q2 is in no small part explained by low oil-prices and the austerity programmes that have hit all GCC economies.

A key reason why the blockade has not done extensive damage to the economy is because oil and gas exports continue to flow freely. In fact, one of the ironies of this dispute is that the UAE continues to receive gas from Qatar via the Dolphin pipeline. Qatar petroleum executives have stated privately that although the company has the right to exercise force majeure and suspend delivery, it will not do so. The view is that a contract is in place and it will be respected. For Qatar Petroleum it really does look like business as usual.

Given the impasse and the lack of ongoing dialogue, the dispute seems likely to continue well into the future. Qatar has proven itself adept, nimble, and flexible in dealing with the economic fallout. Independent economic analysts are suggesting that the worst may be over for the Qatari economy. That ought to serve as a message to the Quartet to get back to the negotiating table and work toward ending a feud that is diplomatically, politically, and economically damaging to all involved.

About the author:
*Bill Law (@billlaw49) has reported extensively from the Middle East for the BBC. He now runs TheGulfMatters.com, providing analysis and journalism about the Gulf States and the wider Middle East region, and he is a regular contributor to Middle East Eye, Gulf States News, The Independent, the New Arab, BBC, and Monocle Radio.

Source:
This article was published by Gulf State Analytics (GSA).

In a momentous decision on 28 July, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from holding public office by the country’s Supreme Court on the flimsy pretext of holding an ‘Iqama’ (a work permit) for a Dubai-based company. Although it is generally assumed the revelations in the Panama Papers, that Nawaz Sharif and his family members own offshore companies, led to the ignominious downfall of the prime minister, but another important factor that contributed to the dismissal is often overlooked.

In October last year, Pakistan’s leading English newspaper, Dawn News, published an exclusive report [1] dubbed as the ‘Dawn Leaks’ in Pakistan’s press. In the report titled ‘Act against militants or face international isolation,’ citing an advisor to the Prime Minister, Tariq Fatemi, who has since been fired from his job for disclosing the internal deliberations of a high-level meeting to the media, the author of the report Cyril Almeida contended that in a huddle of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership, the civilians had told the military’s top brass to withdraw its support from the militant outfits operating in Pakistan, specifically from the Haqqani Network, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

After losing tens of thousands of lives to terror attacks during the last decade, an across the board consensus has developed among Pakistan’s mainstream political parties that the policy of nurturing militants against regional adversaries has backfired on Pakistan and it risks facing international isolation due to the belligerent policies of Pakistan’s security establishment. Not only Washington but Pakistan’s ‘all-weather ally’ China, which plans to invest $62 billion in Pakistan via its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has also made its reservations public regarding Pakistan’s continued support to the aforementioned jihadist groups.

Thus, excluding a handful of far-right Islamist political parties that are funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and historically garner less than 10% votes of Pakistan’s electorate, all the civilian political forces are in favor of turning a new leaf in Pakistan’s checkered political history by endorsing the decision of an indiscriminate crackdown on militant outfits operating in Pakistan. But Pakistan’s military establishment jealously guards its traditional domain, the security and foreign policy of Pakistan, and still maintains a distinction between so-called ‘good and bad Taliban.’

It’s worth noting that there are three distinct categories of militants operating in Pakistan: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-centered Punjabi militants; and the transnational terrorists, like al-Qaeda, which number only in a few hundreds and are hence insignificant. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here.

Although TTP likes to couch its rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity that enables it to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security establishment of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the TTP militants which are deemed as security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, but as far as the Kashmir-centered Punjabi militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani Network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as ‘strategic assets’ by the security establishment.

Therefore, the Sharif administration’s decision that Pakistan must act against the jihadist proxies of the security establishment or risk facing international isolation ruffled the feathers of the military’s top brass, and consequently, the country’s judiciary was used to disqualify an elected prime minister in order to browbeat the civilian leadership of Pakistan.

Historically, from the massacres in Bangladesh in 1971 to the training and arming of jihadists during the Soviet-Afghan war throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and then launching ill-conceived military operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas under Washington’s pressure, which led to the displacement of millions of Pashtun tribesmen, the single biggest issue in Pakistan has been the interference of army in politics. Unless Pakistanis are able to establish civilian supremacy in Pakistan, it would become a rogue state which will pose a threat to the regional peace as well as its own citizenry.

For 33 years of its 70-year-long history, Pakistan was directly ruled by the army, and for the remaining half, the security establishment has kept dictating Pakistan’s foreign and security policy from behind the scenes. The outcome of Ayub Khan’s first decade-long martial law from 1958 to 1969 was that Bengalis were marginalized and alienated to an extent that it led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971; during General Zia’s second decade-long martial law from 1977 to 1988, Pakistan’s military trained and armed its own worst nemesis, the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists; and during General Musharraf’s third martial law from 1999 to 2008, Pakistan’s security establishment made a volte-face under Washington’s pressure and declared a war against the Pashtun militants that ignited the fires of insurgency in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Although most political commentators in Pakistan nowadays hold an Islamist general, Zia-ul-Haq, responsible for the jihadist militancy in tribal areas; however, it would be erroneous to assume that nurturing militancy in Pakistan was the doing of an individual scapegoat named Zia; all the army chiefs after Zia’s assassination in 1988, including Aslam Beg, Asif Nawaz, Waheed Kakar, Jahangir Karamat and right up to General Musharraf, upheld the same military doctrine of using jihadist proxies to destabilize the hostile neighboring countries, Afghanistan, India and Iran, throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

A strategic rethink in Pakistan army’s top brass took place only after 9/11, when Richard Armitage threatened General Musharraf in so many words: “We will send you back to the Stone Age unless you stop supporting the Taliban.” Thus, deliberate promotion of Islamic radicalism and militancy in the region was not the doing of an individual general; rather, it has been a well-thought-out military doctrine of a rogue institution. The military mindset, training and institutional logic dictates a militarist and aggressive approach to foreign affairs and security-related matters. Therefore, as a matter of principle, military must be kept miles away from the top decision-making organs of the state.

Finally, the rule of law, more than anything, implies the supremacy of the law: that all institutions must work within the ambit of the constitution. The first casualty of the martial law, however, is the constitution itself, because it abrogates the supreme law of the land. All other laws derive their authority from the constitution, and when the constitution itself has been abrogated, then the only law that prevails is the law of the jungle.

If the armed forces of a country are entitled to abrogate “a piece of paper,” known as the constitution under the barrel of a gun, then by the same logic, thieves and robbers are also entitled to question the legitimacy of civil and criminal codes, which derive their authority from the constitution. 

By Nick Ottens*

(FPRI) — The Catalan independence crisis feels intractable. Ministers who defied the Spanish Constitutional Court to organize an independence referendum on October 1 have been jailed. The government in Madrid has dissolved the regional administration after the administration claimed the referendum as a mandate to break away. Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, has fled to Belgium.

Snap elections scheduled for December 21 are unlikely to break the deadlock. Polls show Puigdemont’s center-right separatist party losing support to hardliners, but the balance between pro- and anti-independence parties would be virtually unchanged.

That means the two sides could find themselves back at square one in the New Year.

Spanish attempts to suppress Catalan separatism have backfired. Since the government sent in the national police to disrupt the October 1 referendum (the regional police force largely refused to intervene), provoking clashes with voters in some cities and towns, Catalan support for secession has increased from 41 to 49 percent, according to the latest official survey. Only 43 percent want to stay in Spain anymore, down from 49 percent in June.

But public opinion becomes more fluid when Catalans are given more than two options.

Add becoming a federal state of Spain as a third option and support for independence falls to 40 percent.

That is still higher than it was during the summer, but the combined share of Catalans who are content with the status quo or want Spain to become a federation is larger: almost 50 percent.

This suggests there is still a way out of the crisis: the promise of more autonomy for the region could probably convince the majority of Catalans they are better off remaining Spanish after all.

Warnings from European leaders that leaving Spain would mean giving up and reapplying for EU membership—something the separatists don’t like to talk about—are also causing Catalan nationalists to think twice about secession.

Autonomy is what 78 percent of Catalans voted for in 2006, when they were asked in a referendum to approve a statute that had been decades in the making. It formalized the region’s self-government, giving it back the rights and privileges it had lost under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

Current Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s Party—then in opposition, now in government—felt the autonomy statute went too far. It appealed to the Constitutional Court, the same body that ruled the October 1 referendum illegal. In 2010, it overturned Catalonia’s fiscal autonomy and determined that its description as a “nation” had no legal standing.

Mass protests erupted in Barcelona. Starting that year, more than a million people, out of a population of 7.5 million, would take to the streets annually to demonstrate for self-determination and ultimately independence.

Rajoy ignored the protests. When he got into power, Catalan leaders asked for talks in order to rectify the Constitutional Court’s ruling. He rebuffed them. When Catalan elections returned a regional parliament in favor of breaking away from Spain, Rajoy still wouldn’t talk. Even now, six years into his premiership, Rajoy has not once negotiated with the Catalans. As he sees it, there is nothing to negotiate.

This needs to change. Curtailing Catalan autonomy and refusing negotiations has only radicalized the independence movement. Separatist hardliners in Catalonia have taken advantage of Rajoy’s intransigence to press their case. They can now credibly claim that so long as the People’s Party rules in Madrid, Catalan self-rule will be at risk. Better to break away than lose more powers.

Catalan suspicions are the reason Rajoy must blink first. Promising to return self-government to the winners of the December election, whoever they might be, might just convince Catalans who are wary of independence to support moderates, like Puigdemont’s pro-business party or the soft left, instead of hardliners. Starting a process of constitutional reform, as proposed by the opposition Socialist Party, could give Catalans a legal pathway to expand their autonomy.

The challenge is not browbeating the Catalans into submission, but rather convincing those who feel separate from Spain but fear the consequences of leaving it that there is still a future for them in the country. Is Rajoy up to the task?

About the author:
*Nick Ottens is the owner of the transatlantic opinion website Atlantic Sentinel.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

New research published in Science shows that climate warming reduced the mass of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet by half in as little as 500 years, indicating the Greenland Ice Sheet could have a similar fate.

The Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered large parts of North America during the Pleistocene – or Last Ice Age – and was similar in mass to the Greenland Ice Sheet. Previous research estimated that it covered much of western Canada as late as 12,500 years ago, but new data shows that large areas in the region were ice-free as early as 1,500 years earlier. This confirms that once ice sheets start to melt, they can do so very quickly.

The melting of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet likely caused about 20 feet of sea level rise and big changes in ocean temperature and circulation. Because cold water is denser than warm water, the water contained by ice sheets sinks when it melts, disrupting the “global conveyor belt” of ocean circulation and changing climate.

Researchers used geologic evidence and ice sheet models to construct a timeline of the Cordilleran’s advance and retreat. They mapped and dated moraines throughout western Canada using beryllium-10, a rare isotope of beryllium that is often used as a proxy for solar intensity. Measurements were made in Purdue University’s PRIME Lab, a research facility dedicated to accelerator mass spectrometry.

“We have one group of beryllium-10 measurements, which is 14,000 years old, and another group, which is 11,500 years old, and the difference in these ages is statistically significant,” said Marc Caffee, a professor of physics in Purdue’s College of Science and director of PRIME Lab. “The only way this would happen is if the ice in that area had completely gone away and then advanced.”

Around 14,000 years ago the Earth started warming, and the effects were significant – ice completely left the tops of the mountains in western Canada, and where there were ice sheets, they probably thinned a lot. About a thousand years later, the climate cooled again, and glaciers started to advance, then retreated as conditions warmed at the onset of the Holocene. If the Cordilleran Ice Sheet had still been there when the climate started cooling during a period known as the Younger Dryas, cirque and valley glaciers wouldn’t have advanced during that time. This indicates a rapid disappearance rather than a gradual melting of the ice sheet.

Reconstructing precise chronologies of past climate helps researchers establish cause and effect. Some have wondered whether the melting of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet caused the Younger Dryras cooling, but it’s unlikely; the cooling started too early for that to be true, according to the study. What caused the cooling is still up for debate.

Creating a timeline of glacial retreat also provides insight into how the first people got to North America. Current estimates place human migration to the south of the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets between 14,600 and 18,000 years ago, but how they got there isn’t clear. Some say humans could have crossed through an opening between the ice sheets, but these new findings show that passage was likely closed until 13,400 years ago.

This paper should serve as motivation for further studies, said Caffee. Continental ice sheets don’t disappear in a simple, monolithic way – it’s an extremely complicated process. The more we know about the retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, the better we’ll be able to predict what’s to come for the Greenland Ice Sheet.

A decade ago, the medical world was shocked when a patient in Berlin, Germany, had been declared free of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat cancer. Doctors have repeatedly tried to replicate the result, but this HIV cure has evaded other patients so far.

Dr. Jonah Sacha and colleagues at OHSU’s Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute are among the many scientists who are seeking to understand why the much-studied “Berlin patient” was so fortunate. Now, they’ve developed a new way to understand his cure. Sacha’s team has shown a species of monkey called Mauritian cynomolgus macaques can successfully receive stem cell transplants.

Researchers have long used a different monkey species to research stem cell transplants, but that species’ biological characteristics means it can’t be reliably used to find good donor matches to mimic human stem transplants.

In a paper published Nov. 10 in the journal Nature Communications, Sacha and colleagues report they successfully performed stem transplants on two monkeys more than a year ago that continue to lead healthy lives today. The recipients did not suffer from the many common adverse effects of stem transplants, including the grueling graft-versus-host disease, which can cause severe liver damage, rashes, diarrhea and even death.

The finding provides Sacha a critical tool needed to explore how the Berlin patient was cured. As a result of the finding, researchers can also use Mauritian cynomolgus macaques to improve stem cell transplant outcomes for human patients with other blood-related conditions such as leukemia and sickle-cell disease.

As part of the drive to better protect citizens and improve the Union’s security environment, the European Commission and the High Representative are proposing a number of actions to improving military mobility within the European Union.

The Joint Communication adopted Friday outlines steps to be taken to address the obstacles which are hampering the movement of military equipment and personnel across the EU with the aim of facilitating and expediting their mobility to react in a fast and effective way to internal and external crises. In doing so, the European Commission and the High Representative are delivering on the commitment to use all the tools at their disposal to build a Union that protects.

“European citizens understand that only together, as a Union, can we tackle the security challenges of our times. Cooperation inside the European Union and with our partners has become a must. There is a growing demand for our Member States to coordinate and work together on defence. So while we are moving forward with the Permanent Structured Cooperation to make our defence more effective, we have also decided to further strengthen military mobility among EU Member States and in cooperation with NATO,” said High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini upon adoption of the Communication.

Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said, “The European Union has a modern transport network that serves the needs of Europeans. These needs can also be of a military nature. The swift movement of military personnel and equipment is hindered by physical, legal and regulatory barriers. This creates inefficiencies in public spending, delays, disruptions, and above all a greater vulnerability. It is high time we maximize civil and military synergies also through our transport network in an efficient and sustainable manner.”

Due to the specific status of armed forces and equipment, military mobility is legally bound by a range of national decisions and EU rules, but there is room for a more coordinated and harmonized approach which would maximize the EU-added value and build on civilian/military synergies.

With the Joint Communication, the European Commission and the High Representative are setting out how they will work to facilitate and to help expedite military mobility, ranging from routine needs to strategic pre-deployment of military forces and resources – all this will be done in full respect of the sovereignty of Member States, in synergy with civilian activities and without disrupting civilian use of infrastructure or unnecessary inconveniences. Any action will be coordinated not just between the EU and the Member States, but also with other relevant stakeholders, especially NATO.

Key lines of action for stepping up military mobility within the EU are:

• To develop a shared understanding of the needs and requirements, which will need to be further examined and agreed upon by the Member States.
• To develop a common understanding on the infrastructure to be used and its impact on the infrastructural standards.
• To address relevant regulatory and procedural issues (customs, dangerous goods, other legal barriers, national procedures).

As regards infrastructure policy, the Joint Communication proposes to build on the existing Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). It identifies a number of points on which synergies could be envisaged. This includes the possible dual use of the network for civilian and military purposes, cooperation with defence stakeholders as regards the TEN-T policy database (TENtec) and a reflection on the use of the Connecting Europe Facility – the funding instrument implementing the TEN-T – in the defence field.

On November 8 and 9, Eurojust supported an international joint operation against online piracy criminal groups. This operation resulted in 2 arrests, one of which was based on a European Arrest Warrant, 73 searches and the seizure of several websites, servers, computers and electronic evidence.

The joint operations were co-led by units specialized in cybercrime at the offices of the prosecutor generals of Frankfurt am Main and of Dresden, as well as the State Criminal Police of Hesse and Saxony, with the assistance of the German Federal Criminal Police. The operations were carried out in close cooperation with the judicial and law enforcement authorities of France, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, San Marino and Switzerland.

This international joint operation is the result of the investigations conducted in Germany against criminal networks suspected of managing the internet-based download portals www.usenetrevolution.info, www.town.ag and www.usenet-town.com, which illegally offered licensed or copyrighted materials (such as films, TV shows, software, computer games, music, e-books and e-papers), without paying the required fees to license or copyright owners.

In total, the download portals provided illegal access to approximately 2 million links to licensed or copyrighted materials. The owners of the platforms managed to make an illicit profit of several million euros, and this copyright infringement created damages of approximately EUR 7.5 million.

Through a coordination centre established at its premises in The Hague, Eurojust supported the international joint operations and ensured the transmission and execution of European Investigation Orders, rogatory letters and a European Arrest Warrant, as well as the swift exchange of operational information collected on the ground among all the judicial and law enforcement authorities involved.

At the EU-Western Balkans Media Days that took place on 9 – 10 November in Tirana, Albania, the Commission announced that it will invest in new initiatives to support independent journalism, sustainable media outlets, and boost regional cooperation among public service media.

Freedom of media is one of the political criteria for EU accession – a must for countries willing to join the European Union. At the EU-Western Balkans Media Days conference, the Commission put forward comprehensive proposals to strengthen independent media in the region. New EU funds will provide training for young and mid-career journalists across the region, thereby boosting investigative journalism that contributes to reconciliation. A new technical assistance programme for Public Service Broadcasters will support regional co-production of investigative journalism, media content for youth and digitalisation. In addition, to support independent media, new actions with the European Endowment for Democracy will benefit start-ups for new independent media outlets and small-scale initiatives.

Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations, participating at the EU-Western Balkans Media Days said, “Freedom of expression is a fundamental value of the European Union and inextricably linked to further progress on the EU path. The EU-Western Balkans Media Days pave the way to a more comprehensive approach to support independent media outlets, assist the expansion of media literacy in the region, help digitalisation and know-how transfer. A vibrant, economically sustainable, independent and pluralistic media sector is equally important for exercising freedom of expression as are the legal, political and judicial conditions that guarantee it.”

1) ​Regional Training and Support Programme to improve Quality and Professionalism in Journalism (€2 million)

The action will focus on young and mid-career journalists trained in quality journalism and enhance publications of qualitative investigative stories. A regional network will support the development and exchange of investigative skills by involving journalists, training providers from the EU and the Western Balkans, as well as academic Institutions. The existing EU Award for Investigative Journalism will continue as part of the action. The project is expected to be launched in the first half of 2018.

2) ​Technical assistance programme to Public Service Media in Western Balkans (€1.5 million)

The programme aims at establishing standards and best practices across the Western Balkans as a common frame of reference for independent and professional media. The initiative will generate synergies between the 6 Public Service Media promoting regional exchanges on policies and practices. This will initiate a new phase in the media reform process, including integrated newsrooms, editorial guidelines, and long-term strategies. Finally, the programme will expand cooperation on investigative journalism, mechanisms for co-production on selected topics and regional exchange of digitised archive materials. The projects will start in the beginning of 2018.

3) ​Implementing a scheme to support Civil Society Organisations and media in the Western Balkans (€4 million)

The Commission, in close cooperation with the European Endowment for Democracy, will provide demand driven support to start-ups and new media initiatives. Support will be provided to journalists, bloggers and researchers in the region as well as to provide bridge funding for small-scale initiatives. The projects will start in the beginning of 2018.

WikiLeaks says it has published the source code for the CIA hacking tool ‘Hive,’ which indicates that the agency-operated malware could mask itself under fake certificates and impersonate public companies, namely Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab.

The CIA multi-platform hacking suite ‘Hive’ was able to impersonate existing entities to conceal suspicious traffic from the user being spied on, the source code of the malicious program indicates, WikiLeaks said on Thursday.

The extraction of information would therefore be misattributed to an impersonated company, and at least three examples in the code show that Hive is able to impersonate Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, WikiLeaks stated.

“If the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.

WikiLeaks began to publish documents on Hive in April this year, exposing the elaborate malware suite used by the CIA to hack, record and even control modern hi-tech appliances worldwide. Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly been accused by US officials of being involved in alleged Russian state-run hacking of the US presidential election.

WikiLeaks began to publish ‘Hive’ documents in April this year, exposing the elaborated malware suite used by the CIA to hack, record and even control modern hi-tech appliances worldwide. The most recent revelations are particularly interesting, as Kaspersky Lab has been repeatedly accused by US officials of being involved in the alleged Russian state-supervised hacking plot.

In September, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered all government agencies to stop using the company’s products and remove them from computers, citing “information security risks presented by the use of Kaspersky products on federal information systems.” Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied cooperating with any government entity including Russia, stating that its products simply cannot be used for spying as they lack any functionality beyond the advertised one. In an unprecedented move, the company even opened its source code to independent review last month.

By Siraj Wahab

Iran manufactured the ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi militia toward the Saudi capital and remnants of it bore “Iranian markings,” the top US Air Force official in the Middle East said on Friday.

“There have been Iranian markings on those missiles… To me, that connects the dots to Iran,” said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who oversees the Air Force’s Central Command in Qatar.

“How they got it there is probably something that will continue to be investigated over time,” he said. “What has been demonstrated based on the findings of that missile is that it had Iranian markings on it. That in itself provides evidence of where it came from.”

The missile was shot down on Nov. 4 near Riyadh’s international airport. Saudi investigators examining the remains of the rocket found evidence proving “the role of the Iranian regime in manufacturing them.”

French President Emmanuel Macron also described the missile as “obviously” Iranian.

He said that he was “very concerned” by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and raised the prospect of possible sanctions.

“There are extremely strong concerns about Iran. There are negotiations we need to start on Iran’s ballistic missiles,” he said.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said in a statement on Tuesday that a missile launch in July involved an Iranian Qiam-1, a liquid-fueled, short-range Scud missile variant.

Iran used a Qiam-1 in combat for the first time in June when it targeted Daesh militants in Syria over militant attacks in Tehran.

US warships have also been attacked by the Houthis. In October 2016, the US Navy said that the USS Mason came under fire from two missiles launched from Yemen. Neither reached the warship, though the US retaliated with Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory on Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

At the time, authorities said the missiles used in that attack were Silkworm missile variants, a type of coastal defense cruise missile that Iran has been known to use.

Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri, a Riyadh-based Saudi political analyst and international relations scholar, said that Lt. Gen. Harrigian’s comments supported Saudi Arabia’s case against Iran.

“This confirms what Saudi Arabia has stated,” he told Arab News. “This conclusively proves Iranian intervention in the region. Iran is using its deadly arsenal through the Houthis and Hezbollah.”

He said the statement was “a big indication” that the US shares the Saudi concern and was ready to back Saudi steps against Iran.

“Iran is exposed. The missile attack on Riyadh will not go unpunished. Saudi Arabia will take serious measures against Iran,” he said.

Harvard scholar and Iranian affairs expert Majid Rafizadeh said Lt. Gen. Harrigian’s statement is significant because a high-level official is confirming what many experts and policy analysts have said, which is that the Iranian regime was behind the attack against Saudi Arabia.

“It re-confirms the Iranian regime’s continuing belligerent behavior in the region, its pursuit for regional hegemony and its deep antagonism toward Saudi Arabia,” Rafizadeh told Arab News. “It shows that Saudi Arabia has never made allegations against the Iranian regime without proof and evidence.”

According to Rafizadeh, the Iranian regime’s involvement and cooperation with the Houthis “is much deeper than what the public generally knows.”

He said Tehran provides sophisticated training for conducting terror attacks, and that it arms and funds the Houthis on a much higher level.

Oubai Shahbandar, a Syrian-American analyst and fellow at the New America Foundation’s International Security Program, said: “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been caught red-handed.

“For any skeptic that still denies the Houthis are a direct proxy of the Iranian government, keep in mind that the transfer and launch of such a sophisticated missile against the Saudi capital would not have been possible without the approval at the highest levels in Tehran.

“What this means is that there are likely Iranian Revolutionary guard officers or possibly Lebanese Hezbollah operatives on the ground embedded with the Houthi militias to help facilitate the movement of these missiles and the targeting process.”
Shahbandar wondered what the reaction would be if Riyadh had authorized a missile strike against Tehran.

“There would have been international uproar. Iran’s signature was literally discovered on the missile itself. It’s a dangerous escalation and it is important to publicly call out Iran for its direct involvement in the missile strike without any equivocation,” Shahbandar said.