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The Oil Information Cartel Is (Finally) Broken – OpEd

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A determined James Stafford of OilPrice.com just busted wide open an oil industry information cartel that has existed for decades.

Most investors look at WTI and Brent prices at Bloomberg or CME Futures, and figure the oil price is in the public domain.

You would be about 2% correct, because there are hundreds of different grades of oil, and hubs where it is bought and sold.

And they all have different prices.

Since the age of oil began until a few months ago, most real time oil prices were jealously guarded by marketers, who used it to their advantage in the daily multi-billion dollar physical oil trade.

But I’m going to tell you the story of how Stafford and his small team made 18 months of calls, cajoling and ultimately paying for an amazing service you now get FOR FREE.

It’s a true David vs. Goliath story.  And just like in the Bible, the little guy won.

What they have assembled to date is remarkable, and free.

You can access it through this link: https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts

This is an incredible and unprecedented collection of information available for the public.

Screen Shot from https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts
Screen Shot from https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts

Stafford says that the feedback he has received has been exceptional.  With no marketing effort the oil price page is already receiving 40,000 visits daily.

It was an 18 month quest to democratize the world of oil pricing and bust the information cartel that has existed for decades.

A Simple Question – With No Easy Answer

Stafford’s quest started well over a year ago when he received a phone call from a reporter working for the Wall Street Journal.  The journalist wanted help finding a simple piece of information.

He was writing an article about the African oil industry and simply wanted to know the current price for Bonny Light crude oil (the main benchmark price for Nigerian crude).

Now remember, this is a Wall Street Journal writer with access to an incredible network of contacts and research.  This was not a casual retail investor sitting at home with pedestrian internet search skills and no industry contacts.  You would expect that finding the current price for Africa’s main brand of crude for a Wall Street Journal writer would be a simple internet search or phone call away.

You would be wrong.

The Wall Street Journal writer not only couldn’t find the current price for Bonny Light but the best he could do was get a price from six months ago!

We were passing information around faster with the Pony Express 150 years ago.

The trouble that the Wall Street Journal writer was having surprised Stafford, who then realized that he too couldn’t get access to the current price of Bonny Light.

As the founder of the very popular website OilPrice.com, not being able to find a price for a globally important type of crude did not sit well with him.

So he put his head down and got to work.

Information Held Hostage – The Ransom… $30,000 Per Year

The internet has made information available to everyone…..with ease.

Nowhere is that more true than in the investment world.  I can tap into any SEC filing of any company within seconds.  It wasn’t that long ago that I would have had to request that information by telephone and wait to receive it by mail.

The internet has sent the encyclopedia the way of the dodo bird, ruined many a local newspaper and made the world a much smaller place.

It has also levelled the playing field in many cases, especially when it comes to investing.

When it comes to obtaining global oil price information however the internet has done nothing.  We are still completely in the dark.

Your first inclination may be to disagree with me.  You know that you can tap into the current (or historic) price of West Texas Intermediate or Brent crude any time you want.

What you are missing is that those are just two oil benchmarks out of hundreds — thousands likely.

Generally people believe that oil is a single completely indistinguishable, homogenous substance.  A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil is a barrel of oil.

That is not the case.

In its natural unrefined state crude oil differs in consistency and density from very thin, volatile and light oil to very thick, almost solid heavy oil.  It also differs in color with all kinds of shades from pitch black to a light golden yellow.

Each place where oil is found has very unique properties when it comes to volatility, viscosity and toxicity.

In Canada alone there are north of seventy different oil blends.  You read that correctly….I said seventy!

https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts
Screen Shot https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts

Knowing the exact blend is essential for the refinery process which has to account for the exact chemical and viscosity of the oil being processed.

Stafford knew that if couldn’t find pricing for a major type of crude like Bonny light that there were countless others that would be even hard to get.

His quest quickly led him to a discovery.  The only place to obtain a fairly complete set of current oil price data required a subscription—of $30,000 to $50,000 per year.

These sources knew they had the upper hand over people who had to have that data, and they exploited it.

Even that expensive cost the oil price info wasn’t complete.  It involved receiving only an end of day price for the various source of crudes – nothing real time.

This just motivated Stafford more. His focus now was on finding a way to open up the world of oil prices, to make the information available to everyone.

But it wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t cheap.

It took Stafford and his team almost 18 months of making phone calls, getting rejected, making more phone calls – over and over again.

When he found the right people they were often reluctant to release the information for fear of ruffling the feathers of senior management.

Stafford ultimately succeeded simply by knocking on enough doors across the globe to find enough oil industry people who were sick and tired of this oil price information being held hostage.  Like Stafford these were people who felt that there should be transparency with respect to this information

Stafford will be out of pocket by a couple of hundred thousand dollars per year in order to secure the continued contractual commitments to supply this data.

The Result – Global Oil Price Information For Everyone (Finally)

Stafford and his team aren’t done.  They are still making calls, sending e-mails and adding different blends to their pricing list.  There are a few blends that he knows they are still missing but are incredible hard to get ahold of.  Certain OPEC blends in particular have been hard to pin down.

Well done Mr. Stafford.

*Keith Schaefer is editor and publisher of the Oil & Gas Investments Bulletin. This article was published by Oil & Gas Investments Bulletin


Raytheon To Help Saudi Arabia Create Indigenous Defense Industry

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By Ghazanfar Ali Khan

US defense contractor Raytheon has announced plans to create an indigenous defense industry in the Kingdom by “accelerating its localization strategy” within the framework of Saudi Vision 2030.

“As part of the localization plan, Raytheon will generate billions of dollars in local defense revenue, and create 1,200 jobs for Saudis,” said Kurt Amend, chief executive of Raytheon Saudi Arabia.

Amend said on Tuesday that the company’s local entity Raytheon Saudi Arabia has been licensed by the Kingdom, which will help to achieve substantive self-reliance in the design, development and production of defense equipment locally. He said that “Raytheon Saudi Arabia will generate $7 billion in local defense revenue, and $6 billion in induced and indirect local revenue.”

“Raytheon Saudi Arabia looks forward to partnering with Saudi industry, government agencies, foundations and universities to create a vibrant defense industry in the Kingdom,” he said. Raytheon has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI).

Amend identified areas for localization of the defense industry such as a missile defense system, precision-guided munitions and cybersecurity. “Our goal is to manufacture high-quality defense products in the Kingdom,” said Amend.

He added that the Kingdom is one of the world’s largest importers of defense equipment with a large part of its requirements met from outside the country.

Asked about the commercial license given by the Saudi Ministry of Commerce, Amend said that “this milestone allows Raytheon Saudi Arabia to accelerate its localization strategy.” “Commercial registration allows us to directly contribute to the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 by developing partnerships in the Kingdom that will create desirable jobs for Saudis,” he said.

“Raytheon Saudi Arabia is now officially a local Saudi company bringing Raytheon’s technology and innovation to the Kingdom.”

Raytheon has named Ahmed Al Awad as leader of government relations and an officer of Raytheon Saudi Arabia. The company will be based in Riyadh and is expected to include in-country program management, supply and sourcing capabilities, improved customer access and centralized accountability.

“These programs will positively impact Saudi and US economies including job creation,” said Amend, who had a 23-year career with the US Department of State before joining Raytheon. He has also served in the Riyadh-based American embassy.

Raytheon Company, with 2016 sales of $24 billion and 63,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions.

Latest North Korea Missile New Type Of ICBM Capable Of Reaching Entire US

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North Korea has claimed its latest launch was a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong 15, which can hit all the US mainland.

The announcement was made on North Korean state TV on Wednesday, following the launch on Tuesday (earlier Wednesday Pyongyang time). The missile flew some 1,000 kilometers eastward, according to the Pentagon, before falling in the Sea of Japan without causing any damage.

Pyongyang’s statement also declared that the North now has a full-fledged nuclear force. “North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced that the country has realized the great historic cause of completing a state nuclear force,” it said, as cited by Yonhap.

The missile launch prompted an immediate response from South Korea, which launched its own missile-firing test minutes later.

The US, Japan and South Korea have called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting in response to the launch. The meeting is set to convene in New York later Wednesday.

The Hwasong-15 type missile, which Pyongyang boasts it has launched, would be a new development, with the other launches in 2017 being either the older Hwasong-14 ICBM, or the intermediate range (IRBM) Hwasong-12.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has declared that his country’s nuclear weapons development is aimed solely at “defending the sovereignty of the nation from the US nuclear threat and protecting the peaceful life of the people.” He reiterated his assertion that no other country is under threat from Pyongyang’s nukes.

US President Donald Trump has called North Korea’s latest launch “a situation that we will handle,” saying that it won’t change his approach to the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

The head of the Russian Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee said the launch, coming after a two-month break, was an act of desperation, provoked by incessant US and South Korean saber-rattling on the North’s doorstep. “Pyongyang, most likely, expected the same restraint in response on the part of the West, both in judgments and actions,” which Washington and Seoul failed to demonstrate, Konstantin Kosachev said.

The deputy chief of the Committee for Defense and Security believes Pyongyang could be probing Washington for reaction: “I don’t rule out that in this case it was a kind of a ‘trial balloon,“ Frants Klintsevich said, adding that he hoped Washington “will have enough wisdom to refrain from any retaliatory actions.”

Russia To Launch Independent Internet For BRICS Nations

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The Russian Security Council has asked the country’s government to develop an independent internet infrastructure for BRICS nations, which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions.

The initiative was discussed at the October meeting of the Security Council, which is Russia’s top consultative body on national security. President Vladimir Putin personally set a deadline of August 1, 2018 for the completion of the task, the RBC news agency reported.

While discussing the issue, members of the council noted that “the increased capabilities of western nations to conduct offensive operations in the informational space as well as the increased readiness to exercise these capabilities pose a serious threat to Russia’s security.”

They decided that the problem should be addressed by creating a separate backup system of Domain Name Servers (DNS), which would not be subject to control by international organizations. This system would be used by countries of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The issue of excessive dependency on global DNS has previously been addressed by Russia. In 2014, the Russian Communications Ministry conducted a major exercise in which it simulated the “switching off” of global internet services and used a Russian backup system to successfully support web operations inside the country.

However, when reporters asked Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov if the country’s authorities had been considering disconnecting from the global internet in 2014, Peskov dismissed these allegations as false.

“Russia’s disconnection from the global internet is of course out of the question,” Peskov told the Interfax news agency. However, the official also emphasized that “recently, a fair share of unpredictability is present in the actions of our partners both in the US and the EU, and we [Russia] must be prepared for any turn of events.”

“We all know who the chief administrator of the global internet is. And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our national security,” said Peskov. It’s not about disconnecting Russia from the World Wide Web, he added, but about “protecting it from possible external influence.”

Depraved Treatment Of Drug War Captives On US Coast Guard Ships – OpEd

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If you heard mention of people being shackled on the deck of a ship out in the ocean for weeks or months exposed to the elements and with only a bucket for a bathroom, you might assume the full story is about the cruel actions of pirates or slave traders from centuries past.

However, as reporter Seth Freed Wessler recounts, the United States Coast Guard routinely subjects individuals alleged to be involved in the transport of cocaine between South America and Central America to such conditions.

Wessler provides more details in an interview transcript posted Tuesday at USA Today, including the preposterous claims of the Coast Guard that the extended depraved treatment is required due to “logistical challenges” and is acceptable because the shackled individuals “are not formally under arrest until they get to the United States.”

And after the accused individuals arrive in America, their torment continues when they face years in US prison all due to actions they are accused of taking hundreds or thousands of miles from America.

Read the interview transcript here.

Wessler’s in-depth November 20 New York Times article regarding the topic may be read here.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Consent Of The Governed, Revisited – OpEd

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What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.”

When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes.

One question after another comes to mind. Must every person consent? If not, how many must, and what options do those who do not consent have? What form must the consent take—verbal, written, explicit, implicit? If implicit, how is it to be registered? Given that the composition of society is constantly changing, owing to births, deaths, and international migration, how often must the rulers confirm that they retain the consent of the governed?

And so on and on. Political legitimacy, it would appear, presents a multitude of difficulties when we move from the realm of theoretical abstraction to that of practical realization.

I raise this question because in regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration.

I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts. What monumental effrontery these people exhibit! What gives them the right to rob me and push me around?

It certainly is not my desire to be a sheep for them to shear or slaughter as they deem expedient for the attainment of their own ends.

Moreover, when we flesh out the idea of “consent of the governed” in realistic detail, the whole notion quickly becomes utterly preposterous. Just consider how it would work. A would-be ruler approaches you and offers a contract for your approval. Here, says he, is the deal.

I, the party of the first part (“the ruler”), promise:

(1) To stipulate how much of your money you will hand over to me, as well as how, when, and where the transfer will be made. You will have no effective say in the matter, aside from pleading for my mercy, and if you should fail to comply, my agents will punish you with fines, imprisonment, and (in the event of your persistent resistance) death.

(2) To make thousands upon thousands of rules for you to obey without question, again on pain of punishment by my agents. You will have no effective say in determining the content of these rules, which will be so numerous, complex, and in many cases beyond comprehension that no human being could conceivably know about more than a handful of them, much less their specific character, yet if you should fail to comply with any of them, I will feel free to punish you to the extent of a law made my me and my confederates.

(3) To provide for your use, on terms stipulated by me and my agents, so-called public goods and services. Although you may actually place some value on a few of these goods and services, most will have little or no value to you, and some you will find utterly abhorrent, and in no event will you as an individual have any effective say over the goods and services I provide, notwithstanding any economist’s cock-and-bull story to the effect that you “demand” all this stuff and value it at whatever amount of money I choose to expend for its provision.

(4) In the event of a dispute between us, judges beholden to me for their appointment and salaries will decide how to settle the dispute. You can expect to lose in these settlements, if your case is heard at all.

In exchange for the foregoing government “benefits,” you, the party of the second part (“the subject”), promise:

(5) To shut up, make no waves, obey all orders issued by the ruler and his agents, kowtow to them as if they were important, honorable people, and when they say “jump,” ask only “how high?”

Such a deal! Can we really imagine that any sane person would consent to it?

Yet the foregoing description of the true social contract into which individuals are said to have entered is much too abstract to capture the raw realities of being governed. In enumerating the actual details, no one has ever surpassed Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who wrote:

To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson. London: Freedom Press, 1923, p. 294)

Nowadays, of course, we would have to supplement Proudhon’s admirably precise account by noting that our being governed also entails our being electronically monitored, tracked by orbiting satellites, tased more or less at random, and invaded in our premises by SWAT teams of police, often under the pretext of their overriding our natural right to decide what substances we will ingest, inject, or inhale into what used to be known as “our own bodies.”

So, to return to the question of political legitimacy as determined by the consent of the governed, it appears upon sober reflection that the whole idea is as fanciful as the unicorn. No one in his right mind, save perhaps an incurable masochist, would voluntarily consent to be treated as governments actually treat their subjects.

Nevertheless, very few of us in this country at present are actively engaged in armed rebellion against our rulers. And it is precisely this absence of outright violent revolt that, strange to say, some commentators take as evidence of our consent to the outrageous manner in which the government treats us. Grudging, prudential acquiescence, however, is not the same thing as consent, especially when the people acquiesce, as I do, only in simmering, indignant resignation.

For the record, I can state in complete candor that I do not approve of the manner in which I am being treated by the liars, thieves, and murderers who style themselves the Government of the United States of America or by those who constitute the tyrannical pyramid of state, local, and hybrid governments with which this country is massively infested. My sincere wish is that all of these individuals would, for once in their lives, do the honorable thing. In this regard, I suggest that they resign their positions immediately and seek honest employment.

Addendum on “love it or leave it”: Whenever I write along the foregoing lines, I always receive messages from Neanderthals who, imagining that I “hate America,” demand that I get the hell out of this country and go back to wherever I came from. Such reactions evince not only bad manners, but a fundamental misunderstanding of my grievance.

I most emphatically do not hate America. I was not born in some foreign despotism, but in a domestic one known as Oklahoma, which I understand to be the very heart and soul of this country so far as culture and refinement are concerned. I yield to no one in my affection for the Statue of Liberty, the Rocky Mountains, and the amber waves of grain, not to mention the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. So when I am invited to get out of the country, I feel like someone living in a town taken over by the James Gang who has been told that if he doesn’t like being robbed and bullied by uninvited thugs, he should move to another town. To me, it seems much more fitting that the criminals get out.

Second addendum: The foregoing (along with a few ill-considered sentences that I have now deleted) was first posted by The Beacon blog in June 2010. I stand by it except for the small revisions just mentioned. However, ultimately, in recognition of the zero probability that the U.S. government would ever treat me decently and would almost certainly only demand greater abasement from me over time, I emigrated from the USA in October 2015. I did not go to a free country; no such country exists. But I did escape some of the more menacing and humiliating aspects of life under the U.S. government as well as the state and local tyrannies that hold the American people hostage.
This article was published at The Beacon.

Cardinal Rai Begins Strategic Call For Saudi Religious Freedom – Analysis

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By Andrea Gagliarducci

The first cardinal to be officially invited to visit Saudi Arabia, Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, has begun a strategic call for religious tolerance among the Saudi Arabian royal family.

“I mentioned the importance of the [royal family’s] work for dialogue with the KAICIID, the center for interreligious dialogue based in Vienna. I told them that it was important to have such dialogue in Saudi Arabia, thus implying that they should open to further dialogue,” he told CNA.

Cardinal Rai was in Saudi Arabia Nov. 13-15, and met with Pope Francis Nov. 23 in a private audience to report about the visit.

Although the visit had long been planned, his trip took on more importance after former Lebanese premier Saad Hariri announced his resignation from government while in Riyadh Nov. 4, and remained in the city thereafter.

In Riyadh, Cardinal Rai met King Salman, Prince Mohammed bin Salman and with Hariri.

The meetings were mostly behind closed doors and short, and the official Saudi agency SPA offered the only reports of most meetings. However, the event was groundbreaking, because it was the first official visit of a top-ranked Catholic priest in the holiest territory of Islam, the nation where the cities Medina and Mecca are located.

“I received an official invitation from the King, and I accepted. I was welcomed almost as a head of state, the protocol of the visit was very official,” he said.

The cardinal stressed that Saudi Arabian king and crown prince showed “great openness” toward inter-religious dialogue.

He said that there were already “friendly relations between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon,” considering that “there is a big Lebanese community in Saudi Arabia, very much respected,” and that the Maronite Patriarchate and Saudi king were “very much in good relations.”

Cardinal Rai addressed religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, noting that “Saudi Arabia has not recognized the possibility to build churches or practice Catholicism. The Catholic religion is discreetly practiced in the embassies or in the Apostolic nunciature, and the Saudis know and pretend not to know.”

Cardinal Rai recounted that he told the crown prince that his presence there was already a sign of opening, and that the crown prince responded “that today times have changed, Islam is now spread all over the world, and we are called to be open to other culture and other religions.”

The cardinal said that, rather than tackling the issue of religious freedom directly, he expressed appreciation that Saudi Arabia established its center for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna.

The cardinal was referring to KAICIID, the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue. Established in 2012, it is funded by Saudi Arabia with Austria and Spain as cofounder states. The Holy See is a founding observer of the center.

Cardinal Rai praised the fact that Saudi Arabia has “already practiced inter-religious dialogue with the center.”

This, he said, was “an indirect way to tell him that it is time to have this inter-religious dialogue also in their homeland,” he maintained.

Cardinal Rai also explained to the Saudis that Lebanon is a “model that shows how Islam and Christianity can live together, because Christians and Muslims are equal in Lebanon, they jointly manage power and the separate state and religion.”

The Maronite Patriarch also noted that Lebanon is “a light of hope for Christians in the Middle East,” since Christians in other nations live in fear of persecution, and often flee their homelands.

“We encourage Christians to stay [in their homelands], we tell them that Christianity has been in the Middle East for 2000 years. Saudi Arabia was Christian at the beginning, and Christian culture was present in Saudi Arabia 600 years before Islam,” Cardinal Rai said.

He added that “these words are not enough when there is war, fear, economic crisis and diaspora.”

The situation in the Middle East, and the appeal for Christians to stay, was emphasized in Ecclesia In Medio Oriente, Benedict XVI’s 2012 post-synodal apostolic exhortation, which followed a Special Synod for the Middle East.

“The Synod for the Middle East was a Benedict XVI’s prophetic act,” Cardinal Rai said. “But there is no more conscience, the conscience is dead. States seek their own interests, whether they are economical, political, strategic or commercial interests. They do not listen to the Church’s words.”

Despite this, the cardinal concluded, “the Church must speak out to shake up consciences. She cannot stay silent.”

Pope Francis And The Lady Meet Again – OpEd

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By Father Michael Kelly SJ*

The much-anticipated second meeting between Pope Francis and Aung San Suu Kyi, following a get together in Rome in May, will disappoint those who expected an attentive focus on the Rohingya.

Both speeches — the first by the State Counsellor welcoming the pope and then the pope’s response — were long on what Myanmar needs to get anywhere as a new nation and short on any specific focus on any of the country’s manifold problems, most notably the one that has captured the attention of many and horrified most — the Rohingya, 620,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh to escape the brutality of the Myanmar military.

However, there were plenty of coded messages in both speeches to say that both people acknowledge just what a savage and dismaying mess the country is in. There was even the specific reference to it by Suu Kyi — in code as the “still outstanding problems in Rakhine State go unresolved.”

That was about as close as either party could be expected to get to addressing the issue in short addresses. Suu Kyi’s speech was hardly different to the one she gave to the diplomatic corps accredited to Myanmar on Sept. 19, 2017. She recognized the need for an inclusive approach to nation-building, respect for national and religious minorities and that the only stable future the country could look forward to was one based on the rule of law.

The pope rehearsed a well-developed list of basics required if a society was to prosper: Respect for diversity, inclusion of all groups in national processes, a specific emphasis on education and skill training to give the young, in the very young population of Myanmar, some hope for the future.

But that is as far as either went and really could go and the reason why the word Rohingya wasn’t uttered.

Why?

Firstly, constraining Suu Kyi are some basic facts: she doesn’t really run Myanmar and never will as long as its 2008 Constitution is in place; she has absolutely no control of the national army and border force that has been doing the deeds and probably didn’t find out that it was happening until everyone else did – after it began and through the media.

Moreover, she knows that a majority of her country actually think that the comprehensively Buddhist culture that underpins the nation is at risk of being overrun by Muslims and Islamic extremists. Mad as it sounds, this is a widely held fear in Myanmar that is inflamed by extremist Buddhist monks and is one of the reasons why the Rohingya are so loathed.

Several factors go into what Pope Francis can actually say.

It is seriously preposterous to suggest that the pope could address the Rohingya crisis in the capital of Myanmar on his first visit to the country. He is the Head of State of another country and has been invited to Myanmar by its President Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Aung Sun Suu Kyi.

Moreover, he is the leader of a religious community that accounts for a little over 1 percent of the national population and parts of which, has received similar treatment from the military in the country’s north and east in particular. Tens of thousands of Catholics are among the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people in Myanmar — rendered so by the unresolved civil wars and abusive treatment by the military.

The sight of Pope Francis on the barricades is a serious misreading of what he can and should do while he’s here. Stir up the local scene and flee within 48 hours to leave local Catholics to take the beating they would get is neither courageous nor wise, or even worse trigger broader sectarian violence across the country. That is a very real threat that human rights groups who have begged him to address this issue on Myanmar soil appear to conveniently ignore.

But Pope Francis, unlike Suu Kyi, gets a second chance, in Bangladesh the second leg of this draining trip to two of Asia’s poorest nations. The master of the telling symbolic act, Pope Francis can show more in deed than word when he gets to Dhaka where his mind is on the matter and has flagged plans to meet Rohingya refugees.

*Father Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com and based in Thailand.


Libya: Mass Extra-Judicial Execution, Reports HRW

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Armed groups loyal to Libyan National Army forces (LNA) appear to have summarily executed dozens of men in the LNA-controlled town of al-Abyar, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

On October 26, 2017, local police forces discovered the bodies of 36 men, all of them executed, close to a main road south east of al-Abyar, 50 kilometers east of Benghazi. Authorities transferred the bodies to a hospital, where families came to identify them. Relatives of six of the victims told Human Rights Watch that the men had been arrested on various dates by armed groups loyal to the LNA in Benghazi or in other areas controlled by the LNA.

This incident comes after a series of unlawful killings and summary executions in Benghazi that prompted the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant against an LNA special forces commander on August 15.

Following the discovery of the 36 bodies in al-Abyar, Gen. Khalifa Hiftar, the LNA chief, ordered the military prosecutor of the eastern region on October 28, to conduct an investigation . The LNA and the military prosecution have yet to announce any investigation results.

“The Libyan National Army’s pledges to conduct inquiries into repeated unlawful killings in areas under their control in eastern Libya have so far led nowhere,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The LNA will be condoning apparent war crimes if their pledge to investigate the gruesome discovery in al-Abyar proves to be another empty promise.”

Human Rights Watch met with relatives of two of the victims in Tripoli and interviewed relatives of four others by telephone in October and November. All of them said that their family member had been arrested earlier in 2017, some only two days before the bodies were found, and had not been heard from again.

All said their relative bore one or more gunshot wounds, and that their hands were tied behind their backs, based on information they obtained from family members who identified the bodies at the Benghazi Medical Center, also known as Hospital 1200. Most interviewees did not have access to a medical report. All relatives also said that armed groups from Benghazi prevented families from putting up tents in front of their Benghazi homes to receive guests during the traditional three-day mourning period.

The relatives said that all six victims were civilians seized from their homes, in the presence of their families, by armed groups linked with the LNA. None of the armed groups presented an arrest warrant. Human Rights Watch reviewed multiple lists containing a total of 25 names of the men found at al-Abyar, but could not verify which were civilians and which, if any, were fighters affiliated with forces opposing the LNA.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed photographs of the bodies, including two apparent group photos of the victims, posted on social media sites by unidentified sources on October 26. The group photos show at least 35 bodies in an open field. Researchers also reviewed close-up photos of 23 of the victims and corroborated them with the group photos and with photos sent by relatives.

Most of the 23 victims photographed in close-up had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic handcuffs. Each was lying in what appeared to be a pool of blood. The majority had visible gunshot wounds to the head, neck or face.

Stefan Schmitt, a forensic investigator who reviewed the photos, said the injuries were consistent with executions at point blank range at the location where the bodies were discovered. The bodies appeared not to have been disturbed between the time of execution and the time of discovery. He said the photos were most likely taken within several hours of the killings, as the blood appeared not to have fully congealed.

The al-Abyar police chief, Col. Jalal al-Huweidi, spoke with Human Rights Watch by phone on November 27. He said that all 36 bodies were found at the same spot in al-Kassarat, a desert area southeast of al-Abyar. He said that his forces were alerted to the presence of the bodies, all of the people executed at the same spot, and had found them at around 1:30 p.m. on October 26. He said his forces, together with the Red Crescent, removed the bodies and transferred them to the hospital in Benghazi known as 1200, after the criminal investigation department and the attorney general’s office investigated the crime scene.

Human Rights Watch met with al-Siddiq al-Sur, head of investigations at the General Prosecutor’s office in Tripoli, on October 28, who said that 35 bodies were discovered in the location in al-Abyar and one more in the al-Qwarsha area in Benghazi. Al-Sur said his office had opened an investigation into the al-Abyar killings and was in contact with the Benghazi attorney general about it.

Armed conflict, insecurity, and political divisions have plagued Libya since May 2014, when General Hiftar declared war on “terrorism” in Benghazi and announced his Operation Dignity. As part of this operation, LNA-aligned forces battled fighters affiliated with the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), which has since withdrawn from Benghazi, and an alliance of militias and individuals known as the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council (BRSC). Armed groups loyal to the LNA control large swathes of eastern Libya, with the exception of Derna, and some parts of the south.

Forces aligned with the LNA include regular army units, army special forces, neighborhood militias known as Sahawat, and a militia known as the Avengers of Blood or Katibat Awliya’ al-Dam, whose family members were killed fighting “terrorists” in Benghazi. Some LNA units include adherents of the strict Salafist Madakhla ideology that view Hiftar as their “ruler” to whom they owe “obedience.” On July 5, Hiftar announced the complete “liberation” of Benghazi from holdout elements of the BRSC, although fighting in the city’s downtown area of Sidi Khreibish continued until early November.

As a result of armed conflicts in both eastern and western Libya, central authority collapsed and three competing governments emerged, now reduced to two. These are the Interim Government based in the eastern city of al-Bayda, which is aligned with the LNA and supported by the House of Representatives, and the UN-backed, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Key institutions, most notably law enforcement and the judiciary, are dysfunctional in most parts of the country, and basic services have collapsed.

All parties to a conflict are required to abide by the laws of war. Certain serious violations of the laws of war, when committed with criminal intent, such as executions of civilians or enemy fighters who had been captured or had surrendered, are war crimes. Anyone who commits, orders, or assists, or has command responsibility for war crimes, can be prosecuted by domestic or international courts. Commanders may be criminally liable for war crimes of their subordinates if they knew or should have known of the crimes and failed to take measures to prevent them or hand over those responsible for prosecution.

“Senior army commanders who do not act resolutely to stop gross violations in areas under their control, and hold those responsible to account, should face criminal prosecution for complicity in war crimes,” Goldstein said.

Venezuela: Hunger By Default – Analysis

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Economic mismanagement, corruption and dwindling reserves have forced Venezuela into penury and now into missed payments and partial default on its debts. Full-scale, internationally supervised negotiations involving a restored parliament are essential to pave the way to a debt restructuring and a free, fair presidential election.

I. Overview

The financial markets have long regarded Venezuela’s default as probable, and have charged the country accordingly. Already by mid-2017, the implied risk of default within twelve months was over 50 per cent, while the risk over the subsequent five years was above 90 per cent. As of today, Venezuela is technically in default on part of its debt, raising the possibility that creditors at any moment could move to recover the full amount owed. That would total some $60 billion in bonds issued by the government and by the state oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA, although the total foreign debt is generally thought to be around $150 billion, of which two thirds could be subject to immediate demand.

The last major default in Latin America was that of Argentina, which ceased payment on most of its $132 billion foreign debt in 2001 amid a severe economic and political crisis. It took Argentina fifteen years to reach a final settlement with “hold-out” creditors and restore its access to financial markets. A Venezuelan debt crisis is likely to be even more complex and cause more political and social damage. First, an orderly restructuring of the debt is all but impossible: the government not only lacks a credible economic and financial recovery plan, it also faces sanctions, which could expose those providing the country with fresh loans to criminal prosecution. Furthermore, the government is likely to maintain its rigid and economically harmful controls over currency exchange and access to U.S. dollars.

Moreover, while Argentina is one of a handful of countries that are self-sufficient in food, Venezuela has a declining food and agriculture sector and malnutrition is rampant. Some 96 per cent of its foreign earnings come from the oil industry, whose overseas assets may be vulnerable to seizure by creditors. The disruption of oil exports could trigger a humanitarian emergency in a country that is already suffering severe shortages of food, medicines and other vital goods. Politically, Venezuela is increasingly isolated: all major countries in the hemisphere, as well as the EU, have joined in demanding a restoration of democracy. Adding to the instability is a presidential election due to take place next year. The issue of who will be the official candidate has yet to be resolved.

II. Default

On 2 November, President Maduro announced his decision to “decree a refinancing and restructuring” of Venezuela’s foreign debt. Although the government insists it has no intention of defaulting, it subsequently failed to make several debt payments within contractual time-limits, leading ratings agencies to downgrade its debt to the “selective default” category. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) – a market association that decides whether to trigger insurance payments on bad debt – declared a technical default.

On 13 November, the government hosted a meeting in Caracas with bondholders, ostensibly to launch the restructuring/refinancing process. Maduro put Vice President Tareck el Aissami in charge, causing many bondholders to stay away because Aissami and another commission member (Finance Minister Simón Zerpa) face U.S. Treasury Department sanctions. Although the department ruled that merely attending the meeting was not a violation of U.S. law, negotiating with these individuals clearly would be. Moreover, U.S. sanctions prohibit issuing any new debt to Venezuela, unless it is approved by parliament, 1 rendering the process futile without a political agreement.

In the event, the meeting lasted a mere half-hour. Aissami read a communiqué devoted mainly to blaming U.S. sanctions for payment delays and offered few clues as to what the government would do. Some bondholders who attended said they were asked to pressure the Trump administration to lift sanctions. As long as the government continues to pay, albeit belatedly, creditors are likely to hold off taking action that would trigger a full-scale default. However, that may change, especially if it becomes clear the government is taking steps to safeguard assets that would be potential targets for seizure in the event of default.

III. Economic Freefall

The Maduro government boasts that it has disbursed more than $71 billion in debt repayments over the past four years. During the same period, imports have fallen from over $45 billion in 2012 to under $20 billion this year. The country’s health service is close to collapse and most vital medicines have vanished from pharmacies. In October, for the first time, the monthly consumer price rise exceeded 50 per cent, often regarded as the threshold for hyperinflation. Food prices are rising even faster, yet wages are not indexed to prices. Millions of households rely at least partially on a government program to distribute cheap food to the poor, but the food has to be imported with oil dollars. The Catholic charity Caritas declared an emergency earlier this year when moderate to severe malnutrition among under-five year olds surpassed 10 percent.

In 2018, debt servicing is likely to consume around a third of oil revenues, even if the present price recovery continues. Some economists have argued that it is immoral to pay bondholders while Venezuelans die from malnutrition and preventable diseases. Default – especially a simple cessation of payment, with no restructuring or refinancing deal in place – could leave the country even less able to pay its bills, however. This is not merely because it would further reduce Venezuela’s access to credit, but also because bondholders could attempt to seize its significant oil industry-related overseas assets, potentially paralysing an industry on which the entire economy depends. These include not only physical assets, such as refineries, but also pending oil payments. Any attempt to confiscate these holdings is likely to result in drawn-out legal battles over the distinction between sovereign debt (which enjoys immunity from asset seizure) and that of PDVSA, whose sole shareholder is the Venezuelan state.

The surrounding region is already suffering the consequences of Venezuela’s crisis, from declining trade to spreading epidemics and an expansion of organised crime. Middle-class professionals are no longer the only ones leaving. Colombia alone has received at least 470,000 Venezuelans,2 many of them poor, placing welfare services under severe strain, especially in border areas.

IV. Democratic Meltdown

Venezuela has been sliding toward dictatorship for years. The trend accelerated after the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) alliance won control of the National Assembly (parliament) two years ago. The government used its control of the Supreme Court to block all parliamentary initiatives and strip the assembly of its powers, including control of the budget and the issuance of foreign debt. It has used the National Electoral Council (CNE) to block a recall referendum against President Maduro, schedule elections at the ruling party’s convenience and tilt the electoral playing field against the opposition. From April to July this year, the opposition demanded a return to democracy in almost daily mass demonstrations that were met with violence by security forces. More than 120 people died.

On 30 July, the government held an election to a National Constituent Assembly (ANC), ostensibly tasked with reforming the 1999 constitution. The opposition alliance boycotted the poll, arguing that the election was unconstitutional and violated the principle of one-person-one-vote. There is evidence the government falsified turnout figures. The 545-member assembly, composed exclusively of government supporters, was installed on 4 August. Two weeks later, after parliament refused to recognise the Constituent Assembly, the latter assumed legislative powers by decree. However, this new legislature is regarded as spurious by many foreign governments, including the twelve-member Lima Group of countries, mainly from Latin America, the U.S. and the European Union (EU), which continue to recognise the National Assembly’s authority.

With the Constituent Assembly in place, the government called elections for state governors, which should have been held in December 2016. Polls showed the Democratic Unity alliance was likely to win more than half the 23 states, but the electoral council resorted to measures clearly aimed at depressing the opposition vote, such as relocating voting centres at the last minute. In the event, the government claimed eighteen governorships. Evidence of fraudulent vote counting emerged in one state – Bolívar – but overall the government appears to have out-manoeuvred the opposition.3 It continues to enjoy the support of up to a quarter of the electorate and has also refined a system which makes access to food and other services conditional on political loyalty.

This political setback left the opposition severely weakened and more divided than ever over strategy. Pro-government factions are also vulnerable to divisions, which could be further exacerbated in the event of default and likely pressures to dismantle the system of currency controls. A significant portion of the sovereign and PDVSA bonds are reportedly held by government leaders and supporters.4

V. International Sanctions

On 26 August, President Trump issued a ban to prevent any individual or corporation in the U.S. or subject to U.S. jurisdiction (which includes most of Venezuela’s major creditors) from financing the state oil company for more than 90 days or the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for more than 30. This allows trading to take place but rules out long-term finance. Moreover, since the debt is in U.S. dollars, any renegotiation would inevitably involve the U.S. financial system. Thus, there is little prospect of a viable refinancing plan unless sanctions are lifted. In addition, President Maduro and many other senior government figures are subject to individual U.S. sanctions, which make it a crime for anyone subject to U.S. jurisdiction to have dealings with them. Vice President Tareck el Aissami is also accused by U.S. authorities of links to drug trafficking.5 Canada has also imposed individual sanctions, while the EU has approved a legal framework for travel bans and asset seizure.

Venezuela’s exclusion from the dollar-based financial system is driving it to seek closer ties with Russia and China, both of which have rejected what they consider Western interventionism and shown far greater flexibility in renegotiating their own bilateral debt. These two countries are believed to hold some $30 billion in Venezuelan debt.

VI. Talks Offer Slim Hope

On 1 December, the government will once again sit down for talks with some leading opposition members in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. However, the two sides have very different agendas. The government wants the opposition to recognise the Constituent Assembly, call for an end to sanctions and promise to secure parliament’s approval to issue more debt. The opposition’s principal demand is free and fair elections, which it believes would remove the present government from power. Previous rounds of talks have led nowhere. The main difference on this occasion appears to be the presence of Latin American foreign ministers acting as “guarantors” for the negotiations.

Past talks foundered partly because the government used them to buy time and to divide and disparage the opposition. This task was made easier by opposition politicians who failed to agree on a unified strategy and by international facilitators who did not insist on a solid framework for negotiation and guarantees of compliance. The opposition remains fractured, with only seven of its two dozen parties agreeing to attend the talks, though this round will be preceded by a wider consultation process, including talks with civil society organisations.

Venezuela’s dire economic, financial, social and political crisis cannot be resolved piecemeal. The government will only be able to manage the debt crisis by de-coupling sovereign debt from PDVSA debt to avoid asset seizure and by working out a refinancing agreement with bondholders. But it cannot do this without also making significant concessions in return for the National Assembly’s approval of fresh debt and an agreement to call for the gradual lifting of sanctions.

Government concessions would have to include giving up monopoly control over the Supreme Court and Electoral Council and agreeing to hold free elections under international supervision. It would also have to produce an economic reform package, including dismantling distortionary exchange and price controls and agreeing to a unified exchange rate.6 Such a package likely would be credible to investors only if announced by a completely fresh economic team incorporating independent experts. Any agreement should also include an emergency social program, financed in part by money freed up by debt relief, and incorporating aid from foreign governments and NGOs.

The prospects for agreement are slender, however. Therefore, the international community needs to prepare for a significant deterioration in the humanitarian crisis by increasing assistance to neighbouring countries to meet the needs of destitute migrants, and continuing to press the Venezuelan government to allow humanitarian aid deliveries inside the country. It should also address the reasons for the repeated failure of talks to produce a solution. This means devising a credible and workable procedure for negotiations, and applying sufficient pressure through allies of Venezuela’s government and opposition to induce both parties to accept it.

Source:
This article was published by the International Crisis Group

Notes:
1. The opposition-controlled National Assembly has for all practical purposes been replaced by the National Constituent Assembly, elected in July, which has no opposition members. See Crisis Group Commentary, “Venezuela’s Last Flickers of Democracy”, 3 August 2017. In August, the U.S. government imposed sanctions restricting loans to Venezuela. Ann Gearan & Anthony Faiola, “Trump tightens Venezuela’s access to U.S. financial system”, Washington Post, 23 August 2017.

2. Over half of these immigrants are clandestine, according to official Colombian migration figures. “¿Cuántos venezolanos hay en Colombia?”, El Colombiano, 27 October 2017.

3. Anatoly Kurmanaev, “How hundreds of mysterious votes flipped a Venezuelan election”, Wall Street Journal, 2 November 2017.

4. Crisis Group interview, Venezuelan economist, 22 November 2017.

5.For the details of what U.S. sanctions mean in practice, see “Frequently Asked Questions on Venezuela-related Sanctions”, U.S. Treasury Department. For the Canadian sanctions, see “Canadian Sanctions Related to Venezuela”, Global Affairs Canada. Regarding the EU, see Michael O’Kane, “EU imposes arms embargo and targeted sanctions on Venezuela”, in europeansanctions.com blog, 13 November 2017.

6. Venezuela introduced exchange controls in 2003 and price controls have been steadily ratcheted up over the same period. The main official rate (for “essential imports”) is currently set at 10 bolívars to the U.S. dollar, while the black-market rate recently passed 80,000 bolívars to the dollar. In theory, dollars can be obtained by citizens and the private sector at a third rate (currently 3,345 bolívars) but the system of so-called currency auctions has been suspended for the past two months. Independent economists attribute severe price distortions and other economic ills in Venezuela to the byzantine system of controls, which has also helped foment corruption.

Sole Reliance On Russia May Prove Disastrous For Armenia: Stratfor

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The growing Russia-Turkish partnership as well as Moscow’s recent overtures towards Azerbaijan show that the sole reliance on Russia may prove disastrous for Armenia, an article on the American geopolitical intelligence platform Stratfor said on Tuesday, November 28.

“The current strategic rift between Russia and the US complicates Armenian efforts to pursue a balanced foreign policy,” the article says.

“The Western rhetoric on containment against Russia may eventually put Armenia under tough Russian pressure to restrict its interactions with the US and NATO. However, core national interests of Armenia require to keep at least the current level of cooperation with the Western institutions in general and with the US in particular. The growing Russia-Turkish partnership as well as recent Russian overtures towards Azerbaijan, including the multi-billion USD modern assault weaponry sales, indicates that the sole reliance on Russia may prove disastrous for Armenia. Thus, in a short-term perspective, Armenian foreign policy will deal with the hard task of keeping its partnership with the West, and simultaneously avoiding anger Russia and jeopardizing its strategic alliance with Moscow.”

Also, the article weighs in on another key aspect of Armenia’s foreign policy agenda – the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

“The 2016 April Azerbaijani large-scale four-day offensive along the Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact put additional pressure on the negotiation process,” the article says about the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group to reach a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

“In two subsequent summits held in May 2016 in Vienna and in June 2016 in Saint Petersburg Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents agreed to increase the number of OCSE monitors as well as to establish ceasefire violations investigative mechanisms. Nevertheless, till now Azerbaijan has rejected the realization of agreements, while Armenia viewed them as a necessary condition for resuming any substantial negotiations.”

China’s Rising Coal Use Defies Forecasts – Analysis

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By Michael Lelyveld

China is gradually transforming its economy and patterns of energy consumption, but it may be decades before citizens see dramatic improvements in air quality, according to a recent report.

The finding this month by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) came as an international group of climate scientists blamed an increase in China’s coal consumption for the first big rise in global greenhouse gas emissions since 2013.

The warning from the Global Carbon Project of a two-percent jump in 2017 emissions coincided with the IEA’s release of its long-range energy forecast and its first in-depth China analysis in the past 10 years.

In its 2017 Global Carbon Budget, the scientists’ group cited a projected three-percent rise in China’s coal use this year and a 3.5-percent increase in emissions as causes of the climate setback after three years of relative stability.

“The 2017 growth may result from economic stimulus from the Chinese government, and may not continue in the years ahead,” the scientists said during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

Speaking at the conference, China’s top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua acknowledged the findings but argued that the higher emissions were not the start of a trend.

“Carbon emissions do fluctuate, but a single indicator cannot reflect the whole picture,” Xie said in remarks reported by the official English-language China Daily.

The IEA’s long-term analysis as part of its annual World Energy Outlook was generally positive about the decarbonization trends of China’s transition to more sustainable economic growth and cleaner fuels.

Even so, some details of the 780-page study may raise concerns about how long it will take for China’s “war on pollution” to pay off with public health benefits in terms of exposure to fine particulates known as PM2.5, mainly from coal.

As it stands now, only about two percent of China’s nearly 1.4 billion people breathe air that meets World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, the IEA said.

That proportion would rise to only three percent by 2040, even if China meets all the targets set in its expected economic, energy and environmental plans, according to the report.

The massive IEA study does not present an overarching theme, as the agency’s annual forecast did five years ago in predicting a “golden age of gas.”

Instead, it is a collection of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of implications of energy data points and emerging trends with consequences for the global economy and the environment.

Changes in the global scheme

Sweeping shifts are predicted as a result of factors including greater U.S. oil and gas production, lower costs for renewable energy, broader use of electricity and China’s economic transition, the IEA said.

China’s place in the global scheme has changed since the last major analysis. Projections of its energy use and emissions are falling behind those of India and Southeast Asia in long-term forecasts of world growth.

But it continues as the leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), with 28 percent of the world total in 2016, making its carbon reduction efforts critical to both climate change and smog.

Echoing earlier studies, the IEA estimates that outdoor air pollution causes nearly 1 million premature deaths in China annually, while indoor pollution claims an additional 900,000 lives.

China is already ranked first in growth of renewable energy, but high-polluting coal still accounts for nearly two-thirds of primary energy use, the IEA said.

With contributions from solar, wind and nuclear sources, low-carbon generation capacity will surpass that of fossil fuels in power production by around 2025 under the study’s “new policies scenario,” which includes agreed and intended plans.

China’s transition to a slower-growing economy, driven by services, consumption and light industry rather than investment and heavy industry, promises continued gains in energy efficiency and lower rates of demand.

The share of all fossil fuels in primary energy demand will slowly slide from 89 percent in 2016 to 76 percent in 2040. Demand for coal is forecast to decline at an average annual rate of 0.6 percent.

But other trends in China’s complex transition may limit the relief that citizens can expect. Demographic shifts are a major factor.

Urbanization is proceeding at a rapid rate, exposing a higher proportion of the population to pollution, while the average age is also rising.

The phase-out of firewood and biomass for cooking in rural areas may reduce indoor deaths to 500,000 by 2040, but premature deaths from outdoor pollution could rise to 1.4 million with the more elderly population, even though PM2.5 may fall to half of current levels by then.

By the end of the forecast period, the share of the population older than 65 will grow to 14 percent from 4 percent now, the study said.

The presence of uncertainties

To a greater degree than previous annual outlooks, the study frequently cites uncertainties in its forecasts.

“There is no certainty about the CO2 emissions outlook for China,” the study said. “It is entirely possible that emissions could peak later than 2028, or indeed earlier. But perhaps the bigger issue is uncertainty about the actual level of the peak.”

One major concern is the pace of China’s economic transition.

A 10-year delay in the reform agenda could add more than 1 billion metric tons to coal demand, or 35 percent, to the central projections for 2040, the IEA warned.

Although the study does not say so, China’s credit-fueled growth spurt to spur recovery this year from a slump in 2015 has raised questions about its commitment to sustainable growth policies.

In the first three quarters of this year, China’s gross domestic product topped government targets with a growth rate of 6.9 percent, rising from a 6.7-percent pace in 2016.

Infrastructure spending has driven demand for building materials including steel, despite the government’s directive to cut production overcapacity in the industry.

The study estimates that lower iron and steel output accounts for about 80 percent of the projected decline in coal consumption by 2040.

Failure to meet the capacity cutting targets for steel and cement could add 100 million tons of coal equivalent to the energy total in 2040, nearly equal to South Africa’s current coal consumption now.

A 10-year delay in meeting targets for lower steel and cement output would increase CO2 emissions by 5 gigatons, or more than all the current emissions from China’s power sector.

China’s own official statistics this year have not been encouraging.

In the first 10 months of the year, steel production climbed 6.1 percent from the year-earlier period after rising 1.2 percent in 2016, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.

Pig iron production is up 2.7 percent, and coal output has risen 4.8 percent, the NBS said.

Renewed outbreaks of winter smog in China’s northern cities may also be a sign of unreported coal burning despite the government’s push to require heating with natural gas.

At a pre-release press conference for the IEA report, the study’s main authors were asked about concerns that China’s higher rates of GDP growth and steel production this year may conflict with forecasts.

“It shouldn’t be taken for granted that China jumps into this new era with no bounds whatsoever,” said Laura Cozzi, head of the IEA’s energy demand outlook division, in response to questions from RFA.

Cozzi said the agency had analyzed the consequences of delay or failure to meet China’s targets for transition to more sustainable growth.

“I think the findings are quite remarkable and quite important, and we are telling those to Chinese policy makers, as well,” Cozzi said.

Tim Gould, head of the supply outlook division, said the IEA was “aware of the data coming in, in relation to China’s coal consumption” so far this year.

“I think it’s too early to draw definitive conclusions from that,” he said.

“Our analysis is really trying to look at longer-term structural trends, even while we pay very close attention to the short-term data,” he said.

South Asia Strategy Provides ‘Path To Win’ In Afghanistan, Commander Says

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By Jim Garamone

The new permissions available thanks to the South Asia strategy mean the campaign is on the “path to a win,” the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission and U.S. forces in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters Tuesday.

President Donald J. Trump announced the strategy during a speech at Fort Myer, Virginia, in August.

Speaking via satellite from his headquarters in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson emphasized that the strategy is strictly conditions-based, not time-based.

“We will be here until the job is done,” the general said. “The U.S. approach aligns with the NATO approach. … War is a contest of wills. The president has left no doubt in terms of our will to win.”

Goal: Negotiated Reconciliation

In Afghanistan, the goal is reconciliation through a negotiated settlement lowering the level of violence, Nicholson said. Afghanistan and the coalition will use three forms of pressure to make this happen, he added: military pressure, diplomatic pressure and social pressure.

Afghan security forces will apply the military pressure, the general told reporters, aided by coalition advisors and air assets. That pressure will increase in the next year as new Afghan capabilities come on line and as U.S. and coalition advisers embed with smaller units, he said.

Meanwhile, he said, Afghan and coalition officials will apply diplomatic pressure on the enablers of the Taliban and the Haqqani networks, and social pressure will be applied through elections over the next two years. If done credibly, Nicholson said, these pressures will enhance the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the people.

“In the face of this pressure, the Taliban cannot win,” Nicholson said. “Their choices are to reconcile, live in irrelevance, or die.”

The United States and coalition must realign resources and to execute this strategy, the general said. “I’d point out that the military effort is necessary but, by itself, not sufficient for success,” he said. “We must work together with all of the parts of the U.S. government and the coalition in order to be successful.”

Striking Taliban Revenue Stream

Operations under the new permissions have already begun, as Afghan and coalition forces struck the source of the Taliban’s finances: the narcotics trade.

“In just over three days’ worth of operations, the Afghan 215th Corps, their special forces commandos, their air force, in close cooperation with U.S. forces, removed between $7 million and $10 million of revenue from the Taliban’s pocketbook,” Nicholson said. “And the overall cost to the drug trafficking organizations approached $48 million. So these strikes were just the first step in attacking the Taliban’s financial engine, and they will continue.”

Nicholson said the Taliban have evolved into a criminal or narco-insurgency. “They are fighting to defend their revenue streams,” he said. “They have increasingly lost whatever ideological anchor they once had. They fight to preserve and expand their sources of revenue. This includes narcotics trafficking, illegal mining, taxing people throughout Afghanistan, kidnapping and murder for hire: all criminal endeavors.”

The general noted that Afghan forces have stepped up. “We fought most of this year, through Aug. 21, at the lowest level of U.S. force and capability, and, therefore, the highest level of risk, in our 16-year war in Afghanistan,” he said. “Yet, in spite of that, the Taliban strategy was not successful. It was essentially defeated by the Afghans.”

In face of this, the Taliban have reverted to guerilla war, while Afghan forces have become more capable. Nicholson noted that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani often says the Afghans own the fight, and are proud to. “They are willing to fight and die for their future, their country, their families,” the general added. “And in so doing, they’re not only fighting on behalf of themselves, but they are fighting against the terrorists who have threatened our homeland and the homelands of our allies as well.”

Pakistan’s Sea-Based Deterrence: Challenges And Prospects – OpEd

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“Control of the sea is the key to world dominance” said Alfred Thayer Mahan, who was very right while emphasizing the importance of the maritime security. Future wars will be fought over the sea as oceans cover 75% of the earth, which the remaining one third land mass depends heavily upon.

Among the major oceans of the world, the Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean covering approximately 73.3 million square kilometer. It is the triad of world’s most important choke points; the Straits of Hormuz, Bab-al-Mandeb and Malacca. The most significant sea lines of communications also pass through the Indian Ocean. With this strategic significance, the Indian Ocean shares its piece of pie with two important nuclear weapons states. Since India claims its control over the Indian Ocean and considers it as India’s ocean, therefore, maritime security in Indian Ocean is a subject of vital national interest for Pakistan.

A number of strategic premises act as motivating factors in India-Pakistan’s quest for naval expansion, with multiple interests in mind. In 2015, India launched a program to build six nuclear-powered attack submarines. Powered by an 83-megawatt nuclear reactor India inducted its first nuclear power submarine INS Arihant in 2016. Arihant is expected to carry 12 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM). It is also developing a more advanced SLBM that will have a range of up to 3500 km. Work on the second nuclear submarine, INS Aridaman, is also scheduled.

India currently operates a Russian Akula-II nuclear-powered attack submarine on a 10-year lease and may acquire a second vessel of the same class. Due to its no first use (NFU) policy, India continues to develop the naval component of forces as step towards nuclear triad and find it necessary to acquire sea based deterrence in order to confirm its second strike capability. India’s development of naval nuclear arsenals helps in secure the grand first strike capability, with increased options of survivability.

India’s naval expansion and nuclear triad has raised serious concerns for Pakistan. The nuclearization of the Indian Ocean is a clear threat, particularly in light of India’s aspirations for a blue water navy. This fact has widened the probability for conflict escalation. Therefore, Pakistan is required to prepare its sea-based defense.

*Qura tul ain Hafeez has done M Phil in International Relations at Quaid-I Azam University Islamabad. She is currently working as a Research Associate at Strategic Vision Institute Islamabad.

DC Metro Transit Censors Christmas Ad – OpEd

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To celebrate Christmas without celebrating Christ makes as much sense as celebrating Veterans Day without celebrating veterans. But don’t tell that to the secular sages at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

WMATA has banned a Christmas ad sponsored by the Archdiocese of Washington because it “depicts a religious scene and thus seeks to promote religion.” The scene was mounted on a poster to be placed on the outside of metro buses. Its purpose is stated in its message: “Find the Perfect Gift.” The scene neither mentions nor depicts Christ.

The archdiocese, represented by the distinguished law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, has sued WMATA on First Amendment grounds: freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion have both been violated.

Would WMATA allow a bus ad of Rev. Martin Luther King, in clergy garb, speaking from a pulpit before a congregation? Would it reject the ad on the grounds that it is a religious scene and is thus promoting religion?

Would WMATA reject a vile anti-religious ad? Or would it conclude that such a poster is merely an expression of free speech?

Religious speech does not automatically lose its constitutional protections  because it is voiced on public property. This is a clear case of viewpoint discrimination, something which the courts have repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional. It is also an example of militant secularism and anti-Christian bigotry.

To show how utterly ignorant the officials at WMATA are, consider that the City of New York recently approved the granting of a permit to the Catholic League to erect a life-size nativity scene in Central Park, on public property. If anything, our crèche is much more of a “religious scene” than the one sponsored by the Archdiocese of Washington, yet it has never been challenged as unconstitutional, not even by the ACLU.

Kudos to Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of the archdiocese, for standing up to the bullies at WMATA.

Contact Paul J. Wiedefeld, WMATA CEO: PWiedefeld@wmata.com


Is Israeli-Saudi Alliance Planning War Against Iran? – OpEd

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Israel, the USA, and Saudi Arabia are doing everything to lay the foundations for war against Iran. That is why Iran and its people must be demonized and dehumanized. The Israeli governments have been doing this since the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Iranian people. In general, all Sunni Muslim countries get along very well with Iran, except the regime of Saudi Arabia and those Arab regimes that succumb to their financial pressure, which doesn’t surprise anybody because they collaborate closely with the the Israeli regime such as Egypt.

In a flattering interview with the New York Times, the Saudi crown prince and future king, Mohammed bin Salman, called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, the “new Hitler of the Middle East.”1 And he continued with a skewed comparison, saying: “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.” The same rhetoric used Netanyahu when he agitated against the nuclear deal with Iran.

Besides the silliness of such comparisons, it’s an incredible insult to the highest Shiite authority by a Sunni Muslim, who is going to be the next “King of Saudi Arabia.” The Iranian clerical elite will never forgive and forget. They rebuked this insult elegantly saying: “No one in the world and the international arena gives credit to him because of his immature and weak-minded behavior and remarks.” As an old deep-rooted people, the Iranians gave bin Salman a good advice: “Now that he has decided to follow the path of famous regional dictators … he should think about their fate as well.”

This provocation by a regime that can only survive by the US American and Zionist sword and their financial tribute in the form of large weapon purchases and mercenary pay for terrorist fighters should have not future. But there is a sneaky plan behind bin Salman’s slander. It started with Donald Trump’s silly speech he delivered during his visit to Saudi Arabia in which he called Iran “the top state sponsor of terrorism.” And Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu called Iran “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Both leaders cooperate very closely in deranging the nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration. Now, Mohammed bin Salman has thrown himself into the fray.

At least for the time being, President Trump is not jet willing, despite his anti-Iranian bias and rhetoric, to go to war with Iran for Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s sake. To sacrifice American lives for two rogue regimes would be politically very unwise. That is why an image cultivation of the Saudi regime has already started in the United Kingdom and the US. In the case of Israel, the reporting in the US and the UK are one-sided and incredibly biased. Hence, the Saudis have to catch up.

The British Guardian and the leading newspaper of the US Empire, the New York Times, have started to paint the new Saudi strongman, Mohammed bin Salman, as a kind of visionary reformer, although he has been spreading terror and blood since he took office. That Saudi Arabia has been fighting a brutal war against the people of Yemen, supports the different terror groups in Syria and stirs up tensions against Iran is silently skipped by Thomas L. Friedman from the NYT. Even bin Salman’s crackdown on large parts of the political and economic elite and his bloody purge against political opponents celebrate the NYT as a fight against “corruption.” Nobody should be surprised that the US and its major media outlets are embracing this brutal strongman because he serves US interests. Saddam Hussein was the best case in the point until he fell from US grace.

While the Guardian was full of praise of bin Salman during the year, the NYT reported more cautiously until Thomas L. Friedman took over. In a kind of press release, the Guardian was full of praise for the future Saudi King. He did arrest not only 11 peopled but also sidelined 20 billionaires. That several people died in an organized helicopter crash was not worth reporting to the Guardian.

Friedman didn’t want to be in no way inferior to the Guardian’s uncritical reporting. He even topped it writing: “The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia.” All the other Arab Spring movements failed miserably happening from bottom up; the Saudi one is led from the top down by bin Salman. That the Crown Prince wants to reform a degenerated Saudi version of Islam seems worth reporting. Time will tell. Reading all these articles, one can ask who paid for these base flatteries.

Why didn’t Friedman ask bin Salman about his 500 million US-Dollars worth yacht? Or the cost of the last vacation in Morocco, where he and his father’s royal household spent 950 million US-Dollars. So much to combat corruption, Mr. Friedman.

Bin Salman also maintains an unconventional and rough diplomatic contact with other heads of states when they are on a Saudi drip-feed. When Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Saudi Arabia, he was forced to announce his resignation via Saudi TV. Apparently he feared for his life. For a few days, he stood under house arrest. Due to the speech of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the whole Lebanese leadership rallied behind Nasrallah and called for Hariri’s return to announce either his resignation or to stay in office. The President of France, Manuel Macron, also intervened on behalf of Hariri. Finally, Hariri could leave Saudi Arabia via France from where he returned to Lebanon to celebrate the country’s independence day. Bin Salman’s farce failed miserably. Almost the same happened to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Saudis ordered him to Riyadh and presented him an outline of the American Israeli “peace plan.” After returning to Ramallah, Abbas rejected the US Israeli document of surrender.

It’s an open secret that the Saudi and the Zionist regime are cultivating intensive diplomatic contacts not only on security issues. A rare interview by the head of Israel’s armed forces to a Saudi owned news outlet fueling talks of close links. Despite the denial of the Saudi foreign minister Adel el-Jubeir, these rumors won’t disappear.

“There are no relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Jubeir said. Formally, he seems correct, but what about the informal contacts. Hasn’t Mohammed bin Salman visited Israel in camera?

According to Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Israel enjoys “warm relations” with many Arab countries despite the fact that these nations officially refuse to recognize Israel diplomatically. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been boosting for quite some time about the close contact with several Arab countries.

The Israeli-Saudi-US alliance aims at Iran. They want to push back Iran’s influence in Iraq and Syria. For the time being, bin Salman’s plan to sell Israel to war against Lebanon to crush Hezbollah has failed. Hariri was not the Saudi stooge bin Salman thought. What these three rogue states have in common is the destruction of Iran like they did with Iraq, Syria or Libya. Netanyahu has warned President Bashar al-Assad not to allow Iran to build military bases in Syria. Israel will never accept it as they will never tolerate a nuclear Iran, so Netanyahu.

It remains to be seen whether the new “Axis of Evil” or the Russian Iranian Turkish alliance will prevail in the Middle East. So far, the Israeli, US  and Saudi cooperation have brought devastation to the region; it’s time Russia and the other rational actors bring stability back to the area.

Notes:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html

North Korea Launches ICBM Missile, Angering USA, Allies – OpEd

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Even as USA, South Korea and Japan keep raising objections to North Korean efforts for nukes, North Korea keeps testing its military readiness to face the US threats.

After two months of relative peace, North Korea launched its most powerful weapon yet early Wednesday the November 29, an intercontinental ballistic missile that could put Washington and the entire eastern US seaboard within range.

Resuming its torrid testing pace in pursuit of its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit the US mainland had been widely expected, but the apparent power and suddenness of the new test still jolted the Korean Peninsula and Washington.

The launch, against the Trump regime warnings, indicated an effort to perfect the element of surprise and to obtain maximum attention in the USA. The firing is a clear message of defiance aimed at the Trump government, which had just restored the North to a US list of terror sponsors. It also ruins nascent diplomatic efforts, raises fears of war or a pre-emptive US strike and casts a deeper shadow over the security of the Winter Olympics early next year in South Korea.

Japanese defense minister Itsunori Onodera said the missile landed inside of Japan’s special economic zone in the Sea of Japan, about 250 kilometers 155 miles) west of Aomori, which is on the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Onodera says the missile could have been an upgraded version of North Korea’s Hwasong-14 ICBM or a new missile. A big unknown, however, is the missile’s payload. If, as expected, it carried a light mock warhead, then its effective range would have been shorter, analysts said.

The launch is North Korea’s first since it fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan on Sept. 15, and may have broken any efforts at diplomacy meant to end the North’s nuclear ambitions.

US officials have sporadically floated the idea of direct talks with North Korea if it maintained restraint.

The missile also appears to improve on North Korea’s past launches. If flown on a standard trajectory, instead of Wednesday’s lofted angle, the missile would have a range of more than 13,000 kilometers (8,100 miles), said US scientist David Wright, a physicist who closely tracks North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, D.C., and in fact any part of the continental United States.

Of course, a rattled Seoul responded by almost immediately launching three of its own missiles in a show of force. The South’s president, Moon Jae-in, expressed worry that North Korea’s growing missile threat could force the USA to attack the North before it masters a nuclear-tipped long-range missile, something experts say may be imminent.

“If North Korea completes a ballistic missile that could reach from one continent to another, the situation can spiral out of control,” Moon said at an emergency meeting in Seoul, according to his office. “We must stop a situation where North Korea miscalculates and threatens us with nuclear weapons or where the United States considers a pre-emptive strike.”

Moon, a liberal who has been forced into a more hawkish stance by a stream of North Korean weapons tests, has repeatedly declared that there can be no US attack on the North without Seoul’s approval, but many here worry that Washington may act without South Korean input.

An intercontinental ballistic missile test is considered particularly provocative, and indications that it flew higher than past launches suggest progress by Pyongyang in developing a weapon of mass destruction that could strike the US mainland.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to prevent North Korea from having the WMD capability — using military force if necessary. In response to the launch, Trump said the United States will “take care of it.” He told reporters after the launch: “It is a situation that we will handle.” He did not elaborate. After North Korea missile launch, it’s more important than ever to fund our government and military! Dems shouldn’t hold troop funding hostage for amnesty and illegal immigration. I ran on stopping illegal immigration and won big. They can’t now threaten a shutdown to get their demands. — Donald J. Trump

Trump declared North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism and in the wake of today’s provocation, “our administration” is considering additional measures. Everybody was hoping that there would be restraint from the regime.” He said the latest and toughest sanctions resolutions against North Korea “are working, having an effect on the situation … on the capacity of the regime to obtain hard currency because to go along with the military programs or missile or nuclear (programs) you need money, and that’s the objective.”

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said the missile was launched from Sain Ni, North Korea, and traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before landing in the Sea of Japan within 370 nautical kilometers (200 nautical miles) of Japan’s coast. It flew for 53 minutes, Japan’s defense minister said. South Korea’s responding missile tests included one with a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) range, to mimic striking the North Korea launch site, which is not far from the North Korean capital.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement that North Korea was “indiscriminately threatening its neighbors, the region and global stability.” He urged the international community to not only implement existing UN sanctions on North Korea but also to consider additional measures for interdicting maritime traffic transporting goods to and from the country.

“Diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now,” Tillerson said, adding the USA remains committed to “finding a peaceful path to denuclearization and to ending belligerent actions by North Korea.” If there is bluster, and there is reality. Not knowing the difference can result in the loss of millions of lives.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the missile flew higher than previous projectiles. “It went higher, frankly, than any previous shot they’ve taken,” he told reporters at the White House.  “It’s a research and development effort on their part to continue building ballistic missiles that can threaten everywhere in the world.”

“There is still room for new measures, but for the moment … we don’t know what the council decision will be,” he said.

A week ago, the Trump government declared North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, further straining ties between governments that are still technically at war. Washington also imposed new sanctions on North Korean shipping firms and Chinese trading companies dealing with the North.

North Korea called the US terror designation a “serious provocation” that justifies its development of nuclear weapons. Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the early flight data suggests the North Korean missile was likely a Hwasong-14, which the North fired twice in July.

The North is likely trying to further evaluate the weapon’s performance, including the warhead’s ability to survive atmospheric re-entry and strike the intended target, before it attempts a test that shows the full range of the missile.

South Koreans are famously nonchalant about North Korea’s military moves, but there is worry about what the North’s weapons tests might mean for next year’s Winter Olympics in the South. President Moon told his officials to closely review whether the launch could in anyway hurt South Korea’s efforts to successfully host the games in Pyeongchang, which begin Feb. 9.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who spoke with Trump, said Japan will not back down against any provocation and would maximize pressure on the North in its strong alliance with the USA. Trump has ramped up economic and diplomatic pressure on the North to prevent its nuclear and missile development.

So far, the pressure has failed to get North Korea’s government, which views a nuclear arsenal as key to its survival against US threats, to return to long-stalled international negotiations on its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for November 29 at the request of Japan, the USA and South Korea. Obviously, Russia and China would support China and would not let any resolution against their allay North Korea.

Najib’s Mother Of All Budgets: Gearing Up For 14th General Election – Analysis

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The Najib government’s Budget for 2018 is widely seen as a feel-good package geared for the upcoming general election. This contrasts with the opposition coalition’s emphasis on good governance in its Alternative Budget. Which will win the public vote?

By Saleena Saleem and Amalina Anuar*

The Malaysian Budget for 2018 is the last prior to the upcoming general election, which the UMNO-led federal government has confirmed will be held within 180 days. As such, the budget represents the government’s last opportunity to demonstrate to the electorate how it intends to address the bread-and-butter issues that are topmost concerns for a sizeable portion of the Malaysian population.

Given this objective, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s self-declared “mother of all budgets” has been loaded with vote-getting goodies. This has the potential to help the incumbent government win votes, though how well it fares will depend on a variety factors.

Feel-Good Budget Ahead of Polls

First, the budget was not overly expansionary in anticipation of the upcoming elections. Instead, it balanced fiscal prudence by maintaining a targeted downward budget deficit of 2.8%. By comparison, the expected budget deficit for this year is 3%. There are plans and budget allocations that appeared to mitigate some of the impact from rising costs.

These include personal income tax reductions, abolition of toll collections on four major highways, Goods and Services Tax (GST) exemptions on certain items such as increase in affordable housing and the continuation of the 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M) welfare programme.

This approach satisfied international credit rating agencies, which have so far maintained a stable outlook for the Malaysian economy. It also helped to bolster a positive perception amongst market watchers that the government remains fiscally responsible with an eye toward long-term growth, even as it seeks to be responsive to the people’s needs in an election year.

Second, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have projected a modest global economic recovery and a rebound in oil prices in 2018. These factors will help bolster Malaysia’s economic growth that is anticipated at 5 to 5%. This may then increase the government’s revenues and help offset losses stemming from the planned personal income tax cuts.

Growing Foreign Capital Inflow

The growing optimism in the Malaysian economy has already drawn foreign capital inflows of nearly eight billion ringgit to Malaysian bonds in September. Coupled with the government’s demonstrated fiscal responsibility in the 2018 budget, foreign investor confidence will likely improve.

Third, the low and middle income groups bore the brunt of the economic downturn for the past three years, but these groups will get to directly benefit from the budget provisions such as the income tax cuts, as well as from a projected economic improvement in 2018.

Given the difficulties endured by the low and middle income groups over the past three years, these benefits provide immediate relief to a large segment of the electorate. The relief is projected to improve domestic consumer sentiment and public confidence, which had been on a downward trend since 2015.

The combined effect is to contribute to a feel-good factor that will be pivotal for the incumbent government as voters go to the polls. The government will certainly leverage on this sentiment to reinforce the message that better times lie ahead. It will claim to have successfully steered the country through economic difficulties while maintaining unpopular but necessary economic policies such as the GST and abolition of subsidies.

1MDB and Economic Austerity Measures

To be sure, the government could not remove these unpopular policies, even though these were akin to austerity-inducing measures that worsened the impact of the economic downturn on low and middle income groups.

This was primarily because the downturn, marked by massive foreign capital outflows, the stock market fall and the ringgit’s sharp depreciation, had surfaced the debt repayment woes of state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), which then sparked a protracted political crisis.

The government had to refrain from seeking more credit to avoid a downgrade by credit agencies, so it needed the revenues from the GST, even if it imposed pain on the people. If this pain is mitigated with the timely feel-good sentiment, it will be to the government’s advantage.

Pakatan Harapan’s Alternative Budget

On the other side of the political divide, Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) Alternative Budget — now in its third iteration — remained focused on the opposition’s electoral campaign issues of good governance and bread-and-butter grievances.

Even though PH’s alternative budget is peppered with populist promises such the abolition of the GST and the reinstatement of fuel subsidies, as well as a pivot to supporting BR1M, it may have a harder task in generating the same feel-good sentiment necessary for an electoral win. There are three reasons:

First, the incumbent government may have already stolen some of the opposition’s thunder by pre-emptively zero-rating additional items and administering personal income tax relief.

Second, PH’s proposal to abolish GST may alienate market actors that prefer policy stability. Coupled with the proposal to eliminate highway tolls, it also raises serious questions for voters on how PH plans to raise revenue and implement their policies.

To date, PH’s rationalisation of potential revenue sources remain vague. For example, while PH’s emphasis on anti-corruption measures as part of its good governance initiative to prevent unnecessary costs of doing business is important, it is nevertheless not a method of revenue creation. Hence, PH’s anticipated revenue from good governance measures may not necessarily be forthcoming, dampening the opposition’s ability to create public confidence and a feel-good sentiment around its fiscal governing capabilities.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, these ambiguities in PH’s vision of the Malaysian economy can create public misunderstanding and apprehension on its Alternative Budget and by extension, the opposition’s electoral campaign on the whole. If so, PH’s emphasis on good governance may not yield its desired returns.

A Possible Win for Barisan Nasional?

If material concerns remain foremost in voters’ minds, a feel-good budget may stack yet another card in Barisan Nasional’s (BN) favour. Pre-election polls have indicated that compared to good governance, bread-and-butter issues are more pertinent to voters.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if economic considerations will be a major factor in the constituencies and marginal districts that matter most during the14th General Election, given the salience of other intersecting issues such as religion, race, and inequality.

*Saleena Saleem is an Associate Research Fellow and Amalina Anuar a Student Research Assistant at the Malaysia Programme, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Saudi Arabia Shifts Policy From Risk Averse To Downright Dangerous – Analysis

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The Saudi system of consensus and family cohesion is broken, and the United States has leverage with its military support.

By Bruce Riedel*

A perfect storm is gathering around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Economic weakness, foreign policy setbacks and political infighting in the royal family threaten to destabilize America’s oldest ally in the Middle East. Volatility in the kingdom will have a ripple effect throughout the region.

The special US relationship with Saudi Arabia turns 75 next year. In 1943 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited King Abd al Aziz al Saud to send representatives to Washington in the midst of the Second World War. Ibn Saud sent his sons Prince Feisal and Prince Khaled, two future kings. They stayed in Blair House, the official guesthouse of the US president, and met with FDR in the Oval Office. A state dinner and meetings with Congress were followed by a cross-country tour from Texas to California and back to the East Coast. The president wanted to impress the Saudis with America’s power and might. Two years later FDR and the king meet face to face on the USS Quincy, a cruiser, in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt.

The relationship has since become stormy with great highs alternating with deep lows. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Iraq in Kuwait were highs, and the 1973 oil embargo and 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 were lows. Today the relationship is superficially better than ever. Donald Trump made Riyadh his first foreign port of call, and he has strongly endorsed King Salman and his son Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman including their recent purge of the royal family. The president and king share a strong opposition to Iran.

But trouble brews beneath the surface. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism law, passed 98-0 to override former President Barack Obama’s veto last year, has led to court cases alleging Saudi culpability for the 9/11 plot. Opposition to arms sales to the kingdom because of the war in Yemen is growing in Congress. The last US arms sale to Saudi passed the Senate by a narrow margin.

The kingdom is at a crossroad. Low oil prices have damaged the economy which flat-lined in 2016 and went into recession this year. A third of the country’s foreign reserves have been spent since Salman ascended the throne just three years ago. The Saudi cradle-to-grave welfare state is unsustainable.

The good news is that the king and crown prince recognize the need for profound changes and have proposed a new economic strategy called Saudi Vision 2030 including innovative ideas for opening society and reducing dependence on oil. Giving Saudi women driver’s licenses, for example, reduces the need for a half million foreign chauffeurs who send their wages home. Opening ARAMCO, the Saudi national oil company, to outside investors would encourage more foreign investment.

But implementing Vision 2030 has been weak. Necessary cuts in public-sector salaries and subsidies were quickly reversed. The purge of family members, allegedly an anti-corruption campaign, has frightened investors and is leading to capital flight.

Foreign policy failures add to the economic burden. The 30-month-old war in Yemen is an expensive quagmire. What was billed as Decisive Storm by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Muhammad bin Salman, known as MBS, has become a stalemate. With modest help from Iran and Hezbollah the rebels are building missiles that have already targeted Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates could be next. Almost 80 missiles have struck the kingdom. The Saudis are spending a fortune in Yemen while Houthi-supporter Tehran fights to the last Yemeni. The biggest loser is the Yemeni people who are now living in the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. The Saudis claim 85 percent of Yemen is in their hands, but in fact a sizable majority of the population is in the rebel-controlled north where the famine is most acute. The Saudi strategy is starvation and disease, which rightfully draws global opprobrium.

The blockade of Qatar is another failed adventure by the crown prince. Qataris have rallied behind the emir, and Saudi efforts to promote dissidents have been mocked.

Iran has been a beneficiary of the crisis. More broadly Iran is outpacing the Saudis across the region. Iranian influence is preeminent in Syria and Iraq, and likely to get stronger. Lebanon is Hezbollah’s pawn, and the Saudi maneuvers with Saad Hariri whose unexplained resignation as prime minister while on a trip to Riyadh, later withdrawn, have only illustrated their weaknesses.

Saudi foreign policy, typically cautious and risk averse, has become aggressive and dangerous, sometimes reckless. As the main architect of its failures, Muhammad bin Salman must bear the consequences, and the question is will he learn from his mistakes?

Low oil prices have damaged the economy which flat-lined in 2016 and went into recession this year. A third of the country’s foreign reserves have been spent since Salman ascended the throne just three years ago. The Saudi cradle-to-grave welfare state is unsustainable.

He achieved his top goal of securing the heir to the throne, but that was not difficult since his father cleared the path and provided his favorite son protection. In the process sizable portions of the royal family have been alienated. Former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef is apparently under house arrest, and the former head of the Saudi Arabia National Guard Prince Mutaib is imprisoned in a hotel. The country’s large security services are now run by amateurs.

Most importantly, the arrest of senior princes and other establishment figures and reports that they are being shaken down for their money, as much as $100 billion, have sent a chilling effect through the country. The rules of the Saudi system, based on consensus and family cohesion, have been broken. Decorum has been abandoned for a naked power grab.

For now the crown prince is unchallenged, but many suspect that once his father passes MBS may be vulnerable. One Arab ambassador confided that he anticipates the young man will be assassinated.

Saudi Arabia’s future is certain to be much less predictable and stable than during the last half century of Saudi politics. The placid pace of the kingdom has been replaced by volatility. The spillover is already shaking the region and creating consternation.

Rather than handing over a blank check to Riyadh, Washington should be urging a more conservative approach. Privately the message must be stern because America’s interests are at stake and damaged by misadventures like the Qatari dispute. Washington should be urgently trying to find an early end to the Yemeni catastrophe, both to save lives and prevent escalation. Washington should be clear that war with Iran – either deliberate or inadvertent – is not an American interest, and the United States should also steer clear of injecting itself into royal family politics.

The United States has enormous leverage given Saudi dependence on American military support and spare parts. It’s time to use it.

*Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. In addition, Riedel serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. He retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency, including postings overseas. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council at the White House. He is the author of Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States Since FDR, published in 2017. Read an excerpt.

Beating Heart Patch Large Enough To Repair Human Heart

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Biomedical engineers at Duke University have created a fully functioning artificial human heart muscle large enough to patch over damage typically seen in patients who have suffered a heart attack. The advance takes a major step toward the end goal of repairing dead heart muscle in human patients.

The study appears online in Nature Communications on November 28, 2017.

“Right now, virtually all existing therapies are aimed at reducing the symptoms from the damage that’s already been done to the heart, but no approaches have been able to replace the muscle that’s lost, because once it’s dead, it does not grow back on its own,” said Ilya Shadrin, a biomedical engineering doctoral student at Duke University and first author on the study. “This is a way that we could replace lost muscle with tissue made outside the body.”

Unlike some human organs, the heart cannot regenerate itself after a heart attack. The dead muscle is often replaced by scar tissue that can no longer transmit electrical signals or contract, both of which are necessary for smooth and forceful heartbeats.

The end result is a disease commonly referred to as heart failure that affects over 12 million patients worldwide. New therapies, such as the one being developed by Shadrin and his advisor Nenad Bursac, professor of biomedical engineering at Duke, are needed to prevent heart failure and its lethal complications.

Current clinical trials are testing the tactic of injecting stem cells derived from bone marrow, blood or the heart itself directly into the affected site in an attempt to replenish some of the damaged muscle. While there do seem to be some positive effects from these treatments, their mechanisms are not fully understood. Fewer than one percent of the injected cells survive and remain in the heart, and even fewer become cardiac muscle cells.

Heart patches, on the other hand, could conceivably be implanted over the dead muscle and remain active for a long time, providing more strength for contractions and a smooth path for the heart’s electrical signals to travel through. These patches also secrete enzymes and growth factors that could help recovery of damaged tissue that hasn’t yet died.

For this approach to work, however, a heart patch must be large enough to cover the affected tissue. It must also be just as strong and electrically active as the native heart tissue, or else the discrepancy could cause deadly arrhythmias.

This is the first human heart patch to meet both criteria. “Creating individual cardiac muscle cells is pretty commonplace, but people have been focused on growing miniature tissues for drug development,” said Bursac. “Scaling it up to this size is something that has never been done and it required a lot of engineering ingenuity.”

The cells for the heart patch are grown from human pluripotent stem cells — the cells that can become any type of cell in the body. Bursac and Shadrin have successfully made patches using many different lines of human stem cells, including those derived from embryos and those artificially forced or “induced” into their pluripotent state.

Various types of heart cells can be grown from these stem cells: cardiomyocytes, the cells responsible for muscle contraction; fibroblasts, the cells that provide structural framework for heart tissue; and endothelial and smooth muscle cells, the cells that form blood vessels. The researchers place these cells at specific ratios into a jelly-like substance where they self-organize and grow into functioning tissue.

Finding the right combination of cells, support structures, growth factors, nutrients and culture conditions to grow large, fully functional patches of human heart tissue has taken the team years of work. Every container and procedure had to be sized up and engineered from scratch. And the key that brought it all together was a little bit of rocking and swaying.

“It turns out that rocking the samples to bathe and splash them to improve nutrient delivery is extremely important,” said Shadrin. “We obtained three-to-five times better results with the rocking cultures compared to our static samples.”

The results improved on the researchers’ previous patches, which were one square centimeter and four square centimeters. They successfully scaled up to 16 square centimeters and five to eight cells thick. Tests show that the heart muscle in the patch is fully functional, with electrical, mechanical and structural properties that resemble those of a normal, healthy adult heart.

“This is extremely difficult to do, as the larger the tissue that is grown, the harder it is to maintain the same properties throughout it,” said Bursac. “Equally challenging has been making the tissues mature to adult strength on a fast timescale of five weeks while achieving properties that typically take years of normal human development.”

Bursac and Shadrin have already shown that these cardiac patches survive, become vascularized and maintain their function when implanted onto mouse and rat hearts. For a heart patch to ever actually replace the work of dead cardiac muscle in human patients, however, it would need to be much thicker than the tissue grown in this study. And for patches to be grown that thick, they need to be vascularized so that cells on the interior can receive enough oxygen and nutrients. Even then, researchers would have to figure out how to fully integrate the heart patch with the existing muscle.

“Full integration like that is really important, not just to improve the heart’s mechanical pumping, but to ensure the smooth spread of electrical waves and minimize the risk of arrhythmias,” said Shadrin.

“We are actively working on that, as are others, but for now, we are thrilled to have the ‘size matters’ part figured out,” added Bursac.

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