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Humans’ Intimacy With Technology: Are We All Becoming Cyborgs?

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Do you think you could live without your mobile phone? What about the navigation and backup camera in your car? Could you drive as well without them? Could you get by without your smartwatch reminding you how often to get up from your desk to keep healthy or weather conditions for the day so you know how to dress?

Our obsession with technology and the information it delivers daily has progressed beyond the point of external mobile phones and smartwatches to implanted heart monitors and Fitbits. At one time, consumers were too paranoid to enter their Social Security or credit card number online, but now, they are willing to implant sensors and other wearable technologies into their bodies. In turn, companies are leveraging these devices to collect as much data about their potential customers as possible.

The latest fashion: Wearing data

Think about it: You’re carrying (and generating) large amounts of data everywhere you go with wearable and implanted technologies. This means 24/7 data collection for the companies that manufacture those devices, which in turn helps them create a 360-degree view of the patients, athletes or customers they serve with the appropriate products, services and marketing campaigns.

According to research by Talend, a cloud and big data integration software company, 33 percent of consumers already own wearables like the Apple Watch or smart clothing, and another 30 percent are expected to make a purchase within the next three years. That’s a lot of new sources of data for companies to utilize – and a plethora of information companies can use to more accurately define the preferences and needs of its customers.

How we’re using wearables

Topping the list of today’s most common consumer-use cases for embedded wearables is healthcare (57 percent), privacy (28 percent) and convenience (20 percent), all contributing to the rapid dissemination and uptake of these devices.

Healthcare is the leading use for implanted technologies, with the introduction of advanced-tracking devices such as Medtronic’s FDA-approved Reveal LINQ Insertable Cardiac Monitor with TruRhythm Detection, introduced in March of this year, which is designed to accurately identify abnormal heartbeats. This life-saving device is implanted just beneath the skin and communicates wirelessly with the patient’s bedside monitor, which uploads device data to the Medtronic CareLink network. Once the data is loaded, algorithms can be run to determine if the patient is experiencing slower than average heart rate, which can deprive the brain and other organs from getting enough oxygen. This advanced use of embedded wearables and machine learning helps physicians find answers for patients at risk of cardiac arrhythmias to better manage a range of patient populations.

Outside of healthcare, the second biggest use for embedded wearables is physical security. Several companies have started utilizing biochip implants to replace card keys and manual entry codes for employees. For example, Three Square Market offered employees implanted chips in July to make purchases in their cafeteria and break rooms, open doors, log in to computers and use the copy machine. Approximately 50 employees underwent the minimally invasive procedure, many of whom believe the chip is worth any potential discomfort, as it helps to streamline their daily processes. Though this may seem like a massive invasion of privacy for many, for others, biochip implants present a way to make life easier.

Establishing trust: Should you be worried about privacy of information?

While the results of Talend’s survey seem to point to the fact that consumers are getting more digitally comfortable, with greater trust from consumers comes greater responsibility for companies to understand the many ways they need to protect customer data.

According to Talend’s survey, the most likely scenario that would drive consumers to break up with a brand and take their business elsewhere is a breach of personal data. In fact, 78 percent of consumers want to be assured they have full visibility into what companies are doing with their data. But as implanted and wearable technology becomes increasingly common and technology improves, the trade-off between data privacy and convenience will only increase.

Consider a future of augmented reality where implanted contacts could allow you to visualize and interact with the world around you in practical ways, or a future with implanted audio wearables that translate languages in real time. Would that convenience and experience move you to adopt wearable technology even if it means relinquishing more of your personal information and privacy? At what point of technology adoption do we all essentially become cyborgs, guided each day by the obvious and subliminal information being fed to us via embedded and external devices? The day of total automation may be here sooner than you think.

This article was published by Modern Diplomacy


Gangs, Race And Melbourne – OpEd

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Two’s a company; three’s a crowd.  More?  This issue is preoccupying political and policing figures in the city considered by the Economist Intelligence Unit the most liveable in the world, bettering a whole host of other seemingly more appropriate candidates.  So liveable, in fact, that it houses all sorts.

Having repeatedly boasted, self-congratulated and beamed at the idea that Australia is the most multicultural nation on earth, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been less cautious of late.  He has been getting stroppy with the Victorian Government for not doing enough about what he considers Melbourne’s “growing gang violence and lawlessness”.

The straw that broke a very fragile camel’s back involved acts of vandalism in Werribee.  Depending on which news source you referred to, there was a mass riot at an Airbnb property that would have made the Communards proud. Other sources saw more modest damage to cars and rental property.  Everyone took notice of the juvenile expressions of delight from the perpetrators, who scrawled the letters MTS (“Menace to Society”) on walls to leave their little residue of destructive pride.

At the federal level, politicians see the former: mayhem, riotous violence, a loss of control.  Federal minister Greg Hunt has come up with his own assessment: “Gang crime in Victoria is clearly out of control.  We know that African gang crime in some areas in particular is clearly out of control.”  In the tables of political point scoring, Hunt had found a handy, simplifying culprit.

For Hunt, there were no relevant sophisticated sociological principles here, nor matters of economics.  Society was imploding; an African wave of violence had been unleashed.  Nor was it a police issue.  “The failure is not the police but the premier.”

Victorian police have been a touch more tentative, while various African community leaders have been less than confident in the tag of “gang”.  Label and be damned.  “These young thugs, these young criminals,” claimed Acting Commissioner Shane Patton, “they’re not an organised crime group like a Middle Eastern organised crime group or an outlaw motorcycle gang. But they’re behaving like street gangs, so let’s call them that – that’s what they are.”

South Sudanese community leader, Richard Deng, prefers the direct option: engage the estranged; bring in those lost souls from the cold. Fine for Mr Turnbull to speak from a distant pulpit, but come down to Melbourne and see for yourself and cosy up to conversation with local leaders.  “What disappointed me as a community leader is to see a Prime Minister of our country trying to say these are ‘African gangs’ – these are the children of Australia”.

Deng’s message is that of understanding, conciliation, accommodation, the sugary terms that have long ceased to exist in the official speak of Australian law enforcement.  This remains a country keen on promoting its tolerant cosmopolitanism even as it finances gulag processing centres for asylum seekers on tropical islands in developing countries.  Compassion rarely sells.

Foremost in the approach of such figures as Deng it is that of instruction, the pedagogue in action, the elder in sympathy.  “He’s the Prime Minister, he needs to join hands with the State government and police to support these kids.”

Figures such as Ahmed Hassan, director of the outreach group Youth Activating Youth, adds his vote of confidence to ongoing efforts of the Victorian Government, ones that follow the pathway of encouragement and engagement.  Strategies are being implemented through sporting clubs, through schools.  “We need to continue this and it has to come from a federal level where the Prime Minister has to support the State Government initiatives.”

Race, immigration and security are not provinces where Australian leaders have been particularly keen to separate.  Every attack is a political opportunity, enabling markers of identity to be used to bolster the next populist policy.  Reassurance is less enticing than the drum beat of conflict, the stimulant of fear.  Rather than considering matters of structure and influence in terms of why a section of the population might turn to crime, or even more broadly mischief, the superficial will sell.

Matthew Guy, Victoria’s Liberal Opposition Leader, is an adherent to the tedious view that the fist is better than the mind, the prison a better solution than the classroom.  The fact that prisons are ideal schools for crime eludes him.  The Guy formula here is mandatory sentencing for repeat offenders, those involved in home invasions, aggravated car-jackings and armed robberies.

Not that the community leaders are necessary the best panacea for the lost.  Having assumed the authority to speak for alienated youth figures, they can themselves come across as compromised, seeking authority before others in the immigrant hierarchy. Resources, and prestige, are there to be fought over, even as the problem perpetuates.

Nor do they all agree, either.  Nelly Yoa has provided manna from heaven to more reactionary commentators keen to put the kibosh on “African” perpetrators.  As one who mentors the troubled, he feels that the Victorian government has been sluggish and slow on the uptake.  “The State Government has watched this unfold over the past two years.  Nothing has been done.”

Between Deng and Yoa is a yawning chasm.  One claims that community leaders are engaged, their activities approved and backed by the Victorian government. The other insists that the issue has become something of a conference set, an interminable chat show that tanks more than thinks.  “As a Melbournian,” claims Yoa, “I do believe enough is enough.  Action needs to be taken instead of just talking about it.”

But the options are thin, and refusing to involve those involved in matters of violence or misdemeanour adds teeth to their cause, whatever it might be.  Then comes the issue of policing itself, its protocols, its approaches.  As Deng himself explains, “These are young people who like to make a name for themselves to look tough in front of the Victorian police”.  They are far from the only ones in this.

Sri Lanka: Women Eager For Chance In Elections

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By Niranjani Roland and Quintus Colombage

Rural Sri Lankan women have a better chance to fight for their rights by winning positions in local government.

More rural women will stand in local elections on Feb. 10 after parliament passed a law last year that local governments must have a 25 percent quota for female election candidates.

Women represent 52 percent of Sri Lanka’s population but their representation in local politics has been the lowest among South Asian nations.

The country is ranked 180th out of 190 in the rankings of female representation in parliament.

R.G. Podimenike, convener of the Eastern United Women Organization (EUWO), a group of female social activists, said the organization had formed nominations for 27 women candidates to contest the elections.

“The 25 percent quota encourages rural women to enter politics and make political decisions in their local bodies,” she said.

“We have formed a multi-ethnic group including Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindus. We trained the women candidates to eliminate gender-based violence, enhance democratic governance, access government services and promote ethnic reconciliation among multi-ethnic groups who faced three decades of war.”

Podimenike said the EUWO decided to contest local elections mainly to address the issues of women, children and war-affected people irrespective of ethnicity.

Women’s rights groups including the EUWO demonstrated in the streets to increase women’s political representation in line with equality, democracy and justice.

According to the Election Department, female representation is about 4 percent in provincial councils and about 5 percent in parliament.

Chandrani Bandara, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, said there are only 13 female parliamentarians out of 225.

Arulanathan Jerarajani, 33, a mother of one from Kantale in Trincomalee, said 24 female candidates will contest the elections under her direction.

“It took a long wait for this political culture to change and women did not have such an environment in the past,” she said.

“Many of our candidates have been social workers for last 15 years. They have worked with grassroots people. We will forward our election manifesto in the coming weeks.

“Many of us are new to politics and will be fighting male candidates who have experience in politics. Some rumors have been spread to spoil our image too.”

Sister Nicola Emmanuel of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary congregation, said women had played many roles in Sri Lanka’s post-war situation. They had protested about disappeared people, political prisoners and land grabbing.

“This is a good opportunity for 89,000 rural war widows to fight social stigma and raise their voices for their affected people,” said Sister Emmanuel, a human rights activist in Vavuniya.

US Job Growth Slows Modestly, But Black Unemployment Falls To Record Low – Analysis

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported slightly weaker than expected job growth in December, with the economy adding 148,000 jobs. There was a modest downward revision to the data for the prior two months, which brought the three-month average to 204,000. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent for the third consecutive month.

The best news in this report was the drop in the unemployment rate for blacks to 6.8 percent, the lowest since these data were first collected in 1972. The previous low was 7.0 percent in April of 2000. This is consistent with the view that a low unemployment rate disproportionately benefits the most disadvantaged groups. The black unemployment rate averages close to twice the white unemployment rate. This ratio has been reduced somewhat as the labor market tightened. The unemployment rate for whites in December was 3.7 percent.

Healthy job growth has continued to pull more prime-age workers (ages 25 to 54) into the labor market with the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) edging up to 79.1 percent. This is a new high for the recovery, but it is still more than a full percentage point below its pre-recession level and 2.8 percentage points below the peak high in 2000.

It is worth noting that the EPOPs of varying demographic groups have not followed a predictable pattern since 2000. In the last recovery, women in the 25-to-34 age group showed the sharpest falloff in EPOPs. At present, they one of the groups closest to recovering their 2000 EPOP. While men in the 25 to 34 grouping now show the sharpest falloff in EPOPs among prime-age workers, their EPOPs pretty much moved with the EPOPs for other prime-age workers in the last recovery. This suggests caution in assuming that changes in these EPOPs are due to supply-side issues as opposed to the strength of the labor market.

In this respect, it is worth noting that less-educated workers continue to be the biggest gainers from the continuing expansion. The EPOP for workers with just a high school degree has risen by 0.6 percentage points over the last year. For workers without a high school degree it has risen by 0.5 percentage points. By contrast, for workers with a college degree it is unchanged.

Other news in the household survey was mixed. All the duration measures of unemployment fell, with the average and median duration hitting new lows for the recovery, albeit still slightly higher than pre-recession levels. On the other hand, the percent of unemployment due to voluntary quits edged down to 10.9 percent. By comparison, it was over 13.7 percent in 2000.

On the payroll side, a disproportionate share of the job growth occurred in the goods-producing sector with construction adding 30,000 jobs and manufacturing adding 25,000 jobs. Employment in the mining and logging sector overall was unchanged, although coal mining lost jobs for the third consecutive month.

Health care added 31,400 jobs and restaurants added 25,100 jobs, both in line with their averages over the last year. The professional and technical services lost 4,700 jobs, the first decline in more than two years. This was driven by a loss of 15,400 jobs in accounting, a decline that is sure to be reversed as a result of the new tax law. The big loser was retail, which lost 20,300 jobs. Employment in the sector is down by 66,500 over the last year or 0.4 percent.

The most troublesome item in this report is the continued weakness of wages. The average hourly wage rose 2.5 percent over the last year, but this may actually be slowing. The annual rate for the last three months compared with the prior three months has been just 1.7 percent.

The weakest wage growth has been in manufacturing, where wages have risen by just 1.6 percent over the last year, and mining and logging, where the increase has been just 0.3 percent. This is consistent with production shifting from higher-paying union sites to lower paying non-union sites. Wages in retail have risen by a weak 2.1 percent, while in accommodation and food services they have risen by 3.6 percent, likely reflecting the impact of higher minimum wages.

On the whole, this is a positive report, but it certainly indicates no basis for concern about the labor market overheating.

How To Deal With Climate Change Deniers: Price Carbon – Analysis

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Trump’s election has brought climate change deniers to the centre of global policymaking. This column uses Pascal’s wager as a model to explore optimal policy given uncertainty over the fundamental causes of global warming. This agnostic approach finds that assigning even a high probability to climate change deniers being correct has insignificant effects on policy. Pricing carbon is shown to be optimal in either case, and robust to whether policymakers want to maximise global welfare, or minimise regret in the worst case.

By Rick van der Ploeg and Armon Rezai*

The US appointment of an outspoken climate sceptic, Scott Pruitt, to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency has thrown global climate policy against the ropes. Only on 9 March  2017, Pruitt stated “[…] I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

But even climate change deniers have some doubt about whether man-made emissions really don’t contribute to global warming. Prudent science should therefore deal with the error that a model is falsely assumed to be correct. To reflect the two opposing views of the climate-economy interaction – one in which human emissions contribute to climate change, and one in which the climate follows exogenous projections of committed warming – we extend what is probably the best-known integrated assessment model of the economy and the climate – the DICE model (Nordhaus 2014). We then let agnostics choose climate policy under ‘climate model’ uncertainty.1

Climate change denial can be addressed using such an agnostic approach to policy where the scientific uncertainty that climate change deniers could be right after all is accounted for. It is important to be clear about terminology – ‘climate change deniers’ are 100% certain that global warming has only natural causes, ‘climate change believers’ (or non-sceptic scientists) are 100% certain that anthropogenic carbon emissions contribute to global warming, and ‘climate change sceptics’ or ‘agnostics’ attach a (small) positive probability to climate change deniers being right or at least acknowledge the possibility that global warming is not caused by anthropogenic carbon emissions at all. In the political debate, climate change deniers are sometimes euphemistically referred to as ‘climate sceptics’.

Pascal and the challenge of conducting climate policy in presence of sceptics

In the 17th century, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal pioneered decision making under such fundamental uncertainty by asking if one should believe in (the Christian) God if one cannot prove His existence using scientific methods (Pascal 1910). His recommendation for agnostics was assertive – believe in God if you hold the slightest prior belief that God might exist. The rationale is that the cost of wrongly believing in God is minimal or at least finite, but the cost of wrongly not believing is infinite (eternal damnation and burning in a lake of fire). We use similar reasoning to argue that climate agnostics, who cannot fully discount the position that science has got it all wrong, should push for stringent climate policy nonetheless. Acknowledgment of scientific uncertainty about our understanding of climate change thus leads to only minimal downward revision of optimal mitigation efforts.

Figure 1 plots the temperature profiles for both views of the climate. The dashed green line with temperature peaking at 3.4°C corresponds to the science view where decision makers price carbon at $14.7/tCO2 today to avoid climate change. In fact, the optimal price of carbon increases to $18 and $73/tCO2 if marginal damages rise rapidly with global warming and policymakers use a lower discount rate than private agents (van der Ploeg and Rezai 2017). Under the deniers’ view global temperature is unrelated to human emissions and peaks at 1.3°C regardless of whether carbon is priced or not.

Figure 1 Temperature in the science and denier’s models under either policy

Notes: The climate model of deniers has temperature peaking at 1.3°C, independent of anthropogenic emissions and climate policy. In a scientific climate model, policy limits peak warming to 3.4°C. Policy inaction as favoured by deniers leads to temperature increases of 7°C. Agnostic policy ascribing a 10% chance that deniers are right only increases peak warming by 0.1°C relative to the science view.

We also plot temperature outcomes where one type of policy (price carbon or don’t price carbon) is implemented in the other type of climate view (science or denier). In the science (don’t price carbon) case, the absence of a carbon price leads to rapidly rising temperature, peaking at 7°C (solid red line). This scenario is commonly called ‘business as usual’. In the denier (price carbon) case, human emissions fall (not plotted) but temperature is unchanged due to the decoupling of global mean temperature and emissions.

Table 1 summarises the four scenarios in terms of global welfare gains relative to the welfare predicted by the science view under business as usual in percentage of current world GDP. The first row assumes that the climate scientists’ view is correct. Wrongly not pricing carbon involves unfettered growth in emissions, temperature peaking at 7°C, and severe consequent damages to the world economy. However, if carbon is priced, temperature is stabilised and welfare is increased by 17% of world GDP. The second row assumes that climate change deniers are right. Temperature increases to 1.3°C regardless of policy and the economic future under business as usual is much brighter than what doomsayer scientists think. The benefit of removing severe climate change damage amounts to a 41% of world GDP. In a denier’s world, wrongly and unnecessarily pricing carbon and rebating the revenues introduces efficiency losses and a drag on economic growth equivalent to a 7% drop in world GDP.

Table 1 Decision matrix under science and denier climate views

Notes: Welfare improvements relative to ‘business as usual’ are presented for the science and the deniers’ view of global warming (rows) and the corresponding two type of policies (columns). An agnostic policymaker prices carbon if the probability that deniers are right and global warming has only natural causes is smaller than 70%. The worst outcome for both climate policy and no climate policy occurs under the science model. Doing the best under all worst possible outcomes (max-min) is thus to price carbon. Climate change deniers do not tax carbon as they view climate change as exogenous. The corresponding outcomes (top-right entries in the table) are commonly called ‘business as usual’ if the science view turns out to be correct.

If one follows Pascal and adopts the expected welfare approach with only these two policies, it is optimal to price carbon if the probability that deniers are right is less than 70% and not to price carbon otherwise. Since 97% of scientists and 58% of the general public in the US say that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperature (Doran and Zimmerman 2009), one can assume this threshold for pricing carbon is met. Agnostic policymakers who maximise welfare under the worst possible outcomes (i.e. the max-min decision criterion of Wald 1945) also choose to price carbon, because the resulting efficiency losses are much lower than the deleterious effects of future severe climate change (and 7°C peak warming). The same logic and climate policy applies if policymakers minimise maximum regret (Savage 1954). Both max-min and min-max-regret policies are the classical policy responses to model uncertainty. They maximise welfare or minimise regret under the worst possible view on the causes of global warming.

So far, we have only considered an either/or choice (one either believes in God or doesn’t), but the modern expected-welfare approach allows for a continuous range of policy options. We find that maximising expected welfare with a 10% probability that deniers are correct does not alter the purely science-based optimal climate policy much – the initial carbon price falls from $14.7 to $13.3/tCO2 and expected peak warming rises by a mere 0.1°C (solid black line in Figure 1). If we take 3% for the climate specialists and 42% for the general public, as suggested in (Doran and Zimmerman 2009), the carbon prices are $14.3 (even closer to the figure chosen by the non-sceptic scientist) and $8.7 per tonne of emitted CO2, respectively.

Ambiguity aversion

Modern decision theory extends the expected utility framework to allow for aversion to ambiguity about what the right climate model is (Klibanoff et al. 2005). This approach accounts for irreducible uncertainty and puts a premium on playing it safe when venturing into domains where different models give different outcomes. Accounting for ambiguity aversion (AA) effectively introduces caution by adjusting the probability that sceptics are right downwards (Millner et al. 2013), thereby nesting both the expected welfare approach (with AA = 0) and the extremely cautious max-min approach (with AA infinite) which pushes the probability that climate change deniers are correct right down to zero (Gilboa and Schmeidler 1989).

Figure 2 shows iso-peak-warming curves for combinations of the subjective prior probability that climate change deniers are right (vertical axis) and the AA (horizontal axis). If AA = 0, peak warming increases by more than 0.5°C only for priors that deniers are right greater than a third. If AA = 800, this cut-off for the prior rises to 70%. Aversion to ambiguity about what the right climate model is biases priors toward the non-sceptic scientist and encourages more ambitious climate policy. This effect is small for low AA, but large for high AA. Even if policymakers assign a 50% (90%) chance to climate change deniers being right, allowing for a high degree of robustness but less than for the max-min policy biases this chance down to 20% if AA = 800 (2,000). This implies an initial price of carbon of $11.9/tCO2 and peak global warming of 3.6°C.

Figure 2 Carbon price and peak warming for varying priors that climate change deniers are right and varying degrees of ambiguity aversion

Notes: The initial carbon price decreases and peak warming increases in the probability that climate change deniers are right (vertical axis) from $14.7 to $0/tCO2 and from 3.4°C to 7°C, respectively. Aversion to scientific uncertainty (AA, horizontal axis) lowers the willingness to tolerate high levels of warming. As AA approaches infinity, the initial carbon price increases to $14.7 and peak warming falls to 3.4°C regardless of prior probabilities and gives rise to the max-min policy.

Conclusion

We conclude that the cost of avoiding the most harmful aspects of climate change is small compared with the cost of inaction, so robust policies – such as doing the best or minimising regret under the worst possible outcomes – call for pricing carbon. Even for less cautious policies than the max-min policies with finite but substantial degrees of ambiguity aversion towards climate model uncertainty, and subjective prior probabilities that climate change deniers are right as high as 20%, the price of carbon is close to the non-sceptic, scientifically optimal one. In fact, even if the subjective probability of climate change deniers being right were 50%, possibly due to the influence of the coal and shale gas lobbies, the end of the fossil fuel era would be delayed by only 30 years relative to the rational science-based view. This delay shortens as the prior probability that climate change deniers are right falls, or aversion to ambiguity, about whether scientists or deniers are right, increases. Agnostic decision makers might not want to make an assessment of the prior distribution of the different views of the climate as it is fundamentally unknown. In that case, the max-min solution, and thus the science-based policy, are appropriate.

Not pricing carbon benefits current generations by avoiding the economic burden of climate regulation, giving politicians the subterfuge to avoid painful restructuring of carbon-based industries. Our results, however, discredit this wait-and-see approach. We have not set out to disprove or prove either the climate change deniers’ or scientific view, but have used modern decision theory to show that agnostics should decarbonise the economy rapidly as the consequences of erring on the ‘wrong’ side are too grave. The agnostic policymaker’s response to climate change deniers is thus strikingly simply – price carbon.

*About the authors:
Rick van der Ploeg
, Professor of Economics and Research Director of OxCarre, University of Oxford

Armon Rezai, Director of Policy, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW) Associate Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU

References:
Doran, P T and M K Zimmerman (2009), “Examining the scientific consensus on climate change”, Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 90(3): 22-23.

Gilboa, I and D Schmeidler (1989), “Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior”, Journal of Mathematical Economics 18: 141-153.

Klibanoff, P, M Marinacci and S Mukerji (2005), “A smooth model of decision making under ambiguity”, Econometrica 73(6): 1849-1892.

Millner, A, S Dietz and G Heal (2013), “Scientific ambiguity and climate policy”, Environmental and Resource Economics 55(1): 21-46.

Nordhaus, W (2014), “Estimates of the social cost of carbon: Concepts and results from the DICE-2013R model and alternative approaches”, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 1: 273-312.

Pascal, B (1670), Pensées (Translated by W F  Trotter, London, Dent, 1910).

van der Ploeg, F and A Rezai (2017), “The agnostic’s response to climate deniers: Price carbon!”, CEPR Discussion Paper no 12468.

Savage, L J (1954), Foundations of Statistics, New York, John Wiley.

Wald, A (1945), “Statistical decision functions which minimize the maximum risk”, The Annals of Mathematics 46(2): 265-280.

Endnotes:
[1] The ‘scientific’ model corresponds to version DICE-2013R of the DICE model. Strictly speaking, the International Panel on Climate Change allows for a very small probability that deniers are right but we will call the ‘science’ view the one which says that all anthropogenic carbon emissions contribute to global warming. The ‘denier’ model corresponds to a variant of DICE-2013R where anthropogenic emissions are assumed not to enter the atmosphere and the climate evolves independently of the economy, responding to exogenous and past emissions already in the system.

Ralph Nader: Corporate Coercion And Drive To Eliminate Buying With Cash – OpEd

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“Sorry we’re not taking cash or checks,” said the clerk at the Fed Ex counter over a decade ago to an intern. “Only credit cards.”

Since then, the relentless intensification of coercive commercialism has been moving toward a cashless economy, when all consumers are incarcerated within a prison of corporate payment systems from your credit/debit cards to your mobile phone and very soon facial recognition.

“Terrific!” say those consumers for whom convenience and velocity of transactions are irresistible.

“This is nuts!” say a shrinking number of free-thinking consumers who are unwilling to be dragooned down the road to corporate captivity and coercion.  These people treasure their privacy. They understand that it’s none of any conglomerate’s business – whether VISA, Facebook, Amazon or Google – what, where, when and how consumers purchase goods and services. Or where and when they travel, receive healthcare, or the most intimate relationships they maintain. Not to mention consumers’ personal information can be sent to or hacked around the globe.

Cash-consumers are not alone in their opposition to a cashless economy.  When they are in a cab and ask the driver how they prefer to be paid, the answer is near-unanimous. “Cash, cash, cash,” reply the cab drivers in cities around the country. They get paid immediately and without having to have a company deduct a commission.

Back some 25 years ago, Consumers Union considered backing consumer groups to sign up Main Street, USA merchants who agreed to discount their wares if people paid in cash. For the same reason – merchants get to keep all the money on sales made with cash or check. Unfortunately, the idea never materialized. It is, however, still a good idea. Today, payments systems are much more comprehensively coercive.

Once you’re in the credit card system, lack of privacy and access to your credit are just the tip of the iceberg. That is why companies can impose penalties, surcharges, overcharges and a myriad of other corporate raids on your private treasury. They get immediate payment. If you object, you could see a lowering of your credit score or your credit rating. Besides, you don’t even know you agreed to all of these dictates – banks have over 300 different special charges for their revered customers – in fine print agreements that you never saw, read or even possessed to sign or click on. What’s the likelihood that banks would continue to surcharge you if they had to bill you instead of debit you?

The sheer pace and brazenness of corporations when they have instant access to your credit is stunning. The recent crimes of banking giant Wells Fargo, including selling auto insurance and assigning new credit cards to millions of their customers who had no knowledge and gave no consent for these charges, which resulted in damage to these customers’ credit scores and ratings, can only be committed when consumers are turned into economic prisoners. There are still no criminal prosecutions of the bank or its bosses. Wells Fargo bank stock rose to a year high last month. To their credit, the CFPB imposed a $100 million dollar fine on Wells Fargo, which barred them from deducting the fine as a business expense.

Coercive fine print contracts rob you of your consumer rights by preventing you from going to court, imposing fines as high as $35 fines for  bounced checks (which typically cost the banks less than $2), and decreeing that you agreed in advance to all kinds of unconscionable abuses, so long as you are in a “customer” status with them. Some companies are even charging customers for quitting them.

The rapacity inflicted on cashless purchasers prevails across the economy – insurance, mortgages, telecommunications, healthcare, stock brokerage, online buying and, of course, requirements to use electronic payment systems.

The more consumers become incarcerated by the companies that purportedly serve them, the more lucrative commodity consumers become. This leads to, among other problems, massive computerized billing fraud in the US. In the healthcare industry alone, billing fraud amounts to ten percent of what is spent, according to Harvard applied mathematics professor Malcolm Sparrow, author of License to Steal. This year’s expenditure of ten percent of the $3.5 trillion expected to be spent amounts to $350 billion. A cashless economy further facilitates these larcenous practices.

A computerized economy is one where fraud can easily be committed on a massive scale, according to Frank Abagnale who, after serving his time in prison for identity theft, , has become an impassioned educator (serving institutions ranging from the FBI to AARP) on how to detect and avoid such crimes, which he estimates to cost people about one trillion dollars each year.

What it comes down to is whether consumer freedom is worth more than consumer convenience or whether the points earned for future purchases (assuming the costs are not passed on in hidden ways) are worth minimizing impulse buying, avoiding big data profile manipulations, keeping personal matters personal and requiring your affirmative consent to transactions where you decide what you want to buy and how you can pay.

However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pay by cash or check. Try renting a car or occupying a hotel room or buying a snack or drink on an airline without a credit or debit card.

In the latest example of such coercion, new boutique eateries like Two Forks, Dig Inn, Dos Toros or Pokee in New York City operate entirely through payment systems that reject all cash purchases. “But isn’t cash legal tender?” you might ask. How could they reject cash on the barrelhead? Simple, says the Federal Reserve, so long as they notify you in advance. It’s that fine print again.

The New York Times, reported these rejections and noted: “Not surprisingly, the credit card companies, who make a commission on every credit card purchase, applaud the trend. Visa recently offered select merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving customers of their right to pay by the method of their choice.” The nerve!

Cash consumers of America arise, band together and organize a National Association for the Preservation of Cash Purchases. You have nothing to save but your freedom, your desire to push back and your precious, affirmative and personal right to consent or not to consent, before you are forced into contract peonage.

FISA Section 702 Saga: With Section 702 On Brink Of Expiring, Where Do Things Go From Here? – Analysis

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By George W. Croner*

(FPRI) — It is late October and a truck careens through lower Manhattan striking innocent pedestrians killing 8 and injuring 11 others. In mid-December, a bomb explodes in the Port Authority bus terminal near Times Square. The bomb is carried by an admirer of ISIS who allegedly detonated the device in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria. Just days later, a terrorist plot to bomb Pier 39 in San Francisco, and then shoot those fleeing the blast, is thwarted by law enforcement officials. Clearly, terrorism in the United States homeland remains a clear and present danger.

Now, picture a scenario where those officials most directly responsible for acquiring the nation’s foreign intelligence tell the people’s elected representatives that a particular program due to expire at year’s end is among the nation’s most important intelligence collection tools, especially in the area of counterterrorism.[1] Imagine, then, that those elected representatives disband for their various holiday pursuits without acting to provide an authoritative renewal for continuing this critical intelligence program.

Welcome to the United States Congress and its (mis)handling of legislative authority for intelligence collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which serves as the statutory basis for collecting foreign intelligence by targeting the communications of foreigners located abroad. Despite knowing all year long that Section 702 had a December 31, 2017 sunset date, and with that deadline for renewal staring it in the face, Congress punted, pushed the expiration date for Section 702 to January 19, 2018 as part of the stopgap continuing resolution passed to avoid a government shutdown, and disbanded for its holiday recess. Reaching this state of affairs required an extraordinary level of legislative inertia largely reflecting the excessive handwringing and lamentations of those relatively small, but highly vocal, opponents of FISA Section 702 who apocryphally insist that this valuable collection tool, at least insofar as implemented by the Intelligence Community, violates the Fourth Amendment and is the harbinger of an Orwellian surveillance state.

Fortunately, insofar as the collection of important foreign intelligence is concerned, congressional fumbling has not yet required that the National Security Agency (NSA) terminate Section 702-authorized collection on the 106,000+ foreign targets using selectors currently tasked for acquisition by the NSA.[2] Since Section 702 permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to jointly authorize, for a period of up to one year, the targeting of foreigners to acquire foreign intelligence, and since the current Section 702 certifications were approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on April 26, 2017, authority exists to continue current collection until those certifications expire.

Nonetheless, this situation is readily recognizable as an undesirable state of affairs by anyone concerned about the proficiency of U.S. intelligence capabilities. While Section 702 certifications authorize collection by reference to specific categories of foreign intelligence information as detailed in the certification (as opposed to designating individualized targets), the possibility now exists that a potential new target might surface communicating foreign intelligence information that fails to ‘fit’ within an authorized category found in the April 2017 certification. In this circumstance, the legislative authority by which the Intelligence Community can pursue Section 702 collection is hanging by a thread, and will now expire in two weeks.

Nearly a year ago, the Brookings Institution noted that “one of the intelligence community’s most important collection programs [was] set to expire on December 31, 2017” and that “the failure to reauthorize [Section 702] would deal a body blow to the intelligence community.”[3] Yet, as of December 31, although five separate bills[4] have been introduced relating to the reauthorization of Section 702, Congress was unable to nurse any one of them across the legislative finish line to insure the continuity of this “critically important [foreign intelligence] tool.”[5]

Despite the December 31 expiration date, a group of legislators in both houses of Congress demanded that congressional leadership eschew any effort to extend Section 702 by attaching its reauthorization to “must pass” legislation before the end of the year.[6] Ten senators and 34 House members provided their signatures to two letters sent to their respective chambers’ leadership demanding that any renewal of Section 702 be introduced and debated as standalone legislation.[7] As is apparent from the wording of this correspondence, the signatories are not noted advocates of the current Section 702 collection program (“Section 702 Program”)[8] and, while their numbers fall well short of the necessary votes to terminate or significantly neuter the Program’s capabilities as they existed prior to December 31, their insistence on a full debate attendant to any renewal signifies the impact that Section 702 opponents have had in raising privacy and civil liberties questions in the minds of at least some legislators. Indeed, resort to the short term stop gap resolution was an obvious response to the demand made by this group.

And so, Section 702 is now on life support but, presumably, the essential components for a Section 702 reauthorization still can be found in the now pending bills, so a comparative summary of their most significant elements offers some illumination on what might be debated and, ultimately, included in final legislation.[9]

With the end-of-2017 deadline no longer looming over the legislative process and the recent demand for open debate regarding any renewal, there should be some opportunity for more thoughtful consideration of the security vs. privacy conundrum that has accompanied Section 702 since its initial enactment in 2008. As reflected in several of the entries found in the comparison of the various legislative proposals, this particular issue continues to dominate the Section 702 renewal dialogue; but, such a discussion can be productive only if it fairly embraces and recognizes the value of Section 702 collection in accomplishing the broader objectives of U.S. intelligence policy.

Thus, one must wish that the forthcoming legislative deliberation considers that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Intelligence Community’s mission has morphed from the traditional role of monitoring hostile powers and gathering information for policymakers to operating in a far more asymmetric threat environment against diverse targets using a broad and ever-expanding collection of sophisticated communications facilities. Many of these targets spurn long-established internationally accepted norms of conduct and readily engage in depredations exposing civilian populations to dangers unknown to past generations. For many of these targets, their principal bête noire is the United States.

The primary function of any government is the protection of its citizenry, an immensely more difficult task in the contemporary threat environment. Given those difficulties, there is an understandable urge to employ every advantage offered by modern technology in pursuit of such protection. Good intelligence is generally considered essential to success in combat, covert action, or the development of effective homeland security policy, Consequently, other than when engaged in actual combat or the aggressive physical defense of national interest, the day-to-day task of protecting U.S. citizens and insuring an effective homeland security posture falls, to a significant degree, on the success of the efforts of the Intelligence Community.

In today’s communications environment, intelligence functions involving electronic surveillance admittedly pose potentially the most pervasive intrusion into the privacy of U.S. persons while simultaneously offering one of the most fruitful sources of information acquired by the Intelligence Community for U.S. policymakers.[10] The authority provided by Section 702 is recognized as an extraordinarily valuable intelligence capability that produces unique intelligence product unavailable from other sources but, as is repeatedly voiced by critics, the breadth of that capability poses a potential infringement on the privacy of all who use communications facilities subject to Section 702 surveillance.[11]

Since, by statutory definition, Section 702 is limited solely to targeting foreigners located abroad to obtain foreign intelligence information, U.S. person communications are acquired only incidentally to collection on a foreign target. To be precise, the privacy ‘intrusion’ here takes the form of incidentally acquiring the communications of those U.S. persons who communicate with foreigners located abroad using communication selectors that, because of the reasonable likelihood that those selectors are being used to transmit foreign intelligence information satisfying one or more criteria contained within a FISC-approved Section 702 certification, have been properly targeted for Section 702 collection pursuant to targeting procedures that also have been approved by the FISC. Subsequent retention, use, and dissemination of any information derived from these incidentally collected communications is governed by minimization procedures also approved by the FISC. Thus, the universe of communications triggering the privacy protestations advanced by Section 702 opponents is limited to those to or from that subset of U.S. persons communicating with foreigners located abroad whose activities have satisfied the targeting requirements of a Section 702 certification.

Without deprecating the concerns of those who see the NSA sweeping up their every email or web search, U.S. intelligence policy should not abandon foreign intelligence collection techniques properly targeted against foreigners using a congressionally-authorized acquisition program that has received repeated judicial approval simply because that collection affects the subjective privacy concerns of a segment of U.S. person communicators who elect to communicate with those same properly targeted foreigners. In the absence of a legal mandate demanding otherwise, the national security benefits derived from Section 702 collection activities should not be subordinated to individual privacy concerns no matter how stridently advocated by that minority of U.S. person communicants choosing to correspond electronically with foreigners who happen to be Section 702 targets.

Prudently developed intelligence and national security policies recognize that the U.S. government should employ every available tool to protect the nation’s citizens consistent with the legal standards, constitutionally mandated and otherwise, that form the nation’s governing framework. Foreign intelligence electronic surveillance, in general, and FISA Section 702, in particular, constitute what is likely the most intensely overseen, copiously reported, and highly regulated government program undertaken by the Intelligence Community. Given this existing regulation and oversight, Congress should resist the temptation to mollify Section 702’s inveterate vocal critics, who will never be truly appeased until the Program’s most valuable collection capabilities are effectively vitiated, by saddling this critical intelligence tool with still more legally unnecessary retardants. Unfortunately, nothing in the Section 702 renewal process, to date, inspires confidence in the sudden appearance of such legislative fortitude.

Although the extension of Section 702 authorized in 2012 has now lapsed, there is no logically credible basis supporting any conclusion other than that Congress will ultimately act to resurrect this collection authority in some form. Even the USA Rights Act, which is seriously flawed as intelligence policy on a multitude of levels,[12] contemplates renewing Section 702 as a collection program, as does the December 15, 2017 letter sent to the Senate leadership demanding that any Section 702 renewal be considered as standalone legislation.[13] Of course, the question that lingers is: what form will a reauthorization now take? At this point, an extension in the range of 4-6 years seems likely coupled with some form of statutory restriction on “about” collection.[14] Additional restrictions may also be applied to the use of U.S. person identifiers in querying the Section 702 database and/or the ‘unmasking’ of U.S. person identities in intelligence reporting, but these issues are more politicized making legislative consensus problematic.

By all means, have the full and open debate recently demanded by a coterie of legislators in each chamber: the merits of Section 702 should be readily recognizable to all but those devoted to a utopian view of privacy rights or a distorted reading of the Fourth Amendment. As disappointing as one finds the legislative process, and there are countless reasons for disenchantment, a modicum of responsibility for the security of the American people should finally compel the Congress to produce a reauthorization of FISA Section 702 in a form that preserves its most important intelligence collection capabilities while resisting the temptation to strangle it with additional, gratuitously pointless, regulation.

About the author:
*George W. Croner
previously served as principal litigation counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency. He is also a retired director and shareholder of the law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C., where he remains Of Counsel, and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

[1] Section 702 has been described as the “crown jewel” of the Intelligence Community’s surveillance authorities. See, e.g., Robyn Greene, OTI’s Reform Priorities for Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, at 2, Open Technology Institute (May 2, 2017).

[2] This figure is derived from estimates furnished by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). See Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Use of National Security Authorities for 2016 at https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/transparency/odni-transparencyreport-cy2016.

[3] Benjamin Wittes, “To Preserve an Important U.S. Intelligence Tool, Trump Needs to Set a Different Tone,” Brookings Institution, January 29, 2017.

[4] The pending FISA reauthorization legislation consists of (1) the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989) (introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on 10/6/2017); (2) the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (S. 2010) (introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr on 10/25/2017); (3) the USA Rights Act (introduced by Senator Ron Wyden on 10/24/2017); (4) the House version of the USA Rights Act (introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren on 10/25/2017); and (5) the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (H.R. 4478) (introduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on 11/29/2017).

The House and Senate versions of the USA Rights Act are virtually identical and will be treated collectively. Although there are both House and Senate bills titled the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017, there are material differences between these two pieces of legislation and they will be discussed individually.

Previous reviews of this Section 702-related FISA legislation have appeared in FPRI’s E Notes: What’s To Be Found in the USA Liberty Act, FPRI E-Notes, October 20, 2017; Congress Skirmishes Over FISA Section 702: Will it Preserve the Intelligence Community’s ‘Crown Jewel’ or Neuter It?, FPRI E-Notes, November 1, 2017; and The Gun Lap: FISA Renewal in the Homestretch, FPRI E-Notes, December 6, 2017.

[5] Wittes, “To Preserve an Important U.S. Intelligence Tool, Trump Needs to Set a Different Tone,” Brookings Institution, January 29, 2017.

[6] Charlie Savage, Lawmakers Warn Against Any Attempt to Jam 702 Surveillance Reauthorization Without a Real Debate, Power Wars Blog by Charlie Savage, December 15, 2017. Savage’s article includes the texts of both the December 13, 2017 letter to the House leadership and the December 15, 2017 letter to the Senate leadership.

[7] Id.

[8] Notably, while demanding “full and open debate and amendment” on any Section 702 renewal legislation, the Senate letter did acknowledge that “Section 702 is an important national security tool and, with appropriate protections for privacy and civil liberties, Congress should reauthorize it.” Id.

[9] The attached chart expands upon an earlier comparison of pending FISA reauthorization legislation included by Charlie Savage in his Power Wars Blog. See, Charlie Savage, 702 Surveillance Legislation: Adding Wyden-Paul ‘USA Rights Act’ to the mix. Bonus: a chart comparing differences with SSCI/Burr & Goodlatte/Conyers HJC bills, October 24, 2017.

[10] For example, by 2014, approximately 25% of counterterrorism reports issued by the NSA were based, in whole or in part, upon Section 702 collection. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Report on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, July 2, 2014, at 10. Additionally, a 2012 analysis, found that Section 702 collection was the source for 1,477 separate items or “four items per day for the President’s daily intelligence briefing.” Loren Thompson, Why NSA’s PRISM Program Makes Sense, Forbes, June 7, 2013.

Although similar calibrations of Section’s 702 value remain classified, neither the volume of Section 702 collection nor its ubiquity in intelligence reporting is likely to have diminished.

[11] When operated consistently with FISC-approved certifications and their accompanying targeting and minimization procedures, courts have repeatedly concluded that, whatever the subjective privacy views of its critics, Section 702 collection does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Consequently, although opponents frequently couch their opposition to Section 702 and their “backdoor search” objection in constitutional terms, no court ever has agreed that searching the Section 702 database of communications already lawfully collected pursuant to a FISC-approved certification constitutes a separate “search” implicating Fourth Amendment rights.

Moreover, no instance of intentional circumvention or violation of the procedures or guidelines governing the Section 702 collection program has ever been found. Office of the Director of National Intelligence “Fact Sheet” relating to the “Semiannual Assessment of Compliance with Procedures and Guidelines Issued Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – 13th, 14th and 15th Joint Assessments” at 1 available at www.dni.gov//Overview_Fact_Sheet.

[12] The many defects in the USA Rights Act are covered in Congress Skirmishes Over FISA Section 702: Will it Preserve the Intelligence Community’s ‘Crown Jewel’ or Neuter It?, Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Notes, November 1, 2017.

[13] As previously noted, while demanding “full and open debate and amendment” on any Section 702 renewal legislation, the Senate letter acknowledged that “Section 702 is an important national security tool and, with appropriate protections for privacy and civil liberties, Congress should reauthorize it.” Charlie Savage, Lawmakers Warn Against Any Attempt to Jam 702 Surveillance Reauthorization Without a Real Debate, Power Wars Blog by Charlie Savage, December 15, 2017.

[14] “About” collection refers to the practice of acquiring communications that are to, from, or about a particular target. This form of collection has been a particular focus of critics who contend it improperly expands the universe of incidentally collected U.S. person communications. The NSA discontinued “about” collection earlier this year but there currently is no legislative prohibition against its resumption.

Taking Paracetamol During Pregnancy May Reduce Fertility Of Daughters

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Taking paracetamol during pregnancy may impair the future fertility of female offspring, according to a review published in Endocrine Connections. The article reviews three separate rodent studies that all report altered development in the reproductive systems of female offspring from mothers given paracetamol during pregnancy, which may impair their fertility in adulthood.

Paracetamol, or acetaminophen, is an over-the-counter treatment for pain relief that is commonly taken by pregnant women worldwide. Recent studies have linked paracetamol use during pregnancy with disruptions in the development of the male reproductive system but the effects on female offspring had not yet been investigated.

In this article, Dr David Kristensen and colleagues from Copenhagen University Hospital, review the findings from three individual rodent studies that evaluated the effects of paracetamol taken during pregnancy on the development of the reproductive system in female offspring.

It is well known that exposure to some chemicals during pregnancy can cause developmental effects that may not manifest until much later in life. In rodents and humans, females are born with a finite number of eggs for reproduction in the future. In these reviewed studies, rodents given paracetamol during pregnancy, at doses equivalent to those that a pregnant woman may take for pain relief, produced female offspring with fewer eggs. This means that in adulthood, they have fewer eggs available for fertilisation, which may reduce their chances of successful reproduction, particularly as they get older.

Dr Kristensen said, “Although this may not be a severe impairment to fertility, it is still of real concern since data from three different labs all independently found that paracetamol may disrupt female reproductive development in this way, which indicates further investigation is needed to establish how this affects human fertility.”

Although there are parallels between rodent and human reproductive development, these findings have yet to be firmly established in humans. However, establishing a link between paracetamol taken by mothers during pregnancy and fertility problems much later in the adult life of the child will be difficult. Dr Kristensen recommends that an inter-disciplinary approach be taken to address this, “by combining epidemiological data from human studies with more experimental research on models, such as rodents, it may be possible to firmly establish this link and determine how it happens, so that pregnant women in pain can be successfully treated, without risk to their unborn children.”

Dr Kristensen said, “As scientists, we are not in the position to make any medical recommendations and we would urge pregnant women in pain to consult with their general practitioner, midwife or pharmacist for professional advice.”


Did Ancient Irrigation Technology Travel Silk Road?

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Using satellite imaging and drone reconnaissance, archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis have discovered an ancient irrigation system that allowed a farming community in arid northwestern China to raise livestock and cultivate crops in one of the world’s driest desert climates.

Lost for centuries in the barren foothills of China’s Tian Shan Mountains, the ancient farming community remains hidden in plain sight — appearing little more than an odd scattering of round boulders and sandy ruts when viewed from the ground.

Surveyed from 30 meters above using drones and specialized image analysis software, the site shows the unmistakable outlines of check dams, irrigation canals and cisterns feeding a patchwork of small farm fields. Initial test excavations also confirm the locations of scattered farmhouses and grave sites, said Yuqi Li, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences who discovered the site with grant support from the National Geographic Society.

Preliminary analysis, as detailed by Li and co-authors in the December issue of the journal Archaeological Research in Asia, suggests that the irrigation system was built in the 3rd or 4th century A.D. by local herding communities looking to add more crop cultivation to their mix of food and livestock production.

“As research on ancient crop exchanges along the Silk Road matures, archaeologists should investigate not only the crops themselves, but also the suite of technologies, such as irrigation, that would have enabled ‘agropastoralists’ to diversify their economies,” Li said.

“In recent years, more and more archaeologists started to realize that most of the so-called pastoralist/nomad communities in ancient Central Asia were also involved in agriculture,” Li added. “We think it’s more accurate to call them agropastoralists, because having an agricultural component in their economy was a normal phenomenon instead of a transitional condition.”

The Spatial Analysis, Interpretation, and Exploration (SAIE) laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis is devoted to understanding human societies through time and across space.

Working with The Spatial Analysis, Interpretation, and Exploration (SAIE) laboratory at Washington University, Li and colleagues first used satellite imagery to target an area known as MGK, so named for the adjacent Mohuchahan Valley, an intermontane valley of the Tian Shan.

More detailed on-site mapping was accomplished using a consumer-grade quadcopter drone and new photogrammetry software that stitched together about 2,000 geotagged aerial photos to create 3D models of the site.

The site provides researchers with a remarkably well-preserved example of a small-scale irrigation system that early farmers devised to grow grain crops in a climate that historically receives less than 3 inches (66 millimeters ) of annual rainfall — about one-fifth of the water deemed necessary to cultivate even the most drought-tolerant strains of millet.

Researchers believe the site was used to cultivate millet, barley, wheat and perhaps grapes.

Researchers have identified seven areas along the Mohuchahan River where ancient irrigation systems once functioned. The current study focuses the MGK4 plot.

The discovery is important, Li said, because it helps to resolve a long-running debate over how irrigation technologies first made their way into this arid corner of China’s Xinjiang region.

While some scholars suggest that all major irrigation techniques were first brought here by the troops of China’s Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), Li’s study suggests that local agropastoral communities adopted many arid-climate irrigation techniques before the Han dynasty and kept using them to the post-Han era.

A stream known as the Mohuchahan River drains the valley and carries a seasonal trickle of snow-melt and scarce rainfall down from the mountains before vanishing in the sands of China’s vast Taklamakan Desert.

The Tian Shan Mountains, which form the northern border of this desert, are part of a chain of mountain ranges that have long served as a central corridor for the prehistoric Silk Road routes between China and the Near East.

Li’s research on MGK builds on work by his Washington University colleague Michael Frachetti, professor of anthropology, whose research suggests that herding communities living along these mountain ranges formed a massive exchange network that spanned much of the Eurasian continent.

Ongoing research by Frachetti and colleagues at Washington University contends that the seeds of early domestic crops gradually spread to new areas along this Inner Asian Mountain Corridor through social networks formed by ancient nomadic groups — who met as they moved herds to seasonal pastures.

Based on his research at MGK, Li argues that early irrigation technologies also followed this same route, passing from one pastoral group to another over thousands of years.

Li notes that small-scale irrigation systems similar to MGK were established at the Geokysur river delta oasis in southeast Turkmenistan about 3,000 B.C. and further west at the Tepe Gaz Tavila settlement in Iran about 5,000 B.C.

The Wadi Faynan farming community, established in a desert environment in southern Jordan during the late Bronze Age, has an irrigation system nearly identical to the one at MGK, including boulder-constructed canals, cisterns and field boundaries.

Compared with known Han Dynasty irrigation systems in the Xinjiang region, the MGK system is small, irrigating about 500 acres across seven parcels along the Mohuchahan River. Li’s current study focuses on one of these seven parcels, known as MGK4, which provided irrigation for about 60 acres.

By contrast, the “tuntian” irrigation systems — introduced by the Han Dynasty at the Xinjiang communities of Milan and Loulan — used longer, wider and deeper straight-line channels to irrigate much larger areas, with one irrigating more than 12,000 acres.

While some researchers estimate that Han Dynasty workers would have had to move about 1.5 million cubic meters of dirt to build a tuntian system capable of irrigating 2,500 acres, Li calculates that the 500-acre system at MGK could have been constructed by a small community of farmers with much less effort in a few years.

“The irrigation system at MGK4 suggests that, although the Han Dynasty brought sophisticated irrigation technology to Xinjiang, this set of technology did not replace the irrigation technology that appeared earlier in Xinjiang,” Li said. “Instead, it continued to be used in the post-Han period. We believe the reason was that this set of technology was well-adapted to the ecological and social conditions faced by local agropastoralist communities.

“Given recent research on the routes of early crop exchanges, it is possible that the technological ‘know-how’ of irrigation in this region originated with earlier agropastoral traditions in western Central Asia,” Li added. “As a fundamental technology that underpinned the agropastoralist societies in Xinjiang, irrigation probably spread to Xinjiang through the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor along with crops during prehistory.”

Covert Wars: Iran And Saudi Arabia Revisit Their Strategies – Analysis

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Expressions of support by US President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu have provided the grist for Iranian claims that anti-government protests were instigated by foreign powers. The largely baseless assertions offer nonetheless insight into the very different strategies adopted by Iran and Saudi Arabia in their vicious struggle for regional dominance.

There is little doubt that the protests were fuelled by widespread economic grievances with Iran’s detractors resembling not always helpful fans on the side lines. In fact, Saudi Arabia, Iran’s nemesis, was the one opponent of the Islamic republic that refrained from joining the fans publicly in a bid to deprive the regime in Tehran from using it as a scapegoat. That did not stop Iranian leaders from pointing a finger at the kingdom in ways that reflected the dynamics of the Iranian-Saudi rivalry.

Both Iranian and Saudi approaches to their rivalry are in flux. Protesters in Iran challenged the government’s heavy expenditure on propping up allies like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and funding proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen, not to mention proselytization campaigns in West Africa.

The protests are unlikely to change Iranian policy that the country’s leaders view as the crux of their defense strategy in covert wars with the United States and Saudi Arabia that have been ongoing since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the shah, a monarch and an icon of now waning US power in the region.

Nonetheless, Iranian leaders will have to take public grievances into account even if the protests peter out. Rather than toting its regional successes publicly, Iran going forward is likely to be more circumspect about its foreign involvements. While that will not change things on the ground, it may contribute over time to an environment more conducive to a lessening of tensions.

Despite the protests, Iran has little reason to change facts on the ground. With access to the world’s most advanced weapons systems severely restricted for decades because of sanctions and boycotts, some in response to provocative Iranian actions and policies, others part of regional power struggles, Iran has sought to fight its battles far from its borders. Many Iranians bought into the argument that the policy had largely shielded their country from instability and jihadism wracking the rest of the region.

Simultaneous Islamic State attacks last June on the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, that killed 12 people were viewed as the exception that proved the rule. That perception has changed in a significant segment of the population as protesters demanded that funds allocated to Iran’s defense doctrine and enhancement of its regional influence be invested in improving their deteriorating living standards.

“Our military doctrine is…based on historical experience: During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein rained Soviet-made missiles on our cities, some of them carrying chemical components provided by the West. The world not only kept silent, but also no country would sell Iran weapons to enable us to at least deter the aggressor. We learned our lesson,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in The New York Times weeks before the protests erupted.

Speaking this week at a Brookings Institution seminar in Washington, Iranian-American journalist Maziar Bahari described Iran’s doctrine as a more brutal and militarized version of the late Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion’s policy of the periphery that in the absence of relations with Israel’s neighbours sought to forge ties with the neighbours of the Jewish state’s neighbours.

Mr. Zarif represents the view of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s pragmatic government, a view shared by conservatives as part of a far greater ambition that they have no compunction about articulating.

In a column in the conservative Tehran Times entitled ‘What makes Iran stronger than Saudi Arabia?’, sociologist and journalist Mohammad Mazhari argued that “the Saudi regime has no comprehension that money cannot replace ideological values.” By contrast, Mr. Mazhari wrote, “there are common ties between Iran and Hezbollah, however the crux of those ties is not monetary. What drives Iran is not a superficial goal, it is working hard to restore the empire, but this time culturally, while Saudi Arabia and its alliances have no clear vision nor project in the Middle East save for keeping their thrones.”

Prince Mohammed vowed months before Mr. Zarif articulated Iran’s defense doctrine, that the fight with Iran would take place “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.” In doing so, the crown prince was playing on deep-seated Iranian fears rooted in a history of foreign intervention that stretches from ancient to modern times as well as highlighting the fundamentally different Saudi and Iranian strategies.

Since coming to power in 2015, Prince Mohammed has shifted the emphasis of Saudi strategy from long-term cultural and public diplomacy focused on promotion of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism as an anti-dote to Iranian Shiite and revolutionary ideology, and passive reliance on the United States to defend the kingdom by containing Iran to a more assertive confrontation of the Islamic republic everywhere but in Iran itself.

Prince Mohammed’s approach is a power play based primarily on chequebook diplomacy, pressure tactics, and projection of the kingdom as the custodian of Islam’s holiest cities. It is an approach that is void of any ideology or worldview beyond the need to counter Iran and support autocratic or authoritarian rule in a bid to ensure the survival of his family’s rule.

Prince Mohammed’s approach has so far produced mixed results at best. His effort to force a political crisis in Lebanon by pressuring Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign backfired. King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the crown prince’s demand that they not attend an Islamic summit in Istanbul convened last month to condemn Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The prince’s one military adventure, intervention in Yemen, has produced a quagmire, severely tarnished the kingdom’s image, and even provoked criticism from one of his greatest fans, Mr. Trump. Egypt has adopted an independent foreign policy that is at times at odds with positions adopted by Saudi Arabia despite being financially dependent on the kingdom.

Hanging in the balance is the question whether Prince Mohammed’s declaration last year that he wants to return the kingdom to a yet undefined moderate form of Islam means that he will introduce an ideological element to his strategy that would replace the increasingly problematic propagation of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism.

It’s a tall order in a country whose religious establishment and culture is steeped in ultra-conservatism despite support for more relaxed religious and social codes among a significant segment of a predominantly young population.

A successful redefinition of Islam would not only significantly enhance confidence in Prince Mohammed’s ability to change the nature of Saudi society and economy but also strengthen the kingdom in its struggle with Iran that despite being fought as a zero-sum game can only be resolved with an agreement that recognizes both Saudi Arabia and Iran as key regional players.

Economics rather than Iran’s rivalry with Saudi Arabia and hostility towards the United States and Israel is at the crux of anti-government protests in Iran. Nevertheless, the protests are likely to force Iranian leaders to repackage their foreign involvements at a time that Prince Mohammed is seeking to revamp his kingdom as part of an economic and political survival strategy. In the longer term, that could unintentionally create building blocks for the lowering of tensions in a dispute that has wracked havoc across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world.

Mattis Speaks To Reporters About South Asia, North Korea, Iran

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By Lisa Ferdinando

US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis discussed strategy in South Asia, issues on the Korean Peninsula and Iranian illicit weapons activities, in an impromptu discussion with Pentagon reporters.

“We’ll fight them,” the secretary said, when asked about the strategy in Afghanistan against the terrorists with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria operating there.

Probably the most challenging part in making assessments in combat is that what counts most in war, including morale levels, is most difficult to quantify.

“Eventually you’ll see a lagging indicator — you’ll see that not as many people want to be recruited into a force that’s getting annihilated,” such as ISIS was in Syria, he said, adding that not as many foreign fighters will sign up for that.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters for the second consecutive day, Mattis said the strategy in South Asia reinforces some of the troops in the region.

“We found some forces didn’t have the American advisors they needed, and the ones with advisors seemed to always win,” he said. ”The ones without them did not fare so well.” The strategy is a regional approach that also focuses on reconciliation efforts, he pointed out.

Iran

The protests in Iran have had no impact on his assessment of the country, Mattis said, adding that he keeps his advice to President Donald J. Trump confidential. But the United States watches all the time for indicators of illicit Iranian activities, he said.

Mattis noted that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley visited Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in the nation’s capital last month to see illegal Iranian equipment on display. “So if anyone thinks they’re not exporting ballistic missiles or weapons or explosive boats like down to Yemen, there it is,” he said. “We all know what they’re doing in Syria. We’ve seen what they’re doing from Bahrain to the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.”

The displays in the hangar included missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, antitank weapons and a Shark-33 boat used to attack a Saudi frigate. Examination of the weapons trace them back to Iran and industries owned and operated by the Iranian government or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Mattis said his intent is to “show that to the world clearly.” The Iranian people are not supporting the export of terrorism or “whatever the revolutionary regime people want to call it,” he added.

“They’re not buying it there at home,” the secretary said. “We’re not buying it internationally.”

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 deals specifically with Iranian arms transfers and its ballistic missile program. Iran has repeatedly violated the resolution.

North Korea, South Korea

North Korean and South Korean officials are to meet Jan. 9 to discuss the Winter Olympics, which take place next month in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Mattis said. “Right now, it is only about the Games,” he told reporters.

Mattis highlighted the close bond between the United States and South Korea, saying the two nations are in “complete lockstep.”

“It’s almost like an old married couple, when we start the statement and they can finish it,” he added.

Joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises have been deconflicted with the Games and will occur at some point after the Paralympic Games, which follow the Olympics, he added.

Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula is a diplomatic-led effort that requires a diplomatic solution, Mattis said, adding that he provides the “backing for the diplomats.”

At The Manger – OpEd

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By Abraham Kuyper*

I didn’t get a full appreciation of Bethlehem until Christmas day when, after a light meal, I mounted the balcony and beheld the entire Serai district before me. Imagine a rectangular area, thirty meters wide and four hundred meters long, bordered by fairly high white stucco houses. They all have roofs divided from each other by walls of uneven heights—a picturesque scene. The whole population of Bethlehem stood on this long row of roofs, closely packed in neat, bold-colored, and celebratory clothing, waving and shouting and singing to await the arrival of the procession. On our calendar, of course, it was the Christmas feast of the Catholics; that of the Greeks follows fourteen days later. But the inhabitants of Bethlehem celebrate Christmas twice a year, so at today’s Roman Christmas festivities many Greeks were found heartily celebrating as well. Turkish forces were present along both sides of the square ostensibly to keep things calm, but they were watching the festivities more than anything else since there was not even a hint of trouble. The people were up on the roofs, not in the street. After a moment the Patriarch appeared, followed by his retinue led by the French consul. They were met by the whole procession of priests and choirboys emerging from the other side of the church. With little delay the parade formed and thus commenced the passage to the Church of St. Catherine.

With the friendly interposition of my guide, I was able to insert myself at the end of the procession. The majestic church building was already full. Almost all the seats were occupied by women whose white, hood-like head coverings and fresh, if serious, facial features add richness to the life of the church. The Te Deum, which I attended, was impressive. Then we all went down to the holy places, which extend like a crypt beneath the door of the sanctuary—perhaps more accurately, which form a winding series of caves linking all the places of sacred remembrance.

Most people know that in the East it is commonly held that the stable at the chan (which our Gospels translate as “inn”) was located not on level ground but rather much lower, in a nearby cave or cavern. A small place like Bethlehem, “little among the thousands of Judah” [see Matt 2:6], would have had only one inn back then, of course, and once in place it would remain there for centuries. It is precisely for this reason people say with a high degree of certainty that the cave into which you are descending once served as a stable for the inn where Joseph and Mary took up residence. Finding the inn to be entirely occupied explains why they took refuge in the stable down in the cavern. So yes, in a stable, but not of the type that our cattle- or horse-sheds bring to mind. Rather, a cavern with various corridors and caves and with light shining in a secluded corner where nobody could spy on Mary when she brought the Holy Child into the world. The corner of the cave where the manger was located was thus different from the actual birthplace. After the Child was born, Joseph or Mary herself carried him from that sheltered spot to the opposite corner where the manger stood.

It takes some time before you feel at home in the labyrinth of corridors and caves and can imagine the facts of the case of Jesus’ birth. Insofar as tradition is correct, the connection between the particular parts of the birth narrative and the precisely corresponding places of the cave remains an open question. To the eye of faith, it comes down to the occasion in its totality. This tour perfectly enables your sanctified imagination to re-enter that miraculous night, a night Vondel rightly called “purer than day” in reference to the inscription on the door, Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est; that is, “here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.”

It goes without saying that from ancient times all the Churches of the East and West would do anything to praise, thank, and worship God on this very spot. Naturally the Greeks, as heirs of Byzantine Christianity, were the first on the spot, but the Armenians were here early on as well, while the Roman Catholics arrived with the Crusades. It is true that the Greeks sought to drive the Romans out, but Napoleon III restored them to their former rights. Three churches and three monasteries thus stand over the sacred cavern, practically on top of each other. The blank exterior walls of this group of buildings give the impression more of a fort than a sanctuary, although inside all is properly divided, even if the lion’s share of space is retained by the Eastern Churches.

This is a good time to address the complaint voiced all over the world about how, precisely in these holy places, Christians oppose each other so remorselessly. The Turks, it is said, have to maintain order among the Christians by arms. Allow me to declare right away that in my visit to the holy places, here as well as at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, I detected none of this bitterness or disorder whatsoever. In fact, everything proceeded very smoothly; the evil reports seem to rely more on incidents from the past. I acknowledge with shame that lamentable events did occur. But was this something unholy at work? Islam made itself master of Palestine at a time when the Eastern Churches had not yet resolved their divergent views into a harmonious unity. Christianity’s natural development was thus aborted by the invasion of the Arabs, and the ensuing regime lacked the resilience to ensure an orderly course of affairs in the further settlement of disputes. It is true that the Turks have to provide police service here, but that is their duty as the government in power. The misconduct into which they had to intervene was a consequence of the Muslim invasion and deficient Turkish law. In America, in England, in France, and in our own country as well, similar police functions are carried out by the government, often over divisions within an existing congregation where the two opposing groups claim the same church. Remember the massive process in Scotland not long ago when, for confessional reasons, parts of the United Presbyterians and the Free Church could not go along with recently passed plans for unification.

Now we are calm Westerners; Easterners are much more spirited. Even on the steamers I witnessed time and again how the smallest dispute over sleeping space on the deck was enough to send them into a fit of rage, one flying against another, eyes bulging and mouths foaming. So how could we imagine that these Eastern Christians would converse calmly and with composure when the disagreement involved something they take to be most sacred! The convert to Christianity in the East does not lay aside his Eastern nature. When in Jerusalem or Bethlehem you see groups of Armenians and Copts in a secluded corner, clutching a small icon they have managed to hold onto and singing their praises there, all but forgotten, surely the same spirit is at work in them as it was in Ezra of old when he prayed to God: “Give us a secure hold within his holy place” [Ezra 9:8]. Far from condemning these groups, I asked myself whether some culpability does not lie with Protestant Churches for never so much as lifting a finger to acquire even a foot of ground among these places of highly sacred memory, where our praise and worship, too, could be blended with those of the other churches. The Anglicans have Christ Church in Jerusalem. The Germans have a presence in the Muristan district of the Christian Quarter where, on October 31, 1898, the Emperor inaugurated the Church of the Redeemer in the ancient courtyard of St. John. A Protestant Episcopal diocese has even been founded. But all this falls far short of the special charm that would emanate from a spot of ground that is tied to the most sacred memories. Even if we could have taken possession of the cavern south of Bethlehem, where the shepherds were regaled by the angels’ gloria in excelsis, it would have been something. But we have nothing.

I am aware that one should not have attachments to wood or stone, but we can also go overboard in our spiritualism. In the book of Revelation the focus falls most aptly upon the connection of the Invisible to the visible, or as John puts it, what we have touched with our hands [see 1 John 1:1] Therefore, without attempting to justify what was an offense against love, we should at the same time avoid that tendency in our Western spirituality to condemn Eastern Christians out of hand because their zeal is somewhat reckless. Keep in mind as well that political influences played a leading role in these disputes. The annoyances and agitations of the day must be seen in light of these other issues of much greater gravity. Such was not the case with the Copts and Armenians huddled in their corner; I especially loved them for the tenacity with which they clung to their sacred memories. They are not the source of evil. On the contrary, perhaps it is with reference to such as these that the expression “See how they love one another” finds its highest fulfillment. If so, then it is here at these sacred places that my sorrow for Christian division runs deeper than anywhere else.

And how could that which came down to earth in snow-white holiness remain undefiled by the impurity of the human heart? The main fault in the present case lies with the delusions of a false philosophy and the arrogance of state power. Of the invisible world we know nothing, and philosophy doesn’t even understand letter A in this alphabet. Only revelation illuminates the darkness here. Nevertheless, philosophy has always imagined that by itself it could remove the veil that hangs before the unseen world. From the second century on, and still today, philosophy has gone well beyond its rightful bounds and thrown itself upon Christianity, subverting revelation with the imposition of its own imagined realities. So it was then, and so it remains today. The second element of decay was introduced by state power after Constantine. By its very character the Church of Jesus Christ is international, but state power forced it into a national straitjacket. Even the Reformation, especially in Lutheran countries, had no weapon against this. Consequently, Christian unity suffered a great loss. Now it might sound admirable, even tender, to pronounce judgment over the sad residue of that division uncovered in the East, but here again one is pitted against the logic of history. The strongest evidence that we lack any right to render a verdict on this situation is surely the complete indifference we have shown to the sanctity of our Christian past—our failure to lift even a finger to exorcise the prevailing disunity in that land.

This commentary was excerpted from On Islam by Abraham Kuyper (Lexham Press, Acton Institute, 2017). The book is available for purchase in the Acton Shop.

About the author:
*Abraham Kuyper
(1837-1920) is a significant figure in the history of the Netherlands and modern Protestant theology. A prolific intellectual, he founded a political party and a university, and served as the prime minister of the Netherlands (1901-1905).

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

National Improved Medicare For All Making Progress – OpEd

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In The Road to Medicare for Everyone, Jacob Hacker is once again working to dissuade single payer healthcare supporters from demanding National Improved Medicare for All and use our language to send us down a false path. Hacker comes up with a scheme to convince people to ask for less and calls those who disagree “purists”. Hacker calls his “Medicare Part E” “daring and doable,” I call it dumb and dumber. Here’s why.

Hacker makes the same assertions we witnessed in August of 2017 when other progressives tried to dissuade single payer supporters.

He starts with “risk aversion,” although he doesn’t use the term in his article. Hacker asserts that those who have health insurance through their employers won’t want to give it up for the new system. Our responses to this are: there is already widespread dislike for the current healthcare system; people don’t like private insurance while there is widespread support across the political spectrum for Medicare and Medicaid; there is also widespread support for single payer; and those with health insurance can be reassured that they will be better off under a single payer system. It is also important to note that employers don’t want to be in the middle of health insurance. Healthcare costs are the biggest complaint by small and medium sized businesses and keep businesses that operate internationally less competitive.

Next, Hacker brings up the costs of the new system and complains that it will create new federal spending. He points to the failures to pass ‘single payer’ in Vermont and California. First, it must be recognized that the state bills were not true single payer bills, and second, states face barriers that the federal government does not, they must balance their budgets. Hacker ignores the numerous studies at the national level, some by the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office that demonstrate single payer is the best way to save money. Of course there would be an increase in federal spending, the system would be financed through taxes, but the taxes would replace premiums, co-pays and deductibles, which are rising as fast as health insurers can get away with. Hacker proposes a more complex system that will fail to provide the savings needed to cover everyone, the savings that can only exist under a true single payer system.

Hacker also confuses “Medicare for All” with simply expanding Medicare to everyone, including the wasteful private plans under Medicare Advantage. This is not what National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA) advocates support. NIMA would take the national infrastructure created by Medicare and use it for a new system that is comprehensive in coverage, including long term care, and doesn’t require co-pays or deductibles. The system would negotiate reasonable pharmaceutical prices and set prices for services. It would also provide operating budgets for hospitals and other health facilities and use separate capital budgets to make sure that health resources are available where they are needed. And the new system would create a mechanism for negotiation of payment to providers.

Finally, Hacker tries to convince his readers that the opposition to NIMA will be too strong, so we should demand less. We know that the opposition to our lesser demands will also be strong. That was the case in 2009 when people advocated for the ‘public option’ gimmick. If we are going to fight for something, if we are going to take on this opposition, we must fight for something worthwhile, something that will actually solve the healthcare crisis. That something is NIMA. We are well aware that the opposition will be strong, but we also know that when people organize and mobilize, they can win. Every fight for social transformation has been a difficult struggle. We know how to wage these struggles. We have decades of history of successful struggles to guide us.

One gaping hole in Hacker’s approach is that it prevents the social solidarity required to win the fight and to make the solution succeed. Hacker promotes a “Medicare Part E” that some people can buy into. Not only will this forego most of the savings of a single payer system, but it also leaves the public divided. Some people will be in the system and others will be out. This creates vulnerabilities for the opposition to exploit and further divide us. Any difficulties of the new system will be blown out of proportion and those in the system may worry that they are in the wrong place. When we are united in the same system, not only does that create a higher quality system (a lesson we’ve learned from other countries), but it also unites us in fighting to protect and improve that system.

Hacker succeeded in convincing people who support single payer to ask for something less in 2009 and we ended up with a law that is further enriching the health insurance, pharmaceutical and private healthcare institutions enormously while tens of millions of people go without care. Now, Hacker rises again to use the same scare tactics and accusations that he used then to undermine the struggle for NIMA. This is to be expected. The national cry for NIMA is growing and the power holders in both major political parties and their allies in the media and think tanks are afraid of going against the donor class. Social movements have always been told that what they are asking for is impossible, until the tide shifts and it becomes inevitable.

Our task is to shift the tide. We must not be fooled by people like Jacob Hacker. We know that single payer systems work. We have the money to pay for it. We have the framework for a national system and we have the institutions to provide care. Just as we did in 1965 when Medicare and Medicaid were created from scratch, and without the benefit of the Internet, we can create National Improved Medicare for All, a universal system, all at once. Everybody in and nobody out.

We know that we are close to winning when the opposition starts using our language to take us off track. “Medicare Part E” is not National Improved Medicare for All, it is a gimmick to protect the status quo and convince us that we are not powerful. We aren’t falling for it. This is the time to fight harder for NIMA. We will prevail.

First Direct Proof Of Ozone Hole Recovery Due To Chemicals Ban

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For the first time, scientists have shown through direct satellite observations of the ozone hole that levels of ozone-destroying chlorine are declining, resulting in less ozone depletion.

Measurements show that the decline in chlorine, resulting from an international ban on chlorine-containing manmade chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has resulted in about 20 percent less ozone depletion during the Antarctic winter than there was in 2005 — the first year that measurements of chlorine and ozone during the Antarctic winter were made by NASA’s Aura satellite.

“We see very clearly that chlorine from CFCs is going down in the ozone hole, and that less ozone depletion is occurring because of it,” said lead author Susan Strahan, an atmospheric scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

CFCs are long-lived chemical compounds that eventually rise into the stratosphere, where they are broken apart by the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, releasing chlorine atoms that go on to destroy ozone molecules. Stratospheric ozone protects life on the planet by absorbing potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and damage plant life.

Two years after the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985, nations of the world signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which regulated ozone-depleting compounds. Later amendments to the Montreal Protocol completely phased out production of CFCs.

Past studies have used statistical analyses of changes in the ozone hole’s size to argue that ozone depletion is decreasing. This study is the first to use measurements of the chemical composition inside the ozone hole to confirm that not only is ozone depletion decreasing, but that the decrease is caused by the decline in CFCs.

The study was published Jan. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms during September in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter as the returning sun’s rays catalyze ozone destruction cycles involving chlorine and bromine that come primarily from CFCs. To determine how ozone and other chemicals have changed year to year, scientists used data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard the Aura satellite, which has been making measurements continuously around the globe since mid-2004. While many satellite instruments require sunlight to measure atmospheric trace gases, MLS measures microwave emissions and, as a result, can measure trace gases over Antarctica during the key time of year: the dark southern winter, when the stratospheric weather is quiet and temperatures are low and stable.

The change in ozone levels above Antarctica from the beginning to the end of southern winter — early July to mid-September — was computed daily from MLS measurements every year from 2005 to 2016. “During this period, Antarctic temperatures are always very low, so the rate of ozone destruction depends mostly on how much chlorine there is,” Strahan said. “This is when we want to measure ozone loss.”

They found that ozone loss is decreasing, but they needed to know whether a decrease in CFCs was responsible. When ozone destruction is ongoing, chlorine is found in many molecular forms, most of which are not measured. But after chlorine has destroyed nearly all the available ozone, it reacts instead with methane to form hydrochloric acid, a gas measured by MLS. “By around mid-October, all the chlorine compounds are conveniently converted into one gas, so by measuring hydrochloric acid we have a good measurement of the total chlorine,” Strahan said.

Nitrous oxide is a long-lived gas that behaves just like CFCs in much of the stratosphere. The CFCs are declining at the surface but nitrous oxide is not. If CFCs in the stratosphere are decreasing, then over time, less chlorine should be measured for a given value of nitrous oxide. By comparing MLS measurements of hydrochloric acid and nitrous oxide each year, they determined that the total chlorine levels were declining on average by about 0.8 percent annually.

The 20 percent decrease in ozone depletion during the winter months from 2005 to 2016 as determined from MLS ozone measurements was expected. “This is very close to what our model predicts we should see for this amount of chlorine decline,” Strahan said. “This gives us confidence that the decrease in ozone depletion through mid-September shown by MLS data is due to declining levels of chlorine coming from CFCs. But we’re not yet seeing a clear decrease in the size of the ozone hole because that’s controlled mainly by temperature after mid-September, which varies a lot from year to year.”

Looking forward, the Antarctic ozone hole should continue to recover gradually as CFCs leave the atmosphere, but complete recovery will take decades. “CFCs have lifetimes from 50 to 100 years, so they linger in the atmosphere for a very long time,” said Anne Douglass, a fellow atmospheric scientist at Goddard and the study’s co-author. “As far as the ozone hole being gone, we’re looking at 2060 or 2080. And even then there might still be a small hole.”

The Jerusalem Question – OpEd

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Does Israel have unilateral rights to declare Jerusalem as its capital?

U.S. President Donald Trump thinks so. His controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was, however, dealt a blow when the bulk of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (GA) member states backed its motion to brand his unilateral move as “null and void”.

The resounding condemnation against the move by the US president was delivered by 128 countries – almost two-thirds of the 193 member states of the global alliance. Only eight countries – Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo – supported Trump in his stance.

The UK, France and Germany were among the nations who voted in favor of the motion. It is not legally binding, but its near unanimous victory delivered an embarrassing blow to Trump.

Jerusalem remains the most contested real estate in our world. Since coming to power in 2015 for the fourth time, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has made Jerusalem one of the central pieces of his agenda to Judaize and grab the city, in violations of scores of international laws. He issued orders for constructing new settlements around the occupied East Jerusalem. On 23 December 2016, the United States, under the Obama Administration, abstained from United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, effectively allowing it to pass. On 28 December 2016 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry strongly criticized Israel and its settlement policies in a speech.

Of course, with the election win of Trump, the relationship between the two states has improved significantly. As far as the Netanyahu government is concerned, it’s impossible to imagine an American White House more attuned to Israel’s concerns than Trump’s. One senior Israeli official likened Trump’s picks of pro-Israel U.S. policymakers—a uniquely favorable lineup that presents Israel with an opportunity to make strategic gains. The two leaders have quite a few things in common: their tactics, their contempt for the core values of democracy, their inherent racism (both against Muslims, with Trump adding his contempt for black people and Mexicans for good measure), their love of walls, their hatred of Iran, their scandals and, more broadly, the growing sense that both are driven more by a desperation for self-preservation than by any sense of commitment to their national interests.

In October 2015, Netanyahu drew widespread criticism for claiming that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, gave Adolf Hitler the idea for the Holocaust in the preceding months to the Second World War, convincing the Nazi leader to exterminate Jews rather than just expel them from Europe. This ludicrous claim has since been dismissed by mainstream historians, who note that al-Husseini’s meeting with Hitler took place approximately five months after the mass murder of Jews began. Some of the strongest criticism came from Israeli academics: Yehuda Bauer said Netanyahu’s claim was “completely idiotic”, while Moshe Zimmermann stated that “any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu tried to use one of the old dirty tricks – disinformation – to justify his untenable claims on Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in History

Jerusalem has been the subject of immense interest throughout history. It embodies sacred memories of the Prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is here that all the three Semitic religions of the world played vital roles at different junctures in the history of mankind. For twelve centuries, under Muslim rule (636-1917 CE, except a century of Christian rule), Jerusalem has been an oasis of peace and tranquility. Yet, beginning in 1948, we witness a change of a major dimension, a conspiracy that culminated in the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine ignoring the rights of its overwhelming Muslim majority. This event has been responsible for much bloodshed to subsequently follow among the children and heirs to the Abrahamic heritage.

Jerusalem is very dear and sacred to Muslims for several reasons.

The Holy Qur’an refers to Jerusalem regarding Prophet Muhammad’s (Sallal-lahu alayh wa-as-salam: blessings of Allah and peace be upon him) Isra’ and Mi’raj in the following verses: “Glory be to Him who did take His servant for a journey by night from the Masjid Al-Haram (Sacred Mosque) to the Masjid Al-Aqsa (Farthest Mosque) whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our signs. He (Allah) is the One who hears and sees all things.” [Qur’an 17:1] (The masjid in Jerusalem was called the farthest mosque because it was the farthest mosque known to the Arabs during the Prophet’s time.) According to most commentators of the Qur’an, this event of Isra’ and Mi’raj took place in the year before the Hijra (Prophet’s migration to Madinah). The hadith literature gives details of this journey. To Muslims, the event is viewed as passing of the spiritual baton from the children of Isaac (Ishaq) to those of Isma’il (alayhis salam). [2]

As has been pointed out by Professor Walid Khalidi in his 1996 address at the Jerusalem Conference of the American Committee on Jerusalem, “The Prophet’s isra to and miraj from Jerusalem became the source of inspiration of a vast body of devotional Muslim literature, as successive generations of Traditionists, Koranic commentators, theologians, and mystics added their glosses and embellishments. In this literature, in which the Prophet is made to describe his visits to Hell and Paradise, Jerusalem lies at the center of Muslims beliefs, literal and allegorical, concerning life beyond the grave. This literature is in circulation to this day in all the languages spoken by nearly one billion Muslims. To this day, too, the Night of the Miraj is annually celebrated throughout the Muslim world.

A particular link also exists between Jerusalem and one of the five “pillars” of Islam — the five daily prayers (salat). According to Muslim tradition, it was during the Prophet’s miraj that, after conversations between the Prophet and Moses, the five daily prayers observed throughout the Muslim world became canonical. Parallel to this body of literature concerning the isra and miraj is another vast corpus of devotional writings concerning the “Excellencies” or “Virtues” (fada’il) of Jerusalem.” [3]

In the early stage of Islam, Jerusalem was the Qiblah towards which Muslims faced in their prayers. Later, however, they were instructed by Allah to change their Qiblah to Makkah: “So turn thy face toward the Masjid al-Haram, and ye (O Muslims), wheresoever ye may be, turn your faces (when ye pray) toward it. Lo! those who have received the Scripture know that (this Revelation) is the Truth from their Lord. And Allah is not unaware of what they do.” [Qur’an 2:144]

With this change of Qiblah, Jerusalem did not lose its sacredness to Muslims though. It came to be known as Al-Quds (the sanctuary), al-Beit al-Muqaddis (i.e., the holy house), and al-Quds ash-Sharif (the holy and noble city).

Pre-Islamic Period

The memorandum of the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference in 1919 declared, “This land is the “historic” home of the Jews.” By “historic” the Zionists meant the right of the “first occupier,” i.e., nobody inhabited the region prior to the Jews. Such an assertion, as we will see, is only a myth. For debunking this myth of “first occupier,” we shall examine the Bible. The Book of Genesis says, “And Te’rah took Abram [referring to prophet Abraham or Ibrahim (Alayhis Salam)] his son, and Lot [referring to Lut (AS)] the son of Ha’ran his son’s son, and Sa’rai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out from Ur of Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan.” [Gen. 11:31]; “And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Si’chem, unto the plain of Mo’reh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.” [Gen. 12:6] [4] The verses 13:3-7 state that the Canaanite and the Perizzite were already dwelling in the land when Abraham returned from Egypt to Bethel and set his tent between Bethel and Ha’i. Not only did the tribes with Abraham find the Canaanites but they also found the Hittites (around Hebron), the Ammonites (around Amman), the Moabites (to the east of the Dead Sea) and the Edomites (in the south-east). At the same time, there were arriving from the Aegean Sea another people, the Philistines, who installed themselves between Mount Carmel and the desert.

The Bible says that Jacob [Prophet Yaqub (AS)], who is also known as Israel, settled in Sha’lem , a city of She’chem, which was in the land of Canaan (Gen. 33:18). There he erected an altar and called it El-e-lo’he-Israel. [Gen. 33:20]

The modern-day Palestinians are, indeed, descended from indigenous Canaanite Jebusites who lived in Palestine at least 5000 years ago, from the Philistines (who gave the country its name – Palestine, Arabic for Falastin), and from the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and the Turks who successively occupied the territory, following the Babylonians, the Hittites, and the Egyptians. The “first occupiers” are these inhabitants who have inhabited the territory since the dawn of history. And any reference that the Palestinians are descendants of Muslim Arabs (from the time of Muslim conquest of Jerusalem) is disingenuous and is aimed at denying their ancestral tie to the land for five millennia.

The current mythology to connect Prophet Dawud or David (AS) with Jerusalem is a typical example of distorting history. The name Jerusalem does not come from the Hebrew word ‘shalom’ meaning peace, but from Uru-shalim, meaning the city or foundation of the (Canaanite Jebusite) god Shalim, cited in ancient Egyptian texts. It is these Jebusites who gave the name of the city some 2000 years before the time of David and Solomon.

Both the Qur’an and the Old Testament mention that the children of Jacob [Yaqub (AS)] settled in Egypt when Joseph [Yusuf (AS)] was appointed a Minister to the Pharaoh. Moses [Musa (AS)], born in Egypt, was later commanded by Allah to rescue the Children of Israel from the Egyptian bondage and to settle them in the Sinai desert. During the time of Moses, the holy land was denied to them due to their disobedience of the commandments of Allah (see the Book of Deuteronomy).

From the accounts in the Bible, it is clear that the Children of Israel did not establish themselves in the Holy Land until around 1004 BCE when David [Dawud (AS)] of the tribe of Judah defeated the Jebusites to found a kingdom there. He created a multi-national state, embracing peoples of different religions. His own ancestress Ruth was a Moabite. His son Solomon [Sulayman (AS)], who succeeded the throne, was born of a Hittite mother. Solomon, like his father, maintained the multi-national characteristics of his regime. [5] He built a stone temple, commonly known as the Temple of Solomon, as a gesture of his thanks to Allah (YHWH).

After Solomon’s death, the kingdom got divided into two -” the Kingdom of Israel in the north (comprising the ten tribes) with the capital in Samaria, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south (comprising the two tribes) with capital in Jerusalem. In 722-721 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was invaded by the Assyrians and its people scattered, who came to be known as the “Ten lost tribes of Israel.” In 586 BCE, the Babylonians under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar annexed the southern kingdom of Judah. The country’s notables were exiled to Babylon. Jerusalem was ravaged to the ground, along with its temple and fortifications. When Emperor Cyrus (Dhul Qarnain of the Qur’an) of Persia defeated the Babylonians in 538-537 BCE, he let the exiles to return to Jerusalem. Many Jews, however, preferred to remain in more prosperous Babylon.

History is scant and dubious before Alexander’s peaceful entry into Jerusalem in 332 BCE, but it suffered heavily under the Persians and the temple – rebuilt under Ezra (Uzayr) and Nehemiah about 515 BCE – might have been destroyed during Artaxerxes’s regime. In 320 BCE, Ptolemy I of Egypt partially demolished the fortifications that remained in ruins until their restoration by Simon II in 219 BCE After a series of struggles between the Ptolemies and Seleucids, the latter obtained the city by a treaty in 197 BCE. The temple was totally Hellenized, i.e., turned into a heathen idol-temple, by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BCE.

Next, we come to the period of the Maccabean revolt. After a twenty years’ struggle, the Maccabees were able to form the Hasmonean dynasty in 164 BCE. This broke up owing to internal conflicts and in 63 BCE Roman General Pompey was able to conquer Palestine, which first became a vassal monarchy under Herod, and then a Roman province.

Under Herod, Jerusalem was rebuilt and the second temple (known as the Temple of Zerubbabel) elaborated (from 17 BCE to 29 CE). However, during the failed revolt (66-70 CE) by the Hebrews, the city was blockaded by Roman General Titus who completely razed it to the ground and burned the temple in 70 CE on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Ab, the very month and day on which 657 years earlier Nebuchadnezzar had razed the first Temple. [6] (The Qur’an briefly mentions these two destructions of the Temple in Surah 17:4-7.) The Jewish inhabitants were exiled or sold into slavery. After the failed second revolt (132 CE), led by Bar Kochba, the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina in 135 CE and Jews were banned from entering the city. And since then Jews gradually moved away from Palestine.

In 326 CE, Emperor Constantine the great ordered the building of the Church of Holy Sepulcher in Aelia. In 614-615 CE Khoshru II of Persia captured the city by defeating the Roman (Byzantine) Christians, mention of which is found in the Qur’an (30:2-3): “The Romans have been defeated in a land close by: but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious within a few years, with Allah is the command in the past and in the future: on that day shall the believers rejoice.” His forces destroyed many buildings. Just as the Qur’an had prophesied, the Romans defeated the Persians in 628 C.E, under Heraclius, and reentered Aelia.

Muslim Period

In 636 CE, at the battle of Yarmouk, the Byzantines were decisively defeated by the Muslim Army, led by Amr ibn al-‘As (R). Within months in 637 CE, the Muslim army under the leadership of Abu Ubaydah ibn Jarrah (R) lay a bloodless siege on Jerusalem, which lasted for four months. Patriarch Sophronius offered to surrender the city if Khalifa Umar ibn al-Khattab (R) himself would come in person to ratify the terms of the surrender. The encounter between these two men was very dramatic. In the words of a Christian historian, Anthony Nutting, “Umar taught the caparisoned throng of Christian commanders and bishops a lesson in humility by accepting their surrender in a patched and ragged robe and seated on a donkey.” [The Arabs, New American Library, N.Y. (1964)]

The terms of the surrender were: “Bismillahir Rahmaneer Raheem (In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful). This is a covenant which Umar, the servant of Allah, the Amir (Leader) of the faithful believers, granted the people of Aelia [Ilya’]. He granted them safety for their lives, their possessions, their churches and their crosses. They shall not be constrained in the matter of their religion, nor shall any of them be molested. Whoever leaves the city shall be safe in his person and his property until he reaches his destination.” [1]

Umar (R) thus pledged security of the lives, properties, churches and freedom of worship of the city’s Christian inhabitants. These pledges came to be known as the Covenant of Umar, which established the standard of conduct vis-a-vis the non-Muslim population of Jerusalem for subsequent generations and specifically for the two Muslim rulers of Jerusalem: Sultan Salah al-Din Ayyubi (1187) and the Ottoman Sultan Selim (1516). [It is worth noting that the Covenant was one of the most progressive treaties in history. For comparison, just 23 years earlier when Jerusalem was conquered by the Persians from the Byzantines, a general massacre was ordered. Another massacre ensued when Jerusalem was conquered by the Christian Crusaders from the Muslims in 1099 CE. The Treaty of Umar (R) allowed the Christians of Jerusalem religious freedom, as is dictated in the Qur’an and the sayings of Muhammad (S). This was one of the first and most significant guarantees of religious freedom in history. Umar (R) further allowed Jews to worship on the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall, while the Byzantines had banned them from all such activities.]

When Umar (R) entered Jerusalem, (what is now known in the West as) the Temple Mount lay vacant. The Christian Byzantines had used it as a garbage dump [to offend the Jews]. But to the Muslims it contained the Rock hallowed by the Prophet Muhammad’s (S) Isra’ and Mi’raj (the Prophet’s nightly journey to Jerusalem and ascension to heaven with Angel Jibril (AS)).

After accepting the city’s surrender from Sophronius, Umar (R) was shown around the church during which the time for mid-day (Zuhr) prayer came. The Patriarch offered a place for him to pray inside the church and laid out a straw mat but Umar (R) refused, explaining to the Patriarch, “Had I prayed inside the church, the Muslims coming after me would take possession of it, saying that I had prayed in it.”  He (R) prayed outside the Church.

According to the Muslim chroniclers, Umar’s (R) next concern was to identify that Rock. Sophoronius guided him to a spot, which by then had no traces of its Jewish past. Because of high reverence for the place, Umar (R), the Amirul Mu’meneen, himself started cleaning it in person, carrying dirt in his own robe. His entourage and army followed suit until the whole area was cleaned. He directed that no prayers be held on or near it until the place has been washed by rain three times. His entourage then sprinkled the place with scent. Umar (R) then led the Muslims in prayer on a clean spot to the south. Foundation of a mosque was erected on the spot and this is the Al-Aqsa mosque, revered by Muslims as one of the three most sacred mosques on earth.

In the Jewish apocalyptic literature of the time, Umar’s (R) capture of Jerusalem was seen as an act of redemption from the Byzantines. It is worthwhile mentioning here (as has also been recognized by Jewish historian Moshe Gil) that it was not until 638 CE that a Jewish quarter would be assigned in the city – since the days of the second Jewish Revolt some five hundred years ago – when Muslims invited Jewish families to reside therein.

The most obvious reflection of Islam’s reverence for Jerusalem is in its architecture. During the Umayyad rule (660-750 CE) Jerusalem flourished to become a major city, and from this period, important buildings survive. The Umayyad Khalifa Al Walid later completed the construction of the al-Aqsa mosque in 715 CE. His father Caliph Abdul Malik bin-Marwan constructed the “Dome of the Rock” Masjid al Quba as-Sakhra (visible with gold dome) on the Haram al-Sharif earlier in 688-691 CE (68-71 AH). These two mosques became essentially the most visited mosques in the entire Muslim world outside the Ka’ba and Masjid an-Nabi in Arabia, and grace the city of Jerusalem to this very day.

In 728 CE, the cupola over the Al-Aqsa Mosque was erected, the same being restored in 758-75 by the Abbasid Khalifa Al-Mahdi. In 831 Khalifa Al-Ma’mun restored the Dome of the Rock and built the octagonal wall. In 1016 CE the Dome was partly destroyed by earthquakes; but it was repaired in 1022.

As part of historical revisionism, some Orientalists, such as John Wansbrough, and Likudnik/Zionist historians have opined that Muhammad’s (S) night journey to Jerusalem – the Isra’ and Mi’raj, one of the principal foundations of Jerusalem’s sanctity in Islam – was a later invention aimed at accounting for the Qur’anic verse 17:1. [7] Others, such as Patricia Crone, have proposed that Jerusalem was in fact the original Islamic holy city, and that the sanctity of Makkah and Madinah was a later innovation. Neither of these ludicrous theories enjoys much acceptance (outside die-hard Zionists), least of all among Muslims. [8]

During the Abbasid rule (750-969 CE) Jerusalem became a religious focal point for Christian and Jewish pilgrims and Sufi Muslims. Most of its inhabitants were Muslims. It remained under Muslim control until the first Crusade (1099). Excepting a brief period during Fatimid caliph (insane) al-Hakim’s rule (996-1021), there was no religious persecution of minorities. [9]

In November 1095, Pope Urban II delivered a speech at Claremont, France, which can only be described as the vilest and most spiteful speech of the Middle Ages, responsible for initiating the never-ending Crusade.

He said:

“O race of Franks! race beloved and chosen by God! … From the confines of Jerusalem and from Constantinople a grievous report has gone forth that an accursed race, wholly alienated from God, has violently invaded the lands of these Christians, and depopulated them by pillage and fire. … The kingdom of Greeks is now dismembered by them, and has been deprived of territory so vast in extent that it could not be traversed in two months’ time.

On whom, then, rests the labor of avenging these wrongs, and of recovering this territory, if not upon you – you upon whom, above all others, God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great bravery, and strength to humble the heads of those whom resist you? … Let none of your possessions keep you back, nor anxiety for your family affairs. For this land which you now inhabit, shut in all sides by the sea and the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife.

Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.

Jerusalem is a land fruitful above all others, a paradise of delights. That royal city, situated at the center of the earth, implores you to come to her aid. Undertake this journey eagerly for the remission of your sins, and be assured of the reward of imperishable glory in the kingdom of Heaven.”

With that deleterious speech, the Pope aroused Christians to recapture Jerusalem from Muslims. On 1099 CE the Crusaders entered the city and began one of the bloodiest and crudest massacres in history. According to Ibn al-Athir some 70,000 Muslims were slaughtered in Masjid al-Aqsa alone, all of them non-combatants, some of them Imams and professors of theology.

Raymond d’Aguiliers, chaplain to Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse, wrote:

“Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious ceremonies were ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So, let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle-reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.” [10]

Jerusalem became the capital of the Latin Kingdom under Godfrey, Count of Bouillon, who changed the Al-Aqsa mosque into a church and erected a big cross on top of the Dome of Rock. Muslims and Jews were banned from living in the city.

In 1187 CE Sultan Salahuddin (Saladin) Ayyubi (RA) liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders and restored the al-Aqsa mosque to its previous condition. Before liberating Jerusalem, Saladin wrote a letter to King Richard which sums up Muslim position vis-a-vis the status of the city. He wrote:

“Jerusalem is our heritage as much as it is yours. It was from Jerusalem that our Prophet ascended to heaven and it is in Jerusalem that the angels assemble. Do not imagine that we can ever abandon it. Nor can we possibly renounce our rights to it as a Muslim community. As for the land, your occupation of it was accidental and came about because the Muslims who lived in the land at that time were weak. God will not enable you to build a single stone in the land so long as the war lasts.”

Comparing Saladin’s behavior with those Christian Crusaders, the historian Anthony Nutting writes:

“Apart from restoring the holy places of Islam, Saladin allowed not a single building to be touched. As Christian historians have attested, strict orders were issued to all Muslim troops to protect Christian life and property and not a single Christian was molested on account of his religion – a remarkable contrast to the atrocities perpetrated by the Franks eighty-eight years before.”

It is worth mentioning here that while the Crusaders, when they entered Jerusalem, burned Jews in their synagogue Salahuddin, after recovering the city, had allowed Jews to return.

Excepting brief periods between 1229-1239 and 1243-1244 when Jerusalem again fell in the hands of the Crusaders (because of Muslim in-fighting), it remained a Muslim City through all its life. Religious freedom and rights of worship by Christians and Jews were respected. In 1267 Rabbi Moshe Ben Nahman (Nahmanides) arrived from Spain, revived the Jewish congregation and established a synagogue and center of learning bearing his name. In 1448, Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro settled in Jerusalem and led the community. After the Spanish Inquisition (1492), Jews found shelter among the Muslims of North Africa and (what is now called) the Middle East.

The Mamluks (1248-1517), who came after the Ayyubids, left their mark in architecture with beautiful buildings, schools and hospices throughout the Old City. They added markets, repaired water supplies and constructed city’s fountain system.
In 1517 the Ottomans took over Jerusalem peacefully. Sultan Suleiman “the magnificent” (1537-41) rebuilt the city walls (un-walled since 1219) including the present day 7 gates (what is now known as the Old City) and the “Tower of David.” He further improved the city’s water system, installed drinking fountains still visible in many parts of the Old City. He also patronized religious centers and educational institutions. A Jewish colony “Safaradieh” was formed in 1522 in Palestine. The Ottomans granted religious freedom to all and it was possible to find (something that was unthinkable in Europe) a synagogue, a church and a mosque in the same street.
The Damascus gate was erected in 1542. It was Sultan Selim, the Ottoman ruler, who dug out the Wailing Wall from under the rubble in the 16th century and permitted Jews to visit it. All the Ottoman Sultans -” from Suleiman “the magnificent” to Sultan Abdul-Hamid (RA) -” were great patrons of Jerusalem, making surrounding territories of the mosques as their Waqf properties.

Throughout the Ottoman era, the city remained open to all religions, although the empire’s faulty management after Sultan Suleiman meant slow economic stagnation. When Jewish people faced extermination across Europe, the Ottoman Sultans allowed them to take refuge in the Empire. Some of them settled in Palestine. In 1562 there were 1,200 (mostly religious) Jews and 11,450 Arabs living in Jerusalem. [11]

By mid-19th century, with the weakening of the Ottoman Empire (to the extent of being ridiculed as the “Sick Man of Europe”) the European colonial powers vied with each other to gain a foothold in Palestine. New areas with names like the German Colony and the Russian Compound sprouted the city. According to Zionist historiography, residential building outside the walls of the Old City began around 1860 with the Jewish settlement – Mishkenot Shaananim. However, such scholarship overlooks the much earlier construction and continued use of numerous indigenous residential buildings outside the walls such as khans, residences for religious persons, and summer homes with orchards and olive presses, belonging mostly to non-Jews, especially the Arab Muslims. [12] In time, as the communities grew and connected geographically, this became known as the New City. [13]

This was also an age of Christian religious revival, and many churches sent missionaries to proselytize among the Muslim and especially the Jewish populations, believing passionately that this would expedite the Second Coming of Christ. These outside missionaries settled in and around places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

In 1846 there were only 12,000 Jews in Palestine out of a population of 350,000. In 1880, shortly before the Russian Pogroms, there were only 25,000 Jews in Palestine out of a population of half a million. [14]

The last half of the 19th century witnessed the pontification of Pope Pius IX (1846-78), the publication of Wilhelm Marr’s “Jewry’s Victory over Teutonism” (1873), the assassination of Czar Alexander II (1881) and the Alfred Dreyfus case (1894). [15] These events led to pogroms and anti-Semitism (actually Jew-hatred) across Europe, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia. Jews again found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. [Ironically, the demise of the Ottoman regime can partly be blamed on the Jewish enclave in Salonika (now Thessalonica or Thessaloniki in Greece) – home of the Donmeh [16] and the birthplace of the (Jacobin) Young Turk movement.] [17]

The last decade of the 19th century saw the emergence of political Zionism calling for the establishment of a Jewish state. Sultan Abdul-Hamid, the last of the Ottoman Sultans, was approached by Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, who offered to buy up and then turn over the Ottoman Debt to the Sultan’s government in return for an Imperial Charter for the Colonization of Palestine by the Jewish people. In his Diary, Herzl writes, “Let the Sultan give us that parcel of land [Palestine] and in return we would set his house in order, regulate his finances, and influence world opinion in his favour…” The Sultan rejected the offer, but reiterated that as the Caliph he remained a guardian of the Jewish people.

Herzl personally met the Sultan in May 1901. The American Jewish Yearbook [5663, October 2, 1902, to September 21, 1903, ed. Cyrus Adler, Philadelphia, the Jewish Publication Society of America (1902)] at the time summarized Herzl’s meeting this way:

In his report,  Dr. Herzl announced that, at the audience granted on May 17, 1901, by Sultan Abdul-Hamid to Herr D. Wolffsohn, Chairman of the Jewish Colonial Trust,  Herr Oscar Marmorek, Secretary of the Actions Committee, and himself, the Sultan had authorized him to proclaim that the ruling Khalif was a friend and protector of the Jewish people.

[Note: The Jewish Yearbook cited above also shows that at the Fifth International Congress (of Zionists), held at Basel, Switzerland, from Dec. 26 to 29, 1901, a system was designed to uniting the various Zionistic societies under one umbrella, the Congress, and the Congress was to establish a National Fund of 200,000 British Pound to be used for the purchase of land in Palestine.]

In his letter to a Sufi Shaykh – Shadhili Sheikh Abu’Shamat Mahmud (dated Sept. 22, 1911), Sultan Abdul-Hamid mentions this episode:

“I left the post of the ruler of Caliphate only because of the obstacles and threats on the side of people who call them ‘Young Turks’. The Committee of Unity and Progress obsessively insist on my agreement to form a national Jewish state in the sacred land of Palestine. But in spite of their obstinacy I strongly refused them. In the end, they offered me 150 million English pounds in gold, but again I refused and said the following to them: ‘If you offer me gold of the world adding it to your 150 man [measure of weight], I won’t agree to give you the land. I have served Islam and the people of Muhammad (S) for more than 30 years, and I won’t cloud the Islamic history, the history of my fathers and grandfathers – Ottoman Sultans and caliphs.’ After my definite refusal, they decided to remove me from power, and after that they told me that they would transport me to Salonika and I had to resign. I praise my benefactor who didn’t let me bring shame on the Ottoman state and the Islamic world. I want to stop at this. I praise the Almighty once again and finish my letter.” [18]

The Sultan, to the last of his days, resisted bartering Jerusalem for his reign.
So, what we notice from historical accounts is a remarkable Muslim reverence for the city of Jerusalem, much in contrast to the disingenuous claims made by Zionist apologists like Daniel Pipes and others. Down the centuries, from the time of Umar (R) to the subsequent Muslim dynasties ruling from Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Istanbul, Jerusalem was always important to Muslims. They constructed a wide variety of buildings and institutions in Jerusalem: mosques, theological college convents for Sufi mystics, abodes for holy men, schools of the Hadith and the Qur’an, orphanages, hospitals, hospices for pilgrims, fountains, baths, pools, inns, soup kitchens, places for ritual ablution, mausoleums, and shrines to commemorate the Prophet’s (S) Mi’raj.

These buildings were maintained through a system of endowment in perpetuity (awkaf), sometimes involving the dedication of the revenues of entire villages in Palestine, Syria, or Egypt. The patrons were caliphs and sultans, military commanders and scholars, merchants and officials, including many women. Their philanthropy bears witness to the importance of Jerusalem as a Muslim center of residence, pilgrimages, retreat, prayer, study and burial. [19]

British Mandate Period

With the defeat of the Turkish Army during the World War I (1914-18), British General Edmund Allenby took control over Jerusalem. Upon entering the city on 11 December 1917, he declared, “Now the Crusades come to an end.” As a matter of fact, it was the beginning of the end, i.e., marshalling of a neo-crusade against Muslims by using Israel as a ‘rampart’ in the Muslim heartland.

In 1917, Britain issued the infamous Balfour Declaration promising the Zionists establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The Declaration was criminal to the core as historian Arthur Koestler so aptly described: “One nation solemnly promised to give to a second nation the country of a third nation.” [20] With that goal in mind, during the devious British Mandate (1917-47), Jews were pumped into Palestine from all over Europe. Despite such Jewish influx, according to a census taken by the British on 31 December 1922, there were altogether 83,000 Jews in Palestine out of a total population of 757,000 of which 663,000 were Muslims. [21] That is, the Jewish population was only 11%.

In 1935, when the Palestinian Arabs rose in revolt against further Jewish immigration, there were 370,000 Jews out of a total population of 1,366,670, i.e., 3 out of 4 were Arabs. [22] During partition, the Jewish population owned less than 6% of the total land in Palestine. [23] Yet when on November 29, 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem in an international zone, 56% of the total area was allotted to the Jewish state. As was expected, Arabs (except for King Abdullah of Transjordan) rejected the plan and a fight for territories broke out in which armed Jewish terrorist gangs massacred unarmed Palestinians in several villages. [24] At that time, in Old (East) Jerusalem Jews owned less than 1% of land. Their ownership of properties in the New (West) city was 26%. [25]

In recent years, the issue surrounding pre-1948 demographics of Jerusalem has become a hot item. Zionist historiographers (e.g., Ben Arieh, Gilbert and others) have been trying to prove a Jewish majority in Jerusalem before the partition. This myth has no support and is debunked by the available late Ottoman-era statistics and (for the later period) by examining the boundaries of the Jerusalem Municipality as drawn by the British Mandatory authorities. [26]

In this regard, it is worth quoting what pre-eminent demographer Justin McCarthy had clearly pointed out, “Ottoman statistics are the best source on Ottoman population.” [27] The Ottoman data on Jerusalem show that in 1871-2, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was a quarter of the total population living in Jerusalem. In 1895, when the city’s population was about 43,000, the entire Jewish population could not have been more than a third (i.e., 14,500). In 1912 – the last Ottoman statistics – show that Jerusalem had a total population of 60,000 of which nearly 25,000 were Jews. [28]

According to Professor Walid Khalidi the international zone comprising “Mandatory municipal Jerusalem” in addition to some 20 surrounding Arab villages had a slight majority of Arab population who numbered 105,000 while the Jewish population was just under 100,000. [29] Academic research works by Salim Tamari (director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Birzeit University) and others present a similar picture. They point out how Zionist historiographers deliberately avoided accounting for Arab neighborhoods in their demographic studies of Jerusalem while concentrating mostly on Jewish suburbs.

Upon reviewing the literature on the selective demographics of Mandate Jerusalem, British historian Michael Dumper attributes two major reasons for these population discrepancies. [30] First, estimates counted Jewish migrants who arrived in Jerusalem before 1946 and later moved to Tel Aviv and other localities. Second, while excluding Palestinians who were working in the city but living in its rural periphery (the daytime population such as the commuting workers from Lifta and Deir Yasin), they included Jewish residents living in suburban areas such as Beit Vegan, Ramat Rahel, and Meqor Hayim. The latter were incorporated within the municipal population through a process he refers to as “demographic gerrymandering.” [31]

Professor Tamari’s studies on Jerusalem’s western villages, for instance, show that once the rural neighborhoods are introduced, the picture regarding demographics and land composition change dramatically. “Extrapolations from 1945 Mandatory statistics,” Professor Tamari says, “show that the Jerusalem sub-district contained slightly over a quarter of a million inhabitants of whom 59.6% were Arabs and 40.4% were Jewish. In the western Jerusalem areas that came under Israeli control after the war (251,945 dunums) 91.8% (231,446) dunums were Arab owned, 2.7% were Jewish owned, and the rest were public lands.” [22]

Israeli Period

The conspiracy of the Western powers in collusion with the Zionists, the terrorism inflicted upon the Arab inhabitants, the foolishness of the local leaders, and the incompetence or indifference of others – all these led to the establishment of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948 when on that day the Jewish settlers declared independence. The massacre of Arab residents of Deir Yasin, Qibya and Kafr al-Qasim that followed were only the preludes to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatilla, Tyre and Sidon, Nablus, Jenin and of ongoing atrocities in Gaza, West Bank and Southern Lebanon. [33]

Soon after the unilateral declaration, in a subsequent war with neighboring Arab states, Israel captured 78% of the original Palestine by annexing territories set for the Arab Palestinian state, leaving only East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Arab hands. This cataclysmic event forced 750,000 Palestinians to seek refuge elsewhere.

As to its impact on Jerusalem, Professor Tamari writes,

“During the war of 1948, particularly during the months of April-May, about 25-30,000 Palestinians were displaced from the urban suburbs of Jerusalem. In addition, the bulk of the village population (23,649 rural inhabitants) were also expelled. These included the population of the two largest villages in the Jerusalem sub-district, Ain Karim and Lifta, and virtually all the rural habitations west of the city (except for Abu Ghosh and Beit Safafa). Altogether 36 villages and hamlets were destroyed, or – as was the case with Lifta and Ain Karim – were physically left intact but their Palestinian inhabitants removed. Most of the displaced persons eventually found refuge in the Old City and its northern Arab suburbs (Shu’fat, Beit Hanina, Ram), and in the refugee camps of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Today the refugee population originating from the Jerusalem district is estimated to be 380,000.” [34]

In July 1949, the Israeli government declared West Jerusalem “territory occupied by the State of Israel”, and all Arab lands and businesses were confiscated under the Absentee Property Regulations of 1948. Most of the urban refugee property in Jerusalem was sold to Israelis and squatters. Refugee-lands outside the urban center were mostly sold to a specially established Government Development Authority which in turn sold them to the Jewish National Fund or to cooperative agricultural settlements. Soon, Israel began to transfer its government offices to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Government employees were housed in abandoned refugee property. [35]

On 13 December 1949, the Israeli government declared Jerusalem as its capital, which was later passed as a resolution in the Knesset on January 23, 1950.

On June 5-10, 1967 Israel launched an offensive against neighboring Arab states and captured East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza, plus the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Most Jews celebrated the event as a liberation of the city; a new Israeli holiday was created, Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), and the popular Hebrew song, “Jerusalem of Gold” (Yerushalayim shel zahav), became popular in celebration.

Between 1949 and 1967 scores of Palestinian towns and more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Israel. In the first flush of victory in the 1967 war, Ben Gurion wanted the magnificent walls built by the Ottomans that surround the “Old City” destroyed because they were such a powerful reminder of the Islamic character of the city. Most of the Israeli government buildings in Jerusalem including the Knesset are built on Palestinian-owned land.

In defiance of the international community, Israel wasted no time in declaring the city of Jerusalem as its “eternal, undivided” capital. This meant that it extended its law to East Jerusalem and claimed it as part of Israel, a move that no country in the world recognized, including up until recently the US, citing international law which states that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.

Teddy Kollek, the mayor of the contested city, said in 1968: “The object is to ensure that all of Jerusalem remains forever a part of Israel. If this city is to be our capital, then we have to make it an integral part of our country, and we need Jewish inhabitants to do that.”

In 1980, Israel formalized its annexation of the eastern half of the city when it passed the Jerusalem Law, claiming that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”.

In the 1967 census, the Israeli authorities registered 66,000 Palestinian residents (44,000 residing in the area known before the 1967 war as East Jerusalem; and 22,000, in the West Bank area annexed to Jerusalem after the war). Only a few hundred Jews were living in East Jerusalem at that time.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), since annexation of East Jerusalem, have embarked on a “Judaization” policy that entails constricting building permits to local Arabs to build houses on their ancestral land, withdrawing residency permits, demolishing Palestinian homes and mosques, and building illegal settlements. One of the first moves was to demolish the Maghariba quarter in order to enlarge the prayer area next to the Wailing Wall. One hundred and twenty-five Arab houses were destroyed in the process.

Jerusalem Palestinians are considered as foreign residents. As non-citizens, they can participate in municipal elections, but have no voting rights to the Knesset, under whose jurisdiction the whole of Jerusalem falls. If they stay out of Jerusalem for too long, they lose even their residence status and be thrown out of the city altogether, as happened to thousands of them. The policy of the Interior Ministry towards them – endorsed on 30 December 1996 by the Israeli Supreme Court – is too severe and arbitrary (especially since 1994). In 30 years (1967-97), an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Arab residents in Jerusalem lost their right of residency in the city. These include, for example, Jerusalem Palestinians who lived for over seven years outside the city limits. During the first two weeks of January 1997 alone, 233 Palestinian residents in Jerusalem were issued with expulsion orders. Palestinian refugees from camps located within the limits of Greater Jerusalem (the Shufat and Kalandia camps) have absolutely no political rights. [36]

Since its occupation, Israel has demolished hundreds of Palestinian-owned homes. Last year, some 88 homes were destroyed, leaving 295 people without shelter. Over the past decade, more than 2,600 people have been rendered homeless after their houses were demolished. Since 1967, Israel has revoked the residency status of 14,595 Palestinians in Jerusalem. Palestinian holders of the Jerusalem IDs live under the constant threat of residency revocation.

This “policy of Judaization,” which has been conducted openly by the Israeli government to reduce the Arab presence in Jerusalem, is starting to bear fruit. While in 1990, there was still a majority of 150,000 Palestinians against 120,000 Jews in the eastern part of the city, the ratio has been reversed to the benefit of the latter. In 1993, East Jerusalem counted 155,000 Palestinian Arabs against 160,000 Israeli Jews. Some 250,000 Israelis lived in West Jerusalem. [37]

On 19 April 1999, an inter-ministerial committee on Jerusalem recommended that Israel needs to build 116,000 new housing units in the city for Jews by 2020 in order to maintain a 70/30 percent Jewish majority in Jerusalem. This would signify an annual rate of 5,500. Figures published on 28 May 2003 by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics showed that Jerusalem’s population reached 683,000, of which sixty-six percent was Jewish. Of the 32 percent of the population who were Arabs, 94% were Muslim and 6% were Christians. [38] In 2004, the Jewish population in Jerusalem was estimated at 464,000 out of a total population of 692,000. [39]

The illegal Israeli settlements in and around occupied East Jerusalem have expanded rapidly, in violation of all international laws. Between 1967 and 2003, 35% of the land in East Jerusalem was expropriated for the construction of Jewish neighborhoods and attendant facilities. Of the more than 38,500 houses built on expropriated land, as of 2003, none was constructed for Arabs. As a result of such settlement policies, by 2003, there were over 43,000 homes in Jewish neighborhoods and only 28,000 in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. [40]

The Jewish settler population in East Jerusalem has also multiplied accordingly. In 2000, it was estimated to be close to 180,000. [41] In 2003, 217,000 Palestinians shared East Jerusalem with 200,000 Jewish settlers. Of these, 66,500 were in the Greater Jerusalem area of Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Betar Elite, Har Adar, Efrat and part of the Etzion Bloc. [42] Today, 86 percent of East Jerusalem is under direct control of the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers. Around 200,000 settlers live in settlements that have been mostly built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian property.

Worse still, Israel has constructed a wall to separate Jewish illegal settlements from Palestinian neighborhoods. This apartheid wall, which Israel started building in 2002, snakes through the West Bank territory, dividing villages, encircling towns and splitting families from each other.

It has also impacted Palestinian Jerusalemites: more than 140,000 residents living in Jerusalem neighborhoods are disconnected from the rest of the city and as a result, suffer from a severe lack of basic services and infrastructure. [For instance, more than 40% of Palestinians living inside Jerusalem are not connected to city’s official water grid.]

Moreover, Israeli lawmakers are now making moves to annex three large settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli-defined boundaries of Jerusalem.
The so-called “Greater Jerusalem bill” would see the addition of 140,000 Jewish Israelis who live in these settlements to the population of Jerusalem, to ensure a Jewish majority in the city. With the approval of new construction permits for Jewish settlements, the demography of Jerusalem in its 50th anniversary of statehood and beyond is bound to change steadily.

The Israeli government has succeeded in applying Jerusalem’s religious symbolism to vast areas that have nothing to do with historic Jerusalem. So, e.g., over half of what we call Jerusalem today was not part of the city pre-1967, but were parts of Bethlehem and 28 other West Bank towns.

In today’s Israel, even the dead are not safe from desecration. For example, during Olmert’s tenure as the mayor of Jerusalem, Islamic burial places in West Jerusalem ‘Ma’man Allah’ (or colloquially Mamilla), measuring some 250,000 square meters, were turned into building plots. The Sheraton Plaza Hotel, Supersol supermarket, Beit Argon building and the adjacent car parking lot are all built on this Islamic Waqf owned land which was used by Muslims as their burial place in Jerusalem until 1948. What remains of this Muslim cemetery is being used as an open park, courtesy of Jerusalem mayors.
Moreover, Palestinians in Jerusalem are required to pay taxes, such as the national insurance tax, for services they barely receive. This is in contravention of international law, which considers East Jerusalem as occupied territory and thus, Israeli law should not be applied to the area. The Arnona municipal tax has been imposed on residents of the city since 1967. It is widely seen as a form of discrimination as it affects Palestinians disproportionally. With the rates highest for East Jerusalem, Arnona taxes can exceed the annual rent of low-income families. Businesses are also subject to Arnona taxes. The rate applicable to each business correlates with the size of the property and not its economic revenue. The system has strenuously placed pressure on Palestinians, forcing many to relocate to the occupied West Bank.

The 1993 Oslo Accord left the future of Jerusalem to be determined later through serious negotiation. At Camp David in July 2000 and later at Taba, Israeli negotiators considered allowing some sovereignty to the Palestinian state over Arab areas of East Jerusalem but no agreement was reached. The Palestinian side was ready to concede Israel’s claim to West Jerusalem of which Palestinians had privately owned 40 per cent in 1948. The final negotiation fell flat on the status of Haram al-Sharif. [44] But more problematic was the apparent arm-twisting of the Palestinian negotiators by their US counterparts to appease the Israelis. It failed to give importance to the legal arguments, i.e., who owned/owns what property. Just because Barak “conceded” more than any other Israeli government does not mean that it was just or fair.

In the post-Clinton era, nothing significant has been done to settle Jerusalem’s long-standing problem except President Bush’s announcement of the so-called “Roadmap” for the creation of a Palestinian state, which aimed more at getting the necessary cooperation from his Arab client states before toppling Saddam than establishing the groundwork for real peace or finding a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. As subsequent events had proved, Bush Jr. administration gave a Carte Blanche endorsing Israel’s war crimes inside Gaza. Between 2001 and 2008, the US vetoed 9 times in the UNSC on resolutions critical of Israel on the Palestine question.

During Obama’s presidency, no substantive initiative was undertaken either to stop Israel’s excesses and to find a solution to the crisis. His administration cast its first negative vote in the UN General Assembly in 2009 on a resolution that called for an end to the 22-day Israeli attack on Gaza. It cast its first veto in the Security Council on 18 February 2011 to block a resolution denouncing Israel’s settlement policy as an illegal obstacle to peace efforts in the Middle East. Not only that, the US voted against a UNGA resolution that called on Israel to cease obstructing the movement and access of personnel, vehicles and assets of the Agency of the United Nations Relief and Works for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). In 2012, it also opposed and attempted to block Palestine’s upgraded UN status at every step. Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN, described all efforts to hold Israel accountable for its criminal actions and to abide by the international treaties, charters and conventions to which it is bound as “anti-Israel crap.”

In 2014, the world witnessed the murder of more than a thousand unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The Obama administration once again allowed Netanyahu’s war crimes to go unpunished. The shortly lived ad on metro buses of Boston’s transit authority, the MBTA (before it was removed under pressure from pro-Israel groups and in an apparent violation of its own policies) summed up the US complicity: “Since September, 2000 Israel’s Military has killed one Palestinian child every four days, using U.S. tax dollars. End U.S. support for Israeli apartheid.”

Instead of disciplining Israel for its plethora of crimes, the Obama administration in September 2016 rewarded the pariah state with a whopping $38 billion military aid package, the largest given to any state anytime in US history. It was a criminal gesture, which only emboldened Israel to expand its settlement activities. The Obama administration in its last days, as if out of some moral bite of conscience, stood by as the U.N. Security Council voted in December 2016 to adopt a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem illegal and demanding a halt to their expansion. The abstention was the first time the Obama administration stepped aside and allowed the Security Council to censure Israel. Speaking after the vote, Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, defended the abstention, comparing it to policies of Republican and Democratic administrations dating back to the Reagan administration. “Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 undermine Israel’s security, harm the viability of a negotiated two-state outcome, and erode prospects for peace and security,” Power told the council after the vote. “We could not in good conscience veto the resolution,” Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, added.

The president-elect Donald Trump blasted the U.N. and the Obama administration after the vote. Trump tweeted, “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th,” after the UN vote.

Surely, with Trump in the White House now, Netanyahu has a narcissist, delusional and psychopath to lean on to! On December 17, 2017, a UN security council resolution calling for the withdrawal of Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has been backed by every council member except the US, which used its veto.
As can be seen the US support inside and outside the UN has been crucial for Israel to defying world opinion and international law, and maintaining its apartheid character.

Religious Myth

Next, we come to the question of religious myth, as Menachem Begin once said, “The country [Israel] was promised to us, and we have a right to it.” [Davar, Dec. 12, 1978] Golda Meir similarly said, “This country exists as a result of a promise made by God Himself.” [45] Moshe Dayan said, “If you have the book of Bible, the people of the Bible, then you also have the land of the Bible – of the Judges, of the Patriarchs in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jericho and thereabouts.” [Jerusalem Post, Aug. 10, 1967]

One should not be surprised by such invocations of Biblical passages to “justify” or “sanctify” the permanent extension of the Zionist state. In 1956, it was David Ben-Gurion who showed the way by declaring that Sinai formed part of the “Kingdom of David and Solomon.”

Colonialists have always sought a rationalization for their criminal annexations, robberies and authority. And what a better way than to claim being “God’s Chosen People” or belonging to a “Superior” race? Are we, therefore, surprised at the remarkable similarity between Zionist claims and Vorster’s (late Prime Minister of the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1972) assertion about justification of apartheid when the latter said, “Let us not forget that we are the people of God, entrusted with a mission”?

The concept of ‘race’ is a 19th century invention by European colonialists to justify colonial hegemony. To justify colonialism, English writer, Rudyard Kipling spoke of “the White Man’s burden” to civilize the non-whites. As Roger Garaudy has rightly pointed out this very idea of “chosen people” should be recognized as historically infantile, politically criminal, theologically intolerable, and morally insane. It has no scientific basis. [46] It is a bizarre puzzle to say the least. Because, God’s mercy is never restricted to a group, but transcends entire humanity. It is narrated in the Qur’an, “Remember when Abraham was tried by his Lord with certain words, which he fulfilled. He said, ‘I shall make you an Imam [leader] to humankind.’ Said he, ‘And what of my progeny?’ He said, ‘My covenant shall not include the wrongdoers.’” [2:124]

Zionists often invoke the Book of Genesis (15:16), which states: “In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” So, which “seed” or son is meant here? Is it Ishmael – the first born, or Isaac (the son of Sarah) – the father of Jacob? What we know from history is that this “promise” was only fulfilled through the Arab descendants of Ishmael – firstborn son of Abraham – who was the forefather of Muhammad (S), and not ever by any descendant of Isaac – the second son of Abraham (AS). Period!

So, if theology were to determine the status of Jerusalem, the Muslim position strongly contradicts Jewish aspiration for the city and shows that they have stronger claim to the city than their Jewish cousins.

Sadly, political Zionism has betrayed Judaism and perverted Christianity. The same church that once labeled Jews as “Christ-killers”, as the “rejected” or “forsaken people”, now calls them the “Chosen people.” They are now its best friends, more zealous than many Israelis in their support for the rogue state. It is really strange! I wish the Christian motivation was genuine and not simply to gather them as the sacrificial lambs for the ‘coming Armageddon’!

The entire policy of the state of Israel, internal or external, has been a colonial enterprise, but it wears the “chador” (cloak) of pseudo-theological myth. From its beginning to the present, Israel has always been a racist, colonial state. The father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl remarked, “Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream, antagonism is essential to man’s greatest efforts.” [Jewish State, (1897)] Contrary to this view, the greatest minds ever in the history of mankind – from Moses to Jesus to Muhammad (S) – spoke of universal brotherhood to be the solution. This remark rightly shows the sick mentality of this founder of Zionism. As a matter of fact, the Zionists – Jewish or Christian alike – are morally wrong.

In his Diary, Theodor Herzl writes about the establishment of a Jewish state: “We should form there a portion of rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Here, it clearly shows his colonial, racist mentality. He first disregards the rights of the indigenous inhabitants of the Arab Palestinians, and then dehumanizes them by calling them barbarians.

The history of the Zionist, apartheid state of Israel since its unholy birth has exhibited its “rampart” characteristics rather too well! It is also not difficult to understand the brutal measures employed by the racist leaders of Israel against unarmed Palestinian teens. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Every day, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded Apartheid Wall. The killing of Palestinians does not raise the eyebrows of most Zionists today. After all, the victims have been dehumanized with statements like those of the Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense, Eli Ben-Dahan in 2013 that stated that: “[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human”. Racist ideologies within Israel’s criminal justice system and military have made crimes against dehumanized Palestinians look justifiable in the eyes of its bemused followers and executioners!

In the last week of December 2017, we learned that Israeli army mistakenly thought it had thwarted a terror attack when it shot a 15-year-old Palestinian teen in the head. “The bullet entered from the back of his neck and exited through the eye socket, shattering his head and face. A single bullet fired by an Israel Defense Forces soldier lurking in ambush with his buddies in the shade of olive trees. The soldier sees the person approaching the fence, unarmed, not endangering anyone, a slim teenager, dozens of meters away – but still shoots him in the head with live ammunition, wounding him seriously, destroying his life and that of his family, probably for all time.

At first the IDF claimed that the soldier had thwarted a knifing attack, and later that the teen had ‘put his hand in his pocket in a suspicious way.’ In the end, it turned out that the Hamed al-Masri hadn’t done anything wrong at all,” reported Gideon Levy and Alex Levac from Israel.

Thanks to the culture of impunity, such trigger-happy incidents are not exceptions but are norms in Apartheid Israel. What a betrayal of Jewish moral codes!

Summary

From the above discussion, we see that the so-called Children of Israel far from being the first settlers in Palestine were only one group among many others. The total period of Jewish rule or sovereignty over Palestine, in general, and Jerusalem, in particular, before the establishment of the modern Jewish state was only about 400 years, and this period is much shorter a period compared to the period of Muslim rule. As a matter of fact, in its entire history, no other religious community had ruled Palestine or Jerusalem for a longer period. The myth of political rights of the Jews over Palestine is, thus, not substantiated by history.

In the pre-1948 period, Jews returned to Palestine primarily because of persecution (esp. the Jewish Holocaust) in Europe, and least from any yearning for the ‘homeland of their ancestors.’ Had it not been for the generosity of Muslim rulers since the days of Saladin they could not have found refuge among Muslims, and surely not in Palestine. Only under Muslim rule the sanctity of Jerusalem – as spiritual center of three monotheistic religions – was upheld.

If theology were to be the basis for occupying land, then Muslim claims for Jerusalem is stronger than those of Jewish (and Christian) claims.

Contrary to the myths now spread by Zionists, Jerusalem was always important to Muslims and that during the Muslim rule it never declined to the point of being in shambles. Its importance has not dwindled a bit amongst Muslims. Israel through its actions in post-1967 era has shown that it cannot be trusted for guardianship of Muslim shrines there.

More importantly, East Jerusalem, including its Muslim holy places, is not the patrimony of any Arab incumbent in whatever Arab capital he or she may be, but that of nearly 1.7 billion Muslims and of the Arab people of Palestine.

Concluding Remarks

Trump’s preposterous Jerusalem declaration in December 2017 was like a Christmas presentation to his Judeo-Christian Evangelical base and a Hanukkah present to the extremist Zionists like Sheldon Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu who believe that the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would pave the way for the construction of a Third Jewish Temple in the same place the Second Temple had been before it was demolished in 70 CE by the Romans.

Not surprisingly, some Jews and Judeo-Christians see Trump’s announcement – and, in fact, Trump himself – as hastening the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.  To be sure, Trump did little to dispel the sense that something of biblical significance was in fact taking place. But just as the Haaretz has questioned: whose Messiah is Trump hastening? Is it the fundamentalist Israeli vision of a return to a Jewish kingdom and priesthood reminiscent of the Old Testament? Or is it the Evangelical belief in the return of Jesus Christ and the conversion of all the Jews to born-again Christian doctrine and faith?

Nonetheless, Trump’s decision is sure to bolster the extremist Zionists with their criminal land-grabs further worsening the Palestine-Israel crisis. As part of the payback, Israel’s transportation minister is pushing ahead with a plan to dig a railway tunnel under Jerusalem’s Old City, passing near sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims — and ending at the Western Wall with a station named after Trump. Digging railway tunnels to the Western Wall would also entail excavating in Jerusalem’s Old City, where religious and political sensitivities — as well as layers of archaeological remains from the city’s 3,000-year history — could make for a logistical and legal quagmire.

The status of Jerusalem as the ‘undivided capital’ of the State of Israel is unacceptable. The General Assembly revisited the question of Jerusalem many times. In its fifty-fifth session, in a resolution adoted on 1 December 2000, the Assembly determined that the decision of Israel to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem was illegal and, therefore, null and void. The Assembly also deplored the transfer by some States of their diplomatic missions to Jerusalem in violation of Security Council resolution 478 (1980).

As the recent United Nations General Assembly (Dec. 2017) vote once again showed Trump’s decision went against the very spirit of finding a peaceful solution – the so-called two state formula – to the decades-old problem. No wonder that the Palestinians see Trump’s declaration as the death knell to any peace process. They have said, and rightly so, that they won’t accept the USA as a mediator any more to resolve the crisis. Trump has forfeited that privilege.

These statements and resolutions, as well as many others adopted by United Nations bodies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and religious groups, demonstrate the continuing determination of the international community to remain involved in the future of Jerusalem. They also show the great concern over the delicate status of the peace process and the unanimous desire that no actions be taken that could jeopardize that process.

Since its birth, the Israeli plan has been to totally ignore international law, given the absence of any enforcement device, and to work hard to create facts on the ground, in the belief that sooner or later the international community, including the Palestinian leadership, would be forced to accept the ‘ground reality’ of the absolute lawlessness of ‘might is right’. So far, thanks to its powerful international backers wielding tremendous economic and political power, esp. the USA government and its ‘Amen Corner’ in the Capitol Hill, Israel has succeeded in its devious plan, but that won’t sanctify what is immoral, illegal, unjust and unfair.

Jerusalem is important for adherents of the three great monotheistic religions. Her international status can neither be unilaterally declared by Israel nor blackmailed by any other state. Her heritage is as much, if not more, Islamic as it is Christian and Jewish. As the hallowed site of Isra and Mi’raj and the place of many Prophets (AS) of the Qur’an who walked and lived there, the world Muslim community can never abandon its heritage nor can they renounce their rights to it. As for the land, the Zionist occupation of it is accidental and came about because of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, betrayal of regional Arab leaders, and weakness of Muslim post-colonial nation states. Who knows, things may change one day, and Jerusalem will belong to those who would uphold her sanctity and make it a true center of world peace and blessings!

Notes:
[1] The text of the treaty read: “In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the assurance of safety which the servant of God, Umar, the Commander of the Faithful, has given to the people of Jerusalem. He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves  for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and healthy of the city and for all the rituals which belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted. No Jew will live with them in Jerusalem.
The people of Jerusalem must pay the taxes like the people of other cities and must expel the Byzantines and the robbers. Those of the people of Jerusalem who want to live with the Byzantines, take their property and abandon their churches and crosses will be safe until they reach their place of refuge. The villagers may remain in the city if they wish but must pay taxes like the citizens. Those who wish may go with the Byzantines and those who wish may return to their families. Nothing is to be taken from them before their harvest is reaped.
If they pay their taxes according to their obligations, then the conditions laid out in this letter are under the covenant of God, are the responsibility of His Prophet, of the caliphs and of the faithful.” – Quoted in The Great Arab Conquests, from Tarikh Tabari
[2]. See this author’s essay on explanation of the Biblical verse Malachi 3:1 in soc.religion.misc (1992); lecture on “Muhammad in the World Scriptures,” Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1995.
[3]. Islam, the West and Jerusalem by Walid Khalidi.
[4]. For quotations from the Bible, the author is using the Authorized King James Version.
[5]. Roger Garaudy, The Case of Israel: A Study of Political Zionism, Shorouk International (UK) Limited (1983), p. 34.
[6]. See, Khalid Baig’s article – Jerusalem: History Lessons (Aqsa), www.albalagh.net
[7]. See, e.g., the Zionist historians quoted in Daniel Pipes’s article quoted earlier. See also: Wansbrough, J., Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977; The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978. (See Estelle Whelan’s work for a refutation of Wansbrough’s thesis in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1998, Volume 118, pp. 1-14.: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/
Dome_Of_The_Rock/Estwitness.html)
[8]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem
[9]. Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah was the sixth Fatimid dynasty. He was insane who claimed that he was a reincarnation of God. The Druze sect believes in his divinity. They believe that he did not die but vanished and will one day return in triumph to inaugurate a golden age.
[10]. Edward Peters, The First Crusade: The chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other source materials, p. 214.
[11]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Jerusalem
[12]. A Social Profile of Jerusalem before 1948: The Growth of the Western Communities (Rochelle Davis); http://www.bma-alqods.org/englishsite/jerus-48.htm
[13]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem
[14]. Roger Garaudy, op. cit., p. 35.
[15]. The Dreyfus case would later motivate Theodor Herzl to write the book “Jewish State,” responsible for initiating the Zionist movement.
[16]. The Donmeh are descendants of the Jewish followers of a self-proclaimed messiah, Sabbatai Sebi (or Zevi, 1626-76), who was forced by the sultan to convert to Islam in 1666. Their doctrine includes Jewish and Islamic elements. They consider themselves Muslims and officially are recognized as such.
[17]. See this author’s lecture/essay: “The Turkish Experiment with Westernization” (pub. Media Monitors Network): https://www.mediamonitors.net/articles/the-turkish-experiment-with-westernization/
[18]. http://eng.islam.ru/pressclub/history/letter/
[19]. Walid Khalidi, op. cit.
[20]. Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfillment, London, 1949.
[21]. Garaudy, op. cit., p. 38.
[22]. Study presented by Georgetown History Professor Hisham Sharabi at the Senate Sub-committee on Near East on September 30, 1975; also see The Palestinians: Selected Essays, ed. Hussaini and El-Boghdadi, Arab Information Center, Washington D.C. (1976), p. 41.
[23]. Presented at the Committee on International Affairs of the House of Representatives on September 30, 1975 by Professor Edward Said, Remarks on the Palestinians, Selected Essays, ed. Hussaini and El-Boghdadi, Arab Information Center, Washington D.C. (1976), p. 50.
[24]. Zionist terrorist gangs – Irgun and Stern -” rejected the plan, much in contrast to the official Jewish position that accepted the plan. As is witnessed by the Haganah’s Plan Dalet, the Jewish leadership was determined to link the envisaged Jewish state with the Jerusalem corpus separatum (the so-called international zone). But the corpus separatum lay deep in Arab territory, in the middle of the envisaged Palestinian state, so this linking up could only be done militarily. Thus, according to Walid Khalidi, “As of early April 1948 –before the end of the British Mandate and before the entry of the regular Arab armies – the Jewish forces launched two major military offensive for the conquest of Jerusalem: Palestinian state, and the other starting from the Jewish quarters within the city itself. It was in the course of the second offensive that the whole of today’s West Jerusalem fell to the Haganah and that the massacre of Dayr Yasin at the hand of the Irgun and Stern groups led by Begin and Shamir respectively was perpetrated. Even before the end of the Mandate on 15 May 1948, Haganah’s objective was the conquest not only of the whole of municipal Jerusalem but of the larger area of the corpus separatum itself. It was thwarted only by the last-minute intervention of the Arab Legion of Transjordan under Kind Abdallah, grandfather of King Hussein. Thus present-day Jewish control of West Jerusalem and of a so-called ‘corridor’ linking it to the coast was achieved by military conquest in violation of the UN partition resolution that gave birth to the Jewish state itself.” (op. cit.)
[25]. http://www.bma-alqods.org/englishsite/jerus-48.htm (see articles by Rochelle Jones and Nathan Krystall)
[26]. During the British Mandate period, there was a deliberate attempt by the British to help the Zionist cause. In their redrawn map, they included far-flung Jewish settlements, some of them 4 or 5 kilometers away from the heart of old Jerusalem, while they excluded adjacent Arab neighborhoods like Silwan, l-Tur and al-‘Aizariya. Even then with such an altered boundary, in 1922 the Jewish population was only slightly higher than Arab population.
[27]. Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine (New York: Columbia UP, 1990)
[28]. See papers presented at the Institute of Jerusalem Studies Symposium: Contemporary Research Trends on the History of Jerusalem, Dec. 16, 2000 (http://www.acj.org/resources/khalidi/w_history.htm)
[29]. Walid Khalidi, op. cit.
[30]. Michael Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem (New York: Columbia UP, 1997), pp. 61-62.
[31]. http://www.jqf-jerusalem.org/1999/jqf3/tamari.html
[32]. http://www.bma-alqods.org/englishsite/jerus-48.htm
[33]. As to the de-Arabization of Jerusalem and its neighborhoods by Zionist terrorist gangs і Irgun and Haganah, see the report by Nathan Krystal where he says, At first the Haganah targeted the mixed neighbourhoods such as Romema, Sheikh Badr (the current site of the Knesset). Lifta. and the houses around the British Shneller military camp, and tried to pressure Arabs to vacate these areas through psychological warfare and by blowing up buildings on the pretext that they served as bases for Arab military actions. The bombing of the Semiramis Hotel on 4 January 1948 began the Arab exodus from Katamon and Talbiyeh. Concomitant with the Haganah’s campaign to clear Arabs from the Western neighborhoods was their settling by Jews. With the settling of Sheikh Badr by Jews, this area became an extended part of Romema and the entrance to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv had been successfully transformed into an Arab free zone. In mid February 1948 Arab villagers abandoned Beit Safafa, and residents – first of all the economically well off – of Talbiyeh, Musrara, Baq’a, Deir Abu Tor and Katamon started to leave. In contradiction to what is usually presented by Zionist historians, the Arab Higher Committee also called people to stay put in the Arab neighborhoods and not to leave. There was a pattern of collusion between the labor Zionist Haganah forces and the right wing Irgun and Lehi forces in the sense that the latter’s actions were usually condemned by the Haganah, but – at the same time – served Haganah aims (including the Deir Yassin Massacre). On 6 April 1948, the Haganah launched -Operation Nahshon designed to open the access road to Jerusalem which was then successfully controlled by local forces of Palestinian irregulars led by Abdel Qadir al-Husseini. Operation Nahshon resulted erasing of the Palestinian villages outside of the city (from Beit Mahsir in the west to Kolonia and Qastal in the east and was a watershed for the Zionist forces on the way to Jerusalem. Its counterpart in the city was the massacre of 254 Deir Yass’m villagers on 9 April 1948. The massacre immediately provoked a mass flight of Arab Jerusalem residents, particularly those who could afford to relocate quickly. Operation Jebussi (22 April – early May 1948) followed by Operation Kalshon aimed occupy the parts of the city the British had evacuated towards the end of its mandate in Palestine. These operations resulted in the occupation of Sheikh Jarrah, the American Colony, Bab al-Zahera, Wadi Joz, Deir Abu Tor, Katamon (1 May 1948) and Baq’a (16 May 1948).
After the fall of the Arab neighborhoods of Western Jerusalem in May 1948, only about 750 non-Jews remained in this area. Almost all of the Arabs among them were concentrated and confined to Upper Baq’a. Extensive looting of the empty Arab homes began with the first cease-fire in June.Ӕ( http://www.bma-alqods.org/englishsite/jerus-48.htm)
In his book The Revolt Menachem Begin wrote that without the massacre of Arabs in Deir Yasin there would not have been a State of Israel.
[34]. http://www.bma-alqods.org/englishsite/jerus-48.htm; see also the book – Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari, Institute for Palestine Studies.
[35]. ibid.
[36]. http://www.caabu.org/press/factsheets/Jerusalem.pdf
[37]. Central Bureau of Statistics, Jerusalem Municipality, Israel, Population File, 1996
[38]. CAABU Fact Sheet: Jerusalem, September 2003.
[39]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Jerusalem
[40]. PBS Program, shown in 2005.
[41]. More Settlements under Barak by Francoise Perreault The Other Front January/February 2000
[42]. CAABU Fact Sheet: Jerusalem, September 2003
[43]. http://www.caabu.org/press/factsheets/Jerusalem.pdf
[44]. See Le Monde, 15 October 1971 for the context.
[45]. Garaudy, op. cit., p. 71.
[46]. See, e.g., Gary Norths ғForeign Policy of 20 Million Would-be Immortals, http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north188.html


My Heart Bleeds For Tibet – OpEd

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I am not a Tibetan. I am not a Buddhist. I have never visited Tibet. I have never spoken to venerable the Dalai Lama. I have only seen his face in television. I have never interacted with any Tibetan and exchanged views with him. However, I have studied about Tibet’s glorious history, tradition and culture. From whatever I have read, I have developed deep admiration for this country, that is located in a remote corner of the world and at a height not seen by many people and the people in the past leading nearly a natural life without being influenced by the negative forces of the modern era.

My heart bleeds when I realize that this glorious country with peaceful people was invaded by China with it’s military might and brought the country under its total control. It mercilessly drove out venerable the Dalai Lama and hundreds of his followers who were forced to leave their dear country and seek refugee status elsewhere.

Tibet has been grievously wronged and as yet, even after several decades, there is no sign that Tibet will regain its old glory and become an independent country, for the Tibetans to live with their cherished values.

However, something in me tells me that Tibet will get independence before long, though the skeptics may not share my view. All I wish is that I should see in my life time a free and independent Tibet getting justice for all the harm that has been done to it.

China, the occupier of Tibet and with ruthless approach to achieve its objectives with least consideration for ethical values, has no inclination to quit Tibet.

China is a dictatorial country and the people in China do not have their freedom to express their views on such matters. However, the views of people of China need not be the same as the rulers of China and there could be many Chinese who have ethical standards for themselves and may in all probability desire that Tibet should get its independence back. As of now, nobody has heard such sane voice in this iron curtained country.

Apart from the merciless and vengeful attitude of China towards the call for Tibet’s independence, what causes me even more anguish is that some Tibetans seem to be reconciling themselves to the occupation of China by Tibet and are pleading with the Chinese government to give autonomy for Tibet within the overall governance and control of China.

Certainly, such appeal for autonomy has been looked upon with contempt by the Chinese government and the Chinese leadership must now be having hearty laugh over such autonomy pleadings.

Of course, the thoughtful Tibetans would be finding it difficult to understand as to what would be such autonomy for Tibet under Chinese government like. Expecting autonomy for Tibet under Chinese government is similar to the act of an unarmed man standing before a hungry tiger and expecting that it would not maul the person.

Today, the Tibetans living in Tibet who were born much after China’s aggressive occupation , should have been brainwashed by the Chinese government making them think that they are essentially Chinese citizens. In all probability, the present generation of Tibetans in Tibet may not be aware of the glory of Tibet and the history lessons for the students would have been completely re written in the way that the Chinese government want.

The Tibetans who have left Tibet after the Chinese occupation and their descendants now live in different countries either as refugees or the citizens of the countries where they have domiciled. Perhaps, for some of the present generation of Tibetans living abroad, Tibet as a country may be of only historical value, since they have not seen Tibet and had no opportunity to learn about it’s glorious traditions.. This situation is what the Chinese government want ,with almost all the governments in the world reconciling themselves to a world without Tibet as an independent country.

Given this scenario, the Tibetans living outside Tibet should not dilute the objective of independent Tibet and say that autonomy status for Tibet under China would be appropriate. In other words, such voices essentially give up the idea of Tibet as an independent country entirely and permanently.

As my heart bleeds for Tibet’s freedom, I only pray that Tibetans living outside Tibet, wherever they are, should keep their spirit that Tibet should be an independent country sooner or later. Certainly, there must be thousands of Tibetans across the world whose heart bleed for Tibet just as the way my heart does.

History has shown on several occasions that ultimately justice has been done to a wronged country or wronged person sooner or later.

Arabs Seek Recognition For Palestine With East Jerusalem As Capital

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By Hani Hazaimeh

Arab foreign ministers on Saturday stressed that peace in the Middle East is impossible without addressing the Palestinian cause on the basis of a two-state resolution with East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.

“The Arab League will seek international recognition of the Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital after Washington recognized the holy city as Israel’s capital,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi announced at a joint news conference with Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit following talks in Amman on Jerusalem’s status, also attended by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.

“There is a political decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and we will strive to reach an international political decision to recognize a Palestinian state with (East) Jerusalem as its capital,” Safadi said.

He added that the Arab states would work collectively with the international community to secure international recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, adding that the meeting was also used to agree on steps to ensure no other country recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“We reiterated that no peace or security can be achieved in the Middle East without the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and in accordance with all relevant international references,” Safadi said, stressing that peace is the only way to resolve the Palestinian cause, being the only strategic option to meet the legitimate and rightful demands of the Palestinian people.

US President Donald Trump reversed decades of American policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6, threatening Middle East peace efforts and angering the Arab world and the US’ Western allies alike. Trump’s controversial decision sparked protests in several countries and was rejected in a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters following a meeting with his Jordanian counterpart that Saudi Arabia stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their bid for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, reiterating the Kingdom’s rejection of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia has always been a strong supporter of legitimate Palestinian demands, stressing that addressing the Palestinian and the Arab Israeli struggle on the basis of a two-state solution is key to regional peace in the Middle East.

“Arab efforts have succeeded in isolating the US decision, citing the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly votes, adding that these efforts will continue to deter any effort aiming at undermining the status of Jerusalem,” Abul Gheit said.

He added that the Arab League’s foreign ministers will reconvene at the end of this month when Palestine briefs the group on what has been achieved so far with regard to their efforts to counter the US decision and the illegal Israeli measures to change the status of Jerusalem.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 and later annexed East Jerusalem in a move never recognized by the international community.

Earlier on Saturday, Jordan’s King Abdullah met the ministers and said: “the question of Jerusalem must be resolved within the framework of a just and lasting peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis.”

The New Iranian Revolution – OpEd

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By Yossi Mekelberg*

It is too early to tell whether what we are witnessing on the streets of Iran is the closing chapter of the 1979 revolution, or merely the prelude to a repeat of the violent suppression of the 2009 protests. Unlike the demonstrations of nearly nine years ago, which were specifically against elections that were alleged to have been rigged, this time around there is no well-defined agenda and no obvious leadership.

Whatever the outcome of these disturbances, the regime in Tehran will be making a grave mistake if it ignores the readiness of so many thousands to take to the streets and risk their lives or at least their freedom, the many different concerns they are expressing, and the widespread nature of the demonstrations.

On Wednesday, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC), Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, announced the defeat of what he called “sedition” in the country.

But even if that were true for now, it will not make the reasons behind the demonstrations disappear unless the political elite in Tehran can demonstrate that it is willing and able to deal with the general malaise among ordinary Iranians. For the moment at least, that does not look like likely.

Comparing what is taking place right now on the streets of Iran with the events of 2009 is inevitable. Back then, it looked like the start of a widespread and prolonged uprising, with the well-defined political objective of reversing the outcome of an election characterized by considerable irregularities that had returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power with a much bigger majority.

The size and intensity of the protests, though peaceful in nature, put the regime under severe pressure, which was answered by the use of excessive force by the IRGC, the Basij militia and the Intelligence Ministry — all of which, to a lesser or greater extent, report to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The result was more than 120 demonstrators killed, many injured and 4,000 detained, many of whom were tortured.

In the time that has elapsed since the aborted Green Revolution, little has improved for the average Iranian. If then the protesters were generally young and from the urban middle class, this time it is mainly disgruntled young people in small towns and rural areas — the “working poor” as some call them — who have initiated the protests.

The demonstrations began not in the capital but in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, when hundreds of people complained of the high price of food and other basic goods.

The protests spread rapidly to around 50 cities and towns, including Tehran, in a clear indication of the nationwide mood of resentment.

The spontaneity of the demonstrations meant that rather quickly, anger at declining standards of living turned into a much wider criticism of the establishment, especially the political elite that for many decades has exploited and abused the economy to serve its own vested interests.

 

Even if the range of issues raised and the geographical reach of the protests are bound to worry the regime, the protests might end up uniting the different factions in government with the sole aim of protecting their own positions.

As long as the chanting on the streets concentrated on the economy, which is the domain of President Hassan Rouhani, the supreme leader could afford to stay quiet. But when it rapidly turned into cries of “Death to the Dictator” — targeting Khamenei himself — he came out and blamed foreign intervention, though with little evidence to back that claim.

The lack of any coherent strategy or message may well cause the current unrest to fizzle out with no achievements, and save the government from having to use further force.

But in the longer run, the multiple reasons for people’s dissatisfaction, along with the manner in which the country is governed and how it affects their daily lives, holds an even bigger threat of a popular uprising.

The economic hardships are evident, with rising inflation and constant hikes in food prices chipping away at people’s real income. Economic development is sluggish and youth unemployment stands at about 40 percent, despite repeated promises by the Rouhani government that the nuclear deal would result in job creation and consequently improve people’s living standards. Instead, the failing economy has forced more and more people, even from the middle class, to take multiple jobs in order to sustain their families.

It is not surprising, then, that ordinary Iranians are resentful of a government that instead of looking after their wellbeing is spending billions of dollars of public money on religious institutions, financing the IRGC, and indulging in political adventures abroad that further destabilize the region and compromise the country’s standing in the world.

All this at a time when it is expected that the new budget will include cuts in cash subsidies to the worse off in society, an increase in fuel prices, and plans to privatize education.

But disillusionment with the establishment is not confined to the economy. It is tied up with corruption, cronyism, incompetence and a costly foreign policy. It is also about the constant violation of human rights by the extreme clerical elite and their political associates, including restrictions on freedom of expression and association, gender-based discrimination and violations of the rights of minorities.

Khamenei conveniently blames outside enemies for the protests. Even if this were true, it would be imprudent of him and the rest of the regime to ignore the plight of protesters, because they are genuine in their complaints and need no inducement from the outside.

Nevertheless, this is not a regime that is capable of pragmatic compromises with its own people. So it would rather resort to oppressive means in an attempt to quell the demonstrations and bide its time, even if the long-term consequences are dire and at the expense of its own people.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

UK Urges Commitment To Iran Nuclear Deal

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The United Kingdom’s ambassadorto the United Nations has encouraged all member states to stay committed to the Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), IRNA reports.

“We encourage all member states to uphold all their commitments. A prosperous, stable Iran is beneficial to all,” Matthew Rycroft said on Friday, January 5, addressing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting.

The British envoy was addressing the United Nations Security Council session which had been held at the request of the United States to discuss recent unrests in some parts of Iran.

Following recent unrests in certain parts of Iran, US Representative to the UN Nikki Haley in a speech to reporters at the UN headquarters on January 2 accused Iran of violating human rights and freedom of expression and said Washington was after sessions on Iran by UNSC in New York and UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Other members of the Security Council particularly Russia has shown different reactions to the US demand to an extent that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova while referring to the way the United States deal with protest gatherings in other parts of the world said perhaps the US envoy to the United Nations (Nikki Haley) has some interesting things to say about suppression of popular protests in Ferguson and Wall Street.

People Who Sleep Less Than 8 Hours More Likely To Suffer From Depression, Anxiety

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Sleeping less than the recommended eight hours a night is associated with intrusive, repetitive thoughts like those seen in anxiety or depression, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Binghamton University Professor of Psychology Meredith Coles and former graduate student Jacob Nota assessed the timing and duration of sleep in individuals with moderate to high levels of repetitive negative thoughts (e.g., worry and rumination).

The research participants were exposed to different pictures intended to trigger an emotional response, and researchers tracked their attention through their eye movements. The researchers discovered that regular sleep disruptions are associated with difficulty in shifting one’s attention away from negative information. This may mean that inadequate sleep is part of what makes negative intrusive thoughts stick around and interfere with people’s lives .

“We found that people in this study have some tendencies to have thoughts get stuck in their heads, and their elevated negative thinking makes it difficult for them to disengage with the negative stimuli that we exposed them to,” said Coles. “While other people may be able to receive negative information and move on, the participants had trouble ignoring it.”

These negative thoughts are believed to leave people vulnerable to different types of psychological disorders, such as anxiety or depression, said Coles.

“We realized over time that this might be important — this repetitive negative thinking is relevant to several different disorders like anxiety, depression and many other things,” said Coles. “This is novel in that we’re exploring the overlap between sleep disruptions and the way they affect these basic processes that help in ignoring those obsessive negative thoughts.”

The researchers are further exploring this discovery, evaluating how the timing and duration of sleep may also contribute to the development or maintenance of psychological disorders. If their theories are correct, their research could potentially allow psychologists to treat anxiety and depression by shifting patients’ sleep cycles to a healthier time or making it more likely a patient will sleep when they get in bed.

The paper, “Shorter sleep duration and longer sleep onset latency are related to difficulty disengaging attention from negative emotional images in individuals with elevated transdiagnostic repetitive negative thinking” was published in ScienceDirect.

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