Directly following the last ice age, people from the western parts of what is now Norway were a population that had substantially different genetics from the people living in the area corresponding to present-day Sweden.

“We were surprised that the results showed such marked dissimilarities,” said associate professor and archaeologist Birgitte Skar at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) University Museum. Skar is responsible for the museum’s Stone Age and Bronze Age collections.

Scandinavia was one of the last parts of Europe to become habitable when the glaciers released their icy grip more than 10,000 years ago. The ocean’s resources and the coastal archipelago attracted marine hunter-gatherers of yore to the region.

Swedish and Norwegian researchers have collaborated on analysing the DNA in 9500-year-old bone samples from the southern and western Norwegian coast and from the Swedish islands of Gotland and Stora Karlsö. This period corresponds to the Mesolithic Stone Age.

Researchers examined seven excavated individuals and compared their genetic material with samples from other parts of Europe.

“People from the Norwegian south and west coast were genetically similar to populations east of the Baltic Sea that came from today’s Russia. People from eastern Scandinavia – present-day Sweden – were more genetically similar to populations from central and western Europe,” says population geneticist Torsten Günther from Uppsala University. He is one of the main authors of the new study.

Norwegian results are key

This finding may seem strange if you just look at the geography, but it may due to multiple waves of migration to Scandinavia. About 11,500 years ago, people migrated from the south, through Germany and Denmark and then by sea to Norway. About 1000 years later, people traveled from the northeast and followed the Norwegian Atlantic coast southward.

“To understand the migration routes, it was essential to obtain data from the Norwegian individuals,” explained Skar, co-author of the study. The Norwegian skeletal remains from southern Norway are also the oldest of the individuals studied.

Over time, the various migration waves led to extensive contact between the diverse populations, and this is also reflected in the genetic data.

The researchers analysed the genetic data in conjunction with other archaeological findings and new insights from climate models to increase their understand of the migration routes, settlement patterns and the first people to settle in Scandinavia as the ice retreated.

Archaeological artefacts and isotopic analysis – which can tell us something about what people ate – help to fill out the picture. The new immigrants that came from the northeast learned new boating and fishing skills to access marine resources, which offered their main source of food.

The researchers discovered that these immigrants also introduced new tools and innovative ways to produce them. This shift in material culture can now be linked to a particular migration wave.

“We expect that a migrating population comes with an entire cultural package – a knowledge of nature, ways of life, craft traditions, beliefs and other customs,” said Skar. “Now we can explore more closely how the relationship between the original and new populations evolved. The original inhabitants were highly skilled and adventurous seafaring hunters, whereas the new population was originally an inland people. Archaeologists can track the processes of change in their material culture,” she adds.

Light pigmentation variants may have been advantageous

People at that time were largely dependent on the ocean for food. They braved challenging climate conditions that required behavioral adaptations in the short term, and that in the longer term could lead to changes in the population’s genetic composition.

“The two groups that migrated to Scandinavia at that time were genetically distinct. People from the south probably had blue eyes and dark skin, while those from the northeast had various eye colours and light skin,” said population geneticist Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University, another of the main authors.

The genetic variation between the Mesolithic individuals from Scandinavia is surprisingly high, and greater than in the populations who lived in western and central Europe. This contrasts with the Europe of today, where the largest genetic variation is found in the south.

The lighter variations of skin and eye color that are more common in Scandinavia than in other parts of Europe also appear to have been the case at the time of the migrations. Pigmentation, now as then, tends to decrease the farther away a population group lives from the equator. We can assume this to be an indicator of climate adaptation.

Good results

The results are presented in a research article recently published in PLoS Biology. The sample quality is very high.

The remains of one of the individuals studied yielded aDNA results with the best coverage, or depth, achieved for any human being from prehistoric times. The abbreviation aDNA stands for ancient DNA and refers to the study of genetic data obtained from fossil subjects.

A new study aiming to provide a better understanding of how injection wells in the U.S. influence earthquake activity cites wastewater injection depth, not purely rate or volume, as a critical factor.

The results suggest that efforts to restrict injection depths to certain distances above the so-called crystalline basement layer could reduce earthquake hazard. Earthquakes can be induced by industrial processes, a fact established decades ago.

Since 2009, when seismicity in the US midcontinent began to surge, earthquakes induced by the underground fluid injection processes associated with oil and gas extraction have become a major focus.

High-rate injection has been cited as a particularly important trigger.

Studies have also suggested that injection depth – namely injections near the crystalline basement – might increase the likelihood of seismicity locally, though the role of injection depth has been challenging to define.

Here, to better parse the effects of different wastewater injection parameters, including depth, Thea Katherine Hincks and colleagues developed an advanced computer model that explores the joint effects of injection volume, depth and location – encompassing effects that are at once operational, spatial and geological in nature.

Simulations with this model using six years of data from 10,000 active class II wells in Oklahoma’s induced seismicity zone reveal that while the joint effects of depth and volume are critical, depth above the basement is more influential.

Simulations that limited depth of injection to 500 meters above the basement reduced seismic energy release by a factor of 2.8, the authors say.

The novel modeling approach could aid in improving forecasts of the impact of proposed regulatory changes on seismicity.

Researchers have been able to create tomatoes with increased resistance to Tuta absoluta insects, which are responsible for the destruction of swathes of crops worldwide

Researchers at the Plant Molecular and Celular Biology Institute (IBMCP), a joint venture of the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has performed a study that shows how genetically modified tomato plants have increased resistance towards Tuta absoluta insect plagues. The project’s results have been published in the BMC Plant Biology magazine.

Plants are sessile plants – they are born, grow and die in the same spot. As they don’t have the ability to move when under attack, their evolution has provided them with great genetic variety, allowing the plants to overcome different stress conditions. Nonetheless, an estimated 40% of the worldwide annual production of these crops is lost to plagues and pathogens, and 13% to insects.

Luis Cañas, researcher of the CSIC at the IBMCP, explained that “the miner insect Tuta absoluta has become one of the main plagues that threaten tomato plantations across the world, and without the appropriate management it can cause losses of between 80% and 100% of their production. To face this threat we have to fortify the plant’s defense arsenal, and one of the alternatives being studied is giving the plants, through genetic engineering, defensive genes from phylogenetically distant species such as the protease inhibitors present in barley.”

José Pío Beltrán, research professor at the CSIC and also at the IBMCP, said that, “in this project the in vivo effect of a serine proteinase inhibitor (BTI-CMe) and a cysteine proteinase inhibitor (Hv-CPI2) have been investigated, isolated from the barley plant, on the Tuta absoluta insect. In order to do so we have tested both inhibitors separately as well as together in transgenic tomato plants. The Tuta absoluta larvae which were fed the double transgenic plants showed noticeable weight loss. Moreover, only 56% of the larvae reached their adult stage. Those that were reaching their adult phase had wing deformities and fertility reduction.

The effect on the insect’s digestive enzymes when ingesting proteinase inhibitors has also been studied.”

“The results of our work show a decrease in larvae trypsin activity. Proteinase inhibitors in transgenic tomato plants attracted species of the Tuta absoluta predatory insects such as the Nesidiocoris tenuis, but did not have an effect on them. We also studied whether the defensive mechanisms of the plants would activate on transgenic tomatoes. Curiously, the release of barley cystatin benefitted the plant’s defense, including the proteinase 2 inhibitor gene (Pin2), endogenous to the tomato, and which is inducible through wounding. Furthermore, transgenic plants increased their glandular trichome production and their volatile organic compound emission was altered”, Cañas added.

“Therefore, our work shows that it would be possible to simultaneously conduct integrated control, by combining transgenic crops, as well as biological control of the Tuta absoluta”, Beltrán said.

Researchers of the Valencian Institute of Agricultural Research (IVIA) also took part in the project, which is of great interest to the agricultural sector, as it proves the usefulness of the co-expression of different proteinase inhibitors for the plant’s increased resistance to plagues.

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), in collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE CSIC-UPF), created the PopHuman browser, the largest available inventory of measures of genetic diversity along the human genome.

The PopHuman browser allows users to detect episodes of genetic selection which have left a mark on the human genome, such as those related to the establishment of agriculture in European and Asian populations some 10,000 years ago.

The international project 1000 genomes provides information on 2504 complete genomic sequences from 26 populations around the world. It is the most extensive global human genetic variation data set to date, with more than 84 million genetic differences catalogued.

In order to make this information available and help with navigating through such a large amount of data, researchers from the Bioinformatics of Genomic Diversity group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), in collaboration with scientists from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a centre belonging to the CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), created the PopHuman browser, the largest available inventory of measures of genetic diversity along the human genome. This resource allows the exhaustive search of episodes of natural selection which have taken place in the human lineage and have left their print on the genome.

Human genetic variation is the set of genetic differences which distinguish our genomes, either among individuals within a population or between populations. There are no two genetically identical humans. On average, each of us is more than 99% genetically identical to any other person, while the less than 1% of genetic variants distinguishing our genomes are present in different frequencies in different human populations.

The geographically and ancestrally more distant populations tend to differ more, although it is the differences between individuals within populations, especially in the African ones, the most important quantitatively in the set of the human genetic variation.

The study of the human genetic variation has significant evolutionary and medical applications. It has allowed to determine the origin of humanity in sub-Saharan Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and subsequent human migrations, and it also helps in understanding how certain genetic variants have contributed to the adaptation of human populations to their environment in the whole planet. The description and explanation of the evolutionary forces controlling human genetic variation within and between populations is thus a fundamental goal of population genetics.

In an article published recently in the prestigious journal Nucleic Acids Research, the UAB and IBE researchers presented an exhaustive inventory of genetic diversity measures along the human genome from the data of the project 1000 genomes. This inventory captures the evolutionary properties of the sequences, and it is available to researchers through the PopHuman genome browser, an online portal allowing users to navigate the results through a graphical interface. PopHuman offers the most complete catalogue of estimates of human genetic variation so far in terms of number of genomes and populations analysed, and incorporates the genetic changes between the human and the chimpanzee genomes.

In this way, PopHuman allows to detect from relatively recent selective episodes, such as those related to the establishment of agriculture in European and Asian populations some 10,000 years ago, to older episodes which have recurrently occurred throughout the past million years, such as the one observed in the region of the PRM1 gene, involved in the compaction of sperm DNA.

Researchers are convinced that PopHuman will become the starting point for any exhaustive analysis of the different selective episodes which have taken place in the human lineage and have left their mark on the genome.

Researchers of the University of Bern have shown for the first time in an experiment that also non-human animals exchange different kind of favors.

Humans commonly trade different commodities, which is considered a core competence of our species. However, this capacity is not exclusively human as Norway rats exchange different commodities, too. They strictly follow the principle “tit for tat” – even when paying with different currencies, such as grooming or food provisioning.

Humans cooperate with each other on a daily basis and on different scales. We cooperate, for instance, by opening the door for others, playing symphonies, building space shuttles or developing schemes to reduce global warming.

Although a high level of cooperation is our trademark, cooperation is not uniquely human. Many animals help each other, too, like bees managing their hive. Human cooperation often follows the reciprocal strategy “I help you because you helped me before”.

Such reciprocal cooperation has been claimed to be cognitively demanding, especially when different commodities are exchanged. Trading of different commodities is a fundamental component of human interactions, enabling for instance division of labour, which is the basis of our ecological and economic success. It has been argued that the high cognitive demands of such trading may hamper cooperation in non-human animals.

In contrast, several studies of wild animals have suggested an exchange of different commodities, but hitherto this has not been examined by controlled manipulations of the behavior of test subjects.

Trading with different currencies

In an experimental study, Manon Schweinfurth and Michael Taborsky from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the University of Bern tested whether common Norway rats engage in reciprocal trading of two different forms of help, i.e. allogrooming and food provisioning.

Their test rats experienced a partner either cooperating or non-cooperating in one of the two commodities. To induce allogrooming, the researchers applied saltwater on the test rats’ neck, which is hardly accessible to self-grooming, so help by a partner is needed.

To induce food provisioning, partner rats could pull food items towards the test rats. Afterwards, test rats had the opportunity to reciprocate favors by the alternative service, i.e. allogrooming the partner after receiving food from it, or donating food after having been allogroomed.

The test rats groomed more often cooperating than non-cooperating food providers, and they donated food more often to partners that had heavily groomed them before. Apparently, they traded these two services among another according to the decision rules of direct reciprocity.

“This result indicates that reciprocal trading among non-human animals may be much more widespread than currently assumed. It is not limited to large-brained species with advanced cognitive abilities,” said Manon Schweinfurth.

Top lesson from the 2008-9 financial crisis: Banks take on too much risk. And everyone knows the government, at great taxpayer expense, will bail certain banks out if things get too bad — for the sake of social good.

Government guarantees help keep the banking system healthy, but they also mean that shareholders of distressed banks potentially have a lot more to win than lose when they make risky bets. And if bank CEOs’ compensation is aligned with shareholders’ interests, via stock options or other types of variable pay, they too have distorted risk incentives.

This state of affairs is not a corporate governance failure, but a problem stemming from those government guarantees, say Christian Eufinger and Andrej Gill, the authors of “Incentive-Based Capital Requirements,” which proposes a new regulatory approach.

In brief, Eufinger and Gill propose separating management’s incentives from shareholders’. More specifically, they suggest that banks implement a more conservative compensation structure for managers, with higher fixed payments and lower variable payments (because of the latter’s tendency to incentivize risk-taking). And that with more conservative compensation structure, banks should be able to access more debt.

Basically, it’s a new take on capital requirements, based on managers’ pay instead of assets.

Usually, regulators focus on banks’ current assets and the risk levels of those assets in capital requirements. However, the most recent financial crisis revealed that measuring asset risk is a difficult and error-prone process. The new proposal is simpler.

Next Steps: How to Make it Work

Incentive-based capital requirements, as a policy, must be transparent and flexible in order to work. By ensuring bank managers are invested in their bank not defaulting — their wage depends on it — Eufinger and Gill argue that their policy is more effective than trying to directly impose risk-mitigating initiatives, like banning insured debt altogether. And by changing the bank’s capital requirements whenever managers’ pay structure changes, there is a high level of flexibility.

By motivating bank management to take responsible, low-risk investment decisions, this new approach to bank regulation could promote success for both financial institutions and society as a whole.

Methodology, Very Briefly

The authors’ model builds on previous studies to examine risk-shifting incentives when managers’ incentives are decoupled from shareholders’. They consider an economy with three dates, three risk-neutral parties (shareholders, creditors, and bank managers), and two investment possibilities (risky and safe), assuming that the government will step in if the bank fails.

By Aline Robert

(EurActiv) — Meat imports were a significant obstacle in brokering the EU’s trade deal with Canada. Now, the same issue has cropped up in the ongoing Mercosur talks, infuriating French livestock farmers and politicians.

Meat was back on the menu during bilateral talks this week in Brussels, with Mercosur trade ministers (Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina) and Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrӧm dining out.

According to Reuters, the quantity of meat that Mercosur would have the right to export into the EU has been increased to 99,000 tonnes per year.

In France, Agriculture Minister Stéphane Travert condemns this proposal, recalling that French President Emmanuel Macron had already warned Jean-Claude Juncker that the quota of 70,000 tonnes was already a red line for France.

“France wishes to continue talks with Mercosur, but within the actual political context, it is crucial to come to a balanced result, and at this moment we are far from it,” said the minister.

“On the subject of beef, the quota should not exceed the volume already supplied at a European level,” which is equivalent to 70,000 tonnes, the minister added.

The timing is unfortunate for Travert, who shortly has to release the result of the National Food Conference (Etats Généraux de l’Alimentation), a long dialogue which resulted in a legal text meant to solve the recreation of value and its fair distribution.

It’s an initiative that could run the risk of being pointless if at the same time the EU opens its borders to cheap agricultural products.

“We cannot advocate food sovereignty and accept to open the market to meat produced in completely contradictory situations,” said Dominique Langlois, president of Interbev, the French national inter-branch livestock and meat association.

The livestock industry opposes importing more meat. Brexit could also have a detrimental effect on European livestock farmers, as the UK is a major meat importer from the EU-27.

“More than 75% of our meat imports, the equivalent of 246.000 tonnes, already comes from these countries, and it is unacceptable that the EU puts forward a proposal to increase the quota in exchange for concessions in other sectors,” says Jean-Pierre Fleury, of the Copa Cogeca, the European agricultural lobby.

The president of the National Bovine Federation (FNB), Bruno Dufayet, also believes that European consumers would be “cheated” and “sacrificed” if Europe were to receive 99,000 tonnes of meat without customs duty from these countries.

“Antibiotics, growth stimulants, meat and bone meal, GMO’s, everything that is banned here is allowed in those countries,” Dufayet said during an RMC radio broadcast on Wednesday morning.

Meat for milk and spare parts

In exchange for more meat in Europe, Mercosur should in return accept more milk and automotive parts, according to sources from the Commission.

Last week, during the visit of Argentinian President, Mauricio Macri, to Paris, the French president “clearly expressed France’s concerns (…) particularly on the subject of meat, as there are national interests to protect on the subject”.

French EPP MEPs also strongly oppose the potential increase meat imports to Europe. “Although we had already condemned the last quota of 70,000 tonnes, last September, once more the Commission turned the other way and is now about to put forward a new offer of 99,000 tonnes of beef to Mercosur,” said centre-right deputies Tokia Saïfi and Franck Proust in a communiqué.

CETA’s shadow

The question of meat quotas irritated livestock farmers during the CETA trade agreement, which was provisionally implemented in September. The agreement concluded between the EU and Canada plans imports of 65,000 tonnes of beef.

This represents only 0.8% of European consumption, but the impact on the sectors could be greater in terms of value. “Canadians will export prime-quality cuts, so the impact will automatically be greater than the one mentioned amongst the meat sector,” warns Dominique Langlois.

The implementation of CETA has already confirmed that the opening of the European market leads towards more competition. It also decreases the EU’s capacity to negotiate differently with the other trade partners such as Mercosur, or Japan.

Polls show, Boris Kagarlitsky says, that “a significant portion of the population passively supports those in power. But today the stress needs to be placed not on the word ‘supports’ but rather on the word ‘passively,” which is exactly what the Kremlin does not want given its desire for high turnout in March and enthusiastic backing of Putin.

In an editorial for the Rabkor journal, the editor of that publication and the director of the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social Movements argues that today, Russian society is divided into two parts, one that is completely apathetic and another that is increasingly angry (rabkor.ru/columns/editorial-columns/2018/01/31/newyear2018/).

The mass of the population “which the present authorities can conditionally include among their supporters is in fact simply apolitical and indifferent to everything except petty current needs that ever more oppress them, Kagarlitsky argues. That may not seem like much, but “in the current situation, this can be equivalent to a death sentence.”

That is because “the people will destroy the authorities not by means of protests but rather by its indifference to them.”

In this situation, there are many paradoxes. In 2017, the relative stability of the crisis “began to grow into a political crisis” because people at various levels began to recognize that change is required and that the current powers that be are not interested in any change that would in any way take away their power and wealth.

Now, the paradox is that the current worsening of the economic situation may in fact work for the powers that be because Russians will focus again even more intently not on politics but rather on meeting their own most immediate needs. But what is going on above them highlights a society-wide problem.

“Even the ruling circles and the bureaucracy understand the need for change. But these groups are divided in what direction to proceed. Because any discussion of these differences threatens “’stability,’” the conflicts are growing but not into a real struggle for power but rather into a situation in which “solutions simply aren’t being taken.”

According to Kagarlitsky, the country and the state are living by inertia,” something that is visible on the faces of those in power. Indeed, it may be that their faces already bear “’the mark of death.’”

As the situation deteriorates, he continues, Putin will make ever more promises; but people now know that he will not realize any of them. But as the gap between promises and non-action grows, they will become ever more angry viewing that gap as evidence that “the powers that be are panicking.”

“Liberal experts complain about the ‘Sovietization’ of the economy which is now being put on military rails. Critics of liberalism place their hopes on protectionist measures. But neither the one nor the other is real,” Kagarlitsky argues. The former would require a different society and different values and officials than the ones that now exist.

And protectionism is a complete illusion for a country based on the export of raw materials with a very weak domestic market and the collapse of private investment in industry. “Without the conversion of the state into a locomotive of development, without nationalization, and without a sharp change in social policy, nothing will happen.”

And that won’t happen until there is a change in regime, he says. But even that change by itself is far from a guarantee of changes to the best. Neither God, nor the tsar, nor Navalny, nor Grudinin were they to win would save society.” Society must change, but so far it is too indifferent to what is going on to be able to make any serious effort in that direction.

By Apurvaa Pandey

In the name of globalization and development, humanity is fast destroying the very environment it inhabits. With uncontrolled emissions, melting glaciers, frequent floods and hurricanes, climate change and societal damage are a very real threat. And yet governments world over, despite signing landmark treaties, are either backtracking or approving catastrophic environmental clearances, such as Brazil allowing for mining in the world’s largest carbon sink of the Amazon basin, thereby stimulating irreversible damage to local culture and endangered species. The U.S. has more recently joined this league, and now our very own India as well.

India’s interlinking river (ILR) project is an ambitious government undertaking. It is uniquely remarkable given that it has the potential to enable greater equity in water distribution across the country, albeit with hidden costs – the big elephant in the room…

Nearly a century ago, archeologists discovered the remains of the Harappan civilization, which was established around 5,200 years ago. Prominent cities like Mohenjodaro were situated on the banks of Indus River and rain-fed Saraswati. However, around 1900 BC, the civilization began to decline, with the Indus River moving approximately 40 miles away from its main course, and the Saraswati progressively drying up. The monsoons, it seems, shifted eastwards with natural catastrophes becoming the norm of the day. The people were now forced to gradually migrate to the east, with a complete shift by 1600 BC.

If we compare India then and India now, there is not much difference, except for one fact – 1900 BC saw a natural decline, and 2100 AD will be anthropogenic…

Understandably, water management, which the ILR aims to achieve, is the need of the hour. Given that its scarcity has inadvertently caused farmers distress, with some resorting to suicide, while for others lack of fresh clean water means a plethora of, sometimes incurable, deadly diseases multiplied by their inability to get world-class health treatments. Adding to this are the erratic monsoons; while deadly floods have cost the country in its human resources. Indeed, the scheme, first envisioned during colonial India in 1858 and since then mooted several times, in the larger scheme of things is attractive. And yet the picture is not as rosy as it seems, with hazardous environmental and social consequences lurking in the shadows, consequences that cannot be overlooked.

India has enlisted foreign help in the sector, the most recent being the MoU signed between the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for bilateral cooperation in the field of water resources management. The agreement entails the enhancement of institutional and technical capacity of federal and state government agencies dealing with water resources, especially in the field of river basin management, and it has also registered pollution abatement in rivers, including Ganga, flood management, water quality, and the efficient use of water among its other aims.

Not very long ago in 2013, India was shaken by the Himalayan Tsunami. A multi-day cloudburst in the Indian state of Uttarakhand nestled in the lower Himalayas resulted in devastating floods, landslides, and massive human loss, becoming one of the worst natural disasters in recent history. Large amounts of unprecedented rainfall and debris chocking up rivers are considered to have caused the major overflows. Back then, a study by Utah State University concluded that the natural disaster was indeed man-made. Since the 1980s, the region had been experiencing heavy rainfall, which is often “associated with a tendency in the upper troposphere towards amplified short waves, and the phasing of such amplified short waves is tied to increased loading of greenhouse gases and aerosols.” Given that the region saw unscientific and poorly planned developments of roads, hotel-resorts, and most importantly more than 70 hydroelectric projects, the blueprint of the disaster was already drafted. Environmental experts stated that any activity undertaken towards building these 70 projects, such as tunneling and blasts underwrote the ecological imbalance in the state. Furthermore, with other streamside developments and river flow being restricted, landslides and excessive flooding was in the making. A misnomer of sorts for the other Himalayan states, these flash floods were a natural tragedy compounded by anthropogenic activities.

Four years later, the government plans to start an $87 billion scheme to connect nearly 60 rivers in the country in a gamble to end the wave of deadly droughts and floods… But a major question arises: Doesn’t linking rivers and changing their natural course invite yet another disaster?

Designed to be the world’s largest irrigation infrastructure project, the ILR program envisions building close to 15,000 km of new canals and 3,000 big and small dams and storage arrangements.

Broadly speaking, the scheme has two parts: The Himalayan rivers section which has 14 links, expected to transport 33 trillion liters of water per year, and the peninsular component which has 16 links, inclusive of the Godavari-Krishna link, which will transport 141 trillion liters per year. (It should be noted that most of the peninsular rivers are rain-fed while the Himalayan rivers originate from glaciers. Both are subject to climate change in their own ways.)

A suave engineering product, wherein the water from “surplus” river basins shall be transferred to “deficit” ones, ILR is not simply about diverting rivers. Given the multitude of the geographical terrain and topography the country is blessed with, complex engineering, decades of hard work – and of cost overruns – are only to be expected.

Anthropogenic interference in the form of engineering new channels and routes for the rivers, however, also portends enormous ecological, human, and overall environmental damage in waiting. Just like the 70+ hydro projects inadvertently became the cause of 2013 floods, will ILR with its proposed 30 canals and 3,000 dams have a similar fate?

With respect to Ken-Betwa project as the first leg of the ILR, Dr. Sudha Ramacharan writes on “the irreversible damage that reduced downstream flows would have on a river’s ecology and biodiversity. A change in the ecology of the River Ken on account of the Ken-Betwa link project in central India is expected to doom the already critically endangered gharial. Also, this project would submerge around 10 percent of the Panna Tiger reserve, reversing the huge gains of India’s tiger conservation project.”

For the uninitiated, the Ken- Betwa river link entails a 231-kilometre (144 mile) canal between the two rivers in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, along with two dams and reservoirs; the felling of more than 1.8 million trees; and the usage of 6,017 hectares (23 sq miles) of forest land, including the Panna Tiger Reserve, with special mention of endangered wildlife species that will be impacted. The project is also expected to consume nearly 6,000 hectares of non-forest land, with approximately 5,000 homes being submerged as per the National Water Development Authority feasibility report.

This will conversely also have direct implications on climate change and India’s COP21 commitment.

One can expect large-scale deforestation to make way for dams and canals, thereby robbing us of the carbon sinks present in the country. This can result in increased greenhouse gases ratio in the atmosphere, leading to increases in temperature. Notably, India is a signatory to the Paris Treaty, having pledged to contribute toward maintaining a global temperature rise of under two degrees. However, the policymaking community seems to forget that forests are sacrosanct to balance out GHG emissions.

Next, the idea behind the project is to transfer surplus water from the donor basin, read the Ganga, to storage basins of Krishna & Godavari for instance. But what if the monsoon fails or, due to climate change, there is a change in the perennial system? Automatically, the entire project will be rendered a failure.

Additionally, shifting a river course will induce changes in the topography and vegetation, catalyzing the process of climate change. Thus, one should not rule out the possibility of a complete dry spell when changing the river course, as has happened in past across the world resulting in the end of great civilizations.

What does it mean to change a river course?

Naturally, the rivers meander owing to low gradient and water discharge. On plains, the rivers tend to take the easiest route which offers least resistance. However, depending upon the terrain, the river speed differs on different banks. Hereafter, the meandering process starts where there is a faster side of the river and less sediment deposits. This allows for further erosion and hence the formation of small curves. At the slower side of the river, more sediment from erosion of the outer curve is deposited. Over a period of time this meander gets more and more pronounced, while the slower side of the river further lags behind. Once the curves have sharpened, the river eventually re-establishes its path, thereby changing its course.

However, the river changing course has consequences such as:

The disappearance of villages and indigenous cultures, as has happened in the northeastern state of Arunanchal Pradesh, where the change in river course is due to climate change. Geologist Patnaik who is studying the impact of climate change in the state has categorically stated that: “under normal climatic conditions, rainfall would have been well-distributed throughout the year. Now, due to climate change, the pattern has changed. It has become erratic.”

On the flip side however, shifts of the Indus River and the subsequent disappearance of Saraswati, as often argued by archeologists, led to complete decline of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization. “The end was partly caused by changing river patterns. These changes included the drying up of the Hakra River and changes in the course of the Indus River. The river changes disrupted agricultural and economic systems, and many people left the cities of the Indus Valley region.”

“Evidence from many sources, including that of archaeological remains associated with old river courses, indicate that a major river, stemming mainly from the same sources as the present Sutlej, flowed through Northern Rajasthan, Bahawalpur and Sind – to the southeast of the present course of the Sutlej and the Indus – in the third to second millennium BC. This river, known as the Sarasvati in its upper course, at different times either joined the lower course of the Indus in Sind, or found its way independently into the Arabian Sea via Rann of Kutch.”

Another very eye-catching example is of the changing course of the river Semliki, marking the natural border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, thereby leading to confusion in an oil-rich area. The boundary dispute between the two nations is an altogether different debate, but nonetheless the changing course of a river is instrumental yet again – this time as a national border.

There’s also a loss of biodiversity. Building dams and canals sometimes disconnect one area from another, thereby not allowing for the natural migration of certain species such as eels.

Thus, the ILR, which plans to connect rivers by carving new paths via means of thousands of canals and dams, is indeed a risky project. It entails within it the social, economic, and environmental costs which the country may or may not be able to pocket given the vulnerable ecosystems, diplomatic international commitments, sensitive societies, cultural xenophobia, and delicate economies in the wake of demonetization and a new tax structure.

India is now marching forward on its road to development, and though the Inter-Linking of Rivers Program does fit into the larger picture of a Developed India, one cannot ignore the hidden costs. In the other words, as Margaret Atwood writes in her 1971 classic Power Politics:

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopolitical Monitor.com, where this article first appeared.

Between January 19, 2018 and January 24, 2018, a delegation of researchers and academics from the U.S. think-tanks and non-profit organizations, which also included researchers from the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), paid a visit to Qatar to meet the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense, the Governor of the Central Bank of Qatar, academics, and other high-level and leading figures of Qatar to shed light on the recently imposed sanctions on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Bahrain, and Egypt, citing the Qatari government’s alleged support for terrorism.

By Anne Speckhard and Ardian Shajkovci*

The dispute between Qatar and the powerful Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Egypt and Bahrain continues to attract public attention. The diplomatic and economic blockade imposed on Qatar by the aforementioned four countries stems from the allegations that Qatar is meddling in the internal affairs of its neighboring states. Tensions have arisen especially in light of charges that it supports the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Hamas, and al-Qaeda affiliates, as well as for its relationship with Iran.

The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt remains a polarizing factor in most of the Gulf States, notably inSaudi Arabia, Egypt, and the U.A.E.. Following the toppling of Hussni Mobarak’s regime in 2011, Qatar poured billions of dollars in support of the Brotherhood-led government in Egypt. Following the 2013 crackdown against the Brotherhood members in Egypt, leading to the group being outlawed and designated by Egypt as a terrorist organization, Qatar continues to be criticized by Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., and Egypt for providing a safe haven and citizenship to Islamist renegades, including members of the Brotherhood, from other Gulf Countries.

Qatar is also criticized of supporting Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood in Gaza.It has repeatedly been accused of pouring billions of dollars into the Gaza strip, largely investing in infrastructure, building hospitals and creating jobs, despite it being under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.The growing clashes between Shia militants and the Saudi security forces in the east of Saudi Arabia, the fight against Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the 2011 uprising by the majority Shia population in Bahrain are all charged in part to Qatar and its alleged support for anti-government militias in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Bahrain.

While it is true that Qatar is a supporter of groups like Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and the fact that such support serves as prime focal point in linking Qatar’s alleged terror- support and terror-funding schemes, things may not be as simple as they seem.

Amidst other accusations directed against Qatar was the distrust over its state-funded broadcaster in Doha, al Jazeera, which is seen by the blockading countries as a purveyor of extremism. The accusations against al Jazeera are longstanding and have been made for years by many countries. For instance, it faced criticism by Saudi Arabia and other blockading countries for its coverage of the Arab Spring and unfavorable portrayal of monarchies and governments in the Middle East. In the past, prior to the age of social media, terrorist groups wanting to air their messages would turn to al Jazeera (surreptitiously providing video tapes to the channel). Chechens holding 800 hostages in the 2001 siege of the Dubrovka Moscow theater, for instance, did so, as has Al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden. Nowadays, terrorists upload their messages directly to the Internet and rely on their social media networks to distribute them, but in reality, by such measure, nearly all news media outlets could be considered guilty of providing platforms for violent extremist and terrorist groups, including ISIS, to distribute their messages, as these same uploaded messages are replayed on most major Western news channels as well.

While the English broadcasting version of al Jazeera does not serve as a platform for extremism, some non-Qatari citizens offer claim that the Arabic version gives an undue platform to extremists. In a non-scientific polling of a small sample of Iraqi, Jordanian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian and Arab speaking American, French, and Belgian viewers to understand al Jazeera’s role in spreading extremism, ICSVE researchers found varying sentiments, from strongly worded responses such as “the Qatari owned network is a podium for spreading extremism” and that “it has certain shows which inflame the public opinion and influences the minds of youth” to more measured statements that it “sometimes gives an opportunity to some extremists to express their opinion, much like mainstream Western media might let a far-right or racist white supremacist speak.” One respondent stated that the channel “allowed terrorists a podium, but with a bit of toning it could also be used to expose terrorists and maybe pave way for dialogue.” Others believe that “al Jazeera is covering different sides and point of views that some people don’t want to see.” One respondent noted, “Al Jazeera is like CNN over Trump… they concentrate for or against, according to the emir’s will.” One respondent noted that during the 2003 U.S.-led Coalition invasion of Iraq al Jazeera provided counter balancing coverage to Western media’s coverage of the same. Perhaps most tellingly, one Arab respondent pointed out that al Jazeera may be considered tame in comparison to Saudi Arabia’s al Arabia, and many of the other regionally sponsored networks.

In any case, al Jazeera may be the most pressing and challenging issue for Qatari leadership. Using their state- owned television station to poke at their neighboring countries in ways that their neighbor’s leadership finds highly irritating, if not threatening, is challenging indeed. For a television station that holds as its motto, “Giving voice to the voiceless,” supported by a country that is less fearful of the changes happening throughout the Arab world, it may be too willing to voice opinions that other neighboring countries simply do not want supported. For instance, when the Arab Spring of 2011 sent shock waves throughout the region, giving millions of Arabs hopes for regime change and democratic governance, al Jazeera was giving these events full coverage.

While the blockading countries of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain sought to erect a seawall barricading their regimes from the popular wave of change emanating from the Arab Spring, the Qatari government stood more patient; it was more content to wait for events to progress naturally, and towards more democratic forms of governance, as pointed out by Qatari government officials, while not fearing for their own regime’s downfall. Moreover, through the Arab Spring, and even before it, Qatar has supported and allowed for al Jazeera, the state-funded broadcaster in Doha, which officials claim to be quasi-independent, to criticize the records and policies of neighboring states on human rights and other issues, infuriating and causing them to fear a popular backlash.

The government of Qatar confident in its own popular support was not opposed to the groundswell of popular demand for regime change when it resulted in Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Abidine Ben Ali being ousted, and democratic elections held to allow the people to choose their own leaders. The political win by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt caused concern among those who feared that the Brotherhood’s Islamists aspirations could lead to a dismantling of the very democratic processes that had brought them to power, but Qatar did not share that worry.

While other nations stood back watching to see what would happen, Qatar stood by the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing them access to the media via the Qatari network of al Jazeera and by giving them large tranches of financial support to help them continue to govern. Yet, in Egypt, the political elites and the military conspired against the Muslim Brotherhood, resulting in the 2013 military coup that ousted and labeled their group as terrorists, with a non-elected government coming to power, at least temporarily. Al Jazeera was kicked out of the country. Its journalists were arrested. Qatar ended up taking Muslim Brotherhood exiles into their nation, and in many cases providing them with Qatari citizenship.

In defense of his country’s policies in regard to the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatari Ambassador Mutlaq al Qahtani, the Special Envoy for Qatar’s Foreign Minister, responded that “Qatar’s position is to respect the will of the people in regard to who rules them.” The Ambassador further noted that neither the U.S. State Department nor the United Nations have designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Given Qatar’s stance on respecting the will of the people in choosing their political destiny, as well as their deep desire to see a stable Egypt progressing through the Arab Spring, Qatar gave the Muslim Brotherhood their full support following the fall of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood into power through democratic elections, despite angering its neighbors for such actions, the Ambassador noted. He also pointed out that “Washington works with the Taliban, which is recognized by the U.N. Security Council as a terrorist group” whereas Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are not designated, so we don’t have issues; yet we get accused.”

The United Arab Emirates has a particular quarrel with Qatar over the Muslim Brotherhood, as its members were accused of trying to overthrow the Emirati government. The wife of an Emirati opposition leader seeking asylum in Doha served as the crucial nerve-point leading to the quarrel and aggressive attacks against one another in the media, and even served as one of the primary reasons for the blockade, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al Thani. Her case has caused a quarrel between the two countries over the demand by the U.A.E. to extradite her and Qatar’s refusal to do so.

Citing both legal and Islamic traditions, Qatari officials commented that she was there on political asylum and not guilty of any crimes, and as a woman, Qatari officials would not be willing to turn her over against her will to a country that might imprison or otherwise harm her. When ICSVE director was in the U.A.E. this past month, Emirati government officials cited Qatar as harboring Muslim Brotherhood members from other countries, and even providing them with passports to enable their travel abroad. While some view such actions as highly irritating, including Egypt and the U.A.E., among others, Qatari officials adamantly deny such actions as constituting support for known terrorists or terrorist groups. In fact, officials cite the 2012 legitimate and overwhelming victories of Islamist parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in post-Mubarak parliamentary elections.

Qatar’s position seems to be no different than the other Arab countries in standing firm for a solution with Israel and seeing Hamas both as a legitimate political force and governing party, much like many others now see Hezbollah. Similar to other Arab States, Qatar allows Palestinian refugees to reside in their countries, but fails to provide them with passports, continuing to insist on their right of return. A jeep driver who gave us a great ride and amazing adrenaline rush barreling over cliffs in the sand dunes outside of Doha shared his experiences of having been born in Qatar but still unable to obtain citizenship due to his Palestinian citizenship.

Qatari diplomats insist on Israel adhering to U.N. resolutions and finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Qatar being firmly in favor of a two-state solution. Qatar does not officially recognize Israel, though Qatari officials do not deny having diplomatic relations with Israel which indirectly recognize their statehood, such as in the case of having a Qatari official serving in Jerusalem and in charge of funneling humanitarian aid that is approved by Israel, through Israeli territory into Gaza, to rebuild the war-torn area.

While Qatar is accused by its neighbors of supporting terrorists, the United States Air Force is comfortably hosted at al al-Udeid Air Base, which serves as a main operations and logistical hub for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) areas of operation. The General and Colonels we met with, who lived off base in Doha with their spouses and children, said that the cooperation between the two countries was crucial for the U.S. Air Force to act at peak performance supporting missions as far away as Afghanistan and in providing air support and supplies for the fight against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. One of the Qatari officials cited Qatar’s financial support for the expansion of the base and their intention to build a school and community there, although U.A.E. officials have countered by offering to build the same facility to replace the al-Udeid Air Base on Emirati soil.

Most of the military members we spoke to at al-Udeid airbase had children who attended the international school in Doha. Their parents remarked that their children were mixing with members of the royal family and that everyone felt safe in Qatar and there was no sense of hostility against the presence of U.S. troops, which was very positive for all of them. While there has been at least one incident of an attempted attack on the airbase, involving a man with a Kalashnikov trying to enter the base in 2001, the U.S. military credited the Qatari security forces with having a tight hold on who enters their country and for what purpose. It is also noteworthy that Qatar was responsible for brokering the prisoner swap to free U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network and helped free American writer Peter Theo Curtis from al Nusra.

Qatari officials stressed that some of the reasons behind the blockade were jockeying between the regional players for influence as well as jealousy over Qatar’s wealth and ability to pour resources into their global efforts. Indeed, Qatar is a wealthy state.

While the blockade has caused deep concern for Qatari officials, they seem to be weathering the storm quiet well. The Governor of the Central Bank of Qatar, Abdulla bin Saoud al-Thani, expressed enthusiasm about the country’s economy and investment funds in general, although some financial experts we spoke to pointed out a mass flight of capital from the bank—that is, Saudis and other blockading country citizens withdrawing their cash, in the early days of the blockade. One of the solutions was to call upon Qatari citizens living abroad to repatriate their money, which many did out of patriotic concern and nationalistic ardor.

The Central Bank of Qatar officials also pointed out that since 9-11, they have significantly tightened controls on money flowing out of the country, particularly by allowing only two organizations (The Qatar Charity and the Red Crescent) to wire funds or make cash disbursements outside of the country. Yet, banks are not the only way in which one can hinder flows across international financial networks when it comes to terrorism, nor hinder the way in which terrorist groups and militias are financed. A case in point is when a party of 26 Qatari falconers—some from the royal family—were taken hostage in southern Iraq in 2015 by a Shia militia, Qatar flew millions of U.S. dollars to buy their freedom, calling some to question where the money went and whether it was an appropriate response. Iraqi intelligence officials, however, informed ICSVE researchers that the plane load of money from Qatar was intercepted by Iraqi intelligence officers. The hostages were ultimately freed through Iraqi brokering and the money remains in a frozen account.

Accusations have also been made about how al Nusra and ISIS managed to finance themselves in their first days of their formation following the uprising against Syrian President Assad. In fact, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are accused of supporting Ahrar al-Sham, an organization with direct ties to Al-Qaeda. Stories abound about Sunni Arab businessmen sending money to Sunni Syrians trying to stand up against Assad’s atrocities, including one told to us from a high-level U.S. diplomat of Kuwaiti businessmen sending large sums of money to arm the rebels. In the early years of the Syrian uprising, journalists uncovered money trails moving via Turkey to Syria, through payments made to President Erdogan, and then passed to Sunni rebel groups. There are allegations that Qatar, too, was involved in these payments. Arguably, even the U.S. was part of such concerned parties scrambling to find the correct partners to arm and fund in the uprising against Assad.

Concerns have been voiced as well about where U.S. money and guns might have ended up in Iraq and Syria. In discussing specifically about the arms that were supplied to ISIS and other violent extremist groups by both internal and external actors, Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out that even American weapons made it into the hands of such groups. Namely, he stressed that in a chaotic war situation where factions rapidly shift and switch loyalties, it can be difficult to know who to arm. He also noted that ISIS captured many of their weapons from competing factions. Indeed, ISIS defectors interviewed by ICSVE researchers cited instances of having to unwrap new weapons from their cellophane protectors and receiving large weapon supplies from many unknown sources and donors, as well as capturing massive supplies of arms from Assad’s troops. When it comes to terrorism financing, Qataris have prosecuted those identified of terrorism financing, although their exact sentences are not known given these facts are not made public.

Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs, al Thani, also noted that Qatar has joined the military theaters of operation in Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and that it was helping to train and arm the rebels alongside the Turks, Arabs and Americans, further noting, the “Red line is ISIS and al Nusra, but we helped the regular groups that are not designated as terrorists. When we [along with other nations] helped establish the Free Syrian Army, we worked very hard to unite them.” However, he stated that things changed with Russia’s involvement, and many seeing Syria as occupied by foreign powers, with the war being one of liberation.

Regarding the future of Syria, the Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs remained steadfast about supporting the will of the Syrian people: “We want it to look like what the people want.” When asked about the possibility of Assad remaining in power, he stated, “Assad did even more crimes than ISIS committed. So, how can we tolerate to deal with a war criminal as a leader in the area? Then we create a precedent for this?”

When one examines the numbers of Qataris who joined the conflicts in Syria and Iraq as foreign fighters, the total numbers are small, with reports varying depending on cited statistics, from 8 to 15 total, whereas neighboring Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Tunisia had thousands of foreign fighters. Ambassador Qahtani explained that the high numbers of foreign fighters coming from Jordan and Tunisia are a direct result of dictatorship, while stating that the few Qataris who joined the conflicts in Syria went after viewing on the media, as he put it, “our people [Sunnis] being killed and feeling hopeless. Qataris went for humanitarian reasons and then got manipulated on the ground,” he explained. Indeed, this echoes what ICSVE researchers have repeatedly heard of those who joined the Syrian conflicts early on from many places around the world.

As alliances in the region shift, particularly in light of the blockade, concerns have been raised about the new nexus of power arising out of Qataris isolation from the blockading countries, including Qatar’s increasingly close relationship to Turkey and Iran. When asked whether there are any such concerns related to Qatar gravitating towards Iran in pursuit of its geo-political and economic goals, a U.S. military leader at the al-Udeid base we spoke to pointed out that it likely made their base safer—Iran would be unlikely to attack a base located on the territory of their ally. In addition to launching a huge airpower build up, such as through the purchase of dozens of Typhoon fighters and Boeing F-15QAs, among others, and pumping up their military capacities and offering more support to the American troops located at the al-Udeid Army Base, Qataris have also extended their hospitality to Turkish troops who have requested an increased presence in the region. In addressing the influx of Turkish troops in Qatar for joint training exercises and Qatari capacity building, many of the Qatari officials pointed out that the Turks had explored possibilities of locating their presence in Saudi Arabia first. They also mentioned that Turkey, at least for the moment, remains a key NATO member and an American ally.

While the blockade may seem to outsiders a case of serious sibling rivalry among Arab royals, or a case of the pot calling the kettle black, in Qatar there were some serious concerns about a military invasion and change of regime being forced as a result. Khalid Bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, Qatari Defense Minister, cited his and his country’s concerns that Saudi Arabia felt emboldened to move against Qatar after their November 2017 successful hosting of President Donald Trump and the negotiation of a large investment in the United States that ensued. “We were very worried about an imminent invasion, but three things warded it off,” the Defense Minister explained. The first was “Turkish President Recep Erdogan endorsing deployment with Qatar on our behalf; this scared them [the blockading nations]. The second was, “They [the blockading nations] also thought that the Europeans will align behind them, but they did not, Germany only, then France and Italy and then the U.S. [failed to join]. Lastly, they also thought the U.S. was with them but ignored that the U.S. is an institutional nation.”

While President Trump at first appeared to agree with the blockading nations, he later reconsidered his position, and in fact, most Western countries have made it clear that the blockade should stop as it is likely illegal from an international law point of view.

The threat of military escalation continues with Emirati jets accused of violating Qatari airspace and the counter accusation of Qatari jets buzzing an Emirati passenger jet flying on the border of their airspace. Qatar’s Defense Minister stated that the official position of Qatar was to arrest and return foreign fisherman found violating Qatari waters to their home countries, although they were angered to find on one such boat five Emirati troops. “Two days ago, the boat came from Bahrain, a bigger size, and military people from the U.A.E. were on the boat. It was not a mistake,” the Defense Minister explained. He went on to explain that there are absolutely no direct military or other communications between Qatar and the blockading countries. “In the Cold War there were back doors, but not in our case. We are totally in dark,” he noted.

Despite the aggravation, however, Qataris seem to feel more confident in their alliances with Turkey and the United States, while also citing the prospects for increased alliance with Iran and Russia—alliances strengthened over feelings of necessity. During the briefing on the topic, Director of Communication at the Ministry of Defense, Lt. Col. Nawaf al Thani noted that he had just received a Reuters report of the Emiratis warning their pilots to not escalate the military tensions.

During a visit to Education City in the heart of Doha, where the campuses of Northwestern, Georgetown, and several other prominent U.S. universities are housed, one cannot help but notice an interesting trend. Students from the blockading countries stayed in country and continued their enrollment uninterrupted, although they are now inconvenienced to travel indirectly when they visit home. Equally interesting is the fact that both Emiratis and Bahrainis have passed laws making it illegal and punishable offenses for those residing in their respective countries to express support for Qatar. Qatari websites are also suppressed in Abu Dhabi, as noted by some of the respondents during our visit to Qatar’s Education City, yet professors and students in Qatar shared that these issues are discussed openly, that free speech and academic freedom is practiced and encouraged on the campus.

Aside from fearing a military invasion, Qataris who were in the middle of observing the holy month of Ramadan, which according to Qatari officials represents a peak food consumption period, were faced with immediate food shortages. Their neighboring countries slammed land barriers and ports down, forcing Qataris to rely on new and more expensive alternatives, such as supply chains for milk and products not normally farmed or produced inside Qatar. Officials cited their resilience, while proudly joking about the herd of “first class cows” that were shipped into the country by air and now housed in air-conditioned barns to resupply the milk and dairy chain. Likewise, Hamad Port, located south of Doha, was officially opened in September of last year. They also began to rely on the Omani port of Sohar. While Qatar now supplies much of its food from Turkey and Iran, they also began high-tech food production inside the country and expect to continue, stating that the blockade in many ways forced them to bolster their self- reliance. “We are now 60 to 70% self-producing and self-sufficient,” the Governor of the Central Bank of Qatar proudly stated.

With the continued cooperation between the U.S. and Qatar it is interesting to consider the different perspectives that are taken by Qatar and the U.S. in regard to fighting terrorism. As Ambassador al Qahtani, explained, “The Qatari perspective is that we focus on root causes of terrorism and violent extremism, whereas Americans often focus on military solutions but underestimate the local drivers of ongoing conflicts, which include dictatorship, poverty, and exclusion.” He went on to explain that Qatar’s answer to terrorism has three prongs: education, aiming to provide educations for 60 million children globally (with Qatar currently providing education for 10 million children in 40 countries); economic empowerment and initiatives that provide employment opportunities for young men and women (having achieved this for 2 million persons, a majority from Jordan, Tunisia, including Saudis, but also aiming to provide job opportunities in Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi and Yemen); and engaging in preventing conflict and preventative diplomacy.

Indeed, these are important issues that require attention. Soft power approaches are badly needed alongside the heavy U.S. kinetic focus. Ambassador Qahtani underlined that, “the U.S. is a strategic partner of Qatar and we have ongoing dialogue with them,” referring to the upcoming high level Strategic Dialogue meetings occurring between the two countries in Washington, D.C. this week. “Of course, we need the military defeat of Daesh, winning the war in Syria and Iraq, but we also need to defeat the ideology and to tackle root causes. Addressing root causes has another timeline for success,” the Ambassador noted, stating Qatar’s pride about being a founding partner, funder and only Muslim country on the board of the G-CERF, an organization devoted to tackling root causes of terrorism.

Historically speaking, Washington has long been frustrated with its Gulf counterparts, including Qatar, for not taking a stronger stance when it comes to combating terrorism financing. While some Middle Eastern experts would argue that when it comes to the Middle East, terrorism financing is a function of regional socio-political dynamics and carefully crafted strategic calculations, the issue remains serious, nonetheless. The concerns over state and private support for terrorism are particularly egregious to Americans knowing that Israel has suffered long at the hands of Hamas. The ties and friendship with Iran also raises serious concerns.

Qatar’s support for Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, remains the crucial nerve-point leading to the quarrel among Qatar and the blockading states. While domestically Qatar’s support for such groups during the Arab Spring might have served to echo Qatar’s determination to respect the will of the people and push for a more progressive stance towards Islamist groups in the region, the question remains if, as suggested by some analysts, Qatar can continue to use them as a counterbalance or shield against its regional neighbors—and if so, at what cost?

Government officials stressed the important role of al-Jazeera in promoting media pluralism and media transparency. Al-Jazeera is seen as a powerful voice in swaying Arab public opinion—and doing it in both English and Arabic. It also serves to promote a diversity of cultural expressions, as noted by some respondents. While al-Jazeera continues to face backlash by the blockading countries, primarily Saudi Arabia, it remains defiant. Arguably, al-Jazeera is there to stay—at least for some time to come, as are the other regionally sponsored networks. Perhaps removing content that plays directly into extremist hands and lends support to violent narratives, without encroaching on its editorial freedom, could be one way to deal with it.

Although the extent to which the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar support radical or violent extremist groups in Syria remain debatable and subject to verification—both are accused of supporting Ahrar al-Sham, an organization with direct ties to Al-Qaeda. The ongoing dispute between the two countries could in fact undermine finances to the Syrian opposition and therefore weaken efforts to oust Syrian President Assad. In addition, the ongoing dispute between Qatar and the blockading countries could have repercussions beyond the domestic policies of such countries and endanger U.S. operations in the Middle East as well.

The fact that Qatar hosts a major U.S. military base, with over 11,000 U.S. and coalition troops deployed there, goes to show that the U.S. provides it with existential security. Qataris are showing a strong desire to be upright allies of the United States and to stand firm with our allies in the global fight against terrorism. The recently signed U.S.- Qatari memorandum of understanding on anti-terrorism financing and Qatar’s legal amendments to its domestic anti-terrorism financing laws, including the upcoming January 30th, 2018, meeting between the U.S. President Trump and the high-level Qatari delegation comprised of Qatar’s Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Defense, among others, remains promising for the future Qatari-U.S. relationship.

Overall, Qatar seems to live up to its commitments to fight terrorism. That said, the continued standoff between Qatar and the blockading states, unless resolved soon, may have a direct impact on the U.S. and the interests of its allies in the fight against terrorism in the region and globally, a reason we may wish to help broker an end to the blockade.

About the authors:
*Anne Speckhard, Ph.D., is an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). She has interviewed over 500 terrorists, their family members and supporters in various parts of the world including Gaza, the West Bank, Chechnya, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and many countries in Europe. She is the author of several books, including Talking to Terrorists and ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. Follow @AnneSpeckhard

Ardian Shajkovci, Ph.D. Director of Research/Senior Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE)

Source:
This article was published at Modern Diplomacy and originally at Qatar and the Terrorism Blame Game. ICSVE Research Reports

By Jonathan Power*

President Donald Trump said it would never happen. Now it is. During the election he said he did not want more interventions – no more Iraqs, no more Afghanistans,  Libyas or Syrias.

A year into his presidency the American military is involved in all these places and he’s aching to get boots on the ground in North Korea and perhaps even Iran. At least he’s not thinking about it in Ukraine – that would really set the cat among the pigeons.

Last week his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said that waging war in Syria is “crucial to our national defence”. This is a big deal but few seem to be talking about it. The pundits and congressmen are either asleep at the switch or taking a holiday.

It’s true that Barack Obama initiated this Syrian intervention but he never intended it to be an occupying force but one deployed for one thing only: to drive ISIS out of Syria and then chase it until the US, its local allies and Russia had caught up with it and decimated it – which they have. Obama would have withdrawn his soldiers at this point.

Now the politics of it is different. The mission is to wage war against the present day Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, which is recognized by the UN and the US as occupying the Syrian seat at the UN in New York.

By what authority can Trump do this? Intervention has to be authorised by the UN Security Council – as it was with the first Iraq war and with Afghanistan. There hasn’t been a debate. Neither has there been in the US Congress which is supposed to be at least consulted before the US goes to war.

Public opinion, until this speech by Tillerson, had not been informed of what was afoot. The media had not been briefed. European allies had been informed at the last minute, and they seem quiet about it- perhaps stunned into silence.

The Assad government is back on its feet. Most of the armed opposition has been defeated. The big cities, destroyed down to their bones, are being resettled and gradually rebuilt. What is Trump planning to do with his 2,000 troops? 2,000 doesn’t go very far. It would need 200,000 to overthrow Assad.

So what’s it all about?

Tillerson claims it is to protect Israel. Syria is its enemy. But it hasn’t done anything about it for 35 years. There’s no sign that either side are in much of a hurry to change the status quo. Tillerson added that he was sure “Iran seeks dominance in the Middle East and the destruction of our ally, Israel”. This is piffle. There is no Iranian attempt to destroy Israel. If anything there is the reverse. Israel had plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear plants until the Obama regime successfully negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran. There is certainly no urge inside Iran to take on militarily the marshal-minded Kurds or the super-weaponized, governments of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Kuwait, not to mention the Sunni part of Iran.

This reminds me of the domino theory in Vietnam in the 1960s which led America into a blind war, ending in defeat. The theory was if South Vietnam fell to communism so would the other south east Asian countries as they were toppled one by one. We know that never happened.

Is it to give a moral boost to the Sunni peoples of neighbouring Iraq and Turkey? Turkey with its massive military doesn’t need it and Iraq is ruled by a Shi’ite-sympathetic government, as is Syria.

Is it to side-line Iran which Tillerson in this speech described as “malignant”? Malignant? While Iran has supported Assad it has been opposing ISIS in Iraq as well as Syria, just as at one time it aided the Afghani government against the Taliban and accepted many Afghani refugees. I don’t remember America saying ‘thank you’.

Is it to keep the Russians out? Can that be done with 2,000 soldiers? Anyway the Russians don’t need prompting to leave now Assad is back firmly on his throne. Of course if the Americans hang around trying to stir up trouble against Assad they might leave some of their troops and planes in place. That would be a very counterproductive American move.

The State Department is saying it’s trying to push Syria to attend UN negotiations. At the moment Syria prefers to be a participant in the Russian-led peace negotiations which makes some sense since several years ago the Americans walked out of the UN ones. Moreover, whilst it was still in them it made sure Iran couldn’t attend.

This latest Trumpian move is not going to ensure stability and peace in the Middle East. He should realize his actions are actually undermining the US and provoking instability.

*Note: For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune – and a member of the Independent Commission on Disarmament, chaired by the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. He is the author of a newly published book, “Ending War Crimes, Chasing the War Criminals” (Nijoff). He also authored “Like Water on Stone – the History of Amnesty International” (Penguin). He forwarded this and his previous Viewpoints for publication in IDN-INPS. Copyright: Jonathan Power.

By Paul Bracken*

(FPRI) — The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is a thoughtful, deliberative report that captures the big strategic issues facing the United States in the area of nuclear force structure.(1)This is surprising and welcome in my view. The previous two NPRs, in 2002 and 2010 respectively, were ideological tracts with little policy analysis of the strategic issues facing the United States. This one is different.

While the “details” of the NPR recommendations—a new ICBM, bomber, and submarines, updated command and control, etc.—are important, what is more important is the way the Review explains why these actions matter. It’s the strategic level of analysis that makes this NPR distinctive and interesting.

It does this in two ways. I will call these items the NPR’s two strategic themes. It’s important to separate these themes from the more detailed analysis arguing for a new ICBM or bomber, for example. That is, debate can focus on whether a replacement ICBM for the Minuteman III is a good or bad thing. We could get into numbers of missiles, survivability, operating cost, and accidental launch questions. But the choice of going ahead with a new ICBM depends on more than these. It also depends on the strategic context of world order as it is now developing. This is where the NPR is the most thoughtful in comparison to the previous reviews.

The first strategic theme in the 2018 NPR is the return to great power rivalry. It is a key point. I believe that any administration, Democrat or Republican, would have come up with this for several reasons. As the United States has focused on counter terrorism and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last fifteen years, it has overlooked the evolution of major power rivals. The annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Ukraine and the artificial islands in the South China Sea are actions that cannot be ignored, even if we are unable to reverse them. Finally, the military buildups in China and Russia matter. They are upsetting the strategic balance in troubling ways. The United States cannot be sure of the scenarios or pathways to war that this could lead to, but falling behind looks like an even more dangerous choice.

The second strategic theme in the 2018 NPR is its signaling dimension. It says to other major rivals like Russia and China, “We see what you’re doing: breaking the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF Treaty), a doctrine for tactical nuclear weapons, fielding an autonomous nuclear torpedo with a high yield warhead. And we will respond. But the US has no interest in restarting a nuclear arms race beyond repairing the problems your actions have created.” “Moscow and Beijing should know that the US will not respond with ‘cheap talk,’ i.e. with words but little action. Not this time.”

This signaling by the United States conveys both action and restraint. The action part is made up of proposals for a replacement ICBM, bomber, smaller warhead for the D-5 and replacement submarines, and modern command and control.

However, there is also restraint. There is no mention in the Review of new weapons or new capabilities. The United States will replace weapons in its arsenal with those that have the same essential features. At a time when technology is disrupting the entire industrial and business universe, and where the United States leads the world in such innovation, this is a noticeable omission. Not only could the United States field dramatically new weapons, it’s something that we’re quite good at.

The omission of new improved weapons is like the Sherlock Holmes story of the dog not barking (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze). It’s a sign of what the United States could do, but has chosen not to do up to this point in time. It’s a self-imposed restraint, and, as such, it could be removed in the face of continued strategic modernization by rival major powers. Not mentioning technological improvements signals that the United States does not seek an arms race—even in a competition it is likely to win.

In the next few years, Russia and China will respond to the U.S. modernization program. They may escalate the arms race, or not. But the key point is that without some balance in nuclear forces the United States would be at a disadvantage in negotiating any kind of arms control system for the second nuclear age that we are now in. If Russia and China choose to go down the road of a strategic buildup, we cannot stop them. But the Untired States can ensure we stay in the game, so Russia and China do not get any one-sided advantages, military or political, from their investment.

My sense is that the NPR will receive bipartisan support in the broad center that defines how most people look at the U.S. nuclear posture. We are a long way from the 2009 Prague speech, where President Barack Obama called for a dramatic de-emphasis of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy and further actions to eliminate these weapons altogether. Thinking along these lines had already started to change in the late part of the Obama administration. I am told by friends that in the past few years President Obama himself changed his views on whether it was still desirable to advance the Prague agenda.

The new NPR is a pivot to the geopolitical realities of the 21^st century. By no means does it call for a new nuclear arms race. Actually, it signals restraint. But it adds a critical proviso. Unless restraint is given in return, the United States will be compelled to take more ambitious improvements in its nuclear deterrent posture.

About the author:
*Paul Bracken is an FPRI Senior Fellow and a member of its Board of Advisors as well a Professor of Management and Political Science at Yale University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] All references to the Nuclear Posture Review are to the draft pre-decisional document widely published online in January 2018. See for example https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4347479/Npr-2018-A.pdf

Pointing to a strong track record in nuclear nonproliferation and security, India applies for Missile Technology Control Regime membership.

By Debalina Ghoshal*

India test-fired a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons in January, and for the most part, the rest of the world did not bat an eye. The international community had long denied technology to India for developing missiles, but such restrictions are futile against a determined nation. India overcame the international obstacles and now, in an ironic twist, is willing to embrace the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, hoping to use membership to strengthen its strategic position.

Reports confirm that the country formally applied for MTCR membership in June 2016. MTCR is an informal and voluntary association of 35 countries that share the goal of non-proliferation of unmanned systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. Members coordinate efforts to restrict export of missiles and related technologies capable of delivering such weapons.

Initially, India refused to join the association, citing a “discriminatory” nature and charging a “narrow approach to the global arms race, its function as an impediment to the economic progress of developing states, and the self-righteous attitudes of regime members.” India’s refusal made it difficult for the country to obtain necessary cryogenic materials for its missile development program, and India’s civilian space program lagged due to MTCR restrictions.

But the restrictions proved to be an unintended blessing for India. By 1983, the country established its indigenous missile program, the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program, and made remarkable progress in its ballistic missile program, including sophisticated Agni versions with missiles ranging from 700 to 5000 kilometers – which could become a primary source of delivery of nuclear warheads in a retaliatory strike due to their greater ability to remain un-intercepted by defense systems. Not only this, India has also used indigenous cryogenic engines for its geostationary launch vehicle.

Bureaucrats in India have since altered their negative view of the membership, instead finding benefits such as the ability to acquire sophisticated technologies for the nation’s missile and space-related programs. India’s desire for membership in multilateral export regimes is “driven by the need for access to high technology equipment, materials and know-how without which Indian industry cannot upgrade itself rapidly and remain globally competitive,” noted India’s former foreign secretary and national security adviser Shyam Saran . He added that membership would allow India to join with the world’s most technologically advanced countries, conforming with global best practices and strengthening its reputation as a responsible power committed to goals of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

MTCR benefits for India include:

• international status and boosting India’s reputation as a state that supports non-proliferation;
• opportunity to earn hard currency as a weapons exporter, especially to prospective markets in Southeast Asia and West Asia, as an increasing number of countries seek to possess missiles and missile-defense systems;
• ability to equip countries, such as those in Southeast Asia that are also party to MTCR, with missile systems and components to act as a counter to China;
• possible access to high-end missile technology from technically advanced countries.

Following the Indo-US nuclear deal, Washington began applauding India’s missile development program, and US support for India’s MTCR entry was no surprise. The United States urged India to exercise restraint, praising the nation’s solid non-proliferation record rather than trying to impose sanctions. Apart from a record of non-proliferation of both nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles, India has also been responsible by ensuring a high security threshold. Nuclear weapons are kept in a de-mated and de-alerted state, with a posture of induction rather than deployment. Also, India’s no-first-use policy in nuclear doctrine has strengthened nuclear deterrence in the region.

Perhaps the United States also recognizes India’s potential to check China’s military might, explaining why over the years Washington has applauded India’s missile development program and post-missile tests, including long-range ballistic missiles. The United States views India’s MTCR entry as crucial to strengthening the non-proliferation regime. Under the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Act, 2005, India is committed “not to transfer nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or to transfer control over such weapons or explosive devices, and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any other country to manufacture nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” India also ratified the Additional Protocol in 2014.

India has an opportunity to change the world-view of its nuclear-weapons capability and pursue recognition as a nuclear weapon state. New Delhi has already stated its intention to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Joining global non-proliferation measures can only help India as it seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

However, MTCR membership for India should not be viewed as a step forward in attaining Nuclear Suppliers Group membership. This group of nuclear supplier countries aim to promote nuclear non-proliferation by imposing export- and import-related restrictions. India has received a nuclear waiver from the United States, but membership is possible only if China agrees. Such agreement is unlikely and would require herculean diplomatic efforts on India’s side. The recent standoff at Doklam as well as India’s anti-dumping policies are likely to result in China refusing to consider India’s membership.

There is debate on whether India can use its MTCR membership card to block China’s MTCR membership, in turn using this as a bargaining chip for Nuclear Suppliers Group membership. But this strategy is least likely to work as China would be affected little by denial of MTCR membership.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese government propagated multiple regulations: to name a few, the Export Control of Missiles and Missile-Related Items and Technologies in the missile field; Administration of Arms Export; the Import and Export Control of Goods; and the Import and Export Control of Technologies and the Foreign Trade Law. It is assumed that these export control regimes are roughly parallel to the MTCR strictures.

India anticipates that MTCR entry would strengthen its foothold in the international forum. India probably could then use its MTCR card to prohibit China’s membership with the condition that the latter would accept India’s Nuclear Suppliers Group entry. But this card would only work if China’s desire for MTCR membership is serious.

For now, India should celebrate MTCR membership as an achievement and look for ways to further strengthen its non-proliferation regime, especially as the country gears up to become a big player in the missile and missile-defense markets.

*Debalina Ghoshal is an independent consultant specializing in nuclear, missile, and missile defense relate issues.

Yemeni snipers gunned down five Saudi forces in the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Jizan.

Yemeni troops launched operations against Saudi forces in Hamezah village, al-Farizeh military base, and near another village called Quwa on Thursday evening, managing to inflict major losses on them, a Yemeni military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network.

The source added that Yemeni sources also sprayed a Saudi military vehicle with machine gun fire in Hamezah village.

Yemeni army soldiers and Popular Committees fighters also fired a salvo of artillery rounds at a gathering of Saudi forces in Qais Mountain and al-Haskoul base in Jizan. There were no immediate reports on the number of possible causalities and the extent of damage caused.

Separately, Yemeni artillery units targeted a Saudi battle tank in al-Sadis military base of the kingdom’s Najran region, located 844 kilometers (524 miles) south of the capital Riyadh.

The retaliatory attacks by Yemeni forces came after Saudi Arabia bombarded several civilian areas in the impoverished Arab country.

People of Yemen have been under massive attacks by the Saudi-led coalition for nearly three years. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.

Five people have been killed when two military helicopters collided in southern France, according to local media on Friday.

France’s regional daily Var Matin reported that the incident occurred early Friday morning near the Carces lake, in the southeastern Provence region.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.

Var Martin put the death toll at five. Another French daily Le Parisien reported there were six people aboard the helicopters belonging to the French army’s flight training school and that the search for the missing sixth was ongoing.

Emergency and rescue units were referred to the region which is 50 kilometers away from the touristic port city of Saint-Tropez.

Original source

It seemed to be an act of counter-intuitive genius, one framed in a manner that could have been deemed both insulting and flattering.  You, dear customer, would be the one expected, not only to fork out for a product; you would also be expected to assemble it, to envisage the functioning of its parts, to have the means by which to realise a vision.

Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, who died last Saturday, was certainly on to something.  A love of labour’s products might not have been accidental. The issue of self-realised productivity might well have had traces in fascist sympathies, a particularly national socialist view of furniture and living.

Kamprad came from a family of Sudetenland immigrants. Both his paternal grandmother and father were avowed Nazis, while Kamprad would, in time, express more than a passing commitment to the Swedish fascist movement.

The Stockholm Police, in fact, took note of a certain Member 4,014 of Socialist Unity, Sweden’s far-right party which was active during the Second World War.  He showed a continuing interest in Per Engdahl, a notable anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who kept up his work even after the guns had fallen silent in Europe.  In an uneasy contradiction, one that baffled Elisabeth Åsbrink, he could still maintain a friendship with Otto Ullman, a Jewish refugee whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz.

Kamprad’s vision of modular furniture, the combination of no-frills, industriousness, and self-reward was sparked even as European Jewry was being exterminated in the apocalyptic realisations of the Third Reich.  He had his mind both on business and finding recruits for Socialist Unity.  “Ingvar Kamprad’s image and Sweden’s,” concludes Åsbrink, “continue to reflect each other: without shadows, without disgrace, and without any ambition to come to terms with their past.”

Kamprad did make small steps towards acknowledging a course of life which he “bitterly” regretted.  In 1998, he wrote of those wayward “delusions” of youth.  During a speech at the book release at an IKEA store in suburban Stockholm, he claimed to have “told all I can.  Can one ever get forgiveness for such stupidity?”

His near ascetic view of life, combined with a democratising vision of furnishings, is recalled in The Testament of a Furniture Dealer (1976), a pamphlet that has a curiously fascistic tone of self-preservation with a fundamental “duty to expand.” In it, Kamprad stakes the mission of his company to offer “a wide range of well-designed functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible can afford them.”

The great ambitions Kamprad writes about are expansive, involving influencing “practically all markets” while also being “able to make a valuable contribution to the process of democratisation outside our homeland too.” A set of values are then outlined: simplicity is touted as virtue; profit endows the company with resources while good results can be attained “with small means”.  If the Kamprad outlines were followed religiously, a “glorious future” awaited.

In time, IKEA also realised shopping as a collective ideal, the Volk who needed to be invigorated even as they went about their journey in the centre.  Customers could dine on meals specific to the IKEA brand using IKEA cutlery and crockery. They could consult merchandise even as children were being looked after at IKEA day care facilities.

A few accounts of his passing have also shown a clean, unreflected vision, only momentarily dipping into his right-wing nourishing.  Note is taken of his frugal living, his tendency to plunder the salt and pepper packets from restaurants, his generally miserly disposition.

For the chief executive officer of the IKEA Group, Jesper Brodin, “His legacy will be admired for many years to come and his vision – to create a better everyday life for the many people – will continue to guide and inspire.”  The Los Angeles Times wrote admiringly over the “boyhood business of selling pencils and seeds from his bicycle in Sweden” while Brodin nostalgically noted how he “started as a 17-year-old with two empty pockets, but a ton of entrepreneurship.”

By shifting the focus away from the ready-made and cutting costs with a flat-pack vision of distribution, the IKEA view became a global phenomenon.  In time, it even collected a name on the way, the “IKEA effect” technically defined by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely as “the increase in valuation of self-made products.”

Norton et al do make the relevant point that having it all, a product readied, available and easy to use, might have made things too elementary.  The introduction of instant cake mixes during the 1950s, for instance, was billed to be a revolution of ease for the US housewife.  Yet scepticism was expressed: “The mixes made cooking too easy, making their labour seem undervalued.”

To foist assembly costs on an individual, to effectively suggest to a consumer who will still pay a premium for the relevant product that can only be realised with his or her labour, suggests a reduction of value, not a gain. The IKEA effect postulates the opposite, a sort of Lockean vision of imbuing a good with one’s labour, thereby adding value to it.

With the 1956 invention of flat-pack furniture by IKEA employee Gillis Lundgren, the company could also add to its own value, cutting shipping costs by astonishing margins.  An explosion, and in fact, a conquest of taste, was imminent.  The innovation would be sold, not as a profitable advantage to the company, but a sensible one to the customer.  All would be happy.

Over the past several years, Vladimir Putin has successfully moved to limit the freedom of action of regions and republics; but to date, he and his regime have done far less to rein in the municipalities within each of these federal subjects, government bodies that are often more independent-minded than their regional heads.

Because the leaders of the municipalities are not appointed by and thus beholden to Moscow – in sharp contrast to the Kremlin-appointed federal subject heads – they often reflect local views more accurately and within their competence often are able to block central and regional initiatives.

Nowhere is this power of the municipalities greater than in the field of education, and so it is not surprising that in Moscow’s drive to imposes the tightest possible central control, Education Minister Olga Vasilyeva is taking the lead, transferring control of schools and school programs from the municipalities to the federal subjects.

She began this process a year ago with a pilot program in 17 regions but now wants to extend it across the entire Russian Federation. And she is insisting that the shift be made within a year or two, apparently fearful, Ramazan Alpaut says, that shifting ethnic balance in the country will make it more difficult to do so after that time (idelreal.org/a/28985510.html).

According to the Radio Svoboda commentator, “the federal authorities are hastening to finally ‘solve the nationality question’ while ethnic Russians still form an absolute majority in the country because if the proportions change, this will make such a process much more difficult.”

“However strange it may sound,” Alpaut continues, “the remnant of freedom of the subjects are preserved [more] among the municipalities [than among the regions]. For example, in Daghestan, the heads of districts are influential centers of fore which can sabotage the decisions of regional heads. The latter as a rule in Russia are executors of Moscow’s will.”

That is especially the case, the commentator says, “in a number of republics where there are no longer direct elections” for the top job. And all this means that Moscow has taken it centralization drive to a new level and that resistance to that move is likely to come below the radar screen of many outside this or that region.

As more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, the global ocean soaks up much of the excess, storing roughly 30 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions coming from human activities.

In this sense, the ocean has acted as a buffer to slow down the greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere and, thus, global warming. However, this process also increases the acidity of seawater and can affect the health of marine organisms and the ocean ecosystem.

New research by University of Delaware oceanographer Wei-Jun Cai and colleagues at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, University of Hawaii at Manoa and ETH Zurich, now reveals that the water over the continental shelves is shouldering a larger portion of the load, taking up more and more of this atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The study findings, published in Nature Communications on Wednesday, Jan. 31, may have important implications for scientists focused on understanding the global carbon budget.

Understanding how carbon flows between land, air and water is key to predicting how much greenhouse gas emissions the earth, atmosphere and ocean can tolerate over a given time period to keep global warming and climate change at thresholds considered tolerable.

The study authors used recently available and historical data from the past 35 years to calculate global trends of carbon dioxide concentration increases in the coastal ocean. The analysis revealed that, while the amount of carbon dioxide in the open ocean is increasing at the same rate as in the atmosphere, these same carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing slower in the coastal ocean.

“This is because the coastal ocean is shallower than the open ocean and can quickly transfer sequestered carbon dioxide to the deep ocean; this process creates an additional and effective pathway for the ocean to take up and store anthropogenic carbon dioxide,” said Cai, the Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.

Though relatively small in comparison to the open ocean, the coastal zones are where an extremely large amount of the carbon dioxide is exchanged between air and water.

“If this conclusion is confirmed by future observations, it would mean that the coastal ocean will become more and more efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” said Goulven Lurallue, the paper’s lead author and a researcher with Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

Until recently, these trends were extremely difficult to calculate due to a lack of data about carbon dioxide in coastal waters. Complicating matters further, coastal zones behave differently depending of their location and topography. For example, in higher latitudes such as northern Canada and Greenland, coastal waters usually act as carbon sinks, absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In in tropical areas such as the South China Sea, coastal waters are generally considered a source of carbon dioxide.

At the same time, human activities have increased the amount of nutrient pollution entering coastal waters from things like fertilizer on land. These nutrients stimulate the growth of algae within the continental shelves, which subsequently removes more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the researchers said.

According to the research team, this suggests that the continental shelves are becoming a crucial element in the global carbon cycle and for the climate system.

“It is important that scientists take into account the contribution of continental shelves to calculate global carbon budgets,” said Pierre Regnier, professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles. “The possibility of shelves becoming a more important carbon dioxide sink in the future should be considered in global carbon cycle models and flux assessments.”

A commonly-prescribed multiple sclerosis (MS) infusion medication linked to a rare but serious side effect is safer to use when dosing intervals are extended, according to a new study led by MS specialists NYU Langone Health.

The new research showed that extending dosing of natalizumab from every 4 weeks to every 5 to 12 weeks significantly reduced the risk of developing progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a rare but potentially fatal brain infection. The authors presented their findings February 2 at the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) Forum 2018 in San Diego.

The findings could influence how neurologists prescribe the medication. “Neurologists have been looking for safer ways to administer natalizumab infusions to their patients, but there hasn’t been clear data on whether decreasing dosing frequency improves safety,” said first study author Lana Zhovtis Ryerson, MD, assistant professor of neurology at NYU School of Medicine and an attending neurologist at NYU Langone’s Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center. “Our safety findings are clinically and statistically significant, and we believe that extending the dosing schedule of natalizumab is practice changing and may save lives.”

Natalizumab, a monoclonal antibody, is used to prevent MS relapses, improve quality of life, and slow worsening disability. The medication is indicated to be prescribed in 300-milligram infusion doses every 4 weeks.

Taking the medication longer than two years, however, may increase risk PML, which is caused by the John Cunningham virus (JCV). There have been 756 PML cases reported worldwide as of January 2018, with a global incidence rate of 4.19 per 1,000 PML cases in people treated with natalizumab. Patients who test JCV antibody-positive are typically either told to not to start natalizumab, or have had treatment stopped after two years, when risk was deemed to be too high.

The new study, however, reports safety data through up to 72 months, or 6 years, when the extended dosing regimens were applied, with risk reduction for PML as high as 94 percent.

How the Study Was Conducted

Researchers reviewed data on all patients who have been exposed to JCV who are enrolled in TOUCH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-mandated Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program for natalizumab that requires manufacturers to document all uses of a medication to ensure that the benefits of a drug outweigh its risks. Since the optimal extended dose schedule is not known, researchers chose to look at the data in multiple ways, with the primary definition looking at extended dose history in the last 18 months, the secondary definition looking at extended dose occurring at any time in the dosing history, and for tertiary definition looking primarily at how extended dose history affects PML risk. The results showed clinically and statistically significant risk reductions with all definitions.

The new study did not look at drug efficacy comparing extended to standard doses. However, previous research led by Dr. Zhovtis-Ryerson’s group found extending the dose up to 8 weeks did not negatively affect the medication’s efficacy in a retrospective sample of 2,000 people. The authors are planning prospective efficacy studies of extended dose natalizumab.

Natalizumab is manufactured by Biogen Idec and Elan, and sold under the name Tysabri®. Biogen provided the researchers access to their data and statistical support.

Other infusion disease-modifying therapies approved to treat MS include the drugs alemtuzumab and ocrelizumab. Oral and injectable medications are also prescribed.

A team of archaeologists, led by Cat Jarman from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, has discovered that a mass grave uncovered in the 1980s dates to the Viking Age and may have been a burial site of the Viking Great Army war dead.

Although the remains were initially thought to be associated with the Vikings, radiocarbon dates seemed to suggest the grave consisted of bones collected over several centuries. New scientific research now shows that this was not the case and that the bones are all consistent with a date in the late 9th century. Historical records state that the Viking Great Army wintered in Repton, Derbyshire, in 873 A.D. and drove the Mercian king into exile.

Excavations led by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle at St Wystan’s Church in Repton in the 1970s and 1980s discovered several Viking graves and a charnel deposit of nearly 300 people underneath a shallow mound in the vicarage garden.

The mound appears to have been a burial monument linked to the Great Army.

An Anglo-Saxon building, possibly a royal mausoleum, was cut down and partially ruined, before being turned into a burial chamber.

One room was packed with the commingled remains of at least 264 people, around 20 percent of whom were women. Among the bones were Viking weapons and artefacts, including an axe, several knives, and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 A.D. 80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.

During the excavations, everything pointed to the burial’s association with the Viking Great Army, but confusingly, initial radiocarbon dates suggested otherwise. It seemed to contain a mix of bones of different ages, meaning that they could not all have been from the Viking Age.

Now, new dating proves that they are all consistent with a single date in the 9th century and therefore with the Viking Great Army.

Cat Jarman said: “The previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.

“When we eat fish or other marine foods, we incorporate carbon into our bones that is much older than in terrestrial foods. This confuses radiocarbon dates from archaeological bone material and we need to correct for it by estimating how much seafood each individual ate.”

A double grave from the site – one of the only Viking weapon graves found in the country – was also dated, yielding a date range of 873-886 A.D.

The grave contained two men, the older of whom was buried with a Thor’s hammer pendant, a Viking sword, and several other artefacts.

He had received numerous fatal injuries around the time of death, including a large cut to his left femur. Intriguingly, a boar’s tusk had been placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and that the tusk was there to replace what he had lost in preparation for the after-world.

The new dates now show that these burials could be consistent with members of the Viking Great Army.

Outside the charnel mound another extraordinary grave can now be shown to be likely to relate to the Vikings in Repton as well.

Four juveniles, aged between eight and 18, were buried together in a single grave with a sheep jaw at their feet.

Next to them large stones may have held a marker, and the grave was placed near the entrance to the mass grave. At least two of the juveniles have signs of traumatic injury. The excavators suggested this may have been a ritual grave, paralleling accounts of sacrificial killings to accompany Viking dead from historical accounts elsewhere in the Viking world. The new radiocarbon dates can now place this burial into the time period of 872-885 A.D.

Cat Jarman added: “The date of the Repton charnel bones is important because we know very little about the first Viking raiders that went on to become part of considerable Scandinavian settlement of England.

“Although these new radiocarbon dates don’t prove that these were Viking army members it now seems very likely. It also shows how new techniques can be used to reassess and finally solve centuries old mysteries.”