University of Colorado Boulder researchers have developed a new type of malleable, self-healing and fully recyclable “electronic skin” that has applications ranging from robotics and prosthetic development to better biomedical devices.

Electronic skin, known as e-skin, is a thin, translucent material that can mimic the function and mechanical properties of human skin. A number of different types and sizes of wearable e-skins are now being developed in labs around the world as researchers recognize their value in diverse medical, scientific and engineering fields.

The new CU Boulder e-skin has sensors embedded to measure pressure, temperature, humidity and air flow, said Assistant Professor Jianliang Xiao, who is leading the research effort with CU Boulder chemistry and biochemistry Associate Professor Wei Zhang. It has several distinctive properties, including a novel type of covalently bonded dynamic network polymer, known as polyimine that has been laced with silver nanoparticles to provide better mechanical strength, chemical stability and electrical conductivity.

“What is unique here is that the chemical bonding of polyimine we use allows the e-skin to be both self-healing and fully recyclable at room temperature,” said Xiao. “Given the millions of tons of electronic waste generated worldwide every year, the recyclability of our e-skin makes good economic and environmental sense.”

A paper on the subject was published today in the journal Science Advances. Co-authors on the study include Zhanan Zou and Yan Li of mechanical engineering and Chengpu Zhu and Xingfeng Lei of chemistry and biochemistry. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Many people are familiar with the movie The Terminator, in which the skin of film’s main villain is “re-healed” just seconds after being shot, beaten or run over, said Zhang. While the new process is not nearly as dramatic, the healing of cut or broken e-skin, including the sensors, is done by using a mix of three commercially available compounds in ethanol, he said.

Another benefit of the new CU Boulder e-skin is that it can be easily conformed to curved surfaces like human arms and robotic hands by applying moderate heat and pressure to it without introducing excessive stresses.

“Let’s say you wanted a robot to take care of a baby,” said Zhang. “In that case you would integrate e-skin on the robot fingers that can feel the pressure of the baby. The idea is to try and mimic biological skin with e-skin that has desired functions.”

To recycle the skin, the device is soaked into recycling solution, making the polymers degrade into oligomers (polymers with polymerization degree usually below 10) and monomers (small molecules that can be joined together into polymers) that are soluble in ethanol. The silver nanoparticles sink to the bottom of the solution.

“The recycled solution and nanoparticles can then be used to make new, functional e-skin,” said Xiao.

By P. V. Ramana*

Pressure mines may not be lethal, but can certainly decapitate a person. On February 7, 2018, one personnel of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) was injured in a pressure mine blast in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district, near Dhanora.

For over more than a decade, Naxalites of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Maoists in in short, have been widely deploying pressure mines, especially in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, as well as in other parts where they operate.

Speaking on May 16, 2006, the then district police chief of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, said: “These mines will kill anyone who steps on them. The mine doesn’t distinguish between a policeman and a civilian. It is also for the first time in the country that the Visakhapatnam police have unearthed pressure mines.”

The intended target is security force personnel on patrol. While on duty, the fear of a blast constantly lurks in his mind and he has to be very cautious while walking; this is a distraction. If he is careless, he might get injured and lose a limb permanently; occasionally he may also die. An injured security force personnel is more expensive for the state as it raises the cost of fighting the rebels; the injured person has to be tended to and a replacement found.
Besides, innocent civilians and cattle have also been victims of pressure mines. During a visit to Bastar some years ago, this author met a school teacher, Triveni Devangana, in Narayanpur who had been injured by a pressure mine. The teacher was riding her moped very near the school when a pressure mine got triggered a mere three feet away from her. The mine had been planted adjacent to a bore well with a view to target security forces personnel who normally halt there to quench their thirst. But a young cattle-herd had found the device and it exploded when he began fiddling with it. Devangana lost sight in the right eye, suffered partial damage in the left eye and received severe burn injuries in the face. A mother of two children and a Sahitya Ratna in Hindi, her family of modest economic means spent Rs 1.1 lakh for her treatment. The Maoists did not even care to ‘apologise’, which they do occasionally, when innocent civilians fall victim to their violence.

It is sad and abhorring that the unintended targets of Maoist violence have often been civilians and innocent, speechless, animals. On a number of occasions, cattle grazing in the forest have been killed or injured in pressure mine blasts. There is no count of the number of cattle killed in these incidents.

Typically, a pressure mine is made by placing TNT or other explosives in a small, spherical container and attaching a blasting cap at the top of the container. The size of the blast depends upon the size of the container and the amount of explosive material packed inside. Pressure bombs are made with readily available materials and can be simple or complex; it all depends on the fabricator’s choice. “These bombs are easy to conceal. They are planted just below the surface of the earth. The pressure that a person would exert when he or she steps on it accidentally, while walking normally, is all that is needed to trigger-off an explosion.”, a senior Superintendent of Police told this author during an interview in July 2007.

The Maoists have gone a long way in indigenously and ingeniously fabricating weapons. Lately, they have developed crude rocket launchers that are not accurate but have “nuisance value”. Their arsenal now consists of a melange of weapons –– 4,000 regular and another 6,000 country made. These include sophisticated weapons such as SLRs, AK series rifles, INSAS rifles looted from the security forces, and weapons such as tapanchas that they have fabricated in their production units.

While the Maoists have beaten a tactical retreat, they are still a formidable force with an estimated 4,000 armed underground cadre spread across 106 districts in 10 States. The core is still intact. While some members of the apex and all-powerful Central Committee have been arrested, killed in encounters, or surrendered, the Central Military Commission, presently consisting of six members, which guides all armed activity, is intact. (A seventh member Jinugu Narasimha Reddy alias Jampanna surrendered to the police on December 22, 2017).
Therefore, there can be no room for complacency. The government’s four-pronged approach of security, development, public perception management and ensuring the rights and entitlement of local communities needs to be implemented earnestly and, more importantly, its monitoring has to be rigorous.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*Dr. P. V. Ramana is Research Fellow at Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

By Charles W. Baird*

On February 26 the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). At issue is whether forcing government employees to pay for the collective bargaining activities of unions that represent them violates their First Amendment rights. On January 19 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed an amicus brief with the Court in which they took the side of AFSCME against Mark Janus.

I am a Catholic, but I find no logically compelling arguments in the bishops’ brief. To the contrary, I think their arguments fail mainly because they do not understand many of the implications of the key principle of American unionism – exclusive representation – especially in the government sector.

Under American labor law a union is certified as the exclusive bargaining agent of a group of workers by a majority vote of those workers. “Exclusive” means that the union represents all workers who were eligible to vote no matter how they voted or whether they voted. No one else, no other union or even the individual workers themselves, can have any voice in the collective bargaining process.

Unions justify exclusive representation on the grounds that it is “democratic.” But democracy is a form of government, and unions are not governments. People on the losing side of a certification vote are forced to accept representation in the sale of their labor services without their consent.

Exclusive representation creates the “free rider” problem which the bishops lament throughout their brief. Unless dissenting workers are forced to pay union dues, the union would represent them for free. The obvious solution to the free rider problem is to have members-only bargaining. Instead, the USCCB insists that non-members must be forced to pay union dues. It opposes state right-to-work (RTW) laws which proscribe forced dues.

In its 1977 Abood ruling, which the bishops enthusiastically endorse, the Court said that unions representing government-sector employees in collective bargaining under the principle of exclusive representation could force those employees to pay for the collective bargaining representation. At the same time the Court ruled that those government employees could not be forced to pay for any of the unions’ ideological or political activities. To do so would be to force those government employees to pay for political speech with which they may disagree, and this would violate their First Amendment rights.

Janus argues that in the government sector, collective bargaining itself is inherently political. The terms and conditions of government employment affect taxes, government expenditures and public policy. It is bad enough that under exclusive representation he and his colleagues are forbidden to speak on those political matters. (The Janus case doesn’t address exclusive representation.) It is even worse that they are forced to pay for the political speech of the unions that purport to represent them. Forced payment for union political speech, they argue, violates their First Amendment rights.

The USCCB begins by referring to Catholic Social Teaching (CST) on unionism beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum through Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical, Laborem Exercens. It correctly says that CST supports the right of workers to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. It goes on to say that CST is the reason that American bishops oppose RTW laws. Such laws, it alleges, make it difficult to form unions. It says that a ruling in favor of Janus on First Amendment grounds would amount to a constitutionally-imposed national RTW law for all government employment. Therefore, it concludes, the Court should rule in favor of AFSCME.

In 2002, I wrote an Acton Institute monograph, Liberating Labor, wherein I argued that a careful reading of papal encyclicals regarding labor unions from Rerum Novarum through John Paul II’s Centisimus Annus (1991) suggests that the popes advocated voluntary unionism on the basis of freedom of association. There is nothing in the encyclicals that implies their authors would endorse American-style unionism based on exclusive representation and forced dues payments. The bishops’ brief ignores this possibility.

Incredibly, the bishops place their opposition to a ruling in favor of Janus on the same level as their opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. They write (p. 2):

[The Court] should leave constitutional space for the public policy position supported for so long by so many bishops and bishop-led institutions, rather than declare still another such position outside the bounds of what policymakers are permitted to implement by law. See, e.g., Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015) (definition of marriage); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) (prohibition of abortion).

They amplify this point on pp. 13-14.

The mandatory payment of union dues is a secular issue with respect to which the Church has no particular expertise or authority. Same-sex marriage and abortion concern fundamental questions of faith and morals with respect to which, for Catholics, the Church has special teaching authority. It is at least a bit grotesque for the USCCB to conflate such questions.

In the last section of the brief the bishops argue that if the Court does rule in favor of Janus it should make clear that this national RTW ruling in the government sector does not extend to the private sector. But no one suggests that the arguments in the Janus case apply to the private sector. Collective bargaining in the private sector does not involve questions of taxes, government expenditures and public policy. Private sector collective bargaining is not inherently political.

Then the USCCB resorts to exasperating obfuscation. It argues that a constitutionally-based RTW law in the private sector would

be a disaster for private expressive associations that rely on contractual arrangements with their employees as a necessary means to secure reliable assistance in developing and perpetuating a particular message. … This is true whether people are gathering to further the message of advocacy for good jobs, decent wages, and hope for the future, as with a union; or the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as with the Church (pp. 18-19).

What do they mean by “contractual arrangements” which are “a necessary means to secure reliable assistance in developing and perpetuating a particular message”? What does this have to do with government-enabled forced dues payments? Do the bishops really think that the proscription of forced dues would be akin to impairing the proclamation of the Gospel? I certainly hope not.

I expect Janus to win his case. I also expect that the Court will eventually take up the issue of exclusive representation in the government sector. The USCCB and I will be on opposite sides of that case, too.

About the author:
*Dr. Charles W. Baird is professor of economics at California State University, East Bay and author of Liberating Labor: A Christian Economist’s Case for Voluntary Unionism (Acton Institute, 2002).

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

The so-called “Kremlin Report” of the US government even though it has not yet been accompanied by new sanctions is already having a negative impact on Russian companies, according to former Russian finance minister Aleksey Kudrin (interfax.ru/business/599206 and dailystorm.ru/news/kudrin-kremlevskiy-doklad-my-perezhivem-no-on-uzhe-navredil-rossii).

Both the firms and the Russian government have sought to minimize these consequences and were breathing much more easily when sanctions were not imposed at the time the list was issued, the head of the Moscow Center for Strategic Planning says; but more sanctions may come and companies are already facing a different financial situation in dealings with foreign banks.

In support of that view, Vagit Alekperov, the president of LUKOIL, tells Dozhd television that after the report was published, the price of shares in his company declined (tvrain.ru/news/glava_lukojla_dopustil_problemy_s_kreditami_iz_za_kremlevskogo_doklada-457180/ and sobkorr.ru/news/5A7D696F1C28E.html).

And other analysts have suggested that one of the reason companies whose heads are on the list are now in difficulty is that other companies view it as more risky and even potentially dangerous to themselves to maintain any contacts with them (rbc.ru/opinions/politics/09/02/2018/5a7c5e679a79473cb026591c?from=center_6).

It is not clear whether such statements will lead those in Washington opposed to new sanctions to delay even further – it is certainly the case that the Kremlin would be pleased if that were the case – but it is certain that the list, however defective and so far without accompanying sanctions – is having an effect in Russia that members of the elite can feel.

By Shahriar Sheikhlar*

After the dramatically decreases in the crude oil prices during the second half of 2014 which continuously dropped to below $30 per barrel in 2016 January, most of observers claimed that the time for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)’s influences was over. They relied on essential market factors such as stronger U.S. Dollar, shale oil revolution in the United States which was backed by large investments and technological breakthroughs, as well as weakened global economical growth and historical highs of OECD oil inventories.

Meanwhile, the OPEC members and OIC’s losses were estimated to more than $1 trillion during just 15 months until 2016 November, since the crude oil prices’ fall in 2014.

OPEC’s Mission and Power

While OPEC’s mission is “to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry”, divergence of OPEC members seemed as last shot against it.

Beside, the OPEC members control more than 70% of world proved oil reserves (1,220 out of 1,706 billion barrels of oil, in 2016) as well as produce about 42% of world total oil production what they employed to satisfy their mission, historically. Actually, OPEC has stabilized the market by changes in its total production, mostly by pumping higher rate of product which enable it to increase its share in the market, but sometimes OPEC decreases the production rate to secure the oil price.

Regardless of defining OPEC as a cartel or an organization, they could respect their mission and total expedient, even where the conflict of their interest was a matter. Absolutely, some producers in the OPEC with the ability to change their production level fast and widely, especially Saudi Arabia, act in not too dissimilar a way from a commodity producers but which is driving the OPEC’s actions historically, is consensus not veto by most powerful members.

Indeed, the main oil customers tried consistently to threaten OPEC’s control on international oil market, especially after 1970s when embargo by some OPEC’s Arabic members triggered the oil prices. Although, their focuses on new energy sources such as Hydro, Nuclear, Wind or Solar, increased the share of them to 13% of the world energy sources in 2016 but OPEC taunted them by its last affects on the oil market.

OPEC’s Influences in Oil Market

For the first time, OPEC flexed it’s power against global oil price in 1973, when hiked it up to $12 per barrel, the highest price until then. The next major, was at March 1998 and March 1999, when OPEC cuts its production level twice during a year to end the slide in oil prices. All of OPEC members cuts their production in a high level of cohesiveness to verify their approach to a common object.

The third considerable OPEC’s effect was successfully implemented in the high oil price environment of 2004 to cutback the oil prices. OPEC’s production in 2004 was raised by 2.1 mb/day comparing with 2003 to cool overheated prices.

Finally, in 2016 November, when the continuous fall in the oil prices raised budget deficit of OPEC members, they decreased their products level in cooperation with some Non-OPEC producers to balance the oil market again. The agreement which was doubted to be respected by all the parties but successfully stabilized the market as addressed in the OPEC’s objectives.

While most of observers and analysts believed OPEC’s control on oil market was gone and predicted its end, OPEC members’ loyalty to their common mission could make a new alliance including even some oil suppliers out of the OPEC which empowered them to lead the international oil market again which is the fundamental of recent raises in oil prices, even by threatens from shale oil and not significant improvements in the world growth rate…. It approved that OPEC is mighty yet but respecting their mission in future against the shale oil and new energy sources could interpret its fate.

About the author:
*Shahriar Sheikhlar, Independent Energy Economy Analyst

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Jehivian Alexis Hernandez*

There is a famous saying in Spanish that “en Guerra avisada no muere gente,” which can be translated as “no soldier dies in a scheduled war.” Even though this is a recurring saying in Puerto Rico, apparently the lesson －if you are aware of the dangers around you, you are less likely to suffer from them －was never taught to the Puerto Rican and U.S. Federal governments. For years, the authorities have been aware of the dire condition of the islands infrastructure, especially of its decaying energy system. What better admonition than a complete blackout produced by a ‘system failure’ in one of the central generators in September 2016[i]. However, for more than a decade the government avoided investing in the maintenance and improvement of its infrastructure. This brought Puerto Rico to meet its Waterloo with hurricane Maria, a storm with winds surpassing 155 mph that left behind unparalleled damages exceeding the $95 billion.

Four months have passed since hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, leaving millions without power, communication, clean water, and in a state of despair. As of January 2018, more than 30 percent of the population are still without power, forcing thousands of businesses to shut down and leaving over 30,000 people without jobs[ii]. The lack of primary resources and commodities has driven over a quarter of a million people out of the island, where it is predicted that by 2019 there will be less than 3 million people living in Puerto Rico[iii].

However, the primary victims of this devastation are those living in rural areas, where the help and response of the state have been extremely slow. While the initial efforts were primarily invested in the metropolitan area, where the business and wealthy are concentrated, the destruction left most of these rural communities unable to communicate with the government for several weeks. If it were not for NGOs, churches, and community groups, most of these people would not have received any aid. Their endless frustration has motivated them to protest the treatment by the state and elevated their extreme need for their power system to be reestablished by the government[iv].

The primary cause of the current public outrage is the inefficient response of both the island and federal governments in the immediate days after the hurricane. Disorganization and miscommunication characterized the reaction throughout the government agencies since none of the emergency procedures were put in action prior to the natural disaster. Experts argue that these emergency procedures determine what steps are necessary and who is in charge before, during and after a hurricane hits the island[v]. This lack of coordination caused a lag in the island’s government response since it was expecting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be their first responder. However, the agency argues that this is precisely the problem that has delayed the recovery since their role is not as first responders but one of assistance to the local authorities.

The lack of preparation led to disorganization in the access and circulation of food, water, fuel, and the restoration of utilities across the island. This occurred to such an extent that up to this day the government is still uncertain of how many people died in and from the consequences of Maria. After the hurricane, the official count of deaths was 64[vi]. After several news outlets questioned the report, The New York Times reported that the actual number was around 1,052 and rising. The government had not taken into account all the related deaths due to the failure of essential utilities such as clean water and, especially, the battered power system. Local organizations, such as Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Center for Investigative Journalism, CPI), are organizing surveys in order to determine which deaths are related to the storm and have not yet been included in the final report[vii].

Also, the unwillingness of the government officials to accurately disclose its finances has moved the Federal government to withhold a $5 billion loan for relief approved by Congress. In the immediate days after the hurricane, the island’s government asked for monetary assistance from the federal government to address the disaster. Three months after the emergency relief was approved, the Puerto Rican government, in December, disclosed over $1.5 billion it has in cash and the oversight board found a total $7 billion in undisclosed money[viii]. This discovery led FEMA to withhold a $5 billion relief loan until the island’s finances drop below their policy standards, which have not been fully unveiled. Although Puerto Rico has argued that the money is already destined for other expenses, the FEMA decision is forcing them to use these funds to ensure the continuing operation of their utilities.

Even though privatization and austerity policies has been in the current government’s agenda since the start of their administration, the most recent government’s proposition to tackle the power system deficiencies is to privatize the power company, known as PREPA[ix]. In a demagogic way, the governor has utilized the public anger and frustration towards PREPA as a legitimating vehicle for its privatization scheme. Once known as the government’s crown jewel, PREPA now faces its most significant threat, since over 87 percent of the public approves this measure[x]. The argument is that since PREPA has become an old and obsolete enterprise, a privatized energy scheme consisting of “a mix between selling assets and offering concession to private companies to run operations over the following 18 months” will solve the island’s energy problems [xi]. The expectation is for more efficiency, lower cost, and public emancipation from a decaying infrastructure.

However, this policy favoring PREPA’s privatization ignores the lessons learned by the privatization of the water and sewer company, which had similar expectations only to have the government repurchase the company after facing problems with quality control, costs, and range of services[xii]. Likewise, the negative effects of the privatization of several highways, the health system, and airport, which led to reduced services, less state revenue, and more cost to the consumers.

Furthermore, this policy has not taken into consideration that FEMA only assists public and private corporations that are nonprofit. Therefore, the question that arises is, which private organization will cover the costs of rebuilding the infrastructure after a hurricane, without passing the price to its customers? For example, Florida Power & Light Co. was planning on surcharging between $4.00 and $5.50 on customers monthly bills, to cover the $1.3 billion Irma-related costs. After Congress rewrote the tax code, the company decided to utilize its tax saving rather than as a surcharge.

Additionally, it does not consider that a private company could raise prices without the necessity of justifying it to its customers, which will directly impact society’s most vulnerable communities, like those on welfare and the elderly. This would go against the sole purpose of the government’s consolidation of the energy production during the 1970s, of controlling rates and expanding services without the constraints of the market-profit mentality. Moreover, the governor has promised the public that the revenue from the sale will be used to fund the public pension system. However, that is impossible since the money would go to pay the $9 billion the corporation has in debt, for which it already has declared bankruptcy.

Although PREPA and its union have expressed opposition to such steps, as arguing that the corporation was intentionally set to fail precisely so it could be privatized, the recent history presents a very compelling case against them. Last November, its director was forced out of his position for not contacting his counterparts in the mainland immediately after the hurricane, and by rushing a $300 million contract to a small company in Montana, called Whitefish. Whitefish turned out to be a company with only two full-time employees and without the resources, experience, and personnel to complete the job of restoring the power lines[xiii]. The company historically has also been accused of political patronage and inefficiency. Therefore, the slow response to reestablishing services added to PREPA’s recent scandals has caused a decay in its political capital, making it easier for the government to justify its privatization.

The economic crisis that Puerto Rico is currently facing is an exacerbating factor to this dire situation. Years of irresponsible economic dependence on bond emissions produced a $73 billion deficit, with 50 percent of the affected population are living under the poverty line, and with an unemployment rate of 14 percent[xiv]. The unpayable nature of the public debt forced the government to declare bankruptcy under title III of PROMESA, which is the Congressional response to the crisis by establishing a fiscal oversight board[xv]. The primary role of this board is to oversee the finances of the island and make sure that all measures are taken, including austerity policies and privatization, in order to pay back the bondholders. In other words, this board is the epitome of the colonial status and lack of democracy in which Puerto Ricans are living today.

Fortunately, in the four months that have passed since hurricane Maria, several services affected by the storm are functioning at full capacity. For example, 97.5 percent of the communication systems are running, all major hospitals are providing services, and 88 percent of gas stations are fully operating. However, there is still a long way towards a full restoration, requiring a complete concentration of efforts and mobilizing resources of the government to rebuild the country before the new hurricane season begins, which is only five months away.

*Jehivian Alexis Hernandez, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Kirwin Shaffer, Senior Research Fellow, and Jasmin Chicas and Alexandra Gale, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[i] Ivelisse Rivera Quiñones, ‘Colapso Total del Sistema de la AEE en Puerto Rico’, El Nuevo Dia, September 20, 2016, https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/colapsototaldelsistemadelaaeeenpuertorico-2243468/

[ii] Status Puerto Rico, http://status.pr ; ‘Se Pierden 31,600 Puestos de Trabajo, Tras el Impacto de Maria’ Metro, November 17, 2017, https://www.metro.pr/pr/noticias/2017/11/17/fuerte-impacto-irma-maria-estadisticas-empleo.html

[iii] ‘Cierre de Comercios y Desempleo Como Resultado de María’, Noticel, Novemeber 14, 2017, http://www.noticel.com/economia/cierre-de-comercios-y-desempleo-como-resultado-de-mara/656312628

[iv] Miguel Rivera Puig, ‘Protestan por Falta de Energía Eléctrica en Puerto Nuevo’, November 19, 2017, http://www.elvocero.com/actualidad/protestan-por-falta-de-energ-a-el-ctrica-en-puerto/article_b674d992-cd48-11e7-a3f4-9bb56898e610.html

[v] Gloria Ruiz Kuilan, ‘El Gobierno No Uso Su Plan Catastrófico’, El Nuevo Día, November 15, 2017, https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/politica/nota/elgobiernonousosuplancatastrofico-2374492/

[vi] Frances Robles, Kenan Davis, Sheri Frank, and Sarah Almukhtar, ‘Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 64. Actual Death May be 1,052’, The New York Times, December 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/08/us/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-death-toll.html?_r=0

[vii] Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, http://periodismoinvestigativo.com

[viii] FEMA’s letter to Gerardo Portela, January 9, 2018, https://www.scribd.com/document/369368797/Carta-de-FEMA-a-Gerardo-Portela#from_embed

[ix] ‘Puerto Rico Moves to Privatize Troubled Power Company,’ The New York Times, January 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/22/world/americas/ap-cb-puerto-rico-privatized-power-.html

[x] ‘Los Ciudadanos Favorecen la Privatización de la AEE’, January 23, 2018, https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/losciudadanosfavorecenlaprivatizaciondelaaee-2392527/

[xi] Lara Merling, ‘Privatization Won’t Fix Puerto Rico’s Broken Power Utility,’ Center For Economic and Policy Research,’ February 1, 2018, http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/privatization-won-t-fix-puerto-rico-s-broken-power-utility

[xii] ‘Hope, Fear as Puerto Rico Moves to Privatize Power Company’, The New York Times, January 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/23/world/americas/ap-cb-puerto-rico-power-company.html

[xiii] Steven Mufson, Jack Gillum, Aaron C. Davis, and Arielis R. Hernandez, ‘Small Montana Firm lands Puerto Rico’s Biggest Contract to Get the Power Back On’, The Washington Post, October 23, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.6fd57fa88a6e

[xiv] ‘Huracan Eleva Nivel Pobreza a Más de la Mitad’, Metro, November 27, 2017, https://www.metro.pr/pr/noticias/2017/11/27/tasa-pobreza-tras-maria-podria-haber-aumentado.html ; [xiv] ‘Desempleo Entre Discapacitados es Cuatro Veces Mayor,’ ˆMetro, https://www.metro.pr/pr/economia/2013/11/29/desempleo-discapacitados-cuatro-veces-mayor.html

[xv] Amanda Albright, ‘Puerto Rico Wants to Stall Creditors. That Went Badly in 1842,’ Bloomberg, January 26, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/puerto-rico-wants-to-stall-creditors-that-went-badly-in-1842

The stability of Oman offers an easier space for India to manoeuvre in.

By Kabir Taneja

The geography of West Asia today is under immense stress, with conflicts visible on most of the boundaries in the region. While on the face of it much of the blame would point towards the Syrian war and the entry of the Islamic State (ISIS) into the jihadist discourse, it is in fact the increasingly confrontational rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran that is spreading a lot of discord around the region’s politics and the fragile sectarian environment that holds these states together.

The sultanate of Oman, the last stop of Prime Minister Modi’s tri-nation trip to the region covering Palestine (with Jordan facilitating the stopover to Ramallah) and UAE before he lands in Muscat, has been conflict-free since the Dhofar Rebellion which lasted from 1963 till 1976, leading to a radical modernisation of the previously downtrodden and impoverished Omani state. Amidst this political kerfuffle, then Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur (who gained his education from Mayo College, Rajputana—India, in the 1920s) was deposed in a coup by his son Qaboos Bin Said al Said with support from the British. Qaboos, as of today, is the longest serving Arab leader.

India’s relations with Oman have been strong, and gradually grown into a strategic partnership with Muscat often playing supporting roles in helping India expand its regional balance act in West Asia. Prior to Modi, four Indian Prime Ministers have visited Oman. Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have laid down a strong tradition of bilateral relations between the two states at the highest levels. However, Oman’s importance to India may become more critical than before as the Indian Ocean region develops further as a hotspot over the larger narrative of attempts to understand and react to China’s rise as a revisionist global power, America’s gradual but visible rescind as the sole hegemonic superpower and India’s ambitions to become a global power in the decades to come.

The Indian Ocean region has always been seen as India’s zone of influence, an exclusivity expected to be maintained by New Delhi as part of its overall strategic posture, despite the lack of grand-strategy goals. This has come to a challenge, with Chinese financial and political influence increasing in the region setting up base for increased international military activities in the future, India’s outreach in West Asia on the security front has also seen some steadfast movement from the Indian Air Force Sukhoi 30s making a first ever stopover in Saudi Arabia in 2015 to regular port calls by the Indian Navy at various critical ports in the region.

The stability of Oman offers an easier space for India to manoeuvre in. The Indian Navy conducted its eleventh bilateral military exercise with Muscat in December last year, where India deployed its new state-of-the-art P-8I long-range reconnaissance aircraft along with the Talwar-class frigates INS Trikand and INS Teg. This exercise has been a fixture of India-Oman outreach since 1993. Subsequently frequent bilateral visits from the defence and diplomacy circuits between the two countries have cemented strong ties and laid groundwork for future challenges as well, such as cyber security and counterterrorism.

India and Oman have previously also worked together with New Delhi’s relations with Iran, specifically during the peak period of sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme and attempts to setup an undersea LNG pipeline between India, Oman and Iran. The pipeline was envisaged to originate in Iran and crossing over to Oman in order to skirt at least some of the sanctions related problems, mainly those of financial transfers. Further, a recent report on Indian interests in setting up military presence in Oman as part of a larger deal with France for the Indian Ocean region has added potential for an all new dynamic to the relationship. This comes, again, in the backdrop of Beijing’s full control of Gwadar port in Pakistan, with new reports suggesting a second base in Jiwani also under consideration, along with its operationalisation of its first overseas permanent naval base in Djibouti. While China maintains the Djibouti facility is a ‘logistics facility’, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) conducted a live-fire exercise with heavy weaponry only a few days after the base gained operational status.

While these interests may spur India’s strategic linkage with Oman at a faster pace than before, it is relevant to note that this oasis of peace in the region also has its own challenges. Sultan Qaboos, the leader of 47 years, has the responsibility of installing a succession programme that will continue the country’s regionally uncharacteristic neutral nature after his reign, and protect Oman from slumping into becoming a protectorate of either Saudi Arabia or Iran. Even as a member of the GCC, much to Saudi displeasure, Oman refused to entertain calls for a military alliance by Riyadh in Yemen, calling itself a country of peace with war being against its ideals. The question of a post-Qaboos Oman, pushed by concerns over the sultan’s health with him remaining out of country for treatment and making TV appearances to dispel rumors of his death last year, while looking frail, has had no answer as of yet. The current climate in West Asia and the escalated stakes of the Saudi-Iran battle for regional supremacy has seen Oman already being blamed by various interest groups on both supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen and simultaneous supporting Saudi interests. While maintaining such a ‘Switzerland-syndrome’ in West Asia has been managed well by Qaboos, with public support, increasing fractures around the country’s geography requires a strong and well executed political transfer to make sure Oman does not fall to become another front in Riyadh-Tehran sectarian Olympics.

Strong relations, both economic and strategic, work in favour of both Muscat and New Delhi. India’s balancing act in the region is not too dissimilar from Oman, which is conducting the same whilst not just being in middle of the storm, but also a part of it. Demographic, economic and defence cooperation between the two countries aids India’s approach towards West Asia significantly, adding positive weight to New Delhi’s global ambitions and more narrowly, renewed aims in the Indian Ocean region.

Reluctance to Chinese investments in Spain may grow if the its volume increases significantly and begins to penetrate more “strategic” or high-tech sectors.

By Mario Esteban and Miguel Otero-Iglesias*

As in many other European countries, Chinese investments in Spain have increased spectacularly over that past years. Nonetheless, there has not been a public or political debate around the topic, and even less a thorough reflection by the government, the media and the academic community at large about the implications of these investments. One reason for the lack of interest in this topic is that, until 2016, the stock of Chinese investments was rather low and there have been no major acquisitions in strategically sensitive sectors. However, this could change in the years to come, considering what is happening in neighboring countries and the intensification and diversification of Chinese investments in Spain in the past few years.

Overall, for the moment, the perception of the Spanish government, the public administration at large and the media regarding Chinese investments is broadly positive. This contrasts with the view of Spanish public opinion, which looks with more suspicion on the capital coming from China than from other sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) such as the US, France, Germany, and even Japan.

Analysis

A late and modest destination for Chinese investment

Up to 2008, Spain received hardly any Chinese investment. In the last eight years, however, the total volume of Chinese direct investment flows to Spain has mounted to EUR 4 billion, according to the Ministry of Economics of Spain, and EUR 3 billion if one takes the figures provided by the Rhodium Group.¹Two factors mainly explain this discrepancy: investment in real estate by individual investors and in the energy sector by China Three Gorges through Energias de Portugal (EDP) and by Gingko Tree Investment in Madrileña Red de Gas through an international consortium.²Either way, this is quite a modest figure compared with the EUR 10 billion of assets that Chinese firms have acquired from Spanish companies in Latin America.3

The amount of Chinese investment in Spain is quite ordinary also when compared with Chinese investment in other European countries and with the foreign direct investment received by Spain from other countries. According to the Rhodium Group figures, Spain is the ninth most important target country for Chinese direct investments in Europe, and the statistics offered by the Spanish Ministry of Economics make China the tenth largest investor in Spain, with a 2.65 percent share of Spain´s stock of inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) as of 31 December 2015.

This means that, although Spain is the fourth largest economy in the Eurozone, and the seventh country in the EU by stock of IFDI, it is not one of the priority destinations for Chinese investors in Europe – so far.

Looking at the investment trend, caution is advised of making too much of the massive spike in Chinese investment in Spain in 2016 (see figure below), since the purchase of Urbaser (a branch of the infrastructure giant ACS specialized in environmental services) by China Tianying for EUR 1.2 – 1.4 billion accounts for ¾ of total Chinese direct investment in Spain for that year. This single operation also distorts the industry breakdown for Chinese investment in Spain.

Unlike in other Southern European countries, Beijing did not purchase any strategic assets in Spain during the Eurozone debt crisis.⁴ Nevertheless, State Grid did attempt to buy the electric company Red Eléctrica de España, Fosun was after the public insurance firm CESCE, specialised in corporate risk, and the China Investment Corporation showed an interest in Repsol (energy), Canal de Isabel II (water), and the above-mentioned Red Eléctrica.

At the same time, one needs to note that, indirectly, China has already penetrated the strategically important energy market of Spain. By buying Energias de Portugal (EDP) in 2011, the Chinese state-owned company China Three Gorges became the main shareholder of EDP Spain and invested the sizable sum of EUR 600 million in EDP Spain from 2012 to 2016. Moreover, Gingko Tree Investment acquired for EUR 714 million a 35 percent share of Madrileña Red de Gas in 2015, which was sold to an international consortium formed by Gingko Tree, the Dutch pension fund PGGM, and the French electricity group EDF (see table below). In June 2017, however, EDP sold its gas distribution business in Spain to an international consortium for EUR 2.6 billion, which essentially means that China Three Gorges now only operates a Spanish electricity distribution business through a company called EDP HC Energia. Hence, the presence of Chinese actors in the Spanish energy market is still rather small.

Other sectors that have attracted significant amounts of Chinese money are the real estate and hospitality sector, with EUR 900 million – the most significant acquisitions being the EUR 367 million invested in the NH Hotel Group by the HNA Group (2013), the EUR 265 million investment by Wanda Group in the skyscraper Edificio España (2014), the EUR 50 million sale of Hotel Santiago in Tenerife to Chongqing Kangde Industrial (2015)and the EUR 48 million that the Jiangsu Group paid for Hotel Valparaiso in Palma de Mallorca (2014).

A large amount of Chinese money has also arrived in Spain through the Golden Visa program, which grants permanent residency to foreign investors who buy real estate assets for EUR 500,000 or more. Indeed, the official figures for this program show that one-third of the golden visas issued by the Spanish authorities have gone to 702 Chinese investors who have spent a total of EUR 489 million.

Apart from infrastructure and real estate and hospitality, other important sectors include agriculture products and food and beverages, which received around EUR 525 million according to the Rhodium Group. In the European context, agriculture in Spain is a comparatively important target for Chinese investors. Chinese companies are interested in the reputation and production techniques of Spanish food companies, since Chinese consumers are spending increasing amounts on food products due to their rising purchasing power and to food safety concerns. Among the biggest acquisitions in this field are the purchase of Miquel Alimentació by Bright Food; Hijos de Albo by Shanghai Kaichuang (for EUR 61 million); 75 percent of the winery Marqués de Atrio by Changyu Pioneer Wine (for EUR 35 million) and 20 percent of the giant Osborne by Fosun.

Another sector that attracts a considerable amount of Chinese investment is soccer. Three La Liga clubs have Chinese shareholders. Espanyol and Granada were purchased by Rastar Group and Desport, respectively, while Wanda Group is now in possession of  20 percent of the shares of Atlético Madrid, one of the biggest teams in Spain and Europe. In total, Chinese investment in Spanish football amounts to EUR 281 million so far.

Finally, although the technology sector has not been targeted by Chinese investors as much as in other countries, it is significant that the two biggest acquisitions in this sector happened in 2016: Aritex and Eptisa, two engineering firms, were bought by AVIC and JSTI for EUR 110 million and 16 million, respectively.

Is Chinese investment well received in Spain?

There is a clear difference between the perceptions and attitudes towards Chinese investments by the government and the media, and by the public opinion at large. Both the governments of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE), in power from 2004 until 2011, and the center-right Popular Party (PP), in power now, have tried to attract Chinese investments, especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008. From the Spanish government’s point of view, when it comes to Chinese investments in Spain the attitude is: “the more investment, the better”.

With this purpose in mind, the Spanish government has developed a series of concrete actions. For example, during every visit of senior Spanish officials to China, apart from seeing their Chinese counterparts, there is also a meeting with potential Chinese investors interested in Spain. Consistent with this strategy is also the fact that, according to the Spanish trade promotion office, ICEX, between 2014 and 2016 China is the place where Spanish officials have given the most briefings on Spain’s Golden Visa program. This promotion of Spanish assets for Chinese investors also applies to the technology sector. ICEX has organized commercial missions of Spanish aerospace companies to contact with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and that facilitated the acquisition of ARITEX by ARIC (see table above).

Although the government has not undertaken a thorough and exhaustive analysis of all Chinese investments in Spain, the general feeling in the administration is that with the 126 Chinese firms that are based in the country, the experience so far has been positive or even very positive. This is particularly true with firms that have generated an important amount of jobs⁵ or have helped Spanish firms to penetrate the Chinese market in the fields of agriculture, food and beverages, and distribution.

By contrast, there are a few, but well-known negative cases, such as the purchase of the Edificio España skyscraper by Wanda Group, which was not able to get its renovation project approved by the City Council in Madrid and eventually sold the building to a Spanish group. Another example is the dismissal from the board of the NH Hotel Group of two HNA Group executives, despite HNA being the largest shareholder, due to a conflict of interest once this Chinese company purchased Carlson Hotels. In addition, the opening of an ICBC office in Madrid has also been problematic due to its alleged involvement in illicit activities, such as money laundering. A Spanish court is investigating this issue involving not only ICBC Spain, but also ICBC Luxembourg, ICBC´s European unit. These cases have damaged the image of Spain as a destination of Chinese direct investment, and also the image of Chinese investment in Spain.

Other significant divestments by Chinese companies in Spain, such as the sales of Campofrío, Naturgas Energía, or a 20 percent stake in the Osborne Group by WH Group Limited, China Three Gorges, and Fosun respectively, do not necessarily imply a negative assessment by these Chinese firms of their experience in Spain, but should be understood in a wider framework of corporate strategy.

Despite these negative experiences, the Spanish media share the Spanish authorities’ generally positive assessment on Chinese investment. A content analysis of news published on this topic from 2013 to 2016 by eight important newspapers in Spain, shows that the attitudes towards Chinese investments are similar in the media as in government. Usually, the coverage is positive (this is the case for ABC, Cinco Días, El País and La Vanguardia), moderately positive (for El Mundo and Expansión) or neutral (which is the case for La Voz de Galicia and Público). In other words, none of the most-read newspapers with national coverage, nor the two most circulated economic newspapers in Spain, have a hostile attitude towards Chinese investments.

On the one side are two most cited arguments in favor of Chinese investments. First is the complimentarity between the availability of Chinese capital and the financial needs of Spanish firms, particularly during the Eurozone crisis. Second are the synergies that potentailly emerge when the Chinese partner facilitates access to the Chinese consumer market. On the other side, concerns expressed usually focus on the lack of knowledge that the Chinese investors have of the Spanish legal system and the lack of transparency in their firms.

However, despite the strong consensus in favor of Chinese investments that exists among government and media actors, Spanish public opinion has a different view. A poll conducted by the Elcano Royal Institute⁶in 2015 shows that most Spanish citizens perceive Chinese investment with hesitation, especially when compared with investment from other countries such as Germany, the United States and France. In order to capture the perceptions of the Spanish public, the poll asked the participants to respond to the following question:

Spain receives investments from different countries. Arguably, it is better for Spain to increase the investment that it receives from a number of countries and reduce that coming from others. In your view, from which countries should Spain receive more investment and from which less?

The results were the following:

As can be observed, Spaniards are generally in favor of inward foreign direct investment, especially if it comes from Germany, the United States and France. However, the attitude is different vis-à-vis China. One quarter of those interviewed think that China’s investments in Spain should be reduced. This is a striking figure given that the country that generates the second most negative sentiment, Japan, was only viewed as such by 9 percent of interviewees.

These numbers are more easily understood when one looks to another survey, also conducted by the Elcano Royal Institute7 which shows that a large percentage of Spaniards (concretely 34 percent) believe that China is the biggest investor in Spain, while only 17 percent think it is Germany, 10 percent France and 8 percent the United States. In reality, China is only the tenth biggest investor in Spain.

What then explains this desire for proportionally less Chinese investment? This is not about people just focusing on recent IFDI flows, since China has never been one of the five main origins of Spain´s IFDI and is far behind the flows from many OECD countries. More research needs to be done on this topic, but two plausible explanations are that companies from non-OECD countries generate less trust in Spain than OECD companies; and the envy and rejection generated in some sectors of the Spanish society by the economic success of the Chinese community in the context of the deep economic crisis that the country has gone through from 2009 until 2014.

What is Spain’s position regarding Chinese investments in Europe?

At the moment, the European Commission is focused on two aspects when it comes to Chinese investments in Europe. One is the negotiation of a bilateral investment agreement, and the other is the implementation of an IFDI screening mechanism for strategic sectors on the grounds of security and public order. On these matters, the position of Spain is as follows. On the one hand, Spain is in favor of an investment agreement that would facilitate greater access of European service industries to the Chinese market. This emphasis on market access is no surprise given the weight of the services sector in the Spanish economy. Spanish banking and telecommunication firms, for example, are confronted with many restrictions to penetrate the Chinese market.

Regarding the IFDI screening mechanism, Spain is not as worried as the countries that signed the February 2017 petition to the European Commission (Germany, France and Italy) about the strategic implications of Chinese investments in Spanish companies. First, Spain already has a working screening mechanism for IFDI. Second, Chinese investment on Spanish technological firms and critical infrastructure is quite limited. Besides that, Spain is satisfied with the idea to allow the Commission to give a recommendation, but not make a binding decision. The final word should remain with the member state receiving the investment, since the Spanish authorities do not want this mechanism to behave as an undercover protectionist mechanism in the hands of the Commission.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that this laid-back attitude will continue in the future. Most probably, the worries will increase as Chinese investors buy more high-tech, infrastructure and energy firms. This has already happened in 2016 with the acquisitions of Aritex and Eptisa (see above) and also the purchase by COSCO of a 51 percent stake of Noatum, the biggest Spanish port terminal operator.

Conclusions

Chinese direct investment in Spain has arrived later and in lesser volumes compared to other European countries. However, it is very likely that it will increase in the near future, especially if we consider the trend in the past few years and the business opportunities that exist in Spain in sectors such as agriculture products, food and beverages, real estate, tourism, manufacturing, engineering, and logistics.

In contrast to Spanish public opinion, which is generally reluctant to see more Chinese investments, the Spanish elites, in government, business and the media, are welcoming Chinese capital and tend to highlight the positive aspects that it brings. However, reluctance may grow if the volume of Chinese investments increases significantly and begins to penetrate more “strategic” or high-tech sectors. So far, when it comes to large scale operations in strategic sectors, the Spanish government has not been supportive of Chinese companies becoming the sole owner of large Spanish firms.

This text first appeared in the report “Chinese Investment in Europe: A Country-Level Approach” by the European Think-tank Network on China (ETNC)

*About the authors:
Mario Esteban, Senior analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @wizma9

Miguel Otero-Iglesias, Senior analyst, Elcano Royal Institute< | @miotei

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.

Notes:
1. In this chapter, we will use both the data from the Ministry of the Economy of Spain and those from the Rhodium Group.

2. On the contrary, Rhodium groups reports much more Chinese investment in agriculture and food than the Spanish Ministry of Economy. The frequent reports of Chinese investment in this sector that finally do not materialize could explain this discrepancy.

3. Mario Esteban (ed.), China in Latin America: Repercussions for Spain, Madrid: Elcano Royal Institute, 2015, p. 55-59.

4. Although China has not bought strategic assets in Spain during the Eurozone crisis, as in other Southern European countries, it bought a sizable amount of public debt. See Miguel Otero-Iglesias, “The Euro for China: Too Big to Fail and Too Hard to Rescue”, ARI, Real Instituto Elcano, 13 October 2014; Miguel Otero-Iglesias, “How Much Spanish Debt Does China Hold?”, Real Instituto Elcano, 17 December 2014.

5. The Ministry of the Economy of Spain claims that total Chinese direct investment in Spain generates only 2,661 direct jobs (1,000 by Huawei), while Spanish direct investment in China generates 30,674.

6. 37 Barometer of the Elcano Royal Institute. The representative survey by the Elcano Royal Institute consisted of 1,003 interviews conducted by phone across the country and was undertaken in November 2015.

7. 34 Barometer of the Elcano Royal Institute. This survey was undertaken in November-December 2013.

Is it not ironic that two very similar insurgencies have simultaneously been going on in Pakistan for the last several years: the Baloch insurgency in the Balochistan province and the insurgency of the Pashtun tribesmen in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering the US-occupied Afghanistan.

While the Pakistani neoliberal elites fully sympathize with the oppressed Baloch nationalists, when it comes to the Pashtun tribesmen, they are willing to give Pakistan’s security agencies a license to kill, why? It’s simply because the tribal Pashtun insurgents use the veneer of religion to justify their tribal instinct of retribution.

The name Islam, however, is such an anathema to the core neoliberal sensibilities that the elites don’t even bother to delve deeper into the causes of insurgency and summarily decide that since the Pashtun tribesmen are using the odious label of the Taliban, therefore they are not worthy of their sympathies, and as a result, the security establishment gets a carte blanche to indiscriminately bomb the towns and villages of the Pashtun tribesmen.

As well-informed readers must be aware that military operations have been going on in the tribal areas of Pakistan since 2009; but a military operation – unlike law enforcement or Rangers operation, as in Karachi – is a different kind of operation; it’s an all-out war.

The army surrounds the insurgency-wracked area from all sides and orders the villagers to vacate their homes. Then the army calls in air force and heavy artillery to carpet bomb the whole area; after which ground troops move in to look for dead and injured in the rubble of towns and villages.

Air force bombardment and heavy artillery shelling has been going on in the tribal areas of Pakistan for several years; Pashtun tribesmen have been taking fire; their homes, property and livelihoods have been destroyed; they have lost their families and children in this brutal war, which has displaced millions of tribesmen who have been rotting in the refugee camps in Peshawar, Mardan and Bannu districts since 2009, after the Swat and South Waziristan military operations.

I have knowingly used the word ‘Pashtun tribesmen’ instead of ‘Taliban’ here, because this phenomena of revenge has more to do with tribal culture than religion, per se. In the lawless tribal areas, the tribesmen don’t have courts and police to settle disputes and enforce justice; justice is dispensed by tribes themselves; the clans, families and relatives of slain victims seek revenge, which is the fundamental axiom of their tribal ‘jurisprudence.’

It’s worth noting here that there are three distinct categories of militants operating in Pakistan: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uighur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

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

Notwithstanding, the Pashtuns are the most unfortunate nation on the planet nowadays, because nobody understands and represents them; not even their own leadership, whether religious or ethnic. In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are represented by Washington’s stooges, like Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, and in Pakistan, the Pashtun nationalist party, the Awami National Party (ANP), loves to play the victim card and finds solace in learned helplessness.

In Pakistan, however, the Pashtuns are no longer represented by a single political entity, a fact which became obvious after the 2013 parliamentary elections in which the Pashtun nationalist ANP was wiped out of its former strongholds.

Now, there are at least three distinct categories of Pashtuns: firstly, the Pashtun nationalists who follow Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s legacy and have their strongholds in Charsadda and Mardan districts; secondly, the religiously inclined Islamist Pashtuns who vote for Islamist political parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and thirdly, the emerging new phenomena, the Pakistan nationalist Pashtuns, most of whom have joined Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in recent years, though some have also joined Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League.

It would be pertinent to mention here that the general elections of 2013 were contested on a single issue: Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror, which has displaced millions of Pashtun tribesmen. The Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party was routed, because in keeping with its supposedly “liberal interventionist” ideology, it stood for military operations against Islamist Pashtun militants in tribal areas; and the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province gave a sweeping mandate to the newcomer in the Pakistani political landscape: Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, because the latter promised to deal with tribal militants through negotiations and political settlements.

Although both Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif failed to keep their election pledge of using peaceful means for dealing with the menace of religious extremism and militancy, the public sentiment has been firmly against military operations in tribal areas. The 2013 parliamentary elections were, in a way, a referendum against Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror in the Af-Pak region, and the Pashtun electorate gave a sweeping mandate to pro-peace political parties against the pro-war Pakistan People’s Party and Awami National Party.

In a new study, University of Utah geographers sought to understand the factors fueling hate across space. Their findings paint a rather grim reality of America; hate is a national phenomenon, and more complicated than they imagined.

The researchers mapped the patterns of active hate groups in every U.S. county in the year 2014, and analyzed their potential socioeconomic and ideological drivers.

They found that in all U.S. regions, less education, population change, and ethnic diversity correlated with more hate groups, as did areas with higher poverty rates and more conservative political affiliation. The magnitude of the drivers had regional differences, however. The regional variation of the proposed drivers of hate may be a result of diverse ethnic and cultural histories. One surprising finding is that the geographical region seemed to determine whether religion has a positive or negative relative effect on the number of hate groups for the county.

The U geographers assert that organized hate is motivated by the desire to protect a place from the perceived threats that ‘outsiders’ pose to identity and socioeconomic security. The contemporary expression, ‘hate,’ is shaped by the intermingling histories and present-day conditions of a place.

“There is a lot of uncertainty in the country today, and a lot of change. For those involved in hate group activities, they see their actions as a way to secure the future of their people. Unfortunately, that fear turns to hate, and in the worst case, violence,” said Richard Medina, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the U, and senior author of the study.

“Hate is a geographic problem. The ways people hate are based on the cultures, histories, ethnicities and many other factors dependent on place and place perception.”

The study published online in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

A grim reality

“When thinking about hate and place, it really boils down to thinking about identity,” said Emily Nicolosi, co-author and doctoral student at the U. “Some people have strong feelings about who belongs, and who doesn’t belong in ‘their’ place. When they see people coming in that they think don’t belong, their very identity feels threatened.”

A hate group is an organized group or ideology with beliefs or practices that malign an entire class of people due to their immutable characteristics, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Whether it be their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation, a hate group expresses prejudice against people with a particular identity. Though hate has always existed, 2016 saw a near-high in the number of hate groups in the United States, according to the SPLC. There is still much to learn about how Americans hate, and why.

The researchers mapped active hate groups for every U.S. county using the SPLC database from 2014. They compared the relationships between these groups with the county’s socioeconomic factors, meant to represent diversity, poverty, education level and population stability, and ideological factors, represented as religion and degree of conservativism.

“People hate for different reasons because U.S. regions have different situations and histories. For example, the Northeast is a place of power that may be seen as elitist and well-educated. Is there still hate? Yes. Some of the reasons people hate there are different than in the South, where there’s a different history of the Confederacy, of discrimination, and so on,” said Nicolosi.

While this is not the first study to quantify hate groups at the county level, it is one of the first to look more regionally and analyze variations in space explicitly. Previous research has focused on why people hate, but all populations are typically analyzed together in a national model. Until now, the drivers of hate have never been differentiated for specific places.

What’s next?

Medina and Nicolosi want to analyze the differences between different types of hate groups, and whether hate groups are linked to violent behavior.

“First and foremost, I want our paper to help people understand how much we don’t know about hate–hate is not a uniform phenomenon. Hopefully this study motivates people to start asking more questions, especially right now,” said Medina. “We have a long way to go before we really understand the drivers and patterns of hate in this country.”

By Benjamin Fox

(EurActiv) — The UK faces “unavoidable” checks at the Northern Irish border if it decides to leave the EU’s single market and customs union, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator warned on Friday (9 February), after the latest round of talks on the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc.

Addressing reporters at a press conference, following a week of talks in London and Brussels, Michel Barnier insisted that “any solution (to avoid a hard border) must be precise, clear and unambiguous”.

“It is important to tell the truth. A UK departure from the single market and customs union would make border-checks unavoidable,” he said.

The question of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic remains one of the most vexed questions in the Brexit process, with both sides anxious not to break the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal struck between London, Dublin and Belfast in 1998.

“If the UK sticks to its position of leaving the single market and the customs union…we will do all that we can to ensure that there is no hard border in Ireland,” said Barnier.

The talks between senior EU and UK officials are the first significant negotiations since the agreement of a Joint Report in December, which laid the basis for a pact on a €39 billion divorce settlement and a transition period during which the UK will retain access to the single market.

On Thursday evening, Brexit Secretary David Davis accused the EU of showing ‘bad faith’ over a proposal which suggested that the EU could impose sanctions on the UK during the transition if it breached or failed to implement EU rules.

However, Barnier insisted that “there is no wish whatsoever to punish.”

“We want to do this in a serious and effective way,” he added.

Two meetings of Theresa May’s ‘Brexit cabinet’ of ten senior ministers broke up on Thursday without a final agreement on what the government’s negotiating position will be when talks on post-Brexit relations begin.

Davis wants the transition period, which is expected to last for between 21 and 24 months, to be concluded ahead of a European Council summit on 22 March.

However, Barnier warned that Davis had “laid out a series of disagreements that I regard as substantive.”

Chief among these are the UK’s intention not to extend a deal on citizens’ rights to EU nationals who arrive during the transition period. The May government also wants a right of objection to any new EU rules or laws that would enter into force after the transition period, and to have the right to opt-in to EU policies on justice and home affairs.

“To be frank, I am surprised by these disagreements,” said Barnier, cautioning that “if these disagreements persist, then the transition is not a given.”

“Time is short and we haven’t a minute to lose if we want to succeed…in this orderly withdrawal.”

That warning, which if fulfilled would lead to the UK losing access to the single market after March 2019, prompted an immediate slide in sterling’s value against the euro and dollar.

Overtly racially motivated rhetoric is becoming increasingly acceptable in Republican politics in the US. Two Italian researchers now argue that this can partly be traced back to the conservative Tea Party movement which has reshaped the Republican party’s identity away from its traditional conservative axioms to one that is more nativist and racially tinged. Luigi Leone and Fabio Presaghi from the Sapienza University of Rome have published their findings in Springer’s journal Race and Social Problems.

The Tea Party movement’s name refers to the 1773 Boston Tea Party, when demonstrations against taxes imposed on colonists by the British government launched the American Revolution. The modern-day Tea Party began in 2009 in opposition to the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan of former President Barack Obama, and the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). Various Tea Party organizations rapidly made their mark in the Republican Senate and House primaries, and subsequent midterm elections.

Leone and Presaghi investigated the influence of the Tea Party on current US political discussions by analysing data collected from 3495 white respondents who took part in the 2012 survey of the American National Election Studies. The researchers found that people who supported the Tea Party were more likely to feel resentment against races other than their own, and – more importantly – that those supporting the Tea Party relied more strongly on their racial resentment in evaluating Obama.

“The interaction we found between racial resentment and support for the Tea Party could reflect how tolerance for overtly racially motivated rhetoric increases the role of racial animus in shaping attitudes,” said Leone.

The researchers contend that the form of overtly racialized political language used by Trump is not unexpected.

“This type of language was tested by the Tea Party as a new way of reintroducing into mainstream political discourse overtly racialized political meanings,” explained Leone.

“Racial resentment and racially motivated political discourse have become less disturbing as an after effect of Tea Party rhetoric and Trump’s communication strategy,” added Presaghi. “The tense racialization of several political topics under the Trump presidency is a legacy of the Tea Party’s ability to make racially hostile content in political communication acceptable to a large number of white Americans.”

The prevalence of obesity has risen dramatically in the U.S., but there has been little information about the economic impact of this trend for individual states.

Recent research by John Cawley, professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, provides new insights on how individual states are affected by the health care costs of obesity.

“We have, for the first time, estimated the percentage of health care spending that is devoted to obesity, using microdata for each state,” said Cawley, who co-authored “The Impact of Obesity on Medical Costs and Labor Market Outcomes in the U.S.” with Adam Biener of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University.

Large differences exist across states, Cawley said. “In 2015, states such as Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania devoted five to six percent of their total medical expenditures to treating obesity-related illness, whereas North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin spent more than twice that – over 12 percent of all health care dollars in those states were used to treat obesity-related illness.”

Overall, the authors found the percent of U.S. national medical expenditures devoted to treating obesity-related illness in adults rose from 6.13 percent in 2001 to 7.91 percent in 2015, an increase of 29 percent.

The publication reports results by payer type, including private health insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. “Once again, we find dramatic differences across states in the fraction of Medicaid spending that is devoted to obesity-related illness,” Cawley said. “For example, over 2001-15, Kentucky and Wisconsin devoted over 20 percent of their Medicaid spending to obesity-related illness. In contrast, in New York, 10.9 percent of Medicaid spending was devoted to obesity-related illness, and the average for the U.S. as a whole was 8.23 percent during that period.”

By analyzing data for 2001-15 from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey of Americans’ health care utilization and costs, the authors estimated the percent of health care costs that were associated with adult obesity for the most populous states.

Estimates could not be generated for less populous states because of a scarcity of information about their residents in the data. Previous estimates of the health care costs of obesity by state were not based on microdata for each state but on assumptions about how national costs should be apportioned to different states.

These differences across states are driven by a number of factors, such as differences in obesity prevalence, health care access by obese individuals, how obesity is treated and prices of health care, Cawley said.

No other world leader is more demonized and slandered by the Western media than the Russian President Vladimir Putin. All the major US media outlets and corporations caricature one of the most rational and thoughtful leaders on the international stage.

Compared to Donald Trump, Theresa May, and Emanuel Macron, not to speak of the most overrated Angela Merkel, Putin has a vision of the role of the nation-state in international politics. He can be called the Russian Bismarck. The closest to him, what the role and importance of the nation-state are concerned, is President Trump.

At least, there is still one US voice of reason what Russia and Putin are concerned. Professor Stephen F. Cohen, the best expert on Russia in the whole United States, strikes a blow for Putin with excellent, rational and thoughtful arguments. He contrasts sharply with the created “Russiagate” and Russophobic hysteria, which, up till now, are rumors. So far, there hasn’t been any shown evidence of so-called Russian hacking or Russian collusion, not by the 17 US Intelligence Agencies. Not to speak of the Clinton/Obama mafia that invented this whole myth with the FBI, DOJ, the Intel community, especially Clapper and Brannan, and the other subordinate crooks in the Obama administration. Without Obama’s knowledge and approval, this conspiracy against a newly elected US President could have never taken place.

Without the massive propagandistic support of the mainstream media in the US, the UK, and Australia, not to speak of their scribblers in Western Europe, especially in Germany, this anti-Russian propaganda would have failed. Even more important are people such as Stephen F. Cohen, a voice in the wilderness. Whether the major propaganda outlets such as CNN, MSNBC or the BBC will listen, can be doubted. Too much for their reputation is at stake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1697&v=wOH_VF9hWnA

By S. Vipulananda

The main US military base in the Middle East has been put on high alert after an Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down over Syria on Saturday, high-ranking sources told Arab News.

Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar is the forward HQ of US Central Command and a major US air base, with more than 11,000 US and US-led coalition troops and more than 100 aircraft.

“Israel is our closest security partner in the region and we fully support Israel’s inherent right to defend itself against threats to its territory and its people,” Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway said.

Israel struck what it said were Iranian targets inside Syria in large-scale raids on Saturday after it shot down an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace. The F-16 was returning from one of the raids when it crashed under fire from Syrian air defenses.

Saturday’s confrontation was the most serious between Israel and Iran since the civil war in Syria began in 2011.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry called for restraint from all parties, and said it was “unacceptable to create threats to the lives and security of Russian soldiers” in Syria.Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus warned that Syria and Iran were “playing with fire,” but said his country was not seeking an escalation. “This is the most blatant and severe Iranian violation of Israeli sovereignty in the last years,” Conricus said.

Saturday’s chain of events began at 4:30 a.m. (0230 GMT) when an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down an Iranian drone over the northern town of Beit Shean. The drone had been sighted taking off from a base in Syria, and was intercepted after it crossed into Israeli territory, Conricus said.

Israeli planes then struck an Iranian installation in Syria from which the drone had been operated.

The Israeli military released grainy black and white footage of what it said was the drone’s control vehicle in Syria being destroyed. The F-16 crashed on its return from the mission, and came down in an empty field near Harduf, east of Haifa.

The pro-Assad military alliance said Israel had attacked a drone base in central Syria but denied any of its drones had entered Israeli air space. Iran rejected the Israeli version of events as “ridiculous” and said Syria has the right to self-defense in response to Israeli strikes.

Lebanon protested against Israel’s use of its airspace to target Syria, and said it would complain to the UN Security Council. Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry urged concerned countries to “rein in” Israel.

Israel called on the council to denounce Iran’s dispatching of a drone into Israeli territory.

On the ground in Syria, meanwhile, Assad regime forces were accused by UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein of carrying out “no-holds-barred” military offensives after a spike in violence left hundreds of civilians dead.

Calling for urgent international action to protect civilians, Al-Hussein also slammed what he called an “epic failure of global diplomacy” to end the war.

“The past week has been one of the bloodiest periods of the entire conflict, with wave after wave of deadly airstrikes leading to civilian casualties in areas of Eastern Ghouta and Idlib,” he said.

The condemnation came as a Turkish army helicopter was shot down by Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Unit) militias near the north Syrian town of Afrin and two soldiers on board died.

By Maria Dubovikova*

The effectiveness of sanctions against Russia is debated all over the West. Some acknowledge that they do not work, and say it is time to launch a dialogue instead. Others argue that the sanctions have not achieved any visible results so far because they are insufficient, and they propose new sanctions until Russia cracks under the pressure.

The purpose of the sanctions, those already imposed and those proposed, is to change Russia’s foreign policy. The main targets are Russia’s elites. The calculation of those who support sanctions is that because these elites are close to President Vladimir Putin, putting pressure on them will lead to their putting pressure on Putin to be more flexible.

Their calculations were wrong. The elites are not angry with Putin, they are angry with sanctions.

The imposition of sanctions has boosted internal processes that would hardly even have been launched without significant external pressure. Russian society has consolidated and united, and the Kremlin has used this social wave for its own benefit. Russia has focused on developing its domestic economy, which it was too lazy to do before sanctions. Russians are now working on meeting demand using their own resources.

The military-industrial complex, mostly in ruins after the collapse of the USSR, is now restored and expanding, boosted by external threats.

The latest “Kremlin list” of supposedly influential Russians, produced by the US Treasury at the end of January, was greeted with much sarcasm in Russia (not being included was “grounds for resignation,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev joked).

Nevertheless, it allowed Putin to urge businessmen named on the list to avoid sanctions by repatriating their wealth, which benefits the Kremlin. Capital has been fleeing Russia for a long time since the demise of the Soviet Union, as businessmen implemented tax-avoidance and money-laundering schemes, and sought refuge for their wealth in European and American banks. The new sanctions and the new list will probably drive them out of Europe and the US to Russia again.

European and American banks have launched investigations into the funds and deposits of foreign clients. If the client fails to prove the origin of their money, the bank may limit or even block the client’s transactions, or increase the fees and charges on such transactions. Such restrictions, regardless of whether the client is under sanctions, are making life difficult for Russia’s oligarchs.

Now that Russia has joined the Common Reporting Standard, the global mechanism for the automatic exchange of tax and financial information, it will be easier for Russian authorities to obtain full details of money kept overseas by its citizens. This better enables the Kremlin to restore money that was smuggled abroad. Furthermore, the new regulations will permit Russia to uncover money-laundering, tax fraud, suspicious income and so on. Russia is turning these challenges into opportunities. It is already working hard at encouraging Russian businessmen to return money home, giving them assurances at a high level. These include capital amnesties, which mean that wealthy Russians can freely declare their capital in foreign banks, overseas property and other assets. In return, Russia will not investigate or prosecute their companies. Russia has also issued special bonds to help businessmen to return capital threatened by sanctions.

In many cases these measures are a lifebelt for wealthy Russians already facing tough pressure from Western banking and financial institutions.

What is clear is that sanctions are not going to change the Kremlin’s course, or its way of thinking. The further implementation of sanctions is a risk for the global economy and the countries that impose them, as has already been admitted by financial institutions in Europe and the US. Furthermore, there is a probability that the flight of Russian capital from European and US financial and banking centers will weaken those countries and strengthen the Russian economy.

The truth is that sanctions and aggressive rhetoric from the West have served only to unite Russians in defiance. The most-quoted saying recently is that of Tsar Alexander III: “Russia has only two allies: its army and its fleet.” Russia has recalled its historical role and its national pride, which were trampled in the 1990s.

Aggressive statements from the West, mostly from the US and some minor European states — and rare calls to end the hysteria, mostly from Europe — are widely publicized by Russian state media. The effect on the public consciousness is to divide the world into friend or foe, and to consolidate the people into facing the aggressors.

Sanctions are irrelevant, and will never work against Russia in the way they work against other countries. They take no account of the Russian spirit and mentality. When Napoleon was conquering Europe, the continent’s leaders handed him the keys to their cities. The Russians, however, simply retreated, burning towns and villages behind them, and even gave up Moscow without ever actually surrendering. In the end, the French emperor fled back to Paris, defeated, his “grand army” in tatters.

Western countries have weak advisers on Russia. There is so much hatred that it blocks the capacity to think clearly. And that, literally, threatens the world.

• Maria Dubovikova is a prominent political commentator, researcher and expert on Middle East affairs. She is president of the Moscow-based International Middle Eastern Studies Club (IMESClub).Twitter: @politblogme

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi dismissed as “ridiculous” the Israeli regime’s claim on Saturday that it had intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria.

“The claim about the flight of an Iranian drone and Iran’s involvement in the downing of a Zionist fighter jet is so ridiculous that it does not merit a comment,” Qassemi said on Saturday.

“This is because the Islamic Republic of Iran has advisory presence in Syria at the request of the country’s legitimate and lawful government,” he added.

He further defended the Syrian army’s reaction to Israel, and said, “The government and army of Syria, as an independent country, have a legitimate right to defend (the country’s) territorial integrity and counter any kind of foreign aggression.”

His comments came after reports of downing of an Israeli warplane by the Syrian Arab Army.

An Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down by Syrian military on Saturday while targeting what it called Iranian sites responsible for launching a drone into occupied Golan Heights.

Pro-government military alliance in Syria said in a statement on Saturday that Israel would see a severe and serious response to its “terrorism” from now on.

The statement also said the drones -one of which Israel claims to have shot down- were being used against Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.

US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis departs tomorrow for a trip to reaffirm key partnerships and alliances in Europe.

Mattis will begin his trip Feb. 12-13 in Rome, conducting bilateral meetings with senior officials, including Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti, Pentagon officials said in a statement announcing the trip.

Feb. 14-15, Mattis will be in Brussels to attend 2018’s first conference of NATO defense ministers. He will engage with allies to discuss how to strengthen the alliance and forge new partnerships, ensure that the alliance is fit for its time, and to how to deter or defeat threats NATO faces, officials said.

He then will travel to Stuttgart, Germany, to visit with the leadership and troops of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command during a visit to their respective headquarters Feb. 15-16.

Mattis will conclude his trip Feb. 16-17 in Munich to participate in the 54th Munich Security Conference, where he will discuss current crises and future challenges in European security policy, officials said.

For the last five years, because of Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea, Russians and the world have been treated to numerous articles suggesting that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev betrayed Russia by redrawing the border between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR in order to hand over Crimea to Kyiv.

As a result, the assumption made out of ignorance or convenience by many in the West that republic borders were somehow eternal was shaken but not entirely destroyed despite the fact that they had been changed numerous times during the Soviet period. (See this author’s “Can Republic Borders Be Changed?” RFE/RL Report on the USSR, September 28, 1990.)

Now, at least, some Russians and some citizens of the other post-Soviet states are beginning to focus on the fact that Moscow at various times and for various reasons redrew the borders and thus to raise at least implicitly the question of how just the current borders are or are not – and whether they should be changed.

The latest example of this is in Novyye izvestiya yesterday (newizv.ru/news/society/09-02-2018/ne-tolko-krym-kak-pri-hruschyove-menyali-granitsy-soyuznyh-respublik) based on a blog post by Aleksey Roshchin (sapojnik.livejournal.com/2557930.html) that in turn draws on a Kazakh article on borders in Khrushchev’s time (inkaraganda.kz/articles/108697).

Entitled “Not Only Crimea: How under Khrushchev the Borders of the Union Republics were Changed,” the Novyye izvestiya notes that sociologist Roshchin has found interesting material from Kazakhstan according to which the Soviet leader wanted to transfer Kazakhstan’s Magushlak peninsula into Azerbaijan.

Many mistakenly assume that Khrushchev’s moves on Crimea were “somehow extraordinary.” But that is a mistake: the Soviet leader wanted to take part of Kazakhstan and transfer it to Uzbekistan and transfer another part of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan (or possibly Turkmenistan).

In the mid-1950s, Roshchin says Kazakh sources say, Khrushchev was prepared to make these shifts but was blocked only by the resistance of senior Kazakh officials in general and Zhumabek Tashenev, head of the presidium of the Kazakh SSR Supreme Soviet and then prime minister of that republic.

Tashenev succeeded in convincing a special party-government commission in Moscow that taking these steps would be a mistake; but Khrushchev ignored it and him and in 1956 transferred 418,000 hectares of land from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. But that was far from the end of Nikita Sergeyevich’s plans.

In 1960, he created the Tselina Kray out of Akmolinsk,, Kostanay, Kokshetau, Pavlodar and North Kazakhstan oblasts. According to Roshchin, “the only individual brave enough to speak openly against this was Tashenev who said if Moscow went ahead, Kazakhstan would defend its constitutional rights in international forums.

Not surprisingly, Khrushchev was furious, pointedly saying that “the Soviet Union is a single country and therefore what territories are to be given to whom is a decision of the USSR Supreme Soviet” and no one else. Tashenev still didn’t back down. But Khrushchev got his way – the new kray was disbanded only after he was ousted – and he had Tashenev fired.

With his chief Kazakh opponent out of the way, Khrushchev then decided in 1962 to transfer Kazakhstan’s Mangyshlak peninsula, a major oil-producing region, to Azerbaijan or others say Turkmenistan because both of these republics had long experience in the petroleum business.

That attempt at territorial change was blocked by Aleksey Kosygin, then first deputy chairman of the presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

In 1964, Khrushchev was removed for what his opponents and successors described as “hare-brained scheming.” At least part of that charge was based on his efforts to redraw borders, a matter of history that certainly has some potential contemporary applications.

Tension between the needs of cattle and fish is a source decades of controversy in northeast Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Endangered bull trout, steelhead trout, Chinook salmon, and sockeye salmon require cold, clear water in mountain streams to thrive and reproduce. Cattle need these same streams for water, heat relief, and valuable streamside browse. But grazing cattle can muddy the water and trample eggs. Divisive, sometimes acrimonious, contention over livestock grazing on public lands has smoldered since the listing of salmon and trout species under the Endangered Species Act in the 1990s.

To tackle complex problems like improving the compatibility of cattle and fish, the social and ecological systems of mountains and their river basins must be approached holistically, say ecologists working with the Mountain Social Ecological Observatory Network (MntSEON), a National Science Foundation funded initiative designed to build knowledge networks and foster resiliency in vulnerable mountain communities. Even defining problems to be solved, they argue, requires perspectives from ranching, community, and tribal groups, as well as insight from ecological research.

The Blue Mountains case study is part of an open access special issue on “Social-ecological systems in mountain landscapes” published online in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

“Socioecological Systems Science is the understanding and perspective of people on the landscape. Traditional ecology is focused on everything in the environment except for people–but that’s changing. Landscape ecology is one sub-discipline that has seen the need to change. We need to look at relationships and the dynamic interplay between people, the environment, and ecosystems,” said Andrew Kliskey, a professor at the University of Idaho.

Kliskey co-edited the special issue with his co-director at the University of Idaho’s Center for Resilient Communities, Lilian Alessa, and Jim Gosz, emeritus professor at the University of Idaho.

“When you talk about people and the environment, it gets contentious. You have polarized views. We try to bring together different perspectives. Sometimes that leads you to having to do conflict resolution,” Kliskey said. MtnSEON responded to the need to cope with discord by developing a curriculum for conflict management, which has grown into a popular course for middle managers within federal land management agencies.

The mountain landscapes of the American West are rich in fossil fuels, timber, fish, wildlife, and natural beauty, and host some the largest and most famous national parks, monuments, and protected wilderness. They are home to sizeable communities of Native Americans. Federal agencies govern large tracts of land in a part of the country where human inhabitants have long been few and far apart.

But change is coming with rapidly growing populations and increasing conversions of agricultural land to residential areas. In recent years, popularity with wealthy home buyers from outside these communities has shaken local economies. Booming energy sector speculation, combined with rising demands from growing urban centers and diversions to the Southwest, has put pressure on water sources. Wildfires are larger and more frequent, and warm winters have brought dramatic outbreaks of bark beetles.

Current strategies to protect fish habitat are imposed top-down by the government and present some serious disadvantages for ranchers, while benefits for fish are unclear. To break the deadlock, the MntSEON Blue Mountains working group talked in depth with stakeholders to develop new approaches, outlining potential benefits and barriers. They held meetings and interviews with with permit holders for the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman, and Malheur National Forests, where 70 percent of the land is allocated to grazing allotments, and with the US Forest Service personnel who manage the land, as well as community representatives and university extension agents. From these conversations, ideas like the use of range riders, flexible on and off dates for livestock, and redrawing or sharing across allotment boundaries emerged.

Upland watershed management decisions and economic activity can have outsized consequences for communities and ecosystems downstream. The Blue Mountains are part of the extensive Columbia River Basin, and the survival of salmon and trout is of great concern to the people who make their living from recreation centered on popular fish.

The Columbia is one of the most heavily managed river basins in the world. Its 668,000 square kilometers sprawl over state and international borders between British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. Fifty-six hydroelectric dams span the Columbia, Snake, and other major tributaries in the basin. These barriers, combined with fishing, logging, and the effects of development have pushed several formerly abundant salmon and steelhead stocks to severe decline or disappearance. The US spends more than $1 billion annually on habitat restoration, primarily concentrated on fish.

Though grazing has been a focus for decades, habitat may not be the critical factor currently limiting recovery of these commercially valuable species. Release of hatchery fish, overfishing, and natural migrations stymied by dams may be undermining restoration efforts. The authors discuss the social and economic factors that complicate changes to management practices in the river basin. They revisit past successes, such as a controversial end to trout stocking in Montana in 1974 that succeeded in boosting trout abundance by 213 percent within four years.

“You really can bring together people with polarized views if you do it carefully,” Kliskey said. “But it takes time. You have to listen.”