Next year will be the real turning point for Lithuania from the financial point of view. After gaining the independence Lithuania was significantly supported by the EU.

Brussels helped a young country to grow stronger and decrease its dependence on Russia. Many projects started by the country decades ago were successfully financed from the European funds. Such assistance made possible to develop economy at a very fast rate. Lithuania every year became more and more confident in its capabilities and strongly believed in its European future. EU financial aid helped to start the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant and the building of the Rail Baltica, as well as a lot of other projects.

For example, Brussels has already allocated €1.5 billion as part of the current budget up to 2020 for the Ignalina nuclear power plant. But the process is only half way. Lithuania desperately needs at least the same amount of money to finish the project and be safe.

Though a spokeswoman for the Lithuanian energy minister on March 13, 2018 has denied a report that an incident occurred in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in late 2017, the situation is alarming.

The new EU budget for the next seven years could become a real threat to Lithuania position in this regard. It is not a secret that the European Union is experiencing financial difficulties and they will be even more serious than now. The matter is BREXIT for sure will cause financial cuts of the EU budget.

Thus, financial perspective for Lithuania is not very encouraging. Its main donor will decrease financial aid. Even now the European authorities stress the necessity of financing Lithuanian projects mainly at its own expense.

Besides the Ignalina nuclear power plant, Lithuania extremely needs money for continuation of the Rail Baltica project that should link Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with a European standard gauge rail line. No decisions have yet been made about the next funding period (2020+). And Vilnius makes enormous efforts to convince the EU to continue support for the project. So, as well as the Ignalina nuclear power plant project, the Rail Baltica is also in limbo.

In other words Lithuania can’t stop these projects because they are too important for her image and security but admits that it can’t continue them without external assistance. Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas insisted in December that “EU support is crucial and we simply do not have any other alternatives.”

At the same time, lack of funding does not prevent Lithuania from increasing defence budget. This year Lithuania will allocate 873 million euros for defence. The increase is by 149.2 million euros (as compared to 2017).

If redirected this amount of money annually to such vital project as decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, it would easily afford Lithuania to close the plant during next 20 years without external assistance. If to compare the necessity to close the plant and the necessity to buy containers, trucks, repairs of military equipment, spare parts of vehicles (the biggest purchases projected for 2018 according to the Ministry of national defence) the priorities are clear. May be something is wrong with the priorities of the Lithuanian authorities?

With all these additional money Lithuania could close dangerous nuclear plant and also build modern railway without asking the EU or other sponsors for money. Let us think about it…

Many African countries are still consistently looking  to improve healthcare delivery to millions of people living in rural communities with little success. In this interview, Professor Mikhail Y. Natenzon, chairman of board of the “National Telemedicine Agency” Research-and-Production Union and also deputy head of the Regional Working Group for Telemedicine of the Regional Commonwealth for Communication of the CIS countries, tells Kester Kenn Klomegah, an independent researcher and policy consultant on African affairs in Russia and Eurasian region that the establishment of compatible national telemedicine systems, which has many advantages, can suitably be adapted to the local conditions of any particular African country.

Here are interview excerpts:

Q: How important is modern telemedicine technology for African countries? And the reasons why you are passionately exploring Africa?

A: Economic development of African countries reached the level where the government can begin a strategic reform of health systems to create a modern, meeting the world standards of health care. The implementation of these programmes will solve health problems and give African countries the opportunity to take the next leap forward in economic and social development.

African governments and international specialized organizations have now developed and are implementing various programmes to improve the quality of life of African populations. The most advanced project is the elimination of the epidemic of socially dangerous diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and allocate significant funds for it. Indeed, one of the problems of the slow development of African economies is the fact that people suffering from malaria are unable to work effectively and vigorously. Another important international project is the maternal and child mortality reduction program.

Significantly, multi-billion dollar funds have been allocated by governments and international organizations to these projects, and the results are clearly not in line with the efforts made. The efficiency of investments is not large enough.

The reasons for this are, inter alia, the inadequate health infrastructure in Africa, its concentration in major cities and the almost total absence in rural, remote and hard-to-reach areas, where about 60 per cent of the population-600 million people-live. It is obvious that the traditional methods of providing medical care can not work in the current situation.

Therefore, we have developed new methods to ensure accessibility and a single high standard of quality medical care for the population, especially in rural areas and remote areas. These system solutions, technologies and equipment are based on the widespread use of Russian information and telemedicine technologies. These proposals are now practically non-alternative, as confirmed by the documents of the UN, the world Health Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the African Development Bank and other international organizations.

Q: As it’s already known, many African rural communities are very limited or disadvantaged with sources of energy (electricity), but how could telemedicine be useful for these remote areas of the continent?

A: The problem of all rural areas in Africa is the underdeveloped social and health infrastructure. Its creation with the traditional approach is a long and very expensive project. Moreover, such infrastructure will always experience a shortage of qualified medical and technical staff. But most importantly, its exploitation will require large funds that are not available to either rural communities or the state. The only solution for the cost effective implementation of social development goals in Africa so far is the establishment of an integrated telemedicine system.

It consists of two parts: network of telemedicine consulting-diagnostic centers, established in stationary medical institutions of different levels, and communication associated with them system of the mobile telemedicine laboratory diagnostic facilities (the ITC) in various fields. The ITC is designed to address a wide range of health challenges and provide social services to people in rural, remote and remote areas. Built on international standards, it integrates with similar systems in other African countries and Russia, interacting with telemedicine systems in other countries.

A key element of the mobile telemedicine complex and mobile hospitals can provide medical care to the population in remote and inaccessible areas in a completely autonomous manner. They have their own power supply system, communication system, up to the satellite, life support systems, crew systems cleaning air and water and many other optional installed systems required for successful operation. Most importantly, the personnel of the ITC may not be a doctor, but an average medical worker. Use MTK allows radically solving the problem of comprehensive medical services to the rural communities. Their residents will not have to get to the city hospitals. The hospital will come to them.

At the same time, qualified doctors working in provincial hospitals, to which the ITC is assigned, can provide advice through telemedicine equipment to personnel of several ITC operating in different parts of the province. This solves the problem of shortage of qualified doctors and reduces the cost of operation of MTC.

Q: Can you discuss innovative tools available in the plant and key competitive advantages? Do you have all the equipment and / or components manufactured in Russia?

A: The main goal and the main competitive advantages of the medical complex are the solution of four socially important tasks: ensuring accessibility of medical and social services to the population; providing a unified high quality medical and social services for citizens regardless of their place of residence and social status.

It helps optimization of the cost of healthcare while improving its quality and coverage and creation of permanent jobs for highly qualified technical and medical personnel, ensuring the creation and operation of complex.

Other important competitive advantages of the systems offered by us are: High capacity of MTC – up to 20,000 people per year, and therefore, almost 100% coverage of health care for the entire population.

Low cost of rendering medical services to the population due to use of the average medical personnel and absence of need to build stationary medical institutions and to spend means for their operation.

Possibility of step-by-step realization of the project, the complex telemedicine system. At the same time, the system itself begins to function fully from the start of its first segment. Connecting the following segments extends the functionality of the system and without requiring structural adjustment.

There is high investment attractiveness. The expected return on investment in the project is 5-6 years. The functioning of the system is an important contribution to the stable development of the state, providing an increase in the human capital development index. There is also professional development of medical personnel and the use of international standards and the possibility of organizing cross-border telemedicine consultations.

All equipment which is a part of complex telemedicine systems: stationary telemedicine consulting and diagnostic centers for stationary medical institutions of all levels (from the Central hospitals in the capital, to the para-medicine point in the small village), mobile telemedicine laboratory and diagnostic complexes of various medical appointment with all equipment, communication equipment, satellite communication systems, guarantee maintenance of system, preparation of medical and technical personnel for system functioning is the Russian know-how, certified and manufactured in Russia.

At the request of the customer, the system offered by us can be connected with the existing telemedicine systems in the country. The system can begin to operate immediately after the installation of equipment in the country and completion of training. The system is delivered on the principle of “turned on and work” without any complications.

Q: What will be the main direction in terms of implementation of this medical technology projects in Africa? And what are your expectations from African governments?

A: The main direction of our project for Africa is the gradual creation of compatible national telemedicine systems that can interact with each other and in the long term to create a pan-African telemedicine system. The telemedicine system becomes economically and socially effective when it is a queueing system. This is exactly how the proposed system is designed.

Health systems in almost all countries of Africa basically are state-owned. Therefore, the establishment of compatible national telemedicine systems is possible only in close cooperation with the regional Ministries of health, so that the project can be adapted to the conditions of a particular country and at the same time maintain the universality of national telemedicine systems, so that they can interact with each other. We know the serious efforts that African Governments are making to promote health, and we hope that our cooperation in implementing telemedicine systems will yield significant, qualitatively better results.

By Justin Murray*

On March 9, 2018, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act into law. As is common with quickly written legislation motivated by emotional events, the law is rife with errors, contradictions, fails to address the underlying issue at hand, is filled with pages upon pages of text that have nothing to do with the bill’s title and, ultimately, will only make the problem it seeks to address worse. In other words, par for the course for our government officials.

Setting aside the well-documented fact that most firearms used in crimes are already illegal under current legislation, that rifles are rarely used as a tool of homicide and the term “assault rifle” is only a meaningless cosmetic determination, the Florida law has major issues.

The key issue, to get it out of the way, is the law doesn’t actually ban anything. Touted partially as a “bump stock” ban, the underlying text of the section related to this presents a not surprising lack of knowledge of the function of firearms by the Florida Congress. It reads on page 26 of the above linked bill:

790.222 Bump-fire stocks prohibited.—A person may not import into this state or transfer, distribute, sell, keep for sale, offer for sale, possess, or give to another person a bump fire stock. A person who violates this section commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 741 775.083, or s. 775.084. As used in this section, the term “bump fire stock” means a conversion kit, a tool, an accessory, or a device used to alter the rate of fire of a firearm to mimic automatic weapon fire or which is used to increase the rate of fire to a faster rate than is possible for a person to fire such semiautomatic firearm unassisted by a kit, a tool, an accessory, or a device.

Note how bump fire stock is defined. It is defined as any conversion tool that allows for a mimic of automatic fire or allows a faster rate of fire than a semiautomatic weapon. The problem with this definition is that automatic weapons do not fire faster than semi-automatic weapons in the same family. If all else is equal, receiver, trigger, etc, an AR-15 with an automatic conversion fires exactly as fast as the semi-automatic variety. This is perfectly demonstrated by Jerry Miculek firing along-side a person using an identical rifle with only the “bump stock” being the difference. Jerry fired just as fast as Eric in the video and actually was more accurate while doing so. It’s not even necessary to convert a rifle to “mimic” automatic weapon fire.

The reason for this is physics. The only difference between a semi-automatic rifle and an automatic rifle is that a semi-automatic is limited to one shot per trigger pull. What limits the fire rate of any weapon is the cycling speed, which is how fast the spent chamber is ejected, new round loaded, and firing pin reset. The only factors, apart from electronic driven rotary weapons that are too cost prohibitive to bother owning even if they were legal, driving firing speed of a weapon is receiver weight, firing force of the round and spring strength of the magazine. That’s it and even then, when these factors are optimized, it only facilitates emptying a magazine by a few milliseconds — modifications only useful for competition where a single millisecond counts. Since bump fire stock was defined as a modification to make a semi-automatic fire faster than a semi-automatic and that’s an impossible statement, the law effectively banned nothing.

The Real Problem is the Mental Health Provisions

However, this is just semantics. The real problems (apart from the 75 pages of unrelated laws) are the mental health provisions. Under the sub-provision referred to as the “Risk Protection Order Act,” the State of Florida granted itself to engage in a one-sided evaluation of an individual’s mental health and impose a full firearm restriction order on that individual without trial. This act is an ex parte order, or a temporary order, where any law enforcement agent can designate an individual as a risk and generate a court order to confiscate weapons from the targeted individual without a hearing. The law also directs law enforcement to publicly accuse the targeted individual to all family members and other residents of the individual’s home that the individual is a potential violence risk. Justification for this action can be made on flimsy grounds such as “alcohol abuse” or a witness testimony.

More chillingly, Florida has turned upside-down centuries of common law and American jurist prudence by deciding that the State has no obligation to do anything to prove the individual should be under a confiscation order and places the burden solely on the individual to prove otherwise. Per page 37:

The respondent shall have the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the respondent does not pose a significant danger of causing personal injury to himself or herself or others by having in his or her custody or control, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm or ammunition.

All the while this is going on, the clock is ticking. Anyone who is subject to this confiscation has one year to clear their name or the State will destroy all weapons and ammunition confiscated. Given how backed up courts are already, this order is an all but guaranteed permanent confiscation.

This isn’t even the worst provision. The worst comes from the mental health laws. Per the new law, all students that seek mental health services are required to register with the school the type and reason for those services. Even a simple referral is enough to trigger a permanent branding as a potential threat. The potential for abuse is certainly evident, but worse is this will likely result in fewer parents seeking mental health services for their children to avoid them being branded a threat. The State of Florida will now require all students who engage in anything labeled under the broad category of “delinquent” to register their name and address with the Superintendent. Sure, there will be claims that these records are confidential and sealed, but sealed records frequently have a habit of being leaked.

Because of these draconian restrictions, parents will be less likely to seek any kind of services, allowing for legitimate problems to fester and result in more violence. People like Nikolas Cruz are frequently the target of bullying and social ostracizing. The provisions of this bill that seek to help such issues will more likely result in the dual effects of greater ostracizing should the information leak or refusal to seek help to avoid the risk. In fact, 71% of school shooters have been identified as the target of social and physical attacks by peers and are also twice as likely to feel like they need to be armed in a school environment. Creating greater pressures of being outed as having issues will only amplify the stress.

This is on top of the usual unrelated bills, such as the fact that, per page 54, that the State decided to amend its criminal code to make cloning a cell phone and threatening a code inspector a worse offense (15 years maximum second degree felony) than child abuse (5 years maximum third degree felony).

The bill is unlikely to result in any positive outcomes promoted by those who voted for it. Given that numerous errors are present in the bill, some fixed at the eleventh hour (such as changing the word handgun to firearm in the waiting period section, if unfixed would have just repeated an already outstanding law), few, if any, of the politicians actually read the text before voting on it or signing it into law, extending the grand tradition of politicians only voting on how nice the bill title says. With this Florida law being such a mess and provisions within so easy to abuse, the road to good intentions in the State is a superficially disguised Road to Serfdom.

About the author:
*Justin Murray received his MBA in 2014 from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Alexandra Gale

Nearly one month after de facto President of Brazil Michel Temer issued an emergency decree that placed the Rio state police under control of the military, councilwoman Marielle Franco was killed under mysterious circumstances on the night of March 14.[i] Franco was a feminist activist who fought for black rights and was an outspoken critic of the military intervention in Rio and police brutality.[ii] Although no arrests have been made, the assassination appears to be a targeted silencing of a dissenting voice.

The military intervention currently underway in Rio de Janeiro was initiated on February 16, 2018 and effectively placed the state police force under the direct control of the armed forces. [iii] On February 23, a stark scene was presented when Brazilian military personnel approached residents on the streets of some of the poorest communities in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro with a list of suspects in hand. Members of the military forces used their cellphones to photograph local residents holding their identification cards, and then forwarded the resulting photos to the Civil Police in order to check whether or not the residents had a criminal records. [iv] Army Colonel Carlos Frederico Cinelli stated that this unusual measure was not only legal but time-effective, ignoring that such “time-saving” efforts could result in the criminalization of entire communities whose inhabitants are almost always poor and non-white. [v] This invasive maneuver which documented citizens’ identification and image is just another harsh aspect of life under the new norm of increased military presence in Rio that many residents have had to submit to.

For the past two years, the state of Rio de Janeiro has been in the midst of a financial crisis which has exacerbated existing tensions and has contributed to a demonstrable increase in crime.[vi] The mostly unregulated shanty towns within as well as on the periphery of the city, neighborhoods commonly known as favelas, have historically operated with little government presence, which non-state actors have used to their own advantage.[vii] Despite multiple efforts by the police to “pacify” such communities, Rio currently hosts three major drug gangs and several paramilitary groups, who are fighting each other as well as against the police for territorial control. [viii] The situation has culminated into an explosion of urban violence over the past few years. In 2017 alone, there were 6,731 violent deaths in the state of Rio, or about 40 homicides per 100,000 citizens—the highest registered toll in eight years. [ix] Other crimes such as kidnapping, carjacking, and cell phones robberies have also increased.[x] Rio’s famed Carnaval celebrations, which this year attracted 1.5 million foreign tourists to the city, were marred by accounts of physical assault and robbery, footage of which was prominently displayed on daytime television. [xi] Of these homicide statistics, 77% of victims were black and a majority were young and black, a profile that is highly concentrated in the poor communities of Rio. [xii] Although the security crisis in Rio de Janeiro has gained the greatest degree of notoriety, the Brazilian states of Acre and Rio Grande do Norte currently have homicide rates almost twice as high as that of Rio de Janeiro. [xiii] The choice to involve the military in Rio instead of where the violence is more intense reveals a potentially politically motivated decision. Since polls have revealed that security is a top priority for Brazilians, a military intervention could be popular with many voters who support a tough-on-crime approach.[xiv] Although it appears that the decision to intervene solely in Rio may be politically motivated, other possible explanations include Rio’s economy, the importance of tourism, and Rio’s symbolic importance for the national image. [xv]

Temer’s February 16 decree gave the military broad authority in an attempt to restore law and order to Rio de Janeiro, placing the city police under the command of General Walter Souza Braga Netto.[xvi] The decree marks the first time since Brazil’s transition to democracy in 1985 that the government has used the constitutional provision that allows for the military to take control of the police force in special circumstances.[xvii] The presidential decree was passed by both houses of the Congress on February 20. [xviii] A common, if oversimplified narrative in Brazil is that the Rio police has effectively lost control of large areas of Rio due to a lack of adequate police resources and funding, which has allowed for the drug gangs to operate in the vacuum of authority.[xix] The poorer communities have been the most affected, and the military has set up checkpoints to search every person entering or exiting specific neighborhoods, while some communities have also been patrolled by armored vehicles and marine craft. [xx] Photos showing the military searching the backpacks of schoolchildren under the age of 10 have gone viral and have produced a considerable alarm among Brazilians who fear that the harsh treatment of poor black children reveals the military’s criminalization of their demographic. [xxi]

Although the military intervention has had the support among the right wing of the upper and middle classes, the lower class, which is most directly affected by the increased presence of the police in their neighborhoods, express doubt that the action will result in a significant decrease in crime. [xxii] The upper and middle-class Brazilians who support increased military presence live in the wealthier neighborhoods that already have less policing, and their support could stem from a desire to protect their personal property. The inhabitants of the poor communities are predominately black and more likely to suffer from indiscriminate police brutality than are other segments of the population.

In a February 27 interview with the British The Guardian, retired Army General Gilberto Pimentel expressed sympathy for the army’s dilemma in identifying who the criminals are, stating “we are going to operate in communities that are dominated by the bandits. It is very difficult to separate the good people from the bandits.” [xxiii] This statement is highly disconcerting and it reveals dangerous prejudices held by members of the military that are bound to contribute to the criminalization of entire communities, which can lead to human rights abuses and the death of innocents among a segment of the population.

Despite the lack of success of military intervention in Brazil’s recent past, Sergio Etchegoyen, a member of Temer’s cabinet, has stated that “Rio de Janeiro is a ‘laboratory’, implying if the military intervention in Rio is seen as a success by the military and the federal government, the military will feel emboldened to attempt a similar approach in other parts of the country. [xxiv]

The timing of the military intervention is suspicious to those who suspect that Temer, who has the approval of only approximately 5% of the population, is taking drastic action in an attempt increase his popularity or show strength leading up to the presidential election, which is scheduled for October of 2018. [xxv] Perhaps more importantly, during a period of military intervention enacted through the constitutional provision, lawmakers are prevented from making any major legislative changes. Thus, Temer’s proposed social security reform, which was highly unpopular, is provided with a ready-made excuse for its failure to pass. [xxvi]

For many Brazilians, the increased role of the military in Rio carries uncomfortable echoes of the military dictatorship, which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. [xxvii] Under a new law passed in October of 2017, members of the armed forces who kill civilians can only be tried in the notoriously non-transparent military courts, a decision which could increase impunity for the military’s human rights abuses. [xxviii, xxix]  Although the current political and economic crisis in Brazil may overshadow the unsettling news of the military intervention, it is evident that the current trend is of major concern for defenders of human rights and points to a wider trend of militarization of police, racism, and a lack of checks and balances in Brazilian politics and civic society.

*Alexandra Gale, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Aline Piva, Research Fellow, Liliana Muscarella, Extramural  Research Fellow, and the Research Associates João Coimbra Sousa and Keith Carr at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 

It is important to note that the Amazigh cultural revival refers to the empowerment and greater celebration of Amazigh culture. The Amazigh nation predates all known established civilizations, with rich cultural traditions, languages, and institutions that have survived despite many waves of colonization and attempts at stamping them out.

Thus, the answer to the question of the origins of the Amazigh cultural revival is complex and based on reactive stances to Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, and Western European political and cultural invasions that have taken place over the last two millennia. i

In this regard Reed Wester-Ebinghaus in Ancient History Encyclopedia argues:ii

“The Berbers have occupied North Africa, specifically the Maghreb, since the beginning of recorded history and until the Islamic conquests of the 8th century CE constituted the dominant ethnic group in the Saharan region.”

The Amazigh cultural revival was a highly decentralized social movement that evolved into its full force during the 1970s. Its complete roots stretch far back before North African independence from colonialism, all the way back to the invasion of Roman and Arab-speaking warriors in Berber regions, over the span of 2000 years; but for the purposes of the contemporary movement, the past 150 years suffice as its impetus.

Spurred by decades, if not centuries, of invasion and oppression, a Pan-Amazigh movement began to form around the desire to revive a largely undocumented yet present culture across North and Saharan Africa.

Amazigh Identity

Amazigh identity is formed largely by its language awal, Tamazight. Language is the marker of all cultures, but particularly so with Amazigh civilization. Tamazight Is being recognized by both Morocco and Algeria as an official language in their respective constitutions. This recognition came about after a long period of denial from the governments and society about Tamazight and its connection to Amazigh identity. It ran into several issues. Besides the multiple dialects of Morocco and Algeria, Tamazight was unwritten in the recent past except among the Tuareg in the Sahara.

The first task of the officially recognized Amazigh cultural team in the government was the selection of an official alphabet for Tamazight in Morocco i.e. Tifinagh.

Unfortunately, the language has interacted with Arabic for so many years that the two have intermixed. In 2005, a movement was started to teach Tamazight in Amazigh areas. This called for the creation of textbooks and a curriculum to be taught by teachers in Tamazight. Although the governmental ministries dragged their feet in this endeavor, Tamazight TV 8 was created as an Amazigh cultural channel. Clearly, language is a definitive element of Amazigh cultural identity in Morocco and the same applies in Algeria.

The next major defining aspect of Amazigh culture is land akkal. Land has been historically and culturally significant to the Amazigh people. Land conservation is taken very seriously and land ownership balances the fine line of being communal with private property. Additionally, disputes can arise over land ownership. However, a census taken in Morocco in 2014 was controversial to the Amazigh because of the composition of the population as well as Amazigh land location and territory.iii

The land on which the Amazigh live extends all the way from Egypt to the Canary Islands. This land is called Tamazgha, and the Amazigh believe that it belongs to them. Thus, there are some issues surrounding Amazigh land today since it is such a large component of Amazigh identity and culture.

Another theme central to Amazigh identity is the idea of blood ddam. Family to the Amazigh represents cohesiveness of their culture. Solidarity with other Amazigh people denotes the recognition Amazigh feel in addition to a sense of belonging. Additionally, blood represents sacrifice in Amazigh culture. This sacrifice can represent the earning back of honor, repayment of other sorts, or recognition of significant events. The Amazigh believe that an issue is resolved only once sacrificial blood is spilled. As such, blood is a very important aspect of Amazigh identity and was used in the Amazigh cultural revival movement.

Altogether, the Amazigh cultural revival movement called for a definition and recognition of the Amazigh culture. This movement drew upon the components of language, land, and blood to unite the Amazigh people. In terms of language, Tamazight was decided upon as the official language of the Amazigh people. Another identifying aspect of Amazigh culture is land. The Amazigh see land as central to their society and thus sought governmental protection for their lands. Finally, the cultural concept of blood brought them together for the cultural revival movement. United by blood, the Amazigh people sought governmental recognition of their lands and the official use of Tamazight in the Amazigh cultural revival movement.iv

On the issue of Amazigh struggle for recognition in Algeria, Amir Akef writes about this country’s recent official change of heart towards Amazigh culture in The Guardian, in a piece entitled: “Algeria proposes constitutional reform.” He first details the official recognition of the culture since 2002:v

“Amazigh was granted “national language” status in 2002 and its recognition rewards the efforts of a long campaign hinging on the definition of Algeria’s national identity. In 1949 the issue triggered a serious crisis in the Algerian independence movement. The controversy was papered over when the war of independence started shortly afterwards, but resurfaced when independence was proclaimed in 1962. Hocine Aït Ahmed, one of the original leaders of the independence movement, advocated a democratic state guaranteeing political pluralism. But his ideas were soon thwarted by the authoritarian Pan-Arab credo that prevailed under presidents Ahmed Ben Bella (1963-65) and Houari Boumédiène (1965-1976).

The campaign in favour of the Amazigh language dovetailed naturally with the broader struggle for civil liberties, gaining fresh impetus in the 1980s with the Berber cultural movement. In the early 1990s the authorities grudgingly started to acknowledge its importance. “It took almost half a century, starting from the crisis in 1949, for the Algerian constitution [of 1996] to begin to draw up a more balanced, realistic map of the nation’s identity, though there is still a great deal of ambiguity,” the nationalist militant, then leader of the Algerian Communist party, Sadek Hadjeres, wrote in 1998.”

And later on moves on to discuss the constitutional reform:

“The plans for constitutional reform include setting up an Algerian Academy of Berber Language, tasked with consolidating its new status as an official tongue. Supporters say it would put an end to a pointless source of division, giving rise to various political ills the country could well do without.”

Amazigh Struggle For Full Recognition In Tamazgha

For decades, the Amazigh community has been trying to penetrate into relevant life and culture within North Africa. Their focus on language, land, and blood have had ties to the land and people for thousands of years. The unwritten culture they have built and passed down through generations has shaped every aspect of life.

However, since the Arabs have controlled the region, they have historically been ostracized and ignored, being pushed aside while the dominant Arab culture and values have received all the credit and in the process marginalizing Amazigh freedom, standards, and lifestyle. Over the years the Amazigh cultural revolution has been met with obstacles, oppression, and ignorance while trying to gain recognition for their influence on culture and existence as an ethnic group.

In the 1970s more and more Amazigh voices were being projected, arguing for less oppression, more rights, and acknowledgment of the Amazigh culture and ethnicity. These underground activists continued to gain support in the following years, finally breaking through in 1980 with the Amazigh Spring in Algeria: tafsut Imazighen.

The Amazigh Spring created widespread awareness within the region. While it may have only been a “Spring” in Algeria, its influence did not go unnoticed in Morocco. The Spring sparked even stronger hope and strength within the Amazigh fight. Supporters of the Amazigh cause were fighting harder than ever for their voices to be heard, their history to be recognized, and their culture to be acknowledged. The flame continued to light the way for more activism in the years to come.

In 1994, the Amazigh movement finally had some acknowledgment by those in power. During a protest on May Day, Amazigh supporters marched with a banner written in the Amazigh language. The activists were arrested and taken in by police. Such an act created outrage within all of Morocco. The media followed the trials and the situation closely, leading the movement to gain national support for Amazigh rights. The nation was finally starting to recognize the Amazigh community’s battle within the country.

Beginning Of Revival Was In Algeria: Tafsut Imazighen

Algeria in response to the aggressive Arabization efforts of the FLN regime which aimed to suppress the Amazigh identity by banning activities by Amazigh militants and the use of Tamazight and its variants, people voiced their discontent publicly.

In this context, many Imazighen in Algeria began to push boundaries in their respective fields in the late 1970’s. A primary example of this rests in the album A Vava Inou Va that the musician Hamid Cheriat, also known by his stage name Idir, produced in 1976, in the period leading up to the Kabylie Tafsut Imazighen.

A Vava Inou Va was the first internationally released album by an Amazigh musician in Tamazight, and this artistic creation led to the blossoming of Amazigh music throughout North Africa.

The revival of Amazigh literature also coincides with the same period, and the demand that it created for a written medium for Tamazight aided the adoption of the Tuareg’s Tifinagh script and added legitimacy to the movement to recognize Tamazight as a national language in 2001 in Algeria and as an official language in Morocco in 2011.

On March 10, 1980, a conference at Mouloud Mammeri Hasnaoua University in Tizi-Ouzou featuring a Kabyle activist by the name of Mouloud Mammeri was suppressed and the pushback from Amazigh activists led to the mass arrests of its main players on April 20, 1980. Though the Algerian FLN government violently suppressed the strikes following from these events, and the movement did not succeed immediately, it became the critical rallying point for the formation of civil society organizations such as the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) and the Berber Cultural Movement (MCB), which both advocated for greater recognition and acceptance of a distinct Amazigh cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of Amazigh human and legal rights.

Later, Tamazight was recognized as one of Algeria’s national languages and these developments also had the collateral effect of adding strength to the general push for the protection of human rights in Algeria.

A second political push came during January 2011 as the Arab Spring pushed through the Middle East and North Africa, and this momentum strengthened the social, political and cultural institutions created by the first Tafsut Imazighen.

Tamazigh Revival In Morocco

In response to the outpour of Amazigh support across the nation and the cries for more Amazigh rights, King Hassan II publicly spoke about the need to teach Tamazigh in schools in a speech on August 20, 1994. He stated that the Tamazight language was important to Morocco’s past and culture. Within this speech, King Hassan II was the first Alouite king to finally acknowledge the Imazighen’s importance to Morocco and its development.vi

In this regard, Karima Ziamari et Jan Jaap De Ruiter writes:

« Le discours du Trône du 20 août 1994, à l’occasion de la fête de la Révolution du Roi et du Peuple, est considéré comme un tournant. Dans ce discours, le roi Hassan II annonçait, dans un certain sens, l’ouverture du pays aux trois variétés de berbère. Il se montrait favorable à l’enseignement de ces langues, et, immédiatement après ce discours, les stations TV et radio commençaient des bulletins d’information en tarifit, tamazight et tachelhit. »

However the battle for rights and recognition still continued into the new century. In 2001 King Mohammed VI declared in his Royal Decree that it was finally time to support the Amazigh cause and therefore created the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe -IRCAM-. IRCAM was formed to increase awareness and support for the Amazigh around the country. It standardized the Amazigh language, agreeing to slowly integrate it into schools and the media. Not only did it officially aid the Berber cause, but it also raised even more national support, acknowledgement, and acceptance of the Amazigh identity as being a key player in shaping Moroccan culture.

Even with its improvements there was still doubt unto how helpful IRCAM actually was. Some even argued that the organization only limited the Amazigh identity into a small box, not allowing for different forms and less common aspects to flourish. That being said, the main Amazigh movements agreed with the creation of IRCAM and its push for more recognition of Berber identity within Morocco.

While IRCAM agreed to promote the Amazigh culture through schools, the official start of Tamazight being taught in schools did not happen until 2005. The government’s promise was long overdue, being dragged out despite the King’s decree. Even with this, the language was only taught in Berber speaking areas.

Nonetheless, the integration of Tamazight into public schools was a huge step for the Amazigh cultural revolution. With Tamazight came textbooks, curriculum, and teachers that all embodied the acceptance and promotion of Amazigh culture.

As Amazigh cultural activism increased, their presence in the political sphere increased as well. Throughout the 2000’s multiple parties have attempted to form on the basis of their common Amazigh identity. Unfortunately the government has shut those parties down due to illegality of formation of parties based on ethnicity — with Amazigh considered an ethnicity. Even so, there were ways around the ethnic clause. The Movement Populaire (MP) was formed in 1959 to represent the Amazigh, rural and poor Moroccans in parliament and act as a check to the Arabist Istiqlal Party which was hoping to take over power and become a unique party in Morocco, along the communist paradigm. With this in mind, the MP worked closely with Amazigh activists and has mobilized support for the Amazigh movement across the country, advocating for their cultural practices, rights, and recognition. The party have even gained a significant amount of seats in parliament, becoming a strong influence and legitimate party that has direct advocacy for the Amazigh cultural cause.

Following the greater influence of the Amazigh in politics, an unlikely coalition formed between them and trade unions and the Islamists, in 2011, calling for greater rights, freedoms, and respect. The support for this coalition came to a peak on February 20, 2011 when the Amazigh were able to mobilize thousands of supporters to protest and rally for their cause. King Mohammed VI quickly responded to these outbreaks —afraid of what was happening across the region with the Arab Spring — and announced that a new constitution would be created. In this the Amazigh gained many rights, with more protections, cultural rights, and more regional governance. One of the biggest feats was that in the new ratified constitution, the Tamazigh language finally became an official language of Morocco. The support from other groups and by thousands of people in 2011 continued to aid the Amazigh in gaining the strength to no longer be pushed aside or ignored. Even to this day they are gaining more influence, credibility, and cultural rights.

From the early 1970s until present day, the Amazigh have vigorously fought for the freedom and recognition of their culture. The cultural revolution has proven that it will not back down until the Amazigh culture is fully recognized and cherished as one of the most important parts of Moroccan history.

Cultural Revival Is A Grassroots Movement

In Morocco, one could point to the recurring maltreatment by both the French and the Arab political powers as instigators (the unbalance created by the French Berber Dahir in 1930 and the opposition of the Arab-nationalist Istqlal party providing merely two examples). Even though they were still legally prevented from identifying as Berber, a magazine defending Amazigh rights began circulating in the 1980s (named Tamazight).

By 1991, thirty cultural associations were working in Morocco, each aiming to attain recognition of cultural rights for Amazigh people, their language, and culture.
The cultural revival can be described as a grassroots movement, as it developed on an individual and community level, gradually gaining more political influence and voice. As the cause gained national and international attention, North African governments have found it more difficult to ignore the calls.

But in Morocco, the shift from grassroots activism to government backing may be stalling advancements. Many Amazigh activists feel that the adoption of the Tifinagh script over the Latin script is a subtle way of further separating Berber-ness from Arab-ness in contemporary Moroccan society (many of whom are taught to read and write French before Arabic). Meanwhile, the activists who support government involvement (referred to as makhzenisé by their former colleagues-in-arms), feel these might be small prices to pay for ultimate acceptance.

As far as political implications, the current situation is bittersweet. If states of North Africa want to achieve peace with their Berber populations, they need to not only accept the Berber culture as their own culture, but part of the greater countries’ culture as well. This overlapping identity is still a new idea that is just starting to take seed, and if the gap can be filled between government rhetoric and individual activism, acceptance and fair treatment can be achieved.

What good is it to have
Freemen who sleep in this world of suffering
Wake up, my people
Straighten up, my people
Confront the difficulties of your current situation
A long road awaits you
What good is it to have
Freemen who sleep in this world of suffering…

My friends, my friends
Never forget what
We learned from our parents
My friends, my friends
Let us not forget this heritage
That our parents have left us
Let us keep it fondly
This heritage is our identity. . .
Omara “Bombino” Moctar (Album: Nomad, 2013)

Today, the official IRCAM is in full decline, over the years the Moroccan establishment has used it extensively to subdue the Amazigh and keep at bay the vociferous voices who call for full recognition of Tamazight cultural rights.

It is mostly staffed by people from the Association Marocaine de Recherches et d’Echanges Culturels –AMREC-, who have from the very beginning been used as the Amazigh arm of the Moroccan establishment to further its own vision of Amazigh culture: obsequious and subservient.

Since the recognition of the Amazigh language in the constitution of 2011 first in the Preamble:vii

A sovereign Muslim State, attached to its national unity and to its territorial integrity, the Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve, in its plentitude and its diversity, its one and indivisible national identity. Its unity, is forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamist, Berber [amazighe] and Saharan-Hassanic [saharo-hassanie] components, nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebraic and Mediterranean influences [affluents]. The preeminence accorded to the Muslim religion in the national reference is consistent with [va de pair] the attachment of the Moroccan people to the values of openness, of moderation, of tolerance and of dialog for mutual understanding between all the cultures and the civilizations of the world.

And also in Article 7:

Arabic is [demeure] the official language of the State. The State works for the protection and for the development of the Arabic language, as well as the promotion of its use. Likewise, Tamazight [Berber/amazighe] constitutes an official language of the State, being common patrimony of all Moroccans without exception.

An organic law defines the process of implementation of the official character of this language, as well as the modalities of its integration into teaching and into the priority domains of public life, so that it may be permitted in time to fulfill its function as an official language.

Ircam was, ultimately, downsized and runs, at the time being, illegally without a governing board (Conseil d’Administration) and it seems that the Makhzen is violating flagrantly its own legislature for such institutions.

In an article entitled: « L’Institut royal de la culture amazighe (IRCAM) va-t-il disparaître? » Reda Zaireg of the Huffpost Maroc Argues :viii

Dans le projet de loi organique relative à l’amazighe, seules trois institutions sont évoquées dans le projet de loi: le Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, de la formation et de la recherche scientifique, le ministère de l’Education nationale ainsi que le Conseil national des langues et de la culture marocaine.

C’est dans l’escarcelle de ce dernier Conseil que l’IRCAM pourrait tomber. En effet, le projet de loi organique relative au Conseil national des langues et des cultures devrait doter ce dernier d’une super-compétence en la matière, et sera “chargé notamment de la protection et du développement des langues arabe et amazighe et des diverses expressions culturelles marocaines”, selon l’article 5 de la Constitution, qui dispose, aussi, que le Conseil “regroupe l’ensemble des institutions concernées par ces domaines”.

La possibilité que le Conseil national des langues et de la culture regroupe la totalité des institutions concernées par les langues et la culture semble déplaire au directeur de l’IRCAM Ahmed Boukous: “Nous considérons que le Conseil national des langues et de la culture doit garder l’IRCAM en l’état avec ses missions, son statut, son règlement intérieur, ses moyens financiers, ses ressources humaines, si on veut que cette institution continue de faire le travail qu’elle fait, de manière tout à fait respectable depuis sa création”.

Last Word

To conclude, the importance of the recognition of Tamazight as a national language in Maghrebi states previously suppressing it is monumental, given that language is one of the primary tools that the governments and European colonial powers used in Arabization and development to stamp out Amazigh identity. In fact, all political movements to advocate the Amazigh nation can be traced back to language, be it through song, academic discussion, or literature. This ties directly with a primary tenant in the triage of Amazigh identity, language, and also with the importance of all aspects of oral literature in the transmission of Amazigh culture.

Thus, the political movement of the Tafsut Imazighen has both propelled forward and gave birth to important cultural vestiges of the assertion of Amazigh identity, leading to the positive developments of the Royal Institute for Amazigh culture (IRCAM) in Morocco, the creation of Amazigh radio, news, and fine arts outlets in theater, literature, and dance and the full recognition of language and civilization in Algeria, as well. Incorporating Tamazight and other aspects of Amazigh identity has occurred since the first recorded colonization attempts by the Phoenicians, and it has survived in this way to the present day, and so it is important to celebrate the appreciation for Amazigh arts in popular culture today in tandem with positive political developments, because their interaction is dynamic.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter: @Ayurinu

Endnotes:
i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Africa
ii. https://www.ancient.eu/Berbers/
iii. https://rgph2014.hcp.ma/
iv. http://www.amadalpresse.com/fr/?p=965
v. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/algeria-bouteflika-amazigh-berber-language-official
vi. http://books.openedition.org/cjb/1068?lang=fr
vii. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Morocco_2011.pdf?lang=en
viii. https://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/2016/07/29/ircam-amazighe-disparition_n_11255272.html

Bibliography:

Set book:
Brett, M. & E. Fentress. 1996. The Berbers, Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Five copies are available at AMIDEAST and may be borrowed for short periods.

The Berbers occupy a huge area of North Africa from Morocco to western Egypt and as far south as Timbuktu and the Niger River. Historically, their influence extended to Sicily, southern Italy, and Spain and now enriches emigrant culture in contemporary France. They are not a single “people” but can be defined by their prehistoric Mediterranean origins, by a common language (or language-group) and by their historical tendency to seek refuge from a long succession of conquerors (Punic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman, French) in remote mountain or desert communities, where they could preserve their independence and way of life.

This book, by a historian and an archaeologist, provides an excellent summary of Berber history and culture. It casts a critical eye on the traditional historical sources (almost all written by the conquerors, not by the Berbers themselves) and re-examines them in the light of contemporary archaeological and anthropological evidence. It is especially good in two areas: the Berbers’ relationship to Islam, their adopted religion, and the relative freedom of women in Berber society. The black-and-white illustrations and maps are of uneven quality but nevertheless helpful in visualizing this complex and little-known culture.

This past week, President Trump fired Secretary of State Tillerson, nominated CIA director Mike Pompeo for the State Department and chose Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo at the CIA. As we write this newsletter, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is on the verge of being fired. The deck chairs are being rearranged on the Titanic but this will not correct the course of a failing foreign policy.

The Pompeo and Haspel nominations are controversial. Pompeo believes torturers are patriots. He is a war hawk on every conflict and competing country, including Russia and especially Iran. And, unlike Tillerson, who stood up to Trump on occasion, Pompeo kisses-up to Trump, defending his every move. Haspel led a CIA black site torture center and ordered destruction of evidence to obstruct torture investigations.

The Democrat’s record on torture is not good. President Obama said he would not prosecute Bush era torturers, infamously saying, “we need to look forwards as opposed to looking backwards.” John Brennan who was complicit in Bush-era torture, withdrew under pressure from becoming CIA director in 2008, instead becoming Deputy National Security Adviser, which did not require confirmation. After Obama’s re-election, Brennan became Obama’s CIA director.

Brennan was inconsistent on whether torture worked. He tried to elevate Haspel, but the controversy around her prevented it. When the CIA spied on the US Senate Intelligence committee over their torture report, Brennan originally lied, denying the spying, but was later forced to admit it. He was not held accountable by either the Democrats or Obama.

Haspel headed a black site in Thailand where torture was carried out. She ordered the destruction of 92 secret tapes documenting torture even though the Senate Judiciary requested the tapes, as had a federal judge in a criminal trial. According to a federal court order, the tapes should have been turned over to comply with a FOIA request. Counsel for the White House and CIA said the tapes should have been preserved. Haspel’s actions should lead to prosecution, not to a promotion as head of the agency, as CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed torture and served time in prison for it, reminds us.

The Trump nominations leave the Democrats on the cusp of a complete surrender on torture in an election year. Caving on torture by approving Pompeo and Haspel will anger Democratic voters and risk the high turnout need for their anticipated 2018 “Blue Wave”.

Republican Senator Rand Paul says he will oppose both nominees. If all the Democrats oppose, the Senate will be split 50-50, requiring one more Republican to block the nominees. Fifteen Democrats supported Pompeo’s nomination as CIA director, so Democratic opposition is not ensured. Will Democrats oppose torture or be complicit in normalizing torture?

Democrat’s Security State Blue Wave

Militarism and war are bi-partisan. When Trump submitted a military budget, the Democrats almost unanimously joined with the Republicans to increase the budget by tens of billions of dollars. But, that is not all, a series of investigative reports by the World Socialist website reported the Democratic Party is becoming the party of military and intelligence candidates.

The series identifies more than 50 military-intelligence candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as targets for 2018. The result, as many as half of all new congressional Democrats could come from the national security apparatus. An example is the victory in Pennsylvania by Conor Lamb, an anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-drug war, ex-Marine, which is being celebrated by Democrats.

The Sanders-Democrats, working to make the Democratic Party a progressive people’s party, are being outflanked by the military-intelligence apparatus. In the end, Democratic Party leadership cares more about numbers than candidate’s policy positions.

Patrick Martin writes:

“If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.”

Just as Freedom Caucus Tea Party representatives hold power in the Republican Party, the military-intelligence officials will become the powerhouse for Democrats. This takeover will make the Democrats even more militarist at a dangerous time when threats of war are on the rise and the country needs an opposition party that says ‘no’ to war.

What does this mean? Kim Dotcom might be right when he tweeted, “The Deep State no longer wants to rely on unreliable puppets. They want to run politics directly now.” What does it mean politically? There is no two-party system on militarism and war. Those who oppose war are not represented and must build a political culture to oppose war at home and abroad.

US Foreign Policy Elites in Denial About Russia’s New Weapons

There is dangerous denial among US foreign policy elites about the Russian weapons systems announced by Putin in his state of the union speech last week. Military-intelligence analyst the Saker compares the US’ reaction to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. US elites are in the first two stages.

The US does not have an adequate defense to the weapons announced by Putin. As the Saker writes, “Not only does that mean that the entire ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] effort of the USA is now void and useless, but also that from now US aircraft carrier battle groups can only be used against small, defenseless, nations!” US leadership cannot believe that after spending trillions of dollars, Russia has outsmarted their military with ten percent of their budget.

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry exemplifies this denial, claiming Putin’s weapons are “phony,” exaggerated and do not really exist. Then he blames the Russians for starting an arms race. Of course, in both the National Security Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review, published before the Putin speech, the US announced an arms race.

US political and military leadership brought this on themselves. The US’ leaving the SALT treaty in 2002 and expanding NATO to cover the Russian border led to Russia’s development of these new weapons.

Further, Obama, and now Trump, support spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade nuclear weapons. Perry falsifies history and blames Russia rather than looking in the mirror, since he was defense secretary during this era of errors.

The new Russian weapons systems do not have to lead to an unaffordable arms race. The US should re-evaluate its strategy and find a diplomatic path to a multi-polar world where the US does not waste money on militarism. We can divest from the military economy and convert it to civilian economic investment, as the US has many needs for infrastructure, energy transition, health care, education and more.

US global dominance is coming to an end. The issue is how will it end? Will the US hang on with an arms race and never-ending wars, or it will it wind down US empire in a sensible way. The Saker writes:

“The Russian end-goal is simple and obvious: to achieve a gradual and peaceful disintegration of the AngloZionist Empire combined with a gradual and peaceful replacement of a unipolar world ruled by one hegemon, by a multipolar world jointly administered by sovereign nations respectful of international law. Therefore, any catastrophic or violent outcomes are highly undesirable and must be avoided if at all possible. Patience and focus will be far more important in this war for the future of our planet than quick-fix reactions and hype. The ‘patient’ needs to be returned to reality one step at a time. Putin’s March 1st speech will go down in history as such a step, but many more such steps will be needed before the patient finally wakes up.”

As of now, the Pentagon and US leadership are in denial and not ready to face reality. The people of the United States, in solidarity with people of the world, must act now to end the war culture and convince US leadership that a new path is necessary.

The organization dedicated to isolating and delegitimizing Israel by way of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has so far not reacted officially to the announcement that Britain’s Prince William is to visit Israel this summer. Since he will also be visiting Jordan and what are described in the announcement as “the Palestinian occupied territories”, and since both Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, have welcomed the news, hard-line BDS supporters do not have much of a leg to stand on.

Moreover Prince William probably ranks considerably higher in the public popularity stakes than Roger Waters, Lorde or other performers closely associated with their pro-BDS views, and so the prince’s visit is likely to have a major positive effect on young people’s view of Israel across the world.

The extreme sensitivities of the situation were on display within minutes of the announcement. When the British embassy in Tel Aviv issued a Hebrew-language press release, it omitted the word “occupied” from the Kensington Palace statement. “What kind of translator do you have?” tweeted a Palestinian official, Xavier Abu Eid.

In fact, the term “Palestinian occupied territories” is an exact reflection of the British government’s position on the vexed Israeli-Palestinian situation. Although more than 70 percent of the countries of the United Nations have, at the urging of the PA, recognized a State of Palestine, the European Union has not formally done so but has left it to individual states to act on this matter as they choose. A clutch of them have granted Palestine official recognition, but the UK government has always adopted a nuanced approach. Back in 2011 Britain was prepared to grant Palestine non-member observer status at the UN, though it refused to approve full state membership.  In October 2014 a House of Commons motion called on the government to recognize Palestine as an independent state, but the government has not subsequently implemented the advice.

A fair number of contemporary issues bear on the forthcoming royal visit. In Britain all eyes are on Brexit, and the delicate, not to say precarious, state the negotiations with the EU have reached. In Prime Minister Theresa May’s keynote speech on March 2, 2018, she made it crystal clear that, after withdrawal, the UK would not enter into any formal customs union with the EU. Several considerations affected this decision, but high among them was the UK’s determination to negotiate independent trading arrangements around the world – impossible when locked into a customs union.

A recent UK government White Paper identified Israel as a trading priority for post-Brexit Britain because of the potential synergies between Israel’s high levels of innovation and British strengths in design, business growth, finance and high-technology. So Israel is a prime potential trading partner for the UK. The groundwork has already been laid, because UK-Israeli trade is flourishing since the areas in which Israel excels − especially in high-tech fields such as cyber security, Research and Development, and financial technology − are largely outside the EU-Israel agreement which currently governs the terms of trade.

A second factor is the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The immediate, almost universal, wave of protest has largely died down, and it seems to have dawned − in certain quarters at least – that President Donald Trump’s announcement drew no boundaries in Jerusalem, but left wide open the possibility of an eventual separate or conjoint Palestinian capital in the Jerusalem municipality. Far from placing an additional obstacle in the path of an eventual agreement, Trump’s announcement appears to have injected a cold douche of reality into the situation. For, whatever the future may hold, there is no denying the plain fact that Jerusalem is indeed Israel’s capital. Nor has Trump’s announcement inhibited the UK from proposing a royal visit.

Thirdly, as the visit to Britain in March 2018 of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman demonstrated, the UK allies itself with the moderate Arab world that is opposing radical jihadist terror organizations intent on disrupting the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are all known to be collaborating with Israel – albeit below the radar − in combating the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah, Iran’s instrument in its bid for political and religious dominance of the Middle East.

Fourthly 2018 marks Israel’s 70th anniversary, and an official royal visit is a logical consequence of the recognition and celebration by the British government last November of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. PA President Abbas has welcomed Prince William’s intention to visit the Palestinian occupied territories, but at the back of his, and the prince’s, mind will doubtless be his demand in March 2017 that Britain apologises for the Balfour Declaration – a demand that was swiftly rejected by the British government.

A royal visit to the Middle East in 2018 that includes Israel in the itinerary fits neatly into that policy position, which turns its back decisively on BDS.

By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera*

Only when fear and hatred is spread by extremists does serious reflection haunt a community. The teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka, a seeming paradise hanging off the Indian subcontinent, has been provoked yet again. Within a few hours arose an ugly incident of violence, the hill country’s vibrant colours serving as a backdrop to death and destruction – a systematic break-down of lives, religious spaces, and personal property.

The July 1983 riots, insurrections quashed in 1971 and 1989, and 2014 Aluthgama riots were among these unexpected bursts of violence. In all cases, the unprepared state reacted slowly be-fore resorting to brutal force to restore order. How could did Sri Lanka become riven by hostility and terror in a short time? Recent events suggest that this question deserves further attention and study to better inform the work of policymakers.

A nation plunged into a state of emergency with a heavily state-influenced media is the present situation in Sri Lanka. Terrorism exercised blatantly in the streets by violent, extremist nationalists to harm other religious or ethnic groups should not be met with silence, especially in a town that treasures Buddha’s sacred Temple of the Tooth, symbolising the purity of the words of non-violence uttered by Buddha. Extremists should be punished to restore the rule of law in society, regardless of the religious or political affiliations of the perpetrators.

Violence was sparked by the death of a Sinhalese Buddhist man on 4 March, who was allegedly attacked by three Muslim men due to a traffic accident in Teldeniya. Following this, a state of emergency was declared by the government. The last time a state of emergency was in place was during the country’s 26-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers. During the quarter century-long war, one of the most significant incidents that triggered communal violence among the Sinhala Buddhist majority and the Tamil minority was the 1983 riots. Yet neither the majority of Sinhalese Buddhists nor Tamils were part of the riots. It was terrorist, extremist nationalists – mainly Sinhalese Buddhists – who set off anti-Tamil pogroms in the south. The government at that time was silent and prominent members of the majority religious community, including the preachers of Buddha’s words of ‘Ahimsa’ (‘do no harm’), were also silent, as in the present.

The recent racially and communally-minded riots by certain sections of the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community targeting the Muslim minority was a warning of the deteriorating threads holding together Sri Lankan society. Yet it was several days later that the government tightened its control over the ugly situation by blocking social media platforms through which ‘fake news’ was disseminated to create more tension. Stories of exploding Muslim population growth and surreptitious administering of sterilisation pills to Sinhalese were attempts to escalate the situation by pandering to extremist elements promoting hatred and fear.

The vulnerability to social distress and division caused by ‘fake news’ in Sri Lanka is high in the persisting shadow of ethnic tensions. The central aim of a nation on a path to reconciliation should be to ensure zero tolerance for hate speech and violent nationalism.

President Maithripala Sirisena’s government has taken measures to curb the tension. However, it should not allow violent nationalists to routinely and easily spread their message, as this runs counter to the government’s wishes to achieve sincere reconciliation in the country. A Sedition Act to prevent hate speech and swift action could ease the situation and assist the process of seeking ethnic harmony.

The perpetrators of these vicious attacks should be punished. If unpunished, extremists working towards different agendas will take advantage of the opportunity to dominate the narrative and shape the national agenda. ‘Fake news’ and misinformation could construct a powerful narrative that would gain traction and detrimentally influence society. This would be a dangerous path, perpetuating and exacerbating instability across the nation. Examples of this phenomenon have played out globally in recent years, from the US and Europe to the far corners of Asia. Yet Sri Lanka cannot become another Myanmar and it is the role of majority Buddhists and clergy to ensure this is not the case, to defeat the ideologies of extremism.

To make sense of, and exist safely in the midst of rising extremism and violent nationalism, it is vital to promote the true essence of various religions. An attempt to address fear and hatred spread by extremism can be made by placing emphasis on the ethic of non-violence.

This task will require a sturdy and responsible government safeguarding justice and the rule of law. But as the past reflects, it could also choose to do little while leaving the innocent to burn.

Views expressed are the author’s own

*Asanga Abeyagoonasekera comments on the importance of a sturdy and responsible government that safeguards justice and the rule of law

By Karen Dolan*

Can we get real about school safety?

Since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, there have been at least 239 school shootings in the United States. 438 people were shot and injured in these shootings, and 138 people were killed.

On Valentine’s Day of this year, 14 high school students and three faculty members at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School in Parkland, Florida were gunned down in the hallways and classrooms.

The survivors are demanding that lawmakers take action to get guns out of schools so this carnage might stop.

The National Rifle Association, the Trump administration, and many conservative lawmakers are answering these demands for fewer guns by calling for… even more guns in schools. Specifically, they want more armed guards, and even armed teachers.

Is that really the answer?

Let’s see what the facts tell us: Americans already own about half of all guns in the world, and suffer by far the most gun homicides among developed countries. Breaking it down further, states with more guns have more gun deaths.

All told, we’re home to 5 percent of the world’s population but 31 percent of the world’s mass shooters.

Clearly, guns aren’t the answer. But even beyond the weapons, putting more cops in schools has its own risks.

Our public schools already have legions of armed law enforcement officers, euphemistically called School Resource Officers (SROs), roaming the hallways. As of 2014, at least 30 percent of our public schools had at least one SRO.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had one. And it had two other trained, armed law enforcement officers on the grounds as the massacre was occurring. They neither deterred nor stopped the shooter.

Nationally, we average about five school shootings per month. So while our schools are already teeming with SROs, there’s no evidence that this has kept our students safer.

There’s plenty of evidence, however, that the presence of SROs hurts our students — especially back, Latino, indigenous, LGBTQ, disabled, and low-income students.

The presence of cops in schools has markedly increased the number of these kids who end up in the juvenile justice system — including for minor offenses like graffiti and subjective, childish behavior like “disorderly conduct” and “disobedience.”

As of 2014, 43 states and the District of Columbia arrested black students at school at disproportionately high rates. And black students were far more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to attend schools that employ SROs.

This is no small matter. These types of arrests, detentions, and referrals increase the likelihood that children will have further encounters with the criminal legal system, drop out of school, and suffer unemployment later on.

In other words, the presence of armed officers in schools doesn’t protect our kids. It puts them at risk.

A better way forward for school safety is to invest in training teachers in social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD) to spot and address trauma and stress — to see and teach the whole child. And to invest in restorative justice practices that nurture kids while holding them accountable, to help kids move on from small infractions before things escalate.

Our gun-soaked society is a critical piece of the problem, and strong gun control laws can begin to address that. But another critical piece of the problem is a punitive society that targets vulnerable children for non-violent offenses.

Instead of arming schools — which benefits only the NRA and lawmakers who’ve been bought by them — what our education system needs is resources to support the healthy development of all students.

Then we’re getting real about school safety.

*Karen Dolan directs the Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

Socio-economic problems take two forms: one form is fake; the other is real.

The fake problems are bandied about by special interests, chief among which is the government itself, in a quest to acquire greater power and wealth at your expense. Obviously, in a just and sensible world, the government should never undertake to solve fake problems. Its doing so is at best wasteful, at worst destructive.

The real problems themselves take two forms: one form is attended by calls for the government to “do something” to solve the problem; the other form is not attended by such calls. This latter form is, in our time, quite rare, the prevailing assumption being that the government should involve itself in solving any and all real problems, even minor, mostly contrived, and trivial ones.

If the problem is real and the government undertakes to solve it, the result in nearly every case will be that special interests, especially the government itself, will be further empowered and enriched and, on top of this insult to justice and prosperity, the real problem will be made worse rather than solved, setting in motion further calls for government intervention and creating an endless chain of action and reaction leading toward a leviathan state.

So, regardless of the nature of the perceived problem, the default preference of those who cherish their freedom and seek to retain the wealth they have legitimately acquired is that the government do nothing. Cases in which this default option is not optimal are probably too few to merit much consideration.

This article was published at The Beacon.

By Catherine Stupp

(EurActiv) — Privacy regulators across the EU should join together to investigate allegations that London-based firm Cambridge Analytica illegally analysed millions of Facebook users’ data, the EU’s top data protection watchdog has said.

National authorities from across the EU should form a joint taskforce to determine whether the social media giant and Cambridge Analytica broke the bloc’s strict data protection laws.

“None of us may succeed alone. A joint action is needed,” Giovanni Buttarelli, the EU data protection supervisor, told reporters on Tuesday (20 March).

His comments dialled up growing pressure from outraged European politicians to crack down on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica over the allegations of massive data harvesting.

Data protection regulators can investigate legal breaches in their own member states and can coordinate their inquiries to share information if more than one authority investigates the same case.

He said that allegations about Cambridge Analytica using 50 million Facebook users’ profile data to influence political campaigns “could be the scandal of the century”.

Media reports on Saturday (17 March) about Facebook’s knowledge of an app that collected data from the social media platform and fed it back to Cambridge Analytica in 2016 might just be “the tip of the iceberg,” Buttarelli warned.

The New York Times and the Observer reported over the weekend that millions of Facebook users’ profiles were analysed for political campaigns without their consent, and that Facebook knew of the data harvesting but did not inform its users.

Buttarelli said the allegations posed “an extremely important test for all of us”, referring to the national privacy watchdogs from EU countries.

Cambridge Analytica’s clients included Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Leave.EU campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to the newspapers. The company has denied that it abused Facebook’s user terms to collect the data without informing users. Facebook said over the weekend that it had suspended Cambridge Analytica’s account.

“We are not here to alarm you but the problem is real and huge,” Buttarelli said.

He said the national authorities spoke to each other over the phone and by email after the latest reports broke about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.

The regulators have started to work together more over the last few years, particularly in their actions after data breaches affecting large tech companies that operate across the bloc.

Last autumn, privacy authorities from seven EU countries banded together to investigate a breach that exposed personal data from millions of users of the ride-sharing app Uber.

The watchdogs do not currently have the power to conduct EU-wide inquiries if they suspect a company has broken the law in multiple member states. They can voluntarily agree to create special taskforces, like in the case of the Uber investigation, if more than one regulator is investigating the same case.

But that will change when a stricter new EU data protection regulation comes into effect in May that will give regulators more muscle and the ability to impose much higher sanctions of up to €20 million, or 4% of a firm’s global turnover.

A group of multiple European authorities would be better positioned to investigate whether the incident broke EU law because Facebook’s business model and use of features such as the ‘like’ button or fan pages to track user data are the same in every country, Buttarelli said.

“The way in which the system works is global and there is no exception. There is no national approach,” Buttarelli told reporters.

The UK data protection authority ICO opened an investigation last year into how data analytics companies were used in the leadup to the Brexit referendum, after reports first circulated about Cambridge Analytica’s analysis of Facebook profiles for political clients. On Monday, the regulator’s office said it would look into new evidence, referring to the reports about Facebook’s knowledge of the data use.

Facebook’s European headquarters is in Ireland. On Tuesday, the Irish data protection commissioner said in a statement that she is “following up with Facebook Ireland in relation to what forms of active oversight of app developers and third parties that utilise their platform is in place”.

A European Commission spokesman said on Monday that the EU executive urged national data protection watchdogs to open an “EU-wide investigation”.

Vera Jourova, the EU’s Justice Commissioner, called the allegations “horrifying”.

She flew to Washington on Monday and will discuss the Facebook data case in meetings this week with Trump administration officials, her spokesman said. She will also meet with Facebook representatives.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday that he had invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a hearing in the house. The Parliament does not have the authority to sanction firms over breaches of EU data protection law. The UK Parliament has also summoned Zuckerberg to give evidence to MPs.

By Jeoffrey Maitem

A senior United Nations official on Tuesday joined mounting calls for the Philippine government to remove the names of a Filipino special rapporteur and other activists from a list of communist terrorists it wanted to pursue.

Among the 600 names of alleged communist insurgents that the military had asked a local court to classify as terrorists were those of Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, and ex-Rep. Satur Ocampo. Also on the list is Joan Carling, an activist for the Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development, according to Erik Solheim, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP).

“These charges must be dropped immediately and support provided for the legitimate activities of these individuals who have U.N. mandates and the civil society organizations with which they work,” Solheim said in a statement.

His statement came shortly after the U.N. and Human Rights Watch called for the government to clarify the list.

Three months ago, Corpuz expressed alarm over military attacks on indigenous tribes in the southern Philippines because the armed forces had tagged them as communist insurgents.

Corpuz was on the list because the military had received intelligence that she was somehow connected with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), Harry Roque, the spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, said on March 10.

“I assure everyone including the international community that this not a witch-hunt on U.N. special rapporteurs,” Roque said. “Instead, perhaps the U.N. rapporteur system should fine-tune its selection process to ensure that individuals identified with terrorist groups are not given any mandate by the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

Roque stressed that the Philippines would allow Corpuz the right to be heard.

“She can dispute the classification in the regional trial court where the petition to declare the CPP-NPA as a terrorist group is currently pending,” he said.

Corpuz was welcome to submit controverting evidence against the claim that she was a top communist member, Roque added.

Solheim claimed his agency had a long-standing relationship with Corpuz and Carling in line with its mandate as the leading global environmental authority.

“It is deeply concerning that authorities have routinely responded to the expressions of environmental and human rights defenders by criminalizing and delegitimizing their voices,” Solheim said.

He said UNEP had developed a policy promoting greater protection for environmental defenders that recognizes and relies on the critical work of people on the ground.

“It is on this basis that U.N. Environment is calling for these allegations to be dropped, and the safety of those named in the legal petition be assured,” Solheim said.

Corpuz was included on the list because of her alleged ties to CPP-NPA, Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano insisted. They have been waging a guerrilla campaign in the countryside for four decades. Military estimates placed their strength at more than 5,000 men scattered in at least 60 guerrilla fronts throughout the country.

In November 2017, Duterte ended peace talks with the communists, saying the guerrillas had reneged on their commitment to peace when members continued with attacks despite a agreeing to a ceasefire.

Duterte had hoped to end the 49-year rebellion by the time his six-year term expires in 2022. But in January, he announced he would take legal actions against the communist movement, including left-leaning political groups.

ICC

Last week, the Philippines officially notified the U.N. that it was pulling out of the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying critics were using human rights issues to undermine the government.

In February, the ICC, which is based in The Hague, said it would begin a preliminary examination of a complaint filed against Duterte over crimes against humanity because of deaths linked to his administration’s war on illegal drugs. The ICC has jurisdiction over certain serious crimes under international law including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

On Tuesday, the court, issued a statement saying that the Philippine decision to withdraw from the ICC would have “no impact on on-going proceedings or any matter which was already under consideration by the Court prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective.”

Meanwhile, Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists, said the Philippines should reconsider its hasty and ill-conceived decision to withdraw from the ICC.

In a letter sent to Duterte, the ICJ called on the Philippines to commit to an effective investigation of the allegations of widespread and systematic extrajudicial killings and bring to justice those responsible.

Duterte is leading a crackdown against suspected drug addicts and pushers that has left at least 4,000 dead, according to government figures. Rights groups claim the figure could reach 12,000, including deaths blamed on pro-government vigilantes.

“The Philippine government’s submitted justifications for withdrawing from the ICC are a litany of poorly thought out pseudo-legal arguments and self-serving statements that focus on President Duterte’s fear and resentment at facing questions for the horrific campaign of extrajudicial executions that his government has explicitly condoned,” Zarifi said.

“At any rate, despite what the Philippine president may wish, withdrawal from the ICC will not prevent the prosecutor from conducting a preliminary examination because the acts complained of were committed prior to the date when the withdrawal becomes effective,” Zarifi said.

He accused Duterte of bullying critics who had questioned his government’s violent methods.

“He’s now trying to avoid accountability under international law, too,” Zarifi said.

Cristina Palabay, head of the local rights group Karapatan, said Duterte’s decision was part of a ploy to paint himself as the victim of an international conspiracy.

“Unfortunately for Duterte, withdrawing from the ICC does not absolve him from anything, nor does it leave him off the hook. Moreover, withdrawal from international agreements is a constitutional matter, and should undergo proper legal processes,” Palabay said.

Mark Navales in Cotabato contributed to this report.

By Mary Rezac

Catholic educators in Sweden have denounced a political party’s promise to ban all religious schools as a political maneuver capitalizing on people’s fears in order to obtain votes.

The Social Democratic Party in Sweden has proposed banning all religious schools (known as “confessional schools”) in the country, in what the party says is an attempt at better integration of students.

The party has formed a coalition government with the Green Party, and a general election is to be held in September.

The Social Democrats have expressed concern that confessional schools contribute to the segregation of students, by religion and gender, and that they don’t teach children democratic values.

“In our schools, teachers and principals should make the decisions, not priests or imams,” Minister for Upper Secondary School and Adult Education and Training Anna Ekstrom said at a press conference.

The Social Democrats said last week that the proposed policy would be a priority were they re-elected in September.

But Catholic educators in the country are concerned that the proposal would constitute a wide-ranging infringement on religious freedom and on already-restricted religious education in the country. Religious schools cannot charge tuition, and receive government funding.

“…there is a very negative public debate with a lot of pre-judgements against us and religion in general. We are very worried of course as the proposal is an aggressive assault against our Catholic community,” Paddy Maguire, principal of Notre Dame Catholic School in Gothenburg (located fewer than 300 miles southwest of Stockholm), and Daniel Szirányi, a board member of the same school, said in a joint statement.

Religious education in the country is already under strict restrictions. Current law in Sweden does not allow for catechesis or prayer to take place during regular school hours – it must take place either before or after school, on a voluntary basis.

However, Maguire told CNA that most people in Sweden are unaware of this law, that religious schools also follow the state-issued curriculum, or how religious schools are run in general.

“We have to (abide by) Swedish law, they don’t understand that. They just think we’re run by priests and imams, as they put it,” Maguire said.

Maguire added that the issues that the Social Democrats want to solve are problems that are occurring in Muslim schools, “but they are too cowardly to say so.”

Sweden, which has a historically open-door policy for asylum seekers, saw a dramatic increase in Muslim refugees from countries such as Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the past few years, with numbers more than doubling between 2014 and 2015 alone.

This dramatic increase in the number of Muslims in Sweden, and practices of some of their schools – such as sex segregation – is the primary motivation behind the religious school ban, Maguire said.

Rather than fixing individual problems, however, “they want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” she said.

Kristina Hellner, communications officer for the Diocese of Stockholm, told CNA, “It’s presented as a quick and simple solution to a problem that is quite limited.”

“The absolute majority of the religious schools in Sweden show excellent results but a small number of them (and these are Islamic schools) have had different kinds of problems. Instead of doing something about these specific schools, certain politicians would like to solve it by closing all religious schools,” she said.

There are 71 religious schools in the country, of which 59 are Christian, 11 are Muslim, and one is Jewish.

Hellner added that Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm will be working closely with other Christian groups in Sweden to oppose this proposal “with one voice through the Christian Council.”

If the ban were to be enacted, the Socialist Democrats have said that they would make the religious schools into secular schools. However, Maguire noted that most Christian schools would be forced to close, as they are tied to trust funds, through which the schools promised to provide a Christian education.

This would leave approximately 10,000 students without a school, a number the public school system is not adequately prepared to absorb, she said.

“It’s a badly sorted out policy, it’s just a play for populism as we see it,” Maguire said.

Thus far, the proposal is supported by the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and some of the Liberals. The Moderate Party and the Christian Democrats support confessional schools. Some among the Liberals support a policy that would maintain existing religious schools, but would prevent new ones from being founded.

The Green Party and the Centre Party have remained neutral on the issue.

Maguire said she didn’t believe the policy would ultimately pass, because the Social Democrats are losing political power, while right wing parties are gaining power. The Social Democratic Party has lost support in recent polls to the Moderate Party, the largest group in the opposition.

However, she added that educators and Catholic leaders in the country are prepared to fight the proposal all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, and to fight for the rights of parents, designated by the United Nations, to send their children to schools with distinct religious or philosophical leanings.

By Ryan Dagur

Indonesian weekly magazine Tempo has defied radical Muslims’ demand for an apology over a cartoon which they said insulted a Muslim cleric.

In its editorial published on March 19, it insisted that it would only apologize for the impact of the cartoon’s publication on Feb. 28 “if it offends a particular group.”

“But Tempo did not apologize — let alone plead guilty — for publishing it,” it said.

On March 16, about 200 members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) rallied outside Tempo’s office to protest the cartoon of a white-robed man talking to a woman. The man says, “I’m sorry I don’t come home” and the woman replies, “What you did to me was cruel.”

The conservative group said the cartoon referred to Muhammad Rizieq Shihab, the FPI leader who is in Saudi Arabia after fleeing Indonesia in May 2017 when Jakarta police issued a warrant for his arrest over accusations of sharing pornographic material in WhatsApp chats with a female activist.

He also faces possible blasphemy charges stemming from a complaint by Catholic students who accused Shihab of ridiculing the birth of Jesus in a speech that was widely circulated on the internet.

Shihab was supposed to return to Indonesia on Feb. 21 but told supporters in a phone call that his failure to return was because he needed to seek God’s guidance. It was the fifth time he had reneged on a pledge to return to the country.

In the March 16 rally, protesters kicked tables, threw water and seized the glasses of Tempo’s editor-in-chief Arif Zulkifli.

Tempo said the action was “overdone” and claimed the demand for apology to all Muslims “certainly does not make sense.”

“How can FPI claim all Muslims have the same views, attitudes and behavior as them,” it said.

The magazine said that rejecting FPI’s request was based on the belief that “once intimidation succeeds in determining editorial decisions, the thing at stake is not just Tempo’s reputation. If it is not resisted, the intimidating actor can be addicted. The victims could be Tempo or other media. This is very harmful to press freedom and the public’s right to information.”

FPI spokesman Slamet Maarif defended his group’s actions as part of efforts to maintain the honor of clerics.

“Compared to what we do, Tempo’s actions are more dangerous and highly unjustified as they have insulted the ulema [body of Muslim scholars],” he told ucanews.com.

Ahmad Nurhasim from the Alliance of Independent Journalists said FPI must comply with the press law, which requires objections to articles to be conveyed through the right of reply, right of correction or a complaint to the press council.

“By intimidating, they have created a fearful effect among journalists and the media to be critical and independent,” Nurhasim told ucanews.com.

He said mass mobilization to force the media to acknowledge mistakes in journalistic work is anti-democratic and anti-press freedom.

Founded in 1971 by veteran journalists Goenawan Mohamad and Yusril Djalinus, Tempo is known as an investigative magazine.

During the regime of dictator Suharto, the magazine was banned along with two others as a threat to national stability. It resumed publication after Suharto’s fall.

In 2010, the magazine’s office was firebombed by two black-clad men. The attack was widely presumed to be linked to the police as it happened after the magazine published a story about police corruption.

Two novel materials, each composed of a single atomic layer and the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope – these are the ingredients to create a novel kind of a so-called “quantum dot”. These extremely small nanostructures allow delicate control of individual electrons by fine-tuning their energy levels directly. Such devices are key for modern quantum technologies.

The theoretical simulations for the new technology were performed in the team of Prof. Florian Libisch and Prof. Joachim Burgdörfer at TU Wien. The experiment involved the group of Prof. Markus Morgenstern at RWTH Aachen and the team around Nobel-prize laureates Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov from Manchester who prepared the samples. The results have now been published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Tuning electron energies

“For many applications in the field of quantum technologies one requires a quantum system were electrons occupy two states – similar to a classical switch – on or off, with the difference that quantum physics also allows for arbitrary superpositions of the on and off states,” explained Florian Libisch from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at TU Wien.

A key property of such systems is the energy difference between those two quantum states: “Efficiently manipulating the information stored in the quantum state of the electrons requires perfect control of the system parameters. An ideal system allows for continuous tuning the energy difference from zero to a large value,” said Libisch.

For systems found in nature – for example atoms – this is usually difficult to realize. The energies of atomic states, and hence their differences, are fixed. Tuning energies becomes possible in synthetic nanostructures engineered towards confining electrons. Such structures are often referred to as quantum dots or “artificial atoms”.

Two ultra-thin materials: graphene and hexagonal boron nitride

The international research team of TU Wien, RWTH Aachen and the University of Manchester now succeeded in developing a new type of quantum dots which allow for much more accurately and widely tunable energy levels of confined electrons than before. This progress was made possible by combining two very special materials: graphene, a conductive single atomic layer of carbon atoms, and hexagonal boron nitride, also a single layer of material quite similar to graphene except that it is insulating.

Exactly like graphene boron nitride also forms a honeycomb lattice. “The honeycombs in graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are, however, not exactly of equal size” explained Florian Libisch. “If you carefully put a single layer of graphene on top of hexagonal boron nitride, the layers cannot perfectly match. This slight mismatch creates a superstructure over distances of several nanometers, which results in an extremely regular wave-like spatial oscillation of the graphene layer out of the perfect plane.”

As the extensive simulations at TU Wien show, exactly these oscillations in graphene on hexagonal boron nitride form the ideal scaffold to control electron energies. The potential landscape created by the regular superstructure allows for accurately placing the quantum dot, or even moving it continuously and thus smoothly changing its properties. Depending on the exact position of the tip of the scanning tunneling microscope, the energy levels of the electronic states inside the quantum dot change. “A shift by a few nanometers allows for changing the energy difference of two neighboring energy levels from minus five to plus ten millielectronvolts with high accuracy – a tuning range about fifty times larger than previously possible”, explains Florian Libisch.

Towards “Valleytronics”

As a next step, the tip of the scanning tunneling microscope could be replaced by a series of nanoelectronic gates. This would allow for exploiting the quantum dot states of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride for scalable quantum technologies such as “valleytronics”.

“This emerging new field is quickly becoming a center of attention”, said Florian Libisch. “There are multiple potential technological applications of these atomically thin materials – that is also why the TU Wien has also very recently established a special doctoral college focused on two-dimensional materials.”

Could omega-6 fatty acids protect you against premature death? The answer is yes, according to a new University of Eastern Finland study. While protecting against death, omega-6 fatty acids also keep cardiovascular diseases at bay.

“Linoleic acid is the most common polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid. We discovered that the higher the blood linoleic acid level, the smaller the risk of premature death,” said Adjunct Professor Jyrki Virtanen from the University of Eastern Finland, reporting the findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Although omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids are known for their beneficial effect on blood cholesterol levels, it has been speculated that they may increase the risk of several chronic diseases by promoting low-grade inflammation, among other things. The reasoning behind this speculation is that in the human body, linoleic acid is converted into arachidonic acid (also an omega-6 fatty acid) which, in turn, is converted into various inflammation-promoting compounds. However, omega-6 fatty acids also increase the production of anti-inflammatory compounds, and this is why it is challenging to determine the associations of dietary factors with the risk of developing disease merely by focusing on their effects on disease risk factors.

Ongoing at the University of Eastern Finland, the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study, KIHD, determined the blood fatty acid levels of 2,480 men between 42 and 60 years of age at the onset of the study, in 1984-1989. During an average follow-up of 22 years, 1,143 men died of disease-related causes, and deaths due to an accident or other reasons were excluded from the study.

When the researchers divided the study participants into five different groups based on their blood linoleic acid level, they discovered that the risk of premature death was 43% lower in the group with the highest level, when compared to the group with the lowest level. A more detailed analysis of the causes of death showed that a similar association exists for death due to cardiovascular diseases, as well as for death due to some other reason than cardiovascular diseases or cancer.

However, no association was observed for death due to cancer. Similar, although slightly weaker, associations were also observed for the blood arachidonic acid level. Another significant finding of the study is that the outcome is very similar regardless of whether the study participants suffered from cardiovascular diseases, cancer or diabetes at the onset of the study.

The study backs up findings from earlier population-based studies which have linked a higher dietary intake of linoleic acid and a higher blood linoleic acid level to a smaller risk of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, without increasing the risk of cancer, for example. The observed association of arachidonic acid with a reduced risk of death is a new finding.

The blood linoleic acid level is determined by a person’s diet, and the main sources of linoleic acid are vegetable oils, plant-based spreads, nuts and seeds. However, a person’s diet will affect his or her blood arachidonic acid level only a little.

By Bradley Jardine

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan hinted that he aims to extend his decade-long rule in a March 19 interview. The comments came two weeks before his presidential term is set to expire and the country transitions to a new political system under which the prime minister – possibly Sargsyan – will be the most powerful figure.

Speaking with the Tert.am news service, Sargsyan walked back his 2014 pledge to not stay in power after Armenia makes its long discussed transition from a presidential to a parliamentary republic. Whether or not Sargsyan would slide over to occupy the prime minister post has been the subject of much speculation in Armenia.

The 2014 pledge was pretty hard to misinterpret. If Armenia were to choose a parliamentary form of government – which it later did – “then I will also not aspire to the post of prime minister,” he said. “I believe that one person must not aspire to the reins of power in Armenia for more than twice in a lifetime.”

Sargsyan justified his apparent change of opinion by citing fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh and recent internal unrest, which he said have combined to fundamentally alter the political climate in the years since he made his pledge not to remain in power.

Sargsyan also accused opponents of taking his 2014 statement “out of context.”

“I still do not aspire to the post of prime minister,” he said. “But I have never regarded myself as someone who is guided by prejudice or rigid thinking. I cannot fail to reckon with the reality and think that I bear no responsibility for the future and our country’s smooth course.”

The transition is set to take place on April 9, the date Sargsyan’s term expires. His allies have already begun mobilizing their support for his candidacy as prime minister.

Sargsyan went on to speak of ongoing “discussions” within his ruling Republican Party of Armenia and its junior coalition partner, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaksutyun, on who should be the country’s next prime minister.

“I don’t know when we will finish those discussions,” he said. But he said that if he were in fact nominated, he would prioritize handing over the reins to younger figures. “I will be spending more time transferring our country’s entire visible and not visible experience of the past years to young political leaders,” he said. “This is an issue which is extremely important right now.”

Some say this statement may signal the president’s intention to groom successors and influence Armenian politics for years to come.

Chatham House analyst Anahit Shirinyan wrote on Twitter that if “Sargsyan wants to stay in power, wasting the benefit of the doubt he had (if at all) over the Constitutional shift to a parliamentary system. Question is how much opposition/public resistance this will generate, given the starkly divided Armenian opposition.”

Others were quick to notice the parallels with Vladimir Putin, who was elected to a fourth presidential term in Russia under controversial circumstances on March 18. The Russian president famously switched roles with Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev in 2008 and continued to influence the country’s politics behind the scenes.

Director of Yerevan’s Regional Studies Center Richard Giragosian wrote: “[It’s] pretty sad to note just how much Armenia tends to mimic Russia in this case, Armenians and Russians both have leaders who don’t leave office.”

By Caleb Mills

Sparse hints of spring are just beginning to tease the eastern seaboard as the slow recession of winter finally begins. Still, going west of the Mississippi River will bring you perilously close to where Jack Frost’s reign of terror isn’t over yet. Record setting temperatures continue to slow life’s pace not just for the people, but for the local economies; which means farmers.

Harsh conditions are an occupational hazard in this industry, yet that doesn’t make them any less of a threat. But the chilly weather isn’t the only thing nipping at their patience these days.

Being an American farmer isn’t what it used to be. An honest day’s work doesn’t only include an alarm set for 6:00 a.m. and a healthy appreciation for a combine anymore. Even for the small farm, it requires an understanding of technology, international markets, and a firm grip on a future that has never been so severely in question.

Farming was never easy, but the economic realities of the 21st century have erased the picture-perfect image of American agricultural supremacy. In 2012-2013, Brazil surpassed the United States to become the world’s chief exporter of soybeans, and is poised to beat American farms in the beef industry. The United States is now 4th in wheat production, 4th in potatoes, and is fast losing its 1st position in maize.  China is now the world’s main exporter of wheat, utilizing the fertile Yellow River and Huai River Valleys in ways the U.S. can’t match. The depressing truth is that the United States is no longer the world’s breadbasket.

The array of symptoms that afflict this dying symbol of American cultural and economic preeminence is mostly modern, but it is not necessarily new. Agricultural studies from the US government have shown that US farms have been on the decline since the 1970s, with the peak number being 6.8 million in 1935. By 2002, it was only 2.1 million.

The slow demise of the American farmer has been at the center of US domestic politics for decades, and it seems every politician within 100 miles of a silo has an answer that will somehow help them with rural constituents. Putting aside any instinctive need to pander, the sad reality few consider is that maybe this was inevitable.

Historically, America’s agricultural power partially stemmed from an unchallengeable reserve of resources and land, not to mention unprecedented technological progress through innovation. Eventually, America’s self-sustainability became one of her greatest strengths in international diplomacy. Her sources of food were usually secure out west, which in turn prolonged a foreign policy of isolationism. Unlike the rest of the Western world, America didn’t have a vested interest on the world stage in terms of survival. In notable contrast, Europe – particularly Britain – was highly dependent on her colonies for much of the 20th century for maintaining its place near the top in terms of agriculture. Even today, more than half of the United Kingdom’s food comes from overseas. The continent as a whole in 2007 imported an amount equal to the production of 86.5 million acres of farmland.

As early as the 1830s, American cash crops had arrived as a powerful force in international markets. By the time the Civil War began, US imports were so pivotal to European economic stability that Britain and France considered the possibility of sacrificing decades of moralistic opposition to slavery and openly intervening on behalf of the slaveholding confederacy. King Cotton was responsible for the existence of millions of European jobs at the time, especially in the industrial sector.

The international landscape at the end of both World Wars was immensely favorable to the United States, especially economically. As the only major power that did not face extensive fighting on home territory, the giant protected by two oceans was left unscathed by the devastation that had ravaged much of the world. Europe was crippled, Africa colonized, Asia war-torn, and South America impoverished. The lack of rivals throughout the industrialized world against U.S. economic power was a temporary state that should’ve been expected to end, and it did.

The world recovered and as more nations joined the global community as serious powerbrokers, US power diminished. China emerged from Deng Xiaoping’s capitalist reforms eager to challenge the U.S. economically, India began reaping the benefits of Norman Borlaug’s dwarf wheat, and South America slowly began to harness the power of her fertile soil. As this shift became evident domestically, the blame game began. But the most common misconception that arose was that this recession of American economic might was the byproduct of lackluster efforts to preserve it. On the contrary, these developments have been in spite of those efforts.

In 1961, the U.S. was the undisputed king of maize at 91,388,000 tons produced in a single year. In 2016, production soared to 384,777,890 tons. Yet it’s place at the top is in question as in the same year China leaped to second with 231,673,946 tons.

Here we see the inevitable result of globalization and free trade: fierce competition. That doesn’t always benefit everyone. However, not every threat to this all-American way of life is foreign.

As a result of growing pressure across the globe, domestic consolidation of farmland has been increasing. In the early 1950s, U.S. farms began decreasing in numbers while drastically expanding in scale. Today, the top 10% of farms in size account for 70% of total cropland nationally. As a result, a select few US Agricultural giants own the majority of the crop market share, which greatly contributes to the pressures of smaller farms. In 2013, Nestle had over 100 billion in sales worldwide. The sheer power of these large companies is staggering and the control they are consolidating is part of the problem. And that dilemma, only a little a while ago, got a whole lot worse.

Back in October of 2017, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced he would be ending the GIPSA rule, which gave small farms the legal arms to fight back against monopoly practices from bigger companies. It’s not entirely uncommon for large companies like agriculture giant Monsanto to take measures aimed at keeping smaller competitors in check, but in more ways than just cruel economic tactics.

GMOs are a hot topic in the United States, but for countless farmers, using genetically modified seeds has become a necessity. Monsanto has sued hundreds of smaller farms for replanting crops that originated from Monsanto’s modified seeds. They view it as a patent violation, while the small farmer views it as imperative to keep up with the competition. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t share the latter opinion. In 2013, Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman took on Monsanto at the United States Supreme Court and lost. America’s highest court unanimously ruled that Bowman had to pay Monsanto a fee for continued usage of the seeds.

The intrinsically complicated laws of free market capitalism seep in here to make an already tough debate even harder, but the basic fact remains that the monopoly established by Monsanto and others in the seed industry has left thousands of small farms with little to no options if they want to remain relevant. Bowman v. Monsanto Co. established a precedent where farms will now be continually trapped into paying high fees for the advanced seeds they need. Even in Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion for the court there was a clear acknowledgement of the impact these modifications had, writing “we recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse.”

Studies from the Center for Food Safety and the Save Our Seeds campaigning groups have come to the conclusion that Monsanto’s aggressive campaigns against smaller companies go hand-in-hand with other multinational conglomerate legal actions to paint a clear picture: they have sown the seeds for cornering the market. Quite literally.

The research found legal prosecution had affected 410 farmers, 56 small businesses in almost 30 states, and won nearly 23 million dollars as a result. The worst part? 53% of the seed industry was controlled by three companies worldwide:  Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta. GMOs remain banned in 26 countries, which leaves the United States as one of the few industrialized nations that faces this problem. And even as the United Nations continues to recommend other forms of agricultural expansion, the U.S. continues to flatline on one of the biggest reasons small farms are struggling.

Washington has usually blazed its own regulatory path regardless of international standards or advice. That’s always had arduous effects on the agricultural sector, and the new administration is adding significant changes in the recently passed GOP tax bill that will further complicate the matter.

Under the bill, farms structured as corporations or partnerships could see a tax cut as drastic as 10% – a grandiose reduction and a net positive on the surface. Yet senior advisor for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Ferd Hoefner, estimates that farms amassing over $1 million in annual sales will see the most relief, meaning a lot of smaller farms won’t be helped. In fact, it could be quite the opposite.

Farms operating as co-ops will lose big, as the elimination of the Section 199 deduction could take away almost 2 billion in revenue based on expense deductions. The National Council of Farmer Cooperatives strenuously opposed the rollback, and even united over 150 farm advocacy groups against the move. Around 80% of the US milk industry is represented by co-op businesses, meaning it’s not just Kansas that will hurt from the move. Besides a few Senators out west like Montana Democrat John Tester and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, very few brought up the issue. One thing’s for sure: if the tax bill doesn’t kill the small farmer, it certainly won’t save him.

For the heartland, the effects are real and being felt in everyday lives. The gradual decline in prices, especially for wheat and corn, is pushing farmers in Kansas further into debt.  “Whenever you have low prices like this, everyone goes hungry,” local farmer Tom Giessel was quoted as saying in the Topeka Capital-journal. “County governments, state governments, and rural economies suffer along with the farmer.”

For the small farmer, maximizing yield and significantly reducing input costs is the only way to stay in business. The recent MATE Show in Billings, Montana, is only one of a few exposes across the country promoting new tech to a farm community in desperate need for cost reductions. “Compared to the eastern markets, adoption is a little slower out here but as far as the nuts and bolts, the autosteer and stuff like that, adoption has been pretty universal,” Montana Ag consultant Travis Anderson said in an interview with local newscaster KRTV. “The display that comes with this tractor, whatever you punch into it, whether you’re putting down map, seed variety or anything like that, can track inputs back to our website,” Anderson said. “And that allows you to kind of do your own little agronomy trials on your farm. Try something different in this field versus this one and track it to see which one made you more money.”

These so-called production costs that are driving many out of business aren’t just relegated to equipment. It is estimated that almost 39% of U.S. farmland is actually leased to farmers, meaning a large portion of where you get your food probably wasn’t grown on land that the farmer legally controls. The amount of money needed to access the real estate needed for planting is, once again, sometimes too costly for smaller farms to have access to. Iowa State University found in a recent study that in 1970, you could buy land in the state for $419 an acre. In 2016, the price was roughly $7,183, which is an increase of 1,600%.

Still, there is some hope for local farming. In Colorado, initiatives like the Colorado Proud program provide consumers with the knowledge that their food was locally grown, and it’s been wildly successful since its implementation in 1999. It represents a growing social trend, principally with younger generations, that’s putting emphasis on organic and home-grown foodstuffs. “Buying locally has become more of a focus from younger generations,” said Chris Wiseman, deputy commissioner of the Colorado Department of Agriculture. “I know people who look for these labels in grocery stores because they feel like they’re helping a neighbor.”

For all the industries millennials are supposedly killing, local agriculture is definitely not one of them. The upcoming generation makes up 52% of those who consume organic foods, eats 52% more vegetables than older age groups, and roughly 40% are reportedly exercising a plant-centered diet with their eating habits. While healthy cultural patterns alone can’t save American farming, it’s certainly stopping some of the bleeding.

But despite state government programs and differing generational appreciation for small-time farming, the USDA has already predicted that profits for the industry in 2018 will be the lowest since 2006, and studies have shown overall revenue has dropped by almost 50% in the last four years. In addition, there are genuine worries that the attraction of farming is too low for sustainability generationally. For the first time in history, there are more farmers who are older than 65 rather than below 45. Even the suicide rate for those in farming is up, almost double that of veterans.

Sadly, it seems the overly romanticized paintings of Grant Wood and the classic landscapes gorgeously depicted by Currier & Ives might be all that’s left of agricultural Americana these days. Perhaps this was always meant to happen; maybe the natural course of free market capitalism dictates the eventual collapse of every economic powerbroker. We can only hope that the rise and fall of the American farmer is not, in its own sadistic way, an inner representation of the general deterioration of American power.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

By Mahdi Torabi and Vahid Pourtajrishi*

The history of Silk Road backs to thousands years ago. The aim of creation of this route was linking China to Europe through Middle East. Growth of Chinese enterprises and industries which was started since middle of 20^th century increased the significance of expanding the link routes between China and Europe following expansion of China’s export to West. Silk Road seems to be the main option in such condition as an ancient route which has been designed and created for this purpose.

But the main existing problem on this way was existinglimitation on capability of the classic Silk Road for transportation of high volume of freight from China to Europe.

In fact, the issue of increase this capability was the essence of Xi Jinping’s initiation of his “One Road One Belt” Doctrine which was declared by him as one of the significant elements of Chinese foreign policy.

According to the Xi Jinping’s defined policy for the new Silk Road, this route has to be expanded to some new routes on the ground and sea.  But it has to be mentioned that China has not been the only state who follows Jinping’s policy toward Silk Road. Many of other states, especially those who are located on China – Europe rote try to increase role on this high interesting route.

Through these states, we can point to Turkey and Russia as the most important ones who have shown their will to participate highly in this project.

Turkey introduced its Baku – Tbilisi – Kars (BTK) Corridor to create a new Silk Road which connects Istanbul to China by passing Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Ankara’s initiation in introducing a new combined route was a revolution in the regional and intercontinental transport orders.

But beside of all defined merits for this route, some disadvantages like high cost of transport or existence of not suitable weather conditions for move of ships through Caspian Sea on winter. That’s why;relating released reports on establishment of BTK by Turkey and its partners created a shock among experts in international transportation.

While many of experts recognized this route as the last alternative for the classic Silk Road, Russia could come over its geographical problems with sea ices of Arctic to establish Northern Sea Route or Ice Silk Road which was just an inaccessible dream for Moscow till few years ago.

Passing through Arctic that is fully covered with at least 150cm diameter pieces of ice might was just like a joke or far dream before end of Cold War and there was no strong logic behind of such assumption.

By start of the Cold War and fast growth of the nuclear technology in 60s to 90s, we can say that development of many nuclear related technologies like construction of reactors, enrichment and producing nuclear armament in one hand andexpansion of maritime industries especially in military section got in force by USSR.

But the main reasons for focus of Moscow on Arctic back to significance of natural resources in this region which composed determinants and important part of USSR’s boundaries.

While latitude of Scandinavian states and Canada is closed to Arctic, but no one of these states has not been successful enough to use the potential opportunities of this region like Russia.

Since Vladimir Putin’s seize of power in 2000 and his plans for reconstruction of Russia’s economy, discover of new routes to access world markets was adopted on the agenda of the Russian government. Finding new costumers for the huge resources of oil and gas was one of the main attitudes of Russia in Moscow’s new economic planning. That’s why Russia began to expand and execution of its significant and mega plans in this regard like establishment of Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

Despite all adopted policy by Russian government, the main problem was Makinder’s concern in his theory of “Heartland” to access the warm water. According to Makinder, the only available link route between Russia and the southern warm water was Iran. That’s why; Russians always have been looking for a way to access free and warm waters by Iran.

But by achieved impressive growth of technology during past decades, it seems Russia has found a safer way to access free waters instead of Iran and that is use of its territorial waters of Arctic that is able to link this country to Europe on one hand and connects Russia to East and China from on the other hand.

As we know, required technology for using the Northern Sea in international transit of freight have always been in hands of Russia and US. But this route has never been as interesting one for US because of its easy access to the free waters on one hand and end of Cold War on the other hand. That’s why there has been not enough interest for US to invest much in expansion of international transit route from Arctic region. US has only one icebreaker in North Sea and Arctic that is built in 1976 and was used for costal patrol in this region during Cold War era.

We try to investigate the probable causes for establishment of the “Ice Silk Road” by Russia in the following:

Expansion of the oil fields of Arctic and oil export increase

Russia got succeedto transport its first oil cargo in 2017 from Hammerfest in Norway into BoryeongPort of South Korea successfully. This shipment was a 200 million dollars LNG cargo which was transported by “Cristophe de Margerie” tanker carrier within just 19 days. It means Russia got succeed to save the time for 30% rather using Suez Canal as the common path of this route.

Russia has invested in development and expansion of the gas field of “YamalPeninsula” more than 27 million dollars and China also has announced its readiness for investment in this mega project. It is worth mentioning that the order of development this project issued by Vladimir Putinpersonally and this demonstrates the level of priority and significance of this project for Moscow. Margarie ice breaker tanker could sliced the huge ices of Arctic with at least 120 cm thickness and passed Arctic within just six days. But it is clear that possibility of such shipment will get very harder during winter season and needs high-developed ice breakers. That’s why, Russia has decided to produce new generation of these ice breakers to remove this obstacle.

Following this policy, Dimitry Rogozin, the deputy of the Russia’s prime minister in his interview with TASS News Agency declared decision of his country to build three new nuclear ice breakers.  He said: “Rosatom [state civilian nuclear power corporation] has now been instructed as part of private and state partnership to think over the algorithm of financing three icebreakers rather than one and then we will make navigable the entire Northern Sea Route. We will be able to lead whatever vessels for any customer by transit through the Northern Sea Route: caravans with goods from Asia to Europe and we will be able to export our hydrocarbons in the form of liquefied natural gas not only to Europe but also to Southeast Asia,” Rogozin said in an interview with Rossiya-24 TV Channel, describing the plans of developing Russia’s icebreaker fleet.

“In 2019, we will commission [the shipyard’s] dry dock. Just imagine the dimensions: 484 meters long and 114 meters wide. Two aircraft carriers can be built there at a time,” the vice-premier said, describing the new shipyard.

Simultaneously, shipbuilders in northwest Russia are building three current-generation icebreakers: the Arktika, the Ural and the Sibir, Rogozin said.

Simultaneously, shipbuilders in northwest Russia are building three current-generation icebreakers: the Arktika, the Ural and the Sibir, Rogozin said.

According to the vice-premier, these icebreakers will be commissioned for operation in 2019-2021 and “will help ensure an all-out escort [of vessels] through the ice from Yamal Peninsula towards the West.”

“Yamal LNG Project” is under construction in Yamal Peninsula and is counted as the most significant maritime project of Russia in energy sector. This mega project includes 200 wells, one airport and 15 tankers (2016) which will be able to export at least 2 million cm liquid gas. According to experts, this amount will be increased to 50 million cm in a year (the Ministry of Roads and Urban development of Iran).

On the other hand, China is one of the most important strategic customers and trade partners of Russia especially in oil section. According to the experts and analysts of energy section, China will be the consumer of 17% of energy resources of the world till 2050. That’s why, if Russia increases the amount of its oil productions, Moscow would become the first oil partner of China instead of the Middle Eastern oil exporters like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran.

Transit of freight from China to West (the Ice Silk Road)

According to Dimitry Rogozin, transit of freight from Far East to West using Arctic and Northern Sea will be one the main aims of Russia to establish the North Sea Route. Export of the Russian productions into South East of Asia is one of the other significant aims of creating such route. As Rogozin declared, the new generation of the nuclear ice breakers will be able to carry two aircraft carriers. So the approximate area of the each mentioned freight carrier will be something around 55176 m² and this dimension will be more than 5.5 hectares!

Furthermore, creation of the new route will be 25-55 percent shorter than the Suez Canal path which links China to Europe to each other.

It is worth to mention that one of the significant exports of Russia from this route will be the mineral extractions like gold, uranium and diamondin worth of more than five billion dollars.

Reduction of China’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil

China is one of the key players and investors in Yamal project and has invested more than 12 million dollars in this mega project. Except this, the Silk Road Fund has fulfilled 20% of the total project cost. But it has to be asked why China follows this project while Beijing fulfills its required oil from Middle East?

In fact, the energy market of Middle East and its stability is under doubt because of existing many problematic factors like anti – Iranian sanction, fire of war all over the region, the issue of illegal immigration of terrorist groups and etc. that’s why such market could not be counted as a stable and permanent energy market for China as the greatest industrial country of world.

So, it seems the Chinese officials have decided to find a more stable alternative to fulfill its energy needs instead of Middle East. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the existing strategic partnership between China and Russia in this way. Also, by creation of Ice Silk Road, it will be more logical for China to fulfill its required energy resources from Russia regarding the issue of short geographical distance between the two countries rather Middle East.

A the end, we have to say that creation of Ice Silk Road is minded as a game changer not only in foreign trade relations of Russia but also will be a revolution in international trade between East and West especially in aspect of trade corridors. It could affect highly on the both classic and new routes in Silk Road like the passing corridors from Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan and many other states that have enjoyed their geo-economics privileges on this route.

*About the authors:
*Mahdi Torabi is head of planning unit at department of the international affairs of the Railway of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Vahid Pourtajrishi is an expert at planning unit of the department of the international affairs of the Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has worked as journalist at correspondent of Mehr News Agency.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it will continue to support Sri Lanka in many areas including nuclear medicine, non-destructive testing in industry and assistance in introducing nuclear energy. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano reviewed the cooperation between the IAEA and Sri Lanka during his visit to the country on 14 March, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday (20).

While joining the Minister of Power and Renewable Energy Ranjith Siyambalapitiya at the inauguration of the new offices of the Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Board, Mr Amano was informed of the progress the country has achieved in applying nuclear techniques for development. Mr Amano reiterated the IAEA’s continued assistance in capacity building in this advanced technology.

Mr Amano discussed nuclear energy, an area of increased interest to the country. The inclusion of nuclear power as a possible option for electricity generation by 2030 is a key element in Sri Lanka’s Long-Term Generation Expansion Plan 2015-2034.

Mr Amano met State Minister of Foreign Affairs Vasantha Senanayake and State Minister of Power and Renewable Energy Ajith P. Perera and discussed key areas of Agency support when establishing important institutes such as the Sri Lankan Gamma Centre, the National Centre for Non- Destructive Testing and the Nuclear Medicine Unit at University of Peradeniya was covered.

The gamma irradiation applications are used mainly in the health care and food processing sectors and include the sterilisation of disposable medical products, surgical products and decontamination of food items such as species, dried vegetables and health supplements.

Mr Perera explained that in the area of non-destructive testing, Sri Lanka has built significant experience of over two decades and its companies provide inspection services to both the public and private sector. The IAEA has played an important role in helping Sri Lanka promote these technologies, particularly radiographic testing.

Mr Senanayake said that for Sri Lanka, nuclear medicine forms a key component of the national cancer control programme and the IAEA’s support was valuable. As a recipient of the IAEA Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy, Sri Lanka has received assistance in acquiring radiotherapy equipment and training health professionals at the National Cancer Institute. Mr Amano noted the IAEA assistance in providing expert advice on the implementation of the national radiotherapy plan within the national cancer control programme.

Other key areas discussed included ongoing IAEA supported projects on nutrition, the control of insect-borne diseases, analytical capabilities for environment and marine pollution monitoring, and nuclear techniques used in food and agriculture.