The composition of the European Parliament during the 2019-24 legislature will comply with all the restrictions established in the Lisbon Treaty. One of them is that there should be degressive proportionality. Yet the stipulation has been broken in both of the last two legislatures (2009-14 and 2014-19). The European Parliament has proposed a composition to the European Council that fulfils degressive proportionality. Hence, the distribution is acceptable, although it can be improved.

By Victoriano Ramírez González, José A. Martínez Aroza and Antonio Palomares Bautista*

The composition of the European Parliament has been decided, historically, via negotiations and agreements. With the object of obtaining a formula that would avoid the need to resort to a new agreement before each election, in 2011 the MEP Andrew Duff –with the cooperation of Professor Geoffrey Grimmett of Cambridge University– began to look for an appropriate formula for the distribution of seats. As a result, a group of researchers specialising in electoral systems (including seven mathematicians and a political scientist) drafted a report¹ known in the EP as the ‘Cambridge compromise’. This compromise formula fulfils all the stipulations established in the Lisbon Treaty. However, the proposal was not accepted because many countries would have lost representation if it had been applied in 2014.

At the end of 2016 the Constitutional Commission of the European Parliament (the AFCO) requested three reports from European mathematicians to come up with new formulas for the distribution of EP seats. These reports^{2 3} were debated and defended in the presence of the EP’s Constitutional Commission and their authors continued to work towards perfecting the proposed formulas, given that some Euro deputies proposed a new stipulation that ‘no State be forced to lose representation in 2019’ (in addition to guaranteeing the existing stipulations of the Lisbon Treaty).

It is possible to meet this stipulation (along with the others established in the Lisbon Treaty) because of the availability of the 73 seats of the UK that are being vacated as a result of Brexit. Some of these seats could be used to correct the current underrepresentation of certain States without the need for any other State to lose current representation.

A proposal with 705 seats (27 of them from the UK) that complies with all the stipulations of the Lisbon Treaty and in which no State loses representation was approved on 7 February by the European Parliaments.7 It is therefore an acceptable distribution. Nevertheless, a deeper analysis shows that it could be improved by increasing the representation of three countries: France, Spain and the Netherlands.

Analysis

The Lisbon Treaty (LT), signed in 2009, established a series of restrictions with respect to the composition of the European Parliament (EP). Specifically, the LT states that:

1. No State may have more than 96 seats, or less than six.
2. The size of the EP should be less than, or equal to, 751 seats.
3. The assignment of seats to States should be degressively proportional, such that the most populous States would have fewer representatives than would correspond exactly with their proportion of the total European population, while the least populous States would have more (although a State with more population than another would never have fewer representatives).

Therefore, Malta, the smallest EU country, should have at least six seats, even though it has less than half a million inhabitants. At the same time, Germany, the most populous country of the EU –with more than 82 million people– cannot have more than 96 representatives in the EP. Each MEP for Malta represents some 72,000 Maltese citizens, while each German MEP represents more than 854,000 Germans.

This degressive proportionality means that the MEPs from the most populous countries will represent more EU citizens than those from the least populous countries. In particular, when two countries are compared, the ratio between population and the number of seats must be higher for the more populous country. Currently, the 54 MEPs from Spain each correspond to some 860,000 inhabitants, while the 74 French MEPS seats each represent nearly 900,000 French inhabitants. In this way, degressive proportionality does not hold when comparing Germany with France, or Spain. In addition, there are other violations of this degressive proportionality principle.

A simple, transparent and durable formula for the distribution of EP seats was created in Cambridge. Using the 2011 populations cited in Eurostat (and including Croatia), the representation of each country was obtained by assigning an initial five seats to each State, and then another seat for each additional 835,000 inhabitants (or fraction thereof).

If this formula would have been applied, there would be no violation of the principle of degressive proportionality, and Spain would have 61 seats, instead of 54. But under the ‘Cambridge compromise’ formula, the countries of intermediate populations (especially those between 7 and 11 million) would lose significant representation. Therefore, this formula was not accepted for determining the distribution of seats for the period 2014-19.

Many other formulas have also been proposed during the last decade, but none have ultimately been accepted.

One recent formula fits relatively well with the current distribution of seats: it is known as FPS (fixed, proportional and proportional to the square root)⁴ because it assigns a fixed number of seats to each State (10%), while another group of seats is assigned in proportion to the population of each state (50%), and still another set of seats in proportion to the square root of each State’s population (40%).

The draft version of Report 2017/2054(ILN),⁵ prepared by Danuta María Hübner and Pedro Silva Pereira (President and Secretary of the AFCO, respectively), for the meeting held in Strasbourg on 11 September 2017, shows that FPS ‘produces interesting results that deserve a deeper analysis and should be considered for the future assignment of seats as of the 2024 elections’.

If FPS had been applied to calculate the composition for 2019 the result would have been very similar to that agreed except for some of the most populated countries.

The agreed composition and the proposed modification

Figure 1 shows, in column 3, the distribution proposed by the EP and in brackets the increase for countries whose representation would be greater than in 2014-19. France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are the four countries whose representation would increase the most, and precisely all of them except Italy currently fail to comply with the degressive proportionality stipulated by the LT, since they are very underrepresented.

Column 4 shows the degressivity ratios for the distribution of the EP, that is, the population/seat ratio.

Column 5 shows our proposed modified distribution; it only affects France, Spain and the Netherlands (in bold type).

The last column shows, in bold type, the new degressivity ratios for France, Spain and the Netherlands obtained by increasing their representation; it also shows the ratios for the other most populated countries in order to compare the change in ratio with the change in population from Germany to Belgium.

What countries stand to benefit from the EP’s proposed composition?

Looking at the increase in representation of different countries, it might appear that France and Spain, which each gain five more seats than they currently have, are the ones to benefit the most.

But that is not the case, since throughout the 2014-19 period the two countries were underrepresented, in breach of the LT, because Spain’s current ratio is higher than not only Italy’s but also Germany’s, while the latter has almost double its population; and France has a ratio far above Germany’s, when it ought to have a substantially lower one, more similar to Italy’s.

In fact, in the current 2014-19 period, France ought to have around 79 seats and Spain some 59, with Germany, Italy and Poland retaining those they currently have, because in that case the ratios of these five most heavily populated countries would be:

These ratios are in accordance with the respective populations. Because, in this case, France’s ratio (843,818) would be somewhat closer to Italy’s (839,761) than to Germany’s (854,838); and Spain’s (787,092) would be somewhat closer to Poland’s (744,455) than to Italy’s, as is the case with the populations (see column 2 in Figure 1).

However, in the proposal agreed by the EP, Italy has not remained with 73 seats nor Poland with 51. Rather, Italy has gained three seats, resulting in 76, and Poland one, resulting in 52.

Hence, it is Italy that has clearly benefitted from the distribution proposed by the EP.

In reality, the ratio of France should be closer to that of Italy than to that of Germany, since the population of France differs less from Italy’s than from Germany’s. France exceeds Italy in only three seats despite having 5.3 million inhabitants more (one seat for almost every 1.8 million people). That is not very reasonable.

At the same time, Spain’s ratio should be much closer to Poland’s, since its population differs less from Poland’s than from Italy’s. A similar reasoning for Belgium, the Netherlands and Rumania indicates that the Netherlands should also have one more seat, as proposed in column 5.

It can be observed that the last column presents a reasonably declining ratio when three States, ordered consecutively by populations, are compared; if the State in the middle has a population much closer to one of them than to the other, then the same should happen with respect to their ratios. This relationship did not hold in the fourth column of Figure 1.

The same conclusion can be reached by looking at various graphical representations. To guarantee degressivity, the points that represent the assigned seats according to each country’s population should show a concave line, or even in extreme cases be in line, especially as regards small groups of countries with consecutive population sizes. It can thus be seen that France and Spain should have more seats.

Figure 3 shows France and Spain receiving two additional seats each, to respectively 61 and 81.

In this case, the last five data are practically in line.

Figures 4 and 5 show the degressivity ratios of the five most heavily populated States compared to their populations, leading to the same conclusion.

It can be seen that Italy causes a change in the line’s slope gradient.

Figure 5 shows the ratios corresponding to the proposed modification.

In this case, we see how the slopes decrease gradually the gradient becomes smoother.

Additionally, the increase in one seat for Rumania would take its ratio much closer to that of the Netherlands, despite a difference in population of more 2.5 million. Thus, it would also be fairer to assign the Netherlands with one more seat.

Finally, Figures 6 and 7 show the 27 countries as regards the distribution that has been agreed upon and the proposed modification.

Conclusions

The composition of the two most recent European Parliaments did not meet the requisites established in the Lisbon Treaty with respect to degressive proportionality (DP). For example, during the 2014-19 legislature the ratio of population to seats in France, UK and Spain were all larger than that of Germany, although the opposite should have been the case. Furthermore, the stipulation of degressive proportionality is also unmet among States with intermediate level populations.

The withdrawal of the UK from the EU due to the Brexit referendum allows for the transfer of some of the 73 seats that this country’s departure will free up, with the objective of obtaining a DP distribution for all EU States and furthermore comply with the ‘No Lost Seats’ criterion.

There are thousands of possible solutions when considering more than 705 seats. One way of drastically reducing that number of possibilities is to include some additional criterion, such as a comparison between the populations and ratios of each three consecutive countries in terms of population.

An authentically degressive proportionality should assure that two countries with nearly identical populations should also have nearly identical population to seat ratios, and that two countries with very different populations should also have significantly different ratios. Therefore, when three consecutive countries in terms of population are compared, if the country in the middle has a population very close to that of the least populous country and very different from the most populous one, then the three proportions should verify the same proximity relationship and not the opposite.

This criterion is acceptably complied with by the EP’s proposal for the majority of EU Member States, but that is clearly not the case with France and Spain, given the three-seat increase in Italy’s representation. The two cases could be resolved by assigning two additional seats to France and Spain, while adding a further seat to the Netherlands would also be an improvement. The EP would have 710 seats for 2019. In 2024, when there might possibly be a long-lasting formula to decide on distribution, the EP’s size could be reduced to 700, or 690, or whatever is desired.

Nothing justifies that France and Spain, which were both underrepresented in the previous legislature –since it was negotiated under the criterion that they ‘could not increase their representation in 2014’–, should again be underrepresented in 2019. Even more so on this occasion, in which no State need to see its representation decreased in order for others to have a reasonable assignation.

In any case, AFCO should be congratulated, and especially its Rappoteurs Danuta Hütbner and Pedro Pereira, for having achieved for the first time the compliance with degressive proportionality and for the degree of acceptance achieved for the document approved by the EP.

*About the authors:
Victoriano Ramírez González, José A. Martínez Aroza and Antonio Palomares Bautista Professors at the University of Granada and members of the Grupo de Investigación en Métodos Electorales (GIME)

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

Notes:
¹ G.R. Grimmett, J.-F. Laslier, F. Pukelsheim, V. Ramírez González, R. Rose, W. Słomczyński, M. Zachariasen & K. Życzkowski (2011), ‘The Allocation Between the EU Member States of the Seats in the European Parliament – Cambridge Compromise’, Note, European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Policy Department C: Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs, EP 432,760, March.

China is moving on multiple fronts to pre-empt in the short-term Uighur foreign fighters fleeing Syria and Iraq from reasserting themselves in Central Asia and longer term prevent the emergence of an ever more vocal Diaspora like what Tibetans have achieved.

The multi-pronged Chinese approach involves weaving Afghanistan more firmly into the fabric of China’s Belt and Road initiative, potentially establishing China’s first land-locked foreign military base, forcing repatriation of Uighurs abroad and preventing Uighur residents of Xinjiang from travelling abroad without first having been re-educated.

Already Afghanistan’s largest investor with a $3 billion, 30-year lease of a copper mine, China is seeking to link the country to its $50 billion plus investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in a bid to stabilize the Central Asian nation and stop Uighur fighters from regrouping in the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip on Afghanistan’s 76-klimoetre long border with China.

Estimates of the number of Uighurs in Syria and Iraq, who earned a reputation on par with that of their battle-hardened Chechen counterparts, range from five to ten thousand. Many paid thousands of dollars to smugglers who helped them make their way to the Middle East. They came in all shades, some deeply religious, others more nationalistic, all embittered by repression in Xinjiang and what they saw as an effort to erase their Uighur identity at whatever price.

A majority saw their participation in battles far from home as a training for the struggle they really cared about: China’s strategic Xinjiang province.

“We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was. We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China,” a Uighur fighter told a reporter last month.

US officials have been tracking a trek of Islamic State fighters into north and eastern Afghanistan, believed by Afghan officials to number 3,000. US and Afghan concerns were boosted by a recent report by the Institute for the Study of War that Afghanistan had again emerged as ”a safe haven for terrorist plots.” It isn’t clear how many Uighurs may be among those that made their way to Central Asia.

A video released last month by the Turkistan Islamic Party, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda that played a key role in the 2015 capture of the Syrian province of Idlib, showed Uighur and Taliban fighters overrunning remote Afghan military outposts in mountainous terrain, killing or capturing Afghan troops, and using seized US-made Humvees.

China has denied reports by Afghan officials that it was helping build a military facility in Wakhan that could be used by Chinese forces. Local residents, nonetheless, reported having seen joint Afghan-Chinese patrols in the area while China affirms that it has provided Afghanistan $70 million in military aid in the last three years and is helping the country with capacity-building.

China appeared in December to have persuaded Pakistan and Afghanistan to engage in a wide-ranging dialogue designed to reduce differences between them and facilitate Afghanistan’s closer affiliation with CPEC and the Belt and Road. However, three months later, little progress appears to have been achieved.

Meanwhile, Chinese has sought to physically reduce the Uighur Diaspora by persuading countries like Egypt, Thailand and Vietnam to either detain or forcibly return overseas Uighurs. Malaysia has been mulling for months a Chinese demand for the extradition of 11 Uighurs who made their way to the southeast Asian nation after escaping from a Thai detention centre.

In France, Chinese police have demanded that Uighurs hand over personal information, photos, and identity documents — and in some cases, the personal information of their French spouses. The police contacted Uighurs directly via phone or WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, or have paid visits to their family members in China, asking relatives to convey their demands.

Uighurs in the United States, Turkey, Australia, and Egypt who failed to respond to demands like those made of French Uighurs have been ordered to return to China. Some, who returned, often to avoid repercussions for their families, have been arrested. Others are reported to have disappeared.

Major political parties and business organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan have threatened to shut down the Pakistan-China border if Beijing does not release some 50 Uighur women married to Pakistani men from the region, who have been detained in Xinjiang. The province’s legislative assembly unanimously called on the government in Islamabad to take up the issue.

The women, many of whom are practicing Muslims and don religious attire, are believed to have been detained in re-education camps for the past year.

Hundreds, if not thousands of Uighurs in Xinjiang itself have been forced into re-education camps without due process as part of the rollout in Xinjiang of the world’s most intrusive and repressive public surveillance system.

The system involves cameras on streets equipped with facial recognition software and a DNA database that ultimately will include all residents. The database categorizes them as safe or unsafe. ID readers at bus stops, train stations, and shopping malls were being installed to ensure that those deemed unsafe are barred entry.

Authorities in at least one autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang have added ‘interest in travel abroad’ to the list of reasons for detaining Uighurs and dispatching them to re-education camps.

The Chinese campaign to squash the emergence of a more effective Uighur Diaspora is partly driven by a desire not to allow Uighurs to follow the example of exile Tibetans who aided by the voice of the Dalai Lama have created a vocal opposition-in-exile.

The Chinese campaign to squash the emergence of a more effective Uighur Diaspora is partly driven by a desire not to allow Uighurs to follow the example of exile Tibetans who aided by the voice of the Dalai Lama have created a vocal opposition-in-exile.

It is also fuelled by the fact that many of those who initially fled Xinjiang to escape repression and marginalization and build a better life elsewhere were aided once they left China by militants who steered them towards the Middle East and Islamic militancy.

Said a Chinese official: “You can’t uproot all the weeds hidden among the crops in the field one by one—you need to spray chemicals to kill them all. Re-educating these people is like spraying chemicals on the crops. That is why it is a general re-education, not limited to a few people.”

NASA said it has taken another step toward re-introducing supersonic flight with the award Tuesday of a contract for the design, building and testing of a supersonic aircraft that reduces a sonic boom to a gentle thump.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale, California, was selected for the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration contract, a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract valued at $247.5 million. Work under the contract began April 2 and runs through Dec. 31, 2021.

Under this contract, Lockheed Martin will complete the design and fabrication of an experimental aircraft, known as an X-plane, which will cruise at 55,000 feet at a speed of about 940 mph and create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, 75 Perceived Level decibel (PLdB), instead of a sonic boom.

Once NASA accepts the aircraft from the contractor in late 2021, the agency will perform additional flight tests to prove the quiet supersonic technology works as designed, aircraft performance is robust, and it’s safe to operate in the National Airspace System.

Beginning in mid-2022, NASA will fly the X-plane over select U.S. cities and collect data about community responses to the flights. This data set will be provided to U.S. and international regulators for their use in considering new sound-based rules regarding supersonic flight over land, which could enable new commercial cargo and passenger markets in faster-than-sound air travel.

By Nick Cunningham

Oil prices seesawed at the start of the week before jumping close to multi-year highs on geopolitical concerns, with Brent hitting $70 and WTI at $65. However, geopolitical pressure is only able to influence oil prices to such a degree because the market is fundamentally getting tighter.

Ongoing declines in Venezuela and concerns about heightened tension between the U.S. and Iran have significantly raised the risk premium for oil, even as some short-term factors recently pushed up prices.

The weekly EIA report was a bit mixed. U.S. oil production jumped again by 26,000 bpd in the week ending on March 23, putting output at 10.433 million barrels per day (mb/d), yet another record high. Still, the report wasn’t exactly bearish. Although crude stocks rose, they increased by a modest 1.6 million barrels, and much of that is largely the result of a big jump in imports. More glaringly, gasoline stocks fell sharply by 3.5 million barrels.

In other words, U.S. production is indeed soaring, but it doesn’t appear to be swamping the market, at least as of now. A variety of analysts have argued that oil demand is so strong that the market will continue to tighten, even after considering the explosive growth of U.S. shale. “This year will be the eighth year of continuous growth since the Great Financial Crisis; and the seventh consecutive year of annual growth of more than 1 million b/d,” Wood Mackenzie said in a note. “Our latest forecast suggests that demand will grow by 1.7 million b/d in 2018, the fifth-highest this century.”

In fact, some of the recent weakness in oil prices lately can be chalked up to fears of a trade war, which could upset economic growth projections. “The biggest risk to oil demand’s winning growth streak is a trade war undermining the global economy,” Wood Mackenzie said. However, the uptick in oil prices at the end of this past week, some analysts say, are at least in part a result of those trade fears subsiding. “Worries about demand being affected by a possible trade war kind of receded,” Gene McGillian manager of market research at Tradition Energy, told Reuters.

At the same time, some attribution for the oil price increase belongs to a rebound in global financial stocks after a recent selloff. “The equities market is rallying and that’s lending support to oil,” Philip Streible, senior market strategist at RJO Futures, told Reuters. The flat dollar also lent some support to crude.

With trade war concerns on the wane, and global equities on the rise, oil prices rebounded. While these short-term factors no doubt played a role in pushing up crude benchmarks, they are occurring against a backdrop of a tighter oil market. The surplus of OECD inventories is now below 50 million barrels, whereas it was above 300 million barrels a year ago.

Indeed, the IEA sees the oil market tipping into a supply deficit as soon as this quarter, and inventory drawdowns will pick up pace in the second half of the year.

“The voluntary production cuts are only playing one part in this,” Commerzbank said in a note. “The involuntary production outages in Venezuela are weighing more heavily, as they mean that OPEC is reducing its output by considerably more than originally intended.”

As long as OPEC keeps the current production limits in place, the oil market will continue to tighten, even after taking into account U.S. shale growth. And OPEC has even signaled that it is considering extending the cuts for another six months, pushing the expiration date to mid-2019. If they follow through on that, there is a pretty decent chance that there is a lot more room on the upside for oil prices.

Still, there are a handful of uncertainties that would completely upend any reasonable oil forecast. On the bearish side, if OPEC somehow abandons its cuts, begins a phase out sooner than expected, revised the deal to account for sharp declines in Venezuela, or members simply started cheating, then oil prices could slide significantly.

But, arguably, there are more upside risks. The most dangerous is the likely return of sanctions on Iran from the U.S., which could curtail a significant chunk of supply. Worse, the Trump administration could head down a dangerous road that ends in war. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s oil production continues to fall off a cliff.

In short, because U.S. shale growth is already baked into the current oil market projections, the risk to oil prices is probably skewed more towards the upside due to the variety of geopolitical ticking time bombs.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/An-Oil-Price-Rally-Is-Likely.html

“By diverting real wealth towards various non-productive activities, the increase in government outlays in fact undermines the process of wealth generation and weakens the economy’s growth rate over time.”

By Frank Shostak*

In his article released on March 21 2018 – Economics failed us before the global crisis – Martin Wolf the economics editor of The Financial Times expressed some misgivings about macroeconomics.

Economics is, like medicine (and unlike, say, cosmology), a practical discipline. Its goal is to make the world a better place. This is particularly true of macroeconomics, which was invented by John Maynard Keynes in response to the Great Depression. The tests of this discipline are whether its adepts understand what might go wrong in the economy and how to put it right. When the financial crisis that hit in 2007 caught the profession almost completely unawares, it failed the first of these tests. It did better on the second. Nevertheless, it needs rebuilding.

Martin Wolf argues that a situation could emerge when the economy might end up in self-reinforcing bad states. In this possibility, it is vital to respond to crises forcefully.

It seems that regardless of our understanding of the key causes behind the crises authorities should always administer strong fiscal and monetary policies holds Martin Wolf. On this way of thinking, strong fiscal and monetary policies somehow will fix things.

A big question is not only whether we know how to respond to a crisis, but whether we did so. In his contribution, the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman argues, to my mind persuasively, that the basic Keynesian remedies — a strong fiscal and monetary response — remain right.

While agreeing with Krugman, Martin Wolf holds the view that, we remain ignorant to how economies work. Having expressed this, curiously Martin Wolf still holds the view that Keynesian policies could help during an economic crisis.

For Martin Wolf as for most mainstream economists the Keynesian remedy is always viewed with positive benefits — if in doubt just push more money and boost government spending to resolve any possible economic crisis. It did not occur to our writer that without understanding the causes of a crisis, administering Keynesian remedies could make things much worse.

The proponents for strong government outlays and easy money policy when the economy falls into a crisis hold that stronger outlays by the government coupled with increases in money supply will strengthen monetary flow and this in turn will strengthen the economy. What is the reason behind this way of thinking?

In this way of thinking, economic activity is presented in terms of the circular flow of money. Spending by one individual becomes a part of the earnings of another individual, and spending by another individual becomes a part of the first individual’s earnings.

So if for some reason people have become less confident about the future and have decided to reduce their spending this is going to weaken the circular flow of money. Once an individual spends less, this worsens the situation of some other individual, who in turn also cuts his spending.

Following this logic, in order to prevent a recession from getting out of hand, the government and the central bank should step in and lift government outlays and monetary pumping, thereby filling the shortfall in the private sector spending.

Once the circular monetary flow is re-established, things should go back to normal and sound economic growth is re-established, so it is held.

The Problem with the Mainstream View

Given that the government is not itself a wealth generator, this means that whenever it raises its outlays it also lifts the pace of the wealth diversion from the wealth-generating private sector. Hence the more the government plans to spend the more wealth it is going to take from wealth generators.

By diverting real wealth towards various non-productive activities, the increase in government outlays in fact undermines the process of wealth generation and weakens the economy’s growth rate over time.

The whole idea that the government can grow an economy originates from the Keynesian multiplier. On this way of thinking an increase in government outlays gives rise to the economy’s output by a multiple of the initial government increase.

Let us examine the effect of an increase in the government’s spending on an economy’s overall output. Can such an increase give rise to more output as popular wisdom has it? On the contrary, it will impoverish producers. By means of taxation or other means such as borrowings, Government forces producers to part with their products for Government services i.e. for goods and services that are likely to be on a lower priority list of producers and this in turn weakens the production of wealth.

As one can see, not only does the increase in government outlays fail to raise overall output by a positive multiple, but on the contrary this leads to the weakening in the process of wealth generation in general.

According to Mises,

…there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.1

For most commentators including Martin Wolf, the occurrence of a recession is due to unexpected events such as shocks that push the economy away from a trajectory of stable economic growth. Shocks weaken the economy i.e. cause lower economic growth so it is held.

The True Cause of Recessions

Following the Austrian Economics School of thinking — which Martin Wolf seems to ignore —  as a rule a recession emerges in response to a decline in the growth rate of money supply.

Usually this takes place in response to a tighter stance of the central bank. Various activities that sprang up on the back of the previous strong money growth rate (usually because of previous loose central bank monetary policy) come under pressure.

These activities cannot support themselves — they survive because of the support that the increase in money supply provides.

The increase in money diverts to them real wealth from wealth generating activities. Consequently, this weakens these activities.  That is, it weakens the the wealth-generating activities.

A tighter stance and a consequent fall in the growth rate of money undermines various nonproductive activities and this is what recession is all about.

Given that, nonproductive activities cannot support themselves since they are not profitable, once the growth rate of money supply declines, these activities begin to deteriorate. (A fall in the money growth rate means that nonproductive activities access to various resources is curtailed).

Recession then is not about a weakening in economic activity as such but about the liquidations of various nonproductive activities that sprang up on the back of increases in money supply.

Obviously then both aggressive fiscal and monetary policies, which will provide support to nonproductive activities, will re-start the weakening process of real wealth generation thereby weakening the prospects for a meaningful economic recovery.

It is for this reason that economists from the Austrian School such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard held that once an economy falls into a recession the government and the central bank should restrain themselves and do, as soon as possible, nothing.

Contrary to Martin Wolf, during an economic crisis what is required for the government and the central bank is to do as little as possible. With less tampering, the more real wealth remains with wealth generators, which allows them to facilitate a further expansion in the pool of real wealth.

With a larger pool of wealth, it will be much easier to absorb various unemployed resources and eliminate the crisis. Aggressive monetary and fiscal policies will only hurt the process of wealth generation thereby making things much worse.

As long as the pool of real wealth is still growing, the government and the central bank could get away with the illusion that they can grow the economy.

Once the pool starts to stagnate or decline the illusion of government and central bank policies is shattered.

The key reason why Keynesian economics fails to explain the occurrence of recessions is because it ignores the key factor behind this, which is the tampering policy of the government and the central bank.

About the author:
*Frank Shostak‘s consulting firm, Applied Austrian School Economics, provides in-depth assessments of financial markets and global economies.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Notes:
1. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action ,3rd revised edition, Contemporary Books Inc, p. 744.

By Jay Syrmopoulos*

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo to U.S. attorneys regarding seeking the death penalty for some drug traffickers, which was part of President Trump’s plan to combat the opioid epidemic released weeks ago, many pundits failed to miss the potential implications for legal marijuana growers.

The memo utilizes a little-known federal law that already allows for the death penalty to be used for certain criminal offenses, including specific racketeering activities, the use of a gun that resulted in a death during a drug trafficking crime, murder in advancing a criminal enterprise and dealing in “extremely large” quantities of drugs, according to The Hill.

“I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes, when appropriate, to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes in our nation,” Sessions wrote.

Although Sessions’ memo seems focused largely on opioids, the federal law being referenced contains no such drug-specific limitation on prosecutors’ power. The Denver Post reported that upon following the law’s “meandering route through federal statutes,” the following conclusion will be reached: “that anyone convicted of cultivating more than 60,000 marijuana plants or possessing more than 60,000 kilograms of a substance that contains marijuana could face death as a punishment.”

Despite the law being on the books, the death penalty has never been sought before for those dealing large quantities of drugs, according to a Justice Department official cited by The Hill. The Post reported that in June, there were nearly 1 million marijuana plants under cultivation by Colorado’s state-licensed cannabis businesses.

“Under long established United States Supreme Court precedent it’s unconstitutional to use the death penalty for any offense that does not result in death,” said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center, which makes information on death penalty issues available but doesn’t take a position on the death penalty.

Washington Post data reporter Christopher Ingraham noted the potential implications for state-legal marijuana growers in a tweet:

If I’m reading the statutes correctly, this means an aggressive federal prosecutor could theoretically seek the death penalty for state-legal marijuana business operators growing 60,000 or more plants, or producing 60,000 kilos of product (edibles, etc) containing marijuana https://t.co/eSeGp6a3Fe

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) March 21, 2018

Legal experts noted that while technically possible for the federal government to seek a death penalty against a state-licensed cannabis business, it is unlikely that a legal grower would face a federal death penalty case.

“I think it’s still very theoretical,” said Sam Kamin, a University of Denver law professor who, as harmonic luck would have it, is a specialist in both marijuana law and in the death penalty. “I don’t think anyone thinks the federal government is going to seek the death penalty against a state-licensed business. But what it highlights is this enormous disconnect with federal and state law.”

When asked by the Denver Post about the possibility of executions for marijuana business moguls, Aaron Smith, the executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, said, “I really think that’s just bluster.”

And while it may be “bluster,” Kamin cautioned that “what Sessions is reminding us is that losing your life is at least statutorily possible”; AG Sessions is a renowned cannabis prohibitionist.

About the author:
*Jay Syrmopoulos is a geopolitical analyst, freethinker, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at the University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs and holds a BA in International Relations. Jay’s writing has been featured on both mainstream and independent media – and has been viewed tens of millions of times.

Source:
This article was published by Truth in Media.

By Anke Schmidt-Felzmann*

(FPRI) — On April 3, 2018, the three Baltic presidents—Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania, Raimonds Vejonis of Latvia, and Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia—will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. This unprecedented quadrilateral Baltic-U.S. presidential summit is the culmination of a series of high-level working visits between American and Baltic representatives that have taken place in rapid succession since 2014. In this regard, the Trump administration continues the Obama administration’s systematic engagement and commitment to strengthening the resilience of the Baltic states against destabilizing influences from, first and foremost, Russia. The dual purpose of this summit is to discuss U.S.-Baltic cooperation, notably on security and defense in the Baltic Sea area, and to reconfirm the strong U.S. commitment to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as the three Baltic nations celebrate the 100^th anniversary of their creation as independent states.

U.S. Support for European Integration

For the tiny Baltic nations, close relations with the U.S. are a necessity, regardless of who the president is. A lesson drawn from the challenges to Baltic statehood in the 20^th century is that only strong military and political support from Washington (and major European powers) will ultimately help secure Baltic independence against the offensive strategic ambitions of those in Moscow. Russia’s annexation of Crimea revitalized the memory of the Baltic states’ troublesome past with Soviet Russia—just as they were about to celebrate their 10-year anniversary as NATO and EU members in 2014.

The Baltic states’ path to membership in both organizations was completed almost exactly fourteen years ago, in March 2004 (NATO) and May 2004 (EU). American political support played an important role throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s not just in terms of U.S. assistance in shepherding the three countries along the difficult domestic reform process to meet the accession criteria. American clout in Europe helped also convince the more reluctant European member states to allow the three Baltic states into both NATO and the EU. Against this background, it is no surprise that any potential criticism of President Trump has been muted in the Baltic states. Whether or not—and how—to engage with him is simply not a matter of choice. Strong U.S. military and political support is a matter of survival and instrumental for the defense of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Defense Spending in the Baltics

National defense budgets across Europe have long been subject to heated Transatlantic debates. For the Baltic states, the need to spend more has been a pressing issue in recent years. As the smallest of the three Baltic states, it is no coincidence that Estonia maintained compulsory military service and invested comparatively more in its territorial defense capabilities than its Western neighbors. Since 2014, in contrast to most European states, the NATO benchmark of 2% of GDP investment in defense has found full endorsement also in Latvia and Lithuania. The demands created by the deployment of allied forces on their territory have torn holes into their small budgets. At the same time, none of the three Baltic states can today afford to become complacent and risk jeopardizing its status as a loyal ally. Their credibility rests on their own, visible commitment to fulfilling their part of the Transatlantic bargain. Estonia came close to reaching the target already in 2012. Over the past three years, both Latvia and Lithuania have increased their defense spending from less than 1% in 2014 to around 1.5% in 2016 and reaching beyond 1.7% last year. They are both now well on their way to joining Estonia in meeting and exceeding the 2% target. These actions answer President Trump’s demands and respond to previous administrations’ calls on European allies to pay up for their defense to secure continued support from the U.S. Fears of “sabre rattling” and of unduly provoking Russia with a “militarization” of the Baltic region, voiced in Western European states, and notably Germany, are strongly rejected by the tiny states on Russia’s border. Little more than 25 years ago, the Soviet occupation of the three small states finally was ended. That the U.S. never recognized the Soviet occupation of the three Baltic states is often highlighted in this context. The strategy of nurturing close political ties with the U.S. serves today as an insurance policy for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

U.S. Boots on the Ground

The Baltic states’ close relationship with the United States is not uncontested since any U.S. involvement in Baltic affairs provokes fierce negative reactions from Russia. It is worth remembering President Obama’s visit to Estonia in early September 2014, where he met with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This was the first visit of a U.S. President to Estonia. In Tallinn, President Obama assured the three Baltic states of U.S. military support and promised “American boots on the ground” in the region. Several thousand U.S. troops were rotated in the three Baltic states from 2014. Now, these have been replaced with the establishment of NATO battalions—the “enhanced forward presence” of the Alliance, each under the leadership of another NATO ally—the United Kingdom in Estonia, Canada in Latvia, and Germany in Lithuania. Despite the important role played by these multinational battalions, calls for a permanent presence of U.S. troops in the three Baltic states have increased. The value of American boots on the ground in the Baltic region resides in the symbolic and real projection of supreme force that a U.S. military presence entails vis-à-vis Russia.

Obama’s 2014 visit came shortly before the NATO Summit in Wales, and the American reassurances came just after NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had announced plans for the creation of a new NATO spearhead force, a multinational unit made up of several thousand soldiers, that was to help deter any Russian incursions into the Baltic states. Shortly after President Obama’s visit, Eston Kohver, an Estonian officer working for the Internal Security Service (KAPO), was kidnapped from Estonian territory at the border to Russia at gunpoint. Kohver had been investigating smuggling cartels. Although local Russian FSB commanders might have been responsible for the capture, acting independently from the state, the incident was then systematically exploited for a Russian show of strength against Estonia—and indirectly the U.S. and NATO. After a year of being unlawfully held by the FSB in Russia, a showcase trial condemned Kohver to 15 years in a Russian prison at a hard labor camp. He was finally returned to Estonia after a deal was struck to exchange him for Aleksei Dressen, a Russian spy jailed in Estonia.

Baltic Knowledge Transfer to the U.S.

Russian infiltration attempts to influence Baltic decision-making, organized crime, corruption, and Russian foreign and defense policy have remained a constant concern since the three Baltic states regained their independence in the early 1990s. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been most fragile and vulnerable to subversive influence from Russia. In recent years, especially since 2014, Russian subversive actions have been recorded systematically in the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national security and intelligence agencies’ public reports. That way, the level of awareness has been raised domestically, but these public assessments have also received increasing attention internationally. With the ongoing U.S. investigations concerning Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election and widespread concerns across Europe about the extent of Russia’s ability to destabilize societies and manipulate political decisions, the expertise available in the Baltic states has become an invaluable asset.

The relationship between the U.S. and each of the Baltic states has been defined traditionally by the large power asymmetry and heavy, one-sided Baltic dependence on U.S. support. But today, while remaining vulnerable, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have each much to offer in return, and not just as NATO “frontline states.” The Baltic understanding of the Russian modus operandi is second to none. Most, if not all, political and military leaders in the Baltic states are fluent Russian-speakers with decades of experience of handling the co-existence of their tiny states with the giant Russian neighbor. That, if anything, provides them with deeper insights into the structures and mechanisms of Russian operating procedures.

Important examples of this expertise are the lessons learned from the Estonian state’s exposure to cyber-attacks in April 2007 in conjunction with riots around the Bronze soldier monument in Tallinn that were instigated by Russian-affiliated actors, as Estonian security services later concluded. For over a decade, cyber security and the development of capabilities to protect state structures against infiltrations have become a core priority in the Baltic states. Considering the increasing range of cyber-attacks on the U.S. attributed to hackers associated with Russian intelligence services, it is clear that the tiny Baltic allies represent a valuable source of technical and tactical expertise. Of course, the U.S. and the Baltic states have very different capabilities for handling Russia due to their size differentials, but, today, U.S.-Baltic cooperation is a two-way street. Even if President Trump may not benefit personally from the Baltic expertise on Russia, his administration and the range of U.S. agencies engaged in investigating and combating Russian subversion are certainly profiting from the deepening of U.S.-Baltic cooperation on security and defense matters.

Mutual Baltic-U.S. Support against Corruption

The Baltic transition to reestablishing sovereign, democratic policy-making structures and implementing market reforms was swift and generally deemed successful. But significant vulnerabilities remain today as the Baltic states continue to be safe havens for money laundering operations. Additional concerns are the heavy political influence of Russian-affiliated actors, media control by oligarchs with close ties to Russia, and the dependence of political parties on financing of dubious origin. Every local and national election is still regarded with great concern as the party political system remains in flux and there are many access points for Russian influence operations.

Of direct relevance to NATO is the corrosive influence of Russian state actors in the strategically important field of logistics and energy supply. Both transport and energy remain a key battlefront in the three Baltic states, where corruption persists and necessary progress in European market integration is delayed by different beneficiaries of the status quo. Recent revelations about the money laundering scandals in which Danske Bank in Estonia and ABLV bank in Latvia respectively have been embroiled and the political corruption plot around Lithuania’s former Minister of Transportation Eligijus Masiulis and a leader of the Labor Party Vytautas Gapsys have brought to light the persistence of fundamental challenges faced in the region. These spectacular scandals underline the fact that the three Baltic states remain frontline states not just militarily, but also in the fight against endemic corruption. In the elimination of these legacies of failed reforms after the Soviet occupation, the Baltic states have recorded varying degrees of success. The fight against corruption has been, and still is, frequently hampered by powerful actors with links to the parliaments and even government. The Baltic region continues to play a role as a (partly safe) haven for international money laundering operations.

As is so often the case in attempts to dismantle encrusted criminal structures against the powerful influence of vested local and foreign interests, only a hardnosed, radical approach can help uproot the problem and promote a real change. The feverish activities in Latvia after the rapid collapse of ABLV showcase in this regard the difference that U.S. institutions can make when they apply their might. A U.S. Treasury Department report had accused ABLV of laundering money and effectively breaching North Korea sanctions. The American intervention precipitated the downfall, setting a signal that U.S. authorities will not shy away from applying “tough love” against the Baltic states when U.S. interests are at stake. The episode also makes clear that the security interests of the U.S. are intrinsically interwoven with the state of domestic affairs in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Success in combating corruption, hindering manipulations, and preventing infiltration of the political structures in the Baltic region will have a mutually reinforcing positive effect. When the U.S. intervenes with determination, its global power can lend a decisive helping hand to the Baltic states in their domestic struggles.

From the ongoing investigations in the U.S., we know that the struggle to defend political independence and the democratic political system against malign influence is not exclusively a Baltic concern. The U.S.-Baltic knowledge exchange and mutual support is clearly beneficial for the U.S., as much as it remains vital for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Even as the controversies around President Trump and his ties to Russia cast their shadow over the White House, the U.S.-Baltic celebrations of the 100^th anniversary are a living testimony to the achievements that the unswerving U.S. support to Baltic independence made possible. Over the course of their history, the incredible tenacity of the three tiny Baltic nations in the face of adversity sets a shining example also for the U.S. The Baltic states’ centennial celebrations act as a powerful reminder that unfaltering loyalty, and a commitment to freedom and democracy, will ensure in the long term the prosperity of the nation.

About the author:
*Anke Schmidt-Felzmann is a Baltic Sea Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow (Scotland, UK) and is currently lecturing at the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania in Vilnius

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz held a telephone conversation on Monday evening with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the Palestinian issue and the situation in the region.

The Saudi king stressed the need to move the Middle East Peace Process in an international effort, stating the Kingdom’s committed position on the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Israeli forces have killed at least 18 Palestinians and injured more than 1,400 others during and following the protests last Friday.

The two leaders also discussed the importance of the fight against terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria. King Salman also stressed the need to find a solution to the Syrian crisis. The Russian-backed Syrian regime has been fighting different factions of Syrian rebels over the past seven years.

On Yemen, King Salman expressed his appreciation for the statement issued by the White House and its strong stance towards the Houthi militia, which continues its aggression with Iranian support. He also stressed the Kingdom’s efforts to find a political solution to the Yemeni crisis and provide humanitarian relief and support to its people.

Trump also addressed Iran’s attempts to destabilize the region, praising the Saudi Arabia’s role in achieving stability and efforts in this regard.

The King also thanked Trump for hosting the Saudi delegation headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his official visit to the US which saw billion dollar deals and agreements between the two allies.

Russian warplanes have joined in on a new operation against Islamic State forces by the Syrian army and allied paramilitary groups aimed at clearing jihadist fighters from the western countryside of Deir ez-Zor province, Al-Masdar News reports.

According to military-affiliated sources, Russian airpower is conducting precision strikes against deceptively well-hidden IS tactical positions and tunnel entry points as well as terrorist movements throughout the vast desert space being cleared west of the Euphrates River.

With regards to tactical positions, sources on the ground note that the militant group’s trenches and fire support positions are so well blended in to the landscape of the east Syrian desert that government troops do not often identify them until within ten or so meters (i.e. point blank range).

The operation currently underway is the result of the Syrian army high command ‘becoming tired’ of endless Islamic State attacks against its positions at cities and bases across western Deir ez-Zor – this matter now going on for around four months.

(Civil.Ge) — Murat Jioev, representative of the Russian-backed Tskhinvali authorities at the Geneva International Discussions (GID), accused the United States diplomats of disrupting the joint non-use of force declaration at the March 27-28 round of the Geneva Talks.

Speaking on the matter yesterday, at his meeting with Tskhinvali leader Anatoly Bibilov, Murat Jioev said the American diplomats demonstrated “an extremely non-constructive” approach, and proposed “knowingly unacceptable” changes to the document.

“Specifically, that the declaration would be adopted by countries that are participant to the August 12, 2008 ceasefire agreement,” Jioev said, adding that with these changes, the U.S. “tried to separate South Ossetia and Abkhazia from [GID] participants.”

“We told them that we would not even consider this wording and that the American delegation was destabilizing the situation,” the Tskhinvali representative also noted.

Murat Jioev clarified the matter a day later, telling local media that the ceasefire agreement was signed by the then Russian and French Presidents, Dmitry Medvedev and Nicholas Sarkozy, respectively, and “agreed with the Georgian President later.”

Through their proposal, according to Jioev, the U.S. Delegation “attempted to exclude South Ossetia and Abkhazia from GID participants.” “We expressed our categorical protest to that, and reiterated that the discussions are held because Georgia carried out an aggression against South Ossetia,” he said.

“The South Ossetian delegation underlined that it is South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which require security guarantees most, and they need to be secure from repeat Georgian aggression,” Jioev added.

The 43rd round of Geneva International Discussions (GID) – the multilateral mediation forum to address security and humanitarian consequences of the Russo-Georgian War of August 2008 – was held on March 27-28.

Despite prior statements that the participants were nearing to a consensus on a joint non-use of force declaration, the round ended without adopting one, with Tbilisi accusing Moscow of its “destructive approach,” and of intentionally “drawing the talks to a deadlock.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry, on its part, said the participants failed to agree on the document because of unaccepteble U.S. wordings “characterizing the August 2008 events.” The United States Mission to Geneva noted briefly that there was “no agreement” on a non-use of force statement.

The GID is co-chaired by the representatives of the OSCE, EU and UN, and involves diplomats from Georgia, Russia and the United States, as well as members of both the Georgian exiled administrations of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia and the two regions’ Russian-backed authorities.

For the first time, UNC School of Medicine researchers have used MRIs to show that babies with the neurodevelopmental condition fragile X syndrome had less-developed white matter compared to infants that did not develop the condition. Imaging various sections of white matter from different angles can help researchers focus on the underlying brain circuitry important for proper neuron communication.

The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, shows that there are brain differences related to the neurodevelopmental disorder established well before a diagnosis is typically made at age three or later.

“It’s our hope that earlier diagnosis and intervention will help children with fragile X and their families,” said co-first author Meghan Swanson, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the UNC School of Medicine. “We also hope that this knowledge might inform drug development research.”

So far, drug clinical trials have failed to demonstrate change in treatment targets in individuals with fragile X. One of the challenges has been identifying good treatment outcome measures or biomarkers that show response to intervention.

Fragile X syndrome is a genetic disorder and the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability in males. Symptoms include intellectual disabilities, problems with social interaction, delayed speech, hyperactivity, repetitive behaviors and speech. About 10 percent of people with fragile X experience seizures. About one-third of people with fragile X meet the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder.

“One of the exciting things about our findings is that the white matter differences we observe could be used as an objective marker for treatment effectiveness,” said co-senior author Heather C. Hazlett, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine.

For this study, Swanson, Hazlett, and colleagues imaged the brains of 27 infants who went on to be diagnosed with fragile X and 73 who did not develop the condition. The researchers focused on 19 white matter fiber tracts in the brain. Fiber tracts are bundles of myelinated axons – the long parts of neurons that extend across the brain or throughout the nervous system. Think of bundles of cables laid across the brain. These bundles of axons connect various parts of the brain so that neurons can rapidly communicate with each other. This communication is essential, especially for proper neurodevelopment during childhood.

Imaging and analytical analysis showed significant differences in the development of 12 of 19 fiber tracts in babies with fragile X from as early as six months of age. The babies who wound up being diagnosed with fragile X had significantly less-developed fiber tracts in various parts of the brain.

“These results substantiate what other researchers have shown in rodents – the essential role of fragile X gene expression on early development of white matter in babies,” said co-first author Jason Wolff, PhD, former postdoctoral fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill and now assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. “Our work highlights that white matter circuitry is a potentially promising and measurable target for early intervention. However, achieving the goal of infant intervention for fragile X would likely require expanded newborn screening efforts.”

Other authors are Mark Shen, PhD, Martin Styner, PhD, and Joseph Piven, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Annette Estes, PhD, of the University of Washington; Guido Gerig, PhD, of New York University; and Robert McKinstry, MD, PhD, and Kelly Botteron, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis.

Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Simons Foundation.

This study, which used data collected from 2008 to 2016, would have been impossible without the dedication to research from families who had another older child already diagnosed with fragile X syndrome.

The Dark Zone of Greenland ice sheet is a large continuous region on the western flank of the ice sheet; it is some 400 kilometers wide stretching about 100 kilometres up from the margin of the ice.

Some previous theories have attributed this darkening to water on top of the ice sheet – often seen as strikingly sapphire blue ponds, rivers and lakes. But a new study in Nature Communications provides a new hypothesis based on the character of the impurities on the ice surface itself.

“What we show is that the Dark Zone is covered in a finely distributed layer of dust, and black carbon, which provide nutrition for dark coloured algae. These are the main cause of the darkening,” said professor Alun Hubbard, the co-author of the study and professor at CAGE.

A dirt belt in the melt zone

The Dark Zone is a literally dirty belt of the melting area – the ablation zone – of the ice sheet. The darker this ablation zone is, the more of the sun’s energy it absorbs, and the faster the ice melts.

Albedo is a measure of the reflectance of the ice sheet. It is the major factor governing how much incoming solar radiation is used to melt the ice and is the main positive feedback in Arctic climate change. Bright white surfaces, like snow or pure ice, reflect the sun’s energy, but dark surfaces absorb it.

“The fact that a large portion of the western flank of the Greenland ice sheet has become dark means that the melt is up to five times as much as if it was a brilliant snow surface,” said Hubbard.

Algae – a major player

The ice algae seem to be one of the major players in this scheme – even the slight increase of the atmospheric temperature and liquid water production seems to promote algae colonization across the ice surface.

“The algae need nutrients and food, essentially dust, organic carbon, and water. In summer, these are plentiful and the algal bloom takes off. Because algae are dark in colour – they reinforce the dark zone. Thereby you get a positive feedback effect where the ice sheet absorbs even more solar radiation producing yet more melt.”

Innovative drone study

The Dark Zone of the Greenland ice sheet is vast and previously observed by satellites such as MODIS. But for this study the scientists employed relatively modest drones – or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) – to survey the darkened ice belt in unprecedented detail.

While satellite data are great for the big picture of what’s happening across the entire Greenland ice sheet, they only work at really coarse pixel resolutions.

“If we compare it to camera pixels, even the best satellites for the ice sheet imaging have resolution of tens of metres. They can’t see the detail of what’s happening on the ground. Our fixed-wing UAVs can take hundreds of images with pixel resolutions on the centimeter scale with an operating range of hundreds of kilometres,” said Hubbard.

Scientists could see in real detail what the dark zone is made up of. In effect, this UAV survey across the ablation zone of the ice sheet perfectly bridges the gap between people on the ground studying what’s under their feet in just one part of the ice sheet, and the satellite data that shows what’s going on across the entire ice sheet.

“The UAV survey, with its amazing detail, allows us to identify and characterize all the different surface types and impurities across the entire dark zone, not just a small local little part of it.”

The euro area (EA19) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 8.5% in February 2018, down from 8.6% in January 2018 and from 9.5% in February 2017. This is the lowest rate recorded in the euro area since December 2008.

The EU28 unemployment rate was 7.1% in February 2018, down from 7.2% in January 2018 and from 8.0% in February 2017. This is the lowest rate recorded in the EU28 since September 2008. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Eurostat estimates that 17.632 million men and women in the EU28, of whom 13.916 million in the euro area, were unemployed in February 2018. Compared with January 2018, the number of persons unemployed decreased by 201 000 in the EU28 and by 141 000 in the euro area. Compared with February 2017, unemployment fell by 1.968 million in the EU28 and by 1.436 million in the euro area.

Member States

Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates in February 2018 were recorded in the Czech Republic (2.4%), Germany and Malta (both 3.5%) as well as Hungary (3.7% in January 2018). The highest unemployment rates were observed in Greece (20.8% in December 2017) and Spain (16.1%).

Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in all Member States except Estonia where it increased (from 5.8% to 6.5% between January 2017 and January 2018). The largest decreases were registered in Cyprus (from 12.6% to 9.6%), Greece (from 23.4% to 20.8% between December 2016 and December 2017) and Croatia (from 12.0% to 9.6%).

In February 2018, the unemployment rate in the United States was 4.1%, stable compared to January 2018 and down from 4.7% in February 2017.

Youth unemployment

In February 2018, 3.589 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU28, of whom 2.520 million were in the euro area. Compared with February 2017, youth unemployment decreased by 314 000 in the EU28 and by 213 000 in the euro area. In February 2018, the youth unemployment rate was 15.9% in the EU28 and 17.7% in the euro area, compared with 17.3% and 19.4% respectively in February 2017.

In February 2018, the lowest rates were observed in Germany (6.2%), the Netherlands (7.2%) and the Czech Republic (7.5%), while the highest were recorded in Greece (45.0% in December 2017), Spain (35.5%) and Italy (32.8%).

Publicly traded U.S. oil exploration and production (E&P) companies annually assess their expected future cash flows from their proved reserves based on prevailing prices, technology, and geology. In addition to these primary factors, with the recent release of proved reserves assessments for 2017, U.S. E&P companies included effects associated with changes to corporate income tax law enacted at the end of 2017. The implications for the 2017 proved reserves reports include fewer tax liabilities for the companies than under the old tax law, ultimately contributing to the total increase in the future cash flow they expect from proved reserves.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) mandated several changes to corporate income taxes that will directly affect U.S. E&P companies. Some of the changes likely to have the largest effects on E&P companies include

• The federal corporate income tax rate was permanently reduced from 35% to 21%, effective January 1, 2018.
• Tax benefits from net operating losses generated starting January 1, 2018, can be applied to a maximum of only 80% of taxable income in any given year, without expiration. Previously, a company could use net operating losses to claim tax benefits on all of its taxable income, but only for up to 20 years in the future. A net operating loss is generated when operating expenses exceed revenues.
• The corporate alternative minimum tax was repealed.
• The TCJA limits interest expense deductibility to 30% of adjusted taxable income. Previously, companies could generally deduct all interest payments on debt.
• Capital investments may be completely expensed through 2023. After 2023, bonus depreciation can be expensed at lower rates until it is phased out to 0% in 2027. Previously, the accelerated depreciation of capital assets was set to expire by 2020.

Fourth-quarter 2017 financial results reported by 46 U.S. E&P companies that EIA follows reveal an immediate effect from the tax reform. Collectively, these companies lost $991 million before taxes in the quarter, which would generate an income tax benefit at the prevailing rate. The collective tax benefit claimed in the fourth quarter of 2017, based in part on changes to future tax liabilities, was more than $7 billion, contributing to an annual effective tax rate for 2017 of -147% (Figure 1). Tax payments or benefits on the income statement do not necessarily reflect cash outflows or inflows, but rather a change in a given company’s assets and liabilities.

The large income tax benefits for these 46 E&P companies were attributable to a one-time reduction in their cumulative deferred tax liabilities, which are estimates of an amount of tax a company will eventually have to pay in the future. Deferred tax liabilities are generated for a given time period because of differences in how companies record transactions under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and how much tax they owe in a given year.

Because these companies had positive net income—that is, operating revenues greater than operating expenses—from 2012 to 2014, their deferred tax liabilities generally remained flat or increased slightly in these years. After significant declines in oil prices in late 2014, the companies generated large net operating losses from 2015 to 2016, allowing them to claim income tax benefits and reduce their deferred tax liabilities (Figure 2). The 27% decline in deferred tax liabilities in the fourth quarter of 2017 was attributable to revaluing these liabilities at the lower corporate income tax rate.

Most companies cited the reduction of their future expected tax expense from the new corporate tax rate as a factor contributing to the increase in expected future cash flows from proved reserves. Every publicly traded oil company must follow a standardized measure for valuing their proved reserves and estimating their future cash flows, based on guidelines from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The largest drivers of changes in the estimated cash flows from a company’s proved reserves are the estimated quantities of crude oil and natural gas it can produce in the future based on its current investments, and the prices of these commodities, but changes in income tax rates also play a significant role. The net present value—an estimate of future net cash flows in today’s dollars from oil and natural gas production after costs and taxes—of the companies’ proved reserves increased by $100 billion from 2016 to 2017, the largest annual increase during the 2012–to–2017 timeframe (Figure 3).

Income taxes are just one factor among many that affect oil company investment decisions and cash flow from operations. First-quarter 2018 financial statements, which will be released in May, will represent the first period that may demonstrate some of the ongoing effects of the changes in tax law.

U.S. average regular gasoline and diesel prices increase

The U.S. average regular gasoline retail price rose 5 cents from the previous week to $2.70 per gallon on April 2, 2018, up 34 cents from the same time last year. Rocky Mountain prices increased over seven cents to $2.60 per gallon, East Coast prices increased nearly six cents to $2.65 per gallon, West Coast prices increased over five cents to $3.33 per gallon, Midwest prices increased five cents to $2.57 per gallon, and Gulf Coast prices increased nearly five cents to $2.43 per gallon.

The U.S. average diesel fuel price rose over 3 cents to $3.04 per gallon on April 2, 2018, 49 cents higher than a year ago. Rocky Mountain prices rose over five cents to $3.04 per gallon, West Coast prices rose nearly five cents to $3.49 per gallon, and East Coast, Midwest, and Gulf Coast prices each rose nearly three cents to $3.07 per gallon, $2.96 per gallon, and $2.85 per gallon, respectively.

Propane/propylene inventories rise

U.S. propane/propylene stocks increased by 0.6 million barrels last week to 36.2 million barrels as of March 30, 2018, 9.4 million barrels (20.5%) lower than the five-year average inventory level for this same time of year. Gulf Coast and Rocky Mountain/West Coast inventories increased by 0.7 million barrels and 0.1 million barrels, respectively, while Midwest inventories decreased by 0.2 million barrels and East Coast inventories dipped slightly, remaining virtually unchanged. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 7.8% of total propane/propylene inventories.

The U.S. and its allies have been successful in hiding the basis on which Russian diplomats were expelled from their countries — expelled on still-undocumented accusations that Russia’s Government was behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury England on March 4th. On Wednesday April 4th, the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said no to Russia’s proposal for an OPCW investigation into the source of the toxin that was used in the attack. 14 of the 41 OPCW countries endorsed an investigtion; 9 abstained; 17 opposed; 1 absented.

German Radio headlined “EU stands behind Russian culpability in Skripal poisoning: The European Union has maintained that Russia is probably responsible for the Novichok nerve agent attack. This comes despite the UK’s inability to pinpoint the source of the chemical.”

The issue decided by the vote is that the expulsions of Russia’s representatives to U.S.-allied countries must stand on the basis merely of the UK Government’s allegations of Russia’s guilt, without any evidence being provided to back them up.

Essentially, what was at stake in this vote is whether the public, in each of these countries, should believe Russia’s guilt without being provided any evidence that Russia is guilty. This decision by the OPCW Executive Council is yes to that.

This means that any wars that might start or increase on account of those allegations are to be considered ‘justified’ by the residents in at least the U.S.-allied nations, because those nations’ Governments say so, and because they have the power to block an OPCW examination of whatever evidence that exists regarding this matter.

Similarly, on 20 March 2003, the U.S. and a few allies invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of secret ‘evidence’, which the public, in these ‘democracies’, was never permitted to see, but which ‘evidence’ now is known to have been concocted.

Many instances exist in which wars have begun on the basis of attacks that were done by the Nazis, or by the U.S., or by other fascist governments, and set up in advance so as to be falsely blamed against the Government that is to be invaded: the phrase that is commonly applied to such instances is “false-flag” events. This is what is done in order to have an ‘excuse’ for invading. Of course, the expulsion of diplomats is not an invasion, but it is commonly done in preparation for one. Usually, economic sanctions precede it; then come the expulsions; then, and perhaps months or even years later, the armed invasion.

Each citizen in these countries will therefore have to make his or her own decision as regards whether or not that person’s Government is authentically a democracy, going to wars as democracies, or actually a dictatorship, which invades foreign countries on the basis of outright lies — deception of the invading country’s own public, essentially warring against its own public and not only against the invaded country. It has happened many times before; it could happen again. But this time, the targeted country would be Russia, not Iraq or another such weak nation. The implications of this could be staggering.

For the very latest and thoroughly honest information on these developing events, information that’s as reliable as possible and that’s as devoid of speculation as possible, I recommend: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk.

The motion of no confidence against Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated in Parliament with a majority of 46 votes.76 MPs voted in favor and 122 voted against while 26 MPs were absent during the vote.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and other MPs representing the Joint Opposition voted in favour of the motion. Several members of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which has been divided over the decision, were noticeably absent during the vote which commenced at 9.30pm. The absent MPs include ministers Mahinda Amaraweera, Faiszer Musthapha, Nimal Siripala de Silva, Duminda Dissanayake, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Dr. Sarath Amunugama, A.H.M. Fowzie, Vijith Wijayamunia Zoysa and Lakshman Seneviratne.

L. A. M. Hizbullah, Weerakumara Dissanayake, Sriyani Wijevickrama, Indika Bandaranaike, Lasantha Alagiyawanna, Nishantha Muthuhettigama, Muttu Sivalingam, Manusha Nanayakkara, Arumugam Thondaman and Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero were also absent during the vote.

Former Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and EPDP leader Douglas Devananda voted against the no-faith motion. Wickremesinghe needed 113 votes in the 225-member Parliament to defeat the motion.

The United National Party (UNP) had decided to defeat the motion while the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) had been divided over the vote with several MPs pushing for the party to support the motion.State Minister A.H.M. Fowzie had said this morning that the SLFP would abstain, but immediately after State Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena denied the decision.

Parliamentarians representing the Joint Opposition handed over the no-confidence motion, signed by 55 MPs including 4 from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), to the Speaker on March 21 while the following day party leaders decided that it will be taken up for debate yesterday (April 4).

The no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister and Minister of National Policies and Economic Affairs Ranil Wickremesinghe lists several points including accusation over the Central Bank treasury bond scam and also the recent communal violence in Kandy. It claims the PM severed the Central Bank of Sri Lanka from the Ministry of Finance contrary to the norm and brought it under himself “with the motive of committing a fraud associated with Treasury Bonds.”

The motion claims that Wickremesinghe has created a huge economic crisis by keeping under him the Ministry of Economic Affairs, taking control of the Ministry of Finance through the Economic Management Committee and keeping the Central Bank of Sri Lanka under him by managing the national economy for the past three years. He was also accused of failing to take immediate measures to provide protection to Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim people during the unrest that occurred in the Kandy District while holding the portfolio of Minister of Law and Order, resulting in loss of lives and damage to property

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is regarded by many journalists as the gold standard for information on hate groups. But its record is dotted with inconsistencies—it has itself engaged in hateful discourse against some traditionally minded organizations: branding the Family Research Council a hate group is one glaring example. Not as well known are its more subtle ways of emitting bias.

SPLC issued a statement on April 3 about a federal court judge’s decision  against Matt Hale, an imprisoned neo-Nazi who sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons for violating his religious rights; prison facilities monitored his mail, disallowing incendiary material. U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger of Colorado ruled that Hale’s religion, the Creativity Movement, failed to meet four of the five legal determinants of what constitutes a religion. Ergo, his religious rights were not violated.

Judge Krieger’s decision was a model of excellence: Hale’s “religion,” she said, was essentially a secular philosophy, and a hateful one at that.

The issue for the Catholic League is why SPLC, which accurately cited Hale’s hatred of Jews and African Americans, didn’t mention his anti-Christian, especially anti-Catholic, animus. A thorough check of its many reports on Hale, and his predecessor, Ben Klassen, found scant mention of either man’s hatred of Christianity, in general, and almost no mention of his hostility to Catholicism.

Hale is serving time for soliciting a hit man to kill a federal judge. A failed lawyer, he is a real wacko. According to SPLC, “He never had a serious job, sported a Hitler wristwatch and used an Israeli flag as a doormat outside his room [he spent almost his entire life living in his father’s house in East Peoria]. He kept a collection of teddy bears on his bed, and although he eventually married—twice—neither union lasted more than a few months.”

Hale took over the Church of the Creator once its founder, Klassen, committed suicide in 1993. Hale renamed it the World Church of the Creator in 1996, and in 2003 it became known as the Creativity Movement.

Klassen, even more than Hale, made known how much he hated Christianity. He called Jesus a “fiction,” whose fictitious followers practiced celibacy, self-denial and pacifism. They also professed to love their enemy, all of which he said were “wimpish ideas attributed to Jesus Christ, the holy guru of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Regarding Jesus, and the first appointed pope, Peter, Klassen said that “this actually has no historical basis in fact, any more than the story of Mother Goose or Santa Claus. There is no historical evidence that either Christ, or Peter, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ever existed.”

Given all this, how did the Church proceed? It used “terror, torture and tyranny,” perfecting “the Jewish techniques of total mind enslavement.” Furthermore, the Church “is outright hostile to the White Race and strongly favors the rights and interests of the niggers, Indians and mud races of the world. From its inception, the creed and teachings of the Catholic church have been an unmitigated disaster for the White Race.”

Klassen and Hale were hateful men who took aim at Christians, as well as Jews and African Americans. So why does SPLC fail to profile their bigotry targeting Protestants and Catholics?

This is not the first time this has happened, and it is not unique to SPLC.  When the media talk about the Westboro Baptist Church, we hear about the church’s hatred of African Americans and homosexuals, but not much about its animus against Catholics. Similarly, the Ku Klux Klan is anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-African American, yet we hear little about its hatred of Catholics.

When SPLC whitewashes the anti-Christian bigotry of  Klassen and Hale—focusing almost exclusively on their hatred of African Americans and Jews—the implication is that the victimizers are Christians. After all, if 70 percent-75 percent of Americans are Christians, who would the offenders be?

All manifest demonstrations of bigotry should be condemned equally. When politics intercedes—elevating some expressions over others—it does a disservice to justice. And it calls into question the sincerity of those who purport to be outraged.

International efforts to deter chemical attacks in Syria in the year since the devastating sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017, have been ineffective, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch has collated and analyzed evidence of chemical weapons attacks in Syria between August 21, 2013, the day of the deadliest chemical weapon attack in Syria to date, and February 25, 2018, when the Syrian government used chlorine in the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta.

The information, based on data from seven sources, shows that the Syrian government is responsible for the majority of 85 confirmed chemical weapon attacks. The data also show that the Syrian government has been largely undeterred by the efforts of the United Nations Security Council, the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and unilateral action by individual countries to enforce the prohibition on Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

“In Syria, the government is using chemical weapons that are banned the world over without paying any price,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “One year after the horrific sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun, neither the UN Security Council nor the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has acted to uphold the prohibition against chemical weapon attacks.”

On April 4, 2018, the UN Security Council will meet to discuss the situation of chemical weapons in Syria. Members of the Security Council should find an alternative to the Joint Investigative Mechanism, a group that the Security Council and OPCW had tasked with identifying the party responsible chemical weapons attacks, but whose mandate was not renewed because of a Russian veto. The Security Council should impose sanctions on officials involved in the Khan Sheikhoun attack.

The sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun was the largest chemical weapon attack in Syria since the government acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention in October 2013. The government acceded to the convention following the chemical weapons attacks in Ghouta on August 21, 2013, when the Security Council demanded that the Syrian government destroy its chemical stockpiles, weapons, and production capacity.

In June 2014, the OPCW announced that it had shipped Syria’s declared chemical weapons out of the country for destruction, though it continued attempting to verify the accuracy and completeness of the Syrian declaration. Nevertheless, several incidents of the use of the chemical weapons in Syria have been reported, including by the Syrian government. As part of a strategy to re-take areas held by anti-government groups, the Syrian government has conducted coordinated chemical weapon attacks, including in Aleppo in December 2016 and likely in Ghouta in January and February of 2018.

On April 4, 2017, an aircraft attacked Khan Sheikhoun, a town held by anti-government forces in Idlib governorate, with sarin, a toxic chemical. Human Rights Watch investigated the attack and found that all likely evidence pointed to Syrian government responsibility. On October 26, the Joint Investigative Mechanism confirmed that the Syrian government was responsible. On November 16, the Russian government vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to renew the group’s mandate and on November 17, it ceased operations.

Russia has also used its veto at the Security Council to prevent holding the Syrian government accountable for its violations. That includes vetoing a resolution along with China that would have referred the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court on May 22, 2014.

Since the Joint Investigative Mechanism ceased to operate, the Syrian government has likely carried out at least five more chemical weapons attacks. There is no UN or OPCW entity to identify the party responsible for these attacks. And beyond unilateral sanctions by countries like the United States, France, and the European Union, those responsible have not been held accountable for the use of these weapons.

The sources Human Rights Watch used for this analysis are: Human Rights Watch research, the Joint Investigative Mechanism, the UN Commission of Inquiry, the OPCW Fact-finding Mission in Syria, the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria, Amnesty International, and Bellingcat. In some cases, multiple sources investigated the same attack, while in others only one investigated it. The sources selected are independent and document violations based on witness and victim evidence, analysis of open source material, and – where available – physical samples. The 85 attacks reflect attacks that have been investigated by at least one of these sources and made public. The total number of actual chemical attacks is likely higher.

Human Rights Watch classified the data based on the organizations’ findings. Human Rights Watch has not independently verified attacks that it did not investigate. Of the 85 chemical weapon attacks analyzed from these sources, more than 50 were identified by the various sources as having been committed by Syrian government forces. Of these, 42 were documented to have used chlorine, while two used sarin. In seven of the attacks, the type of chemicals was unspecified.

The groups found that the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS) carried out three chemical weapon attacks using sulfur mustard. One attack was by non-state armed groups using chlorine. Those responsible for the remaining attacks in the data set are unknown or unconfirmed.

The OPCW is also mandated with protecting and executing the international Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. The Conference of the OPCW is empowered by Article XII to take “necessary measures to ensure compliance with this Convention and to redress and remedy any situation which contravenes it,” including the use of collective measures such as sanctions.

But despite confirmed use of sarin by the Syrian government by both the Joint Investigative Mechanism and the OPCW’s own fact-finding mission, the OPCW has not taken any collective measures. The OPCW should suspend and sanction the Syrian government for its failure to comply with the Convention, Human Rights Watch said. If the Security Council and OPCW continue to drag their feet, it is a signal that member countries need to individually hold the Syrian government accountable and re-instate a system to identify responsibility for attacks.

“Despite the incentives to act, the UN Security Council and OPCW are silently watching on as Syria transforms the nightmare of chemical warfare into reality,” Fakih said. “It is high time to do right by the victims of the attack and the international standard set in the chemical weapons treaty.”

Con Mannity here. Shrink deficits! States’ rights! Stand up to Russia! Free Markets!  I’m a conservative from the old school, with a capital “Con.”  And I love Donald Trump because he’s sticking to the time-tested conservative beliefs I’ve been pushing on this show for years.

For Example, if there’s one thing we conservatives believe its that we’ve got to shrink the deficit.

[News bulletin: Trump and Republican tax cut will explode the deficit]

Huh? [agitated] Actually, a lot of people don’t understand this, but I tell people all the time… if the real conservative goal is to cut the deficit, then sometimes, maybe the best way to do that is to expand the deficit – so there’s more to cut!  Just think about that. …

Old school conservatives like me have other principles, too, that Trump is championing. States’ Rights! We conservatives hate having big government in Washington telling the states what to do.

[News bulletin: Trump and Sessions attacking California law legalizing pot]

Ok, I’m cool! [More agitated] When something bad is going down, like hippies smoking grass, that’s more important than states rights. I hate hippies, don’t you?  And hate is a basic Republican principle. …

Back to Basics! You can’t trust Russia.  Which is why Republicans came out against Obama’s New Start treaty with Moscow, and complained that Obama wasn’t doing enough to deter Russia in Ukraine.  We have to get those bad-guy Ruskies and teach em’ whose boss!

[News bulletin: Russia helped Trump win election.]

What? Russia helped Trump? [Wildly agitated] I mean, one thing I know, Trump’s the boss, so Russia helping him get elected is teaching ‘em who’s boss.

Finally and not the least – basic conservative principle – free trade! Government, bad! Free markets, good!

[News bulletin: Trump starts trade war.]

Okay, we’re back. [He’s now upside down] It appears that  everything is upside down. But that’s okay.  As long as we stay just…like…this… I’m still a conservative. I’m still Con Mannity, and this is still Rox News.

Historically, Buddhism has presented Moscow with fewer problems than have any of the three other “traditional” religions in Russia, in large part because its followers are concentrated in two republics, Buryatia and Kalmykia, whose leaders have over the last two decades cultivated and even deferred to the leaders of the Buddhist communities

But now a conflict has arisen in Buryatia, one that may soon spark larger ones for Moscow domestically and internationally. On the one hand, any conflict in one Buddhist area has a tendency to spread to others. And on the other, Russian Buddhism’s relationship with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism is a problem for Moscow in its relations with Beijing.’

The appearance and contours of the latest clash between the leader of the Buddhist community in Buryatia and the head of the Buryat government is described today by Artur Priymak in NG-Religii (ng.ru/ng_religii/2018-04-04/12_440_buriatia.html).

The problem began with Vladimir Putin’s appointment of Aleksey Tsydenov as republic head in February 2017. Tsydenov, an outsider who had a Buryat father and a Russian mother, does not speak Buryat and is Russian Orthodox in religion, two things that have put him at odds with the national community.

Tsydenov paid a visit to Damba Ayushev, the head of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia, shortly after taking office; and the new republic head declared that he was learning the national language and has even used it on some occasions. But for many Buddhist Buryats, his Orthodoxy means that few are likely to accept him as a Buryat, even if he learns the language.

According to local media, Ayushev is among them. He has reportedly told those close to him that he doesn’t like “the neglect” of Buryat culture and traditions by Tsydenovand does not approve the republic head’s appointments, some of whom while Buddhist, look to Tibet and the Dalai Lama and support an independent dastan in Buryatia itself.

In December at a public meeting, Ayushev and Tsydenov clashed; and after that, Ayushev and his dastan began to suffer difficulties, Priymak says, with the republic head’s people even threatening to call a meeting at which Ayushev’s continuing as head of the dastan and “official” Buddhism would be called into question.

Russian observers like sociologist Yury Moskovsky say that the ethnic Russian origin of Tsydenov and his ignorance of Buryat should not be the basis for a conflict. “In the regional policy of Russia, questions of language and religion are on third or fourth place” after power and economics.

He concedes that in places like Buryatia, however, “they can be the occasion for the exacerbation of certain attitudes in society via the media, social networks, activists and so on.” Given how tense Buryatia has been at various points over other issues, this emerging conflict between the Buddhist and the outsider governor could trigger bigger things.