Quantcast
Channel: Eurasia Review
Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live

Saudi Arabia’s Interfaith Dialogue A Welcome Move – OpEd

0
0

By Nathalie Goulet*

Even a blind man would be able to see the revolution that is being accomplished in so little time in Saudi Arabia today. And this was boosted by the announcement late last month of an agreement between the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, and the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in the Vatican and French Cardinal of the Catholic Church, Jean-Louis Tauran, to accomplish mutual goals.

A multicultural society is already a fact in the UAE and Bahrain, which has a very old Jewish community. It is now the turn of Saudi Arabia to open its borders to new challenges, including religious diversity. More than cinemas or entertainment plans, this sends a strong message to the world.

I talked about inviting the Pope to Saudi Arabia during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Paris in 2016. We might not be too far from that now.

The announcement with the Vatican affects the deepest exclusivity of religious traditionalism: That of Arabia and its king, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The taboo is now broken and only cynics could see it as a political maneuver.

Early signs had already foreseen this change, which nobody could have imagined would happen so quickly. The visit of Al-Issa to the Grand Synagogue of Paris last November was ignored as anecdotal, while MBS’s visit to the leaders of the Jewish community in New York was seen as a simple communication strategy, and only a few commented on the Pope’s most senior adviser’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Today, and for more than two years, the signs of Saudi Arabia’s opening up to the world in its cultural and religious diversity have become stronger and increasingly compelling. Crown Prince Mohammed announced that he planned to do it and he is staying true to his word. It is always a surprise to see a politician do what he promised — it will take a while but we will get used to it.

This openness to religious diversity is a giant leap toward modernity and will do much to silence the dissenting voices. We must realize that such a policy may provoke some resistance and discomfort among Saudi society. There is no example in world history of such big changes happening easily, but these changes are not done against Saudi society or against the clerics. It may take time to explain this new policy, but where there is a will there is a way.

No doubt Vision 2030 will bring a lot more changes to Saudi society without hurting its most traditional part. Saudi Arabia is proud and is right to be proud of its Muslims roots and traditions, but Vision 2030 is about success with an alliance of tradition and modernity.

I have always said and written that we must support reforms and the Saudi Vision 2030. It is likely that we are at the beginning of a real Saudi cultural revolution, and more than ever we need to support all efforts made.

The agreement signed with the Vatican is not an open door to build churches, but it is the first step to a multi-faith society.

Saudi Arabia has shown a strong sign of tolerance to the world. We are all going to closely watch the Kingdom’s next steps as it opens up, but today it’s time to welcome this historic decision.

 

Nathalie Goulet is a member of the Senate of France, representing the Orne department (Normandy).


What’s Trending In Fake News? New Tool Shows What Stories Go Viral And If Bots Are To Blame

0
0

Researchers at the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media have launched upgrades to two tools playing a major role in countering the spread of misinformation online.

The improvements to Hoaxy and Botometer are supported by the Knight Prototype Fund on Misinformation, a joint venture of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the Democracy Fund to address concerns about the spread of misinformation and to build trust in quality journalism. A third tool — an educational game designed to make people smarter news consumers — also launches with the upgrades.

“The majority of the changes to Hoaxy and Botometer are specifically designed to make the tools more usable by journalists and average citizens,” said Filippo Menczer, a professor in the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering and a member of the IU Network Science Institute. “You can now easily detect when information is spreading virally, and who is responsible for its spread.”

Hoaxy is a search engine that shows users how stories from low-credibility sources spread on Twitter. Botometer is an app that assigns a score to Twitter users based on the likelihood that the account is automated.

Hoaxy’s new functions show users which stories are trending on Twitter, including those from low-credibility sources. It also indicates what proportion of the users who are spreading the stories are likely to be “bots.” These new features were previewed April 12 at the International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas, by Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, a research scientist at the IU Network Science Institute who is part of the team that developed the tools.

The new version of Botometer employs updated machine learning algorithms to identify “bots” with greater accuracy and is strongly integrated with Hoaxy. Users can observe not only how information spreads across Twitter, but also whether these messages are mostly shared by real people or pushed by a computer program potentially designed to sway public opinion.

Automated accounts are commonly used to give the false impression that a large number of people are speaking about a specific topic online, Menczer said. Political campaigns, celebrities and advertisers are known to use bots to push specific agendas or products.

The updated Hoaxy also has a “trending stories” section that displays popular news stories along with claims from low-credibility sources. This is possible because Hoaxy can now trace the spread of any online news story or hashtag over time across Twitter. Previously, users could only analyze headlines from specific websites identified by nonpartisan groups as likely to post false or misleading information.

Ciampaglia said Hoaxy and Botometer currently process hundreds of thousands of daily online queries. The technology has enabled researchers, including a team at IU, to study how information flows online in the presence of bots. Examples are a study on the cover of the March issue of Science that analyzed the spread of false news on Twitter and an analysis from the Pew Research Center in April that found that nearly two-thirds of the links to popular websites on Twitter are shared by automated accounts.

The newly launched project is Fakey, a web and mobile news literacy game that mixes news stories with false reports, clickbait headlines, conspiracy theories and “junk science.” Players earn points by “fact-checking” false information and liking or sharing accurate stories. The project, led by IU graduate student Mihai Avram, was created to help people develop responsible social media consumption habits. An Android app is available, and an iOS versions will launch shortly.

All three tools are united through their creators’ goal to help individuals understand the role of misinformation online, Menczer said.

“By partnering with other groups,” he added, “we’re able to significantly amplify the power of our work in the fight against online disinformation.”

Malaysia: Police Seize Jewelry, Luxury Bags In Searches At Najib-Linked Residences

0
0

By Hadi Azmi and N. Nantha

Malaysian police have hauled jewelry, handbags, cash and documents out of residences and offices linked to ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak as part of investigations into a financial scandal tied to state fund 1MDB, a senior Malaysian official said early Friday (local time).

After a whirlwind of police activity that began more than 24 hours earlier and saw locksmiths sent in to crack open a safe inside Najib’s sprawling house, the head of the Malaysian police’s Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) held an early morning news conference outside a posh condominium building in Kuala Lumpur, where officers had seized boxes full of valuable items.

“We seized 72 luggage bags, carriers of various sizes containing jewelry, watches, cash of various currencies and other valuables which values we have yet to determine,” Amar Singh Ishar Singh, the head of the unit, told reporters at the Pavilion residences.

“We are investigating the 1MDB case and the searches conducted at all six premises since yesterday are linked to this case,” he said.

“During the checks, we also seized 284 boxes of branded handbags. Among them were Hermes Birkins,” the police official said, referring to the fashionable bag that retails from U.S. $12,000 to U.S. $300,000.

The searches began Wednesday night, and included one where police officers and vehicles were seen swarming around Najib’s main residence, soon after the former prime minister had returned home after taking part in prayers at a local mosque on the eve of start of Ramadan in Malaysia. Exactly a week earlier, Najib fell from power after his ruling coalition, which had controlled Malaysian government for 61 years, lost a general election for the first time.

Days later, Najib and his wife were barred by immigration authorities from leaving the country as the couple reportedly was planning to board a private jet bound for Indonesia. Soon after, he resigned as chief of the Barisan Nasional coalition and its anchor party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO).

The searches took place at six locations in Kuala Lumpur and nearby Putrajaya – Malaysia’s administrative capital. These included the official Prime Minister’s Office and Najib’s former official residence as prime minister.

“Four others were his residence,” Singh said.

Going into the election Najib was shadowed by allegations of corruption linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund which he started in 2009 during his first term as prime minister. He has denied allegations of criminal wrongdoing over the deposit of nearly U.S. $700 million of 1MDB-linked money into his bank accounts, saying the money was donated by a member of the Saudi royal family.

Najib: Key lost

When asked whether the locksmiths had managed to crack open the safe in Najib’s main residence, Singh replied, “We are still working on it.”

According to Malaysian news reports, the locksmiths arrived at the house in the early afternoon on Thursday, after the authorities had discovered the safe.

It was an old safe but Najib, in a statement to media, said it had remained locked for two decades because the key to it had been misplaced.

According to a lawyer representing the ex-PM, it took six hours for the police to search the house after they first arrived on Wednesday evening.

No documents were seized, but police took some personal possessions, including handbags and presents, attorney Harpal Singh Gerwal told BenarNews.

Later on Thursday, after authorities had been on the premises for as many as 18 hours, and as people were still drilling away at the safe located on the house’s first floor, the lawyer complained that the police were harassing Najib and his family and causing them distress.

“The family is very stressed and tired with the noise and the long duration of the whole thing,” Gerwal told Benar.

“The continued presence of police officers in his residence and the drilling of the old safe suggests unwarranted harassment on my client,” he added, saying the items seized from the house were of insignificant value.

At a press conference on Thursday in Petaling Jaya, Mahathir Mohamad, the new prime minister, said the searches were conducted at the discretion of the Royal Malaysia Police.

During the electoral campaign, Mahathir had vowed to recover for the Malaysian people billions of dollars that were allegedly stolen from 1MDB and to prosecute any officials who were complicit in the scandal. Mahathir, 92, led the opposition Pakatan Harapan coalition to a shock upset against Barisan.

“The police have their standard operating procedure,” Mahathir told reporters. “I suppose the police have enough reason for a raid. I don’t have any information, this is a police matter.”

On Thursday, Pakatan was formally registered as a political coalition and a Council of Eminent Persons, which had been set up by Mahathir, announced the establishment of a six-member committee dedicated to looking into matters related to 1MDB.

In a press release, the council said it recognized the importance of having a separate committee to look into matters relating to 1MDB.

“Until and unless the issue of 1MDB is resolved, there will be questions that undermine public confidence in the Government and its Institutions,” the statement said.

Anwar’s daughter slams police actions

In leading Pakatan to victory in the election, Mahathir formed an alliance with a former foe, Anwar Ibrahim, the founder of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), who was released from prison on Wednesday, after he had served three years on a sodomy conviction, which, critics said, was politically motivated.

On Thursday, there was some criticism from within Pakatan’s ranks against the police actions. Anwar’s daughter, MP Nurul Izzah, questioned the timing and the manner of the raids targeting Najib’s residences.

On her Twitter account, she said that “as a former victim of early dawn police raids, I must stress my disagreement in ransacking any home at such an ungodly hour.”

“Elections are over and now is the time for nation building and to reflect on our actions,” Nurul Izzah added.

In 2015, Nurul Izzah was arrested under the Sedition Act and was remanded for a night in police lockup over comments she made in parliament that were deemed seditious.

Reacting to her comments, the spokesman for UMNO’s youth wing issued a statement expressing appreciation at the gesture made by one of the key figures of the new ruling coalition.

“Najib is a former prime minister who had given a lot to the country since becoming a member of parliament at the age of 23,” Shahril Hamdan said.

“He has not been charged in court therefore he should be accorded the fair treatment under the principle of innocent until proven guilty.”

Enough evidence to charge Najib: Anwar

Meanwhile, the newly freed Anwar, who walked out of custody after receiving a full pardon from Malaysia’s king, said Thursday that he believed the former prime minister could be arrested and booked on criminal charges.

“Do I believe there is enough evidence to prosecute Najib? I do. Based on the notes I received, it is strong enough but can I instruct him to be prosecuted? No. It has to follow all the process of a prima facie case,” Anwar said after taking part Thursday night in a prayer at his house in Bukit Segambut.

And, in a stunning revelation, Anwar told the Reuters that a “totally shattered” Najib had telephoned him twice in his jail cell to seek his advice on the night of the election, as Najib’s tenure as a titan of Malaysian politics began to crumble.

“When he called on the night of the election, I advised him as a friend to concede and move on,” Anwar told the news service Thursday.

“He was just very evasive … he refused to concede early,” Anwar said.

Pakistan: Army Kills Top Islamic Militant

0
0

Pakistan says the army has killed an Islamic militant who was a chief suspect in the killing of more than 100 minority Shia Hazaras and police in the southern city of Quetta.

An army colonel commanding the operation was also killed in the raid.

Security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in Killi Almas village near Quetta, Balochistan, on a tip off from an already apprehended high value target, the army’s media wing said in a statement on May 16.

The intelligence related to the presence of suicide bombers along with other terrorists in a hideout.

“During the operation three terrorists, including two suicide bombers and high-value target Salman Badeni, head of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Balochistan, were killed,” the army said.

The statement added that Colonel Sohail Abid of Military Intelligence was killed and four soldiers were injured during an intense exchange of fire.

A large cache of munitions belonging to the militants was recovered from the hideout.

The latest military raid comes a day after Hazara residents of Quetta staged a hunger strike over increased militant attacks on the ethnic and religious Muslim minority.

At least eight Hazaras and 15 Christians have been killed in Balochistan’s provincial capital in recent drive-by shootings that were claimed by the terror outfit Islamic State. This followed a wave or earlier killings.

However, police told local media that it was local Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants masquerading as Islamic State who were behind the violence.

Earlier this month, hundreds of Hazaras went on a hunger strike outside Quetta Press Club and the Balochistan Legislative Assembly to protest what they described as an “Hazara genocide.”

The protest was called off only after Pakistan’s powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, flew to Quetta for talks with Hazara representatives.

“While nothing can compensate for the loss of dear ones, those who have targeted them shall suffer twice as much,” Gen. Bajwa told protest leaders.

“The state is responsible for the security of its citizens and all state institutions are concerned.

“Each and every casualty, including from the Hazara community, is of concern to us, and our brave security forces are performing their best and willingly offering monumental sacrifices to bring lasting peace to the country.”

Big Data Reveals New Alzheimer’s Risk Genes

0
0

An international research team led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Queensland, has identified three new genes linked to the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The study, supported by Alzheimer’s Research UK and also involving researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

The researchers combined findings from an existing study of Alzheimer’s genetics, with those from a new analysis involving the children of people with the disease. The findings are set to help researchers better understand the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s and could open the door to new approaches for treating the disease.

To find genetic risk factors for diseases like Alzheimer’s, researchers generally compare the DNA code of people with and without the disease. By carefully analysing data from very large groups of people, researchers can pick out gene variations that are more common in people who have Alzheimer’s. This approach has helped to find around 30 genes that are associated with Alzheimer’s risk.

The more people who are involved in these genetic studies, the more powerful they are and the more they can reveal about the genetics of Alzheimer’s. Large-scale research resources like the UK Biobank hold rich genetic and medical information about hundreds of thousands of research volunteers, but as only a fraction of this data comes from people with Alzheimer’s, relatively few people can be included in the genetic studies.

In this new study, Alzheimer’s researchers used a technique that allowed them to cast their nets more widely and include many more people in their genetic analysis. The research involved genetic information from over 300,000 people from the UK Biobank. As most of the participants were too young to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the research team looked to medical information about their parents, many of whom had developed the disease.

On average, children share 50% of their genes with each of their parents. While at the individual level having a parent with Alzheimer’s doesn’t mean you are at a much greater risk of the disease, by combining data from many thousands of people whose parents developed Alzheimer’s the researchers were able to sift out genetic information relevant to the disease.

The team combined results from their new analysis with data from an existing genetic study involving 70,000 people with and without Alzheimer’s disease. The findings highlight three new genes that may play a role in Alzheimer’s risk.

Prof Peter Visscher, from the University of Queensland, said, “By focusing on people with a family history of Alzheimer’s, we have been able to take advantage of a wealth of existing data to gain new insights into the genetics of the disease. One challenge of this method is that we rely on people to provide accurate information about whether their parents developed Alzheimer’s, and in some cases the disease can be mistaken for another form of dementia or go undiagnosed.”

Dr Riccardo Marioni, from the University of Edinburgh, said, “New genetic discoveries can provide vital clues to the biological processes involved in Alzheimer’s, but our genetic makeup is not the only factor that affects our risk of the disease. We are now working to combine genetic data and information about people’s lifestyle to produce more comprehensive and personalised picture of Alzheimer’s risk. Understanding how genetic and lifestyle factors interact to affect our overall risk could lead to more targeted risk reduction strategies and pave the way to precision medicine in Alzheimer’s disease.”

According to Dr Sara Imarisio, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, “This innovative research highlights three new genes linked to the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and presents promising leads for future research. The next step will be for molecular scientists to assess how these genes might contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s and fit in to the existing picture of the disease. Interestingly, two of these genes are targeted by drugs that are used to treat other conditions, signalling a potential direction for research into new Alzheimer’s treatments.

“Dr Marioni is unlocking the power of big data by applying cutting-edge statistical techniques to rich medical, genetic and lifestyle information provided by hundreds of thousands of research volunteers.

People don’t have to have dementia to take part in research studies, and anyone who is interested in playing a part can find out how at http://www.joindementiaresearch.org

“There are currently no treatments to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, but research can change this picture. Alzheimer’s Research UK is proud to be supporting this pioneering research, none of which would be possible without the efforts of our dedicated supporters.”

New Catalyst Upgrades Greenhouse Gas Into Renewable Hydrocarbons

0
0

A new technology from U of T Engineering is taking a substantial step towards enabling manufacturers to create plastics out of two key ingredients: sunshine and pollution.

Today, non-renewable fossil fuels not only provide the raw material from which plastics are made, they are also the fuel burned to power the manufacturing process, producing climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) — the International Energy Agency estimates the production of the main precursors for plastics is responsible for 1.4 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

A team led by University of Toronto Professor Ted Sargent is turning this process on its head. They envision capturing CO2 produced by other industrial process and using renewable electricity — such as solar power — to transform it into ethylene. Ethylene is a common industrial chemical that is a precursor to many plastics, such as those used in grocery bags.

The system addresses a key challenge associated with carbon capture. While technology exists to filter and extract CO2 from flue gases, the substance currently has little economic value that can offset the cost of capturing it — it’s a money-losing proposition. By transforming this carbon into a commercially valuable product like ethylene, the team aims to increase the incentives for companies to invest in carbon capture technology.

At the core of the team’s solution are two innovations: using a counterintuitively thin copper-based catalyst and a reimagined experimental strategy.

“When we performed the CO2 conversion to ethylene in very basic media, we found that our catalyst improved both the energy efficiency and selectivity of the conversion to the highest levels ever recorded,” said post-doctoral fellow Dr. Cao-Thang Dinh, the first author on the paper published today in the journal Science. In this context, efficiency means that less electricity is required to accomplish the conversion. The authors then used this knowledge to further improve the catalyst and push the reaction to favour the formation of ethylene, as opposed to other substances.

Next, the team addressed stability, which has long been a challenge with this type of copper-based catalyst. Theoretical modelling shows that basic conditions — that is, high pH levels — are ideal for catalyzing CO2 to ethylene. But under these conditions, most catalysts, and their supports, break down after less than 10 hours.

The team overcame this challenge by altering their experimental setup. Essentially, they deposited their catalyst on a porous support layer made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, better known as Teflon) and sandwiched their catalyst with carbon on the other side. This new setup protects the support and catalyst from degrading due to the basic solution, and enables it to last 15 times longer than previous catalysts. As an added bonus, this setup also improved efficiency and selectivity still further.

“Over the last few decades, we’ve known that operating this reaction under basic conditions would help, but no one knew how to take advantage of that knowledge and transfer it into a practical system,” said Dinh. “We’ve shown how to overcome that challenge.”

Currently their system is capable of performing the conversion on a laboratory scale, producing several grams of ethylene at a time. The team’s long-term goal is to scale the technology up to the point where they are able to convert the multiple tonnes of chemicals needed for commercial application.

“We made three simultaneous advances in this work: selectivity, energy-efficiency and stability,” said Sargent. “As a group, we are strongly motivated to develop technologies that help us realize the global challenge of a carbon-neutral future.”

GE14 And Its Aftermath: Enter Malaysia’s New Political Order – Analysis

0
0

Days after the political earthquake of a general election on 9 May, Anwar Ibrahim declared Malaysia “on the verge of a new golden era”. Will it be a mere change of government or a political transition to a new order?

By Yang Razali Kassim*

In the wake of the seismic change that was Malaysia’s 14th general election on 9 May 2018, two aftershocks are now playing out. The first, amid the euphoria of victory, sees the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition taking ground-breaking but cautious steps to put in place not just a new government but also the seeds of what could be a new political order. The second, as part of this changed landscape, sees the defeated Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition bracing for an unfamiliar and uncertain future, with its anchor party, UMNO, under threat of deregistration.

These two aftershocks are moving in tandem as they usher in Malaysia’s new era. Uniquely this post-BN, post-UMNO phase of the country’s political evolution is being led by two colourful personalities who have become national icons but were once allies turned rivals and now allies again ̶ Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim. It was their statesmanly act of transcending their bitter differences in favour of political reconciliation that launched not just a Malay tsunami but a “people’s tsunami” that toppled the old order. It was a titanic feat that finally removed the surprisingly indefatigable former prime minister Najib Razak and, in a historic move, ended the 60-year dominance of UMNO. The road ahead for Malaysian politics will be one of evolution and change.

Rise of Malaysia’s New Order

With hindsight, the end of the UMNO era and the birth of what essentially is the Reformasi Era would not have been possible without the partnership of the two giants of Malaysian politics; Mahathir and Anwar compromised for the sake of a revolutionary change via the ballot box. Ironically, it was Mahathir who embraced Anwar’s Reformasi or Reformation battle cry and led the movement for reform with the single-minded mission to remove the scandal-tainted Najib while Anwar remained in jail, waiting for his impending release, but providing crucial moral support from behind bars.

Still, the rise of this new order has been marked by four halting starts, reflecting how unfamiliar everyone was with the new landscape and the adjustments they each had to make as they pushed ahead to fulfil their electoral “10 Promises in 100 days”.

Mahathir’s Swearing-in

In the first, following PH’s securing of a simple majority on 9 May, coalition leaders pushed for an immediate swearing-in of Mahathir as the new prime minister, out of fear Najib might try to stymie it. Delays in announcing the results gave rise to rampant talk that Najib was trying to snatch away victory; indeed he claimed an inconclusive simple majority which he said must be resolved by the monarch, the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong. It was only into the wee hours of the next morning that PH was officially declared the winner, paving the way for Mahathir to be sworn in – to much relief of many.

That was only the beginning. Determining who from PH would be prime minister wasn’t so smooth-sailing either. The King called in the four presidents of the PH component parties, though not Mahathir, reviving fears of a move to bypass the PH victory. News came out later that the monarch had offered the premiership to PKR’s leader Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, further raising anxieties. She declined, respecting the PH pact to appoint Mahathir as the seventh prime minister; upon his swearing-in, Mahathir was to seek a royal pardon for Anwar, to whom Mahathir will make way as prime minister within two years.

It was when Wan Azizah declined that the King accepted PH’s joint stand in favour of Mahathir. On the night of 10 May, the 92-year-old former premier was finally sworn in – in the most spectacular comeback by the world’s oldest prime minister, having been premier for 22 illustrious years from 1982 to 2003.

Cabinet Formation

The third faltering was over the formation of the new cabinet. Mahathir moved swiftly to set up the first Pakatan Harapan government. The four-party PH alliance had agreed that they would be guided by the decision-making principle of consultation and consensus. Mahathir announced the first three senior ministers ̶ for finance, home affairs, and defence ̶ apparently without the benefit of Anwar’s input, despite him being de facto leader of the largest bloc in the victorious coalition, PKR.

One vocal PKR leader, Rafizi Ramli, felt that Mahathir had “bulldozed” the decision on the top three ministers and went public with a statement. There was some controversy whether he was rightly informed about the manner in which the decision was reached. Subsequently, however, Mahathir visited Anwar in the hospital where the PKR leader was recuperating.

As surprising as Rafizi’s public airing was, it seemed to have reminded Mahathir that he was now in the post-UMNO era where the ruling coalition was one of equals and consensus building rather than unilateral decision-making should be the norm. In their hospital meeting, Anwar conveyed his “strong support” for Mahathir’s leadership while stressing his party’s sentiment on the importance of “more inclusive negotiations”.

Anwar’s Delayed Pardon

The fourth bump on the road was over the pardon and release of Anwar, the prime minister-in-waiting. This was a key goal for PH right from the start which Mahathir has stuck to. When the time came for the Pardons Board to meet on 15 May, however, it was delayed because the controversial pro-Najib Attorney-General Apandi Ali was relieved of his duties and his role in the Pardons Board replaced by the Solicitor-General.

The side-effect of what was a procedural delay was to trigger talk that Anwar’s release might not be taking place soon enough. Such rumours caused some unnecessary anxiety in PKR. In fact, contrary to speculation, the King himself had been eager to pardon and release Anwar without further hesitation, according to a source close to the process.

While stressing that the royal pardon would remain on track, Mahathir wanted the formal process of pardon to be followed. Although this pushed back the pardon by a day, Anwar was indeed finally released on 16 May after an audience with the monarch. A freed Anwar later openly thanked the King for his “complete and unconditional pardon” ̶ wiping out all records associated with his jailing – as well as to Mahathir for actively pursuing his release.

The Future of Umno

On the other end, heads began to roll in UMNO, the first being Najib’s. Under pressure, he immediately stepped down as president, taking responsibility for the unprecedented defeat. Najib now faces the prospect of being arrested on charges relating to the massive 1MDB scandal, declared Mahathir. Indeed, the former attorney-general Gani Patail admitted to Mahathir that it was true he was preparing charges against Najib, then the sitting prime minister, when he was removed as AG on grounds of “ill-health”.

Najib’s successor in UMNO, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, and the presumptive new deputy president Hishamuddin Hussein, will now have to preside over the possible deregistration of UMNO. The group of members behind a legal suit has not given up; it may appeal the judgement by the High Court which threw out the group’s claim that UMNO had breached its own constitution by failing to hold party elections. This is all like deja vu.

In 1988, UMNO had been deregistered for a similar reason under the watch of Mahathir who was then prime minister. UMNO survived that shock when Mahathir revived it by forming a “New UMNO” that eventually took on the persona of the original UMNO. Should it fail this second time, UMNO as a party may not recover.

In this struggle for survival, UMNO’s future is totally uncertain. Remaining members could end up joining either PKR, the Islamist PAS, or Bersatu – Mahathir’s party. This prospect itself will throw up its own dynamic. The new party leader, Zahid, has been given the mandate to open up all options, including to “negotiate to form government or opposition blocs”.

UMNO is realistic enough to know that it will face “two giants in Malaysian politics”, in the words of Khairy Jamaluddin, the UMNO Youth leader. Being in opposition is not a role UMNO is used to, at all – until the fateful day of 9 May 2018.

Road Ahead

In a nutshell, how the post-UMNO era will look like will be shaped by events and their dynamics on these two tracks ̶ first, the new ruling group as defined by Pakatan Harapan, and second, the Opposition front as defined by UMNO. This evolution will ultimately determine whether what emerges eventually is a mere political transition to a new government, or a longer-term systemic change ushering in a new Reformasi Order.

In hindsight, this Reformasi (or Reform) Order grew from the seed Anwar planted when he was sacked in 1998, ironically by Mahathir. As Anwar himself said in one of his post-release statements, “one election does not a democracy make”. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it will be a new era in which Anwar will finally dominate, in part thanks to the pay-back by Mahathir.


*Yang Razali Kassim is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This is the first of a special RSIS Series on Malaysia’s 14th General Election and Its Aftermath.

Re-Impositions Of Sanctions On Iran: Implications For Pakistan – OpEd

0
0

The recent decision of the U.S. president to pull its country out of the nuclear deal signed by six super powers of the world with Iran has serious implications for the world in general and Pakistan in particular. Contrary to policy recommendations, President Donald Trump’s decision to pull-out from the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has already hiked crude oil prices to three-year highs. Since Pakistan and Iran enjoy common border, the geopolitical tension in its backyard must be handled with extreme care as policy decisions of the country are influenced by its relationship with the United States and Saudi Arabia.

From a domestic perspective, if one assesses Pakistan-Iran trade relationship with Iran the likely implications are negligible. Some analysts say that the decision may become a major roadblock in the execution of any energy supply projects (IP gas pipeline, possible expansion of electricity imports). As regards implications on the equity market the pressures imposed through higher global crude oil prices will weigh on an already precarious current account situation and will also not bode well for investors’ sentiments.

According to some economic analysts, having myopic view the hike in crude oil price bodes well for E&P sector and revenue collection. They also believe that influx of foreign exchange from Saudi Arabia will increase. However, they tend to forget that country is already suffering from serious balance of payment crisis.

There are speculations that U.S. sanctions against Iran would lead to a disruption in supply which would further tighten global supplies. Iran’s oil exports were 2.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in April 2018. However, gains have been capped by a stronger U.S. Dollar, which affects demand, and rising U.S. production. The uncertainties over Iran are helping to underpin prices with buyers coming in on weakness, but refraining from buying enough to drive the market through resistance and into new multiyear highs. This is holding the markets in a range and giving the appearance of a sideways trade.

The move has been initiated by the US president and many ‘me too’ are trying to please him. The crusade is led by Israeli prime minister, who is licking wounds caused to Israel in Lebanon by Hezbollah. The US is also adamant at taking revenge of its defeat in Syria, where it also faced Hezbollah. The west is never tired of accusing Hezbollah being supported by Iran but it is in no way part of Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran.

The US commentators have very cunningly convinced OPEC led by Saudi Arabia to curtail crude oil output which has resulted in 1) substantial increase in crude oil price and 2) significant hike in the output by the US and Russia. At present, Saudi Arabia has slipped to third position in terms of daily oil output. The US has also emerged as one of the major exporter of crude oil. Therefore, Iran with a daily export of 2.6 million barrel has become ‘of no consequence’. Even if export of oil from Iran is stopped completely, it would be compensated by other producers very quickly.

As a daily ritual, I have to write a few lines on commodities market and factors driving their prices. The most bizarre part is writing about the factors driving crude oil prices. The usual jargon used are increase/decrease in rig count in the US, movement in US stock piles, turmoil in Venezuela and MENA (countries including Iraq, Libya, and Nigeria). Little reference is made to investment by hedge funds.

Crude prices fell after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a surprise build of 6.2 million barrels in the week-ending April 27. Traders shrugged off the news because the surprise rise in inventories was largely concentrated on the West Coast where supply jumped nearly 5 million barrels.

If one peeps into history, it becomes evident that the price of crude oil is driven by any factor, but certainly not by demand and supply alone. The moral of the story is that developed economies, through hedge funds make millions of dollars by maneuvering crude oil prices. To achieve their objective they often breach agreements. Super powers are notorious for breaching the agreements for achieving their motives.

Therefore, re-imposition of sanctions on Iran will not be a surprise but an example of yet another blatant violation. However, they must not forget that even stopping oil export from Iran completely will neither make an immediate difference for Iran nor sky rocket oil prices.

Comments from Iran’s Foreign Minister triggered a volatile short-covering rally on Thursday after he said U.S. demands to change its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers were unacceptable.

Trump and traders are waiting for the Europeans to hand Trump a plan to save the Iran nuclear deal by the end of next week. However, the situation remains uncertain enough that buyers are willing to come in on dips. If the Europeans can come up with a plan that satisfies Trump then prices are likely to decline sharply on speculative profit-taking and shorting. If Trump moves forward with sanctions then prices could rise, but gains are likely to be limited by rising U.S. production.

The moral of the story is that developed economies, through hedge funds make millions of dollars by maneuvering crude oil prices. To achieve their objective they often breach agreements. Super powers are notorious for breaching the agreements for achieving their ulterior motives. Therefore, re-imposition of sanction on Iran will not be a surprise but an example of yet another blatant violation. However, they must not forget that even stopping oil export from Iran completely will neither make an immediate difference for Iran nor sky rocket oil prices.


Azerbaijan Says Cryptocurrency Profits Must Be Taxed

0
0

By Anvar Mammadov

Profit from operations with cryptocurrencies in Azerbaijan should be put under taxation, Shamil Arabov, Deputy Director General of the Department of Tax Policy and Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Taxes of Azerbaijan, during his speech at the conference “New trends in financial technologies: blockchain, cryptocurrencies and security” in Baku May 17.

He noted that, operations with cryptocurrencies take place mainly between individuals, so they relate to non-entrepreneurial activities.

“The Ministry of Taxes believes that persons engaged in operations with cryptocurrencies should register with the tax authorities, provide the tax authorities with appropriate declarations and pay taxes to the state budget,” said Arabov.

He stressed that today the issue of taxation of operations with cryptocurrencies is widely discussed around the world.

“Almost the whole world today is discussing the possibility of attracting transactions with popular cryptocurrencies to taxation. I believe that it is also necessary to take into account the wide spread of operations with cryptocurrencies in e-commerce and to work out the possibility of control by the tax authorities of the turnover of the crypto market and its legal regulation,” – said Arabov.

On May 17, the conference entitled as “New trends in financial technologies: blockchain, cryptocurrencies and security” was launched in Baku. During the conference which will last two days, financial technologies, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and other innovations in the market, as well as possible risks associated with their use will be discussed.

Urgent Memo To Malaysia’s New Minister Of Education – OpEd

0
0

Now that we have a new government serious in implementing change, with an inclusionist policy, I’d like to share my view of what the children of all Malaysians deserve.

We saw, especially in the era of the previous regime, our educational system plagued with themes of racial discrimination, student indiscipline, gangs in schools and the growing numbers of young people more interested in bike-racing past midnight in cities such as Johor Bahru.

Why this malaise in the most important sector of society: education? How do we bring back the joy of learning and the importance of education to the young? Herein lies the need to reconceptualise the way we build our schools in our hope to prepare the younger members of our society to participate in Malaysia’s democratic lives.

Each child has the right to be intelligent. This is a view of education the new regime needs to work on. I begin with talking about what an “ideal school” should look like as we keep afloat in this predatory “Blue Ocean” of globalisation, as we try to sustain ourselves economically, culturally, and cognitively.

The future is here. A long time ago, in fact. Schools need to change, the way they are defined and built. What kind of school would best fit the needs of Malaysia’s intelligent child?

It would be a “Transhumanistic -Renaissance school” Deweyian-Freirian-Monstessorian-Gandhian in nature, in which the child is a living, thinking, breathing and artefact-creating being growing up not only useful for himself/herself in society but also a culturally-responsive global citizen able to use technology for peaceful purposes. The school, therefore, must be created, philosophically, artistically, architecturally, and responsively to nurture this new human being.

The principle of singularity-multiplicity will be applied, thinking without borders and knowledge framed constructively, and artefacts created for social use be produced altruistically. The students will be in a space of knowledge production, construction, and deconstruction without walls, with Nature or a simulacrum of it adorning the surrounding with the technology used purposefully and sustainably and the “teachers”, are merely guides on the side and not sages on stage.

It’s a “Google Scholar-meets-Facebook-meets Elon Musk-meets-a Summerhill-tribal-green” type of school. Here are my thoughts on education, an excerpt from an article I once wrote in an online journal called Eurasia Review, based in Oregon, USA:

” … what is our problem with this gentle profession and enterprise called “education”? How must we act and feel as teachers — those “transmitters of culture and Grand Narratives” and at the same time “subverts of the human mind and promoters of Constructivism in thinking? How do we mediate these two roles; of the managers of virtue and cultivators of critical thinking?

Having been immersed in this “passion” called the “teaching profession” for more than 25 years now, teaching in the two cultures “East and West”. i.e. in Malaysia and in the US in both the secondary and at the tertiary levels both ways, I have this to say about what teachers ought to become and how the “Socratic ethos” need to be in synchrony with the mind of the millennial child that resides in the 21st Century.

The noble profession of teaching should only be reserved for the best and the brightest in society: the Socrates amongst us. It should be reserved for those who have the passion, dedication, and discipline to turn children into radical thinkers who will question everything and anything and who will create useful artefacts for society and dedicate one’s life to the improvements of the mind, body, and soul of fellow beings.

This is necessary so that society can constantly be renewed, refreshed and be brought to reach the height of periods of evolving renaissance. This will be our Socratic process of bringing humanity from darkness to light as in the Sanskrit term “guru”.

Having said this, many of those teaching in our classrooms today ought to leave the profession for many are there whose unintended goal is to destroy the minds of an entire generation.

A good teacher is one who is skilled in the art and science of planting doubts in the curious young minds and good at training minds to be scientists and philosophers. A Socratic teacher as such will leave each lesson with more questions than answers, to respect each and every child as if each one of them is a teacher one can learn from, and to shower each child with questions that will make him/her shake the foundation of the self, invigorate the critical sensibility in the self. This is done so that the child will grow up thinking as freely as how he/she ought to live and die and free as Nature wishes human beings to be.

Such notion of freedom is the creed of a free society, one that is free from the dictates of dogma and dictatorship of the few; those powerful few who themselves were trained to think as free as how oppressors and immoral aristocrats ought to be. “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains, as the enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques-Rousseau said and we do not have anything to lose except of chains, the economic historian Karl Marx concluded.

Dare we build this new school order?

In the next part of this memo, I shall speak of how technology is changing schooling and how our educational system, in need of major overhaul, can best respond to the needs of our global village’s major and rapidised technological shifts.

Our children deserve better schools. Re-imagine education. Make radical changes. The world is changing fast. Very fast.

Part 2

Today’s schools need to be cognitively architectured and grown anew, and made to start at year zero of a new education revolution. This revolution should rest on of the idea of singularity and complexity, and the multiplicity of knowledge that is fluid and evolving organically.

This philosophy of education is yet to be conceived and crafted, even as the nature of the human self and the mind is being reconstructed, leaving behind the legacy of the paradigms of industrialism, post-industrialism, and quantum physics.

Schools will one day respond to these mega changes and cease to exist in its current shape, form and purpose.

They will one day replace institutions of power and knowledge controlled form above, such as ashrams, madrasah, abbots, convents, and kibbutzim. These are prison-houses of mass indoctrination, of monocultural cognitive linearism for the state to mould children into citizens obedient enough to be slaves to the power elite, new global imperialists and newer mandarins.

Essentially, in this post-industrial social design called ‘instrumental education’, today’s schools are mere factories producing an unthinking citizenry living in a matrix of absurdities.

But what would be among the most compelling transformational uses of technology seen in schools of today, given that we are living in a deeply mediated technological world?

It would be an entire school using the philosophy of project-based learning – students beginning their day with ‘playlists’ as learning objectives, going to their collaborative stations; teachers as tech-gurus and chief researchers, utilising only primary sources; in a research-driven and stress-free school which is aimed at using technologies of the future purposefully, and to nurture scientific, artistic, philosophical, and global thinking.

It is a redesign of instruction that Socrates would have insisted upon and Elon Musk has shown, but informed by the wisdom of Howard Gardner. That would be my idea of a democratic academy, one that Henry David Thoreau would approve of.

Using technology to transform

I saw this idea of a digitally-driven, project-based learning concept in schools in New Jersey and in New York, through the School of One initiative.

National education leaders and ministers – once they become skilled in conceiving the relationship between human beings, technology, culture, and schooling – should explore cutting-edge ideas for using technology in more transformational ways.

This includes writing, reading, thinking, and creating. Virtual reality, big data historicising tools, GPS-type systems, and 3D printing technologies are emerging as potentially transformational tools of collaborative learning.

I grew up in a village in Johor Bahru, like Mowgli in The Jungle Book. I saw the first computer – perhaps an IBM 036 – in an office which 12 human beings had to share. That was in the early 1970s.

I have used technologies of learning such as the ‘tablet’ (a green alphabet and numbers writing pad used with chalk), learned to use the ancient typewriter, then the need-to-boot floppy-disc computer, and other tools to work and learn with the progress of technology.

Today, I am fortunate to be able to even design an entire Master’s curriculum using collaborative technologies and smart tools. I know I will continue to evolve carefully with technologies, without the fear of being turned into a robot and thinking like one.

Technological advances

There are advances in technology I foresee in the near future. I see virtual and augmented reality as technologies of the future that will redesign schooling altogether, only if these are to be used purposefully and democratically, and made available to children in impoverished countries.

The underlying principle of learning is not to showcase gadgets and turn children into techno-zombies, but to develop minds to be more humane and emphatic – more human – and to understand and manage an increasingly complex world in which information has become a commodity, and where knowledge and understanding, let alone wisdom is absent.

We are at a critical juncture of perhaps a third digital revolution, after the computer and the internet. We are moving into a phase of transhumanism, with its attendant dangers and inherent contradictions.

I see global education, learning, and cross-cultural perspectives in urban-international education as the new frontiers for any education consulting company to be venturing into.

‘Summerhill’ of love

My passion about education could be traced as early as I started thinking what my ‘existence in school’ means. I wanted to know more about how my teachers and my principles thought. I read book on educational philosophy, at quite an early age.

One book that had a profound effect on the way I think about the world and my place in it was AS Neil’s Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, published in the ‘hippie’ 1960s.

I read the entire book in 1975 when I was 14, in an ‘experimental American high school’ in Kuantan. I was chosen to be sent to the school based on my academic achievements and my parent’s poverty level.

Its model was based partly on the Bronx High School of Science in New York, as I found out while preparing my PhD proposal for the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

The Bronx High School of Science produced eight Nobel laureates in science and six Pulitzer Prize winners, two of the world’s most prestigious awards in those fields.

So, in that boarding school, I was bored. I read many things. Neil’s book was in my school library – meant for my teachers, I suppose.

I love the way the children were treated in the titular boarding school, Summerhill, in Neil’s book. They could come to school whenever they liked. Learning in that one-house school happened as democratically as it should be in the ‘Summer of Love’ sixties.

The best thing is that, according to Neill, the school’s founder, the children did not turn out to be criminals.

Maybe deep inside I was trying to understand why I was put in that boarding school in Kuantan, sent there at 13, hundreds of miles away from my village, and missing my mother every day.

It was an experimental American high school, and I was there as the government’s guinea pig, as we were constantly told, happily, by our teachers. I am writing my memoir on those days of schooling.

But back to my memo.

I want to suggest the new education minister read up on essential works by major authors on school reform, so that he/she could do the best job producing the best and brightest of our nation.

I recommend works both of the traditional and modern authors: Socrates, Gardner, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, Carl Perkins, and even sci-fi writers talking about scenarios in education.

Let us help the Education Ministry conduct a total revamp: from philosophy to paradigm to practice and people, as well as products.

We have a set of pillars of a major shift to erect. It is a new beginning requiring careful and intelligent steps, in a world of alienation, unemployment, technological determinism, underrepresentation, and increasingly violent racism and religious intolerance – the excesses of predatory local, national and global capitalism.

But most of all, we must move forward gracefully, for the future of all the Malaysian children, hungry for knowledge, understanding and wisdom, to function as good and thinking citizens in a truly multicultural society.

European Commission Takes Action To Protect Citizens From Air Pollution

0
0

The European Commission said Thursday it is providing national, regional and local actors with practical help to improve air quality in Europe, and stepping up its enforcement against 7 Member States who have breached agreed EU rules on air pollution limits and type approval for cars.

Commissioner for Environment, Karmenu Vella said: “The decision to refer Member States to the Court of Justice of the EU has been taken on behalf of Europeans. We have said that this Commission is one that protects. Our decision follows through on that claim. The Member States referred to the Court today have received sufficient ‘last chances’ over the last decade to improve the situation. It is my conviction that today’s decision will lead to improvements for citizens on a much quicker timescale. But legal action alone will not solve the problem. That is why we are outlining the practical help that the Commission can provide to the national authorities’ efforts to promote cleaner air for European cities and towns.”

Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Elżbieta Bieńkowska added: “We will only succeed in fighting urban air pollution if the car sector plays its part. Zero emissions cars are the future. Meanwhile, complying with emissions legislation is a must. Manufacturers that keep disregarding the law have to bear the consequences of their wrongdoing.”

In a Communication entitled ‘A Europe that protects: Clean air for all’, adopted today, the Commission outlines measures available to help Member States fight air pollution. The Commission also underlines the need to step up cooperation with Member States by engaging with relevant authorities in new ‘Clean Air Dialogues’, and by using EU funding to support measures to improve air quality.

In addition, the Commission is today referring France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania and the United Kingdom to the Court of Justice of the EU for failing to respect agreed air quality limit values and for failing to take appropriate measures to keep exceedance periods as short as possible. The Commission is also issuing additional letters of formal notice to Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom on the grounds that they have disregarded EU vehicle type approval rules.

Measures to fight air pollution

The measures proposed by the Commission rest on three main pillars: air quality standards; national emission reduction targets; and emission standards for key sources of pollution, for example from vehicle and ship emissions to energy and industry.

To address air pollutant emissions from traffic, the Commission will further strengthen its work with national, regional and local authorities on a common integrated approach for urban vehicle access regulations, under the EU Urban Agenda.

In addition, the Commission has led a wide-ranging reform to ensure that air pollutant emissions from vehicles are measured in real driving conditions

Are Armenian Events On The Way To Becoming A Revolution? – OpEd

0
0

Russian politicians and analysts have comforted themselves by saying that what has occurred in Armenia is “not a revolution but an internal political crisis” that with the election of Nikol Pashinyan as prime minister is on its way to a resolution (kavkazoved.info/news/2018/05/10/armenia-ne-revoljucia-no-vnutripoliticheskij-krizis.html).

But two events today cast doubt on that view. On the one hand, the Armenian street has held a mass demonstration that has forced the mayor of Yerevan, someone long despised as a representative of the ancien regime of Serzh Sarsyan to defer to the crowd and leave office (ria.ru/analytics/20180517/1520731695.html).

And on the other hand, Pashinyan has appealed to Armenians to stop trying to solve their political problems via mass protests. “We all need a pause,” he said, “in order to peacefully come together for discussion and a resolution of problems. We will lose everything if we try to solve everything all at once” (newsru.com/world/17may2018/pashinyan.html).

If Armenians listen to Pashinyan who himself came to power as a result of mass demonstrations, the situation in their country may calm down; but if they don’t, there is a real danger that Moscow could decide either directly or via its various supporters in Yerevan to try to crush what appears to be on the cusp of a revolution.

At the very least, this increases the likelihood that those who oppose the broader agenda Pashinyan represents may try to exacerbate the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to try to force Yerevan political leaders and the population back into line. If that can be avoided, Armenia may be about to change fundamentally, something all parties should stop and consider.

Western Balkans Leaders Pledge To Work Together On Deepening Integration Through Trade And Investment

0
0

Leaders from the six Western Balkans economies – Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania, met Thursday to boost cross-border cooperation and regional stability.

Meeting under the auspices of the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Dialogue on the Western Balkans, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, today, leaders from the six economies pledged to pursue a joint agenda focused on three clear goals” strengthening growth through public-private partnership; driving a future-oriented digital ecosystem; and supporting next-generation leadership.

The move follows an initial meeting of leaders from the six economies at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2018 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. More than 50 regional and international leaders from government and business participated in today’s meeting. Reflecting the region’s significance, the meeting was opened by Boyko Borissov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria and Sebastian Kurz, Federal Chancellor of Austria. Other speakers include Suma Chakrabarti, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank and Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank.

“Today the leaders of the Western Balkans have signalled their serious intent to look to the future and transform their economies and their region and together work to advance the stability and prosperity the people of this region so richly deserve. The Western Balkans have the potential to become a new hub for growth and investment and the World Economic Forum is keen to provide a platform for this important dialogue and catalyse initiatives, which also bring together the business leaders and next generation to create investment, jobs and skills,” said Borge Brende, President, Member of the Managing Board, World Economic Forum.

“Helping restore the Western Balkans on a path towards stability and prosperity will be one of the priorities of Austria’s upcoming presidency of the European Union. I see this meeting as an important milestone towards this goal,” said Kurz.

The meeting also convened a session focusing on transport infrastructure, where transport ministers from all six Western Balkans economies committed to expand efforts to improve physical and digital connectivity.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018, the economies of the Western Balkans are among the least competitive in Europe. Of the four measured in the report, Albania ranks the highest, at 75 in the global ranking, closely followed by Montenegro (77) and Serbia (78). Bosnia and Herzegovina is the least competitive of the four, ranking 103.

Representing the six Western Balkans economies at today’s meeting were; Ana Brnabic, Prime Minister of Serbia; Zeljka Cvijanovic, Prime Minister of the Srpska Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Dusko Markovic, Prime Minister of Montenegro; Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania; Hashim Thaci, President of Kosovo; and Kocho Angjushev, Deputy Prime Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Europe Rules Out Generous Quotas As Solution For Trump Trade Dispute

0
0

By Jorge Valero

(EurActiv) — EU leaders demanded on Thursday (17 May) “permanent” and “unlimited” exemption from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs as a precondition for any trade negotiation with his administration, including market access.

The 28 heads of state and government discussed late on Wednesday in Sofia (Bulgaria) how to respond to Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The leaders supported the Commission’s preliminary talks with the US Administration, but insisted on not starting proper trade negotiations unless an unconditional exclusion is granted.

“The EU is ready to talk about trade liberalization with our American friends but only if the US decides an unlimited exemption from steel and aluminium tariffs”, European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters after the conclusion of the Sofia summit on Thursday.

“I have to be very clear, and I am repeating myself by saying it: we want an unlimited exemption from the proposed tariffs,” insisted European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker during the same press conference.

One of the options floated during the discussions between the EU and US trade teams was to impose generous quotas on the metals to escape the penalties and avert a trade war.

The quota could be higher than last year’s steel and aluminium exports to the US. But various officials and diplomats were sceptical about this option because of the impact it could have on European producers and the legality of the quotas themselves.

The White House adopted the tariffs on the grounds of national security, an argument the EU disputes, in part because the US and Europe are NATO allies.

An EU diplomat said that “unlimited” meant no quota, “that is our reading”. A quota was still illegal, and the EU “cannot accept something illegal”.

If no solution is found by 1 June, Trump says he will impose a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium from EU countries. Europe is ready to respond with its own countermeasures, including tariffs on iconic US products such as Levi’s and Harley Davidson.

Trump’s ultimate goal is to reduce the trade deficit with Europe that stood at €120 billion in 2017.In recent weeks he has threatened German carmakers with fresh tariffs if both sides fail to find remedies.

The Commission had prepared a four-point strategy to convince US and avoid a trade war. Juncker won the leaders’ support for his plan in Sofia. “The EU will not negotiate with a gun at its head”, an EU official said to summarise the mood in the room.

The EU executive’s proposal included talks to deepen energy cooperation in the field of liquefied natural gas; voluntary regulatory cooperation, as both sides sounded out during the failed free trade agreement negotiation; a solution to overcome the current blockade of the WTO’s Appellate Body nominations; and to improve reciprocal market access, especially for industrial products, including cars, and liberalisation of public procurement, an EU source explained.

Everybody on board?

A reduction of the tariffs for US cars in Europe, as part of the review of market access, would be possible only if the EU lowers the charges for all WTO members or as part of a new free-trade agreement with Washington, according to WTO rules.

Germany is the country most supportive of relaunching trade talks with the US, given its export volume and the threats to its automotive industry.

Berlin flagged the option of a free trade agreement-lite with the US, including only tariffs, in order to placate Trump’s concerns.

According to diplomatic sources, the strengthening of energy cooperation to facilitate US LNG exports to Europe also came from Berlin.

But other big member states, including France and The Netherlands, opposed this conciliatory approach with the unpredictable US president.

An EU diplomat said that Germany wants to find a quick way out of the dispute, but the group of sceptics is more concerned about the long-term relationship with the Trump Administration.

“We are not so sure about whether this administration wants to have a win-win situation,” the official added on condition of anonymity.

Iran Energy Profile: Holds Some Of World’s Largest Deposits Of Proved Oil And Natural Gas Reserves – Analysis

0
0

Iran holds some of the world’s largest deposits of proved oil and natural gas reserves, ranking as the world’s fourth-largest and second-largest reserve holder of oil and natural gas, respectively. Iran also ranks among the world’s top 10 oil producers and top 5 natural gas producers. Iran produced almost 4.7 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum and other liquids in 2017 and an estimated 7.2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of dry natural gas in 2017.[1]

The Strait of Hormuz, off the southeastern coast of Iran, is an important route for oil exports from Iran and other Persian Gulf countries. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide, yet an estimated 18.5 million b/d of crude oil and refined products flowed through it in 2016 (nearly 30% of all seaborne-traded oil and almost 20% of total oil produced globally). Liquefied natural gas (LNG) volumes also flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Approximately 3.7 Tcf of LNG was transported from Qatar via the Strait of Hormuz in 2016, accounting for more than 30% of global LNG trade.

Despite Iran’s abundant reserves, crude oil production stagnated and even declined between 2012 and 2016 as nuclear-related international sanctions that targeted Iran’s oil exports hindered progress across Iran’s energy sector, which affected upstream investment in both oil and natural gas projects. At the end of 2011, the United States and the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions as a result of Iran’s nuclear activities, which went into effect in mid-2012. These sanctions targeted the Iranian energy sector and impeded Iran’s ability to sell oil, resulting in a near 1.0-million b/d drop in crude oil and condensate exports in 2012 compared with the previous year. Since the oil sector and banking sanctions were lifted, as outlined in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in January 2016, Iranian crude oil and condensate production and exports have risen to pre-2012 levels.

Iran’s oil and natural gas export revenue was $33.6 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015-2016, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), having decreased nearly 40% from $55.4 billion in FY 2014-2015. EIA estimates that Iran’s oil net export revenues totaled $36 billion in 2016. The sudden drop was the result of continued depressed export volumes and lower crude oil prices, which combined resulted in low total export revenue. In FY 2016-2017, oil and natural gas export revenue was estimated to have risen to $57.4 billion as crude oil export volumes rose following the implementation of the JCPOA.[2] Most of the export revenues come from crude oil and condensate exports because Iran exports only a small volume of natural gas. Iran consumes most of the natural gas it produces.

Iranian development of its natural gas resources continues and has picked up pace following the implementation of the JCPOA. However, production growth had been slower than expected because sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear activities between 2012 and 2016 also affected natural gas development as a result of lack of foreign investment and technology. Iran’s natural gas activities are centered on the South Pars natural gas field, located offshore in the Persian Gulf, which holds roughly 40% of Iran’s proved natural gas reserves.[3] The field is being developed mainly by Iranian companies.

Total primary energy consumption

Iran consumed more than 270 million tons oil equivalent of primary energy in 2016.[4] Natural gas and oil accounted for almost all (98%) of Iran’s total primary energy consumption, with marginal contributions from hydropower, coal, nuclear, and non-hydro power renewables. Iran’s primary energy consumption has grown rapidly over the past decade and continued to grow even when economic growth was depressed and when nuclear-related sanctions were in place. In fact, between 2006 and 2016, Iran’s primary energy consumption expanded by about 40%. To better control domestic demand growth and reduce the budgetary exposure to high subsidy costs, the Iranian government implemented energy subsidy reform, which resulted in increasing domestic prices for domestic petroleum, natural gas, and electricity between 2010 and 2014.

Management of oil and natural gas sectors

The state-owned National Iranian Oil Company is responsible for all upstream oil and natural gas projects. The Iranian constitution prohibits foreign or private ownership of natural resources. However, international oil companies can now participate in the exploration and development phases through the Iranian petroleum contract, a relatively new model for its upstream oil and natural gas fiscal regime.

The Supreme Energy Council, which was established in July 2001 and is chaired by the president of Iran oversees the energy sector. The council is composed of the Ministers of Petroleum, Economy, Trade, Agriculture, and Mines and Industry, among others. Under the supervision of the Ministry of Petroleum, state-owned companies dominate the activities in the oil and natural gas upstream and downstream sectors, along with Iran’s petrochemical industry. The three key state-owned enterprises are the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), National Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), and the National Petrochemical Company (NPC).

Table 1. Iran’s state-owned energy companies
Company Responsibility
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) NIOC controls oil and natural gas upstream activities through its eleven subsidiaries.
National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) NIGC controls natural gas downstream activities. The company’s objective is to process, deliver, and distribute natural gas for domestic use. NIGC operates through several subsidiaries.
National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) NIORDC is responsible for all refining and distribution activities related to crude oil and petroleum products, including construction of refining and storage facilities, oil pipelines, and operations of gasoline stations. NIORDC conducts these operations through its four major subsidiaries.
National Petrochemical Company (NPC) NPC manages Iran’s petrochemical industry, including operations of several petrochemical complexes, through its subsidiaries.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Facts Global Energy, Arab Oil & Gas Directory, and NIOC

Foreign investment

In an effort to attract much-needed foreign investment and technology in its oil and natural gas sector, the Iranian government implemented the Iranian petroleum contract that allows international oil companies to participate in all phases of upstream projects. The new fiscal regime was approved in 2016 and offers more attractive terms than the previously available buyback contracts.

The Iranian constitution prohibits foreign or private ownership of natural resources, and prior to late 2016, the government only permitted buyback contracts, which allowed international oil companies (IOCs) to enter exploration and development contracts through an Iranian subsidiary. A buyback contract is similar to a service contract and requires the contractor (or an IOC) to invest its own capital and expertise to develop oil and natural gas fields. After the field was developed and production started, the project’s operatorship reverted to NIOC or to the relevant subsidiary. The IOC did not get equity rights to the oil and natural gas fields. NIOC used revenue from the sale of oil and natural gas to pay back the capital costs to the IOC. The annual repayment rates to the IOC were based on a predetermined percentage of the field’s production and rate of return. According to Facts Global Energy (FGE), the rate of return on buyback contracts ranged between 12% and 17%, and the payback period was between five and seven years. [5]

In late 2016, Iranian parliament approved and the government implemented the new oil contract model called the Iranian (or Integrated) Petroleum Contract (IPC). The main purpose of this new framework is to attract foreign investment and technology to spur development of upstream oil and natural gas projects. The new contract terms are a hybrid of those in buyback contracts and production sharing agreements (PSA). The IPC encompasses exploration, development, and production phases, along with the possibility to extend into enhanced oil recovery (EOR) phases. The contract term is set at a maximum of 20 years, with the possibility to extend the term by 5 years for EOR projects. The IPC retains the previous local content requirement of 51% of the value of work, and the foreign investor is required to submit plans for knowledge and technology development transfer as part of its annual operational financial plan.[6]

International sanctions have affected Iran’s energy sector by limiting the foreign investment, technology, and expertise needed to expand capacity at oil and natural gas fields and to reverse declines at mature oil fields. Iran has had to depend mainly on local companies to develop oil and natural gas fields in recent years. Although the IPC was intended to reverse this trend, Iran has had limited success in attracting IOCs to its oil and natural gas upstream.

Thus far, there were only two finalized contract under the IPC. The first one was the July 2017 agreement with French major Total and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to develop Phase 11 of the South Pars field. The development will not produce any crude oil but is expected to produce about 80,000 b/d of condensate.[7] More recently, Russian state-controlled Zarubezhneft signed oil development contracts under the IPC, with reportedly Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, and Tatneft all considering upstream agreements with Iran. The latest agreement was signed in mid-March 2018 between Zarubezhneft, NIOC, and Dana Energy to develop West Paydar and Abadan onshore fields near Iraq. The ten-year contract calls for improved recovery rates and increased production from the fields to 48,000 b/d.

Oil sector

Reserves

Iran holds almost 10% of the world’s crude oil reserves and about 13% of OPEC reserves. More than 70% of Iran’s crude oil reserves are located onshore, with the remainder mostly located offshore in the Persian Gulf.

According to the Oil & Gas Journal, as of January 2018, Iran has an estimated 157 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves, representing almost 10% of the world’s crude oil reserves and about 13% of reserves held by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).[8] Most Iranian reserves are located onshore (about 71%), with the Khuzestan Basin containing roughly 80% of total onshore reserves.[9] Iran also has 0.5 billion barrels of proved and probable reserves in the Caspian Sea, but to date very limited upstream activity has occurred in Iran’s portion of the Caspian Sea. Iran also shares a number of onshore and offshore fields with neighboring countries, including Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Exploration and production

Iran produced 4.7 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids in 2017, of which 3.8 million b/d was crude oil and the remainder was condensate and hydrocarbon gas liquids. Iran’s crude oil production has recovered since the implementation of the JCPOA.

Iran is one of the founding members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was established in 1960. Since the 1970s, Iran’s oil production has varied greatly. Iran’s production averaged more than 5.5 million b/d of oil in 1976 and 1977, with production topping 6.0 million b/d for most of the period. Since the 1979 revolution, however, a combination of war, limited investment, sanctions, and a high rate of natural decline in production of Iran’s mature oil fields has prevented a return to those production levels.

Sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear activities imposed in late 2011 and mid-2012 led to a precipitous decrease in Iranian production in 2013, with production falling to 2.7 million b/d. These sanctions targeted Iran’s petroleum exports and imports, prohibited large-scale investment in the country’s oil and natural gas sector, and cut off Iran’s access to European and U.S. sources for financial transactions. Further sanctions were implemented against institutions targeting the Central Bank of Iran, while the EU imposed an embargo on Iranian oil and banned European Protection and Indemnity Clubs (P&I Clubs) from providing Iranian oil tankers with insurance and reinsurance. Before this round of sanctions, Iran was the second-largest producer in OPEC, but the country has since been overtaken by Iraq.

Following the implementation of the JCPOA in January 2016 and Iran’s renewed ability to export oil to Europe, Iranian exports immediately rose, and, as a result, Iranian crude oil production once again exceeded pre-2012 levels. In 2017, Iran produced nearly 4.7 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids, of which 3.8 million b/d was crude oil and the remainder was condensate and hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL). Iranian total liquids production rose in 2017 relative to 2016 by 0.5 million b/d, supported by continued increases in exports.

Crude oil streams and oil fieldsMost of Iran’s crude oil production comes from the country’s southwestern onshore fields, where Iran Heavy and Iran Light grades are produced. This area accounts for about 85% of Iran’s total crude oil production capacity.[10] Iran Heavy is a medium-heavy, high-sulfur crude oil (29.3° API, 2.29% sulfur) and is sourced from some of Iran’s largest oil fields, including the Gachasaran, Marun, Ahwaz, and Bangestan. Iran Light is similar in quality to Arab Light, with 33° API and 1.58% sulfur content. Iran Light is produced at several onshore fields in the Khuzestan province, but two-thirds of the Iran Light volume comes from three fields, Ahwaz, Karanj, and Aghajari.[11] All of these fields are decades old and have large decline rates. Sustaining production capacity will require EOR techniques, including the injection of natural gas into oil reservoirs to boost recovery rates.

In addition to its Heavy and Light grades, Iran also produces Azadegan, Doroud, Foroozan, Lavan Blend, Soroush/Norouz, and Sirri. Azadegan is a relatively new stream, with production about totaling 0.2 million b/d in 2017 from the Azadegan oil field (called Majnoon on the Iraqi side). Azadegan’s plateau production is expected to reach 0.65 million b/d.

In tandem with the development of the giant South Pars natural gas field, Iran has also increased condensate output, which averaged 0.6 million b/d in 2017. Additional phases of the South Pars development will result in increasing growth in condensate output in the coming years.

Upstream projectsIran’s plans to expand its production capacity and crude oil output in the medium term are ambitious and will require international funding, expertise, and technology. The plans are centered on the development of the Azadegan, Yadavaran, Yaran, and South Pars oil layer, as well as a number of other fields, including the Caspian Sea resources. NIOC plans to sign new upstream contracts under the IPC scheme in the second half of 2018 and in 2019 for additional phases that will increase production of Azadegan, Yadavaran, Yaran, and South Pars oil layer. Azadegan produced less than 0.2 million b/d in 2017 and is forecast to reach plateau production of 0.75 million b/d (including both the North and South Azadegan projects).

Yadaravan is also producing crude oil, with production reaching 0.1 million b/d in the fourth quarter of 2017. Additional development will increase output to more than 0.3 million b/d when it reaches plateau production.

Table 2. Iran’s notable upcoming upstream oil projects
Project Developer Plateau output
(000 b/d)
Est. plateau year
Azadegan (North and South) CNPC and NIOC 750 post 2020
Yadavaran phase 2 Sinopec 95 2019-20
Yadavaran phase 3 Sinopec 120 post 2020
South Yaran NIOC 100 2018
South Pars Oil Layer NIOC 150 2018
Crude oil production at the Yadavaran, South Azadegan, and South Pars (oil layer) fields is currently below their plateau levels.
CNPC is China National Petroleum Corporation. Sinopec is China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation.
Source: Facts Global Energy, Energy Intelligence

Crude oil and condensate exports

Iran’s exports of crude oil and condensate increased sharply in 2016 and averaged more than 2.5 million b/d in 2017. The largest buyers of Iranian crude oil and condensates in 2017 were China, India, Turkey, and South Korea. Iran’s main oil customers have not changed significantly since the implementation of the JCPOA.

According to EIA estimates based on tanker-tracking data reported by Clipper Data, Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports averaged 2.5 million b/d in 2017, about 0.2 million b/d higher than the 2016 average. China and India accounted for about 43% of all Iranian exports in 2017, and Turkey and South Korea took substantial volumes during the year.

Iran resumed its crude oil exports to Europe in 2016 following the implementation of the JCPOA. Before the 2011 and 2012 sanctions, European refiners had been purchasing and processing Iranian crude oil, but they stopped their imports in early 2012. In 2016 and 2017, a number of European countries resumed their purchases of Iranian oil, including Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.

In addition to crude oil and condensate, Iran also exports petroleum products. According to Facts Global Energy (FGE), Iran has a supply surplus for all petroleum products except gasoline. Iran’s exports of petroleum products averaged 507,000 b/d in 2017, with LPG and fuel oil accounting for about 83% of total petroleum product exports. Iran’s petroleum product exports declined in 2017 compared with exports of 587,000 b/d (including small volumes of gasoline exports) in 2016. Most of the petroleum product exports went to Asia.[12]

Oil terminalsThe terminals at Kharg, Lavan, and Sirri Islands, located in the Persian Gulf, handle almost all of Iran’s crude oil exports. Iran also has two small crude oil terminals at Cyrus and Bahregansar, one terminal along the Caspian Sea, and other terminals that handle mostly refined product exports and imports. Condensate from the South Pars natural gas field is exported from the Assaluyeh terminal.

Kharg Island, the largest export terminal in Iran, is located in the northeastern part of the Persian Gulf. Most of Iran’s crude oil exports are sent via Kharg, which includes a main terminal and a four-berth sea island (three of which are operational). The terminal processes all onshore production (the Iranian Heavy and Iranian Light Blends) and offshore production from the Foroozan field (the Foroozan Blend). NIOC has reportedly upgraded the terminal to handle a maximum capacity of 7 million b/d.[13]

Lavan Island mostly handles exports of the Lavan Blend sourced from offshore fields. Lavan is Iran’s highest-quality export grade (35.2° API, 1.59% sulfur) and one of Iran’s smallest streams, with production volume of about 115,000 b/d in 2017. Lavan’s storage capacity is 5.5 million barrels and has a loading capacity of 200,000 b/d.[14]

Sirri Island serves as a loading port for the medium-gravity, high-sulfur Sirri Blend that is produced in the offshore fields. Its storage capacity is 4.5 million barrels.[15]

Neka is Iran’s Caspian Sea port, which was built in 2003 to receive crude oil imports from the Caspian-region producers under swap agreements. The port’s loading capacity is about 150,000 b/d, but trade press reporting suggests that only about 50,000 b/d of oil flows through Neka. The terminal is used to facilitate swap agreements with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Under these agreements, Iran receives crude oil at its Caspian Sea port of Neka, which is processed in the Tehran and Tabriz refineries. In return, Iran exports the same amount of crude oil from Kharg Island.[16]

Assaluyeh terminal is where Iran’s South Pars condensate is loaded for exports, mainly to China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to condensate, the port also loads LPG, sulfur, and petrochemical products.[17]

The export terminals Bandar Mahshahr and Abadan (also known as Bandar Imam Khomeini) near the Abadan refinery are used to export refined product from the Abadan refinery. Bandar Abbas, located near the northern end of the Strait of Hormuz, is Iran’s main fuel oil export terminal.

Consumption and downstream

Iran is the second-largest oil-consuming country in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. While Iran has become self-sufficient in meeting domestic demand for most petroleum products, it continues to rely on some gasoline import volumes. Current plans include construction of new refineries and upgrades to existing refineries to increase gasoline production.

Iran is the second-largest oil-consuming country in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia. Iranian domestic oil consumption is mainly diesel, gasoline, and fuel oil. Oil consumption averaged 1.7 million b/d in 2017, falling slightly compared with the 2016 level. Almost all of Iran’s product consumption was met with domestically refined product, but Iran continues to rely on relatively small volumes of gasoline imports. In 2017, Iran’s only petroleum product import was an estimated 80,000 b/d of gasoline, which accounted for roughly 16% of Iran’s gasoline consumption during the year.[18]

In the past, Iran had limited domestic oil refining capacity and was dependent on imports of refined products, especially gasoline, to meet domestic demand. In response to international sanctions and the resulting difficulty in purchasing refined products, Iran expanded its domestic refining capacity. As of December 2017, Iran’s total crude oil distillation capacity was slightly more than 2.2 million b/d, according to FGE.[19]

Table 3. Oil refineries in Iran
Refinery Crude distillation
capacity (thousand b/d)
Abadan 400
Isfahan 375
Bandar Abbas 330
Tehran 250
Arak 250
Borzuyeh 120
Tabriz 110
Shiraz 60
Lavan 60
BooAli Sina 34
Kermanshah 22
Aras 2 10
Booshehr 10
Aras 1 5
Yazd 3
Total 2,159
Source: Facts Global Energy, December 2017

PipelinesIran has an extensive domestic oil pipeline network including 19 crude oil and product pipelines ranging in length from 93 miles to 525 miles. Iran’s longest pipeline is the product line that runs between Rey and Mashahad. It transports oil between Ahavaz and Rey and supplies feedstock to the Tehran, Arak, and Tabriz refineries. In addition, a new 36-inch condensate pipeline (Assaluyeh-Bandar Abbas) ships feedstock from Assaluyeh to the new PGS refinery.[20]

Iran’s future plans include construction of three additional petroleum product pipelines, including a new line that will transport gasoline throughout Iran from the Persian Gulf Star (PGS) refinery.

Natural gas sector

Reserves

Iran is the second-largest proved natural gas reserve holder in the world behind Russia. Iran holds 17% of the world’s proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC’s reserves. Iran’s largest natural gas field, South Pars, is estimated to hold almost 40% of Iran’s natural gas reserves.

According to Oil & Gas Journal, as of December 2017, Iran’s estimated proved natural gas reserves were 1,191 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), second only to Russia. Iran holds 17% of the world’s proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC’s reserves.[21] Iran has a high success rate of natural gas exploration, which is estimated at 79% compared to the world average success rate of 30% to 35%, according to FGE.[22] Finding new natural gas reserves in Iran is not a high priority because the country contains large amounts of undeveloped known reserves.

Iran’s largest natural gas field is South Pars, a non-associated gas field located offshore in the Persian Gulf. South Pars is part of a larger gas structure that straddles the territorial water of Iran and Qatar called the North Field in Qatar. South Pars reserves account for almost 40% of Iran’s total natural gas reserves.[23] Other major natural gas fields in Iran include Kish, North Pars, Sardar-e-Jangal, Forouz-B, Aghar, Golshan, and Kangan. These fields and others also hold large amounts of condensate reserves. About 80% of Iran’s natural gas reserves are non-associated, according to FGE.

Production

Iran is the world’s third-largest dry natural gas producer after the United States and Russia. Iran’s natural gas prospects have improved with the commencement of production in the South Pars field, with additional phases expected to come online in the coming years.

Iran’s gross natural gas production totaled nearly 9.5 Tcf in 2017, of which 7.3 Tcf was dry natural gas, rising almost 9% compared with 2016, according to Rystad Energy. Roughly 1.6 Tcf of the total was reinjected into oil wells to enhance oil recovery,[24] which plays a central role in Iran’s oil production. Iran’s use of natural gas in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has increased 56% between 2007 and 2017. As natural gas production increases, the use of natural gas for EOR is expected to continue to rise. Use of EOR will be key to stemming declines in Iran’s brownfields, which have relatively high natural decline rates.

In addition to the natural gas used for EOR, Iran vented and/or flared approximately 0.6 Tcf of gas in 2017.[25] Natural gas is flared when no infrastructure exists to capture and transport gas associated with oil production. Iran was the second-largest source country of flared natural gas in 2017, behind only Iraq.

With 7.3 Tcf of dry natural gas produced in 2017, Iran was the world’s third-largest producer after the United States and Russia. South Pars is Iran’s largest field by production volume, with approximately 55% of Iran’s production originating from this field. FGE projects that when fully developed, South Pars volumes will account for more than 70% of Iran’s total production. In addition to South Pars, other major sources of Iran’s natural gas production include the Tabnak, Nar, Kangan, Homan, and Shanoul fields.

Most of the natural gas produced is consumed domestically, with Iran’s consumption averaging at an estimated 6.9 Tcf in 2017.[26] In 2016 (the latest available data), Iran was the world’s fourth-largest consumer of natural gas after the United States, Russia, and China.[27] The largest share of natural gas use domestically in 2016 was in the electric power sector (32%), followed by the residential and commercial sector (29%) and the industrial sector (27%). Natural gas use for electric power generation has grown in recent years as Iran replaced crude oil and fuel oil with natural gas for electricity generation.[28]

South Pars Natural Gas Field

Natural gas production from South Pars is critical to meet increasing domestic consumption and Iran’s plans and obligations for exports. The development plan includes 24 phases, of which 18 are already operational.

The most significant energy development project in Iran, the South Pars field, accounted for about 55% of Iran’s natural gas production in 2016. It holds almost 40% of Iran’s total proved natural gas reserves.[29] Discovered in 1990 and located 62 miles offshore in the Persian Gulf, South Pars has a 24-phase development plan, with 18 phases already operational, although not all of these phases have reached maximum production capacity. Currently, five phases are under development and one phase just began its development. Each of the 24 phases has a combination of natural gas with condensate and/or hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL). The project is managed by Pars Oil & Gas Company (POGC), a subsidiary of NIOC. According to FGE, development of the South Pars gas field has so far required $71 billion in investment, with an additional $20 billion needed to complete the remaining phases.

Table 4: South Pars natural gas field development
Phase Natural gas
capacity (Bcf/d)
Condensate
capacity (b/d)
Start-up year
1 1 40,000 2004
2 2 80,000 2003
3
4 2 80,000 2005
5
6 3.7 120,000 2008
7
8
9 2 80,000 2019
10
11 2 80,000 2022
12 3 110,000 2014
13 2 75,000 2018
14 2 75,000 2018
15 2 75,000 2015
16
17 2 75,000 2016
18
19 2 75,000 2017
20 2 75,000 2017
21
22 2 77,000 2018
23
24
Total 30 1,117,000
Source: Facts Global Energy, December 2017

Imports and exports

Iran trades relatively small volumes of natural gas regionally via pipelines. In 2017, all of Iran’s imports came from Turkmenistan, and more than 73% of Iran’s exports went to Turkey. Iran does not have the infrastructure in place to export or import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Iran accounts for about 1% of global natural gas pipeline trade and is not yet a significant natural gas exporter. In 2017, Iran exported about 450 Bcf and imported 170 Bcf of natural gas via pipelines. Iran relies on imports particularly during winter months when residential space-heating demand peaks during colder weather. Iran does not have the infrastructure to export or import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Although Iran’s aspirations to build a liquefaction facility date back to the 1970s, the country has yet to build one. In past years, the NIOC started construction projects to build an LNG export plant, but most of the work has been halted. The lack of technology and foreign investment, stemming from decades-old international sanctions, made obtaining financing and purchasing necessary technology impossible. Inability to construct a large-scale LNG project has led to a change in strategy. Iran is now working on plans to construct small- and medium-sized LNG plants, including the Kangan LNG project, which would have 2 million tons per year (mmtpa) of liquefaction capacity, and the acquisition of a Caribbean floating LNG (FLNG) terminal. Purchase of the Caribbean FLNG is subject to U.S. sanctions.

Iran exports natural gas via pipeline to Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iraq, and it receives imports from Turkmenistan. Total exports averaged 1.2 Bcf per day of natural gas in 2017, of which about 73% was destined for Turkey. Iran’s natural gas exports to Armenia averaged 36 MMcf per day in 2017, for which Iran received electric power. Iran and Armenia trade natural gas and electric power via a 20-year swap contract. [30]

Iran began exporting natural gas to Iraq in June 2017 to fuel electric power plants near Baghdad, including the Al-Besmaya, Al-Quds, Al-Mansuriyah, and Al-Sadr stations. Annual natural gas exports to Iraq averaged 132 MMcf per day in 2017, but these volumes likely will rise as new gas-fired generation capacity comes online in Iraq. In addition to volumes to the Baghdad-area power plants, Iran also plans to ship natural gas to Basrah sometime in late 2018.

Iran’s imports of natural gas from Turkmenistan began in 1997 in response to lack of domestic infrastructure that would deliver natural gas from the south to the major consuming centers in northern Iran. Turkmenistan’s natural gas volumes filled this critical gap for years, especially during winter months. Iran’s imports of Turkmenistan’s natural gas peaked in 2015 at 0.9 Bcf per day, but they have since fallen to 0.5 Bcf per day. The decrease is partly the result of contractual disputes between Iran and Turkmenistan, which have at times resulted in a complete cessation of gas trade between the two countries. In January 2017, Turkmenistan halted gas exports to Iran over a reported non-payment for deliveries. In response, Iran built a pipeline between the city of Damghan and Neka in the north, reducing the need for Turkmen natural gas.

In the past, Iran received natural gas imports from Azerbaijan, but these imports ceased completely in October 2016. Iran and Azerbaijan traded natural gas under a gas swap contract, where Iran delivered natural gas to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan province, and in return, Iran received volumes from Azerbaijan via the Astara pipeline connections.

Proposed regional pipelinesIran has the potential to become an important natural gas supplier to its region and has established agreements with some of its neighboring countries to export natural gas via planned regional pipelines. However, several challenges related to Iran’s natural gas sector remain that may complicate volumes expected from these projects. Some of these challenges include: Iran’s growth in natural gas demand; Iran’s reliance on domestic natural gas to augment oil recovery by reinjecting it into oil wells; international sanctions that have hindered Iran’s access to technology and foreign investment; and some disagreements between Iran and potential buyers over natural gas prices.

Iran-Oman Pipeline: In March 2014, Iran and Oman agreed to form a joint venture that would deliver more than 1 Bcf per day of Iranian natural gas to Oman. Some of the Iranian gas volumes were planned to be exported as LNG from Oman. However, Oman’s development of its domestic natural gas resources, including tight gas development projects, has removed some of the need to import natural gas from Iran. The project would require a new pipeline (half of which would be subsea). Thus far, little progress has been made on its construction.

Iran-Pakistan Pipeline: Construction of one leg on the Iranian side of the pipeline is complete, but construction on the Pakistani side has been repeatedly delayed and has yet to start. In 2009, when the agreement was signed, Pakistan agreed to import 750 MMcf per day of natural gas, and the trade was supposed to commence in December 2014. Given the lack of progress on the Pakistani side, this project is not likely to materialize.[31]

Iran-UAE Gas Contract: Although the Iranian natural gas pipeline system is connected to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran has so far refused to sell its natural gas to UAE. Iran and the UAE had signed an initial agreement to trade natural gas on a 20-year term, with Iran shipping natural gas produced at the Salman field to the city of Sharjah. However, after repeated cancellations, the contract has been referred for international arbitration.

Electricity sector

Natural gas is Iran’s primary fuel source to generate electricity, accounting for 70% of total generation in 2016. With the projected demand growth, Iran will have to expand generation capacity in the coming years. However, state control of electricity prices at depressed levels will make expanding capacity challenging.

In 2016, Iran generated almost 276 billion kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity, of which 93% was from fossil-fuel sources.[32] Natural gas is the largest source of fuel for electricity generation in Iran, accounting for 70% of total generation. Hydropower, nuclear, and nonhydro power renewables make up the remaining fuel sources used to generate electricity in Iran.

The Iranian government has ambitious plans to expand electric power generation capacity, including natural gas-fired, renewable, and nuclear-fired facilities. Natural gas-fired generation likely will continue to play an important role in the electric power sector in Iran, and a number of natural gas-fired projects are in various stages of completions.

Iran’s ambitious plans also extend to nuclear-fired electric power generation. The government plans to construct additional units to the Bushehr facility, Iran’s only nuclear power plant. Currently, Bushehr has 1,000 MW of capacity. These two additional units would potentially commence operations in 2028 at the earliest. Bushehr became fully operational in late 2013.[33] Construction at the power plant originally began in the mid-1970s, but the project was repeatedly delayed by the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and then by problems associated with the Russian consortium that was awarded the construction contract. The Iranian government took control of the plant’s management in late 2013, about the same time the nuclear power plant began producing commercial power.[34]

The Iranian government also plans to add 5 GW of new nonhydro power renewable capacity by 2020. According to Business Monitor International, Iran has adopted a feed-in tariff to offer a fixed rate for renewable projects in an effort to promote these types of projects.

Notes:

  • Data presented in the text are the most recent available as of April 9, 2018.
  • Data are EIA estimates unless otherwise noted.

Endnotes:

1. Gas production data: Rystad Energy UCube (January 2018 update)
2. International Monetary Fund Article IV Consultation, Islamic Republic of Iran (February 2017), IMF Country Report No. 17/62, page 4.
3. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017 (December 2017), page 37.
4. BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 (June 2017)
5. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2014 (December 19, 2014), page 12.
6. Herbert Smith Freehills, The New Iranian Petroleum Contract (August 2016).
7. Middle East Economic Survey, “OPEC’s 2017 Output The Second Highest on Record; What Does 2018 Hold?” (January 12, 2018).
8. Oil & Gas Journal, Worldwide look at reserves and production (December 2017).
9. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017 (December 2017).
10. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017 (December 2017).
11. Energy Intelligence, World Crude Oil Data – Iran (accessed January 2018).
12. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017 (December 2017).
13. Energy Intelligence, World Crude Oil Data – Iran (accessed January 2018).
14. Energy Intelligence, World Crude Oil Data – Iran (accessed January 2018).
15. Energy Intelligence, World Crude Oil Data – Iran (accessed January 2018).
16. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017 (December 2017).
17. Energy Intelligence, World Crude Oil Data – Iran (accessed January 2018).
18. Facts Global Energy, Iran Oil and Gas Monthly January 2017, Data File (February 2018).
19. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017, (December 2017).
20. Ibid.
21. Oil & Gas Journal, Worldwide look at reserves and production, (December 2017).
22. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017, (December 2017).
23. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017, (December 2017).
24. Gas production data: Rystad Energy UCube (January 2018 update)
25. Ibid
26. Facts Global Energy, Iran Oil and Gas Monthly January 2017, Data File (February 2018).
27. BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 (June 2017)
28. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017, (December 2017).
29. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2017, (December 2017).
30. Facts Global Energy, Iran Oil and Gas Monthly January 2017, Data File (February 2018).
31. Facts Global Energy, Iran’s Oil and Gas Annual Report 2016, (December 2017).
32. Business Monitor International (BMI) Research, Iran Power Report Q1 2018.
33. Business Monitor International (BMI) Research, Iran Power Report Q2 2015, (March 2015), page 33.
34. Business Monitor International (BMI) Research, Iran Power Report Q2 2015, (March 2015), page 17.

The Google Tax – Analysis

0
0

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

The European Treasury, individually as member States or collectively as Union, has so far reached – with a race to the bottom – as many as 72 agreements with large global companies.

Tax competition is still very strong and active. Just think of the US corporate tax that-following the latest reforms- has decreased to a maximum 26% rate, more than one third less than the previous rate, with a US average corporate tax rate which is now below all OECD and G7 levels. Similar approaches, however, are developing in Argentina, Colombia, Luxembourg, Canada and even Japan.

Conversely corporate taxes have increased in Turkey, Portugal and Taiwan, with further increases – albeit slight – also in India. They are selective increases to favour some foreign or national companies compared to others.

At world level we now have as many as eleven jurisdictions –which account for 27% of the total corporate taxes in the world – that are currently increasing corporate taxes, while all the other small and large countries will keep on competing fiercely at tax level with their neighbouring countries.

In short, technology has made all the old tax strategies obsolete.

In fact, currently competition between EU tax systems costs the weakest countries 60 billion euros a year.

It is worth recalling that nine of the twenty companies with the largest capitalization in the world are digital.

The most used corporate tax avoidance strategies to move profits sourced in EU countries to offshore tax havens include the “Dutch sandwich”, the Luxembourg tax rulings-which have recently come to light with the LuxLeaks scandal which hit the headlines – or the specific Irish tax policy, known as the double Irish arrangement.

They rely on the tax loophole that most EU countries allow royalty payments be made to other EU countries without incurring withholding taxes. However, the Dutch tax code allows royalty payments to be made to several offshore tax havens, without incurring Dutch withholding tax.

The Dutch sandwich is based, at first, on the Dutch national rule according to which the dividends and surplus value of a parent company can be transferred to its subsidiaries without paying any tax.

Hence any capital can be transferred to companies based in the Netherlands, thus avoiding all taxation on this liquidity.

Therefore the Dutch sandwich behaves like a “backdoor” out of the EU corporate tax system and into the untaxed non-EU offshore locations.

On the other hand, Luxembourg tends to enter into bilateral agreements with large companies and multinationals, as in a sort of State-company agreement. Everyone tends to do so, but in Luxembourg the transactions and agreements with companies are always particularly beneficial to the private sector.

Ireland imposes a maximum 12.5% corporate tax rate on the total taxable income stated. For purely financial companies said tax rate is only 10%.

Currently the EU tax policy is still based on the destination principle which allows for VAT to be retained by the country where the taxed product is sold.

This is a strategy dating back to the period when the European Union had to deal with the booming phase of Internet sales.

In that case, however, it was a matter of selling traditional goods in a new way. Nowadays brand new goods are sold on the Internet in an even more unusual way.

For IT companies, however, the matter is even more complex, considering they can make turnover and profit anywhere without having any kind of permanent and stable organization where they sell or buy product (or, possibly, produce them).

According to the latest data, with the aforementioned “Dutch sandwich” strategy, in 2016 Google put aside as many as 3.7 billion euros on a total taxable income of 15.9 billion euros.

As all web firms do, it is enough for an Irish subsidiary of the Californian company to sell products globally via royalty schemes to a Dutch company without staff or operations in progress or to another Irish subsidiary also incorporated in Ireland, but managed from an offshore tax haven like Bermuda..

Over a period of three years, the well-known monopolistic Internet firm of California has “saved” approximately 34.2 billion euros, with an annual saving increase of about 7%.

At this juncture, we could only define a universally applicable legal formula of registered office or business organization, in addition to the one of the tangible or intangible place where the tax is generated.

Obviously we also need to imagine the tacit blackmail power of major corporations operating on the Internet, which have very useful databases for all governments and for the US one, in particular. We should also consider to what extent this information and tax asymmetry is useful for the US hegemony over global markets.

This is the geopolitical issue: the tax supremacy of major web firms is an essential and irenouceable factor of the new US hegemony, namely of the New American Century.

With a view to curbing web majors’ tax power, someone has also considered the formula of “meaningful interaction” with users, obtained through widespread digital channels.

It may happen, however, that at least part of the online turnover is produced through peer-to-peer channels between the company and some customer sectors or through a splitting of the IT mediation between small companies, carried out by customer groups.

With the pretext of “dedicated” content, you can avoid taxation and artificially limit the visible invoicing in one single country.

A faster option than “significant interaction” would be to hit only the companies which invoice the intermediate services (advertising, etc.) to the web majors.

Nevertheless, if the web majors bought also these intermediaries, we would go back directly to the Dutch, Irish and Luxembourg tax avoidance schemes and practices.

Furthermore, current data points to a 3% average tax for the companies supplying services to the web majors in Italy and in the rest of the European Union.

In the latter case, the European Commission foresees revenue of only 5 billion euros for the whole EU-27.

However, if we calculate the average of the tax rates currently in force in Europe, the Internet majors pay income tax rates equal to 9.2%, as against the EU average rate of 23.3%.

Is it rational, however, that companies are taxed only on the basis of self-stated annual invoicing?

In essence, with current regulations the sale of data or User Generated Content cannot be taxed properly and profitably.

In this respect, the EU has proposed two different levels of taxation, but considering the digital platform to be a “presence” of company and, therefore, a “permanent and stable organization”.

The criteria under discussion will be the following: exceeding a revenue threshold of 7 million euros in a single EU Member State; the presence of over 100,000 users in one Member State during a single fiscal year; the presence of over 3,000 contracts for digital services concluded between company and users in a single fiscal year.

Hence, with a view to circumventing EU rules, the Internet majors can rely – for their “permanent and stable organization” – also on systems based outside the EU. They can also distribute their users among various micro-companies, not necessarily having a permanent and stable organization in the country using them. Finally they can invoice the 3,000 minimum contracts differently.

A second proposal, still under discussion among the EU leaders, regards the “temporary tax” on digital activities which, moreover, are not currently taxed in any way by the EU.

Hence, according to this proposal, revenues resulting from the sale of advertising space for goods or services other than the means used would be taxed.

Or the revenues resulting from the sale of data based on the information provided, free of charge, by users would be taxed.

Obviously the tax would be collected by the Member States in which the users are located.

Are we sure, however, that an online service can be used without being tracked? This is the rule in what is currently known as the dark web.

If smuggling is the strategy used by all those who do not want to pay taxes on sales, the dark web could become – with some mass IT devices – the new Tortuga of Internet majors.

In Italy, the new Budget Law provides for a tax on digital transactions -as from 2019 – but only relating to the provision of services to subjects resident in Italy both by national companies and through non-resident companies.

In more specific terms, each transaction shall be taxed at 3% net of VAT, thus further loosening the legal connection existing between company’s presence and provision of services, i.e. between “permanent and stable organization” and online commercial activity.

The Italian rule for 2019, however, regards only business to business transactions, thus explicitly excluding both e-commerce ones or the final business to consumer connection.

Much Internet content, however, can easily shift from business to business(B2B) to other types of sales or supply.

Therefore the tax levied should be the withholding tax on revenues, which creates a difference between resident and non-resident companies, which could not suit the EU system.

Hence, again with reference to Italy, the new tax will be neutral with respect to the place of origin of the transaction, but revenues can be subjected not only to the 3% levy, but also to other taxes.

Moreover, it could also be possible to carry out manoeuvres on the prices of the IT supply, with a sort of new dumping on EU or Italian companies by the big Internet majors.

On the other hand, the Italian web tax relies only on self-certification. There will be trouble.

If the web tax and the other taxes on the Internet are VAT modelled, we will face the problem that the VAT transitional regime, defined in Europe until 1997, is still currently in force.

Not to mention the fact that the transfer of capital via the Internet is fully uncontrollable for the States or unions of States and that information gap and asymmetries between States and Companies in this field are such that everything relies on the “good will” of the subjects taxed. Too little.

A solution would be to equip the EU with a stable IT system capable of controlling, at least, a significant part of commercial transactions via the Internet, but this is almost science fiction.

Otherwise, stringent and fast regulations would be needed to definitively close “tax havens” both in the EU and elsewhere but, apart from the unavoidable delays, the result would be that the countries which are currently tax havens would ask for something-indeed, much – in exchange to the other ones which are not tax havens.

Or it could be possibly stated very frankly that the EU market does not accept the free movement of capital in this sector.

However, this would favour the geopolitical areas that would like to use what, in their eyes, would be considered a European weakness.

Nonetheless, here as elsewhere, we should really rethink the architecture of the world economic and financial system.

Said system results from the fully geopolitical irrational anarchy which saw Eurasia yield to the US unipolarity, which currently no longer exists, at least according to the 1990s standards.

Here as elsewhere, we should import the idea of a great liberal and free trader, a disciple of Luigi Einaudi who, in the 1950s, imagined the “army of labour”.

I am referring to Ernesto Rossi who, while assuming a public system using the huge mass of post-war unemployed people, clearly theorized – as a liberal – “a marked integration of Socialist elements into the market economy”.

Abolire la Miseria was written by Ernesto Rossi in 1942, on the island of Ventotene where he had been confined. It was published in 1945 and then re-edited in 1977 after his death.

The Tuscan liberal thinker theorized no “social safety nets”, but rather the creation of an army of labour to be recruited as an alternative to the military service.

The army provided all its members with essential services, with dignity and autonomy, but the “army of labour” had to work both on public infrastructure and on land use and maintenance activities, i.e. all the productive activities that – as Keynes said- could not attract and rely on private capital, which would record no sufficient and quick returns.

What about including clearly Socialist mechanisms in the current financial system, and not only through tax systems, thus rightfully leaving high-income activities to private capitalism?

It would finally be the merger between the two best intellectual and technical lines of Italian democracy, namely social Catholicism and secular Liberal Socialism.

About the author:
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

Two Decades After Shakti: India’s Nuclear Policy – OpEd

0
0

By Amb (Retd) Sheel Kant Sharma

India’s nuclear weapon tests in May 1998 had more to do with its external security environment and the global strategic situation rather than domestic compulsions. Over the past two decades, the global environment and world order have changed considerably and so has the strategic calculus. The world today is in so many ways vastly different from what it was in 1998 or in the years preceding it. India’s interface, too, is utterly transformed. A major part of this transformation had its roots in the courageous crossing of the Rubicon in 1998. There is indeed great deal that can be said today with the benefit of hindsight but these past two decades since the Shakti tests have seen many transforming phases in the global conjuncture. It is always tempting when looking back to pick faults with what was done, to expound what could and should have been done, and whether twenty years hence, things look better or worse. It is good however to quickly recap the conditions prevailing in the run up to 1998. A retrospective can assess the vistas that opened, the relationships that blossomed, and the impact it had on the country’s political economy and security.

The tests were in more senses than one the culmination of a journey that began with India’s nuclear programme in the 1950s. That programme was launched by a newly independent nation with considerable aspirations in science and technology (S&T) but challenged by a severe resource crunch and lack of skilled manpower. Even so, the leaders then made a strategic choice to pursue capabilities in the entire range of nuclear S&T, from mining to waste management. They also broadly avowed this pursuit for peaceful use, not for the bomb. They kept, however, options open to themselves for future contingencies and were averse to a priori and unilaterally closing any technology option. Thus they persevered for four to five decades in building a full nuclear enterprise; standing off the exercise of a weapons option, and seeking security in the nuclear age by sustained campaigning for global abolition of nuclear weapons.

India had to come to terms with menacing challenges that came up on the way including, for instance: the Chinese bomb in 1964, the NPT in 1968, the Seventh Fleet bullying in 1971, the long isolation and censure after the peaceful nuclear experiment (PNE) of 1974, and finally the Soviet demise in 1989. But the sinister blow was to come in the 90s, when deceitful and clandestine Pakistan-China collaboration on nuclear weapons and missiles elicited just a passing mention of concern from the prevailing global nuclear order. This order, shepherded by a triumphant and sole superpower and its allies, also appeared blind to audacious Pakistan-sponsored terror plus nuclear weapons blackmail. As Andrew Small mentions in his book, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics, China had given Pakistan the ultimate gift from one state to another (i.e. that of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles).

At the same time, the indomitable spirit of India’s nuclear scientists and engineers and the prowess of their enterprise had fortified and grown by the 1990s despite the post-PNE ostracising. Their capabilities empowered India’s emergence as a nuclear-armed state. Hence the definitive and in-your-face tests of 11 May and 13 May 1998 and unequivocal proclamation of India’s nuclear-armed status.

On 11 May 1998, the global impact of the tests was staggering. External intelligence agencies, including the CIA, had no prior inkling, largely due to the care taken by authorities to dodge external surveillance of the preparations and test site. New Delhi had envisaged the hue and cry that followed. Further tests on 13 May dispelled any doubts as to India’s emergence as a state with nuclear weapons. It broke the invidious and erring mould of a timid, indecisive, soft state. Prime Minister Vajpayee affirmed in clear statements, including in the parliament on 27 May 1998, that India had conducted nuclear weapons tests. Their rationale was articulated with solemn assurance that India’s nuclear weapons would not be for aggression.

Thus emerged a new paradigm that comprised nuclear and missiles capability, a doctrine of no first use (NFU) and a credible minimum deterrent. It affirmed a unilateral moratorium on further testing and massive and assured retaliation if attacked with nuclear weapons. It eschewed falling into an arms race trap and upheld the security objective of multilaterally seeking a world without nuclear weapons. India’s position gradually evoked understanding in key capitals in the years that followed. High-level demarches were made in Paris, London, Berlin, and Moscow. An extended and intensive bilateral dialogue between External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott paved the way for a changing US perception of India. The agenda of this dialogue also included export controls as the US insisted on assurance that India’s technological prowess not be open to pilferage by hostile states and should remain proliferation-proof. As this jelled with India’s policy in any case, credible action was demonstrated, including through systematic consultations involving diverse agencies of the government coordinated by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Pakistan conducted its tit-for-tat tests; breast-beating about South Asia nearing a nuclear flash point. Launching a peace mission to Pakistan, Prime Minister Vajpayee undertook a bus journey to Lahore in February 1999. His meetings with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif initiated several confidence-building measures. But the Pakistan Army slyly sabotaged the Lahore outcome through the Kargil misadventure; exposing, inter alia, Pakistan’s bluff about the so-called nuclear flash point. President Bill Clinton showed markedly better understanding of India’s narrative in the wake of Pakistan’s aggression in Kargil; displaying growing US concern about Pakistan’s role and involvement in what was seen as Osama bin Laden’s global jihad. Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000 unfurled a long-term vision of India-US relations. The Clintons set aside past practice and after a full six-day state visit to India, spent a mere six hours in Pakistan, and that too, in Karachi – marking US de-hyphenation of India from Pakistan.

President George Bush accelerated the transformation of relations with India, eventually freeing them from the overpowering strain of decades of discordant nuclear policies. The shock and revulsion post 9/11 fundamentally altered US priorities in dealing with terrorism and non-proliferation. What rapidly changed the perspective were extraordinary revelations about Pakistan’s pernicious role in clandestine proliferation, with specific material evidence in documents uncovered in 2003-04 about aiding and abetting Iranian and Libyan nuclear weapons pursuit. India’s excellent non-proliferation credentials stood in stark contrast. Moreover, rising crude prices had triggered a veritable renaissance for nuclear power by 2004. A growing Indian economy’s hunger for energy including nuclear power was critical to development. India persuaded its interlocutors that its nuclear enterprise’s categorical imperative in the coming decades would be in meeting energy needs. India pleaded for nuclear cooperation with the US and agreed to separate the strategic component of its nuclear enterprise from the much larger civilian side, and to place all civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards.

This contributed to quick progress towards the nuclear cooperation agreement with the US. The US configured India’s ‘mainstreaming’ in the global nuclear community by amending key Congressional acts inhibiting cooperation with India, and obtaining an India-specific exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The India-US Agreement in 2008 was, doubtless, the kernel of a much larger strategic partnership with the US. India would also emerge with an upgraded profile in the global diplomatic arena, a profile greatly helped by a major quantum leap in India-US relations. India’s relations with Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, entered a new phase of a broader and intense strategic partnership with regular annual summits. Very substantial bilateral nuclear cooperation resulted in setting up two 1000 MW reactors in Kudankulam, and several more in the pipeline. With France, cooperation deals envisaged several advanced reactors in a huge nuclear park in Maharashtra. Strategic partnerships were also forged, setting the stage for versatile relationships with the UK, EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Growth in the indigenous nuclear power programme is sustained with assured uranium supplies. India has active plans for expansion of nuclear power reactors in cooperation with the US, Russia, and France. The domestic enterprise plans more reactors and early commissioning of the Breeder (prototype) reactor in Kalpakkam.

A major upturn in India’s relations with the US, its allies and the West in general, has also catalysed China’s approach to India and led to better mutual understanding and expanding bilateral cooperation. This remains so despite the standoff on border issues, persisting Pakistan-China axis, and China’s reservations about India’s NSG membership.

As regards the strategic domain, ensuring a credible and survival deterrent comprising a nuclear triad is on track. However, recent years have seen a steady deterioration of geopolitics, adding uncertainties and grave misgivings about the future. Sooner than later, the strategic domain may not comprise only conventional and nuclear but increasingly the cyber and outer space dimensions. Also slipping from the front burner is the reduced salience of nuclear weapons, even though serious questions dog their utility except in ‘deterrent only’ mode. Given these uncertainties, India must effectively maintain its credible minimum deterrent.

Modi’s Nepal Visit: More Drama Than Substance – Analysis

0
0

By Pramod Jaiswal*

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a two-day visit to Nepal on 11-12 May. No Indian prime minister had visited Nepal in an official capacity in almost two decades, until Prime Minister Modi, who has been to the country thrice in four years. This article considers the outcomes of the latest visit.

Decoding the Visit

In a break with tradition, Modi began his visit in Janakpur, the birth place of Sita. Janakpur is the temporary capital of province 2, where the Madhesi alliance of Rastriya Janta Party Nepal and Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum Nepal has formed the government. Modi’s desire to start his visit here, in the heartland of Madhes, raised suspicion in Kathmandu. Kathmandu feared that he might provoke the Madhesis by supporting their demands of constitutional amendment. Modi was in fact keen to visit Janakpur and Muktinath during his second visit to the country, but Kathmandu resisted on similar grounds, citing lack of safety for the visiting prime minister.

Analysts believe that there are several reasons behind Modi’s interest in beginning his visit in Janakpur. There is a sense of betrayal and disappointment with India among the Madhesis who believe that the country has given up on the Madhesi agenda and is not applying enough pressure on Kathmandu on the issue of costitutional amendment. India had withdrawn its support to the issue when welcoming Prime Minister KP Oli to India, ahead of his visit to China during his first tenure. Modi, this time around, likely wanted to suggest to Madhesis that India continues to stand with them. Modi’s visit could also help internationalise the Madhes issue by drawing more attention to it through the presence of Indian and international media.

Apart from Janaki Mandir in Janakpur, Modi visited Muktinath temple in Mustang and Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu. Interestingly, the visit to Pashupatinath, who is seen as one of the forms of Lord Shiva, was on the day of the Karnataka polls. Karnataka has a significant population of Shiva devotees, and the priests at Pashupatinath all have Kannada roots. Hence, his visit to Pashupatinath could also have been aimed at Hindu voters in Karnataka.

Both prime ministers flagged off the inaugural direct bus service between Janakpur and Ayodhya to launch the Nepal-India Ramayana Circuit connecting Janakpur, the birthplace of Sita, with Ayodhya. India is developing 15 cities in India under the Ramayana Circuit: Ayodhya, Nandigram, Shringverpur and Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh; Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradesh; Sitamarhi, Buxar and Darbhanga in Bihar; Mahendragiri in Odisha; Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh; Nashik and Nagpur in Maharashtra; Bhadrachalam in Telangana; Hampi in Karnataka; and Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu.

Though the Nepalese Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa had stated that Modi’s visit to Nepal would be primarily religious and cultural in nature to boost religious tourism, both prime ministers also jointly laid the foundation stone for the 900 MW Arun-III hydro-electric project in Nepal. It is the largest hydropower project to be developed in Nepal and is expected to be completed within five years at the cost of about INR 60 billion. According to Nepal’s Investment Board, Nepal will receive INR 217 billion over 25 years from the project. The project developer will also provide 21.9 per cent of the energy free of cost, which is worth INR 97 billion, plus another INR 67 billion in royalties.

Outcomes

While the Madhesis were disappointed with India’s perceived betrayal, people from the hills still have not forgotten the bitter experience of the ‘economic blockade’ that had Indian support. However, Modi had a grand welcome in Madhes despite this disappointment. Although thousands participated in his civic reception in Janakpur, the same warmth was not witnessed in Kathmandu. Memories of the blockade haunted Modi’s visit in Kathmandu. Hashtags such as #BlockadeWasCrimeMrModi and #ModiNotWelcomed-InNepal were trending, with many demanded a public apology from Modi. Local police arrested CP Gajurel, senior leader of the Communist Party, along with several others of the Nepal Communist Party-Revolutionary for protesting against Modi’s visit to Nepal. Though the government of Nepal left no stone unturned to welcome Modi, the people were clearly not as welcoming. The few Nepali or Maithili words at the beginning of his speeches could not charm either Janakpur or Kathmandu, unlike during his first visit. In fact, Oli, who is seen as a nationalist, had to bear the brunt of criticism for inviting Modi to Nepal. Interestingly, the Nepali Congress, once accused of being “Indian agents” and “surrendering its sovereignty to the Indians” by the Communists, were also critical of Oli’s decision.

Way Forward

The Indian and the Nepalese prime ministers termed the visit “historic.” However, it is yet to be seen if the visit will have any real impact on bilateral relations. As per media reports, Modi has advised the Madhesis to unite and consolidate power and has assured them of Indian support. However, he refrained from publicly making any comment on the constitution or on the issues of Madhes.

In his efforts to improve relations with Nepal, Modi has has had two telephonic conversations with Oli, and has also sent his Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to Kathmandu to assure them of India’s support and eagerness to work with Oli’s government. At a time of India’s loosening grip on Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives, Modi has to do much more to show that his ‘neighbhourhood policy’ is on the right track.

*Pramod Jaiswal
Senior Fellow, China Research Programme (CRP)

Redefining Violence: The Problem With PC Speech Codes – OpEd

0
0

By Ryan McMaken*

Last fall, the Washington Post reported on how a “chilling study” showed that college students are “hostile…toward free speech.”

The research, author Catherine Rampell noted, showed that large numbers of students — sometimes constituting even a majority — support “snuffing out upsetting speech.” Many also support the use of violence in order to do so.

Many defenders of free speech in response have framed this unfortunate reality as the result of an insufficient lack of reverence for “free speech,” or for tolerance in general.

But this approach somewhat misses the point. If asked directly if tolerance and freedom of speech are good things, these same students who oppose “upsetting speech” or “hate speech” as they often call it, would surely answer in the affirmative.

If Speech Is a Form of Violence, It is Legitimate for the State to Limit It

Of course tolerance and free speech are good things” the student would no doubt say, “but you don’t have freedom to inflict violence on others.”

When viewed from their vantage point, this claim is analogous to the old political proverb that states “my right to swing my fists ends where your nose begins.”

In other words, behavior must be limited when it threatens the property of others.

Now, to the casual observer not up-to-date on current ideological orthodoxy, he might not see any connection between these two claims. How can speech be equated to swinging fists about? Words are not like fists.

What this casual observer has missed however is that current opponents of so-called hate speech have redefined violent behavior to include upsetting words spoken by others.

This is how advocates of “snuffing out” certain types of speech can reconcile their position with stated support for “freedom” and “free speech.”

By opposing certain types of speech, one is not opposing basic freedoms, but is opposing actual violence.

And this illustrates the importance of the “speech is violence” narrative which is at the very core of the current controversies over so-called political correctness, and which even many leftists are uncomfortable defending.

However, critics of oddball theories from university humanities professors often focus too much on the theories themselves. Claims that there are dozens of genders or that “whiteness” is a social disease are problematic, to be sure. But America has certainly seen its share of aggressive ideologies before.

The difference now, however, is that proponents of these ideologies feel sufficiently emboldened so as to declare even mere opposition to these theories to be a form a violence. And this is an extremely important distinction. If speech can be shown to be violence, then it becomes morally legitimate to call for action by the state to limit or abolish that speech.

After all, in the Western mind, the restraint of violence has long been one of the few near-universally-accepted purposes of the state. For Augustine of Hippo, who took a cynical and suspicious view of the state, the state could at least do some good by retraining violence and punishing malefactors. Centuries later, even most libertarian minded Americans accept that one of the few proper functions of the state is to prevent and punish violations of property rights.

Thus, if merely saying things can be classified as a violation of a person’s body or property, this is a major victory for those seeking to regulate speech itself.

And the left has been hard at work attempting to establish this connection. Last year, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, a respected researcher at Northeaster University attempted in The New York Times to show that speech expressing unpleasant ideas by others can causes chronic stress in the hearer, and thus can lead to physical damage in the body. If speech can cause physiological damage, ought it not be considered a form of aggression?

Similarly, some journalists have claimed they are now suffering from a form of post traumatic stress disorder after being in the presence of members of the so-called alt-right, and after only listening to their jokes, speeches, and exchanges.

This contention that speech literally causes physical harm to the body is a somewhat new innovation, but it is only a small step from a more time-honored strategy: that of claiming that “hate speech” creates the conditions which lead to violence.

In this view, merely expressing disapproval of certain groups or behaviors constitutes “hate speech” because disapproval of certain groups or their actions leads to violence against them.

According to this theory, making the claim that, say, Mexican-Americans are lazier than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts paves the way for violence against Mexican-Americans. Thus, such speech needs to be restrained.

This position has been especially notable outside the United States — at least in recent years. In the United Kingdom, for example, a street preacher was arrested for reading some verses of the bible to a gay teen who had asked the preacher’s opinion on the matter. 

In Canada, in the case of Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v Whatcott, the Canadian Supreme Court affirmed the province’s prosecution of a man who distributed flyers condemning homosexuality. Significantly, the flyeres did not advocate for violence against persons, but portrayed certain people as “inferior” and “untrustworthy.”  In other words, the Court’s decisions concluded that saying rude things is a prosecutable crime in Canada.

Pro-Slavery Opposition to Free Speech in America

In the past, this latter strategy has been employed in the United States as well. In the nineteenth century, abolitionist rhetoric was opposed and condemned in many areas on the grounds that merely opposing the institution of slavery invited insurrection and violence — and thus ought to be banned.

The most notorious case of this, perhaps, is the so-called “mails controversy” in which pro-slavery activists pressured the US postal service to confiscate anti-slavery tracts mailed from the North.

Historian Russell L. Riley describes the situation 1:

The abolitionist strategy for affecting a change in southern public opinion through a free press – that is, by mailing publications from the North – was well into implementation by the mid-1830s. This became an especially prominent part of their strategy in 1835, when the total number of publications produced by the American Anti-Slavery Society skyrocketed in one year from 122,000 to over 1 million copies. Southern newspapers were susequently filled with stories of an invasion of incendiary matter.

Anti-slavery activists in the North had sent thousands of publications to South Carolina’s prominent citizens. The reaction was not especially blithe, to say the least.

As Riley notes, before the materials could be delivered, “a mob of 3,000 Charlestonians” broke into the post office and burned the “offending materials.”

As the local postmaster at the time, Alfred Huger wrote, “this community is too Sensitive [sic]” to allow the expression of such opinions.

In other words, the pro-slavery population of Charleston needed a “safe space,” and it pursued that safe space by pressing for legislation — both local and federal —  allowing local postmasters to censor the mails as they saw fit.

Blocking abolitionist opinions was not merely a matter of annoyance in the minds of pro-slavery advocates, however. The underlying feeling at work here was that any agitation for emancipation — including emancipation through peaceful means — was more or less equivalent to advocating for slave uprisings, and the total destruction of Southern civilization. In other words, advocating for emancipation was seen as essentially equivalent to advocating violence.

The heights to which emotion on this matter could reach can be seen in the words of President Andrew Jackson himself who became involved in the mails controversy. Writing to the Postmaster General, Jackson complained:

I have read with sorrow and regret that such men live in our happy country — I might have said monsters — as to be guilty of the attempt to stir up amongst the South the horrors of a servile war — Could they be reached, they ought to be made to atone for this wicked attempt, with their lives.

Riley notes that “[to] Jackson, what the abolitionists took as an exercise of First Amendment rights amounted to a capital offense.”

Rarely, though, were abolitionist tracts such as these involved in calls for uprisings and insurrections. The abolitionist movement, in fact, was often closely connected to Quakerism and pacifism, and — especially in the 1830s — could be not portrayed as generally inciting violence.

Indeed, in the 1830s, anti-slavery pockets existed in numerous Southern states, and many anti-slavery activists hoped these pockets might grow and spread, bringing about a state-by-state renunciation of slavery.2 In the upper South, and especially in Appalachia where the plantation economy was unimportant, anti-slavery movement thrived in some areas, sustained largely by communities of Quakers in both Tennessee and North Carolina.

Northern Kentucky was also home to notable anti-slavery advocates, including William S. Bailey who was subjected to numerous cases of boycotts, harassment, vandalism, and threats to his personal safety. Employing the usual tactics of pro-slavery activists, Bailey was also accused of supporting violence against slaveowners and their families, and he was later accused to supporting John Brown — a charge Bailey denied.

Fear of anti-slavery ideas became so heated in fact, that no amount of hyperbole was apparently too over-the-top. By 1850, slavery apologist James Henley Thornwell would write:

The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins, on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground—Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake.

This conflating the pro-slavery cause with civilization itself would later be immortalized in the Mississippi declaration of secession which stated that “a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

In Thornwell’s comments, it’s not difficult to see tactics reminiscent of what we see today from the more virulent advocates of political correctness. We might adjust Thornwell’s words to read:

The parties in this conflict are not merely conservatives [or perhaps, “Trump supporters”] and progressives — they are fascists, racists, Nazis, hate-mongers, and religious zealots on the one side, and the friends of equality and diversity on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground—tolerance and hate the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake.

Thus we find ourselves with a serviceable summary of the current movement against speech, which in the PC view, has become a form of violence.

Now, some critics of my drawing an equivalence here might suggests that the paranoia of the pro-slavery activists was justified. After all, didn’t the North eventually invade the South?

This would be a good argument if not for the fact that the war was not fought for the purposes of ending slavery — as defenders of the Southern Confederacy themselves often like to point out.

It was not abolitionist sentiment that lead to military action action against the South, but “unionism” and a anti-Southern reaction in the wake of Lincoln’s successful gambit to goad the South into attacking Fort Sumter.

Prior to the attack on Sumter, a great many northerners had been sympathetic to southern grievances and to secession itself.

It is true that some abolitionists cynically latched on to the war effort because it served their purposes. To his shame, William Lloyd Garrison abandoned decades of apparently principled devotion to disunion and pacifism when it looked like he might get what he wanted through a war. But, it would be anachronistic and absurd to blame the war on 1830s Quakers who advocated for peaceful abolition — and who were facing a federal government headed by Jackson, a pro-slavery president. Moreover, it was localized insurrection, not invasion from the North, that the pro-slavery advocates feared. As was true right up until the Southern states seceded, the slave-state voting bloc in Congress held a solid veto on any attempt to pass nationwide emancipation — which would have required a super-majority.

“Hate Speech” as Crypto-Violence

The anti-abolitionist paranoia expressed in the 1830s is echoed today in the “speech is violence” position in which any opinion that expressed opposition to the current left wing orthodoxy is a form of cloaked support for violence against innocents.

In this view, any opposition to transgender bathrooms is nearly as bad as support for hangings of sexual eccentrics. Any opposition to mass immigration is only one small step from advocating for concentration camps for non-whites.

Whether or not this strategy will ultimately succeed will depend on the degree to which speech is accepted as a form of violence. Historically, when viewed properly, a “right” — in the United States, at least — has been limited to freedom from physical violence and coercion. This has included assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, trespassing, theft, and other identifiable physical manifestations of violence.

If this definition of “violence” is expanded, however, to include concepts such as hurt feelings, stress levels, or possible imagined violence at some point in the future allegedly resulting from certain opinions, then that would be revolutionary indeed. And disastrous for human freedom.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken
(@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.

Notes:
1. See Russel L. Riley, The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality. Columbia University Press. 1999.

2. Pro-slavery sentiment accelerated after 1830, but anti-slavery sentiment was so prevalent in some areas of the South that Tennessee abolitionist John Rankin declared “it was safer to make an anti-slavery speech in the South than it became during the thirties to make the same speech in the North.” See: “The Pioneer Anti-Slavery Press” byAsa Earl Martin in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Mar., 1916), pp. 509-528

Ralph Nader: Trump Making America Dread Again – OpEd

0
0

Donald Trump is a well-known, self-described germaphobe. Unfortunately, he is not concerned about other Americans’ exposure to germs and disease. With leading infectious disease scientists from the Centers for Disease Control to the University of Minnesota warning about a global influenza pandemic (“not if, when”), Trump’s warmongering madman, John Bolton, has closed down a seasoned two-man global health security team.

The Washington Post reported last week about “the abrupt departure of Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, a respected scientist from the National Security Council,” who was “the top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic.”

At the time of Admiral Ziemer’s expulsion, a new Ebola outbreak in the Congo had just been reported.

Trump’s flagrant disregard for the safety of the American people has been punctuated by the proposed elimination of the budget reserved for containing an Ebola epidemic. Earlier this year, Trump pushed through Congress an additional $84 billion for the bloated, unauditable military budget—more than the Pentagon had requested.

Callous Donald is determined to enable and even abet companies that are spewing dangerous toxics into our air, water, and food-growing areas. Many of these companies have contributed to his campaign. This serial failed gambling czar’s coldblooded personality is anti-law. President Trump and his agency chiefs are violating federal statutory mandates to protect the health and safety of Americans.

Trump’s drive to take the federal cops off the corporate crime beats started early and recklessly. On the day he took office, Trump ordered an “immediate regulatory freeze” on the entire federal government. This stopped federal lifesavers in their rescues of endangered American workers, patients, travelers, vulnerable children, and frail, impoverished elderly.

He went from recklessness to ignorant idiocy by ordering all regulatory agencies to repeal two regulations for every one they were going to issue in the future. Business lobbyists were so delighted that they rushed to celebrate at Trump’s hotel just a few blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, spending money to make Trump richer—sometimes huddling with Trump’s regulators.

Wholesale shutting down of law enforcement, putting corporate operatives from the companies being investigated or overseen in charge of closing overdue government safety initiatives, and demanding huge budget cuts in agencies such as the EPA and FAA exceeds the broad “prosecutorial discretion” allowed by the federal courts.

Trump’s marauders are raging through one agency after another, revoking, freezing, or suspending lifesaving health/safety protections. Weaker job safety, auto safety, air and water pollution standards, and pesticide protections spell death, sickness, and illnesses with their attendant family anguish and costs, including to taxpayers.

The Trumpsters are destroying federal protections from the corporate fraudsters who have been caught cheating, lying, and stealing from savers, investors, patients, student loan borrowers, travelers, and insurance policy-holders. Renegade public criminals such as EPA boss, Scott Pruitt, and head of both the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Mick Mulvaney, are openly brazen and contemptuous of the agencies they run, despite their oath of office to uphold the law.

Pruitt, the subject of 12 ongoing federal investigations for spending tax money on himself, is probably on his way out. But Mulvaney, who recently bragged before 1500 bankers that, as a Congressman from South Carolina, he wouldn’t talk to lobbyists unless they had given him campaign money. He is one massive wrecking Goliath driven to leave consumers defenseless.

Mulvaney is bullying civil and criminal investigators fighting the corporate crime wave, from culpable Wall Streeters to payday loan sharks, and literally shutting down one enforcement action after another. Mulvaney even grotesquely restated the CFPB’s mission to include “the protection of Wall Street.”

You may remember news reports in early 2017 about Mulvaney wanting to save tax dollars by cutting the Meals on Wheels program, The Children’s Health Insurance Program, and by slashing the small law enforcement budgets of the health and safety agencies. What you may not know is that Mulvaney is a coward, running away from going after the vastly larger documented waste, fraud, and abuse in military contracting, and corporate welfare giveaways. He has not said a word about the $60 billion yearly fraud on Medicare committed by commercial crooks. He is a corporate crime aider and abettor.

Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is pushing the same dissolution of law enforcement actions against the crimes and frauds of for-profit universities against unaware students, especially veterans. She too is placing people associated with these scams in charge of these despicable companies.

Trump wants to take America back to the days of “caveat emptor,” “let the buyer beware,” to the days of horrifying influenza epidemics, to the days of giving corporate crooks— that liberals and conservative Americans want prosecuted and jailed – a “get-out-of-jail-free” card.

Public interest lawyers alert! In the Supreme Court opinion of Heckler v. Chaney, shielding the agency’s enforcement policies from court challenge, it added a warning where the agency has “consciously and expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.”

Are Senators or Representatives, who surely should have standing, ready to take the rampaging Pruitt, Mulvaney, or DeVos to federal court?

Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images