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Karzai Blames US, Pakistan For Afghanistan Chaos

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By Kalinga Seneviratne

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has blamed the United States and Pakistan for the chaos created in his country over the past two decades. He firmly believes that the West, including Germany, should admit to their failures in his war-torn country.

He followed up on this argument, initially advanced in a keynote address to the Global Media Forum on June 12, 2018, in a panel discussion and an interview with Forum host, the German public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW).

In his keynote speech he began by pointing out western complicity in the chaos that is seen today in the Middle East describing the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. led forces as justified by “trumped up charges” that led to the rise of terrorism in the region.

He argued that disbanding Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party “throwing hundreds of thousands of educated Iraqis and military personnel” to the streets created the regional chaos we see in the Arab world today.

He also criticized the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. “Iraq and Libya were stable countries and now it’s a war zone,” he noted. He also said that Syria is a sad story, a cradle of civilization that has been “turned into a battle ground for others”. He alleged that these developments are impacting on Afghanistan rather than vice-versa.

“The template the world operates on today is chaos and more chaos,” argued Karzai. “It’s driven by technology like drones,” adding with an eye on a large number of Europeans in the audience: “You will not experience that chaos seated in comfortable surroundings in Europe, but we feel it every day in Afghanistan and the Middle East.”

Focusing on his homeland he said that “decades of the use of extremism as a policy is at the root of our problems” and he argued that the West cannot solve problems there without the involvement of the regional leaders India, China, Russia and Iran.

Afghanistan, he said, needs security guarantees from Pakistan in particular. He proposed that Germany as a neutral country may be able to bring all these actors together in a peace conference to induce stability to Afghanistan and other Muslim countries in a state of chaos, that would also be able to solve much of the refugee crisis in Europe.

Participating in a panel discussion titled ‘Peace with the Taliban: A Compromise on Human Rights?‘ he welcomed the recent Eid ceasefire between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which he pointed out was usually seen by the militant group as a puppet of the U.S. Thus, he argued that Taliban has shown a “degree of flexibility” and this has opened up a window of opportunity for peace talks.

“I hope that this short-term truce could lead to a lasting peace in Afghanistan. But we must not forget that the war in Afghanistan is an imposed war. The United States, Pakistan and all other stakeholders in the conflict need to reach a deal to make it [the ceasefire] permanent,” Karzai told the panel.

When asked why he could not do the same when he was President (2009-2014), he blamed western policy. “The 2001 international conference on Afghanistan, which was held in Bonn, should have included the Taliban. It was a mistake not to have extended the invitation to the representatives of the ousted regime,” Karzai said. “To make matters worse, the US went on a revenge campaign against the Taliban, which forced the fighters to seek shelter in mountains and inside Pakistan,” he added.

Karzai also blamed the U.S. for not pressuring Islamabad for abandoning what he calls Pakistan’s support for Islamists. “Taliban as Afghans wanted peace and could have been brought to negotiations back then. Now, it is a long way to go to attain peace,” he lamented.

He also argued that using religion as a weapon by the U.S. and Pakistan to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s was a mistake. “It was a blunder. Pakistan still uses it against Afghanistan (and) after 2001 U.S. back Pakistan (on this strategy)” Karzai noted.

Markus Potzel, Germany’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a fellow panelist, disagreed, pointing out that Pakistan is not the only country in the region that uses religious proxies inside Afghanistan. “Putting all the blame on Pakistan is not right,” he argued. “Our (German) forces are in Afghanistan to secure the country, to advise their military. But, peace in the country is Afghanistan’s own responsibility.”

In recent months there has been much debate in Germany about the government’s deportation policy on Afghan asylum seekers who – it seems – are not welcomed in the country by many Germans. In the interview with DW, Karzai argued that Germany is facing the consequences of western policy failure in Afghanistan.

“There are daily bombs around the country, there is daily insecurity around the country, there is a greater part of the country under the control of non-government forces. Violence is on the increase. After 16 years of our campaign against extremism and terrorism we still have new terrorist groups emerging in Afghanistan. Daesh (an Arabic name for the ‘Islamic State’)  has emerged. We have questions as to why,” he told the interviewer.

He also reiterated his argument that Pakistan is the obstacle to peace in Afghanisatn with U.S. complicity. “The sanctuaries there, the training grounds there, the financial resources provided to terrorism and the ideological inputs that they give to terrorism and send to Afghanistan,” Karzai pointed out.

He added: “The second most important factor or rather equally important factor was the whole conduct of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The approach to Afghanistan and approach to fighting extremism was very heavy handed. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan, creation of prisons in Afghanistan, the violation of our sovereignty and violation of Afghan homes and culture and values. All that accumulated and put together brought us where we are today.”

He pointed out that it was “lack of peace, lack of security, lack of hope for the future” that is driving Afghans to seek refuge overseas, especially in Europe. Karzai believes that the government of Germany could play a role talking to the U.S. to prod them to play a constructive role for peace in his country, because the consequences of failure in Afghanistan have reached Germany.

“Germany must make sure that America adopts the right approach, an approach that brings hope in the future to Afghanistan by bringing peace and a working environment to Afghanistan.” he told DW, adding that he wants young Afghans to stay at home to help rebuild the war-torn country. [IDN-InDepthNews – 13 June 2018]


Sri Lanka: Controversial Buddhist Monk Gets Jail Time

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By Quintus Colombage

Controversial Sri Lankan Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera has been sentenced to six months in prison for threatening the wife of a missing journalist.

On top of the jail time, Gnanasara Thera was ordered on June 14 to pay 50,000 rupees (US$314) in compensation to Sandya Eknaligoda, wife of journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda. He was fined a further 1,500 rupees.

The monk was earlier found guilty on May 24 of intimidating Sandya at a court in 2016. He then accused her of supporting Tamil extremists and blackening the names of military war heroes.

“I humbly made a complaint to his chief Buddhist monk to take disciplinary action against him but they did nothing,” Sandya told ucanews.com after the judgment was handed down.

“The monk accused me of creating a bad name for Sri Lankan military intelligence officials and called me a traitor.

“The monk was previously accused of several anti-Muslim violence and hate crimes but I did not see any action taken against him.”

Gnanasara Thera is general secretary of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist organization Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or “Buddhist Power Force” which is allied with Myanmar’s anti-Muslim Buddhist group 969 Movement led by Ashin Wirathu.

More than 20 monks and about 400 BBS supporters went to the court in Homagama, just southeast of capital Colombo.

Police arrested him for causing religious and racial disharmony in 2017. This is the first time he has been jailed.

Udaya Kalupathirana, a member of the executive committee of the Free Media Movement and director of INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre, said the sentencing of the monk is significant because it protects the rights of victims and witnesses.

“Ven. Gnanasara Thera promotes extremist Sinhala Buddhist political ideology and misuses his religious identity for dirty political purposes,” said Kalupathirana, who was also a witness during the court case.

“The monk wants to attract more Buddhist people for his political ideology. Chief Buddhist monks should take disciplinary action against such monks. All are equal before the law — no one is superior.”

The BBS is appealing the court’s decision and Buddhist group Sinhala Ravaya on June 14 asked Sri Lanka’s president, Maithripala Sirisena, to pardon the monk.

Sandya was awarded the International Women Courage Award by the U.S. last year for her efforts in seeking justice for her husband, a political cartoonist and journalist who went missing in January 2010, two days before presidential elections were held on the island nation. He wrote several articles critical of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa during the election campaign.

Thailand Hands Over Canadian Suspecting Of Being Dark Web Operative To US

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A Canadian suspected of mentoring and advising the founder of the black market website Silk Road was extradited from Thailand to the United States on Friday, where he faces charges of online drug dealing and money laundering, among other offenses, U.S. authorities said.

Roger Thomas Clark, 56, arrived in New York after being turned over by Thai authorities, who had him in custody after arresting him in December 2015 at the request of American law enforcement officials, according to reports.

U.S. authorities shut down Silk Road, a so-called dark website, in October 2013. Its owner and operator, Ross William Ulbricht, was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison on a raft of criminal charges.

But while it was up and running, the site “was used by thousands of drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to over a hundred thousand buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from those unlawful transactions,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a statement Friday.

“Silk Road was a secret online marketplace for illegal drugs, hacking services, and a whole host of other criminal activity,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said.

“Roger Thomas Clark allegedly served as a trusted confidante to Silk Road founder and operator Ross Ulbricht, advising him on all aspects of this illegal business, including how to maximize profits and use threats of violence to thwart law enforcement.”

Clark also hired and managed computer programmers for Silk Road who helped develop the website’s technical infrastructure, the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged, adding that Clark had also gathered information on law enforcement efforts to investigate the site.

Silk Road enabled its users to purchase and sell drugs and other illegal goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement, the office said.

“Silk Road emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet at the time, serving as a sprawling black-market bazaar where unlawful goods and services, including illegal drugs of virtually all varieties, were bought and sold regularly by the site’s users,” the statement said.

Clark went by the online nicknames “Variety Jones,” “VJ,” “Cimon,” and “Plural of Mongoose,” and served as a “real mentor” and “right-hand man” to Ulbricht, U.S. officials alleged.

The dark web is a term for content that exists on darknets, computer networks built on top of other networks that can be accessed only with specific software. Connections are re-routed through layers of servers, allowing users to remain anonymous. Sites on the dark web are not indexed, meaning online surfers will not see them by doing a Google search.

In Thailand last August, Thai authorities announced they had seized millions of dollars in assets belonging to the late founder of AlphaBay, which had replaced the shutdown Silk Road as the world’s most profitable dark web marketplace.

Thai officials said they had frozen 726 million baht (U.S. $21.73 million) in assets – from luxury vehicles to crypto-currency – owned by Alexander Joseph Cazes, a Canadian. He allegedly committed suicide on July 12, 2017 while in Thai custody before he was to be extradited to the United States.

According to an indictment unsealed on Friday in a Manhattan federal court, the charges against Clark include distributing narcotics via the internet, conspiracy in computer hacking and conspiracy in money-laundering, the statement said. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison, among other punishments.

Clark was taken to a Manhattan courtroom on Friday but did not seek bail, the Reuters news service reported.

Macedonia To Rename Divisive Statues That Irked Greece

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By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Huge statues erected in recent years in the Macedonian capital of the ancient warrior kings Alexander the Great and Filip of Macedon – as well as that of Alexander’s mother, Olympia – will be officially renamed and marked in honour of Greek-Macedonian friendship, the Macedonian government has announced.

“The monuments will get plates with explanations. For example, ‘Equestrian Warrior’ will be called ‘Alexander the Great’ – with an explanation that he symbolises the Ancient Hellenic period and remains a symbol of friendship between Macedonia and Greece. The same will apply to the statues of Filip and Olympia,” government spokesperson Mile Bosnjakovski said.

“These monuments will be marked for the purpose of strengthening our friendship. We are not afraid to call the monuments as they are,” Bosnjakovski added.

The giant statues in the centre of the city form the centrepiece of the controversial Skopje 2014 project – a government-sponsored revamp of the capital.

They were erected in 2011 and 2012 by the then nationalist government of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

However, the statues were officially never named after the ancient figures they represented, in a futile attempt not to anger Athens, which still called them acts of cultural theft.

For example, the Alexander the Great statue was merely called “Equestrian Warrior” and his father Filip’s statue was simply named “Ancient Warrior”.

Their erection still annoyed Athens, which saw the move as a provocation and an attempt to appropriate what it considers exclusively Hellenic figures.

At the heart of the problem was not the statues but the long-standing dispute between the two countries over the name “Macedonia”.

After Greece blocked Macedonia’s NATO accession in 2008 over the unresolved dispute, and did the same next year with the start of EU accession talks, the government in Skopje turned towards more hard-line words and gestures, among other things erecting more statues that it indirectly linked to Macedonian heritage.

The move to rename the statues comes just days after the Macedonian government led by Zoran Zaev reached a historic deal with Greece aimed at ending the “name” dispute, which now has to be implemented.

Under the agreement, Macedonia is to change its name to “Republic of North Macedonia” in exchange for swift accession to NATO and the start of EU accession talks.

Mattis Calls South Korean, Japanese Counterparts Following Trump-Kim Summit

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US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis spoke by phone this week to Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo in two separate calls to discuss the results of the recent summit between the U.S. and North Korea, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said in statements released following the calls.

The calls follow an historic weekend summit in Singapore between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald J. Trump. The meeting was the first meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders and talks were aimed at convincing Kim to work toward complete denuclearization.

South Korea

Mattis and Song discussed their mutual support for ongoing diplomatic efforts, to include how their two nations are working together to fulfill the president’s guidance on U.S.-South Korean combined military exercises, White said.

Mattis reaffirmed the ironclad U.S.-South Korean alliance, White said. “Both pledged to continue working closely together towards regional peace and stability,” she said.

Japan

In his call to Onodera, Mattis reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad defense commitments to Japan and said the U.S. is determined to maintain the readiness of its forces in the region, White said. “The two pledged to continue working closely together towards regional peace and stability,” she said.

Jordan Is Pivot To Modi’s Approach To Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – Analysis

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By P. R. Kumaraswamy*

During the close to a century of its existence, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has been, as former President Pranab Mukherjee described in October 2015, ‘an oasis of peace and prosperity.’ While this description rings true when Jordan’s history is juxtaposed with the histories of many of its neighbours who have been caught in an endless cycle of violence, civil wars, and possible disintegration, crisis has been integral to the Hashemite Kingdom’s polity since its founding in 1921.Today, it is passing through one of the worst crises in its history.

Often caught in regional tension and conflict, Jordan has been unwillingly dragged into a host of upheavals in its neighbourhood. Palestine’s partition made Jordan an active player in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the June War only further complicated its position. While it lost the West Bank in that war, it continues to host a substantial number of Palestinians, often estimated at over 40 per cent of the population. This ‘people-without-territories’ situation has fuelled many of Jordan’s social pressures, identity crises, and national tensions.

The recent crisis was trigged when the government sought to increase the income tax, an unpopular move in any country, to ease its financial constraints. This sparked widespread protests in a country that has one of the highest degrees of subsidy on basic food, fuel and above all water. As a result, the government was forced to retreat and resign. But Jordan’s economy is in crisis. Its foreign debt in 2017 stood at over US$38 billion, or 95.3 per cent of the GDP. The kingdom is a semi-rentier economy that depends upon remittances from abroad and foreign aid and assistance. Due to a host of economic and political developments, both have dropped in recent years.

As an emergency measure, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait met and agreed to provide immediate financial assistance to the tune of US$2.5 billion. Not to be left behind, Qatar offered to provide US$500 million towards job creation. Despite the deep divisions with the GCC over the year-long Qatar crisis, the richer members are rallying behind Jordan. The Qatari offer comes despite Jordan lowering its relations with Doha in support of Saudi Arabia.

This was a second major injection of funds from the Gulf. In the wake of the popular protests in early 2011, the richer members of the GCC provided US$5 billion over a five-year period. The present bail out is a sequel, albeit at a lower scale due to the financial constraints that the energy-rich Gulf Arab countries themselves are facing.

Neither the change of government nor the financial assistance from the Gulf countries will, however, solve King Abdullah’s problems. He has only bought some time to evolve a national consensus and bring about economic reforms, but his options are extremely limited. Not only does Jordan lack natural resources except Dead Sea minerals, it is also the second driest country in the world in terms of water security.

Jordan has a large refugee population; besides over two million Palestinian refugees, it has been hosting over 1.5 million Iraqi and Syrian refugees. Out of its 9.5 million inhabitants, as many as 2.9 million, or nearly a third of the resident population, are non-citizens. Their presence adds to the social and economic pressures on this resource-scare country. Geographical factors have transformed Jordan into a safe haven for refugees whenever there is a regional crisis.

Should Jordan’s economic crisis bother India? Isn’t it just another internal crisis in another country, that too a resource-scarce one?

This, unfortunately, is not the case. India has far greater stakes in Jordan than commonly recognized. For long, New Delhi has been ignoring Amman, and popular discourses in India are in favour of the energy-rich Gulf Arab countries and Iran or technologically advanced Israel. Important as these other countries are, Jordan is equally if not more important though its importance lies elsewhere. Jordan’s strength lies in its geostrategic location and diplomatic relevance.

Since becoming prime minister, Narendra Modi has been pursuing an assertive but delicate policy towards the Middle East, especially vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict. A more forceful and public bonhomie with Israel is accompanied by equally assertive engagements with other key players of the region, especially, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, above all, Palestine. Modi’s visits to Israel in July 2017 and Ramallah in February 2018 were standalone visits; that is, he visited one without feeling compelled to visit the other. Many hailed his balanced and de-hyphenated approach.

However, as Modi found out earlier this year, Jordan is a pivot to India’s emerging policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While he could separate those two, he could not de-hyphenate Palestine from Jordan. Geography cannot be changed easily. In the initial days, officials described the prime minister’s overnight stay in Amman as a transit visit. But Modi was bowled over by Jordanian hospitality, and he was ferried to Ramallah in a military helicopter provided by King Abdullah. Consequently, within three weeks, Modi was at the airport to receive the Jordan monarch and both leaders jointly addressed the relevance of Islamic heritage in tacking the problems of today. Given the domestic context, this was a significant move on the part of the Indian leader.

If Jordan is the pivot for India to maintain its new-found balance vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine, instability in the Kingdom will pose two major problems. Directly, it will reduce India’s ability to engage with Palestine and provide economic assistance. More importantly, instability in the Kingdom will have a cascading effect on the larger Palestinian issue and return the region to a cycle of violence. Neither scenario is good for India.

India cannot compete with the rich Arab countries and offering financial aid is beyond its capacity. At the same time, a stable and prosperous Jordan serves larger Indian interests, especially when the Kingdom is the most inclusive society in the entire Middle East.

India should invest in the Jordanian economy towards job creation — the major issue facing the country and its youth. There are precedents. Both countries have a joint venture in the form of the Jordan India Fertiliser Company (JIFCO) established in March 2008 with a production capacity of 15,000 tons of phosphoric acid per day; production started in mid-2014. A few weeks ago, the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) bought a 37 per cent stake in the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company (JPMC) for US$130 million.

An unstable Jordan will undermine India’s newly found nuanced and balanced approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and push it back to the insipid, ineffective and routine of yester years. Will Modi transform the current crisis in Jordan into an opportunity for his assertive Middle East policy? Or simply put, will he walk the talk on Jordan being an oasis of stability and progress?

About the author:
*P.R. Kumaraswamy
is Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His latest edited volume, Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is being published by Palgrave Macmillan. Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Keeping India-US Defence Ties On Even Keel Despite CAATSA – Analysis

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By Amit Cowshish*

The Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed by the US Congress in August 2017 has placed India in a bind. The Act, which came into effect in January 2018, provides for the imposition of sanctions on those who engage in any significant transactions with Russian entities identified by the US administration. The list of 39 proscribed entities notified in May 2018 under the provisions of the Act reads like a who’s who of the Russian defence industry, with several of which India has been dealing for decades. These dealings have come under a cloud now.

While the medium and long term consequences of the Act1, even if all of them are not likely to materialise, have been commented upon, there has been little focus on the immediate fall out with respect to India’s ongoing contracts with Russian companies. The prospect of being sanctioned by the United States seems to have made Indian banks reluctant to remit amounts that are due, or open letters of credit, under the terms of such contracts.

Contractual defaults are a serious matter, which could, among other things, affect the delivery schedule and frustrate the execution of contracts. It is a testimony to the pragmatism and maturity that characterises India-Russia ties that the payment imbroglio has not yet snow-balled into a major crisis.

India and Russia may already be working on resolving this problem with or without the US involvement, but that is besides the point. What is inexplicable is that this wholly foreseeable situation could not be prevented over an eight-month period from the passage of the Act to the notification of the list of proscribed Russian entities.

The issue is likely to figure in the ‘2+2’ talks between the Indian external affairs and defence ministers and their American counterparts when they meet in July 2018. That the matter has to wait till then points to the inadequacy of the dialogue mechanism set up under the US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) to address and settle pressing issues in real-time.

There is a strong possibility of some modus vivendi being found in the forthcoming ‘2+2’ talks to let India honour its contractual commitments without facing the prospect of being sanctioned. The optics of Indian ministers virtually pleading for an exemption from sanctions under CAATSA could linger in the public and bureaucratic memory for a long time and condition the future trajectory of the India-US defence relationship.

The ongoing muddle clearly indicates that the defence trade between India and US companies is susceptible to extraneous factors. It is no coincidence that at a time when US defence exports to India were picking up, the standard Force Majeure clause was amended by the Ministry of Defence in 2016 to the effect that the acts of the government or any state agency of the seller country which may affect the discharge of the seller’s obligation under the contract shall not be treated as Force Majeure. Hopefully, no need will arise to test the efficacy of this clause.

Regardless of how the issue gets settled, it would be naive to dismiss offhand the notion that the way the situation is unfolding will not reinforce some of the old scepticism about over-reliance on import of arms. It is important to pick up the early signs, if there are any, of the insidious influence of this disruptive development on the politico-bureaucratic thinking in India and take effective steps to neutralise it. This requires recognition of what compromises each partner can make.

What is the bottom line for India? With a large proportion of its inventory being of Russian origin, it is axiomatic that India can ill-afford to have ongoing contracts for supply of equipment, spares and other services stalled because of contractual default on its part. Nor will it serve India’s defence objectives to hold back any purchases from Russia till the Act remains in force or completely sever defence ties with Russia which, according to a media report, is perhaps what the US wants.2 The same report also makes a mention of the American concern that India may operate US equipment alongside Russian equipment. This cannot be a compelling reason why India must make a choice between US and Russian equipment, since this concern has not hampered the sale of defence equipment by the US to India so far. There is no reason why it should be of concern now, unless the issue is being raised to mount pressure on India to sign the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) and other agreements. If that indeed is the case, it may not work as India may not want to be seen to be succumbing to any pressure on this count.

Many US lawmakers and top officials have been saying that India should be exempted from the sanctions mandated by CAATSA. While this is indeed welcome, the resolution to the present predicament should not be premised solely on the consideration that the imposition of sanctions on Indian entities would hurt US business interests in India or that it would impede the process of weaning India away from Russia. Mutual and shared interests must form the basis of an enduring solution to the present quandary, which requires recognition of the fact that new US partners like India – and indeed old NATO partners like Turkey which too is poised to go ahead with acquisition of the S-400 Triumf air defence system – need to maintain military relations with both the US and Russia.

Respect for mutual interest also demands that India takes no precipitate action at the present juncture. Viewed in this perspective, it is hard to understand the purpose of seeking the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) at this juncture for the procurement of the S-400 Triumf air defence system. Even if the sanction were to be accorded, the deal will remain stuck as India will not be able to make even the advance payment as required under the contract without facing the prospect of being sanctioned by the United States. The move will thus achieve little except for being seen as an attempt to cock a snook at the United States.

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

About the author:
*Amit Cowshish
is a former Financial Advisor (Acquisition), Ministry of Defence and a former Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:

However Tenuous and Whatever His Motives, Trump’s Summit Agreement With Kim Is Praiseworthy – OpEd

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The summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was pretty much all symbols and no solid content — basically it’s an agreement to talk further with plenty of wiggle room for either side to back out later. But that said it was a striking departure from the gutless and arrogant refusal of 11 prior presidents to make any move towards ending the state of war between the US and North Korea during the 65 years since fighting ended in the bloody Korean War with an armistice in place back in 1953.

Kudos to both Trump and Kim for that.

Odds are that even if North Korea doesn’t get rid of its nuclear weapons, ultimately the US will have to grin and bear it because South Korea looks ready to sign, either on a four-party basis with the US and China, or bilaterally on its own with just North Korea, a peace treaty ending one of the last relics of the Cold War that began with the end of World War II and the division of Korea, Vietnam and Germany into two parts.

If the pro-peace president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, were to sign a peace agreement with North Korea’s Kim, it would eliminate any justification for the US continuing to keep military bases in South Korea, where 32,000 US soldiers are still stationed as a “trip-wire” in the event of an invasion from the north. At that point the US would lose all leverage for trying to pressure North Korea to eliminate its recently developed nuclear bomb arsenal.

The idea of a neutral Korean peninsula with no US bases is surely horrifying to the neo-conservative strategists of Russia and China containment like Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton, a chicken-hawk war monger who’s never met a war he didn’t like or even promote. But for Koreans and the broader peoples of Asia, getting the US out of Korea would be a blessing. It would remove a crucial component of any potential US first strike against China — the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile launch systems recently installed in South Korea on the bogus justification that they are guarding against North Korean missiles. (Any North Korean missiles aimed at South Korea would necessarily have low-altitude trajectories because of the short distance to target, and would not be vulnerable to THAAD missiles.)

Furthermore, once North and South Korea signed a peace treaty, it would eliminate any ratioale for the still-in-force UN Security Council Resolution 82, a measure which authorized the US-led UN defense of South Korea in 1950 and which has continued to provide the fig leaf of legal cover for America’s continuing colonial domination of South Korea ever since. Even if the US were to continue to veto moves to revoke that Security Council resolution, it would be seen as meaningless with the war officially over.

Surely this was not the intention of President Trump in meeting with Kim, but let him have his moment. Because he desperately needed something positive in the foreign affairs realm to show for his now bumptious, goof-ball 18-month-old presidency, he had to reach an agreement of some kind with North Korea, and now he’s gotten that. The agreement is going to turn out well, too, even if not the way he’d have intended. If President Moon now nominates him and Kim for the Nobel Peace Prize, as he has suggested, they’ll deserve it at least as much as war criminal Henry Kissinger (awarded the prize in 1973 jointly with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho who unlike Kissinger at least had the decency to decline it) and Israel’s Menachim Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat — and surely far more than his predecessor Barack Obama, who proceeded, upon collecting his medal, to ramp up the Afghanistan War yet again, to invade Libya, overthrowing the government there, to meddle in Syria and threaten that country with a missile blitz, and to launch more deadly drone and Special Forces targeted murder attacks against people in numerous sovereign nations than the Bush/Cheney administration ever did.

Corporate Democrats like ex-VP and likely future presidential candidate Joe Biden and Sen. Diane Feinstein, along with hardline neo-conservatives like Sen. John McCain and Bolton can rant that Trump has told out US imperial interests. They clearly prefer an eternal state of war between the US and South Korea, since it’s good for the US war machine and for the arms industry that feeds off it. But endless that endless war policy, whether in Europe, Asia or the Middle East, hasn’t been good for anyone else, abroad or here at home in the US.

Here’s hoping Trump manages to keep his radical right-wing advisors like Bolton from blowing up the deal he’s struck with Kim, and that Moon succeeds in signing a real peace treaty with his northern neighbor that can eventually lead to the reunification of the Korean people, as happened in the early 1990s Germany and after the defeat of the US military in Vietnam in the 1970s.

And here’s hoping too that Trump can take inspiration from this first success and move forward towards a rapprochement between the US and Russia. The last thing the world needs is to see the start of a new missile race [1] between these two nuclear-armed superpowers to produce swarms of hypersonic nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, each on hair-trigger alert and virtually unstoppable once launched at their targets, as increasingly appears to be the next crazy idea on the agenda of both countries’ military establishments. (This new race is itself fallout from the ill-thought-out Bush/Cheney decision, continued by the Obama administration, to pull the US out of the Reagan-era anti-ballistic missile treaty negotiated with the Russians, which has lead to justified Russian fears tat the US is working towards obtaining a first-strike capability against Moscow.)

If only the narcissistic Trump could discover how much better and more ego-satisfying would be the adulation he’d receive, not just domestically but globally, for ending America’s war-mongering ways, and for defusing animosities between this country and both Russia and China, than are the raucus cheers of yahoos for his tub-thumping racist and misogynist MAGA outbursts and actions. Then he might improbably go down in history as a great president instead of as a buffoon and a charlatan.

Sadly, knowing we’re dealing with a mentally unbalanced individual with a troubling fondness for military parades staged in his honor, I’m not expecting that to happen Still, that’s no reason to deride what he’s accomplished with North Korea.


Not Everything Trump Says On Trade Is Wrong – OpEd

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Donald Trump’s tendency to make things up as he goes along naturally prompts a strong reaction from people who try to approach issues in a serious way. But serious people can sometimes get carried away in this reaction.

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact checker, got a bit carried away in trying to set readers straight on Trump’s bizarre claim we have a $100 billion trade deficit with Canada. (We do have a trade deficit, but it is closer to $20 billion.) In his Fact Check piece, Kessler asserts:

“If overall trade increases between nations, people in each country gain, no matter the size of the trade deficit.”

This is not necessarily true. Let me go through two cases, one in which the countries are below full employment and one in which they are at full employment.

Suppose in the first case one country, let’s say Denmark, decided to subsidize $100 billion of exported cars to the United States, displacing $100 billion of domestic production. The immediate effect of the increased imports from Denmark is a loss of output and employment in the United States.

In principle, the Danes have another $100 billion to buy goods and services from the United States, but suppose they don’t like anything we sell. In the textbook story, they would dump their $100 billion on world currency markets, driving down the value of the dollar. This would make US goods and services relatively cheaper, thereby causing us to export more and import less, possibly fully offsetting the $100 billion in increased imports.

But suppose the evil Danish central bank used these dollars to buy up US government bonds, as many countries have done over the last two decades. This would keep the dollar from falling. The purchase of US bonds would have some effect in lowering US interest rates, but this would be just like the Fed’s quantitative easing policy. The lower interest rates would boost demand, but not nearly enough to offset the $100 billion increase in our trade deficit.

So, in this below full employment story we end up with a situation where trade has increased by $100 billion, but the US is left with lower employment and output. It sure looks like it has been hurt by more trade.

Now let’s take a full employment story. Suppose to get even with Trump for calling him weak, Justin Trudeau decides to open his doors to US medical patients. Taking advantage of the lower fees paid to physicians in Canada, he offers major surgeries for half of the price that is charged in the US. He also arranges a service whereby MRIs and other scans can be quickly read by Canadian radiologists for less than half the price charged in the US.

This is a case where most people in the United States will clearly be winners since they will get lower cost health care. However, US doctors will be big losers, since they will see their wages depressed as the demand for physicians in the United States plummets.

In this story, we could certainly say that the country as a whole gained and there were large numbers of winners, but the doctors would be correct in arguing that they were big losers. Now, we could restructure the picture to have Trudeau subsidizing the export of manufactured goods to the US, displacing large numbers of manufacturing workers.

This would drive down the pay of manufacturing workers, and because manufacturing is a source of relatively well-paying employment for less-educated workers, this could mean that non-college educated workers more generally are losers. This argument has been drawn out more carefully by Paul Krugman and Josh Bivens. In this case, most of the workforce would end up as losers, even if the country as a whole may still gain since the minority of winners benefit more than the losers lose.

So here are two clear stories where more trade does not necessarily imply that the country gains. (There are also issues about trade possibly foreclosing the development of specific industries, but we’ll leave that one out for now.) This doesn’t imply that Trump has a remotely coherent strategy in his battles with our trading partners or that we are likely to end up better off as a result, but there are some legitimate issues with our patterns of trade even if Trump may have no idea what they are.

This column originally appeared on Beat the Press.

Fitch Affirms South Africa’s Rating Outlook As Stable

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South Africa’s government has noted Fitch’s decision to affirm South Africa’s long term foreign and local currency credit ratings at ‘BB+’, and maintain a stable outlook.

In a statement released by National Treasury on Friday, government said the proactive steps it is taking towards economic growth are starting to bear fruit.

“Collaboration with government, business, labour and civil society continues to yield the necessary interventions to positioning South Africa as an attractive investment destination, while also creating an enabling policy environment for inclusive economic growth,” Treasury said.

According to Fitch, “the affirmation and stable outlook takes into consideration signs of recovering governance standards and the prospect of a mild cyclical recovery but also indications that financial challenges at key state-owned enterprises (SOEs) remain substantial and the fact that government debt has yet to stabilise”.

The agency believes that changes in the political leadership following the African National Congress electoral conference in December 2017 have led to a significant improvement in economic confidence. Despite a sharp contraction in the first quarter, Fitch expects Gross Domestic Product growth to recover to 1.7% in 2018 and 2.4% in 2019. These forecasts are higher than the 2018 Budget assumptions.

Fitch said the ratings are supported by a favourable government debt structure, deep local capital markets, a healthy banking sector and strong institutions. Furthermore, South Africa’s institutions, including the judiciary, South African Reserve Bank and National Treasury, have shown significant resilience over the last years, despite the serious challenges they encountered.

Government response

The Government said it fully recognises Fitch’s assessment of challenges and opportunities the country faces in the immediate to long term.

“Concluding critical policies, such as the Mining Charter, remains important for providing policy certainty in the country. Tangible progress has been achieved on most of the 14 Confidence Boosting Measures and this is expected to translate into improved investor confidence.

“Furthermore, the recent changes in governance in critical SOEs and the 2018 Budget, which outlined decisive and specific policy measures to strengthen the fiscal framework, are expected to improve the investment climate of South Africa,” said Treasury.

Government is also prioritising its plans for inclusive growth. The agenda for structural reforms that are much needed to raise South Africa’s long-term economic growth is underpinned by the following National Development Plan priorities: raising employment through faster economic growth;  Improving the quality of education, skills development and innovation; and building the capacity of the State.

Putin Now Defends Orthodox Church The Way Soviets Did Official Atheism – OpEd

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“Russia is returning to the times of the repressive policy of state atheism,” Aleksandr Soldatov argues, but now the Putin regime is defending not official atheism as the Soviets did for 60 years but rather official Orthodoxy as defined by the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Moscow commentator draws that conclusion on the basis of Moscow’s attacks in recent weeks on various independent Orthodox groups including the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church who are officially registered but differ from the Moscow Patriarchate on many issues (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2018/06/14/76801-pod-katkom-protoierey).

Soldatov details what Russian siloviki have done against this group; but his article is important because of his larger point: Putin is not simply being repressive against various religions such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims but he is following the very same pattern the Soviets did, choosing one, penetrating it with security officers, and oppressing everyone else.

Most commentaries on the state of religious life in Russia under Putin have acknowledged that various groups are in trouble, but they have tended to treat each of them in isolation, looking for particular reasons why Putin is taking the repressive actions he has been taking.

Soldatov’s article is a reminder that Putin is not opposing this or that religion for specific reasons, although he may make tactical choices, but rather seeking to repress all groups that are not totally loyal to him, that is, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, in just the same way the Soviets did with official atheism.

It’s Trump’s Party Now – Analysis

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By Seema Sirohi

The shift in the Republican Party towards hardline conservatism started with Donald Trump’s campaign, it consolidated with his election as president and less than half way through his term, Trump has captured the party’s soul where no one dare question him, leave alone oppose him.

That it is now Trump’s Party is a truth widely acknowledged by Republican stalwarts, seasoned senators, party managers, narrative creators, message makers, spin doctors and deflated opponents. All it takes is a tweet from Trump to kill a candidate’s chances at the polls.

The dust-up at the G-7 Summit in Canada where Trump berated allies on “unfair” trade practices and then withdrew support for the communiqué came from a complete command over the Republican Party and his political base. He was merely delivering on his agenda and then some by talking tough on trade.

The swagger – Trump was never short in that department – is sustained by real support. Religious conservatives are enthralled that his vice president is Mike Pence, an evangelical, and that Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an issue close to the hearts of many evangelicals. It was a promise other US presidents had made but never kept.

Trump has the freedom to disrupt, he can even suggest that Russia should once again join the G-7 as he did at the recent summit to the collective gasp of foreign policy elites.

He has busted the Beltway orthodoxy on foreign policy like none other – whether at the behest of powerful donors as in the case of withdrawing from the Iran deal or moving his embassy to Jerusalem or because he wants his own history-making deal with North Korea is immaterial. “It’s about attitude,” as he said.

The Republicans who had criticised the president in the past lost, incumbents who had never seen defeat were in the dustbin and those who had dared to be “Never Trumpers” had no hope at all. Candidates vied for who can be more pro-Trump because the Republican political base is solidly behind him.

The midterms will be a referendum on Trump and the Republican majority in the House and the Senate but before that thousands of Republicans and Democrats will fight for their party’s nomination to be on the ballot in November.

Congressman Mark Sanford, a vocal Trump critic, lost his South Carolina seat in a bitter Republican primary mainly because Trump decided to intervene against him at the eleventh hour by reminding voters about Sanford’s extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman in 2009. “He is better off in Argentina,” said Trump less than three hours before polls closed.

Trump endorsed Katie Arrington, who had made Sanford’s criticism of Trump the focus of her campaign. She won even though the presidential intervention in her favour had come so late. Such is Trump’s political muscle.

Another indication where the Trump party is headed was the victory of Corey Stewart in the Virginia primaries. Stewart has openly defended pro-slavery or Confederate symbols and white supremacists. He will face Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Senator Tim Kaine in November.

Traditional Republicans were embarrassed and shocked at Stewart’s victory but they have no strategy to take the party back from the fringe, apart from bowing out.

Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, summed it up well this week. “We are in a strange place. It’s becoming a cult-ish thing, isn’t it? It’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of, purportedly, of the same party,” he bemoaned to reporters.

Corker initially had supported Trump and worked as an interpreter of his maladies on Capitol Hill. But he began moving away last year over a host of issues, including Trump’s gratuitous insults of his own cabinet members, treatment of NATO allies, incendiary rhetoric on North Korea, tax and trade policies and overall conduct which the senator found unbecoming of a president.

Over time Corker became critical, sometimes pointedly so. He accused Trump of “debasing” the country and famously called the White House an “adult day care center.”

This week Corker failed miserably to get his own party’s support to allow a vote on his proposal giving the Congress the power to accept or reject Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminium on national security grounds. The tariffs have pitched the US against its oldest allies.

“I would bet that 95% of the people on this (Republican) side of the aisle support intellectually this amendment… But, no, no no! Gosh, ‘We might poke the bear’ is the language I’ve been hearing in the hallways… The president might get upset with us,” Corker railed on the floor of the Senate.

But it’s also important to note why Corker suddenly found his voice – he is retiring and can afford to speak his mind. Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives and once the young star, has declared he wont run again. Unstated is the fact that he can’t bridge the divide within his own party, leave alone be effective vis-à-vis the Democrats.

Senator John McCain, a Republican stalwart who has harshly criticized Trump, is fighting brain cancer and will not be coming back to Capitol Hill.

The traditional leadership of the Republican Party is in retreat. Trump wore them down in just over 500 days. And there are more than 900 days to go.

Researchers Pinpoint New Subtype Of Prostate Cancer

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Researchers led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have identified a new subtype of prostate cancer that occurs in about 7 percent of patients with advanced disease.

The subtype is characterized by loss of the gene CDK12. It was found to be more common in metastatic prostate cancer compared to early stage tumors that had not spread.

Tumors in which CDK12 was inactivated were responsive to immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy treatment that has overall had limited success in prostate cancer.

“Because prostate cancer is so common, 7 percent is a significant number. The fact that immune checkpoint inhibitors may be effective against this sub-type of prostate cancer makes it even more significant. This is an exciting prospect for patients who have CDK12 alterations and may benefit from immunotherapy,” says senior study author Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology.

Researchers at the Rogel Cancer Center will lead a multisite clinical trial to assess checkpoint inhibitors as a treatment for metastatic prostate cancer with CDK12 loss.

In this study, published in Cell, researchers looked at DNA and RNA sequencing data from 360 tumor samples from patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. This is an aggressive, advanced form of the disease in which the cancer has spread throughout the body and no longer responds to traditional hormone-based treatments. Tumor samples were from U-M’s Mi-ONCOSEQ program and from samples collected through the Stand Up to Cancer-Prostate Cancer Foundation Dream Team.

Researchers found loss of CDK12 in only about 1 percent of early prostate cancer samples. That jumped to 7 percent for metastatic cancer, which indicates a more-aggressive form of the disease.

“It suggests that those early stage patients who have CDK12 loss are the ones who will develop metastatic disease. This could be a harbinger in early cancer,” Chinnaiyan says.

By following the mechanism of how CDK12 loss impacts the cell, researchers found a process in which cells create neoantigens that are foreign to the immune system. This boosts immune-fighting T-cells, which may explain why these patients benefit from immune checkpoint blockade.

This suggests that a precision medicine approach to prostate cancer could help better direct immunotherapy treatment. It could also explain why some prostate cancer patients have had exceptional responses to immunotherapy while the treatment has had lackluster results overall in prostate cancer.

The team had first recognized a possible role for CDK12 in a 2015 paper that evaluated the genomic landscape of advanced prostate cancers. CDK12 has also been linked to ovarian cancer.

Little is known about CDK12 on a molecular basis but scientists do know that CDK12 regulates several critical cellular processes and is essential for development. Eliminating it is likely lethal to most cell types. So why can tumors lose CDK12 and survive? Researchers suspect cancer must inherit something that allows it to grow in the face of CDK12 loss. More study is needed to understand this.

“This very promising study suggests that CDK12 loss may be a biomarker for identifying prostate cancer patients who may respond to checkpoint immunotherapy,” says Howard Soule, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief science officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. “The Prostate Cancer Foundation is proud to have funded this team, which continues to make foundational strides in identifying actionable genomic mutations in prostate cancer and using this information to identify new classes of precision treatments that can be used to improve the lives of men with prostate cancer.”

New Method Makes Weather Forecasts Right As Rain

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Meteorologists have known for some time that rainfall forecasts have flaws, as failure to take into account factors such as evaporation can affect their accuracy. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have developed a system that improves the precision of forecasts by accounting for evaporation in rainfall estimates, particularly for locations 30 miles or more from the nearest National Weather Service radar.

“Right now, forecasts are generally not accounting for what happens to a raindrop after it is picked up by radar,” said Neil Fox, associate professor of atmospheric science in the School of Natural Resources at MU. “Evaporation has a substantial impact on the amount of rainfall that actually reaches the ground. By measuring that impact, we can produce more accurate forecasts that give farmers, agriculture specialists and the public the information they need.”

Fox and doctoral student Quinn Pallardy used dual-polarization radar, which sends out two radar beams polarized horizontally and vertically, to differentiate between the sizes of raindrops. The size of a raindrop affects both its evaporation rate and its motion, with smaller raindrops evaporating more quickly but encountering less air resistance. By combining this information with a model that assessed the humidity of the atmosphere, the researchers were able to develop a tracing method that followed raindrops from the point when they were observed by the radar to when they hit the ground, precisely determining how much evaporation would occur for any given raindrop.

Researchers found that this method significantly improved the accuracy of rainfall estimates, especially in locations at least 30 miles from the nearest National Weather Service radar. Radar beams rise higher into the atmosphere as they travel, and as a result, radar that does not account for evaporation becomes less accurate at greater distances because it observes raindrops that have not yet evaporated.

“Many of the areas that are further from the radar have a lot of agriculture,” Fox said. “Farmers depend on rainfall estimates to help them manage their crops, so the more accurate we can make forecasts, the more those forecasts can benefit the people who rely on them.”

Fox said more accurate rainfall estimates also contribute to better weather forecasts in general, as rainfall can affect storm behavior, air quality and a variety of other weather factors.

Distant Moons May Harbor Life

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We’ve all heard about the search for life on other planets, but what about looking on other moons?

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern Queensland have identified more than 100 giant planets that potentially host moons capable of supporting life. Their work will guide the design of future telescopes that can detect these potential moons and look for tell-tale signs of life, called biosignatures, in their atmospheres.

Since the 2009 launch of NASA’s Kepler telescope, scientists have identified thousands of planets outside our solar system, which are called exoplanets. A primary goal of the Kepler mission is to identify planets that are in the habitable zones of their stars, meaning it’s neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water — and potentially life — to exist.

Terrestrial (rocky) planets are prime targets in the quest to find life because some of them might be geologically and atmospherically similar to Earth. Another place to look is the many gas giants identified during the Kepler mission. While not a candidate for life themselves, Jupiter-like planets in the habitable zone may harbor rocky moons, called exomoons, that could sustain life.

“There are currently 175 known moons orbiting the eight planets in our solar system. While most of these moons orbit Saturn and Jupiter, which are outside the Sun’s habitable zone, that may not be the case in other solar systems,” said Stephen Kane, an associate professor of planetary astrophysics and a member of the UCR’s Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. “Including rocky exomoons in our search for life in space will greatly expand the places we can look.”

The researchers identified 121 giant planets that have orbits within the habitable zones of their stars. At more than three times the radii of the Earth, these gaseous planets are less common than terrestrial planets, but each is expected to host several large moons.

Scientists have speculated that exomoons might provide a favorable environment for life, perhaps even better than Earth. That’s because they receive energy not only from their star, but also from radiation reflected from their planet. Until now, no exomoons have been confirmed.

“Now that we have created a database of the known giant planets in the habitable zone of their star, observations of the best candidates for hosting potential exomoons will be made to help refine the expected exomoon properties. Our follow-up studies will help inform future telescope design so that we can detect these moons, study their properties, and look for signs of life,” said Michelle Hill, an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Queensland who is working with Kane and will join UCR’s graduate program in the fall.


SCO Summit: India’s Entry Opens New Chapter To Rewrite Sino-India Relation, Albeit Modi’s Refusal To BRI – Analysis

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Chinese media were euphoric with the success of 18th summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) , held in Qingdao, China, considering that it would write a new chapter for India-China relation. India and Pakistan participated as new members of the organization in the summit. Global Times , the noted Chinese media, extolled the summit, saying “ China, India ready to deepen their economic ties”.

Chinese hailing surprised many against the backdrop that Indian Prime Minister escalated trust deficit in the wake of supporting China’s BRI ( Belt and Road Initiative). The summit was a great chance for China to enhance multilateral cooperation among BRI member countries, according to the Chinese media. None other than India out of eight members was against BRI. Other member countries reaffirmed their support to the initiative for a greater work to expand the economic connectivity. Instead, Mr Modi was emphatic to built up trust before the BRI takes place.

Contrary to Chinese heightening of hope, Indian media remained reticent. They wondered how the hopes would brighten for better economic connectivity through BRI, without dwarfing the trust deficit. Since past two years, India and China wades into a tumultuous phase. A series of disputes erupted during these periods. Of these , Doklam stand- off was the worst, which deepened the trust deficit.

Nevertheless, though Doklam stand-off cast a deep shadow on bilateral relation, the events in the subsequent periods rejigged the hopes for rapprochement of the relation. BRICS summit in September 2017, visit of India’s new foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhle to China – instrumental to mitigate Doklam ire, and Modi’s informal summit with Xi Jinping added some fresh air to rework for better relation between the two countries. Even then, the trust deficit reeled underneath.

The volte- face of Chinese media for re-energizing the relation is laudable, despite a big disparity exists between the two countries in terms of economic size. Chinese economy is five times bigger than India.

By virtue of faster growth, China emerged the biggest trading partner of India. The growth in the trade did not confine to only trading activities. It extended further , when China has become the new game changer of India’s manufacturing activities

Till 2015, a few were engaged in manufacturing of mobile phones in the country after Nokia pulled down its India shutter. Today, more than half of mobile phone demand is met by domestically manufactured products. Chinese makers were instrumental to this manufacturing growth. Chinese brands like Gionee, Huawee, Oppo, Vivo, One Plus, Coolpad – have established their manufacturing facilities in India.

These changes in the bilateral relation – from trading to manufacturing activities – exhibit a new era of relation, amidst a long political bitterness between the two countries. China emerged the architect in transforming manufacturing landscape of India from resource base to technology oriented component base industry. China emerged the second pioneer , after Japan, in bringing the structural changes in the manufacturing dynamism in the country . In this context, China should have a pat on the back its contribution to the Indian economy. Japan was the pioneer in development of automobile industry in the country.

However, the other side of the Chinese cooperation cannot be overlooked. It is apathetic that China dragged India into a big trade deficit. Nearly, 39 percent of the trade deficit in 2017-18 was due to Chinese export to India.

To this end, the analysts were agog with the ideas as how best India can counter-balance the trade deficit by exporting more or work together with China. In this context, Chinese think tanks were upbeat for a new pattern of economic cooperation, while relegating the factor of wide disparity between the two countries’ size of economy.

According to Pangol Institution –a public policy think tank in China – there are three similarities in the advantages of India and China. They are : a large and low cost labour force, a big domestic market and a large pool of human capital for supply of science and engineering talents. The think tank is of the opinion that while China has properly utilized these three assets to develop its industry from labour intensive and export oriented base to cutting –age high valued technology oriented industries like integrated circuits, pharmaceuticals and aviation, India utilized them for development of highly competitive technology and capital intensive industries like pharmaceuticals and IT industries. As a result, even though progress was made for intermediate level component base industries, like cellphones and automobiles, they lag behind in terms of international competitiveness and industrial eco-system. At this point, China can be a role player in improving the Indian industrialization, the think tank urged. In this process, a platform for new trust can be built up, it asserted.

Further, the recent Sino-USA trade war may turn boon to enhance business relation between India and China. Scope enlarged for India to export more products , such as cotton, soybean meal and maize, according to Indian exporters. The huge market for cotton in China can be tapped by India after Chinese retaliation to USA by imposing high tariff. Of the 5 million bales of cotton imported yearly by China, 40 percent are imported from USA. There is no import duty on cotton import into China from India.

In the race of retaliation, China is more weak. USA is more important to China than China to USA. China is an export base economy and not vice versa. Given this and China’s arrogance for the tit-for-tat actions, the current US- China trade tiff is unlikely to be sorted out in near term. To this end, chances for reworking for a better India-China relation resurrect after India enters SCO. The two multilateral institutions – BRICS and SCO – can act palatable grounds for misgivings and distrust to be sorted out through negotiation, instead of military tussles. Besides, Mr Modi’s aggressive attempt for informal meeting with Mr Xi Jinping supposedly unveiled both sides’ intents for betterment of the relation.

Views expressed are personal.

Russia, Saudis Agree To Request Increase In OPEC+ Oil Output

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(RFE/RL) — Russia and Saudi Arabia will ask OPEC to increase oil output by 1.5 million barrels a day in the third quarter of 2018 to counter fears that U.S. sanctions on Iran could disrupt supplies.

Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak on June 16 said the move would begin on July 1 and initially only be for the upcoming third quarter, with a reevaluation to be done in early autumn.

“In September, we will review the situation in the market and decide the future course,” Novak said.

OPEC, Russia, and other noncartel nations — the so-called OPEC+ format — decided in 2016 to slash output by 1.8 million barrels a day to push prices up following a long slump caused by crude production glut.

Premium oil prices in early 2016 had plummeted below $30 a barrel. But after recovering and stabilizing around $50 a barrel in 2017, they soared this year to as high as $80 a barrel in London trading.

Potential U.S. sanctions on Iran and oil-output disruptions in crisis-hit Venezuela have led to concerns that prices could rise too far, thus encouraging other manufactures, such as shale-oil producers in the United States, to step up their output.

OPEC is set to meet on June 22 in Vienna to decide the future of the 2016 agreement, with Russia, Kazakhstan, and other non-OPEC partners due to join the meeting a day later.

Russia and Saudi Arabia on June 14 said they had agreed to expand their cooperation on oil and
gas matters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and the two nations’ energy ministers reached the agreement in Moscow before the two countries’ soccer teams vied in the first World Cup match, officials said.

At Least 26 Dead As Blast Hits Meeting Of Taliban And Afghan Forces

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At least 26 people were killed as an explosion rocked a meeting of Taliban and Afghan security forces during an unprecedented ceasefire for the Eid holiday. Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has claimed responsibility.

Casualties include Taliban members, Afghan security forces, and civilians, Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor of Nangarhar, said.

IS has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, according to the group’s Amaq news agency, which confirmed that it targeted “a gathering of Afghan forces.”

Earlier, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that “the incident has nothing to do with the Taliban,” adding that “our members suffered casualties.”

The timing of the bombing in the eastern city of Nangarhar appears to be significant. On Saturday, Taliban members entered the Afghan capital, Kabul urging people to come forward and take selfies with them. The unusual move reportedly occurred elsewhere in the country, as photos and videos on social media showed Taliban fighters giving hugs to locals and Afghan forces across several provinces.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed the nation, saying the truce between the government and the Taliban will be extended.

The government freed at least 46 Taliban prisoners amid the ceasefire, the president’s office confirmed, as cited by Reuters. Ghani’s office urged the militant group to also extend their ceasefire, saying that the government is waiting for their response.

Earlier in June, the Taliban made a surprising statement announcing the suspension of hostilities with the government forces for three days to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid. This is the first time that the Taliban has ever extended an offer of this kind to Kabul.

The ceasefire came two months after the group announced its annual spring offensive, as they vowed to target the “American invaders.” Heavy clashes repeatedly broke out across a number of Afghan provinces, with casualties inflicted among Afghan soldiers and police officers.

The militants attacked a number of cities across the country, seizing large quantities of weapons and equipment.

Ansarullah Claims Israel Bombs Yemen’s West Coast

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While fighting between the Yemeni defending forces and the Saudi-led mercenaries attacking Yemen’s western port city of Hudaydah has flared up in recent days, a member of Houthi Ansarullah movement said Israeli fighter jets have carried out airstrikes on the western coast of Yemen.

Zaifullah al-Shami, a member of the Ansarullah movement’s political bureau, told Al-Alam News on Saturday that Israeli warplanes have bombed the western coasts of Yemen, where the Houthi forces are fighting off a Saudi-led military coalition that tries to capture the strategic port of Hudaydah with its mercenary fighters.

Dismissing reports that the airport of Hudaydah has fallen into the hands of the Saudi-led coalition, Shami said the invaders have suffered heavy casualties and have been forced to withdraw from the airport as far as four kilometers.

The invaders are incapable of continuing the war in the battlefield, he noted, saying the Yemeni Army troops and the popular committee forces have managed to cut the invaders’ access route to several regions in the western areas.

He finally noted that the aggressors have been entangled in a war of attrition in Yemen.

Hudaydah International Airport is on the south side of the city, which is home to some 600,000. So far, fighting has yet to enter Hudaydah’s downtown or its crucial port.

The warplanes and warships of Saudi-led coalition have been pounding Hudaydah since Wednesday to seize the strategic port, which is controlled by the Houthi forces.

The port is the main route for essential goods into Yemen, where 22 million people are in need of humanitarian aid and 8.4 million face starvation, according to the United Nations, which says the figure could reach 10 million by year end.

Aid agencies have said the battle may exacerbate an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.

The UN has warned that in a worst-case scenario, the battle could cost up to 250,000 lives and cut off aid supplies to millions of people.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Sessions Says The Bible Justifies Family Separation: Does It?

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By Courtney Grogan

The Trump administration has pointed to the Bible in justifying its “zero-tolerance immigration policy,” which includes the separation of immigrant children from their parents.

According to one Catholic theology professor, though, scripture has much more to say on the topic of immigration.

On June 14, Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred to Romans 13 in a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” said Sessions.

When asked about the attorney general’s statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders provided further Biblical interpretation.

“I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is, actually, repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” said Sanders in a press conference on June 14.

The statement comes at a time when many Catholic bishops have been critical of the current U.S. practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the border. On June 5, the United Nations condemned the practice as “a serious violation of the rights of the child.”

“The Attorney General cites a famous passage in the theological tradition,” said theology professor Dr. Joseph Capizzi, who teaches moral theology and ethics at The Catholic University of America.

In the New American Bible translation, Romans 13:1 reads, “Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God.”

“Essentially Paul is encouraging those who follow Christ to have a disposition of respect to those in political authority because, in essence, they are there by providence,” Capizzi told CNA. “It does not, by any means, license a blanket support for all laws that are made by those in political authority.”

“The obvious connection here for Catholics is the way we think about abortion,” explained Capizzi, who said that Catholics should not simply follow abortion laws because they are the law, but seek to change them because they are not moral laws.

Scripture is “legitimate as a source of wisdom to draw on” in the public square, continued Capizzi, who said that the Bible can “help us inform the way we think about things, maybe to deepen or challenge certain kind of thoughts we have about politics.”

But the Bible has a lot more to say about immigration than the attorney general’s “clumsy invocation of Paul’s letter to the Romans,” he said.

“The whole story of the Hebrew Scriptures is the story of a people that has been exiled and persecuted,” Capizzi told CNA. The Israelites are wandering, stateless and homeless, and yet they understand that they are called by God to “welcome those who are strangers among them.” Scripture calls everyone, even those who are themselves migrants, to welcome the vulnerable, he said.

The U.S. bishops for years have called for comprehensive immigration reform. They have recognized the importance of national security and border protection, but have also stressed the human rights and dignity of immigrants, the need to address root causes of migration, and the importance of family unity.

Earlier this week, on June 11, Sessions released a ruling stating that domestic abuse and gang violence claims alone should not be considered grounds for asylum claims. This decision also drew strong criticism from the bishops.

“At its core, asylum is an instrument to preserve the right to life. The Attorney General’s recent decision elicits deep concern because it potentially strips asylum from many women who lack adequate protection,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston-Galveston, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, in a statement on June 13.

The cardinal also condemned family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our government has the discretion in our laws to ensure that young children are not separated from their parents and exposed to irreparable harm and trauma…Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”

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