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Pakistan: CPEC Chinese Checkmate – Analysis

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By Tushar Ranjan Mohanty*

At least six persons – among them three Chinese engineers – were injured in a suicide attack on a bus in the Dalbandin area of Chagai District in Balochistan in the morning of August 11, 2018. The bus carrying 18 Chinese engineers was being escorted by Frontier Corps (FC) troops to the Dalbandin airport from the Saindaik copper and gold mines when a suicide bomber tried to drive his explosives-laden vehicle into the bus. “The explosives-laden vehicle exploded near the bus on Quetta-Taftan Highway – and as a result three Chinese engineers, two FC soldiers and the bus driver were injured,” an unnamed Levies official stated. Saifullah Khatiran,Deputy Commissioner of Chagai District, disclosed that the engineers were working on the Saindak project, a joint venture between Pakistan and China to extract gold, copper and silver from an area close to the border.The three injured Chinese engineers were identified as Huo Xiaohu, Shi Jiangpeng and You Riwei. The suicide bomber was killed. All the Chinese engineers were later sent to Karachi.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attacksaying it was carried out “to warn China to vacate Balochistan and stop plundering its resources”.Jiand Baloch, a ‘spokesperson’ for BLA, stated, “We targeted this bus which was carrying Chinese engineers. We attacked them because they are extracting gold from our region, we won’t allow it.” In a statement issued on Twitter, the militant group identified the suicide bomber as Rehan Baloch,who died in the attack,the elder son of BLA’s ‘senior commander’ Aslam Baloch.

On February 5, 2018, a Chinese national, Chen Zhu (46), who was a top official at a shipping firm, was shot dead by unknown armed assailants in a ‘targeted’ attack at Zamzama Park in Clifton in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh.Azad Khan, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Karachi south zone) stated, “The incident appears to be [a] targeted attack, [it] doesn’t look [like] a mugging… The victim is associated with Cosco Shipping Lines Co, a Chinese shipping company. We are trying to get further details.”

While there was no claim of responsibility and the motive was not immediately clear in the February 5, 2018, attack,the ChineseGovernment had, on December 8, 2017,warned its nationals in Pakistan about plans for imminent attacks on Chinese targets there.The ChineseEmbassy in Islamabad hadstated that it had been informed that terrorists were planning “a series of attacks soon” against Chinese nationals:

“The embassy alerts all Chinese organisations and citizens in Pakistan to stay vigilant, safeguard personal security, reduce time spent outside and avoid going to crowded places as much as possible.”

The Dalbandin suicide attack was the first of its kind in the history of the Baloch insurgency, when a suicide bomber was used in an attack to target the Chinese in Balochistan. The Province is at the heart of the USD 62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a massive series of projects that includes a network of highways, railways and energy infrastructure spanning the entire country.CPEC is a flagship project in China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Nevertheless, the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing claimed thatBaloch militant organisations were no longer a threat to the CPEC, in an interview to BBC Urdu on February 2, 2018, arguing, “If they [Baloch militants] are true Pakistanis, they should work in the interest of Pakistan”. He also hadasserted that Gwadar Port would soon become one of the world’s trading hubs, as the security situation in Pakistan had improved to a large extent over the past few years.Yao Jing also expressed satisfaction over the security provided to about 10,000 Chinese nationals working on different CPEC projects in Pakistan, which also had some 60,000-local people employed on different jobs.

Significantly, China has reportedly been quietly holding talks with the Baloch militants for more than five years in an effort to protect the USD 62 billion worth of infrastructure projects it is financing as part of the CPEC. TheFinancial Times, citing three unnamed people with knowledge of the talks,claimed that the Chinese had been in direct contact with the Baloch insurgents, since many of the scheme’s most important projects were located in the Province.

On February 22, 2018, however, China rejected reports claiming that it has been engaged in a dialogue with Baloch separatists in a bid to secure the CPEC project. China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang, when asked about such reports, asserted,”I have never heard of such things as you mentioned.” On February 23, 2018, Pakistan alsodenied the reports that China was holding talks with Baloch insurgents to ensure the security of CPEC projects. Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson, Dr. Mohammad Faisal, said that the Chinese Foreign Ministry had already rejected this speculation, and that both the Governments were constantly in touch and working in coordination on CPEC security matters.

Talks or no talks, discontent persists among the ethnic Baloch people and groups with regard to CPEC. There was, consequently, always a persistent threat to Chinese engineers and people associated with CPEC projects from Baloch nationalists, who considerCPEC part of a ‘strategic design’ by Pakistan and China to loot Balochistan’s resources and eliminate their culture and identity.

Dubbing China a ‘great threat’ to the Baloch people, UNHRC Balochistan representative Mehran Marri argued, on August 13, 2016,

China really-really is spreading its tentacles in Balochistan very rapidly, and therefore, we are appealing to the international community. The Gwadar project is for the Chinese military. This would be detrimental to international powers, to the people’s interest, where 60 percent of world’s oil flows.So, the world has to really take rapid action in curbing China’s influence in Balochistan in particular and in Pakistan in general.

Asserting that CPEC would convert the Baloch people into minorities in their own homeland, Noordin Mengal, a human rights campaigner from Balochistan, stated that, with an influx of outsiders as a result of the project, the identity of the Baloch was being threatened.

Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, thepro-Government Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) president, asserted, on March 5, 2017, that successive rulers of the country over the preceding 70 years had given nothing to the people of Balochistan, except hunger, poverty, unemployment and lawlessness. He alleged that the rulers had deliberately kept Balochistan backward, and had never paid attention to development, depriving its people of their due rights, including their share in the natural resources of their own Province. He claimed that no development could be seen in Balochistan under the CPEC, and that this project would not benefit its people, as not a single development project had been launched in the region as part of the mega project.

Pakistan currently hosts a sizable Chinese population and the numbers are only slated to grow as the project progresses. Concern about the demographic transformation of Balochistan had been reiterated in a report by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) on December 28, 2016, which noted that, at the current and projected rate of influx of Chinese nationals into Balochistan, the native population of the area would be outnumbered by 2048.

Since the start of the ground work on CPEC, more than 39,000 Chinese have come to Pakistan over the past five years, according to official data and documents reportedon March 5, 2018.As many as 7,859 Chinese were issued visas in 2013, at the start of the CPEC projects, soon after the Nawaz Sharif Government came to power. Another 69 visas were issued in 2014; 13,268 in 2015; 6,268 in 2016; and, according to informed officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an estimated 12,287 in 2017.In addition, officials told the media that about 91,000 Chinese nationals visited Pakistan on tourist visas over this period.

Militants trying to disrupt construction of CPEC projects in Balochistan had killed 44 workers between 2014 and September 7, 2016. According to Colonel Zafar Iqbal, a spokesperson for the construction company Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), speaking on this date, “The latest figure has climbed up to 44 deaths and over 100 wounded men on CPEC projects, mainly road construction in Balochistan, which began in 2014.” Since September 7, 2016, according to theSouth Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), another 17 persons have been killed in different CPEC related projects across the province (till August 31, 2018).

The Government of Pakistan has deputed an estimated 37,000 security personnel to guard Chinese workers engaged in some 22 projects directly associated with the CPEC and another 214 related small and mega projects in Pakistan. These include 15,780 military personnel trained under the umbrella of the Special Security Division (SSD) and the Maritime Security Force (MSF). Balochistan is to get more security with the addition of 450 personnel of the MSF for coastal areas; six wings comprising 6,700 personnel of the Frontier Corps; 3,210 Police constables; and 1,320 Levies personnel to guard project routes.

Despite this,China appears to lack confidence in Pakistan’s assurance of security to all Chinese citizens, and is reportedly building a city to house half a million Chinese nationals at a cost of USD 150 million in the port city of Gwadar. According to media reports, only Chinese citizens will live in this gated zone, thus paving the way for the establishment of a Chinese colony within Pakistan. The proposed city will also be a Financial District.The China-Pak Investment Corporation has bought the 3.6-million square foot International Port City and will build a gated community for the anticipated 500,000 Chinese professionals who will be located there by 2022.

On August 20, 2018,Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan assured Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that his Government would take “strictest precautions” for the security and safety of Chinese personnel working on CPEC.Khan assured Keqiang of all help to protect projects under the CPEC, which had come under sporadic militant attacks. However, as long as, Pakistan’s all-powerful Army and civilian leadership fail to address legitimate grievances of the Baloch people, the threat to CPEC related projects in the Province will persist.

*Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management


Mexico May Legalize Heroin; Get Ready To Send In US Air Force And Marines – OpEd

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested a United States war with Mexico last week during his interview with Juan Hernandez, who Carlson introduced as having been an advisor to former Mexico President Vicente Fox.

In the interview focused on the prospect of state- or national-level legalization of heroin production in Mexico, Carlson emphatically asks his guest, “Why shouldn’t we consider it an act of aggression, an act of war, for the country that is the primary — and no one else comes close — supplier of this deadly drug into our country to consider making it easier to bring that drug here?”

Talk about an extreme warmongering approach to US foreign policy! Based on Carlson’s view, it is an act of war for Mexico’s government to not engage in a war on heroin and thus not pursue the rights violations and government power expansions that come with such prohibition policy. If the Mexico government chooses to respect the freedom of Mexicans to peacefully produce and sell a product that is in demand, Carlson seems to thinks it is fine to send in the US Marines and Air Force as a “defensive” reaction.

Ridiculously, Carlson points to overdose deaths in America to support his assessment that Mexico, by legalizing production of heroin, would be initiating war on America. The reality is that the greatest culprit for those deaths and many other dangers for drug users is the drug war being fought by local, state, and national governments in America.

Watch the complete interview here:

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Yeltsin Was Just As Much An Imperialist As Putin But Lacked Resources To Act On His Views – OpEd

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The recently declassified records of conversations between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in the 1990s show many things, but perhaps the most important is that the first post-Soviet president was just as committed an imperialist as his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin, according to Igor Eidman.

The only difference is that Yeltsin in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union had fewer resources at his disposal to pursue his imperialist dreams, the Russian commentator for Deutsche Welle says, and could only hope that allies like Clinton would give him what he could not achieve on his own (afterempire.info/2018/09/04/imperialists/).

In fact, Eidman says, “Yeltsin was just as much a crazy imperialist as have been practically all other Russian rulers over the last several centuries,” keeping alive “an insane dream about dominance in Europe.” That required them to push the Americans out of Europe and both Soviet and Russian leaders have pursued that end.

Thus, “everything Putin is doing today is hardly new. His technology of hybrid war has been applied by the Kremlin for many decades. Deniable agents from Russia under Stalin fought in Spain, Korea and China; under Brezhnev, they were in the Middle East, Vietnam and Africa; and under Yeltsin in Abkhazia, Transdniestria and Chechnya.”

Yeltsin to be sure “was not too aggressive in the international arena,” Eidman continues; but only because “he simply did not have the economic resources for carrying out an imperial policy at the international level. But judging from his conversations with Clinton, he like his predecessors very much wanted to be master of half of the world.”

Moreover, Eidman continues, “many ‘liberals’ in Yeltsin’s entourage were in essence imperialists in the same way. Chubais, for example, said with satisfaction that the Russian army had been reborn in Chechnya … and even dreamed about ‘a liberal empire.” Such attitudes, of course, killed off any chance for the emergence of democracy in Russia.”

Kavanaugh Hearings: When Law And Politics Become One – OpEd

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Most Americans believe that politics and law are separate entities. This was the position of Aristotle, who treated politics as a study in itself, and Hugo Grotius, the eminent Dutch scholar of the seventeenth century who developed the theory of international law. Not all thinkers have been so careful to distinguish the two subjects. For example, Jean Bodin, the sixteenth-century French philosopher who developed the first comprehensive doctrine of sovereignty, intermingled the two.

Americans comfortably in the Aristotle-Grotius camp should think twice about tuning in to the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which begin on September 4. The hearings will have little to do with whether Kavanaugh is qualified to sit on the High Court. He clearly is. Kavanaugh is a Yale Law School graduate, clerked on two courts of appeals and the Supreme Court, served in the White House, and has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since 2006.

The hearings will be no great search for Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy. He’s already made that clear on the evening he received the nomination: “My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”

What the hearings will be is political theater as leftist senators pepper Kavanaugh with questions in the hopes that he has a mental lapse so they can embarrass him and persuade their more moderate colleagues to vote against him.

Why such gamesmanship? It all goes back to Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy. The modern left does not want law and politics to be separate. At one time, Democrats sought change through innovative legislative programs such as FDR’s New Deal. Now they prefer to promote political and constitutional change through the courts. They have learned to do this by drawing the wrong lessons from a historic Supreme Court case.

In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court rightly held in Brown v. Board of Education that “segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race” is against the law. Brown was an extraordinary case that sought to tackle the inimitable evils of state-sponsored segregation.

Unfortunately, the left does not view Brown in this context, but instead is inspired to seek a judicial remedy in the first instance rather than attempting to persuade fellow citizens of the merit of a particular cause. In the words of Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon, after Brown, progressives began to “imagine that wise judges in black robes could cure social ills.” Professor Glendon notes that perhaps even more dangerously, Brown has motivated “many unwise judges down the line to begin to believe that they had the magic touch.”

Gerald Rosenberg, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, astutely complains that post-Brown, various causes were “hijacked by a group of elite, well-educated and comparatively wealthy lawyers who uncritically believed that rights trump politics and that successful arguing before judges is equivalent to building and sustaining political movements.” Political movements build the democratic muscle of the citizenry, whereas litigation sends the message that “important” matters should he left to the elites.

The left seeks to excoriate Kavanaugh because he does not claim the “magic touch,” and he prefers that the people and their representatives address society’s ills. In this manner, he is much like the late Antonin Scalia. “This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine,” Scalia wrote, “always accompanied … by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

For the last 60-plus years, the merger of law and politics has slowly killed the spirit of self-government. Today, issues that were once decided in state and local assemblies are controlled by the judges. The Supreme Court defines marriage, draws legislative districts, and micromanages state criminal law.

With law and politics blended, control of the High Court is a greater prize than majorities in Congress or the occupancy of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, hence the left’s desperate measures to keep a qualified jurist off the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh’s hearings will be a lesson on why law and politics should be separated and a reminder of just how much our country needs an infusion of Aristotelian wisdom.

This article appeared at and is reprinted with permission.

Italy’s Diplomacy Is Floundering In The Mediterranean – OpEd

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By Enrico Trotta

There’s no doubt that the Mediterranean Sea has played a decisive role in elevating Italy’s stature on the world stage. The Romans referred to it as “Mare Nostrum” (“Our Sea”), a rather self-explanatory term that attested to Rome’s quest for maritime dominance. Throughout the Middle Ages, Italian merchants staked generous amounts of money and energy on this maritime crossroads of civilizations, eventually dominating it for many years. The resulting emergence of the Maritime Republics (e.g. Venice, Genoa) represented the capstone of Italy’s commercial and diplomatic thrust in the Mediterranean.

In recent years, several Italian political figures urged to parlay Italy’s historical symbiosis with the Mediterranean into a leading role in the region. Former Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano asserted that Italy “knows better than any other country the language of the Mediterranean.” The term “Mare Nostrum” was dusted off by Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who stated that the Mediterranean is “a geopolitical priority” for Italy which should, therefore, “take on a leading role in the framework of an international stabilization effort” of the area.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Rome could emerge as a leading actor in the Mediterranean by successfully dealing with the migrant crisis. However, the humanitarian emergency found Italy largely ill-prepared. As the tide of migrants engulfed the country, a heated confrontation ensued between former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (who was in office when the migrant crisis began in earnest in 2015) and his major political rivals, including incumbent Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini, the leader of Euro-skeptic and once-secessionist Northern League.

Renzi made a point of helping migrants, eliciting harsh criticism from Matteo Salvini. The latter’s rising popularity eventually led Renzi to play the anti-EU card and reconsider his stance on immigration. He turned pugnacious vis-à-vis Brussels, lambasting it for leaving Rome alone in bearing the brunt of the migrant emergency. Significantly, Renzi went so far as to threaten to veto the EU’s budget.

As a result, the migrant crisis was culpably mishandled by Italy. Because the humanitarian emergency served as ammunition for political skirmishes (both domestic and against Brussels), Italy’s migration policies lacked coherence and efficacy. Such defects are best epitomized by Renzi’s about-face on immigration, prompted in large measure by the rising of the right. Furthermore, the drawn-out confrontation with the EU reduced the scope of Italy’s diplomacy in the Mediterranean, which gradually came to focus completely on immigration.

Flash-forward to August 2018. Italy’s attention is on the “Diciotti” coastguard vessel, which remained docked in Catania for days before disembarking 177 people it rescued off the island of Lampedusa. True to his tough stance on immigration, incumbent Interior Minister Matteo Salvini held off granting the vessel authorization to disembark the migrants, thus igniting a standoff involving the Italian coastguard vessel, protestors and, not surprisingly, the European Union. Eventually, all the migrants were disembarked. However, following in Renzi’s footsteps, the incumbent Italian government is now threatening to suspend EU funding should Brussels continue to overlook Rome’s calls for a more even-handed redistribution of migrants across the Union.

It is clear that Matteo Renzi and Salvini don’t stand on the same end of the political spectrum. However, when it comes to issues that involve the Mediterranean region as a whole (like the migrant emergency), they are both prone to not see the forest for the trees. Indeed, as it repeatedly feuds with Brussels, Rome fails to comprehend that dealing with immigration presupposes acting on North Africa’s festering political and economic instability.

For example, Libya is to this day a political and socio-economic basket case, crippled by an internecine war that shows no signs of abating. As a matter of fact, in July 2018 Matteo Salvini visited the country to meet Libyan deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq. However, Salvini’s visit revolved around the migrant emergency, as he called on Sarraj’s to cooperate with Rome in stemming migration influxes. Little to no mention was made to Libya’s political tribulations. No concrete economic and diplomatic measures to pacify the war-torn country were announced. Rome’s diplomatic initiative seems shortsighted mainly because, as Libyan ceasefires routinely collapse, Sarraj will likely concentrate on maintaining his grip on Tripoli rather than on containing migration. As a consequence, Italy will come away from Libya empty-handed.

Furthermore, while Rome’s dialogue with Sarraj is in place, its relations with Haftar have soured. Importantly, Rome-Tobruk relations took a major downturn when Italy’s ambassador to Libya suggested postponing the Libyan general elections scheduled for December. The Tobruk-based House of Representatives reacted vehemently, declaring Italy’s ambassador to Libya persona non grata.

Showing a better grasp of the situation, Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte attempted to steer Italy’s diplomatic focus back to one of the root causes of increased immigration: Libya’s fragmentation. In July 2018, Conte stated that Italy should act as Europe’s “main interlocutor” vis-à-vis the Libyan crisis and, to this aim, he vowed to organize an international conference on Libya focused on its stabilization. Arguably, the conference is also aimed at patching up Rome’s relations with Tobruk so to as to diversify Italy’s Tripoli-centered policy in the war-torn country.

However, as Rome has yet to deliver a roadmap of the proposed conference, Paris appears to have outpaced Italy. With an eye towards securing its oil interests in Libyan National Army-controlled Sirte Basin, Paris has not shied away from playing both sides of the fence: while supporting the UN-backed Government of National Accord, Paris aims at a working relationship with Haftar. Furthermore, Paris is aware that reaching a modus vivendi with Haftar is key to achieving another critical objective in the region: endearing itself to Egypt which, in turn, cooperates with the Tobruk-based House of Representatives to stabilize its western frontier.

Indeed, Macron’s scheme came away from the Paris summit (where, under his aegis, Sarraj and Haftar agreed to hold peaceful elections in December) as the sole credible go-between in the intractable Libyan conflict. Such diplomatic credentials might enable Paris to play a critical role in post-war Libya, whatever the winner, and promote its reconstruction along pro-France lines.

Moreover, Macron is eager to follow up the Paris summit with a France-sponsored conference on the Mediterranean, to be held in 2019. The bottom line is that, while Italy is still trapped in the Libyan labyrinth – with no fall-back position should the Tripoli-based GNA collapse – France has already moved to the next step: capitalizing on the momentum built by the Paris summit to the accelerate the emergence of a France-centered order in the Mediterranean.

Italy appears to struggle with Tunisia as well. So far in 2018, Tunisians constitute the majority of the immigrants arrived in Italy. Importantly, Tunisia’s political situation is far from consolidated, as tension between secularists and Islamists within the incumbent coalition government is building up.

Nevertheless, Italy’s diplomacy vis-à-vis Tunis appears tentative, if not bumbling. Importantly, Matteo Salvini’s undiplomatic remarks on Tunisian immigrants (“Tunisia often exports convicts”) created a stir in the North African country. Considering that Italy will attend the upcoming “Futurallia Tunisia 2018” business forum, and Salvini himself has recently pledged to spend “at least” € 1 billion to stabilize North Africa, such diplomatic missteps can only dilute Italy’s efforts in Tunisia.

While Rome’s historical heritage still garners respect throughout the Mediterranean, it is doubtful whether Italy can now be regarded as the key to the region’s stability. Of late, Italy appears to lack a farsighted outlook toward the Mediterranean, hence its inability to take the lead in constructing both collective and cogent policies designed to stabilize and pacify the region.

Significantly, Italy has limited itself to stemming the domestic repercussions of the region’s instability (principally, the influx of migrants). On the other hand, France has grasped the bigger picture. Specifically, Paris is addressing the root causes of the Mediterranean quagmire (i.e. North Africa’s economic doldrums, the fragility of its political institutions, and the protracted vacuum of power in Libya) as a means of navigating its ramifications for Europe. The added benefit of this long-term effort is the enhancement of France’s diplomatic standing in the Mediterranean. Paris is cultivating ties with both Eastern and Western Libya, while retaining its privileged position in its former colonies of Algeria, Tunisia and, Morocco. Furthermore, Paris’ flirtation with Haftar has been well-received in Cairo.

As Rome’s “Mare Nostrum” paradigm founders, the stage is being set for the emergence of a France-aligned Mediterranean order.

 

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

Controversy Over GDP Futile – OpEd

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While it is true that the high GDP growth can mean that many more people are lifted out of poverty, it does not mean equitable growth. The rich have benefited a lot from the high GDP growth under both the UPA and NDA regimes. But very few poor have risen to high positions of wealth and power during both times.

By Jayshree Sengupta

What a controversy over a small difference in GDP growth! Ministers of the ruling NDA government and the past UPA-I and UPA-II governments have been at loggerheads over who performed better. What difference does 0.9 per cent GDP growth rate (between UPA’s 8.1 per cent and 7.2 per cent of NDA) make to the common person on the street? None! Most people won’t even know the definition of GDP or Gross Domestic Product and how it is measured, leave aside who has measured it and how.

Why is the ruling NDA government so sensitive to what the GDP numbers say? Because the truth is except for a few professionals and rating agencies — no one really cares? People only care about their own well-being and the welfare of their families. Most people, however, get taken in by political slogans and high-performance promises like ‘India Shining’ or ‘Achhe Din,’ but in the end are disillusioned by the government in power. They realise that whether it is the UPA or the NDA, it is the same story with whosoever is in power.

Fortunately for India, we have an economy which is more or less on auto-pilot. As Adam Smith said, the economy works as though by an invisible hand. We have a hardworking bureaucracy and labour force and people are not bothered about holidays or getaway weekends — things that bug the West. India has a hardworking agricultural population which keeps producing food despite intolerable hardships.

To most people, their own health, children’s education, old-age security, jobs and inflation matter. We don’t have reliable data on jobs yet and so we’ll have to wait till the elections to see whether the government’s claim of creating several million jobs in the last few years is true or not because people with jobs will vote for it. Regarding education, primary education is still not up to the mark and the dropout rates have continued to be high in both UPA’s and NDA’s times. The same is the state of healthcare.

Primary healthcare remains in doldrums and the strides made by India have been in private healthcare where one has to cough up a lot of money for state-of-the-art treatment. The Modi government has initiated a health scheme (Ayushman Bharat) which promises access to healthcare for all. Whether it actually delivers what it has promised only time will tell.

All these indicators about which the common man or woman is worried about during one’s lifespan can be found in the human development index. If one looks at the improvement in it during the span of both the governments in power, it is quite shameful. The progress has been at a snail’s pace, with India ranked at 131 out of 188 countries in 2016, based on the 2015 data.

Similarly, if one takes into account the safety of women and protection of girls, India fares very poorly and is the most unsafe place for women in the world (Thomson Reuters Foundation, 2018). This has been the case under both regimes because despite high rates of GDP growth, crimes against women have continued.

High GDP growth can be wonderful if the fruits of growth are distributed evenly and the poorest are included. While it is true that the high GDP growth can mean that many more people are lifted out of poverty, it does not mean equitable growth. The rich have benefited a lot from the high GDP growth under both the regimes. We have 131 billionaires today. There is a huge concentration of wealth among a few who wield disproportionate power and clout. Their wealth is apparent in their lavish lifestyles. This has created a huge mass of aspirational Indians, but only a few ever become millionaires or billionaires. The poor have fewer chances as they are handicapped by lack of proper education, capital and connections. Very few have risen to high positions of wealth and power during both the regimes.

Corruption became a hallmark of the UPA regime and expansion of credit, given indiscriminately to people of influence. The present government has been saddled by huge NPAs and a fall in investment, as a result. But the core stimulus of an economy lies in its new investments, which fared better during the UPA times and so also gross fixed capital formation and savings. One can say that the UPA was helped by the global boom and falling oil prices, but it, too, suffered a huge current account deficit which it managed to shrink towards the end, accumulating forex reserves at a faster rate than the NDA.

Today, we need not worry about capital flight bringing the rupee down to scary levels when our forex reserves are high due to both the regimes.

Regarding the quality of life that the average person longs for, the most important is the air we breathe. Both the regimes have been unsuccessful in controlling air and water pollution. The rivers and water bodies are as polluted. The quality of public transport is below par and it forces people to go for their own vehicle which has led to traffic congestion and air pollution. Other contributors also have remained unchecked.

So what is the difference between the two regimes and is this controversy worth giving a thought? Also, GDP growth does not measure so many things such as the growing intolerance of the present regime towards minorities and political dissent. Similarly, the policy paralysis of UPA-II is not reflected in its higher GDP growth.

This article originally appeared in The Tribune.

Coastal Strip In Brazil Sheds New Light On Early Farming

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Humans may have been cultivating plants on a narrow coastal strip in Brazil as far back as 4,800 years ago, according to a new study.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of York, analysed the teeth and bones of ancient human remains found at the site in Southern Brazil.

The results reveal that the individuals, who lived around 4,800 years ago, were eating a diet rich in carbohydrates, suggesting that they may have cultivated plants like yams and sweet potatoes.

The area, known as the “Atlantic forest” of South America, was not previously viewed as part of the history of early food production on the continent.

Senior author of the study, Dr André Colonese from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “Our findings may place the Atlantic Forest ‘on the map’ of early plant cultivation in the Americas.

“The Atlantic Forest coast has been largely peripheral in this narrative despite its unique plant biodiversity and archaeological record of dense human occupation. “Our study challenges this traditional view. The high consumption of carbohydrate-rich food suggests that permanent populations subsisted on a mixed economy, and possibly cultivated plants along this narrow coastal strip.”

The authors suggest that the results support the emerging view that food production along the Atlantic forest coast was practised at the same time as sedentary villages based on plant cultivation began to emerge in Amazonia and La Plata Basin.

The team of researchers from the University of York, Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville (Brazil), Universidade da Região de Joinville (Brazil) and the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Austria), examined dental caries along with bone and teeth stable isotopes of several individuals found in Morro do Ouro (Golden Hill), a pre-Columbian refuse heap in southern Brazil.

Other evidence, such as stone tools for processing plants and plant remains entrapped in the tooth tartar of these individuals, also indirectly confirmed the regular consumption of plant resources.

Such a level of plant dependence would likely require some kind of management to guarantee long-term and predictable returns, the research team say.

Dr Colonese added: “It is not clear, however, whether domesticated plants were part of their menu, and to what extent these people exerted some selective pressures on plant resources. What is clear is that our understanding of the nature, time and place of early plant management and cultivation in South America is under continuous development. The Atlantic Forest has much to contribute to these debates”.

Co-author of the article, Prof. Sabine Eggers, from the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Austria) said: “This work shows that the integration of people with different expertise can lead to new insights into the importance of bioarchaeology in coastal South America”

NASA-Funded Rocket To View Sun With X-Ray Vision

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Without special instrumentation, the Sun looks calm and inert. But beneath that placid façade are countless miniature explosions called nanoflares.

These small but intense eruptions are born when magnetic field lines in the Sun’s atmosphere tangle up and stretch until they break like a rubber band. The energy they release accelerates particles to near lightspeed and according to some scientists, heats the solar atmosphere to its searing million-degree Fahrenheit temperature.

All of this happens in colors of light so extreme that the human eye can’t see them. Nanoflares aren’t visible — at least not to the naked eye.

Finding the traces of nanoflares requires X-ray vision, and scientists have been hard at work developing the best tools for the job. The latest advance in this project is represented by NASA’s Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, or FOXSI mission, soon to take its third flight from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, no earlier than Sept. 7.

FOXSI is a sounding rocket mission. Derived from the nautical term “to sound,” meaning to measure, sounding rockets make brief 15-minute journeys above Earth’s atmosphere for a peek at space before falling back to the ground. Smaller, cheaper and faster to develop than large-scale satellite missions, sounding rockets offer a way for scientists to test their latest ideas and instruments — and achieve rapid results.

FOXSI will travel 190 miles up, above the shield of Earth’s atmosphere, to stare directly at the Sun and search for nanoflares using its X-ray vision.

“FOXSI is the first instrument built specially to image high-energy X-rays from the Sun by directly focusing them,” said Lindsay Glesener, space physicist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and principal investigator for the mission. “Other instruments have done this for other astronomical objects, but FOXSI is so far the only instrument to optimize especially for the Sun.”

The Sun tells its story in layers of light, each of which reveals what’s happening at different temperatures. For example, the sunlight that our eyes can see is primarily from the Sun’s photosphere, which is approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But there’s much more going on outside the bounds of human vision. X-ray light, in particular, reveals processes that heat plasma to millions of degrees Fahrenheit, like the most violent explosions at the cores of nanoflares.

But high-quality views of X-rays from the Sun don’t come easy. Unlike visible light, X-rays are hard to focus; they are largely unaffected by the lenses and mirrors used in conventional telescopes. Previous X-ray missions had to make do without focused light.

“In the past we generally used cleverly selected masks to block out some part of the incoming X-rays,” said Säm Krucker, space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal investigator for FOXSI’s two previous flights. “This does not result in very high-quality images, but it nevertheless gave us crucial information on the most energetic part of solar flares.”

To focus the X-rays, the FOXSI team used extremely hard, smooth surfaces tilted to a small angle (less than half a degree) that would gently corral incoming X-ray light to a point of focus.

“Thanks to these telescopes we can now make focused X-ray images of our Sun” said Krucker. “These images have a much-improved image quality at a much higher sensitivity.”

This will be FOXSI’s third flight — its first was in 2012, during which it successfully viewed a small solar flare in progress, and its second in 2014, when it detected the best evidence at the time of X-ray emission from nanoflares. The third mission follows up on this discovery, but this time it includes a new telescope designed for imaging lower-energy, so-called soft X-rays as well.

“Including the soft X-ray telescope gives us more precise temperatures,” said Glesener, allowing the team to spot nanoflare signatures that would be missed with the hard X-ray telescopes alone. In addition, several other performance improvements have been made to produce more accurate, higher-resolution images.

FOXSI’s third flight will also be the first led by Glesener, who was a graduate student, and then the project manager, for the previous two flights led by Krucker.

“This kind of training and project inheritance is common in sounding rocket programs,” said Glesener. “They are designed to grow and mature scientific leaders as well as hardware!”

FOXSI is a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and has co-investigators from the University of Minnesota; University of California at Berkeley; NASA’s Goddard and Marshall space flight centers in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Huntsville, Alabama, respectively; the University of Tokyo; Nagoya University; the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; and Tokyo University of Science. FOXSI is supported through NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program.


Why The Increased Momentum For A Code Of Conduct? – Analysis

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The agreement for a single draft text as the basis for further negotiations for a Code of Conduct (COC) is a significant milestone in the long-running South China Sea saga. The SCS disputes continue to challenge China’s ongoing efforts to demonstrate its peaceful rise and illustrate that it is a responsible major power rather than a revisionist power.

Failure to manage the disputes affects China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) which passes by the decades-old flashpoint. Southeast Asia is also critical for China’s neighborhood or peripheral diplomacy. China, as the largest claimant, therefore has a lot of incentive to work alongside ASEAN in pushing for the early conclusion of an effective and hopefully binding COC. Geopolitical and geo-economic developments are providing windows of opportunity for both sides, but these openings could be fleeting as the situation remains fluid. Hence, both sides, especially China, are stepping up.

Progress on Two Tracks

In the past two years, considerable efforts have been made in relation to dispute management in the SCS in both bilateral (between claimants) and regional (ASEAN-China) tracks. Aside from progress in setting up high level dialogue mechanisms, concrete steps have also been taken to manage incidents on-the-ground and foster confidence-building. Departing from its past behavior, China curiously displayed greater willingness to push forward with COC negotiations this time.

In July 2016, foreign ministers from ASEAN and China met in Vientiane, Laos, to discuss the full and effective implementation of the Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the SCS. In September, both sides met again in the Laotian capital to discuss the application of a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES). In April 2017, guidelines for hotline communications among senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials of the eleven countries were adopted and test exercises conducted. In May 2017, senior officials from ASEAN and China met in Guiyang, China and approved a framework for the COC which, in turn, was endorsed by foreign ministers of both sides in a meeting in Manila in August. Early this August 2018, another breakthrough came when ASEAN and China concluded their first naval tabletop exercise with a field training exercise slated for October.

On the bilateral front, the second organizational meeting and inaugural meeting of the Joint Philippines-China Coast Guard Committee was held in Subic in February 2017. By May 2017, the first Philippines-China Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on SCS was held in Guiyang. This is notwithstanding the increased frequency of high level and working group level meetings between forward-leaning claimants Vietnam and Philippines, on one hand, and China, on the other. Vietnam was the first country President Xi paid a state visit to in November 2017 after consolidating power in the 19th Party Congress a month before. China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi also visited Vietnam before Xi’s November visit. Wang Yi returned to Hanoi again on April 2018 where he met Party Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, President Tran Dai Quang and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Managing the maritime disputes was a prominent agenda in those meetings.

A gradualist approach in managing disputes in the SCS is emerging, building on earlier agreements manifested in joint communiques and post-meeting statements. Observance of CUES and establishment of hotline communications are low hanging fruits that are less politically sensitive, can be easily implemented and have practical and immediate value for dispute management. The slow, but nonetheless steady, progress resonates well with the incremental ASEAN way. This may raise possible concerns of the process playing into China’s hands. However, this overlooks the nature of ASEAN’s lengthy grinding consensus-based decision making and avoidance of divisive issues as greater factors behind the snails-pace progress. Hence, there is some cause for optimism that an improved political climate may create greater traction. Nonetheless, while concrete confidence-building measures are positive steps, the adoption of a framework and a single draft text is only the start of a long and winding process that may be both draining and frustrating.

Strike While the Iron is Hot

Improved relations between key claimants and the still-incipient U.S. strategy towards Asia are providing China the environment to step up and play a leading role in managing disputes in the SCS. The COC negotiations offer one potent avenue for this. Distancing himself from the confrontational stance taken by his predecessor, President Rodrigo Duterte downplayed the landmark 2016 arbitral award and pursued direct talks with Beijing. Despite interference in Vietnam’s offshore hydrocarbon activities in its exclusive economic zone, Vietnam has maintained dialogue with China and keeps their maritime spat still largely within the bilateral framework. Meantime, President Donald Trump’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific remains in its nascent stage and is saddled by America’s imposition of tariffs not only on China, but also on key allies and partners in the region and beyond. Failure to sustain leadership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership which could have served as an economic complement to the U.S.’ regional security alliance is a continuing predicament.

However, these variables can easily change. Electoral cycles may bring about foreign policy changes among ASEAN countries. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad’s decision to cancel and renegotiate some China-backed projects which form part of the Belt and Road Initiative is a case in point. President Duterte also said that he may bring up the matter of the 2016 arbitral ruling again before he steps down. In a rare display of criticism, Duterte said that China should temper its behavior in the contested sea. U.S. is also bolstering its commitment to the region, pledging $300 million worth of new security assistance and $113 million for technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives. While the economic amount is small compared to regional demand and China’s BRI, it signals America’s attempt to rollback, if not counter, Beijing’s growing regional influence.

In sum, an agreement on a single draft for COC negotiations fits into a pattern of improving SCS dispute management in both the bilateral and multilateral tracks. There has been much traction in the past two years thanks to China’s growing regional influence, more receptive political leadership in frontline states, and America’s still fledgling regional strategy. That these foundations may easily change compels ASEAN and China, especially the latter, to act fast.

This article was published by China-US Focus.

New NAFTA Is Just Old Protectionism And Bad Economics – OpEd

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By Carmen Elena Dorobăț*

A new North-American trade deal is in the works between the U.S. and Canada, after a tentative agreement was reached with Mexico last week. The deal would replace the almost 25-year-old NAFTA accord between the three countries. The media and industry alike are suffering from “deal fever,” as they eagerly await the results of negotiations.

There is not much known about what this new deal will involve exactly. However, the few things we do know indicate there’s no need for any excitement. The new trade agreement will be simply an amalgamation of the old NAFTA, the previously-rejected TPP, and some new protectionist measures.

Is it likely to be a win for free trade? Not by a mile.

First, the agreement with Mexico specifies that two thirds of a car’s value (up from 62% in NAFTA) must be manufactured in North America, and almost half of it must be manufactured by workers earning a minimum of $16 per hour. Only the car manufacturers that meet these new requirements will be allowed to ship vehicles across the border at zero tariffs—others will pay a customs tax of 2.5%. This comes as great news for industrial unions in the U.S. and will be beneficial also for Canadian unions in the event of a deal. But Mexico also hopes that this will force auto makers to raise wages. However, these rules of origin and wage and content requirements only increase manufacturing costs. This may eventually reflect in higher car prices, and may bring about the relocation of auto industries from North America to lower cost jurisdictions in the long run.

Second, steel and aluminium imports are currently subject to tariffs after Trump’s latest policy attempts to rebuild U.S. metal industries. These restrictions are likely to remain in place in the form of a quota plan. The impacts of quotas and tariffs are similar, and will bring about price increases and losses for consumers and adjacent industries.

Other measures include the extension of copyright to a 75-year term past the creator’s death, and scrapping NAFTA’s Chapter 19, under which companies could sue for wrongful anti-dumping or countervailing duties. These measures increase governments’ influence in business transactions and intervention in prices, and are likely to reduce innovation in the long run. What’s ironic is that the copyright term extension existed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump refused to sign back in early 2017.

Canada has opposed these two changes, but it may however agree to them if something else is given in return. It may, for instance, negotiate to keep its very low de minimis threshold for duty-free goods of $20—compared to $800 in the U.S. and now $100 in Mexico. Or it may fight to continue protection, in some form or other, for its rich dairy farmers from Ontario and Quebec, whose great influence over Canadian politics makes them a powerful interest group.

If it looks to you like the “much more fair, really good deal” with Mexico (and possibly Canada) is merely shifting trade regulations from one area to another instead of reducing them, your eyes are not deceiving you. The reason for these shifts is to transfer the highly targeted benefits that come from protectionism from one group to another. Even these are fairly short-lived though, because when imports drop, so do exports. If consumers spend more on domestic goods, domestic prices rise, and the more they rise, the more exports are reduced.

The new trade agreement is simply about making new deals for new special interests. Free trade or consumer interests never really enter the equation. Campaign donations do.

Mises’s view of this was very blunt and practical. In Omnipotent Government, he showed that modern trade agreements bore no resemblance to the commercial treaties of Cobden and Chevalier:

“In the age of laissez faire commercial treaties were considered a means of abolishing, step by step, trade barriers and all other measures of discrimination against foreigners… Then the tide turned. The meaning of commercial treaties changed radically. Governments became eager to overreach one another in negotiations. A treaty was valued in proportion as it hindered the other nation’s export trade and seemed to encourage one’s own.

It is vain to expect anything from purely technical changes in the methods applied in international negotiations concerning foreign-trade matters.” (1944, 247-8).

If it also seems to you that the inevitable detrimental impact of the new trade agreement on domestic prices and living standards is contrary to the stated goals of other government policies, you are right again. Mises explained in Bureaucracy how the interests of powerful groups often conflict, and are dealt with in a haphazard manner by state administrations:

“The department of labor aims at higher wage rates and at lower living costs. But the same administration’s department of agriculture aims at higher food prices, and the department of commerce tries to raise domestic commodity prices by tariffs. One department fights against monopoly, but other departments are eager to bring about—by tariffs, patents, and other means—the conditions required for the building of monopolistic restraint” (1944, 85)

As various trade agreements change names, clauses, and proponents, with the old bait and switch tactic, protectionism only changes its less-than-convincing disguise. “The new consumer flimflam agreement” would be a more fitting name.

About the author:
*Carmen Dorobăț
has a PhD in economics from the University of Angers, and is Assistant Professor of Business at Leeds Trinity University.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.

Increasingly Indispensable Grandparents – Analysis

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The world enjoys record-breaking numbers of grandparents due to longer lifespans and low fertility rates.

By Joseph Chamie*

Of the world’s 7.6 billion people, a record-breaking 1.4 billion, or 18 percent, are grandparents. Today’s grandparents play vital and increasingly indispensable roles in modern family life, contributing to the well-being of generations succeeding them. Grandparents have always been an integral part of family life. During the past half-century, however, their roles have evolved as result of demographic, economic, social and technological changes taking place worldwide.

Aging world: Grandparents make up a record-breaking 18 percent of the world’s population(Source: Estimates by Joseph Chamie)
Aging world: Grandparents make up a record-breaking 18 percent of the world’s population(Source: Estimates by Joseph Chamie)

The proportion of grandparents in a population varies across countries, depending on fertility rates and life expectancy, ranging from lows of around 15 percent in countries such as in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan to highs in excess of 25 percent in Costa Rica, Japan, Russia and Ukraine. National statistics on grandparents, increasingly relevant for the development of family policies and programs, are unfortunately limited to a handful of developed countries. Consequently, the numbers and proportions of grandparents presented in this study are indirect estimates calculated by the author based on available demographic parameters for each country.

The proportion of women and men in a given population remaining childless reduces the potential future pool of grandmothers and grandfathers. In many developing countries, such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey, the proportion of childless women in their late forties is relatively low, typically below 5 percent. By contrast, in most developed countries, the proportion of childless women in their late forties is above 10 percent. In Austria, Canada, Finland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, close to 20 percent of women reaching age 50 are childless.

The first childbirth of one’s offspring largely determines the age when people become grandparents. In some developed countries, such as Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Switzerland, the average age of women at first childbirth is close to 30 years, implying that the average age of grandmothers would be approximately double that age or about 60 years.

In many developing countries such as Bangladesh, Chad, Mali, Niger and Zambia, the average age of women at the birth of the first child is below 20 years. Accordingly, the average age of grandmothers would be roughly double that age or slightly less than 40 years.

The level of fertility also produces age structures that help determine the relative proportion of grandparents within a given population. In high fertility countries, such as Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria, less than 10 percent of the population is above the age of 50 years. In low fertility countries, such as Germany, Italy and Japan, more than 40 percent of the population is aged 50 years and older.

Another major demographic parameter contributing to higher levels and lengthier periods of grandparenthood is longevity, considered among the modern era’s greatest achievements. Notable gains achieved in health and lifespans provide women and men with more years to enjoy sustained relationships with grandchildren as they grow into adulthood. For example, at the start of the 20th century when life expectancy at birth in the United States was 47 years, about 20 percent of 30-year-olds had any living grandparent. By the close of that century, when life expectancy had increased to 77 years, about 80 percent of 30-year-olds had a living grandparent.

Health and wealth: The proportion of grandparents varies among nations based on fertility rates and life expectancy (Source: Estimates by Joseph Chamie)
Health and wealth: The proportion of grandparents varies among nations based on fertility rates and life expectancy (Source: Estimates by Joseph Chamie)

Living to advanced ages also permits increasing numbers of grandparents, especially women who generally live longer than men, to become great-grandparents, a relatively recent phenomenon.

The global number of centenarians, 80 percent being women, has tripled since the start of the 21st century. By the century’s close, the current number, about a half a million, is expected to increase 40-fold. Based on projected increases in longevity, one study estimated that by the year 2030, more than 70 percent of 8-year olds in the United States are likely to have a living great-grandparent.

A key familial role of grandparents in today’s modern world is providing childcare assistance to working couples and single-parent families. Although many relatives do not want to look after young grandchildren for health, financial or personal reasons, grandparents are the most common providers of informal childcare.

Largely due to the costs, unavailability and quality of formal childcare, absences and separations of parents, and normative attitudes and traditions concerning childcare, parents frequently rely on grandparents to care for grandchildren.

Such assistance often provides an indispensable lifeline to families squeezed by limited incomes, rising childcare costs, time constraints and employment demands.

Uneven aging: High-fertility countries have youthful populations, and low-fertility nations have older populations (Source: UN Population Division.)
Uneven aging: High-fertility countries have youthful populations, and low-fertility nations have older populations (Source: UN Population Division.)

The financial savings can be considerable. In the United Kingdom, for example, grandparents save parents more than $70 billion annually in childcare costs. In Australia, grandparents save working parents more than $2 billion annually in childcare costs. Such care is particularly critical for mothers with young children, especially single mothers, enabling them to enter and remain in the formal labor market. Without such support, many mothers could not participate in the labor market or pursue career goals.

Available studies show that grandmothers are more likely than grandfathers to provide childcare assistance and more time. For many developed countries, no less than 40 percent of grandmothers provide some childcare to their grandchildren. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Romania, the large majority of grandmothers provide some childcare.

Beyond providing childcare assistance, increasing numbers of grandparents are responsible for raising grandchildren on a full-time basis. For many reasons, including parents’ substance abuse and addiction, mental illness, incarceration, family breakdown, child neglect, migration and death, custodial grandparenting is a global phenomenon. In the United States, for example, about 2 percent of children are raised by grandparents with no parent living in the home. In many developing countries including China, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam, parents who migrate for employment or resettlement to urban areas or abroad often leave children with grandparents and send remittances back home to support them.

Helping hands: Many grandparents provide childcare for their grandchildren, and growing numbers raise grandchildren on a full-time basis (Source: Rand Corporation and US Census Bureau)
Helping hands: Many grandparents provide childcare for their grandchildren, and growing numbers raise grandchildren on a full-time basis (Source: Rand Corporation and US Census Bureau)

More recently, the Great Recession and housing crises brought many generations together. In the United States, for example, the number of grandparents living with their grandchildren is up sharply, having increased by about a third over the past generation  After a long post-war decline in households with multiple generations of family members living together, the proportion of multi-generational households in wealthy nations is once again increasing. This increase has been attributed to the economic conditions and growing numbers of foreign-born groups accustomed to living with extended families.

In addition to assisting children and grandchildren, many grandparents need care as they age. Most elderly prefer to live independently in their own homes as long as possible and not to become a burden for family members. However, growing numbers of aging grandparents, especially those with special needs, move near or in with children or to a facility providing assistance. Nearly 30 percent of those 85 years and older have dementia, with Alzheimer’s disease the most common form. Providing care to the elderly can be difficult and costly, taking a toll on the caregiver’s time and quality of life. Grandparents, adult children and grandchildren can anticipate and prepare for caregiving and end-of-life challenges.

Countries widely recognize grandparents’ essential roles in modern family life by officially celebrating Grandparents Day in Australia, Canada, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. In addition to their unconditional love, grandparents offer guidance, emotional support and financial assistance to families, helping relieve economic, social and personal stress. Beyond their noteworthy contributions, grandparents receive considerable satisfaction from their roles, enjoying and benefiting being with family members.

*Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division. 

India: Price Increase Of Petrol And Diesel Inevitable – OpEd

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The price of petrol and diesel for the consumers have now reached the highest level so far in India. The media and several political parties are accusing Narendra Modi government for the steep price rise, as if it is responsible for this situation.

Obviously, the angry and pledged critics do not care to see the ground realities and the real basic reasons for the price increase. If there would be good understanding of the fundamental causes for the present scenario, there would be constructive debate on the subject, instead of throwing mud at the face of the Modi government.

Stagnant crude oil production in India

India’s production of crude oil is now nearly stagnant at the level of around 36 to 37 milion tonne per annum. The production is fluctuating from one year to another but it is certainly not significantly increasing. As the exploratory efforts to open new oil wells are continuing, the production in the existing wells are inevitably declining.

The efforts of Modi government to take up exploratory efforts for new oil wells are being resisted in several places. The most recent agitation against the crude oil exploration was at Neduvasal in Tamil Nadu, where the government has been forced to give up it’s exploratory efforts. Those who are complaining about the price increase of petrol and diesel are the same people who are blocking the new exploratory efforts to boost the crude oil production.

Rising import of crude oil and consumption

Indian import of crude oil is now well over 220 milion tonne per annum and the import has been increasing at the rate of 7 to 8% during the last several years.

The consumption of petrol and diesel are steadily increasing , which has to be necessarily met by increase in import of crude oil to produce petrol/ diesel in the petroleum refineries. The automobile sector has a significant share of petrol and diesel consumption in India and nobody is willing to curtail the use of automobile to the extent possible.

World consumption trend

World consumes around 90 million barrels per day of crude oil and the consumption has been growing at around 0.7% per annum for the last several years. Given such growth rate, the global consumption of crude oil would reach around 92 million barrel per day in 2020 and 97 million barrel per day in 2025. Obviously, the world crude oil production has to be stepped up to meet the increasing demand.

Transportation is the pre eminent consuming sector of energy in the world, which is using around 60% of the overall oil consumption in the world. This trend is unlikely to come down significantly.

World production trend

The global crude oil price fall during the last several months has been largely due to the steep increase in the production of shale oil in US in several regions including North Dakota and Texas. While the shale oil production in USA has jumped several fold, the life of the shale gas wells is less than twelve months in several cases and shale oil from US by itself cannot sustain the world supply to the required level.

Around 40% of the world crude oil production is carried out by OPEC and 60% by the non OPEC suppliers. While non OPEC suppliers are larger than OPEC, they have virtually no spare capacity.

Global exploratory efforts

The grim fact is that the global exploration efforts for crude oil have considerably slackened in recent time. Due to the recent fall in the crude oil price, more than one hundred oil and gas companies across the world have increased net debt by several billions of US dollar, as their revenue from oil and gas sale have reached a plateau. The exploratory companies say that they have exhausted traditional oil fields and are being forced to explore fields in ever more difficult regions. In such condition, the new exploration efforts of several multi national gas companies are facing uncertainties and hurdles, which would tell upon future additions to the oil and gas production in the world.

Price trend

While global price of crude oil have been fluctuating due to several reasons such as erosion of spare capacity in entire oil exploration chain, geopolitical uncertainties in oil producing countries and falling exploratory efforts and speculative trends ,there is no doubt that the incidents of fall in price of crude oil in the coming years would be less frequent due to temporary reasons and incidents of rise in price of crude oil would be more frequent due to basic and fundamental reasons as outlined above.

India in helpless situation

India, with near stagnant domestic production of crude oil and steady increase in crude oil import, is highly vulnerable to the international crude oil price scenario.

As of now, government of India is helpless in facing the situation. Any government in India will inevitably face such situation in the coming years also.

Critics of the recent diesel and petrol price rise in India argue that the government should slash down the excise duty on petrol and diesel and give up it’s revenue to some extent to reduce the price of petrol and diesel. In today’s conditions, even if the government would do this by sacrificing it’s revenue to some extent, the impact on price fall of petrol and diesel, would be only by around Rs.10 to 15 per litre, as the government has the option of reducing the duties only to a limited extent , as it cannot reduce it’s income drastically.

It should also be noted that in spite of the steady increase in price of petrol and diesel during the last few years, the consumption of petrol and diesel has been increasing in India,particularly for transportation. Can one say that this scenario indicate the affordability of the consumers to pay high price for petrol and diesel for transportation these days?

The Modi government has certainly been taking steps to find alternate source of energy such as solar and wind power. In the last four years, the capacity of solar power generation in India have been increased from 1500 MW to around 23,000 MW now, which is a remarkable achievement. The capacity of the wind power has also gone up substantially. But, all these have only limited impact, in view of the very large requirement of energy., which is being met by petroleum resources now.

Need for knowledgeable debate

It is high time that the Indian media and the politicians should realize that diesel and petrol price increase in India will be inevitable in the coming years and one need not be surprised and shocked, if the price of petrol and diesel would hit Rs. 100 per litre sooner or later and perhaps, sooner than later.

Certainly, petrol and diesel price scenario in India call for responsible, well-informed and constructive debate and not the type of chaotic discussions and debates based on political interests, that we have in the media now.

Ralph Nader: Letter To President Donald Trump – OpEd

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Dear President Trump:

There is a double peril for consumer safety and our national security for you to ponder during your Labor Day vacation. First, the New York Times reported that China is withholding samples of a dangerous flu virus—the lethal H7N9 avian flu—from U.S. health authorities. A World Health Organization agreement requires participating countries to share potentially dangerous influenza samples “in a timely manner.” These specimens are urgently needed to develop vaccines and treatments in anticipation of a global pandemic emanating from the Chinese mainland, as have other lesser epidemics in the past.

China’s delay in sending these lab samples is being explained as part of China’s response to your trade tariffs—as a signal that China has another strong hand to play. This is truly a dangerous game of chicken. Are you up to considering the gravity of this behavior for both the public health and national security of the peoples of the United States?

The second peril can be placed right on the backs of the giant U.S. drug companies, who you charged earlier were, in your words, “getting away with murder.” You were probably referring to their extreme price gouging and their role in promoting recklessly opioid drugs to both physicians and patients. Well, add some more gravity by giving tweet time and air time to our country’s dangerous dependency of the outsourcing of manufacturing of major drugs and drug ingredients to China and, to a lesser extent, India.

These drugs include: Antibiotics, anticoagulants, antidepressants, blood pressure medicines, cancer drugs, birth control pills, and many others. Penicillin is no longer manufactured in the USA.

The immensely profitable U.S. drug companies are not satisfied with the absence of reasonable drug price controls, as are established in most other nations, and billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded research and development, including clinical trials, given away to selected drug giants, nor the billions of dollars in tax credits for their conducting research. They are not satisfied with charging Americans the highest drug prices in the world for the same drugs that are often available for lower prices in other countries.  No, they want even more profits. They have put patients in our country in serious jeopardy. One contaminated drug— Heparin, a blood thinner—already took scores of American lives before it was recalled.

If you want a fuller story about the extraordinary amount of dependence on China for drugs and essential ingredients, produced under less than FDA standards would have allowed in this country, please read the new book, China Rx by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh (Prometheus Books). According to Gibson and Singh “Noncompliance with U.S. standards is a deliberate competitive strategy. As long as they aren’t caught, they continue to win contracts. Lower prices discourage production in the United States and force worldwide sourcing, thereby risking poorer quality products.”  

Read the favorable comments on the flap by very worried people such as former attorney general Edwin Meese III; Jim Guest, former president of Consumer Reports; Major General Larry J. Lust (Ret.); Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing; Daniel Slane, commissioner, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission; and University of Minnesota professor and author Michael T. Osterholm, arguably the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases.

Your immediate attention should be directed to the ticking time bombs that should not be allowed to tick away on your presidential watch. You are on full public notice that urgent action is necessary.

Thank you for your serious and immediate consideration.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Trump Gives Iran Opportunity To Set New Direction – OpEd

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By Mohamed Chebaro*

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani chose to call for unity in a recent televised speech in a bid to answer his critics over the failure of his government to confront the country’s economic meltdown, which followed the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the reimposition of sanctions that are likely to cripple Iran’s oil sector from early November.
Rouhani then failed to appease the Iranian Parliament when he was questioned last week, with members choosing to ignore his justifications for the government’s helplessness as it faced adversity internally, regionally and internationally, as he described it.
Parliament’s sacking of Rouhani’s Labor Minister Ali Rabiei and Finance Minister Masoud Karbasian was not enough for the legislators to try to appease a public that has grown impatient at rapidly rising food prices, a dramatic currency collapse and the reimposition of US sanctions. Many Iranians are in a bleak mood and have not hesitated to shout slogans condemning Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s political class as a whole in protests in more than 80 cities.
Rouhani also hinted at bigger issues that need to be addressed with a cryptic statement that said: “No one can walk into the sea and not expect to get his feet wet.” Many believed that he was pointing to the damaging policy choices made by the regime’s religious establishment, especially since businesspeople in Iran have long been frustrated by other deep-rooted problems, such as the debt-ridden banking sector and the outsized and opaque economic role of military-linked organizations, who many in Iran believe are the source of the country’s ills.
The Iranian regime has, for four decades, been flouting international laws everywhere it sets foot. It began its existence by breaking the most basic laws of international diplomacy when holding US diplomats hostage for 444 days at the start of the revolution, and it has never abandoned such practices.
For its citizens, the regime is in the midst of a revolution 40 years after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, which has failed to provide stability in a society that has grown poorer, more likely to be unemployed, with a failing currency, and faced with rampant corruption at institutional levels, not to mention the constant deficiency of the regime in upholding its citizens’ basic rights.
The threat of Iran’s pledge to export its revolutionary system of government has not ceased to irk everyone in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Tehran’s regime has been true to its basic manifesto and, 40 years on, many of the country’s military leaders boast that they now control four Arab neighboring capitals; namely Baghdad, Beirut, Sanaa and Damascus. This has been achieved through propping up local groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas, among others. Evidence has circulated that Iran has been encouraging the Houthi militia to target Saudi Arabian cities with ballistic missiles launched from inside Yemen, as well as attempt to disrupt maritime shipping in the Gulf and the Bab Al-Mandab Strait.
Internationally, Iran’s regime has been directly or indirectly involved in hostage taking, assassinations, the bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon in the 1980s, and the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina in the 1990s. These examples are just a sample of the regime’s violent record. In recent years, including as the finishing touches were being put to the long-awaited nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, Iranian-American dual nationals were imprisoned in Tehran on espionage and various other charges, and were used as pawns in the final deal negotiations. More recently, Belgium, Germany and France foiled an attempt to assassinate opposition figures from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran at their annual rally in Paris. A diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna was arrested on suspicion of having instigated the plan.
With such a record — that the clergy-led regime of Tehran obviously denies — Iran made the unusual step of calling on the International Court of Justice to adjudicate against the unilateral imposition of sanctions by Washington. This Iranian embrace of international law is a first, and one would hope this could present an opportunity for Tehran to rejoin the international legal frameworks that help settle disputes between nations.
Iran’s revolution will be 40 years old next year and, as the saying goes, “all revolutions devour their own children.” The Islamic Republic of Iran has been devouring its children and its neighbors’ sons and daughters for four decades without any sign that the revolutionaries are about to hang up their gloves.
Critics say Tehran squandered the opportunities presented by the 2015 nuclear deal by limiting discussions to technical aspects that limit its ability to develop a nuclear weapon for the next 10 to 15 years. In 2015, Iran refused to discuss its revolutionary policies, its support for terrorism, proxy wars, and its meddling in other countries’ internal affairs. The regime even failed to benefit from the deal, as it failed to tackle the high rates of inflation, joblessness and corruption that are rampant within the country.
US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal could therefore offer a renewed opportunity for Iran to set a new direction for its policies. Trump’s deal-making inclination should be embraced, and this could offer Iran a chance to review its policies, which have long harmed its economy and society alike.

*Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist broadcaster with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.

Universal Patriarch Says Moscow Has No Right To Veto Ukrainian Autocephaly – OpEd

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Because Universal Patriarch Batholemew did not issue a tomos of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church this week as some in Ukraine had expected, many in Russia are claiming that the patriarch has backed away from doing so, at least in part because of the opposition of the Moscow Patriarchate.

But in fact, as Igor Yakovenko points out in today’s Yezhednevny zhurnal, Bartholemew rejected the pretensions of the Russian church that it has a right to participate in the decision and signaled that he is quite ready to give a positive answer to requests from the Ukrainian church and the Ukrainian government (ej.ru/?a=note&id=32881).

“To the extent that Russia, which is responsible for the current problematic situation in Ukraine, is not capable of resolving the problem,” Bartholemew said, “the Universal Patriarhate has taken on itself the initiative for resolving the issue in conformity with the authorities given to it by the holy canons and its jurisdictional responsibility over the eparchate of Kyiv.”

Constantinople’s position, as defined by Bartholemew, is “100 percent anti-Moscow and correspondingly 100 percent pro-Ukrainian,” Yakovenko says. There are no half tones in the patriarchate’s declaration. And in a remarkable passage that must not be ignored, the Universal Patriarch directly attacked what Moscow has been doing in Ukraine.

“The non-canonical interference of Moscow in the affairs of Kyiv and the willingness to tolerate this by the Universal Patriarchate in the past does not justify any church violations,” Bartholemew said.

The Moscow Patriarchate remains totally opposed to autocephaly for Ukraine’s Orthodox, but it is now on the defensive, as its increasingly hysterical reaction to the developments in Constantinople suggest, reactions that have included threats of military force by the Kremlin against Ukraine if autocephaly happens.

“One can understand the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and their Kremlin masters. Autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will essentially change the situation throughout all of Eastern Europe,” Yakovenko says. And it will mean that the ROC MP will lose its status as the largest Orthodox church in the world.

After Kyiv gains autocephaly – and that is now almost certain to happen – “the share of Orthodox living on the canonical territory of the ROC MP will be reduced to 40 percent of the total number of followers of this religion in the world.” That will reduce the church’s influence and increase the influence of Constantinople. And Moscow religious and secular knows that.

The person responsible for the decline of Russian Orthodoxy is Vladimir Putin, of course, Yakovenko says. His aggressive policies have alienated the former Soviet republics from Moscow and thus opened the way for those countries ever more frequently to achieve their goals in the religious as well as the political spheres.


Trump Urges NYT To Reveal Its White House ‘Resistance’ Insider

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Furious over an article, allegedly penned by a senior official who claims to be a part of the White House resistance working against Trump, the US leader has urged the New York Times to reveal its “phony” anonymous source.

“TREASON?” Trump tweeted in response to the piece entitled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The US leader further questioned whether the alleged ‘Senior Administration Official’ really exists, and urged the paper to reveal its source in the name of national security.

“If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” the president said.

In the anonymous essay, the US president is being painted as the enemy of the people who has little concerns for American values or Republican agenda. “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality,” the author wrote, claiming that anyone who works with Trump knows he is not “moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”

“That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office,” the alleged White House official wrote a day after Trump and his aides challenged the narrative of Bob Woodward’s new book critical of Trump.

Trump vented his rage earlier in the day in front of a group of law-enforcement officials, calling the piece a “gutless editorial,” and criticizing mass media for constantly attacking him. “If I weren’t here, I’d believe The New York Times probably wouldn’t even exist. And someday, when I’m not president … The New York Times and CNN and all of these phony media outlets will be out of business, folks.”

The essay was also called “pathetic, reckless, and selfish” by White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, who condemned the New York paper for publishing it. “Nearly 62 million people voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2016,” said Sanders. “None of them voted for a gutless, anonymous source to the failing New York Times.”

The White House’s reaction to the NYT piece echoed the administration’s response to Woodward’s book, which also paints the US leader as an impulsive decision-maker, who is called an “idiot” and a “liar” even by those closest to him.

Trump has repeatedly called out liberal US media critical of the administration for spreading ‘fake’, poorly sourced and deliberately out-of-context information. At the same time, Trump has also been challenging social media platforms over their alleged bias against conservative voices.

In Senate Grilling, Facebook, Twitter Vow To Tackle Election Meddling

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(RFE/RL) — Senior executives at Facebook and Twitter have vowed to better protect their platforms from foreign manipulation during the 2018 midterm elections and into the future.

The comments from Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came on September 5 in testimony in front of a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Senator Richard Burr (Republican-North Carolina), the chairman of the Senate panel, welcomed the comments by the companies to do better, but said Congress was concerned that not enough had been done.

“Clearly, this problem is not going away,” Burr said. “I’m not even sure it’s trending in the right direction.”

Congress has sharply criticized the social media companies over the past year as evidence has emerged that they failed to stop Russia making extensive use of their platforms in its alleged efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Thirteen Russians were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year on charges of involvement in an alleged plot to disrupt the 2016 election by creating fake accounts that pushed divisive issues on Facebook and Twitter.

Responding to lawmakers, Sandberg and Dorsey both acknowledged that their efforts to prevent Russia and others from manipulating their platforms had been lacking and pledged to do more in the future.

“We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That’s on us. This interference was completely unacceptable,” Sandberg said.

She told the committee that Facebook has “removed hundreds of pages and accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior — meaning they misled others about who they were and what they were doing.”

“We are even more determined than our adversaries, and we will continue to fight back,” Sandberg added.

Ahead of the committee’s hearing, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a Washington Post opinion article on September 5 that his company was engaged in an “arms race” with “sophisticated, well-funded adversaries who are getting smarter over time.”

During the Senate committee hearing, Dorsey held up his phone at the witness table and tweeted part of his opening statement.

“We aren’t proud of how [a free and open exchange of ideas] has been weaponized and used to distract and divide people, and our nation. We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we’ve acknowledged,” Dorsey wrote.

“Abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda through bots and human coordination, misinformation campaigns, and divisive filter bubbles — that’s not a healthy public square. Worse, a relatively small number of bad-faith actors were able to game Twitter to have an outsized impact,” he added.

Dorsey said Twitter was continuing to identify and suspend accounts that may be linked to a Russian Internet agency identified in the Mueller charges.

So far, he said, 3,843 accounts have been blocked.

At the session, a chair was left empty because Alphabet, the parent company of Google, refused to send a top executive, sparking outrage from some of the senators.

Google did offer a written statement from its chief legal officer.

Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) suggested Google might have avoided testifying because it was “arrogant.”

‘Nazi’ Jibes At Romanian President Outrage Germany

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By Ana Maria Luca

German officials and members of Romania’s small ethnic German community have protested strongly after several ruling Social Democrat officials called the country’s ethnic German president ‘a Nazi’.

Romania’s ruling Social Democrat Party have come under heavy criticism from German politicians as well as cultural and business organizations after failing to punish several officials and ministers who recently called Romanian President Klaus Iohannis a Nazi.

Prime Minister Viorica Dancila’s state adviser, Darius Valcov, on Sunday night posted a picture on his social media account in which the logo of the anti-corruption #rezist movement was turned into a Swastika and President Iohannis made to look like Adolf Hitler.

On August 24, former Social Democrat Education Minister Liviu Pop said on a news channel show that Iohannis had led an ethnic German organization, the Democrat Forum of Germans in Romania, which he called “a Nazi organization”.

On August 23, Labour Minister Lia Olguta Vasilescu also slammed Iohannis for his criticism of the way the government handled the police intervention in the August 10 street protests. “As a German, you’ve got to have some guts to speak of gassing people,” she said.

The head of the German parliament’s European affairs committee, Gunther Krichbaum, told the Romanian news website Hotnews on Wednesday that it was “intolerable” for officials who made such statements to remain in government positions.

“This type of behaviour shows a shocking ignorance in terms of history,” he said. “Since Romania’s government did not distance itself in a clear manner from all of this, it seems reasonable to assume that they deliberately accept it, if they don’t even control it,” Kirchbaum added.

Romanian MP Ovidiu Gant who represents the German minority in the Romanian parliament, said on Wednesday in parliament that it was outrageous that Valcov was not immediately fired, and asked both PM Dancila and Social Democrat leaders to distance themselves from these statements.

The Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania on Tuesday said that it would officially notify the German government of the recent racist comments.

Although Romania was once home to about 800,000 ethnic Germans, migration during and since the fall of communism has led to a drastic drop in numbers. According to the latest census in 2011, only 36,000 ethnic Germans remain in the country.

Iohannis is the first ethnic German to become a president of Romania, in 2014. He has refused to comment on the statements.

Indonesia Announces Higher Tax On Imports To Halt Rupiah’s Slide

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By Ahmad Syamsudin

Indonesia will raise import taxes on more than 1,000 mostly consumer goods, officials said Wednesday, as the government took steps to shore up the nation’s battered currency, the rupiah, which dropped this week to its lowest level since the Asian financial crisis two decades ago.

Tax on 1,147 imported items, ranging from coffee to luxury cars, would be raised to between 7.5 and 10 percent – up from the previous 2.5 to 7.5 percent, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.

“The government must take action to curb vulnerabilities in the balance of payments,” Sri Mulyani told a news conference. She said the government’s move was necessary after imported goods spiked more than 50 percent in July and August this year.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is seeking a second term in an election scheduled for next year, has come under increased pressure to intervene after the rupiah slumped to almost 15,000 against the U.S. dollar. The Indonesian currency has lost about 9 percent of its value this year.

Jokowi blamed the weakening rupiah on “a barrage of external factors,” including Washington’s decision to hike interest rates as well as financial-market meltdowns in Turkey and Argentina, which have spread through emerging markets in Asia.

“Investment and exports must increase, so that we can resolve the current account deficit” Jokowi told reporters Wednesday. “If those things are addressed, the rest will be resolved.”

Indonesia’s current account balance – the broadest measure of the country’s international trade – showed a deficit of U.S. $5.5 billion, equivalent to about 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product, in the first quarter of this year, economic analysts said. Those numbers contributed to the financial mayhem, they said.

Bank Indonesia, the central bank, has spent billions of dollars and raised interest rates four times since May to halt the rupiah’s fall. Its repeated interventions in the foreign exchange market had depleted its foreign exchange reserves by more than $13 billion from January to July, analysts said.

Reviewing, postponing big projects

The government also stepped up its efforts to stabilize the currency by deciding to review and reschedule major infrastructure projects, including power plants, which require large amounts of imported materials.

Jokowi has touted his government’s drive to upgrade the country’s dilapidated infrastructure, such as roads, airports, sea ports and power plants as one of his successes since taking office in October 2014.

Some analysts, however, said it would be too early to say whether the rupiah rout would hurt Jokowi’s re-election chances.

“So far the rupiah situation has not significantly affected the overwhelming majority of Indonesians, at least not for now,” Mohammad Faisal, research director at Center for Reform of Economics, told reporters.

“Subsidies and social safety assistance are also helping cushion the poor from the impact of any price increase,” he said. “As long as the prices of staples are under control, we won’t see widespread panic.”

But, Faisal said, the government should refrain from controversial moves that could have political repercussions.

“I think as long as the government isn’t doing anything counter-productive, there will be no significant impact on Jokowi’s popularity,” he said.

Not like 20 years ago: Minister

Chief Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said there was no reason for alarm because the country’s economic fundamentals remained sound.

“Don’t compare the current situation to the 1998 crisis,” he said, referring to the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis that crippled Indonesia’s economy and led to the downfall of then-president Suharto after 32 years of iron-fisted rule.

In 1998, the rupiah dropped from 2,800 to the dollar to 14,000, a 400-percent fall, and inflation hit 77 percent then, compared with the current rate of about 3 percent, Darmin said.

Officials said the new policy posed no risk of violating World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments since the new policy would not single out countries but would, instead, target types of products, including big foreign luxury cars.

Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita told reporters that his office would stop import permits this month for luxury vehicles, including stretch limousines, with engine displacements of 3 liters or greater.

Among the products that would be affected by higher import taxes are cosmetics, clothing, soap, some construction materials and consumer electronics. Imports of the 1,147 items cost U.S. $6.6 billion in 2017, but reached U.S. $5 billion in the first eight months of this year alone, officials said.

Indra Fajar, who makes a living selling used electronic goods, said he had not seen a drop in sales but was worried about the future.

“If the government raises import taxes, prices of imported goods will be more expensive and that means fewer sales,” he told BenarNews. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but it doesn’t look good.”

China: Protestant Churches In Henan Hit By Dawn Police Raids

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Authorities in the central Chinese province of Henan carried out raids on four Protestant churches in the early hours of Wednesday, sources told RFA.Dozens of uniformed police officers and local officials raided the Glory Church in Henan’s Nanyang city, church members said via social media.

They pulled up in a fleet of vehicles that included an ambulance outside the church at around 6 a.m., throwing a police cordon around the area, they said.

Then, they began tearing down crosses on two of the walls of the church.

Church members who approached the police to ask what was happening were grabbed and pinned to the ground, church members said.

Police then searched the premises and confiscated the church’s public address system, musical instruments and Bibles, damaging other religious items as they did so, they said.

Similar raids were carried out in at least three other locations in Henan: the Jinlou Church in Tanghe county; the Hui Xiaoying Church in Tongzhaipu township, and Qiupo Church in Dongwangji township, RFA has learned.

Some church members who tried to prevent the raids were detained in the process, church members said.

An official who answered the phone at the Bureau of Religious and Ethnic Minority Affairs under the Nanyang municipal government referred inquiries to the police and local governments.

“If someone has cause losses or damage to property, then they can report it to the police who will investigate it as usual,” the official said. “We don’t micromanage individual places of worship or religious organizations; we oversee the entire city.”

“They all have their own specific counties, cities, and districts to deal with the matter,” the official said.

The U.S.-based Christian rights group ChinaAid said the raids come as the authorities systematically target churches displaying crosses in Zhengzhou, Nanyang, and Yuzhou.

It cited other groups as saying that the authorities plan to close or merge churches to ensure there are no more than two in any given county.

Exams and surveillance

Meanwhile, pastors and ministers are being forced to take exams testing their knowledge of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s rules on religious affairs, “core socialist values,” and the sinicization of religion in China.

According to local believers in Henan, over a hundred churches and crosses have been demolished or shut down during the last month, with dozens of churches in Xinyang city raided, inspected, or having property confiscated in the last three weeks alone.

A Protestant church member from Zhengzhou city said churches are also being required to install surveillance cameras or face a criminal penalty.

“There is a county that is administered by Zhengzhou called Fuyang county, which had more than 50 Protestant places of worship,” the church member said.

“Between 10 and 20 of them were told to close, and a lot of their crosses were destroyed too,” the person said.

A church in Yulong township that had been designated an approved place of worship by the local religious affairs bureau was raided by the government, and officials confiscated its contents, the church member said.

“Even the approved Protestant churches are under constant surveillance by the police, because they have installed cameras everywhere; not getting them installed is considered breaking the law,” the person said.

The Catholic news site AsiaNews said authorities are burning crosses in Henan and elsewhere in China in a bid to “create a Christianity with ‘Chinese characteristics.'”

“Slogans praising the [Chinese Communist] Party and the values of socialism are exposed on religious buildings, erasing sacred images that are considered too Western,” it said.

Adapting to socialist society

In April, the administration of President Xi Jinping asserted its control over all religious practices among its citizens.

“Religions in China must be Chinese in orientation and provide active guidance to religions so that they can adapt themselves to the socialist society,” according to a white paper on religious affairs published at the time.

Religious believers must “be subordinate to and serve the overall interests of the nation and the Chinese people … and support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” the white paper said, which includes “integrat[ing] religious teachings and rules with Chinese culture.”

Last month, authorities in Henan flew the red flag of the People’s Republic of China over the Shaolin Temple for the first time in the temple’s 1,500-year history.

Overseen by officials of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which is campaigning for religious groups to show their “patriotism,” monks at the temple raised the red flag with its five gold stars at a “grand” ceremony.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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