Things won’t be easy for the new Prime Minister Imran Khan. While the country is facing economic downfall with foreign currency reserves declining and trade deficit skyrocketing, yet there is another serious problem which will put Khan’s cabinet in trouble, that is, the climate change.
When he unveiled his party’s 100 days plan for the country in the month of May 2018, he told media and party members about the seriousness of environmental crisis that Pakistan is facing due to emission of greenhouse gases by industrial and energy infrastructures. He also pledged to plant 10 billion trees to tackle the effects of climate change in the same meeting. But is plantation enough to make a difference?
First of all, the plantation project will require a huge sum of money. Pakistan’s already suffering economy won’t be able to handle the financial burden of Khan’s “10 billion trees” dream. Fertilizing tree plantation requires large input of nitrogenous fertilizer (which also results in greenhouse gases emission), furthermore, huge quantity of water will be used to plant trees. We cannot afford consuming large amount water on plantation. Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), in its recent report, has warned that by 2025 Pakistan’s per capita water handiness will be lowered up to 858 cubic meters, while the inadequacy threshold is 1000 cubic meters and currently it is 1017 cubic meters per capita! Converting agricultural land for hefty biomass plantation will reduce food production as well.
Imagine that there is a leakage in one of the drainage pipes at your home and you bring a water pump to transfer the fluid from the floor to the main sewer. Should we assume that the problem is solved? Yes, but for a moment. Water will continue leaking from the pipe and you will have a flooded floor again. Permanent and complete solution will be to repair the leakage, and that is it! Imran Khan will have to focus mainly on cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emission. Plantation will act as major support to tackle climate change problem but remember, it is not a solution. Imran Khan will have to take tough decisions. Fortunately, solutions exist and if executed properly, Pakistan can curb climate change problem.
First and the foremost, construction of coal-fired power plants and coal mining at Thar Block I and II, under multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), must have to be halted as soon as possible. Because once started functioning, tons of carbon dioxide from these power plants will be emitted, which will pollute the atmosphere. Methane — just like carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping green house gas — which gets released from the coal seam and surrounding disturbed rock strata when coal is mined.
Prime Minister Imran Khan should ask Chinese administration to invest in electricity generation projects based on renewable energy sources, especially in power generation from solar energy. If China can invest $86 billion in solar energy at home, then why not in Pakistan? Also note that China is the largest solar market in the world, having the total installed photovoltaic capacity of around 130 GW. Rather than building $5.6 billion worth of coal-fired power plants under CPEC, it can invest the same amount on Pakistan’s renewable green energy infrastructure!
Pakistan has huge potential to generate electricity by renewable energy sources like solar, hydro and wind. Fortunately, the country receives high levels of solar irradiation. According to the World Bank’s solar maps report, some parts of south-western Balochistan and Sindh have an average Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI — which is the solar radiation received by any surface horizontal to the land) of over 2300 kWh/m 2. Furthermore, ninety percent of the total area of Pakistan has GHI of over 1500 kWh/ m 2 . Germany is blessed with only one-third of the total irradiance which Pakistan receives a year, but still it generated 37 TWh of electricity by using solar energy in 2013, which is half of what Pakistan requires a year. According to studies, Pakistan has 2.9 million megawatts of solar energy potential, but unfortunately the country is producing only approx. 700 MW of electricity from solar energy.
Pakistan generates nearly 591 megawatts of electricity from wind power. According to a report of Pakistan Meteorological Department, the gross wind power potential of 9700 sq. km of coastal area of Sindh is 43,000 megawatts; with exploitable electric power generation is estimated to be 11,000 megawatts. Also, out of 50,000 MW of electricity generation potential from hydro power, the country only has 6,902 megawatts of installed capacity..
Secondly, PM Khan can cut crude oil imports for energy production. It will help the country save billions of dollars which can ultimately be utilized to fund renewable energy projects. The country spends $12 billion annually on the import of crude oil and 70% of it is consumed on power generation which also contributes to climate change. Yet there is another solution to finance green renewable power projects, that is, the issuance of green bonds! These climate bonds will promote investors to invest in environmental friendly projects by giving them tax incentives. In 2017, $161 billion worth of such securities were issued worldwide, which is turning them into one of the fastest growing asset classes. PM Khan should consider issuing triple-A credit quality of green bonds, so that he can attract more investors.
Furthermore, the government can support micro-finance banks across the country by giving them subsidies, so that they can issue soft loans to their customers for installing off-grid solar power systems, which on one hand will reduce burden on national grid and on the the other will decline country’s dependence on coal and oil for electricity.
Finally, the ability to develop strict environmental protection policies and then executing it in a proper manner is the key to success. Climate change problem at a first glance looks easier to tackle, but it is harder than solving most economic problems. Plantation is not a solution by any means. Even planting wrong specie contributes to climate change. Majority of the trees which got planted under Imran Khan’s “Billion Tree Tsunami” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were poplar, eucalyptus and willow, which emit high levels of volatile organic compounds VOCs to protect themselves from bug infestation. These VOCs are hazardous to human health and their reactions with other air pollutants produce methane and ozone, which are powerful greenhouse gases.
*Ali Salman Andani is a Pakistan-based columnist, blogger and social activist. He studies Economics, International Relations and Philosophy. His writings frequently get published in Daily Times, ARY Blogs, Dunya News Blogs, Modern Diplomacy EU and Technology Times. Find him on Twitter. @an_alisalman
In 1992, our American Parent company was asked to submit a proposal for high-capacity soda recovery boiler for the paper and pulp plant for the Bratsk East Siberia Forest Products Complex.
The boiler was beyond our joint venture license agreement so our Turkish American jV company was asked to supply local sales support.
Six top officials from the Turkish parent company first went to Moscow. They met with six expert engineers from the US partner company, in the airport hotel and both parties decided on a sales strategy. Then together they flew to Bratsk, 10 hours away from Moscow in a Russian-made Tupolev-154. Bratsk is in East Siberia, near the Baykal Lake. Bratsk was a place that had not even a decent business hotel to stay at that time. Our Turkish members purchased gifts whiskey, perfume, cigarettes and cigars for the hosts in Bratsk from duty free sales outlets in Istanbul and Moscow airports. Bratsk airport had a narrow strip, which was made for military purposes. The Tupolev had to stop very quickly as soon as they landed. In the year 1992, the Berlin Wall was demolished, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and Russian institutions, companies plants were ready to open to the world.
In the Bratsk Forest Products Complex, the paper and pulp plant was in need of new high capacity soda recovery boiler to replace the existing old unit. The steam boiler was in special design, and it was out of JV license of the Turkish American joint venture company.
Turkish engineers stayed in Bratsk for one week, they visited the site, and made on-site negotiations with local engineers. The project was to be carried out in a very far difficult environment almost 13-hour plane flight from Turkey.
Negotiations talks were over, the team was to leave the site, they had not so optimistic to carry out the next move. However the host Russian authorities evaluated the situation and decided to give a small order to keep them attached, since “They came all the way from a far distance”. Local authority gave them a Tank-Farm job at a price of US dollars 10 million.
Upon receipt of an order, one of the Turkish officials stayed there. He then became the Bratsk project field and site chief manager. He spent one week at the hotel, after other officials returned home.
A week later, 50+ qualified Turkish workers arrived at Bratsk on a charter air flight. The site was set up, the current worker barracks were taken over, they were modified, renovated, made more usable for employees. Turkish cook’s kitchen started to work, our hygiene scheme, bathroom toilet, workers’ bedrooms, kitchen set up.
The old tank farm, which consist large-capacity cylindrical oil storage tanks, were demolished, old materials were scrap, necessary steel sheets were purchased and transported to Bratsk site.
While our tank-farm project was going on, our US partner gave the proposal for the steam boiler, got the job at the equivalent of 200m US dollars. It was necessary to finish the job in 24 months, but the project was a little late because of the financial difficulties.
Steam Boiler site assembly erection works was given to us again, from which we had a share of US $ 20 million. The number of working Turkish workers occasionally became 200+. They worked 7/24 in shifts with one day off per week..
Bratsk city is very different now. There are a lot of comfortable hotels, better airport. The world’s largest paper and pulp mills and forest products factories are here.
In the following years, Turkish engineers built workshops, industrial facilities, factories in the remote areas of Kamchatka, on the North Sea coast, in Kazakhstan Tengiz region. If there are still Turkish people working there today, it was thanks to those who went there in 1992 and provided us with a place to hold. We owe them a lot. Our Bratsk Project ended in 1996. A large number of Turkish workers worked here. I tried to tell the story from the best memory I have, but does it not seem like a fairy tale?
After more than three years of devastating war in Yemen, there are new efforts being carried out in Geneva for a peaceful solution. The United Nations Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths hopes that the warring parties will engage with each other to end the conflict. The negotiations were scheduled to kick off on Thursday, but were postponed due to the lack of representation from the Houthi rebels.
Previously, the Houthis, who are supposedly backed by Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, had condemned the talks because they would not produce any results. Meanwhile, Martin Griffiths had met with officials from the Hadi Government who are supported by a Saudi-led coalition, but talks cannot take place until the Houthi delegation is ready to come to the table. At a press conference in Geneva this week, Griffiths reiterated that the first step to the talks were to work on confidence-building measures between the two sides and focus on how peace negotiations would work in the future.
The talks in Geneva would be the most serious effort made in the last two years to bring an end to Yemen’s three-year conflict, which has killed more than 10,000 people and brought about the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has repeated its call for the implementation of UN resolution 2216, which calls on the Houthi rebels to relinquish its control of the capital Sana’a and refrain from provocations to neighboring states like Saudi Arabia.
There are high expectations for the Geneva talks on Yemen, but there is still an escalation on the ground. The primary aim for these talks is to arrange for future talks so then more negotiations will take place next month. Right now, the United Nations is trying to get the warring parties together and agree on what the future negotiations would look like, and the consultations will have limited aims such as the release of prisoners and the reopening of the Sana’a Airport. However, a slow approach to the conflict could de-escalate the situation on the ground if both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition can negotiate an end to the war, but unfortunately, neither side wants the war to end nor slow down.
According to the United Nations, the Saudi-led coalition may be committing war crimes in Yemen. The coalition has created a starvation siege in Yemen by not allowing humanitarian assistance into the country, and they have also bombed civilian targets like weddings, schools, hospitals, funerals, and markets. The statistics relating to the realities on the ground in Yemen are quite dire. 28 million people are in need of assistance, 8 million people are on the brink of starvation, and 3 million people have fled their homes. This is a terrible humanitarian crisis, yet one that many in western capitals are paying little attention too. In fact, the United States is also responsible for arming and training the Saudis, sharing intelligence with military officials, and refueling Saudi jets in mid-air.
It would not have been possible for the Saudi-led coalition to carry out this intervention in Yemen without the help from the US. Yemen is a sovereign country and when the Houthis took the capital Sana’a in 2014, it was an internal conflict. The external involvement of the Saudi-led coalition with support from the United States intervened in the most disastrous way with 18,000 airstrikes being carried out, most of which have hit civilian targets and it is quite striking that the UN has brought up charges of war crimes that relate to torture, rape, and intentional targeting of civilians.
The US Congress has tried to pull back its support for the Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen by restricting arms sales. The latest attack on a school bus by the coalition that killed 40 children was chaotic, but the bombs that were used to hit those children were American-made, namely from Lockheed Martin. The United States is feeling the ripple effects from the conflict in Yemen, especially the latest event of August 9 because they were directly responsible for the deaths of those children.
But of course, from the perspective of Washington, if the Saudis don’t buy the weapons from the US, the Saudis could get them somewhere else. The weapons that are being sold to Riyadh from the United States are killing people in Yemen and the fact is that Saudi Arabia has enough weapons given that they are one of the largest buyers of weapons in the world. If we are going to talk about ethics and targeting, why would it be ethical to sell weapons to a country like Saudi Arabia that is actively at war, targeting civilians in Yemen, and causing chaos in the Middle East? The Yemenis are the victims of this war and they are victims of both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. Aside from the atrocities carried out by the coalition, the Houthis have also committed crimes against civilians who oppose them, they have kidnapped people, and infringed on their human rights. But at the same time, the coalition has not made things any better by comparing themselves to a group of rebels that took power illegally by portraying themselves as the better side when the Yemeni civilian is paying the price of this war.
We’re not at a peace process in Yemen because the United States continues to support the Saudi-led coalition and it is very difficult to see how a real peace agreement could be implemented. But as long as the coalition continues to be backed by the world’s number one superpower, they will continue this war until an absolute victory is achieved.
In addition, the United States would like to support the Saudis and the Emiratis in everything they do, but it is incredibly hard to do so when there are civilian casualties and people starving throughout the war-torn country. Ambassador Nikki Haley would like to back Saudi Arabia because it would be a counter to Iran, but at the same time she cannot turn a blind eye at the humanitarian disaster in Yemen. The war in Yemen has had a bad name on the Trump Administration, but the US can put pressure on all sides to come to a political settlement. Even if the conflict came to an end, there could still be small pockets of fighting on the ground regardless and this is something the world will have to take care of. However, a slow process of not claiming success before it is actually achieved can give Yemenis hope that maybe a peaceful solution can hopefully be worked out sooner rather than later.
Yemen is a different case from Syria in that the conflict can be solvable and the Yemenis will have to hold onto this consultation process as a way to peace because there is nothing left on the ground. If we do not resolve the crisis in Yemen, this could spill over into neighboring countries and exacerbate the instability of the Middle East.
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is experiencing troubles in Ukraine. Territory once considered as uncontested land of the Russian Patriarchate may now split and become autocephalous (independent), adding yet another dimension to the challenges Russia is facing in the borderlands.
One of the major features of Russian history of the last several centuries was the battle over territories spanning from the Baltic to the Black Sea in the south, then turning eastward towards the South Caucasus.
Those are the lands for which the Russians fought the Swedes, Poles, Nazi Germans, Napoleon’s armies, Turks and the Iranians. To the Russians’ credit, they fought their geopolitical competitors successfully, stalling European advances into the arc of lands around the Russian heartland, where most of Russia’s industrial and human potential laid.
When it came to direct military confrontation, the Russians have never been fundamentally weaker than their European or Asian competitors. Deficiencies in the organization of the Russian military machine always existed, alongside a lack of modern military capabilities, but those problems were alleviated by Russian geography, large landmass, and difficult to penetrate and poor road infrastructure.
Like its earlier versions, the modern Russian military does not fundamentally lag behind its western competitors. The gap historically has been so small that neither Russia nor any of the European powers was totally dominant on the continent for an extended period.
Therefore, it is at times baffling to hear that nowadays the Russians are afraid of NATO expansion near the Russian borders. True, it would be difficult for any major player to accept rival armies near its own borders and Russia is no exception, but in the Russian mindset, surely NATO expansion near Russian frontiers is no different from what previous invasions of European commanders were?
How serious a problem the NATO troops constitute for Moscow is largely doubtful. NATO troops are already in the Baltics, and Turkey is a member of the Alliance. Considering modern military technologies and Russian abilities to defend the country, it is surprising to see how much emphasis Moscow is putting on military aspects, while crucial developments in the borderlands take place in the economic and cultural realms.
I have written often on how Russia is losing its grip on its borderlands primarily in the economic realm. For centuries, western economic reach into Russian borderlands was meagre and, as said above, Russian rulers faced only a military threat which they repelled successfully. In the last 20-30 years though, Western powers have been successful in expanding their economic reach. The European Union (EU) is a powerful entity as it has already attached the former Soviet protectorates in eastern Europe and all the three Baltic states. Moreover, the EU is active in Ukraine, Moldova and the South Caucasus to the level that much of these countries’ trade is now associated with the West.
Beyond economics, the changing geopolitical landscape is also being tilted in favor of the West on the local level. Elites in Ukraine and Georgia are being redirected to the West through economic and political incentives. Youngsters, when facing the choice of studying abroad, predominantly head to western universities and upon return to their native countries, go on to occupy key governmental positions.
Even in the spiritual realm where the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) was predominant throughout centuries, claiming its right to unite Orthodox Christians over large expanses of the Eurasian landmass, it is now experiencing troubles in Ukraine. The latter’s Church was canonically under the ROC’s jurisdiction, but ever since the Ukraine conflict in 2014, Kyiv has been successful in its efforts to distance itself from the Russian Church. Ukrainians claim that the transfer of the Kyivan Metropolitan See in the late 17th century to Moscow was unlawful.
The meeting held on August 31 between Russian Patriarch Kirill and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signaled that the Ukrainian Church is likely to gain autocephaly (independence).
If this scenario plays out, then it will be yet another indication how Russian influence may be diminishing over its borderlands. Religious developments in Ukraine go hand-in-hand with geopolitics between Russia and Ukraine.
*Emil Avdaliani writes on developments in South Caucasus region and wider former Soviet space for local and international websites.
The following is an interview with Daniel Wagner, author along with Keith Furst, of the new book, AI Supremacy: Winning in the Era of Machine Learning.
RW: Can you briefly explain the differences between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning?
DW: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the overarching science and engineering associated with intelligent algorithms, whether or not they learn from data. However, the definition of intelligence is subject to philosophical debate-even the terms algorithms can be interpreted in a wide context. This is one of the reasons why there is some confusion about what AI is and what is not, because people use the word loosely and have their own definition of what they believe AI is. People should understand AI to be a catch-all term for technology which tends to imply the latest advances in intelligent algorithms, but the context in how the phrase is used determines its meaning, which can vary quite widely.
“AI Supremacy: Winning in the Era of Machine Learning”, by Daniel Wagner and Keith Furst
Machine learning (ML) is a subfield of AI that focuses on intelligent algorithms that can learn automatically (without being explicitly programmed) from data. There are three general categories of ML: supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning, and reinforcement learning.
Deep learning (DL) is a subfield of ML that imitates the workings of the human brain (or neural networks) in the processing of data and creating patterns for use in decision-making. It is true that the way the human brain processes information was one of the main inspirations behind DL, but it only mimics the functioning of neurons. This doesn’t mean that consciousness is being replicated, because we really do not understand all the underlying mechanics driving consciousness. Since DL is a rapidly evolving field there are other more general definitions of it, such as a neural network with more than two layers. The idea of layers is that information is processed by the DL algorithm at one level and then passes information on to the next level so that higher levels of abstraction and conclusions can be drawn about data.
Is China’s Social Credit Score system about to usher in an irreversible Orwellian nightmare there? How likely is it to spread to other dictatorships?
The social credit system that the Chinese government is in the process of unleashing is creating an Orwellian nightmare for some of China’s citizens. We say “some” because many Chinese citizens do not necessarily realize that it is being rolled out. This is because the government has been gradually implementing versions of what has become the social credit system over a period of years without calling it that. Secondly, most Chinese citizens have become numb to the intrusive nature of the Chinese state. They have been poked and prodded in various forms for so long that they have become accustomed to, and somewhat accepting, of it. That said, the social credit system has real consequences for those who fall afoul of it; they will soon learn about the consequences of having done so, if they have not learned already.
As we note in the book, the Chinese government has shared elements of its social credit system technology with a range of states across the world. There is every reason to believe that authoritarian governments will wish to adopt the technology and use it for their own purposes. Some have already done so.
How can we stop consumer drones from being used to aid in blackmail, burglary, assassination, and terrorist attacks?
As Daniel notes in his book Virtual Terror, governments are having a difficult time keeping track of the tens of millions of drones that are in operation in societies around the world. Registering them is largely voluntary and there are too few regulations in place governing their use. Given this, there is little that can be done, at this juncture, to prevent them from being used for nefarious purposes. Moreover, drones’ use on the battlefield is transforming the way individual battles will be fought, and wars will be waged. We have a chapter in the book devoted to this subject.
Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have been caught throttling/ending traffic to many progressive (TeleSur, TJ Kirk) and conservative (InfoWars, PragerU) websites and channels. Should search engines and social media platforms be regulated as public utilities, to lend 1st Amendment protections to the users of these American companies?
The current battle being waged–in the courts, legislatures, and the battlefield of social media itself- are already indicative of how so many unanswered questions associated with the rise of social media are being addressed out of necessity. It seems that no one–least of all the social media firms–wants to assume responsibility when things go wrong or uncomfortable questions must be answered. Courts and legislatures will ultimately have to find a middle ground response to issues such as first amendment protections, but this will likely remain a moving target for some time to come, as there is no single black or white answer, and, as each new law comes into effect, its ramifications will become known, which means the laws will undoubtedly need to become subsequently modified.
Do you think blockchain will eventually lead to a golden era of fiscal transparency?
This is hard to say. On one hand, the rise of cryptocurrencies brought with them the promise of money outside the control of governments and large corporations. However, cryptocurrencies have been subject to a number of high-profile heists and there are still some fundamental issues with them, such as the throughput of Bitcoin which is only able to process around a few transactions per second. This makes some cryptocurrencies less viable for real world transactions and everyday commerce.
The financial services industry has jumped on the blockchain bandwagon, but they have taken the open concept of some cryptocurrencies and reinvented it as distributed ledger technology (DLT). To be part of DLTs created by financial institutions, a joining member must be a financial institution. For this reason, the notion of transparency is not relevant, since the DLT will be controlled by a limited number of members and only they will determine what information is public and what is not.
The other issue with the crypto space right now is that is filled with fraud. At the end of the day, crypto is an asset class like gold or any other precious metal. It does not actually produce anything; The only real value it has is the willingness of another person to pay more for it in the future. It is possible that a few cryptocurrencies will survive long-term and become somewhat viable, but the evolution of blockchain will likely continue to move towards DLT that more people will trust. Also, governments are likely to issue their own cryptocurrencies in the future, which will bring it into the mainstream.
Taiwan has recently started using online debate forums to help draft legislation, in a form of direct democracy. Kenya just announced that they will post presidential election results on a blockchain. How can AI and blockchain enhance democracy?
Online debate forums are obviously a good thing, because having the average person engage in political debate and being able to record and aggregate voting results will create an opportunity for more transparency. The challenge becomes how to verify the identities of the people submitting their feedback. Could an AI program be designed to submit feedback millions of times to give a false representation of the public’s concerns?
Estonia has long been revered as the world’s most advanced digital society, but researchers have pointed out serious security flaws in its electronic voting system, which could be manipulated to influence election outcomes. AI can help by putting in place controls to verify that the person providing feedback for legislation is a citizen. Online forums could force users to take a pic of their face next to their passport to verify their identity with facial recognition algorithms.
Should an international statute be passed banning scientists from installing emotions-specially pain and fear-into AI?
Perhaps, for now at least, the question should be: should scientists ban the installation of robots or other forms of AI to imitate human emotions? The short answer to this is that it depends. On one hand, AI imitating human emotions could be a good thing, such as when caring for the elderly or teaching a complex concept to a student. However, a risk is that when AI can imitate human emotions very well, people may believe they have gained a true friend who understands them. It is somewhat paradoxical that the rise of social media has connected more of us, but some people still admit that they lack meaningful relationships with others.
You don’t talk much about India in your book. How far behind are they in the AI race, compared to China, the US & EU?
Surprisingly, many of the world’s countries have only adopted a formal AI strategy in the last year. India is one of them; It only formally adopted an AI strategy in 2018 and lags well behind China, the EU, the US, and variety of other countries. India has tremendous potential to meaningfully enter the race for AI supremacy and become a viable contender, but it still lacks a military AI strategy. India already contributes to advanced AI-oriented technology through its thriving software, engineering, and consulting sectors. Once it ramps up a national strategy, it should quickly become a leader in the AI arena–to the extent that it devotes sufficient resources to that strategy and swiftly and effectively implements it. That is not a guaranteed outcome, based on the country’s prior history with some prior national initiatives. We must wait and see if India lives up to its potential in this arena.
On page 58 you write, “Higher-paying jobs requiring creativity and problem-solving skills, often assisted by computers, have proliferated… Demand has increased for lower skilled restaurant workers, janitors, home health aides, and others providing services that cannot be automated.” How will we be able to stop this kind of income inequality?
In all likelihood, the rise of AI will, at least temporarily, increased the schism between highly paid white-collar jobs and lower paid blue-collar jobs, however, at the same time, AI will, over decades, dramatically alter the jobs landscape. Entire industries will be transformed to become more efficient and cost effective. In some cases this will result in a loss of jobs while in others it will result in job creation. What history has shown is that, even in the face of transformational change, the job market has a way of self-correcting; Overall levels of employment tend to stay more or less the same. We have no doubt that this will prove to be the case in this AI-driven era. While income inequality will remain a persistent threat, our expectation is that, two decades from now, it will be no worse than it is right now.
AI systems like COMPAS and PredPol have been exposed for being racially biased. During YouTube’s “Adpocalypse”, many news and opinion videos got demonetized by algorithms indiscriminately targeting keywords like ‘war’ and ‘racism”. How can scientists and executives prevent their biases from influencing their AI?
This will be an ongoing debate. Facebook removed a PragerU video where a woman was describing the need for strong men in society and the problem with feminizing them. Ultimately, Facebook said it was a mistake and put the video back up. So the question becomes who decides what constitutes “racist” or “hate speech” content? The legal issues seem to emerge, if it can be argued that the content being communicated are calling on people to act in a violent way.
Could the political preferences of a social media company’s executives overrule the sensibilities of the common person to make up their own mind? On the other hand, India has a string of mob killings from disinformation campaigns on WhatsApp, mostly from people who were first time smartphone users. Companies could argue that some people are not able to distinguish between real and fake videos so content must be censored in that case.
Ultimately, executives and scientists will need to have an open and ongoing debate about content censorship. Companies must devise a set of principles and adhere to them to the best of their ability. As AI becomes more prevalent in monitoring and censoring online content there will have to be more transparency about the process and the algorithms will need to be adjusted following a review by the company. In other words, companies cannot prevent algorithmic biases, but they can monitor them and be transparent with the public about steps to make them better over time.
Amper is an AI music composer. Heliograf has written about 1000 news blurbs for WaPo. E-sports and e-bands are starting to sell out stadiums. Are there any human careers that you see as being automation-proof?
In theory, nearly any cognitive or physical task can be automated. We do not believe that people should be too worried, at least for the time being, about the implications of doing so because the costs to automate even basic tasks to the level of human performance is extremely high, and we are a good ways away from being technically capable of automating most tasks. However, AI should spark conversations about how we want to structure our society in the future and what it means to be human because AI will improve over time and become more dominant in the economy.
In Chapter 1 you briefly mention digital amnesia (outsourcing the responsibility of memorizing stuff to one’s devices). How else do you anticipate consumer devices will change us psychologically in the next few decades?
We could see a spike in schizophrenia because the immersive nature of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality that will increasingly blur the lines between reality and fantasy. In the 1960s there was a surge of interest in mind-expanding drugs such as psychedelics. However, someone ingesting LSD knew there was a time limit associated with the effects of the drug. These technologies do not end. Slowly, the real world could become less appealing and less real for heavy users of extended reality technology. This could affect relationships between other humans and increase the nature and commonality of mental illness. Also, as discussed in the book, we are already seeing people who cannot deal with risk in the real world. There have been several cases of animal mauling, cliff falls, and car crashes among individuals in search of the perfect “selfie”. This tendency to want to perfect our digital personas should be a topic of debate in schools and at the dinner table.
Ready Player One is the most recent sci-fi film positing the gradual elimination of corporeal existence through Virtual Reality. What do you think of the transcension hypothesis on Fermi’s paradox?
The idea that our consciousness can exist independently from our bodies has occurred throughout humanity’s history. It appears that our consciousness is a product of our own living bodies. No one knows if a person’s consciousness can exist after the body dies, but some have suggested that a person’s brain still functions for a few minutes after the body dies. It seems we need to worry about the impact of virtual reality on our physical bodies before it will be possible for us to transcend our bodies and exist on a digital plane. This is a great thought experiment, but there is not enough evidence to suggest that this is even remotely possible in the future.
What role will AI play in climate change?
AI will become an indispensable tool for helping to predict the impacts of climate change in the future. The field of “Climate Informatics” is already blossoming, harnessing AI to fundamentally transform weather forecasting (including the prediction of extreme events) and to improve our understanding of the effects of climate change. Much more thought and research needs to be devoted to exploring the linkages between the technology revolution and other important global trends, including demographic changes such as ageing and migration, climate change, and sustainable development, but AI should make a real difference in enhancing our general understanding of the impacts of these, and other, phenomena going forward.
More than two weeks of nearly uninterrupted price gains for crude oil ended this week, with the rally running out of steam. The question is what happens next?
Oil prices posted steep losses just as the bulls were back on the march. WTI briefly topped $70 per barrel in recent days and Brent was flirting with $80. But the rally was kneecapped by a variety of factors, and it could be challenging to break above those key pricing thresholds in the near future.
“[A]lthough the timing of the price slide comes as a surprise – Brent dipped well below $76 for a time [on Thursday] – the slide itself does not, as expectations recently have doubtless been too optimistic,” Commerzbank wrote in a note. In fact, to some, the timing was not all that surprising – WTI faced technical resistance at around $70-$71, and having failed to break above that threshold, was forced back down.
But beyond the technical analysis, oil prices also face some questions on the fundamentals. The emerging market turmoil (some say crisis, or contagion) has not gone away. Currency problems continue to dog a long list of emerging market economies, pushing a few into, or to the brink of, recession.
In fact, the MSCI Emerging Market Index of equities officially fell into bear market territory on Thursday, and there is little sign of light at the end of the tunnel. “My fear of contagion is that right now the sentiment towards the whole emerging-market spectrum is very fragile,” Mario Castro, a Latin America currency strategist at Nomura, said in a Wall Street Journal interview.
Because much of global oil demand growth is concentrated in rapidly-developing economies, currency weakness could have an outsized impact on crude oil demand.
“The worries about demand and a possible spillover from emerging markets are weighing on prices,” Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro Bank NV, told Bloomberg. “We have tested breaking higher, but that failed, so now we have a temporary setback. I still expect the market to turn higher at some point, probably driven by Iran.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is rumored to be on the verge of dramatically ramping up the trade war with China, potentially moving forward on some $200 billion in tariffs. That would surely spark a response from China, and the back-and-forth retaliatory trade attacks could sap global growth. Also, China, specifically, is a major consumer of oil and one of the largest sources of demand growth, so a slowdown there could also go a long way to undercutting oil demand forecasts.
Also, this past week, the EIA reported weekly data that showed an uptick in gasoline inventories, a bearish sign that signals both an end to summer driving season and possibly hints at a slowdown in demand more generally. It’s one data point, however, so it doesn’t indicate a solid trend.
In fact, even as the markets sold off crude oil on the news, fearing a deterioration in the fundamentals, the reaction may have been overblown. “Gasoline demand growth has not been impressive in 2018, but total US oil demand growth has been stronger,” Standard Chartered said in a note. “As for the rest of the weekly data, it was negative but also unremarkable for late August.”
The softness in recent days has taken the wind out of the sails of crude oil, but it does not mean we are on the verge of another downturn. “The news backdrop does not really point to any further price slide: according to the DOE, US crude oil stocks declined by a surprisingly sharp 4.3 million barrels to 401.5 million barrels last week – their lowest level since February 2015. Things also remain interesting with respect to the Iran sanctions – particularly as far as the situation in India is concerned,” Commerzbank said. “We assume that New Delhi will bow to the pressure from Washington – so the supply situation on the oil market will remain tight.”
With two months to go on Iran sanctions, exports are falling fast. U.S. crude inventories are at their lowest point in years, and Saudi Arabia is going to be forced to burn through much of its spare capacity. U.S. shale, while signs of a production slowdown have yet to really materialize in the production data from the EIA, is still running into a rough patch. Just a few days ago, the CEOs of Schlumberger and Halliburton warned that drilling activity the Permian is cooling, which could translate into slower growth.
All of that is to say that while oil prices fell back at the end of this past week, it does not mean that we are in for another slide.
Energy-starved microbes may be the force that causes huge amounts of carbon to be stored in deep soils, according to a Dartmouth College study. The research finds that less food energy at depth makes it more difficult to decompose deposits of organic carbon, creating an underground storehouse for the climate-destabilizing chemical element.
The study, published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry, outlines the conditions that underlie whether deep soil acts as a source or a sink for carbon.
The fate of deep soil carbon is of major consequence to researchers studying climate change. It is estimated that 2400 gigatons of carbon is stored in soil, with two-thirds of that lying below the 20 cm depth. The amount of deep soil carbon alone is about double the amount of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide that exists in the Earth’s atmosphere.
If decomposition rates increase as a result of climate change, then carbon stored in deep soils will be released into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. The research tested how decomposition changes with soil depth to help predict whether deep soil carbon would be vulnerable to such climate-induced changes.
“Deep soil carbon is a really big deal for understanding the future of climate change,” said Caitlin Hicks Pries, an assistant professor of biology at Dartmouth. “Understanding the forces that cause that much carbon and all of its greenhouse gas potential to be stored underground helps us predict what our future climate will look like.”
Soil organic carbon comes from the decomposition of dead plants and can remain in soil for thousands of years. The research team set out to see how root litter decomposes at different depths to understand why some deep soil carbon can be stored for such a long period of time and why other carbon is released into the atmosphere.
The team incubated roots at depths ranging from 15 cm to 95 cm in an 80-year-old stand of conifer trees in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. According to the study, the loss of root litter carbon during the first six months was similar across all depths. However, after 30 months, carbon loss was significantly slower at the greater depths.
The team found that the smaller amount of energy that is readily-available to microbes in the form of dissolved carbon could be the reason for slower decomposition. As a result of the slower decomposition rates, carbon is more likely to be stored long-term.
“Live fine roots feed the soil with substrates that are like candy for microbes. The lack of this energy source at depth denies microbes the energy they need to efficiently decompose dead roots,” said Hicks Pries.
To conduct the study, the team also relied on the Carbon Organisms Rhizosphere and Protection in the Soil Environment model developed at Princeton University and the University of California, Merced. Known as CORPSE, the program predicts microbial activity and allows researchers to see how the amount of available energy translates into biological processes to decompose roots.
CORPSE showed that decomposition proceeds relatively quickly when food energy is available, but that without an external source of energy, microbes at depth lose the ability to decompose roots.
“CORPSE allows us to focus on the role of living things in the decomposition process when studying soil carbon, rather than just looking at the material that’s being decomposed,” said Benjamin Sulman, a project scientist at the University of California, Merced. “This study shows why it’s important to include those biological processes in the computer models we use to make predictions about how ecosystems and climate will change in the future.”
While the findings don’t predict how much carbon will be released from deep soil in a given amount of time, the results do allow researchers to understand how a change in climatic conditions could impact the fate of deep soil carbon.
For example, increased rainfall could transport more energy in the form of dissolved organic carbon to deeper soils and result in more carbon released into the atmosphere. A change in dominant plants to species with deep-growing fine roots, could also force more carbon into atmosphere, whereas plants with coarse roots could have the reverse impact.
“We should be concerned because as temperatures warm, this deep soil organic carbon has the potential to be released as carbon dioxide forcing a positive feedback to climate change,” said Hicks Pries.
According to the paper, the processes controlling the cycling of deep soil organic carbon have received little attention even though over half of the world’s soil carbon is stored below 20 cm.
“This approach misses the huge amount of carbon that resides in deep soil,” said Hicks Pries.
The research indicates that moisture level and temperature do not directly impact decomposition rates within deep soil and that microbial abundance likely does not either. Lower nitrogen levels could be a factor, but further testing would be needed.
AI Supremacy: Winning in the Era of Machine Learning by Daniel Wagner and Keith Furst.
Wagner and Furst exhaustively explore the inner workings and implications of AI in their new book. Each chapter focuses on the current and future state of AI within a specific industry, country or society in general. Special emphasis is placed on how AI will shape the domestic, diplomatic and military landscapes of the US, EU and China.
The first half of the book tackles AI as it pertains to commerce. There are chapters on globalization, manufacturing, finance, the sciences and communication. Each talks about how AI is disrupting the sector and the jobs attached to said sector, then broaches plausible future scenarios (and problems).
“AI Supremacy: Winning in the Era of Machine Learning”, by Daniel Wagner and Keith Furst
Comfortingly, the authors tend to relay a message of AI complementing, not eliminating, workers in the workplace for the foreseeable future. There are examples given of lawyers using software to sift through paperwork and robots handling some of the most tedious and dangerous parts of factory work- under the supervision of humans.
The second half of the book discusses the political implications of AI; this is the more pessimistic half. The two authors warn of the dangers of autonomous weapons, Orwell-esque surveillance statea and of an explosion in cybercrime by both state and non-state actors. Wagner and Furst have as a major theme in this section the glaring lack of government oversight of this superhuman technology. At their best, regulators are playing catch-up on issues of safety, privacy and ethics; at their worst, bureaucrats are completely ignoring AI that is revolutionary in the truest sense of the word.
AI Supremacy focuses a lot on the rat race between nations and corporations. To this point, governments have largely let tech titans, such as AliBaba and Amazon, take the lead in R&D. The G-20 nations are now starting to devote funding and attention to developing their own AI and setting international norms. Wagner and Furst write extensively about such efforts being established in the US, EU and China (which has a dedicated chapter). Lesser attention is paid to the scientists in Russia, India, Korea and Japan.
The book doesn’t claim to have all the answers to humanity’s existential queries on AI. Rather, it is more of a primer for how to think and talk about this sci-fi-come-approaching-reality. This tome is a great resource for politicians, entrepreneurs, scholars and ethicists to research short and long-term trends in AI and where humanity fits into this brave new world.
We have long strong traditions down in Texas. Our culture is the melding of many cultures-Mexican (which itself is a melding of Spanish and Indigenous), Irish, Czech, Polish, and a slew of African cultures, which due to the cruelty of the white man throughout history, get boiled down to Black. We have a way of co-opting you if you decide to migrate to this country. We’ll take you and put a new name on you.
But if you’ve got a hankering on coming down to the Lone Star State and changing it, you will face opposition. It may be good change they’re trying to bring—like that of the carpetbaggers during Reconstruction, or the Texians led by Sam Houston in the infancy of our short lived Republic—but we ain’t gonna just roll over for anything.
Oddly enough, time and politics have gone full circle. In what was once a bastion of Conservative Democrats (entirely white), fighting off encroaching “Radical Republicans” (mixed ethnicities, but still mostly white) in the 1860s-1870s, but had previously been Mexicanos fighting off encroaching Gringos in the 1830s, the two parties do-si-doed with each other so much that I actually thought there was a slight chance that the GOP could swing to the left of the Democrats with the election of Trump (this was during his campaign for the White House when there was still a sliver of hope that his campaign promises to the working class weren’t all lies).
Now we have a GOP incumbent who has definite Cuban roots, but shuns his Spanish first name running in a state with rapidly changing demographics i.e. going from majority white to majority-minority and then quickly to majority Hispanic. Cruz, following in the footsteps of La Malinche, the Indigenous woman who helped advise and interpret for Cortés as he conquered the Aztec Empire, is one of the leading opponents of immigration reform, the Dream Act and an ally of Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant agenda.
I don’t blame Sen. Rafael Eduardo Cruz for going by the whiter sounding “Ted” as that is his right. My name is actually Patrick, but I go by Pato because I have Mexican roots in Texas, and roots mean a thing or two in theses parts.
Speaking of roots, we have Robert Francis O’Rourke, whose preferred nomenclature is “Beto”, running as an progressive, a supporter of immigration and civil rights, who is within single digits in recent polls and raising more funds than Cruz. It is just as much HIS right to adopt a Latino-sounding name. He’s a fourth generation Texan (he’s got about 3 generations on you there “Ted”), he’s from El Paso, and he went by Beto in grade school! Kids can be cruel. Mexican kids—we were really bad.
You don’t go around a Mexican neighborhood calling yourself “Beto” without being able to back it up. You just don’t. It’d be foolhardy to think that the campaign ads that Beto O’Rourke has released of him speaking in Spanish are evidence of his language proficiency, but we do have the fact that Don Beto has challenged the incumbent to debates in English and in Spanish—and the fact that Cruz himself actually isn’t very proficient at Spanish.
O’Rourke’s name and identity, however, haven’t escaped Cruz’s attacks. After O’Rourke won the Democratic primary for the Senate nomination, Rafael “Ted” Cruz issued a radio ad criticizing O’Rourke for his choice of name.
“If you’re gonna run in Texas, you can’t be a liberal man, cuz liberal thought is not the spirit of a Lone Star Man. … Liberal Robert wanted to fit in. So he changed his name to Beto, and hid it with a grin.”
– Ted Cruz ad
The Texas GOP also attacked Beto for skateboarding and performing in a punk rock band while wearing a dress when he was a cool young man. Apparently Cruz and the Texas GOP have a very narrow idea of what it means to be a Texan.
But as a true, red-blooded Texan, I have to say to Sen. Ted Cruz, you, sir, are a malinche. You are not a malinche because of the color of your skin or your inability to pronounce your own name properly. You are one because your disdain for the plight of the least among us, which disproportionally includes your Hispanic brethren.
You are Malinche por que you call out a man of Irish descent for doing something similar, but actually opposite—he was just trying to connect with his majority Hispanic elementary school and with his environs. You are a despicable “human” being who shirked his ethnic identity for pinches votes and campaign funds. I will be casting my ballot for the challenger. For the first time in my voting experience I will get to cast a ballot for a state wide liberal who actually stands a snowball’s chance on the Llano Estacado* in November. (It’s just a saying: *there’s actually snow on the Llano.)
By doing so, we will take our rightful place amongst the left-leaning republics of Latin America and more importantly we will remain in the Estados Unidos to help drive home a win for a Democratic Party that we can actually be proud of and not marred by slavery and then Jim Crow.
Talks between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping have been held in Vladivostok.
The talks, which began in a restricted format and then continued with the participation of the two countries’ delegations, covered bilateral cooperation and key international matters.
Following the talks, the two heads of state attended the ceremony for exchanging documents signed during the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping’s working visit to the Russian Federation.
Among the documents signed were memorandums on establishing the Business Council of the Far East and the Baikal Region of Russia and North East of China and on consolidating Russian-Chinese regional, production and investment cooperation in the Far East, as well as a programme for the development of Russia-China trade, economic and investment cooperation in Russia’s Far East in 2018–2024.
Also signed were documents on cooperation between the Russian and Chinese Olympic committees and between Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency and the China Media Group, as well as an agreement between Far Eastern Federal University and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on establishing centres of Russian and Chinese studies.
In addition, a loan agreement between Vnesheconombank and China Development Bank on granting up to 12 billion yuan and a treaty on the rights of the participants in the KAMAZ Weichai company were signed.
Some 300,000 troops and tens of thousands vehicles, aircraft and warships are participating in the largest military exercise Russia has staged in 37 years. Units from China are to take part in the maneuvers as well.
The Vostok 2018 exercise is meant to test the capability of the Russian military to rapidly move and deploy large forces over long distances as well as coordinating between several branches during a large-scale engagement.
The war games will include around 300,000 Russian soldiers and officers, including 6,000 airborne troops, over 1,000 warplanes, helicopters and drones, about 36,000 armor, and 80 combat and support ships.
The assets have been sent from all over Russia to several training ranges in the Far East of the country by railroad and military transport planes. Several units of the People’s Liberation Army of China will join the Russians for a drill at the Tsugol range.
For some participants, Vostok 2018 will be their first chance to show off some new weapon systems. For instance, the Airborne Troops will be deploying their freshly-supplied BMD-4M air-dropped infantry fighting vehicles and Patriot pickup trucks armed with Kornet anti-tank missiles. Meanwhile, the military engineers will be doing their best to confuse “the enemy” with inflatable mock-ups of Iskander missile launchers and S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.
One of the key elements of the entire exercise, however, will be hard to notice from afar. Russian military communication specialists have deployed a secure network over an area of around 9.8 million square kilometers to ensure the exchange of intelligence and stable communications between the many military units involved in the drill. A broadband link to the General Staff HQ in Moscow 900km away will keep the military chain-of-command in order.
The exercise will be witnessed by monitors from 57 nations as well as NATO and the European Union, according to Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin. He added that Russia informed NATO of the planned exercise months ahead of time during a meeting in May.
The US-led military bloc routinely voices concern over Russian exercises. The Vostok-2018, however, was not targeted by a wave of suspicion similar to its counterpart last year, the Zapad-2017, which some allies framed as bordering on an act of aggression and a possible ruse to launch an invasion of the Baltics. The fears never materialized, just as Moscow said.
A Romanian court ruled that a notorious hacker known as Guccifer will be extradited to serve a sentence in the US after he finishes his jail time in his home country.
Romanian hacker Guccifer – real name Marcel Lazar Lehel – will be extradited to serve a four-year-and-four-month sentence in the US after he finishes his current seven-year jail term in Romania, a court in the Transylvanian town of Alba Iulia ruled on Monday.
Guccifer became notorious after breaking into email accounts including those of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell and members of the Bush family.
Lehel, 46, was extradited to the US in March 2016 and pleaded guilty in court in the state of Virginia, where he admitted that he broke into several networks, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account.
He told the court that he found “hundreds of folders at hand” in Clinton’s account.
Despite Lehel’s statement, the FBI later denied that he had been able to get access to confidential information in Clinton’s account.
However, US prosecutors said that between 2012 and 2014, Lehel had broken into over 100 email accounts, including those of US officials, and the court sentenced him to four years and four months for hacking and identity theft.
Previously, Lehel had been sentenced to seven years in prison in Romania for hacking former security and intelligence officials’ emails accounts, as well some belonging to MEPS and local celebrities.
The US sent him back to his home country after the Virginia court’s conviction, and he is currently in prison in Deva, Transylvania.
In August 2011, he made several phone-calls to Fox News TV producers and told them on the record that he doesn’t want to be sent to the United States, and that he will seek to serve both sentences in Romania.
Church officials in Pakistan have filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency against four Muslims for sharing a Facebook post deemed offensive to the Christian minority.
The controversial photo showed Pakistan army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa standing beside Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Maneka.
The First Lady is seen clad in her signature white burqa, an all-covering traditional garment, with the caption “The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Imran Titus Bhatti, national coordinator of the Church of Pakistan, filed an application on Sept. 10 to launch a case over the post with the cybercrime wing of the investigation agency in the city of Lahore, capital of Punjab province.
“The trinity is among the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith,” he said. “The titles in this blasphemous post insult my faith. It has caused religious hatred. The further sharing of this post is hurting our feelings.”
The Church of Pakistan requested authorities to block the Facebook post and take strong action against what it branded “religious terrorism.”
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in the Islamic-majority nation and Pakistan’s Penal Code stipulates imprisonment of up to 10 years, a fine or both for outraging the religious feelings of any group.
However, religious minorities accuse authorities of generally ignoring insulting remarks about religions other than Islam.
In 2016, a disfigured picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s classic 15th century mural of The Last Supper circulated on social media. It depicted the faces of Jesus and his disciples swapped with the faces of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his ministers against a backdrop of Pakistan’s parliament.
The Christian community has taken to social media to condemn the recent Facebook photo and to post Biblical verses against such mockery.
In a video message issued Sept. 11 on social media, Rev. Amjad Niamat, convener of the Pakistan Christian Action Committee, urged Christians to peacefully record their objections to what was lamentable behaviour.
He demanded that both the government and military act against what he described as miscreant elements.
Catholic activist Khalid Shahzad urged Muslims to give equal respect to the Christian faith.
“A Christian believes in the trinity just like you believe in the finality of Prophethood,” he said. “The Muslim community has imprisoned many illiterate Christians in Punjab jails for blasphemy.”
Affected families and lawyers attending court hearings had also been threatened.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte claimed Tuesday that a political opponent has been conspiring with members of the military to oust him, saying the tipoff came from a foreign power.
Duterte did not say which government provided the intelligence, but said the information would be declassified in the coming days.
He said the plot involved his nemesis, Sen. Antonio Trillanes along with some other members of the opposition and a fraternity of former servicemen called Magdalo – with whom Trillanes had participated in mutinies in 2003 and 2007 – and Maoist rebels.
“You know Sison and this Magdalo, and those who are against me ever since the election, they have combined,” the president said in a nationally televised hour-long conversation, referring to the founder of the Philippine communist party.
“We have the conversation provided by a foreign country sympathetic to us,” Duterte said, adding that Trillanes was in “constant communication” with the guerrillas.
“I am challenging Magdalo to start now,” Duterte said, referring to Trillanes’ political party and fraternity composed mostly of former military officers. “Just make sure that the soldiers and the generals are yours.”
Duterte’s comments came the same day the Supreme Court rejected a petition by Trillanes for a temporary restraining order to block the president’s recent proclamation, in which he stripped the senator of an amnesty for his role in helping lead two military uprisings when he served as a Navy lieutenant.
The high court said it had taken “cognizance” of the pledge by the armed forces and police not to arrest the senator, who has been holed up in his office since last week.
The Supreme Court said it denied Trillanes’ petition and sent the case back to a lower court. But the high court said it had taken note of police and military statements to delay the senator’s arrest, pending a final resolution.
“The court takes judicial notice of the categorical pronouncements of President Duterte that Sen. Trillanes will not be detained,” the high court said in a ruling announced by spokeswoman Victoria Gleoresty Guerra.
A day before Duterte’s televised comments, the Philippine military brass warned all members of the armed forces (AFP) not to be politicized. Earlier, Trillanes had said that some disgruntled officers had sought him out and were helping him from the inside.
On Tuesday, military spokesman Marine Col. Edgard Arevalo issued a statement denying the reported coup plots.
“We wish to categorically state that there were no such sizeable movements of military aircraft or armored vehicles,” Arevalo said.
He said there had been sightings of tanks and troops which were “matters that are otherwise normal occurrence.”
Last week, military advisers pushed Duterte to not revoke Trillanes’ amnesty and order his arrest. The senator, a leading critic of the president’s drug war, has shown evidence that he had gone through the system and was granted an amnesty by former President Benigno Aquino III, Duterte’s predecessor.
Trillanes has taken refuge in his Senate office, setting off a tense standoff while claiming that some military members were supporting him.
‘They are the ones destabilizing it’
The Philippines has a long history of coup plots. In 1986, millions of Filipinos rose up against dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was chased into exile in Hawaii where he died three years later.
He was replaced by pro-democracy icon Corazon Aquino, who survived six coup attempts as she guided the country while it transitioned from two decades of brutal dictatorship to democracy.
In 2001, Joseph Estrada was chased out of office in a military-backed popular uprising over alleged corruption.
Trillanes in 2003, led about 300 junior officers and men in taking over the Oakwood hotel in Manila’s Makati financial district. The rebellion was to protest alleged corruption within the ranks, but was quelled immediately by then-president Gloria Arroyo, who promised to look into their allegations.
Four years later, Trillanes and other officers walked out of a Manila court hearing their case and holed themselves up at another hotel. The siege ended swiftly when the military rammed an armored personnel carrier into the lobby.
Trillanes and other officers who were involved later landed government posts or won elective posts.
On Tuesday, Philippine Congressman and former Marine captain Gary Alejano, who is a party mate of Trillanes, denied that they were part of a plot to oust the president.
“The Magdalo is performing its mandate as members of the opposition under the check-and-balance system of our democratic government,” said Alejano, who joined Trillanes in the previous rebellions. “The essence of this is to strengthen democracy and not to destabilize it.”
Duterte’s allegation was “purely a product of imagination and paranoia” of the government meant to divert the public’s attention from economic woes his government failed to address, Alejano said.
“If there is someone destabilizing the present government, they should not look beyond themselves for they are ones destabilizing it,” he said.
He noted that Duterte, a self-described leftist, had been coddling the communist New People’s Army and that he once granted a fallen rebel leader a hero’s burial. Duterte also freed dozens of guerrilla leaders when he became president, in the belief that creating goodwill would speed up peace talks. But the negotiations faltered.
“It was Duterte who appointed several personalities allied to the communists in his cabinet,” Alejano said. “Up to now, they continue to occupy government positions and influence programs, projects and policies.”
Jeoffrey Maitem in Cotabato City, Philippines, contributed to this report.
Charles G. Koch and his brother David have for many years run one of the highest value privately held companies in America. From their business they have both become billionaires. And they have contributed a substantial amount of their money to political activities in the form of both funding nonprofits and contributing to and aiding candidates in elections.
Some people praise these two Koch brothers for helping the promotion of libertarianism while others criticize their actions as counterproductive to accomplishing that objective. Whatever your position — if any — in that divide, you may find value in the list of 34 book recommendations posted at the website of Charles G. Koch, a smart and well-read individual with a long-time interest in libertarian ideas.
I expect most libertarians will find Koch’s reading list, for the most part, is made up of books that, to the extent they deal with political philosophy and economics, express ideas largely in line with libertarianism.
For more libertarian-related reading ideas, consider also the reading list of 48 books that libertarian communicator Ron Paul included at the end of his 2008 book The Revolution: A Manifesto.
Both Koch and Paul’s lists include books by Andrew Bacevich (America’s War for the Greater Middle East in Koch’s list and The New American Militarism in Paul’s list), Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom in both lists and The Fatal Conceit and Law, Legislation and Liberty in Koch’s list), and Ludwig von Mises (Human Action in both lists and Bureaucracy in Koch’s list). Paul did not include in his reading list Frédéric Bastiat’s The Law, which appears in Koch’s list. Yet, Paul, in an August of 2016 Tom Woods Show interview, mentioned the book in answer to host Tom Woods’ query of what one book Paul would recommend as an introduction to Paul’s views.
The explosions of stars, known as supernovae, can be so bright they outshine their host galaxies. They take months or years to fade away, and sometimes, the gaseous remains of the explosion slam into hydrogen-rich gas and temporarily get bright again – but could they remain luminous without any outside interference?
That’s what Dan Milisavljevic, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, believes he saw six years after “SN 2012au” exploded.
“We haven’t seen an explosion of this type, at such a late timescale, remain visible unless it had some kind of interaction with hydrogen gas left behind by the star prior to explosion,” he said. “But there’s no spectral spike of hydrogen in the data – something else was energizing this thing.”
As large stars explode, their interiors collapse down to a point at which all their particles become neutrons. If the resulting neutron star has a magnetic field and rotates fast enough, it may develop into a pulsar wind nebula.
This is most likely what happened to SN 2012au, according to findings published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“We know that supernova explosions produce these types of rapidly rotating neutron stars, but we never saw direct evidence of it at this unique time frame,” Milisavljevic said. “This a key moment when the pulsar wind nebula is bright enough to act like a lightbulb illuminating the explosion’s outer ejecta.”
SN 2012au was already known to be extraordinary – and weird – in many ways. Although the explosion wasn’t bright enough to be termed a “superluminous” supernova, it was extremely energetic and long-lasting, and dimmed in a similarly slow light curve.
Milisavljevic predicts that if researchers continue to monitor the sites of extremely bright supernovae, they might see similar transformations.
“If there truly is a pulsar or magnetar wind nebula at the center of the exploded star, it could push from the inside out and even accelerate the gas,” he said. “If we return to some of these events a few years later and take careful measurements, we might observe the oxygen-rich gas racing away from the explosion even faster.”
Superluminous supernovae are a hot topic in transient astronomy. They’re potential sources of gravitational waves and black holes, and astronomers think they might be related to other kinds of explosions, like gamma ray bursts and fast radio bursts. Researchers want to understand the fundamental physics behind them, but they’re difficult to observe because they’re relatively rare and happen so far from Earth.
Only the next generation of telescopes, which astronomers have dubbed “Extremely Large Telescopes,” will have the ability to observe these events in such detail.
“This is a fundamental process in the universe. We wouldn’t be here unless this was happening,” Milisavljevic said. “Many of the elements essential to life come from supernova explosions – calcium in our bones, oxygen we breathe, iron in our blood – I think it’s crucial for us, as citizens of the universe, to understand this process.”
Companies should avoid scheduling important work tasks immediately following an election, according to a study from the University of Waterloo.
Researchers discovered the outcome of a U.S. presidential election can affect employees’ engagement and performance at work — if they voted for the losing side. Although experts have long known that ongoing family issues and other stresses can affect the workplace, less is known about the effect of more discrete events.
“This study demonstrates that spillover is not limited to fairly stable environmental features or day-to-day events,” said James Beck, a psychology professor at Waterloo. “Instead, discrete events like presidential elections can also impact the workplace.”
Beck completed the study with fellow Waterloo psychology professor, Winny Shen.
Focusing on American voters, Beck and Shen asked participants to rate their job engagement and work performance at three points: the week before, the day after, and a week after the 2016 U.S. presidential election involving Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Before the election, both sets of voters were equally engaged in their work. However, immediately following the election, voters who backed the losing candidate (Clinton) reported a large decrease in their work engagement and job performance. The effects were short-lived, and engagement returned to normal within a week of the election. Still, the researchers estimate that the election outcome could have resulted in $700 million USD in lost productivity the day following the election.
The researchers also predicted that people who voted for the winning candidate (Trump) would see a boost to their engagement and productivity following the election, yet the study showed that the election outcome had no effect on work engagement among Trump voters.
“Our results suggest employers may be wise to avoid scheduling important tasks or meetings immediately after an election,” said Beck. “It may be especially important to clearly communicate work goals during the days immediately following an election in order to keep employees on track and motivated.”
Although presidential elections only happen every four years, the findings could apply to other major public events as well, including historic events and sporting events.
“Many people have strong political identities, making elections a personal event,” said Beck. “To that end, it’s possible that other events with implications for individuals’ identities may result in spillover into the workplace as well.”
A Sri Lankan Delegation led by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya has called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Indian Prime Minister and Speaker Jayasuriya engaged in an extensive 45 minute bi-lateral discussions.
It had been paid attention of the Indian media, when PM Modi allocated a considerable time for meeting with the Sri Lankan delegation, despite, the focus of the Indian government and many other state sectors has been on a number of other issues, due to the mineral oil crisis.
The Sri Lankan delegation included The Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan, Ministers Nimal Siripala de Silva, Rauf Hakeem, Gayantha Karunathilake and Mano Ganeshan, along with MPs Douglas Devananda, Vijitha Herath and the General Secretary of Parliament Dhammika Dassanayake.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have identified two main challenges for renewable biofuel production from cheap sources. Firstly, lowering the cost of developing microbial cell factories, and secondly, establishing more efficient methods for hydrolysis of biomass to sugars for fermentation. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Energy.
The study, by Professor Jens Nielsen, Yongjin Zhou and Eduard Kerkhoven, from the Division of Systems and Synthetic Biology, evaluates the barriers that need to be overcome to make biomass-derived hydrocarbons a real alternative to fossil fuels.
“Our study is of particular interest for decision makers and research funders, as it highlights recent advances and the potential in the field of biofuels. It also identifies where more research is required. This can help to prioritise what research should be funded,” said Eduard Kerkhoven.
It is technically already possible to produce biofuels from renewable resources by using microbes such as yeast and bacteria as tiny cell factories. However, in order to compete with fossil-derived fuels, the process has to become much more efficient. But improving the efficiency of the microbial cell factories is an expensive and time-consuming process, so speeding-up the cell factory development is therefore one of the main barriers.
Professor Jens Nielsen and his research group are world leaders in the engineering of yeast, and in the development and application of computer models of yeast metabolism – as well as being noted for their world-class research into human metabolism, and investigations into aging processes and diseases. Their work informs how yeast can best be engineered to manufacture new chemicals or biofuels. In their article “Barriers and opportunities in bio-based production of hydrocarbons,” the researchers investigate the production of various biofuels using a model of yeast metabolism.
“We have calculated theoretical maximum production yields and compared this to what is currently achievable in the lab. There is still huge potential for improving the process,” said Eduard Kerkhoven.
The other main barrier is efficient conversion from biomass, such as plants and trees, to the sugars that are used by the cell factories. If this conversion were made more efficient, it would be possible to use waste material from the forest industry, or crops that are purposely grown for biofuels, to produce a fully renewable biofuel. Eduard Kerkhoven notes how important biofuels will be for the future.
“In the future, whilst passenger cars will be primarily electric, biofuels are going to be critical for heavier modes of transport such as jets and trucks. The International Energy Agency projects that by 2050, 27 percent of global transport fuels will be biofuels. Meanwhile, large oil companies such as Preem and Total also predict that renewable biofuels will play an important role in the future. In their ‘Sky Scenario‘, Shell expects that biofuels will account for 10 percent of all global end energy-use by the end of the century. That is in line with our research too,” he concluded.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this week that called on the international community to stop the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) upcoming offensive in Idlib, Al-Masdar News reports.
Erdogan argued in the opinion article that the price of inaction in Idlib would ultimately lead to a large-scale humanitarian disaster.
“All members of the international community must understand their responsibilities as the assault on Idlib looms. The consequences of inaction are immense,” Erdogan said.
“A regime assault would also create serious humanitarian and security risks for Turkey, the rest of Europe and beyond,” he would add.
The Turkish military currently has a large presence inside the Idlib Governorate; however, it is still not clear whether or not they plan on confronting the Syrian government forces.
