The Trump administration’s national security advisor John Bolton has never been a fan of international law, a concept he has found, at best, rubbery. Any institution supposedly guided by its spirit was bound to draw the ire of both his temper and temperament. Before members of the Federalist Society on Monday, Bolton took to the pulpit with a fury reserved for the unreflective patriot certain that his country, right or wrong, was above such matters. “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.”

The wicked body, in this instance, is the International Criminal Court, established by the Rome Statute to try instances of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, a “court of last resort” backed by 123 nations.

The instigation for such concern on Bolton’s part came from the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who requested that the court investigate the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan from 2003 by forces including elements of the US military and intelligence services. In doing so, she was moving the frame of reference beyond a continent that has featured all too readily in the court’s prosecutions: Africa.

Bolton was quick off the mark after the announcement in 2017, with a blistering observation in the Wall Street Journal: “The Trump administration should not respond to Ms. Bensouda in any way that acknowledges the ICC’s legitimacy. Even merely contesting its jurisdiction risks drawing the US deeper into the quicksand.”

Bolton has been consistent with such tirades. In 2000, he contemplated the issue of whether there was such a thing as “law” in the matter of international affairs. His sustained attack in Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems remains salient to a parochial understanding of how such rules work. For Bolton, the central defining issue was one of liberty: how such “law” might “affect individuals in the exercise of their individual freedom”. Prior to the Second World War, international law was essentially a matter of nation states rather than individuals and groups.

Bolton wishes it remained there, a courtly, distant matter separate from the populace. But “the logic of today’s international law proponents drives them toward more pervasive international command-and-control structures that will deeply affect the domestic policies and constitutions of all nations.” Such law lacked notions of “popular sovereignty or public accountability through reasonably democratic popular controls over creation, interpretation, and enforcement of laws”. It lacked clear sources and a mechanism to determine its change. In short, and here, reflective of the sum of all his grievances against international law, such juridical phenomena were not of the US order of things, specifically the “United States Constitution and its system of government, exemplifying the kind of legal system acceptable to a free person.”

His address to the Federalist Society recapitulates his critique: the “supranational” and “unchecked” conspiracy of the ICC advanced by “‘global governance’ advocates” inimical to the Founders’ vision. “Any day now, the ICC may announce the start of a formal investigation against these American patriots, who voluntarily signed on to go into harm’s way to protect our nation, our homes, and our families in the wake of the 9/11 attacks…. An unfounded, unjustifiable investigation.”

The efforts of the ICC was to be frustrated at every turn. No assistance would be provided to its functions and its pursuits. “And, certainly, we will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

Bolton keeps interesting company in having such views. The refusal by the US to ratify the ICC’s founding document in 2002 was joined by Israel, Saudi Arabia and China, fearing its “unacceptable consequences for our national sovereignty”. Bolton subsequently led efforts as Under Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration to broker some hundred bilateral deals preventing countries from surrendering US nationals to the ICC. These remain, by his own admission, a proud achievement.

The ICC has had its fair share of bad press. It groans under a bureaucracy that has led to accusations of justice delayed being justice denied. It has conspicuously failed to deter the perpetration of atrocities in Syria, Yemen and Myanmar. It’s Africa-focus has also caused more than a flutter of dissent from states on that continent. Early last year, the African Union passed a non-binding resolution for member states to withdraw from the court, or at the very least seek reforming it. South Africa confirmed its desire to remove itself from the jurisdictional reach of the ICC, a decision that continues to shadow law makers.

Bolton’s resentment, in short, has fuel to fire. President Donald Trump sees any international pact untouched by his influence to be deficient and contrary to the values of the imperium. But the ICC still has legs, however plodding, and such efforts to despoil their function will not necessarily cripple, let alone kill it.

In contrast to Bolton’s view is another stream of US legal thought that sees international law and its enforcement as indispensable to peace. That view is unduly rosy, and held, at times, disingenuously. But for the US Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, delivering his opening address in November 1945 to the judges of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, such a body, far from being abstract, incoherent and spineless, supplied the animating legitimacy for an international court.

What fouled international law’s decent nest were those wars of imperialism waged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, leaving the impression “that all wars are to be regarded as legitimate wars.” Jackson’s point was that no one, not even the leaders of the United States, could always remain unaccountable, anathema to Bolton’s idea of impunity outside the US constitution.

Assume that you could identify the origins of your great-grandparents, and you discover that all eight of them immigrated to the United States from liberated Europe at the end of the Second World War. Subsequently, you find, all four of your grandparents were born in America, both your parents were born in America. and you yourself were born and bred there.  Would you consider dubbing yourself a displaced person and a refugee?

This is the fiction that UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) seeks to perpetuate in respect of millions of inhabitants of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, people and their descendants who fled from their homes during the Arab-Israel wars of 1948 and 1967. UNRWA deems all of them, even unto the third and fourth generation, to be Palestinian refugees.

At around the time the State of Israel came into being, something over half the non-Jewish population of what used to be called “Palestine”, some 750,000 people, left their homes – some on advice, some from fear of the forthcoming conflict, some during it. Of the Palestinians who left, one-third went to the West Bank, then under Jordanian control; one-third went to the Gaza Strip, then under Egypt’s control; and the remainder fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

A highly relevant factor in their subsequent unhappy history is that the UN body established to assist them – UNRWA – began its work in May 1950, seven months ahead of the establishment of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). As a result, Palestinian refugees have been designated and treated quite differently from − and much worse than − all other refugees, the world over, ever since.

The 1949 General Assembly resolution establishing UNRWA called for “the alleviation of the conditions of starvation and distress among the Palestine refugees.” Yet the resolution also stated that “constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief.” In other words, the new refugee agency’s mission was intended to be temporary.

70 years have passed.  The “temporary” UNRWA has been transformed into a bloated international bureaucracy with a staff of 30,000 and an annual budget of around $1.2 billion.  As for the number of Palestinians registered by UNRWA as refugees, that has mushroomed from 750,000 in 1950 to 5.6 million today. How could such a situation have been allowed to develop?  The transformation occurred according to the diktat of UNRWA itself, which decided to bestow refugee status upon “descendants of Palestine refugees,” in perpetuity.  The growth in UNWRA’s client base is therefore exponential, justifying an ever-expanding  staff and an ever-increasing budget.  It has been estimated that by 2050 the number of UNRWA’s “Palestine refugees” will reach just short of 15 million.

A main function of UNHCR has been to resettle those millions of unfortunate people who have left their homes, willingly or unwillingly, over the years. UNHCR facilitates their voluntary repatriation, or their local integration and resettlement. By contrast a major effect of UNRWA’s humanitarian activities has been not only to maintain millions of people in their refugee status decade after decade, but to expand the numbers as generation has succeeded generation.

In pursuing this course, UNRWA has been complicit with the anti-peace policy of many Arab leaders in respect of the Palestinian refugees. To resettle and absorb these people into their new places of residence would have had the effect of normalizing the situation and removing a formidable bargaining chip. UNRWA, by officially washing its hands of any involvement in “final status” considerations, has in effect sustained and supported this policy of using the Palestinian refugees as a pawn in the political effort against Israel.

Consider the unfortunate Arab refugees who made their way to nearby Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, where today over three million of them and their descendants are living as “registered refugees”, (registered, that is, by UNRWA), about half of them still occupying some 58 refugee camps.

As for Lebanon, that unhappy country now in thrall to Hezbollah and its controlling power, Iran, the extent of its Palestinian refugee population is almost impossible to determine. UNRWA’s most recent count was 450,000, while the Lebanese government census in 2017 offered 174,000 as the total. Whichever it is, most Palestinians living in Lebanon do not have Lebanese citizenship, and therefore do not have identity cards and are legally barred from owning property or earning a living from a whole list of desirable occupations. Less than 2 percent of Palestinian refugees have acquired a work permit.

As regards Syria, just before the civil war broke out in 2011 UNRWA reported total Palestinian refugees there as over 525,000. They had been granted neither citizenship nor the right to vote. Since then, the conflict has led many Palestinians, along with native-born Syrians, to flee the country, and the number of registered refugees has fallen to some 450,000. There is no indication that the Syrian government is minded to change its policy on granting them citizenship.

Jordan is a different case. Here, even though the state has conferred citizenship on most of its 2 million Palestinians, they are still registered as refugees by UNRWA. It is far from clear how an individual can be a fully naturalized citizen of a country yet still be considered a refugee. But UNRWA’s modus operandi is even more illogical. In Jordan only the million-and-a- half Palestinians who live in the camps are regarded as the legitimate concern of UNRWA. Some Palestinians who are not living in the camps fall under the auspices of UNHCR. So some Palestinians are being actively rehabilitated by UNHCR, while most of them, together with their children and their children’s children, are having their refugee status maintained and reinforced by UNRWA.

No wonder in January 2018 US President Donald Trump called for a “fundamental reexamination” of UNWRA, and has announced that the US will no longer fund the agency.

All in all, the Palestinian refugee story is one of heartless exploitation of Arabs by Arabs – the callous manipulation of powerless victims for political ends, with little regard for their welfare or human rights. This inhumanity must be brought out into the open, the UNRWA farce of “refugee status” in perpetuity must be ended, and steps must be taken to allow people and their families who may have lived in a country for fifty years or more to settle and become full citizens.

DELFI, which is the major Internet portal in the Baltic States providing daily news, stated on September, 10 that the number of emigrants from Lithuania exceeds that of immigrants by 1,000 in August. Shocking statistics shows that the country has registered a negative migration balance. Some 4,382 people left Lithuania in August. Thus, Lithuanians are leaving the country despite authorities’ claims on economic growth, stability and favorable perspectives.

On the one hand, according to “Lithuanian economy review – 2017”, the GDP growth in Lithuania accelerated. In 2017, as compared to the previous year, Lithuania`s GDP increased by 3.8%. (http://ukmin.lrv.lt/en/economy-review/lithuanian-economy-review-2017) On the other hand, this fact contravenes the increasing number of emigrants.

What makes people change their life and say “Good by” to their homes? This is a rhetorical question. The answer lies on the surface.

Lithuanians do not satisfy with their standards of living. For example, survey of public opinion and market research company “Baltijos tyrimai” reveals that Lithuanians still haven’t domesticated the Euro. The pool conducted in July shows that more than 46,3% of Lithuanians blame the European currency in lowering their life standards. (https://en.delfi.lt/corporate/lithuanians-still-havent-domesticated-the-euro.d?id=79027773). In other words they do not agree with the authorities’ decision to adopt the euro.

People compare their life with the other European countries and it is not in favor of Lithuania. The words and promises are not fulfilled, corruption flourishes. Thus, Freedom House document “FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2018” reports that “the major problem for Lithuania’s democracy – corruption – continued to dominate the public sphere, as a series of scandals plagued members of the Seimas (parliament) and public institutions. Even Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė on Monday called on lawmakers not to waste their time on squabbling.

Officials, who today name themselves democrats, did not manage to get rid of Soviet thinking and way of behaviour. When they get political power they forget about their duties. Permanent political scandals in small country led to the fact that people stopped believing authorities. And authorities’ activity is seemed to be suspicious in all spheres of life.

Thus, Lithuanians are wary of a new agreement on the country’s defense policy for the next decade signed by Lithuania’s parliamentary parties on Monday. The document calls for joint efforts to resist “irresponsible speculation that sets defense funding in opposition to other sensitive areas”. It means that Lithuanians do not have the right to decide to what area allocate budget money though they pay taxes. They do not have the right to speak on this topic and express their opinions if they contradict the official point of view. The parliament members forget the basic human rights. Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations states that ”everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

An ordinary person cannot solve the puzzle why television and Government controlled media describe his country just another way he sees it. Freedom House states also that “Regional economic disparities remain acute. The minimum wage remains one of the lowest within the EU, and the share of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion is a little over 30 percent.

This discrepancy forces Lithuanians to seek better life abroad, usually in Old Europe. More than 20 years of expectation is too much. Life is too short to waste it to sit around waiting for changes.

China intends to extend aspects of its crackdown on Islam in the north-western province of Xinjiang to all religions as is evident from the publication of proposed restrictive guidelines for online religious activity.

The guidelines, according to Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, would ban online religious services from “inciting subversion, opposing the leadership of the Communist Party, overthrowing the socialist system and promoting extremism, terrorism and separatism,” identified as the three evils China say it is combatting in Xinjiang.

The guidelines would also forbid livestreaming or broadcast of religious activity, including praying, burning incense, worshipping or baptism ceremonies in the form of text, photo, audio or video.

The guidelines, published on China’s legislative information website, are likely to be adopted after October 9 when the window for public comment closes.

The newspaper quoted Zhu Weiqun, former head of the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference as saying that the guidelines were designed to regulate online religious information and protect the legal rights of religious people and religious freedom.

“Some organizations, in the name of religion, deliberately exaggerate and distort religious doctrine online, and some evil forces, such as terrorism, separatism and religious extremism, and cults, also attempt to expand their online influences,” Mr. Zhu said.

By applying the guidelines to all religions, the government hopes in part to take the sting out of an increasing number of media reports as well as assertions by the United Nations that its policy in Xinjiang involves massive violation of religious and human rights. China has denied any violations.

While the crackdown on Islam in Xinjiang is the most severe because of Chinese concerns about Uyghur nationalist aspirations as well as Islamization and Arabization, references to more conservative, if not ultra-conservative strands of Islam, and the potential return to Central Asia of militant Uyghur foreign fighters fleeing Syria and Iraq, it reflects a wider Chinese effort to control religion.

Similar to Xinjiang where Uyghurs report that mosques are being destroyed, authorities elsewhere in the country have destroyed what allegedly were ‘underground churches,’ including a massive evangelical church in China’s northern Shanxi province that services a congregation of 50,000.

A rare, mass protest last month by Hui Muslims, who together with Uyghur’s account for the bulk of China’s estimated 20 million Muslims, forced local authorities in the northern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to suspend plans to demolish a newly built mosque.

Former inmates of re-education camps as well as family members of detainees assert that re-education involves subjecting religious views to the precepts of the Communist party, putting allegiance to the party above that of God, and breaking with religious dietary rules and other Islamic legal requirements.

The drafting of the guidelines come as China is finding it increasingly difficult to keep a publicity lid on developments in Xinjiang. The Global Times announcement came a day after Human Rights Watch issued a damning report and two days after a detailed expose in The New York Times, part of a flurry of media and academic reports published despite probable Chinese efforts to suppress critical reporting where it can.

Independent Media, publisher of 18 major South African titles with a combined readership of 25 million, recently refused to publish a column by foreign affairs columnist Azad Essa on a United Nations report asserting that up to one million Uyghurs were being detained in the re-education camps. Mr. Essa was told his column had been discontinued because of a redesign of the groups’ papers and the introduction of a new system.

China International Television Corporation (CITVC ) and China-Africa Development Fund (CADFUND) own a 20 percent stake in Independent Media through Interacom Investment Holdings Limited, a Mauritius-registered vehicle. There was no immediate indication that Chinese stakeholders were responsible for the cancellation of Mr. Essa’s column.

China’s ability to keep its lid on the crackdown is nonetheless slipping. US officials said this week that the Trump administration, locked into a trade war with China, was considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies involved in Xinjiang in what would be the first US human rights-related measures against the People’s Republic.

The administration was also looking at ways to limit sales of US surveillance technology that could assist Chinese security agencies and companies in turning Xinjiang into a 21^st century Orwellian surveillance state.

Deliberations about possible sanctions gained momentum after US Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the chair of the congressional committee, called for the sanctioning of Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary and Politburo member Chen Quanguo and “all government officials and business entities assisting the mass detentions and surveillance”. He also demanded that Chinese security agencies be added “to a restricted end-user list to ensure that American companies don’t aid Chinese human-rights abuses.”

With the media reporting and UN and US criticism putting pressure on the Islamic world to speak out, cracks are emerging in its wall of virtually absolute silence.

Rais Hussin, a supreme council member of Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) party and head of its Policy and Strategy Bureau, cautioned in an editorial this week against deportation of 11 Uyghurs wanted by China.

“Being friendly to China is a must, as China is a close neighbour of Malaysia. But it is also on this point that geographical proximity cannot be taken advantage by China to ride roughshod over everything that Malaysia holds dear, such as Islam, democracy, freedom of worship and deep respect for every country’s sovereignty… On its mistreatment of Muslims in Xinjiang almost en masse, Malaysia must speak up, and defend the most basic human rights of all,” Mr. Hussin said.

Mr. Hussin’s comments may not be that surprising given that Mr. Mahathir, since returning to power in May in an upset election, has emerged as a point man in a pushback by various nations against Chinese-funded, Belt and Road-related infrastructure projects that are perceived as risking unsustainable debt or being potential white elephants.

Mr. Mahathir has, since assuming office, suspended or cancelled US$26 billion in Chinese-funded projects in Malaysia.

Echoing Mr. Hussin’s statements, Ismailan, a Hui Muslim poet, posted pictures on Twitter of Bangladeshi Muslims protesting in the capital Dacca against the crackdown in Xinjiang.

“They are the first people of Islamic world to stand up for brothers and sisters in #china. Muslims, our fate is connected!” Ismailan tweeted, insisting that his opposition to the crackdown and “the use of concentration camps to solve the problem” did not amount to support for Uighur nationalism.

Economist Dean Baker warned of a housing bubble collapse that could threaten the economy as early as 2002. As the tenth anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers marks the peak of a recession caused by the collapse of the housing bubble, Baker sets the record straight with a complete anatomy of the housing bubble, the recession, the enormous policy failure leading up to 2008, as well as what can and should be learned about economy-threatening bubbles.

“The Housing Bubble and the Great Recession: Ten Years Later,” by Dean Baker and released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) argues that the primary cause of the downturn was a collapsed housing bubble, not the financial crisis. To ignore the main cause of the Great Recession “obscures the extent of the enormous policy failure leading up to 2008 and misdirects the focus of policy going forward,” said Baker.

The housing bubble and the risks it posed were easy to see, as Baker did as early as 2002, when he noted the unprecedented run-up in house prices with no plausible explanation within the fundamentals of the housing market. Baker attributes the failure to see a bubble-induced economic crisis to the “incredibly narrow-minded thinking [of] the vast majority of the economics profession.”

Baker backs-up that critique of economic thinking by looking at the 2001 collapse of the stock market bubble. The failure to recognize the severity of the downturn following that collapse bolstered the conventional view in the economics profession at the time that the collapse of a bubble is easy to handle.

To quell recent warnings of another financial crisis found in the media, Baker emphatically states “there is no imminent crisis that is at all comparable.” No dangerous bubble exists today or is on the horizon.

The lessons contained in “The Housing Bubble and the Great Recession: Ten Years Later” can ensure that future dangerous bubbles like the housing bubble will not slide by under the radar. “If bubbles are big enough for their collapse to severely damage the economy, they are big enough to be seen,” said Baker.

Yossi Beilin is back. This unrepentant Israeli ‘peacemaker’ is like the mythical phoenix, continually resurrecting from its ashes. In a recent article in Al-Monitor, Beilin wrote in support of the idea of a confederation between Israel and Palestine.

A confederation “could prevent the need to evacuate settlers and allow those interested to live in Palestine as Israeli citizens, just as a similar number of Palestinian citizens could live in Israel,” he wrote.

Bizarrely, Beilin is promoting a version of an idea that was pushed by Israel’s extremist Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

The difference between Beilin and Lieberman is in how we choose to perceive them: the former was the godfather of the Oslo Accords 25 years ago, a well-known political ‘dove’ and the former Chairman of the ‘left-leaning’ Meretz party. Lieberman, on the other hand, is purportedly the exact opposite.

When Lieberman suggested population transfer and territorial swaps, all hell broke loose. When Beilin did it, his efforts were perceived as an honest attempt at reviving the dormant ‘peace process.’

That is the brilliance of Beilin, his followers and the whole ‘peace process’ that culminated in the Oslo Accords and the famous White House handshake between the late PLO Chairman, Yasser Arafat, and the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in September 1993. They successfully branded this hideous infringement on international law as a sincere effort at achieving peace between two conflicting parties.

The Donald Trump Administration has long surpassed Oslo and its tired clichés of ‘peace process’, ‘painful compromises’ and ‘trust building’ exercises, etc., as it is promoting something else entirely, the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’.

But Oslo will not go away. It remains a problem because the intellectual foundation that led to its conception is still firmly in place – where only Israel matters and the aspirations of the Palestinian people are still inconsequential.

While Beilin is no longer an influential politician, there are many Yossi Beilins who are still lurking, playing the role of ‘peacemakers‘, meeting behind closed doors, on the sideline of conferences, offering their services as interlocutors, wheelers and dealers, and saviors.

The late Palestinian Professor, Edward Said, was not prophesying when he warned of the disastrous future consequences of Oslo as it was being signed. He was dismissed by mainstream media and pundits as radical, lumped with the other ‘enemies of peace’ on ‘both sides’. But, he, like many other Palestinians, was right.

“Labor and Likud leaders alike made no secret of the fact that Oslo was designed to segregate the Palestinians in noncontiguous, economically unviable enclaves, surrounded by Israeli-controlled borders, with settlements and settlement roads punctuating and essentially violating the territories’ integrity,” he wrote in the Nation.

The colonization of Palestine, for the first time, was accelerating with the consent of the Palestinian leadership. The PLO was turned into a local body with the inception of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. The rights of millions of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora were relegated. The West Bank was divided into areas A, B, and C, each governed by different rules, mostly under the control of the Israeli military.

The ‘Palestinian revolution’ turned into an agonizing process of ‘state-building’, but without state or even contiguous territories. Palestinians who rejected the horrific outcomes of Oslo – protracted expansion of Jewish colonies, continued violent Occupation, normalized through ‘security coordination’ between Israel and the PA – were often abused and deemed extremists.

Meanwhile, successive US administrations continued to fund and defend Israel, unconcerned about its self-tailored job title as the ‘honest peace broker.’

The PA played along because the perks were far too lucrative to be abandoned on principle. A new class of Palestinians had risen, dependent on Oslo for its wealth and affluence.

Even when the Trump Administration cut off the Palestinian Refugees Agency, UNRWA, of all funds, and scrapped the $200 million in humanitarian aid to the PA, the US still released 61 million dollars to the PA to maintain its ‘security cooperation’ with Israel. ‘Israel’s security’ is just too sacred a bond to be broken.

This is why Oslo remains dangerous. It is not the agreement itself that matters, but the mindset behind it – the political and diplomatic discourse that is wholly manufactured to serve Israel exclusively.

In January 2017, Daniel Pipes of the pro-Israel Middle East Forum came up with what seemed like a puerile idea: a ‘way to peace’ between Israel and the Palestinians, based on the simple declaration that Israel has won.

The new strategy requires little by way of negotiations. It merely entails that Israel declares ‘victory’, which Pipes defined as “imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions.’

As unconscionable as Pipes’ logic was, a few months later, Congressional Republicans in the US launched the “Israel Victory Caucus.” The co-Chair of the Caucus, Rep. Bill Johnson, ‘predicted’ in April 2017 that Trump would soon be heading to Israel to announce the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Since then, the US is following a blueprint of a strategy in which the US advances Israel’s ‘victory’ while imposing conditions of surrender on defeated Palestinians. Despite its more diplomatic and legal language, that was also the essence of Oslo.

Trump, to the satisfaction of Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may think that he has single-handedly destroyed the Oslo Accords or whatever remained of it. However, judging by his words and actions, Trump has indicated that the spirit of Oslo remains alive: the bribes, the bullying and the fighting for that coveted and final Israeli ‘victory.’

Oslo is not a specific legal document that can be implemented or rejected. It is a spectrum in which the likes of Beilin, Lieberman, and Pipes have more in common than they may think, and in which the fate of the Palestinian people is left to inept leaders, incapable of thinking outside the permissible space allocated to them by the Israelis and the Americans.

Unfortunately, Abbas and his Authority are still reveling at the expense of the space that is Oslo, not the ‘accords’ – provisions, stipulations and heaps of paper – but the corrupt culture – money, perks and unmitigated defeat.

Liberal opponents of serious, aggressive action on climate change like California Governor Jerry Brown are the strange bedfellows of right-wing survivalists on one thing: Both are quick to warn darkly that if environmentalists have their way and impose strict cuts on oil, gas and coal production or on mileage standards for automobiles and pollution controls on power plants, or in the case of right-wingers, if the banking system is allowed to continue to run US economic policy and the Fed isn’t audited, the irate citizens of the US will descend into an orgy of anarchic violence and mayhem.

The argument is that if Americans are told they can no longer drive gas-guzzling automobiles and blast their air conditioners at will, or if the US financial system again collapses as it did in 2008 leading to the Great Recession, the people of this country will essentially go mad and a lawless chaos of dog-eat-dog, kill thy neighbor for his food, will ensue.

“It will be like the Great Depression all over,” I read in one account of a recent report by one JP Morgan Chase analyst who is predicting a dramatic market crash of over 40% followed by armageddon. (I learned about this little report of impending disaster from a former cop friend who advised me to get a gun and plenty of ammo and to stock up on food to be able to protect my family.)

But this is truly ignorance regarding what actually happened when everything did collapse back in the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.

It’s true that a few despondent investors did leap from windows of tall buildings in lower Manhattan after the 1929 stock market collapse, but not all that many, and things continued fairly calmly after that as the economy began to seize up. After all, very few Americans were actually invested in the market. But even as the lay-offs, bank collapses, bankruptcies and home foreclosures began to mount, there was no revolution in the US.

My own father, then just a young kid, recalls his family losing their home in Flushing, NY as his father, a carpet jobber, lost so many customers he had to give it up, unable to make the mortgage payments. He didn’t pick up a gun and go on a rampage, or join others in his situation and storm Washington. He just started looking for odd jobs to support his wife and two kids, and voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the next presidential election in 1932 and the other three after that.

The Great Depression, when unemployment soared to 25% of the workforce by 1933, remaining above 15% as late as 1940, far past any level it has hit since that time, even in the recent Great Recession, which of course was also much shorter. But even in the depths of that monstrous economic collapse in the 1930s, the American public didn’t turn on each other. In fact, quite the opposite, it was an era of sharing of what people had, and of collective action for change — especially in the field of labor union organizing. The Socialist Party also saw it’s biggest surge of support (the Communist Party, too), as workers saw the need to band together to defend themselves against a capitalist class that was viewed as predatory and criminal.

Why would otherwise rational people think that Americans today would behave any differently in a national economic crisis, or climate crisis? Are the bonds among us as a people that much more frayed today than they were back in the 30s when there was, I should point out, legal segregation of the races in most of the country and de facto segregation in the rest of it, and when a mass migration of desperate small farmers, white and non-white, from the Southeast to the urban North, and from the drought-stricken central plains to the West Coast (a good example of climate disaster response)?

John Steinbeck wrote graphically of the violence that greeted some of those climate refugees from Oklahoma, Arkansas and West Texas when they got to California, but he also wrote of the solidarity of those Okies, Arkies and Texans as they fought for their right as Americans to move where they wanted and to get paid fair wages for their work on the giant farms.

Whether or not we are about to face another economic disaster, perhaps one worse than any we’ve experienced before, and when (not whether) we have to face an inevitable climate crisis, with massive droughts hitting the nation’s grain belt and salad bowl regions in the West, Southeast and Midwest while the Northeast faces epic summer flooding and winter blizzards, I feel confident that the response of most Americans will be, not a turn to guns and mayhem in a scramble of the survival of the fittest, but rather a turn to communal support and a return to collective political action.

It’s what we as a people have always done in the past. I see no reason to doubt that we won’t do the same thing when disaster strikes this time. The courageous people of Puerto Rico, who have been enduring both an epic economic disaster, and a horrific climate disaster that is still continuing as new hurricans draw a bead on the destroyed island colony of the US, are a good example of how this can work. Far from attacking each other, they are working together as a people to rebuild and to survive, and because they are an ignored and abused colony of the US, they are doing it with far fewer resources and under oppressive economic constraints, than we on here on the mainland will be confronting.

Maybe that’s what the people in power on Wall Street and in Washington are afraid of. After all, the ruling class knows how to handle chaos. They just send in their militarized cops and their National Guard troops with their automatic weapons, tear gas and armored vehicles. But they don’t know how to handle an organized collective action by hundreds of thousands or millions of people working together. The sooner we all realize that and start organizing to achieve it, the more likely our chances to achieve that goal.

Maybe it’s too late to avoid another crash, as first Democrats and now Republicans in Washington keep cutting back on bank regulations imposed after the Fiscal Crash, inviting another collapse, and perhaps, thanks to the inaction of the Obama years and the outright assault on the earth’s climate system by the current Trump administration and Republican Congress in Washington, it’s too late to avoid catastrophic global warming. But it’s not too late to begin building a new politics designed to allow us as a people to respond to these crises in a constructive way that helps us all survive rather than in a way that ends up having us killing and stealing from each other like animals in a jungle while the rich sit it out in their walled-in, heavily guarded communities.

China’s Maritime Silk Road, India’s Act East, Korea’s New Southern Policy and Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy all reflect the increasing importance of Southeast Asia in the calculus of Asia’s titans. Even the United States considers ASEAN central to its Indo-Pacific strategy. Seen from this vantage point, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s increasing Asian pivot is not a regional outlier, but rather a response to the changing times.

During his address as a keynote speaker for the Boao Forum held on Hainan this April, President Duterte said that the “Philippines’ destiny is in Asia.” He added that his country “is ready to work with all nations in the region to seek friendship and cooperation.” This forthright statement signals the direction of his foreign policy. While personal impulse may play a role, increasing intra-regional trade, investment and security ties, in fact, are more significant factors in Duterte’s pivot to his Asian neighbors. This re-orientation does not necessarily presage a drift towards Beijing’s embrace as critics may easily argue. The fiery leader, in fact, assigns high importance to his nation’s relations with fellow ASEAN neighbors. Furthermore, other Asian powers, notably Japan, as well as countries in western Asia, also figure prominently in Duterte’s Asian shift. Russia, a Eurasian power, is another non-traditional partner that Duterte wants to cultivate good ties with.

The unorthodox Duterte has broken decades-old Philippine diplomatic tradition by having yet to visit a Western country two years into his presidency. Past presidents paid at least one visit to the Philippines’ former colonizer and major security ally the United States early on in their term. They often ended their stint in power with Washington, D.C. as the favored destination for international visits. Duterte’s immediate predecessor, former President Benigno Aquino, made the U.S. his first stop – taking a week-long trip there before making his Asian rounds. Duterte also blazed a different trail by visiting China as his first visit to a major power. To date, he has made three trips to China, two to Japan, and one each to India and Korea, completing his rounds of Asian powerhouses. He also paid a visit to Russia and major countries in West Asia.

Neighborly Relations and Pragmatic Security Cooperation

Security and economics are at the heart of Duterte’s foreign trips. At the onset of his administration, he realized the transnational aspects of his concerns for Philippine security (e.g. the anti-narcotics crackdown and counter-terrorism). Likewise, maritime security and disputes in the West Philippine Sea are high on his agenda with foreign counterparts. Duterte visited all South China Sea littoral states in his first five months in office and rounded up all ASEAN capitals in his first nine months, underscoring the value he attaches to the regional flashpoint and the critical place of ASEAN in Philippine diplomacy. In comparison, former President Aquino visited only one ASEAN country in 2010 (Vietnam) and did not complete his ASEAN tour until his third year in office. Viewed from this angle, a fixation with bilateralism as well as a failure to consult and work with ASEAN partners are misplaced criticisms of Duterte’s foreign policy.

Easing tensions and managing disputes with neighbors have been central to the president’s maritime policy thus far. He personally led the send-off ceremony for Vietnamese fishermen caught fishing in Philippine territorial waters twice, in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, he agreed to set-up a high-level bilateral consultation mechanism and a joint coast guard committee for maritime cooperation with China. Philippine efforts, in turn, contributed to dial down anticipated tensions, especially in the aftermath of the 2016 arbitration award. In no small way, such moves by Manila created a favorable climate to temper the simmering disputes and create openings for regional cooperation. An ASEAN-China crisis hotline and a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea were set up. Momentum for an ASEAN-China Code of Conduct was also revived, with a framework and a single negotiating text recently agreed upon.

Capacity building, information sharing and joint patrols are areas of security cooperation that Duterte hopes to boost in his Asian pivot. The firebrand leader praised newfound security partners China and Russia, alongside established partners U.S. and Australia, for their support in his fight against terrorism. At a time when the Philippines badly needed firepower to fight ISIS-linked militants that captured Marawi City in 2017, China and Russia donated assault rifles, a million rounds of ammunition, and military trucks. China also donated heavy equipment and pledged support for Marawi’s post-conflict rehabilitation. Thus, Manila’s warming ties with Beijing and Moscow are driven less by the latter’s silence on human rights concerns than their actual help in addressing the country’s pressing and identified non-traditional security concerns. In his brief 2018 presidential address, Duterte, for instance, recognized China’s support in busting transnational drug syndicates that operate in the Philippines. China provided intelligence and equipment, offered training for law enforcement in support of the anti-drug campaign, and built rehabilitation centers. A tip-off from Xiamen customs authorities to their counterparts in Manila led to the biggest drug bust in Philippine history. In the Sulu Sea, trilateral naval and aerial patrols with Indonesia and Malaysia have curbed the incidence of piracy and restricted the maritime mobility of regional terrorist and criminal networks.

More Economic, Less Ideological

Duterte’s improving relations with China and Russia and strong Asian emphasis are driven less by his anti-West posturing than by real, evolving economic imperatives. Seven out of the top 10 export markets and nine out of the top 10 sources of imports to the Philippines in 2016 were from Asia. Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong count among the country’s largest source of foreign investments. In addition, attempts to diversify sources of imported energy constitute one agenda in Duterte’s brewing cooperation with Russia. Infrastructure, trade, investment and aid all drive Philippine engagement with rivals China and Japan. These economic imperatives were best captured in Duterte’s 2018 presidential address when he stated that the Philippines “shall continue to reach out to all nations regardless of their prevailing political persuasion or proximity to or distance from our shores so long as these nations wish us well.”

Protection and promotion of the welfare of overseas Filipinos constitutes a major pillar of Philippine foreign policy and is a big reason for Duterte’s visits to West Asia, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Israel, and Jordan. The signing of a bilateral labor agreement with Kuwait attests to this. During the Philippines’ ASEAN chairmanship last year, the country also successfully pushed for a landmark pact that will protect the rights and promote the welfare of migrant workers. Mainland China also became a new proximate destination for Filipino workers, especially for English teachers and, possibly soon, household workers.

In sum, Duterte’s independent foreign policy with a strong focus on Asia is rooted in security and economic realities. His astute management of disputes with neighbors stems from his recognition of the disruptive capacity of maritime incidents, which threaten the very fabric of regional stability and prosperity. To this end, consultations and negotiations with other claimants are underway in both bilateral and regional tracks, while avenues for pragmatic cooperation are being expanded. Trade and investment figures, as well as migrant worker flows, also point to the increasing ascendancy of Asia in Philippine foreign policy thinking. Hence, Duterte’s Asian pivot is not so much a reaction against the West as it is an emerging imperative.

This article was published at China-US Focus.

If the majority of dairy farms in Pennsylvania fully adopt conservation best-management practices, the state may be able to achieve its total maximum daily load water-quality target for the Chesapeake Bay, according to researchers.

That is the conclusion of a novel assessment of the simulated effects of implementing a conservation dairy-farming system on all dairy farms in the Spring Creek watershed, a small drainage in Centre County. In the simulations, the conservation dairy-farming systems — which have been developed and tested by Penn State researchers over the last decade — produce the majority of the feed and forage crops consumed by their cattle, use no-till planting, have continuous diversified plant cover, and have one system to employ manure injection.

Using a variation of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool — known as SWAT — which was customized and calibrated for the karst topography and hydrology in the Spring Creek watershed in earlier Penn State research, researchers modeled nutrient and sediment-loading processes of four dairy-farming scenarios that differed in land area, feed-production and nutrient-input strategies. They compared nonpoint pollution generated by “typical” existing Pennsylvania dairy farms that include some no-till and limited cover cropping, with dairy farms under conservation management.

The customized SWAT simulated the four dairy-cropping scenarios for a 12-year period. All four dairy farms compared had 65 milking cows and young stock, fed the same dairy ration, and were assumed to produce the same amount of manure with the same nutrient composition. But the land needed to produce the crops differed among the four farming scenarios, and the conservation farms had more land over which to grow feed and apply manure.

Compared to the “typical” Pennsylvania dairy farm that employs some best management practices, produces all the herd’s forage, and purchases most of the cattle feed grain, the enhanced conservation dairy-cropping scenarios improved water quality by achieving significant pollution reductions. Over the 12-year SWAT simulation, they cut the number of in-stream peaks of nutrients and sediment and reduced average concentration of sediment by 31 percent, organic nitrogen by 41 to 53 percent, nitrate by 23 percent, organic phosphorus by 36-45 percent and soluble phosphorus by 32 to 43 percent.

Both conservation scenarios also decreased nitrous oxide emissions by reducing denitrification, but the scenario that included manure injection retarded 91 percent of the nitrogen volatilization that occurred in the broadcast-manure scenario.

“We wanted to evaluate what happens at a whole watershed scale if dairy farmers implement different practices,” said Heather Karsten, associate professor of crop production ecology, Penn State, whose research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences conducted the study. “So, we created these model farms to represent the range of dairy-farming systems that could be present in a watershed.”

The conservation farms were based on the average Pennsylvania dairy farm acreage and herd size at the time the researchers designed the field study in 2010.

“They have twice as much land and are growing all of their feed and forage, which helps them be profitable, because feed costs account for at least 50 percent of milk-production costs,” she said. “And, perhaps most important, they are not applying manure to the same land as often because they have more land to spread it on. In addition, when the conservation farms apply manure in fall, they apply it to winter annual crops that are either cover crops, that retain some of the nutrients, or silage crops, that utilize more of the fall-applied manure to produce forage crops.”

Of course, achieving such large-scale adoption of conservation dairy-farming practices will not be simple, easy or cheap, Karsten conceded. Farmers will need access to affordable land to grow more feed for their herds and apply manure at lower rates. And, she pointed out, technical assistance and financial incentives will be needed to facilitate large-scale adoption of best-management practices such as manure injection, winter annual silage production and cover cropping.

Only about a third of the land in Spring Creek watershed is agricultural, according to lead researcher M.G. Mostofa Amin, now a faculty member in the Department of Irrigation and Water Management at Bangladesh Agricultural University. A postdoctoral scholar and research associate when he led the Penn State study, he noted that Spring Creek is one of the most studied streams in the East.

In earlier research, Amin used data from three U.S. Geological Survey streamflow-monitoring stations in the watershed to customize the SWAT model to simulate the geology and hydrological processes that contribute to sediment and nutrient loads in the Spring Creek watershed.

“Using SWAT to simulate and compare four farming systems over 12 years at the watershed scale enabled the team to assess the impact of large-scale implementation of the dairy-farming scenarios,” Amin said. “We learned that the conservation dairy-farming scenarios can reduce nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural lands and help achieve targeted total maximum daily loads into the Chesapeake Bay.”

By Jaya Ramachandran

A new United Nations report has called for completely lifting the ongoing Israeli land, air, and sea blockade which has reduced the Gaza Strip to “a humanitarian case of profound suffering and aid dependency”. The blockade is now in its eleventh year.

The report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) calls for reunifying Gaza and the West Bank economically and helping to overcome the energy crisis as a matter of priority by, among other things, enabling the Palestinian National Authority to develop the offshore natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea discovered in the 1990s.

UNCTAD paints a bleak picture for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and faults Israel for the worsening of socioeconomic conditions in the past year, leading to a more than 27 percent rise – the highest in the world – in unemployment while per head income declined and agricultural production contracted by 11 per cent.

The report, released on September 12, also notes that the adverse conditions imposed by Israeli occupation have disproportionately affected women and young people. It warns that declining donor support, a freeze in the reconstruction of Gaza and unsustainable, credit-financed public and private consumption paint a bleak picture for prospects for the Palestinian economy.

These, the report avers, are further clouded by the ongoing confiscation of land and natural resources by the occupying Power Israel.

Coordinator of the UNCTAD Assistance to the Palestinian People Unit, Mahmoud Elkhafif, said: “Under international law, Israel and the international community have responsibilities not only to avoid actions that impede development but to take affirmative steps to foster development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

However, Israel has failed to ease restrictions and donor support has declined steeply to one third of its 2008 level.

The report accentuates that in 2017 and early 2018, construction of settlements accelerated, despite United Nations General Assembly resolution A/ES-10/19 of December 21, 2017, which “affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council”.

The report highlights evidence of incremental annexation of large parts of the West Bank that includes the transfer of Israeli population into settlements, the forcing out of the Palestinian population, investment of more than $19 billion in the construction of settlements, extending Israeli domestic legal jurisdiction to settlers and the proliferation of economic, social, political and administrative measures that deepen the integration of settlements into the Israeli State system.

Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade include the dual-use list, which does not allow Palestinians to import a wide range of civilian goods that might have potential military application, the report says.

The list includes essential production inputs such as civilian machinery, spare parts, fertilizers, chemicals, medical equipment, appliances, telecommunication equipment, metal, steel pipes, milling machines, optical equipment and navigation aids.

This ban imposes heavy economic costs and exacerbates conflict and political instability by undermining the employment, wages and the livelihood of the Palestinian people.

Simply removing Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade and investment could allow the territory’s economy to grow by up to 10 per cent, while the blockade can only ensure the continuation of depression-level unemployment and extreme poverty, the report warns.

The report notes that the productive capacity of Gaza has been eviscerated by three major military operations and a crippling air, sea and land blockade. The 2008–2009 Israeli military operation erased more than 60 per cent of Gaza’s total stock of productive capital, and the 2014 strike destroyed 85 per cent of what was left.

Destroyed productive assets include roads, power stations, industrial and commercial establishments and agricultural land, as well as other infrastructure and related assets.

In 2012, the United Nations warned that unless ongoing trends were reversed, Gaza would become uninhabitable – unfit for humans to live in – by 2020. Since then, the report says, all socioeconomic indicators have deteriorated and conditions in Gaza are now worse.

Efforts at revival have been feeble and focused on humanitarian relief, the report says. This leaves few resources for development and resuscitation of the productive economy. Gaza’s present real income per head is 30 per cent lower than at the turn of the century. Poverty and food insecurity are widespread, even though 80 per cent of the people receive social assistance.

Furthermore, Gaza’s longstanding electricity crisis has deepened. In early 2018, households received, on average, two hours of electricity a day and shortages continue to seriously impact everyday life by crippling productive activities and impeding delivery of basic services.

The enduring deprivation of basic economic, social and human rights inflicts a heavy toll on Gaza’s psychological and social fabric, as manifested by the widespread incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder and high suicide rates. In 2017, for example, 225,000 children, or more than 10 per cent of the total population, required psychosocial support.

The UNCTAD report highlights the deleterious effects of the customs union established in 1967 and formalized by the Paris Protocol in 1994 under which free trade prevails between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the two economies share the same external tariffs on trade with the rest of the world.

The customs union is inherently flawed because of the structural differences between the two economies and their vastly different levels of economic development. The outcomes of this union are made worse by the absence of cooperation and the selective, unilateral setting and application of its terms by Israel.

Effectively, the Occupied Palestinian Territory is isolated from the more competitive global markets, which in turn fosters an extremely high level of a trade diversion towards Israel, the report says.

Analysis shows that, between 1972 and 2017, Israel absorbed 79 per cent of total Palestinian exports and accounted for 81 per cent of Palestinian imports. To break the cycle of dispossession and de-development, the UNCTAD report recommends replacing the outdated customs union by a new framework that guarantees the Palestinian National Authority full control over its customs territory, borders and trade and industrial policies.

UNCTAD analysis indicates there is no evidence that the budget deficit of the Occupied Palestinian Territory causes the trade deficit, and further suggests that the two deficits are symptoms of a resource gap fostered by an occupation that cultivates dependence on transfers from abroad and forces Palestinian workers to seek employment outside the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

UNCTAD argues that, under the present circumstances, policy prescriptions that call for further fiscal austerity could dampen growth and elevate unemployment without impacting the trade deficit.

The report warns that inappropriate fiscal austerity prescriptions could exact a high toll and add pressure to the already fragile socioeconomic and political conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In the past year, UNCTAD has continued to assist the Palestinian people by providing advisory services, research and policy papers, technical cooperation projects and capacity-building and training for Palestinian professionals from the public and private sectors.

In the past, protectionism led to the Great Depression. According to Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, trade wars have always led to fall in world trade and a fall in world real income.

By Jayshree Sengupta

United States President Donald Trump has imposed higher tariffs on Canadian, European and Chinese goods. He has particularly targeted $200 billion of Chinese goods with 10 per cent duties. The Chinese have retaliated and both have imposed $34 billion worth tariffs on each other.

Trump’s protectionist policies, which are being applied since July 2018, are now beginning to hurt the American consumers, because most corporations affected by the tariffs on important inputs have no other alternative but to raise the prices of goods produced by them. Thus the impact of higher tariffs on steel and aluminum are being passed on to the consumers. This will ultimately reduce demand and real output of the American economy.

But by all accounts, the US economy under President Trump is doing well and unemployment is at its lowest in July 2018 — at 3.9 per cent. His policies have created many jobs across America about which he boasts often. Inflation has been kept down for years. The US economy is predicted to grow at a record of 3 per cent in 2018.

However, already inflation is creeping up from the annual core inflation rate of 1.9 per cent and is likely to reach the target limit of 2 per cent soon.

The reason inflation is picking up is due to companies making anything from cars to tractors,  dishwashers to canned soft drink (Coca Cola) facing weaker profits on account of high input costs, comprising aluminum and steel that are subject to higher duties. Lower profit prospects may lead to their stocks going down. They are increasingly passing the higher costs and input prices to consumers by charging more for their products — like the famed washing machine makers Whirlpool.

Tariff related cost increases that fan up inflation will prompt the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more often than scheduled. Tariffs are raising company expenses at a time when they are already paying more for other materials, especially labour. The nascent recovery which Trump has been flaunting could be clipped short if interest rates rise and the cost of borrowing rises for firms.

Some companies, however, are not able to pass on higher costs through price increase because they fear shrinkage of demand — like in the case of General Motors. Companies like GM have also benefited from Trump’s tax cuts in the past and have been able to shore up profit and are not going for price increase.  They are being helped by consumers who seem to be anticipating price rise and are stepping up buying big ticket items. This has been good for such companies so far, but it may not be sustainable because higher borrowing costs for consumers due to higher interest rates will soon shrink their demand.

Rising interest rates in the US will have a worldwide repercussion on the FIIs which will try to head back towards the US, abandoning the Emerging Markets. Already FIIs have been exiting Indian stock market in hordes ($7 billion since the beginning of 2018) creating a problem in foreign investment inflows and creating volatility in the stock market. This will make the supply of investible funds shrink in the Indian stock market, constraining corporations to make new investments. Volatility in the capital market will be very dangerous when India is trying hard to grow at a higher rate in the election year. It may lead to further FII outflow. If the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates over and above the two expected hikes this year, the rupee may depreciate further aggravating the problem of financing the high oil import bill and widening of the current account deficit.

Although Trump’s imposition of high tariffs will force China to seek imports from other countries, India may not be a big beneficiary because China will focus on countries that fulfill its specific needs. Its imports from the US consisted mainly of agricultural products and India can supply soybeans but since China has reduced duties on 8549 types of goods from India under the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement, India may already be a beneficiary. These items include chemicals, clothing, steel, aluminum and medicinal products.

In recent weeks, China’s economy seems to be slowing down. China’s trade surplus has shrunk considerably in recent months and the Yuan has slid by 6 per cent to a six-month low in a falling stock market.  The Turkish lira has sunk to a new low after new sanctions on Turkish exports of aluminum and steel.

In the past, protectionism led to the Great Depression. According to Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, trade wars have always led to fall in world trade and a fall in world real income. China is clearly losing out in the trade war because it is much more dependent on US demand and is getting hurt by taking a hardline stance. The US trade deficit with China was $375 billion in 2017. It imports $505 billion worth of goods from China. The fall in exports is hurting China.   It’s try to ally with the European Union has also not worked and the Europeans are tightening scrutiny over Chinese investments in the name of national security. They have been worried by the influx of huge Chinese investments in recent years.

Higher oil prices will also contribute to the onset of a worldwide depression. The US is one of India’s main trade partners and hence it is important that its trade balance which runs into a surplus does not attract fresh tariffs. Both the US and India seem to be keen to resolve trade issues and prevent the implementation of India’s retaliatory tariffs worth $235 million on 29 American products that were supposed to come into effect in August 2018 in response to higher tariffs on steel and Aluminum. The US is already critical of India’s export subsidies and the RBI’s ruling on data localisation to ensure that firms operating in India move their servers to India.

As long as the US economy is buoyant, President Trump will seem to be a clear winner but any slowdown of the economy, caused by a hike in inflation leading to higher interest rates, may have disastrous consequences on the rest of the world because of the importance of the dollar and the Federal Reserve’s policies on world financial flows.

By R M Panda

Several countries including the United States, India and the European Union (EU) have raised serious doubts over the fairness of the Maldives presidential elections to be held on 23rd September.

Bending the rules and abusing state resources, an autocratic President “Abdulla Yameen” is fighting to get himself ‘selected for his second term. He has been accused of series of corruption charges-he has mocked the human rights of the people of the nation, has put every possible contestant in jail or driven them to exile, muzzled the press and has controlled all administrative apparatus to silence his political opponents. The foreign media ( domestic has been terrorized and subdued) has strongly condemned this impropriety.

China loves dictators and is not comfortable with true democracies! Ignoring immediate neighbours and their concerns Yameen has sought the support of China just to stay in power by any means.

In the process Yameen has antagonized besides India, the European Union and the United States. The US has been threatening sanctions against the country but what use will it be when China has now another country in this region to be befriended as another “lips and teeth”.

As the presidential election is just a week ahead, the Maldivians will have to choose their presidential candidate wisely keeping their national interest in mind. Their elected candidate must be able to take Maldives out of the debt trap Maldives is beginning to show.

They have to choose between the opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (ibu) a veteran law maker and having a clean image, or the current tyrant Abdulla Yameen.

Yameen got a free hand to violate all the existing election rules and regulations. All the administrative departments and the judiciary are at his beck and call. The Chief Elections Commissioner who is generally considered to be incompetent has been specially selected by Yameen despite strong opposition to ensure that the elections go this way.

Yameen kept on inaugurating development projects and campaigning side by side with his official visits misusing the State Funds even afterthe Election Date was announced. The Election Commission has not objected to Yameen misusing his position and is not likely to do so either.

The President’s Office which normally announces the visits and inauguration of projects by the President has been deliberately silent for the last three months. Media reports indicate that Yameen inaugurated 133 projects and visited 68 islands and all the visits were organised by president’s office According to Election Laws, Candidates are prohitbied from using tpublic funds to campaign other than the funds allotted to the political parties by the EC.

A dozen of former ruling party law makers who were prevented from contesting the elections- an act that was done in collusion with the Elections Commission are preparing to file a case against the Administration. But with the judiciary firmly in the hands of Yameen, no purpose will be served by such law suits.

The European Union (EU) will not sent be sending any official delegation to Maldives to observe the election because “conditions for credible and transparent elections have not been met”.

The warning by the Police that some dangerous act could happen on the Election Day looks like another insidious idea of Abdulla Yameen to get rid of of whatever opposition that is still left in Maldives. May be another “Emergency” is in the offing!

The opposition has accused the police of scare-mongering and said it is to terrorise the voters. The Opposition believes that by these tactics, Yameen can engineer the outcome of the elections he desires. Either derail the election or create a scenario whereby a ruling dispensation can prolong the Yameen rule, regardless of the popular ranchise.

It looks that Maldives is well on the way to get into a debt trap just as it happened to Sri Lanka. Maldives should take a note of the fact another country-Zambia is likely to give up its international airport as it is unable to pay the debts. Malaysia’s cancellation of pipe line projects recently is another pointer of the way China is leading the poorer countries into a debt trap for overall strategic and economic control. The new Regime in Pakistan also wanted to re-negotiate its agreements under CPEC, but it appears to be in a helpless condition.

The Public Service Media has been carrying a negative campaigning with official blessings. Unverified and in fact Fake News are being spread that the opposition is unpatriotic, anti-Islamic and in cahoot with the Christian minorities.

The World as well as the immediate neighbours appear to be not in a position to stop this irregular election that is seeing an unprecedented violation of all norms by the candidate of the Ruling Party.

The writer can be reached at E mail: – pandaradhamadhaba@gmail.com

By Die Morina

President Hashim Thaci has expressed deep disapproval of the government’s move to push a draft law expanding the mandate and competences of the Kosovo Security Force, KSF.

Kosovo’s government on Thursday approved a new bill on the Kosovo Security Force, KSF, expanding its competences but avoiding the need for constitutional changes required to change it into a regular army.

The proposal came from Rrustem Berisha, Minister of the Kosovo Security Force, and provides for the gradual transformation of the FSK.

“What is foreseen is a gradual transformation of KSF into an organisation whose mission is to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kosovo”, a memo of the draft law seen by BIRN says.

The government also approved a draft law on serving in the KSF and a recommendation for approval of draft law on the organization of the Defence Ministry.

“The draft law on the KSF determines the competences, organisation and the functioning of the KSF as a multiethnic, professional force, protecting the territorial integrity of the interests of Kosovo citizens,” Berisha said during the government meeting.

However, President Hashim Thaci, only minutes ahead of the government’s decision, stated that he had not been informed about the proposal and would need to consult Kosovo’s strategic partners.

“I also do not believe the United States of America and NATO have been informed, because then I would be informed also,” Thaci said.

Thaci welcomed the idea of the formation of a regular army – but only in partnership with NATO and the country’s allies.

He deplored “an action on our own to isolate and seriously harm the multiethnic mission of the government.

“I think that proceeding with the issue today is the wrong moment because we do not need to send such a message to our allies,” Thaci stated.

The proposal approved by the government does not need any constitutional changes but needs only a simple majority vote in parliament.

Kosovo has long sought to form a regular army against bitter opposition from Serbia and from the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

The idea has also failed to win support from Kosovo’s Western partners who feel it is provocative ahead of a final settlement with Serbia.

Over the last year, Kosovo institutions tried in vain to change the KSF’s mandate and incorporate it into the regular army by a form of stealth.

However, these plans have run up against a constitutional obligation requiring a “double majority” in parliament – meaning the support of two-thirds of all MPs and two-thirds of the 20 ethnic non-Albanian MPs.

Kosovo Serb MPs, who hold 10 of the 20 seats reserved for non-Albanian communities, blocked the initiative.

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) – of which blockchain is the best known form – could play a major role in reducing the worldwide trade finance gap, enabling trade that otherwise could not take place, finds a new study by the World Economic Forum and Bain & Company. Its effects would be largest in emerging markets and for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), showing the use of the technology beyond large corporations and developed markets.

The global trade finance gap currently stands at $1.5 trillion, or 10% of merchandise trade volume, and is set to grow to $2.4 trillion by 2025, the Asian Development Bank calculates. But a new study shows that this gap could be reduced by $1 trillion if DLT is used more broadly. The largest opportunities could come from smart contracts, single digital records for customs clearance. They would help mitigate credit risk, lower fees and remove barriers to trade.

If implemented, the main beneficiaries are set to be SMEs and emerging markets, which suffer most from a lack of access to credit and have ample room to grow trade. “Implementing blockchain-based solutions can eventually do more for SMEs in emerging markets than removing tariffs or closing trade deals,” said Wolfgang Lehmacher, Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industry at the World Economic Forum.

The trade financing issue, and the proposed DLT solution, are particularly important for Asian economies, including ASEAN, China and Hong Kong SAR, India and Korea. They account for almost three-quarters of total documentary for import-export transactions, and account for almost 7% (or $105 billion) of the trade finance gap. But for countries to benefit, they will need a coordinated approach.

“The benefits of adopting DLT in trade will affect everyone from banks to companies to governments to consumers,” said Gerry Mattios, Expert Vice-President at Bain & Company, and a key contributor to the study. “But action has to be taken in a collaborative way and with an ecosystem approach in mind. Individual actions won’t bring the expected results.”

If the recommendations are implemented and the estimated impact materializes, it would be one of the first cases where blockchain is mostly beneficial to SMEs and emerging markets, as opposed to large banks or technology companies in developed markets.

Oysters likely suffered toxic effects from the oil dispersant Corexit® 9500 when it was used to clean up the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, said Morris Animal Foundation-funded researchers at the University of Connecticut. The team determined this by comparing the low levels of toxicity of oil, the dispersant and a mixture of the two on Eastern oysters. The team published their findings in the journal Aquatic Toxicology.

After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spilled more than 170 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, nearly two million gallons of Corexit® 9500 was deployed into the Gulf to break the oil down.

“There’s an unfortunate trade-off to using dispersants like this,” said Lindsay Jasperse, a member of the university’s research team that published the study. “They may prevent giant oil spills from washing ashore and damaging wetlands, but they also cause negative effects for species below the ocean’s surface that might have been spared if dispersants weren’t used.”

Oysters are considered a keystone species due their value to their ecosystem. Primarily, they serve as water purifiers, filtering out particles and nutrients from the water to improve the quality for surrounding species. Oyster reefs also prevent erosion and provide habitat and protection for many crabs and fish. Unfortunately, as they are immobile and so abundant, they are at a significant risk for critical exposure to oil and oil dispersants following environmental disasters.

Researchers compared, in a controlled environment, the toxicity of oil alone, the dispersant alone and a mixture of the two on oysters. The researchers tested both the oysters’ feeding rates, or how well they could filter algae, and immune functions, or how well they could absorb and destroy bacteria, which indicates an oyster’s ability to fight off infection. A reduction in an oyster’s feeding rates could result in stunted growth or even death. If an oyster’s immune system is compromised, it can be more likely to succumb to infection.

For the oysters’ immune function, the dispersant alone was the most toxic, followed by the dispersant and oil mixture. Oil alone did not impact the oysters’ immune function at all. Researchers tested the oysters’ feeding rates and found the mixture of the dispersant and oil had the most toxic effect, followed by oil alone and then the dispersant alone.

“Knowing the effects dispersants and oil have on oysters can help us make better mitigation recommendations the next time an environmental and ecological crisis like this happens,” said Dr. Kelly Diehl, Morris Animal Foundation Interim Vice President of Scientific Programs. “Species are interconnected, and what harms oysters will likely cascade through their ecosystem to the detriment of all.”

Bye-bye artichoke dip. Heavyweight appetizers and fatty entrees may not get much love when restaurants list calories on their menus.

In a new study, Cornell University researchers conducted a randomized experiment and found that diners at full service restaurants whose menus listed calories ordered meals with 3 percent fewer calories – about 45 calories less – than those who had menus without calorie information. Customers ordered fewer calories in their appetizer and entree courses, but their dessert and drink orders remained the same.

“Even if you’re an educated person who eats out a lot and is aware of nutrition, there can still be surprising things in these calorie counts,” said co-author John Cawley, professor of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology.

Even the chefs at the restaurants in the study were startled by the high number of calories in some dishes, such as a tomato soup/grilled cheese sandwich combo. “They would have said it was one of the lower-calorie items on the menu,” said co-author Alex Susskind, associate professor of operations, technology and information management at the School of Hotel Administration.

The findings come at a time when most Americans don’t have a precise estimate of how many calories they’re eating, because one-third of their food is prepared outside the home. At the same time, the obesity crisis in America has reached epidemic proportions; the prevalence of obesity in adults has nearly tripled in the past 50 years, to nearly 40 percent of the population in 2016.

In response, many cities, counties and states have passed laws requiring restaurants to include calorie information on their menus. And as of May, it is a nationwide requirement that chain restaurants with 20 or more units post calories on menus and menu boards, as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

To find out how this law affects consumer behavior, the researchers conducted a randomized field experiment in two full-service restaurants. Each party of diners was randomly assigned to either a control group, which received the usual menus, or a treatment group, which got the same menus but with calorie counts next to each item. At the end of the meal, each diner was asked to complete a survey that collected sociodemographic information and attitudes toward diet and exercise. In all, the researchers gathered data from 5,550 diners.

The study also found that diners valued the calorie information. Majorities of both the treatment and control groups supported having calorie labels on menus, and exposure to the calorie counts increased support by nearly 10 percent. “It’s clear that people value this information,” Cawley said.

And there was no downside for restaurants. Their revenue, profit and labor costs were unchanged.

“It’s a cheap policy to put in place, and the fact that there is a reduction in calories ordered makes it appealing,” Cawley said.

By Joseph T. Salerno*

The doctoral thesis of Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez work was analysed by two of the most rigorous programs at an academic level, Turnitin, used at Oxford University and PlagScan, the European benchmark, Moncloa said on Friday.

After the analysis of the doctoral thesis which was presented by Sánchez, in 2012, the evaluation made by the tools Turnitin and PlagScan have determined the original content of the thesis, which easily passes the text matching systems.

In the case of Turnitin, the result was 13%, while PlagScan gave a figure of 0.96%, each one with its own methodology. These percentages are due to the quotes and compulsory references in the drafting of any research document that all software programmes are unable to discern by default, regardless of their hi-tech nature.

There is a broad consensus in the academic world that considers that these are normal percentages, in accordance with regulation and protocols on verification.

Taking into account that it is commonplace for analysis software of scientific texts to detect parts of the work that match, but which are duly quoted and referenced, it is important to contrast the information and all the references with due consideration to these.

Both the Turnitin and PlagScan studies have excluded, as is to be expected, the current affairs articles of a journalistic nature subsequent to the current thesis, the bibliography and the sources with similarities of less than 1%, such as all the times that the title, or part of the title, of the thesis have been repeated. As far as possible, the bibliographic matches in the footnotes have also been discarded, and hence, following a more detailed analysis, the two software programmes have obtained even lower percentages of matches.

Every time there is a story about a priest accused of wrongdoing, it makes its way into the newspaper. If the accused is a bishop, it merits coverage by all the big media: print, digital, radio, and television. But when a bishop gets cleared of wrongdoing, they go mute.

On September 13, Dauphin County District Attorney Francis Chardo said that following a full investigation, it was determined that “there is no basis to conclude that Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades ever engaged in a criminal or otherwise improper relationship with a person whom we will refer to as J.T.”  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is the seat of Dauphin County.

Bishop Rhoades, who heads the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, and who was previously stationed in Harrisburg, was charged with molesting a teenager decades ago in Puerto Rico. But the stories told by J.T. (an ex-con) never added up. More important, his own mother said that Bishop Rhoades’ account was accurate.

Bishop Rhoades has had his reputation smeared, and the media are letting the false accusation stand. The Associated Press was alone among the big media to run a story on his exoneration. The story was covered by newspapers in Indiana and Pennsylvania, but it received no mention in the evening news on any broadcast or cable channel. The New York Times, Washington Post, and all the other prominent newspapers, said nothing about it.

Sadly, we have become accustomed to this kind of biased journalism.  When a bishop is accused, the story is given high profile, but when a bishop is exculpated, the story is buried. Small wonder why the public holds the media in low regard. Catholics have more reason than every other segment of society to hold them in contempt.

Speaking on the House floor on September 13, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard accused the Trump administration of protecting al-Qaeda terrorists in Idlib. According to the congresswoman, this amounts to the betrayal of the American people and victims of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in the US.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) called out President Donald Trump and Vice President Pence for allegedly protecting al-Qaeda* in Idlib, Syria, while speaking in the House on September 13.

“Two days ago, President Trump and Vice President Pence delivered solemn speeches about the attacks on 9/11, talking about how much they care about the victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on our country. But, they are now standing up to protect the 20,000 to 40,000 al-Qaeda and other jihadist forces in Syria, and threatening Russia, Syria, and Iran, with military force if they dare attack these terrorists,” the congresswoman stressed.

Gabbard qualified the Trump administration’s handling of the Idlib problem as nothing short of “betrayal of the American people” and most notably, “the victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11 and their families.”

“For the president, who is commander in chief, to act as the protective big brother of al-Qaeda and other jihadists must be condemned by every member of Congress,” she emphasized.

While Damascus is preparing to launch an advance on Idlib, the last terrorist stronghold in Syria, which accommodates, according to some estimates, up to 70,000 jihadi militants, Washington continues to issue threats against Syrian government forces and their allies trying to pressure them into abandoning the operation.

In late August, National Security Adviser John Bolton expressed suspicions that the Assad government could resort to the use of chemical arms in Idlib and threatened Damascus with a “strong” response.

The Syrian government has repeatedly pointed to the fact that it destroyed its chemical weapon stockpiles as well as chemical weapon production facilities between September 2013 and August 2014 under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was verified by the OPCW in January 2016.

Commenting on the upcoming offensive on the terrorist-held province, President Trump tweeted on September 3 that “President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib province.”

​”The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!” he claimed.

On September 12, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley groundlessly blamed Russia, Iran and Syria of what she called a plan to “use” chemical arms in Syria.

“What we told, you know, the Syrians, the Russians and the Iranians was, well, twice we have warned you not to use chemical weapons; twice you have used it, and twice President Trump has acted. Don’t test us again,” Haley said in an interview with Fox News, referring to chemical incidents in Khan Sheikhoun and Douma and subsequent missile strikes against Syrian government forces by the US and its allies.

However, no evidence has been presented so far to confirm the involvement of Damascus and its allies in the incidents so far. Likewise, there has been no proof presented backing the claim that the Syrian government is going to use poisonous substances in the region.

In contrast, the Syrian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Defense are citing evidence of a potential terrorist-arranged chemical provocation being coordinated in Idlib province. It was reported that the White Helmets NGO had smuggled a large shipment of poisonous substances to Ahrar al-Sham warehouses in Idlib.