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Philippines: International People’s Court Finds Duterte Guilty Of Rights Violations

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By Jose Torres Jr. and Bong Sarmiento

An international people’s court has found Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte guilty of violating the political and economic rights of Filipinos.

While activist groups and some religious leaders welcomed the ruling by the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) that convened in Belgium this week, the Manila government called the ruling a sham.

In its verdict released on Sept. 20, the tribunal — a global court organized by lawyers’ associations and rights groups — found Duterte “guilty of crimes against the Filipino people.”

The tribunal was among several organized by civil society organizations and private individuals to highlight pressing issues in different countries.

The court’s verdict will be submitted to the International Criminal Court, the European Parliament and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque, however, called the tribunal “sham proceedings” and “propaganda by the left.” He said the verdict was “nothing because the proceedings were not official.”

Among the organizations that convened the tribunal were the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, IBON International, and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines.

In its verdict, the IPT said it found the defendants “guilty of all charges … which account for their accountability for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of law and legal instruments.”

‘Victory for justice’

Religious leaders in Mindanao hailed the verdict as a “victory for justice.”

Father Rey Carvin Ondap, executive director of the Passionist Center for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, said it “shows that those who are hopeless and hapless are now being heard.”

“I salute those who gave their testimonies for their courage,” said the priest.

Families of human rights abuse victims and activist groups told the tribunal about extrajudicial killings linked to the government’s anti-narcotics war and counterinsurgency operations, detention and political persecution of dissenters, abuses during the anti-terror war in Marawi in 2017, the declaration of martial law in Mindanao and attacks on journalists.

Among the 31 “witnesses” who testified was Australian missionary nun Patricia Fox, who claimed the Duterte administration curtailed her rights when she was ordered to be deported for alleged involvement in partisan political activities.

Father Amado Picardal, a Redemptorist priest and a staunch critic of Duterte’s bloody war against drugs, said the tribunal’s ruling adds to the international condemnation of the “brutal regime.”

“For whatever it is worth, I hope this will spur the International Criminal Court to proceed with its investigation into extrajudicial killings and mass murder in the Philippines,” he said.

Sultan Hamidullah Atar of Marawi, who testified before the tribunal for alleged atrocities committed by the military in Marawi, said the five-month conflict last year could have been shortened if Muslim leaders had been allowed to negotiate with Islamic State-inspired fighters.

The Muslim leader said Duterte’s martial law declaration across Mindanao “violated the principles of proportionality in international humanitarian law as it paved the way for the destruction of our cultural sites and worship areas.”

Human rights group Karapatan and the National Union of People’s Lawyers maintained that the tribunal was a legitimate venue for voicing redress and grievances.

In a statement, the lawyers’ group said the tribunal “follows and respects due process where the defendants are duly notified and given adequate opportunity to participate and defend themselves.”

The group said the tribunal’s procedures are consistent with “universal standards of evidence” and the court was convened by “prestigious and respected international lawyers’ organizations and presided over by a panel of eminent jurors from different disciplines.”


Iran Holds US, Regional Terror Sponsors Accountable For Ahvaz Attack

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Islamic Republic holds “regional terror sponsors and their US masters” responsible for the Saturday terrorist attack on a military ceremony in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.

“Terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime have attacked Ahvaz. Children and journos among casualties,” Zarif said on his Twitter account on Saturday.

“Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks. Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives,” he added in his tweet.

During a military parade in Ahvaz which was staged concurrently with nationwide military parades on Saturday to mark the Sacred Defense Week, Takfiri militants fired at the people participating in the ceremony, killing at least 10 people and injuring 21 others.

The political deputy governor of Khuzestan Province, Ali Hossein Hosseinzadeh, told Tasnim that the number of martyrs is likely to increase because some of the wounded were in critical condition.

He also said in the clash, the security forces managed to kill two of the terrorists and arrest the other two.

Iran’s Armed Forces staged the countrywide military parades to mark the Sacred Defense Week on the 38th anniversary of the onset of the Iraqi imposed war on the Islamic Republic back in 1980.

Spain Starts Campaign To Recognize Palestine State, If Fails Could Go Alone

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Spain is to spearhead a move within the European Union to recognise Palestine as an independent state, the country’s foreign minister said on Thursday, adding that if the initiative fails the government is ready to recognise Palestine individually.

If the EU “is not able to reach unanimous decision – each to their own,” Spain’s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said at a conference of European Union leaders in Austria Tuesday, according to Haaretz.

Newly appointed Borrell added that an alternative option of Spanish recognition of the Palestinian state is “on the table.”

Borrell told reporters that he plans to launch an “intensive” consultation process with his fellow European leaders to set in motion the process to reach a unified position on the issue.

In 2014, Spain, along with Britain and Ireland, passed a symbolic motion to recognise Palestine as a state, however the resolution is unbinding.

Recent reports suggest that left-wing organisations in Spain are encouraging the newly elected socialist government to recognise the state of Palestine, which critics argue will prompt Israel to recognise an independent Catalonia in retaliation.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asked the EU to officially recognise the state of Palestine in Brussels, when he met with foreign ministers from the bloc in January.

Abbas told the EU it should take the step “as a way to respond” to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Sweden is the only state to officially recognise Palestine while being a member of the EU, which it did in 2014. Following a severe backlash from Israel, other EU countries did not follow suit.

Original source

Ocean Acidification May Reduce Sea Scallop Fisheries

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Each year, fishermen harvest more than $500 million worth of Atlantic sea scallops from the waters off the east coast of the United States. A new model created by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, predicts that those fisheries may potentially be in danger. As levels of carbon dioxide increase in the Earth’s atmosphere, the upper oceans become increasingly acidic–a condition that could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50% in the next 30 to 80 years, under a worst-case scenario. Strong fisheries management and efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, however, might slow or even stop that trend.

The model, published in the journal PLoS One, combines existing data and models of four major factors: future climate change scenarios, ocean acidification impacts, fisheries management policies, and fuel costs for fishermen.

“What’s novel about our work is that it brings together models of changing ocean environments as well as human responses” says Jennie Rheuban, the lead author of the study. “It combines socioeconomic decision making, ocean chemistry, atmospheric carbon dioxide, economic development and fisheries management. We tried to create a holistic view of how environmental changes might play out across different aspects of the sea scallop fishery,” she notes.

Since the oceans can absorb more than a quarter of all excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, fossil fuel carbon emissions can cause a dip in ocean pH as well. That acidity can corrode the calcium carbonate shells that are made by shellfish like clams, oysters, and scallops, and even prevent their larvae from forming shells in the first place.

According to Rheuban, no existing studies have been published that can show the specific effects of ocean acidification on the Atlantic sea scallop. To estimate its impact in the model, she and her colleagues incorporated a range of effects based on studies of related shellfish species. Combined with estimates of changing water chemistry, this new model lets scientists explore how plausible impacts of ocean acidification may change the future of the scallop population.

Rheuban and colleagues tested four different levels of impact in each of the four different factors influencing the model, ultimately creating 256 different scenario combinations.One group of scenarios looks at possible pathways of how ocean acidification may impact scallop biology. Another examines different levels of atmospheric CO2, including one future where emissions continue to skyrocket, and one where they fall due to aggressive climate change policy. A third set includes a range of future fuel costs, which themselves are related to climate change policies. Higher fuel costs, Rheuban notes, can lead to fewer active fishing days, reducing stress on the fishery itself, but also reducing profitability and revenues of the industry. The fourth and final set involves different federal fisheries management techniques.

Fishing policies for some shellfish, like oyster, clams, and bay scallops, are regulated by state or local governments, each of which follows its own set of rules. Sea scallop fisheries, however, are located well offshore in a region stretching from Virginia to Maine, so are regulated mostly by the federal government. With only one set of rules covering most sea scallop fisherman, it’s possible to fit them into the model.

“The current sea scallop fishery is so healthy and valuable today in part because it is very well managed,” says Scott Doney, a co-author from WHOI and the University of Virginia. “We also used the model to ask whether management approaches could offset the negative impacts of ocean acidification.”

In all of the model’s possible scenarios, high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere consistently led to increased ocean acidification and fewer sea scallops, despite introducing stricter management rules or even closing part of the fishery entirely.

“The model highlights the potential risks to sea scallops and likely other commercial shellfish fisheries of unabated carbon emissions to the atmosphere” adds Doney.

Over the next 100 years, under the worst-case ocean acidification impacts, the model’s ‘business-as-usual’ scenario shows a sea scallop decline of more than 50%, while a scenario with proactive climate policy shows only a 13% reduction.

“The model shows that reductions in fossil fuel emissions due to climate policy might have a big impact on the sea scallop fishery,” concludes Rheuban.

Latest Research Hints At Predicting Autism Risk For Pregnant Mothers

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Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute–led by Juergen Hahn, professor and head of biomedical engineering–are continuing to make remarkable progress with their research focused on autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

A recent paper authored by Hahn and Jill James from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders discusses their work on predicting with approximately 90 percent accuracy whether a pregnant mother has a 1.7 percent or a tenfold increased risk of having a child diagnosed with ASD.

Currently there is no test for pregnant mothers that can predict the probability of having a child that will be diagnosed with ASD. Recent estimates indicate that if a mother has previously had a child with ASD, the risk of having a second child with ASD is approximately 18.7 percent, whereas the risk of ASD in the general population is approximately 1.7 percent.

“However,” said Hahn, a member of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, “it would be highly desirable if a prediction based upon physiological measurements could be made to determine which risk group a prospective mother falls into.”

Hahn’s work in developing a physiological test to predict autism risk is part larger emphasis on Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and an example of how the interdisciplinary life science and engineering interface at Rensselaer offers new perspectives and solutions for improving human health.

In this study, metabolites of the folate-dependent transmethylation and transsulfuration biochemical pathways of pregnant mothers were measured to determine whether or not the risk of having a child with autism could be predicted by her metabolic profile. Pregnant mothers who have had a child with autism before were separated into two groups based on the diagnosis of their child whether the child had autism or not. Then these mothers were compared to a group of control mothers who have not had a child with autism before.

The researchers concluded that while it is not possible to determine during a pregnancy if a child will be diagnosed with ASD by age 3, they did find that differences in the plasma metabolites are indicative of the relative risk (18.7 percent vs 1.7 percent) for having a child with ASD.

“These are exciting results as they hint at differences in some metabolic processes that potentially play a role in increasing the risk of having a child with ASD,” said Hahn.

In addition to the lead authors, Juergen Hahn of Rensselaer and Jill James of UAMS, this work included collaborators from Rensselaer, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the MIND Institute at UC Davis.

This new research follows an earlier study published in 2017, which developed an algorithm based on levels of metabolites found in a blood sample that can accurately predict whether a child is on the autism spectrum. A follow-up study this spring was also highly promising in assessing whether a child is on the autism spectrum. These results have the potential for earlier diagnosis for ASD, and efforts are underway to develop a commercially available test based upon these findings.

Vatican Signs Deal With China On Bishop Appointments

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By Hannah Brockhaus

An expected agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the appointment of bishops was signed Saturday in Beijing, the Vatican announced.

A Sept. 22 communique said that a meeting was held in which a “Provisional Agreement” was signed concerning “the nomination of Bishops, a question of great importance for the life of the Church,” and creating “the conditions for greater collaboration at the bilateral level.”

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the deal is the beginning, not the end, of a process of dialogue between people from “very different standpoints.”

He said the objective of the accord is “not political but pastoral” and will allow “the faithful to have bishops who are communion with Rome but at the same time recognized by Chinese authorities.”

It was signed by the heads of the Vatican and Chinese delegations: the Vatican undersecretary for Relations with States, Mons. Antoine Camilleri; and Wang Chao, the deputy minister for foreign affairs of the People’s Republic of China.

The announcement did not provide details on the content of the agreement but said it “is the fruit of a gradual and reciprocal rapprochement, has been agreed following a long process of careful negotiation, and foresees the possibility of periodic reviews of its application.”

“The shared hope,” it continued, “is that this agreement may favor a fruitful and forward-looking process of institutional dialogue and may contribute positively to the life of the Catholic Church in China, to the common good of the Chinese people and to peace in the world.”

Earlier this week, the Global Times (a newspaper tied to the Chinese Communist Party) reported that Chinese government sources have “stressed that the ongoing negotiations [between the Vatican and China] will stay on the religious level, and will not touch on any diplomatic issue such as the establishment of diplomatic ties between Beijing and the Vatican.”

Past reports on the deal have indicated the substance could be to give the Chinese government some power over episcopal appointments in exchange for bringing the underground Church above ground, ending the split with the state-sanctioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association is under the day-to-day direct supervision of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) due to a major change in March 2018 in which the Chinese government shifted direct control of religious affairs to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD).

Some of the bishops appointed by the Chinese government in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association also serve as members of the Chinese Communist Party’s National People’s Congress.

New regulations on religious practice in China went into effect in February 2018 that codify the increased scrutiny and pressure on religious activities in China. On September 10, the Chinese government placed further restrictions on evangelization, making it illegal for any religious prayers, catechesis or preaching to be published online. This is being enforced via the country’s extensive internet censorship.

Poverty, Ethnicity And Inflation Seen Triggering New Explosions In North Caucasus – OpEd

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At the present time, the Telegram channel Mysli-NeMysli says, the horrific economic situation in the republics of Russia’s North Caucasus are “a social bomb” that may go off at any time given that old ethnic grievances are combining with rising gas prices and loose talk in Moscow about regional amalgamation to push people into the streets.

The channel points to the fact that the very poorest places in the Russian Federation are in the North Caucasus, with Kabardino-Balkaria, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia at the very bottom and North Ossetia only a little better in all-Russian rankings (t.me/mislinemisli reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2018/9/20/305994/).

Because of rising prices for gas and food, the channel continues, “social tensions have sharply increased.” They may draw additional power from longstanding ethnic grievances, disputes over land, or talk in Moscow about redrawing borders in some regional amalgamation plan; but the economic problems are the primary driver.

The channel points to Kabardino-Balkaria as “the hottest situation” given new clashes between the Circassian Kabards and the Turkic Balkars over historical symbols and land and the apparent inability of the Circassian-dominated republic authorities to cope with the situation and thus compelled to turn to the center for troops.

Relations between Chechnya and Ingushetia are rapidly deteriorating as well because of a territorial dispute over their common border. The leaders of the two are trying to hold things together and prevent more violence, the channel says; but many in the populations of the two republics are extremely angry. Similar problems affect North Ossetia.

But instead of addressing these problems and especially the level of poverty across the North Caucasus, officials in Moscow are taking steps that will only add fuel to the fire and quite possibly cause the kind of violence, official and unofficial, that will lead the situation to spiral out of control.

On the one hand, the Mysli-NeMysli channel says that “the Kremlin is going to push forward the ideal of amalgamating regions, a step which could enflame the entire Caucasus,” given that each of the current republics would see itself as a potential loser if it were to be enveloped in some larger and likely ethnic Russian region.

And on the other, Moscow officials, as the URA news agency reports, are increasingly blaming outside agitators in the form of US-backed NGOs for the violence in the region instead of facing up to the real problems of poverty and often ancient ethnic animosities on the ground (ura.news/articles/1036276276).

Frants Klintsevich, deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s defense and security committee, blames the clashes earlier this week in Kabardino-Balkaria not on local issues but rather on the US which he says has “created an enormous number of NGOs” nominally to promote democracy but in fact to achieve “the disintegration of Russian regions.”

In Soviet times, the West focused on destroying the USSR by promoting ethnic protests in the union republics; now, it is doing so in the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation in order to destroy Russia by exploiting local problems in ways that will make the country ungovernable from Moscow.

Aleksey Martynov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Present-Day States, agrees. He says that “if earlier the West used the tactic of the complex destabilization of the system as was the case in Ukraine, with time, it came to the conclusion that for the disintegration of Russia it would be better to use the technology of destabilization in each separate region.”

By doing this in several places at once, he says, the West hopes to create “’a perfect storm’” that will ultimately overwhelm Moscow and lead to the coming apart of the Russian Federation.

Nike Says ‘Believe In Something’: Can It Sacrifice Something, Too? – OpEd

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By Jessicah Pierre*

Nike’s latest “Just Do It” ad campaign includes a number of A-list athletes: LeBron James, Serena Williams, Odell Beckham Jr. — and most controversially, Colin Kaepernick.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Kaepernick — who played quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers — famously knelt during the national anthem before NFL games to protest police brutality toward African Americans. The blowback from his protest led to him being blackballed from the NFL.

Kaepernick’s activism was audaciously displayed on a larger platform in Nike’s multi-national ad campaign, featuring a video and image of Kaepernick with the tagline: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

Nike’s bold move led to more uproar from Kaepernick’s critics. Some white customers even ceremoniously burned their Nike apparel and called for a boycott of the company. But for Nike’s core customers — millennials and young urban men — this ad sent a strong message of solidarity.

Consumers and celebrities alike are now supporting Nike for giving Kaepernick that platform. In less than 24 hours after announcing Kaepernick as the face of their new marketing campaign, the sportswear company received more than $43 million worth of mostly positive media exposure, one report estimates.

Since then, that total has only grown.

“What can I do that’s meaningful?” asked Blackish star Jenifer Lewis as she donned a Nike sweater on the Emmys red carpet. “I’ll wear Nike. I’ll wear Nike to say thank you. Thank you for leading the resistance! We need more corporate America to stand up also.”

According to Forbes, the company saw a 31 percent increase in sales just a few days after the ad became public. And while Nike’s stock initially dipped following the promotion release, it not only recovered but surpassed all stock records for 2018, trading at an all-time high of $83.90 a share.

This has caused a number of people, including myself, to question Nike’s motives. Guardian writer Arwa Mahdawi accused Nike of the latest capitalistic trend, “woke-washing” — that is, using “progressive values as a marketing ploy, appropriating social activism as a form of advertising.”

This wouldn’t be the first offense by a major corporation.

Not long ago Pepsi pulled a controversial ad they said was meant to “project a global message of unity, peace, and understanding” after it borrowed imagery from Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson. (But unlike Nike, this ad received strong backlash from police brutality protesters who accused the ad of being tone deaf.)

Is it possible for a company to support racial justice without exploiting it for profit? Yes.

Actually, there’s an easy way for Nike to prove that their latest ad isn’t just a form of woke washing: It can give the revenue from their “Kaepernick bump” right back to the cause they’re supposedly taking a stand for. The company can start by matching Colin Kaepernick’s own pledge to donate $1 million to organizations working in oppressed communities.

Let’s applaud Nike for taking this very important stand. But we also need to challenge corporations who use progressive messages in their advertising to put their money where their mouth is.

*Jessicah Pierre is the inequality media specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.


Parasitic And Irrelevant: The University Vice Chancellor – OpEd

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They are some of the most remunerated officials of one of Australia’s most importantly lucrative sectors, drawing huge “packages”, as they are termed, for little more than ribbon cutting, attending meetings and overseeing policies that, if implemented, will have to be reversed at some point.

The modern university is neither corporation nor government agency. But it has the worst elements of both, endorsing the rapacity of the former without its benefits, and the bureaucracy of the latter without its purpose. In it, a hybrid has developed, one that has, in turn, brought forth further creations of horror: the pro-vice chancellor and the deputies, a praetorian guard of management heavies with pygmy visions and armies of support staff who have not set foot in a library in years.

Their entire existence – this draining cabal that hoards and feeds – is premised on the irrelevant and the intangible: a visit to a counterpart university in a country they can barely name, signing a memorandum of understanding they will never read again, overseeing policies they neither understand nor care to. That’s the “vision thing”, the bollocks of strategy that has seen Australia’s 38 public university vice-chancellors paid an average of $890,000 in 2016, with 12 earning more than $1 million.

The University of Melbourne’s Glyn Davis, whose vice-chancellorship is coming to an end next month, has proven reflective on that point. In an August issue of the Australian Financial Review, he was willing to certain observations “in the certain knowledge they will be of no use whatsoever.” (Uselessness is always a good start, and shows the immediate hurt expressed by those who think themselves useful.)

One such kernel was the sense of not being needed, an obvious point the vice-chancellors have been attempting to overcome since they became recipients of university largesse. Sensibly, the professorial class at the university fought off a professional full-time vice-chancellor role “for nearly 80 years”. Australia’s famous military commander and part-time chancellor of University of Melbourne Sir John Monash “quit in frustration, famously declaring that he found it easier to organise an army on the Western Front than to run a university.”

That essence of not needing the appointment immediately distorts and corrupts. “So to endure, the vice-chancellor must show she brings some benefit to justify the inconvenience.” This is where Davis hits his stride. The vice-chancellor must always claim relevance, importance, and need, even if there is little to show for it. He claims that “much vice-chancellorial work is external and therefore largely invisible to the professors – representing the university to government and business, enthusing the alumni, touching donors for money.”

Davis, in other words, is suggesting that the modern vice-chancellor is pimp, wooer and crawler, an individual who is not necessarily an academic superstar who will lead the academe but a promoter who will seek to advance the emptiness of a world view jotted down by business planners.

Central to that promotion is something that no vice-chancellor can ever resist babbling about: strategy. “Guiding the priorities that mean we do some things but not others, that we ensure the university articulates, and lives by, its aspirations.” Strategy is where the fare is earned, the supper sung for, as it “requires a full armoury of skills – values, vision, clarity, communication, an implementation plan, evaluation, reporting back.” Is this a university Davis is writing about, or some emaciated version of IBM or Microsoft?

When things go wrong, the university politburo digs in, retaining the most god-awful flunkeys to construct meaningless ripostes to what was, to begin with, meaningless. The VC, PVCs and Deputy PVCs are all, essentially, running an institution into the ground, but want reassurance in doing so that they have the backing of people who are, in all likelihood, going to be their victims.

They seek complicity, encouragement and backing. Staff surveys are sought by vice-chancellors on the almost meaningless suggestions that they care what university workers actually think. (They don’t, and never will. Estranged, they operate in the celestial dimension of self-serving mantras and false gains.)

One such recently conducted survey at RMIT, which was encouraged by senior managers with a fretful insistence typical of a suicidal creature who knows he will succeed, merely served to demonstrate that university managers (turncoat or failed academics, for the most part) are disliked, are deemed to be lacking a vision, and really ought to be done away with. The response from the vice-chancellor in question to such failings? Keep up the good work, staff! You know you are liked. Many a bucket to expectorate into was procured at that endorsement.

Davis’ replacement is Professor Duncan Maskell, senior pro-vice chancellor (planning and resources) at the University of Cambridge. It is significant to note why Maskell is taking up the reins. Introduced as an academic expert in bacterial infections of livestock and people, it is clear why he enchanted the selection panel. “He was,” noted the Australian Financial Review, “co-founder of Arrow Therapeutics, which was sold to AstraZeneca in 2007, a sale reportedly worth $150 million.”

University of Melbourne Chancellor Allan Myers supplied the standard form for such appointment: Maskell was “outstanding” as an academic, but what mattered were the numbers, the turnovers, the promotions, the management. “He has responsibility for a turnover of approximately £2 billion per annum and is also responsible for Cambridge’s major building program”.

It is exactly such sentiments that treat the vice-chancellor, not as an intellectual leader but as an overpaid pseudo-corporate official. We are told repeatedly that education is a matter best left to the CEOs and the administrators, not the teachers and scribblers. It further explains why universities – take RMIT as an example – prefer an individual who lacks any higher degrees but who supposedly boasts the pedigree of a former Microsoft employee. Such a being knows “how to help the university decide what our fees should be, how to market us more effectively – where to play and how to win.” Never mind that job losses, higher fees, and cut-backs are the result, or that students get poorer returns.

The upshot here is that the university vice-chancellor is not only meaningless at best, but parasitic and even destructive at worst. Drawing life from the institution he or she purportedly protects but is, in truth, mauling, such a creature is best done away with. Removing this gargoyle of encumbrance would also enable those who actually do the work – the research and teaching – to finally shave off an entire layering of dead wood that lies heavy upon the spirit of learning. Vision, indeed.

My Road Trips In Bangladesh – OpEd

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I have returned to the USA from Bangladesh after staying there nearly three months. During my visit there I lost three close relatives; the most devastating of which was the loss of my brother-in-law Bahar who was married to my sister. He will always be missed in our family. He was a social worker who had affected the lives of so many who would always miss him dearly.

Bahar died shortly after returning from Chennai Apollo Hospital in India where he had undergone cancer treatment. Contrary to the false hopes given by the hospital doctors his case proved to be incurable. The hospital program coerced him into buying an expensive and lengthy treatment program that obliged him into buying very costly medicines that were simply wasteful, leaving a sense of being robbed monetarily. Soon after returning to Dhaka he was admitted to the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka where he died on July 27 before the Friday prayer. Before his burial in his ancestral land in a suburb of Comilla, three funeral services were held in Dhaka, Comilla city and his village, attended by thousands of people who knew him. I was able to see him alive a day earlier but could not speak with him when he was already in the intensive care unit. While those who attended his funeral prayers were ordinary masses, some dignitaries did attend the services – showing Bahar’s connection at all levels of the society.

The distance between Dhaka and Comilla is only about 100 kilometers. But the highway was so congested that it took us nearly four hours to reach Bahar’s ancestral home, outside the Comilla city, just before sunset. After his burial, hoping to return early, we left around 9 p.m. However, because of the terrible traffic jam and gridlocks at multiple places we reached Dhaka after 5:30 a.m. It was an awful experience for all the commuters that night!

In the last 20 years whenever I visited Bangladesh, I have avoided traveling between Dhaka and Chittagong by road, and the experience in July this year once again proved that my decision was rather wise. And this is a sad commentary given all the government publicity and hoopla about miracles in the road communication sector inside Bangladesh under the current administration.

Truly, if the Communications Minister had put more time into ensuring the success of the government projects than badmouthing opposition parties the commuters would have benefitted and thanked the government. But the reality of a daily commuter in Bangladesh is quite different than those portrayed by the government.

I could understand why the commuters condemn, cuss or curse the government for its massive failure in the public sector where corruption is so rampant. I was told by many contractors that more than half of the allotted fund for construction projects ends up being gulped by government agencies and politicians before they see it. I am told that less than a quarter of the allotted money is spent on the project, thus leaving the newly constructed roads and highways quite vulnerable. That possibly explains why in a report on June 20, 2017, in which the World Bank presented a list of infrastructure cost, especially in road construction, it shows the cost of per kilometer road construction is $2.5 million to $11.9 million in Bangladesh, which is the highest in the world. This cost of construction is simply mind-blowing given the fact that the labor cost in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world. [Note: A four-lane highway costs $1.1m to $1.3m a km in India and $1.3m-$1.6m in China.]

Most of the large government projects these days are given to the Chinese contractors who continue to make a very bad name for themselves in the construction sector. They have been accused amongst other things of unfair price-gouging, dragging and slowing down projects to maximize their gains. Thus, within a very short period, these newly constructed roads and highways are inundated with potholes. Most Indian convoys of lorries that are using Bangladesh as a transit to move their goods are overloaded, beyond the design capacity of the roads and highways being built, compounding the problem further. Unless such abuses of Indian lorries are stopped it would be impossible to stop the premature destruction of the roads and highways. I am also told that Sheikh Hasina government’s more-than-generous policy with the Indian transportation of goods and materials have had a very negative impact on Bangladesh economy.

One of my nephews works with the Rohingya refugees for an international NGO. He lives in Cox’s Bazar, only about 150 kilometers south of the port city of Chittagong. Cox’s Bazar beach, long known for fishing and tourism, is sandy and has a gentle slope with an unbroken length of 120 km (75 miles); it is the longest natural sea beach in the world. He and his wife insisted that I visit Cox’s Bazar. Since I have not been to the area in more than four decades, I could not reject their invitation. We left very early in the morning by a private car to avoid heavy traffic, but still it took us nearly five hours to reach the town.

I recall that in the 1970s, when I travelled with my parents and siblings it took us only three hours to reach Cox’s Bazar from Chittagong. These days, the traffic on the road connecting the two cities has grown several folds while the condition of the road has deteriorated severely, and as I have noticed elsewhere, it was full of potholes, some as deep as a foot. In order to skip some of these deep potholes, drivers were often driving on the wrong side of road, thus, making the entire traveling experience a very risky and tiring one, taking away all the charms out of visiting scenic Cox’s Bazar.

After spending some hours in the city, we planned on going towards Ukhia, located further down south. Bangladesh Army Engineers have done a superb job in connecting Ukhia and Teknaf to Cox’s Bazar town with a scenic two-lane road that goes by the shoreline. However, getting to that Marine Drive meant driving through a two km-long road connecting Marine Drive to Cox’s Bazar town that was full of potholes. It was one of the worst roads I have ever travelled in my life. What concerned me most is that nearly half the traffic on that road comprised of vehicles belonging to the UN and NGOs – local and international – that are trying to provide material help to the persecuted Rohingya refugees settled in Teknaf and Ukhia camps. What impression are these foreign visitors making about Bangladesh, the host country of the Rohingya refugees? Surely, a very bad impression!

Any concerned local administration should have realized the importance of that connecting road and made sure that it remained functional. Sadly, the local municipality has miserably failed in that vital task and is leaving its visitors with a very negative impression about the local government. Such an oversight from municipal and government authorities is simply inexcusable when hundreds of thousands of foreigners are visiting Cox’s Bazar to provide the necessary material aid to the most persecuted Rohingya who had fled to Bangladesh to escape genocide in Myanmar.

What was supposed to be a short ride took several minutes, and my body was aching from the bumpy ride over the potholes in a private car before we entered the Marine Drive. After a few minutes of ride along the scenic Marine Drive, we stopped by the coast of the Bay of Bengal to enjoy its natural beauty. Before sunset, we headed back home for Chittagong city. The ride took longer time and we arrived in Khulshi after five hours and a half.

On our way back home at night, I noticed that more than 80% of the trucks and buses were operationally unfit (most did not have tail lights, brake lights and signal lights) and should not have been permitted to drive on the roads and highways. The potholes were making everyone’s drive a dangerous one, let alone a difficult one, esp. for those unfit buses and trucks, driven sometimes by reckless drivers who seemed to care less about saving lives.

As I have already noted in an earlier article, roads and highways in Bangladesh remain some of the most dangerous in the world. The Government of Bangladesh needs to make its communication system safer for its commuters and every citizen failing which more people will die from traffic accidents. It can start that process with the much-needed fitness tests on trucks and buses and road repair/maintenance jobs. Seemingly, road repair or maintenance work is not a priority or profitable enough business to the greedy ones who have had illicitly made millions from the misery of commuters compared to a full job on the roads when they could have a bigger share of their Hari-loot! This vulture-like attitude of corrupt government officials, politicians and their clients is not only unhealthy, it is simply suicidal for a poor country like Bangladesh.

Persisting Threat Of ISIS: Insurgencies Transform And Transmit Despite Success Or Failure On Battlefield – Analysis

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The intervening powers in Syria would do well by reading into the unfolding developments in Iraq that even while the American-supported Iraqi regime could defeat the insurgency on the battlefield by rolling back the influence of pro-Saddam forces and Al Qaeda with the assistance of Sunni groups including anti-Saddam forces, the hydra-headed ISIS sprang up and quickly replaced Al Qaeda when the intervening power fanned Sunni disillusionment by reserving key governmental ministries and posts for the Shia sect.

The ISIS emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi pointed to the unprecedented bouncing back capacity of the group when he said that the jihadi group could be able to mobilize more than 60 thousand fighters in Iraq from more than a hundred countries to its cause when a surge in US troops’ operations in 2007 downsized the group to only about a thousand fighters (R. Wright, ISIS Makes a Comeback –as Trump Opts to Stay in Syria”, The New Yorker, August 30, 2018, Available at https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/isis-makes-a-comebackas-trump-opts-to-stay-in-syria).

Although the US-led coalition forces have made an announcement that they are fighting the last phase of war against ISIS in Hajin – a desert terrain along the Euphrates River’s east bank and an area claimed to be the last retreat for the group, some US officials have acknowledged that ISIS is also active in other areas such as in the south of the Euphrates River and near the city of Palmyra – areas under the control of Assad regime and out of an effective-reach of US-led coalition troops.

As per some US intelligence reports-which remained ambivalent as to the strength and number of the group  and reports from the UN suggest the group remained resilient in rural pockets and border areas of Iraq and Syria even though the American-led forces may have liquidated the group in urban strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa. A report from a UN panel of experts noted: “ISIS has up to 30,000 members roughly distributed between Syria and Iraq and its global network poses a rising threat.” (Bad News: ISIS Has Just as Many Fighters in Iraq and Syria As It Did 4 years Ago”, The National Interest, August 15, 2018, Available at https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/bad-news-isis-has-just-many-fighters-iraq-and-syria-it-did-4-years-ago-28812).

The reports also came up with a caveat that notwithstanding “ISIS’s battlefield losses, the core will survive with support from countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Southeast Asia and West Africa” (Ibid).

The factors that contributed to resilience of ISIS in Syria until the US proclaimed the last phase of fighting the group out of Syria that started in May 2018 notwithstanding a multipronged challenge to its survival from American, Russian, Iranian and Turkish forces can be explained by the anarchic socio-economic and political conditions that the US, Russia and Iran contributed to either by supporting the rebel forces as the US has done or by seeking to prevent the Assad regime from falling despite its despotic character as the Russians and Iranians have done.

It is worthwhile to mention that the US was engaged in supporting moderate Islamic groups with arms and aid under the rubric of ‘Arab spring’ to unseat despotic regimes from power. In this context, the Syrian rebel groups not only received official support from the American leadership to fight ISIS in the form of ‘train and equip’ program, the CIA was allegedly involved in covert operations running into billions of American dollars to unseat the Assad regime from power. The Russian military involvement in Syrian war in 2015 rolled back the gains that the rebel groups achieved and the Assad regime is now poised to acquire the territories lost to the rebels. However, going by the Iraqi example, there is high probability that the anger and disillusionment of the rebels would find a way out by channelizing these negative feelings and energies towards support for ISIS.

Fluidity of ISIS insurgency

While the geopolitical gambits between the US-led coalitions on the one hand and the Russians and Iranians on the other are very much on in Syria with Idlib serving as the bastion for their competition, the question that assumes significance is how far the fight against ISIS in Syria would go in destroying the roots and vitality of this group.

The American drive against terror groups has so far engendered mixed results as liquidation of one group has given birth to another group as in the case of Al Qaeda’s liquidation leading to the rise of ISIS. The members regroup and emerge from another location with a new avatar or the members of the groups after defecting from one group get recruited by another group, learn from each others’ modus operandi, share arms and ammunitions and raise their funds from coordinated illegal drugs and arms trade. It is germane to note that the foothold of ISIS has already expanded to other adjacent regions where the state institutions remain weak and fragile. Similarly, even while the Assad regime supported by Russia and Iran seems poised to retake lost territories by defeating rebels but that is not likely to end insurgency.

Faced with serious fights in Iraq and Syria, ISIS looked for other countries ridden with sectarian conflicts and grievances against intervening power and Afghanistan appeared being most suitable on these counts. ISIS spread into the law-less areas of Afghanistan reportedly following the death of Mullah Omar – the leader of and stabilizing force within the Taliban. Even since the group has been able to strengthen its presence in Af-Pak border areas and spread its presence and influence into other areas with passage of time.

While several news reports maintained that the ranks of ISIS continued to bloat with foreign fighters escaping from Syria, Iraq and members from Central Asian countries, the US-led forces quite in tune with their success stories against the group in Iraq and Syria have underplayed the threat posed by ISIS by maintaining that the influence of ISIS in Afghanistan was limited to a few provinces such as Nangarhar and Kunar in the east and Jowzjan in north of Afghanistan and that the group consisted of only local defectors numbering around 1500 from other militant groups. (“US Military Rejects Russian Claims About Number of IS Fighters in Afghanistan”, VOA News, February 24, 2018, Available at https://www.voanews.com/a/us-military-rejects-russia-numbers-of-islamic-state-fighters-in-afghanistan/4268999.html).

Russia based on its intelligence information has expressed its concerns that ISIS has an enhanced presence of ISIS in Afghanistan with around 10,000 fighters spread across eight to nine provinces including its influence in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan along the Pakistani border and in the northern province of Jowzjan which shares a border with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan carrying a dangerous portent for the Central Asian states. China, Pakistan and Iran share Russian heightened threat perceptions from ISIS in Afghanistan (“Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia Agree to Carry out Joint Efforts against ISIS”, The Nation, July 13, 2018, Available at https://nation.com.pk/13-Jul-2018/pakistan-iran-china-russia-agree-to-carry-out-joint-efforts-against-isis).

Beijing seems to be alarmed at the possibility that ISIS in Afghanistan might be able to recruit many Uighurs from its restive Xinjiang province as around 5000 ethnic Uighurs belonging to the Muslim minority community reportedly joined ISIS call for jihad in Syria. (B. Blanchard, “Syria says up to 5,000 Chinese Uighurs fighting in militant groups”, Reuters, May 11, 2017, Available at https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-china/syria-says-up-to-5000-chinese-uighurs-fighting-in-militant-groups-idUSKBN1840UP).

Despite American-led forces’ attempts at downplaying ISIS threat in Afghanistan, the group has claimed responsibility for most of the despicable and horrendous terrorist attacks apart from more frequent but less highlighted attacks on the Afghan soil. For instance, there were successive terror attacks in Kabul on April 30, 2018 which reportedly took lives of more than forty civilians including journalists and children. (“Pompeo condemns terror bombings in Afghanistan”, May 1, 2018, Available at https://www.yahoo.com/news/latest-least-4-killed-kabul-blasts-042124456.html).

These strikes followed closely on the heels of a spate of serious attacks a week before in which more than sixty civilians were killed while they lined up to register to vote for the upcoming elections (Afghanistan: 63 dead in Attacks on voter registration centres”, Aljazeera news, April 22, 2018, Available at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/afghanistan-deaths-attack-id-voter-registration-centre-kabul-180422063114761.html).  Terrorist offensives by the group in the Afghan city of Jalalabad killed 19 people including 17 persons from Sikh and Hindu communities on July 1, 2018 (Afghan Sikhs, Hindus grieve after suicide attack kills 19”, The Tribune, July 2, 2018, Available at https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/afghan-sikhs-hindus-grieve-after-suicide-attack-kills-19/613933.html).

Attacks on August 15, 2018 claimed lives of more than forty eight young people among which 34 were students belonging to the Shiite minority sect who were preparing for university entrance exams (“Suicide bomber kills 48 in Kabul as students prepare for University exams”, Independent, 15 August 2018, Available at  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kabul-suicide-bomb-students-death-toll-latest-shiite-isis-dead-a8493526.html).

However, the attacks perpetrated by the group made concerted efforts at spreading anarchy by undermining the nascent democratic and peace process in Afghanistan with targeting potential voters and religious minorities. The car bomb attack on a gathering of the Taliban and Afghan forces united to celebrate Eid ceasefire between June 15 and 17 which claimed at least 26 lives and left several others wounded in the eastern province of Nangarhar could have no other objective except sabotaging the peace process and spread lawlessness in Afghanistan which could only provide the group with the ability to spread its radical ideology and recruit emotionally-tormented people (R. Jain, Q. Sediqi, “Afghanistan Eid car bomb, claimed by Islamic State, kills 26”, Reuters, June 16, Available at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-taliban/afghanistan-eid-car-bomb-claimed-by-islamic-state-kills-26-idUSKBN1JC044).

The US-led forces displayed tremendous resoluteness in unseating despotic regimes like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam of Iraq and in the similar fashion, the Iranian and Russian forces exhibited remarkable consistency in bolstering the Assad regime but what they are seemingly unable to provide is stable alternatives which would bring stability in these societies deeply divided along sectarian lines.

As the war and peace efforts have not been able to deliver on stability in Afghanistan and the Trump Administration has indicated that the US may not be interested in post-conflict state-building efforts in Syria, pertinent questions still remain as regards the American and other powers’ will and capacity to address the problem of terrorism in real terms. Intervening powers in order to take on terrorism to its last must work towards providing for a stable state with normal socio-economic functions in Afghanistan as well as Syria.

How ISIS Appears To Be Deadlier Than The Taliban In Afghanistan – Analysis

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The ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan also known as ISIS-Khorasan or Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) poses a serious security threat to Afghan civilians primarily the minority communities and the foreign nationals as evident from recent high-profile terror attacks conducted by the group apart from other attacks finding lesser global media coverage in recent months.

The killing of ISIS leader by US strikes such as Abu Sayeed Orakzai in August 2018 is likely to have temporary impact on the group as killings of the then leaders Abu Sayed in 2017, Abdul Hasib and Hafiz Sayed Khan in 2016 failed to cast any significant impacts on the vitality of the group. The group has shown tremendous ability to bounce back in Iraq and Syria taking advantage of the simmering disaffection, anger and frustration among the rebel groups.

Even while the Taliban have been responsible for more civilian casualties in the first half of 2018, they claimed responsibility for lesser number of civilian casualties with more attacks compared to more civilian casualties with a fewer attacks perpetrated by ISIS as a UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report released on July 15, 2018 indicated. For instance, the report attributed 42 per cent civilian casualties to the Afghan Taliban and 18 per cent to ISIS, however, the Taliban claimed responsibility for 26 attacks resulting in 453 civilian casualties and ISIS claimed responsibility for 15 attacks with 595 civilian casualties.

Two points are revealing here. First, ISIS, though a new actor in Afghan landscape, claimed responsibility more casualties than the Taliban. Second, the second half of 2018 witnessed some of dreadful attacks by ISIS while the Taliban kept engaging in the peace process and sporadic violence as in the provincial capital of Ghajni. The report while stated that the civilians killed during the first six months of 2018 were the highest over the last decade since the agency began documentation, the second half of the year has already witnessed many appalling terror strikes perpetrated predominantly by ISIS taking lives of many civilians and would probably turn the year into one of the most violent years in Afghanistan.

Noticeably, the primary targets for the Taliban are the Afghan government institutions and officials aimed at the objective of piling up pressure on the US and Afghan government to agree to their political claims and peace terms and the terror attacks by ISIS not only targeted at the Afghan government officials and foreign diplomatic presence considering them ‘apostates’, it indiscriminately targeted at civilians who they believed to be ‘heretics’ primarily religious minority communities in Afghanistan.

While ISIS carried out attacks on Afghan Interior Ministry and the Finance Department in May 2018, the Education Department was attacked twice in July, 2018. The group targeted most of its offensives towards civilians of Shiite sect of Islamic religion, religious communities like Hindus and Sikhs are not immune from ISIS terror strikes as the offensives in the Afghan city of Jalalabad which killed 19 people including 17 persons from Sikh and Hindu communities on July 1, 2018 indicate.

The Taliban stake its claim to be legal and political actor in Afghanistan and therefore, are likely to be careful not to perpetrate attacks that result in large-scale killings of Afghan civilians, ISIS on the other hand, has pan-Islamic objectives and openly claims its responsibility for the attacks taking huge toll on civilians who they believed did not conform to their religious beliefs. While attacks by ISIS unambiguously target civilians, civilian casualties by the Taliban primarily came as collateral damage caused by the armed clashes between the Afghan government and the Taliban and between the Taliban on the one hand and the NATO and American forces on the other. The Taliban attacks on government institutions and diplomatic presence of foreign countries also resulted in death of civilians.

The methods of torture adopted and the objectives pursued by ISIS are far more dreadful and transnational than the objectives pursued by the Taliban in Afghanistan. ISIS has resorted to the extreme brutal methods of torture such as beheadings and forcing the victims to sit on explosives with recorded clippings to arouse fear among other actors within Afghanistan including foreign nationals and civilians of religious minority communities. Aside from this, terrorizing women by resorting to rape and abduction has contributed no less to the Afghan fear and anguish.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for most of the despicable and horrendous terrorist attacks apart from more frequent but less highlighted attacks on the Afghan soil. For instance, there were successive terror attacks in Kabul on April 30, 2018 which reportedly took lives of more than forty civilians including children. These strikes followed closely on the heels of a spate of serious attacks a week before in which more than sixty civilians were killed while they lined up to register to vote for the upcoming elections.

Attacks on August 15, 2018 claimed lives of more than forty eight young people among which 34 were students belonging to the Shiite minority sect who were preparing for university entrance exams. The car bomb attack on a gathering of the Taliban and Afghan forces united to celebrate Eid ceasefire between June 15 and 17 which claimed at least 26 lives and left several others wounded in the eastern province of Nangarhar could have no other objective except sabotaging the peace process and spread lawlessness in Afghanistan which could only provide the group with the ability to spread its radical ideology and recruit emotionally-tormented people.

The Taliban aspire to be legal and political actor with firm indigenous roots and are amenable to peace and reconciliation despite its radical ambitions, ISIS, on the other hand, neither possesses any nationalist agenda nor does it stick to indigenous character. For instance, a piece in guardian newspaper projected that ISIS in Afghanistan (ISKP) has been strengthened by Taliban defectors, fighter from Iraq and Syria, militants from Sudan, Chechnya, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Russian sources continue to express their concerns that ISIS has an enhanced presence in Afghanistan with around 10,000 fighters spread across eight to nine provinces.

This threat perception from enhanced presence of ISIS is also shared by China, Pakistan and Iran. Even while the US-led forces downplay the number and strength of ISIS, the well-documented presence of the group in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan along the Pakistani border and in the northern province of Jowzjan seem to be major concerns for the neighboring countries. Further, cases of successful terror attacks conducted by the group in the city of Kabul lay bare the grim fact that the group can spread its influence to any part of Afghanistan with notice of any slightest slackening of security controls.

Middle Eastern Black Swans Dot China’s Belt And Road – Analysis

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f any one part of the world has forced China to throw its long-standing foreign and defense policy principles out the window and increasingly adopt attitudes associated with a global power, it is the greater Middle East, a region that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa to north-western China, a swath of land populated by the Arab, Turkic and Persian worlds.

It was a series of incidents in 2011 during the popular Arab revolts that drove home the fact that China would not be able to protect with its existing foreign and defence policy kit its mushrooming Diaspora and exponentially expanding foreign investments that within a matter of a few years would be grouped as the infrastructure and connectivity-driven Belt and Road initiative linking the Eurasian landmass to the People’s Republic.

Policy principles of non-interference in the domestic affairs of others, an economically-driven win-win approach as a sort of magic wand for problem solution, and no foreign military interventions or bases needed reinterpretation if not being dumped on the dustbin of history.

The incidents included China’s approach to the revolt in Libya as it was happening when it deviated from its policy of non-interference by establishing parallel relations with the opposition National Council. The outreach to Libyan leader Col. Moammar Qadhafi’s opponents did not save it from being identified with the ancien regime once the opposition gained power. On the contrary, the Council made clear that China would be low on the totem pole because of its past support for the Qadhafi regime.

The price for supporting autocratic rule in the greater Middle East meant that overseas Chinese nationals and assets became potential targets. To ensure the safety and security of its nationals in Libya, China was forced to evacuate 35,000 people, its most major foreign rescue operation. The evacuation was the first of similar operations in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The evacuations didn’t stop militants in Egypt’s Sinai from kidnapping 25 Chinese nationals and radicals in South Sudan from taking several Chinese hostages. The kidnappings sparked significant criticism on Chinese social media of the government’s seeming inability to protects its nationals and investments.

With Uyghurs from China’s strategic north-western province of Xinjiang joining militant jihadists in Syria and two Uyghur knife attacks in Xinjiang itself in the cities of Hotam and Kashgar, the limits of China’s traditional foreign and defense policy meshed with its increasingly repressive domestic approach towards the ethnic Turkic people.

Finally, the greater Middle East’s expectations were driven home in a brutal encounter between Arab businessmen and ethnic Chinese scholars and former officials in which the Arabs took the Chinese to task for wanting to benefit from Middle Eastern resources and trade relations without taking on political and geopolitical responsibilities they associated with a rising superpower.

Add to all of this that in subsequent years it was becoming increasingly difficult for China to remain on the sidelines of the Middle East’s multiple conflicts and rivalries. This was particularly true with President Donald J. Trump’s coming to office.

The greater Middle East’s problems escalated with Mr. Trump’s abandonment of any pretence of impartiality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; his heating up of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran by withdrawing from the 2015 international agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program; and his toying with attempting to change the regime in Tehran that encouraged Saudi Arabia to step up Saudi support for Pakistani militants in the province of Baluchistan; the likely return of Uyghur jihadists in Syria to Central and South Asia that has prompted the establishment of Chinese military outposts in Tajikistan and Afghanistan and consideration of direct military intervention in a possible Syrian-Russian assault on Idlib, the last rebel-held stronghold in Syria; and finally the potential fallout of China’s brutal crackdown in Xinjiang.

Already, the events in 2011 and since coupled with the mushrooming of Belt and Road-related investments has led to the creation of the country’s first foreign military base in Djibouti and the likely establishment of similar facilities in its string of pearls, the network of ports in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

China’s potential policy dilemmas in the greater Middle East were enhanced by the fact that it doesn’t really have a Middle East policy that goes beyond its shaky, traditional foreign and defence policy principles and economics. That was evident when China in January 2016 on the eve of President Xi Jinping’s visit to the Middle East, the first by a Chinese head of state in seven years, issued its first Middle East-related policy white paper that fundamentally contained no new thinking and amounted to a reiteration of a win-win-based approach to the region.

Moreover, with China dependent on the US security umbrella in the Gulf, Beijing sees itself as competitively cooperating with the United States in the Middle East. That is true despite the US-Chinese trade war; differences over the Iranian nuclear agreement which the United States has abandoned and China wants to salvage; and Mr. Trump’s partisan Middle East policy.

China shares with the United States in general and even more so with the Trump administration a fundamental policy principle: stability rather than equitable political reform. China’s principle of non-interference is little more than another label for the US equivalent of long-standing support of autocracy in the Middle East in a bid to maintain stability.

In some ways China is learning the lesson, despite recent developments in Xinjiang, that US President George W. Bush and Susan Rice, his national security advisor and subsequent secretary of state, learnt on 9/11. Within a matter of weeks after the Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, Bush and Rice suggested that the United States was co-responsible for the attacks because of its support for autocracy that had fuelled anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. It was why Bush launched his ill-conceived democracy initiative.

China, as a result of its political, economic and commercial approach towards the Belt and Road, is starting to have a similar experience. Chinese overseas outposts and assets have become targets, particularly in Pakistan but also in Central Asia.

The kidnappings in 2011 in the Sinai and South Sudan were the beginning. Uyghurs joined groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda not because they were pan-Islamist jihadists but because they wanted to get experience they could later apply in militant struggle against the Chinese.

Beyond profiling themselves in fighting in Syria, Uyghurs have trained with Malhama Tactical, a jihadist for profit Blackwater, the private military company created by Erik Prince.

Anti-Chinese sentiment in countries like Kazakhstan and Tajikistan is on the rise.

Iranians are grateful for Chinese support not only in the current battle over the nuclear accord but also in the previous round of international and US sanctions. They feel however that last time round they were taken for a ride in terms of high Chinese interest rates for project finance, the quality of goods delivered, and a perceived Chinese laxity in adhering to deadlines.

Resentment of the fallout of the Belt and Road investment taps into the broader threat involved in supporting stability by backing autocratic regimes That is nowhere truer than in the greater Middle East, a region that is in a period of volatile, often bloody and brutal transition. It’s a transition that started with the 2011 Arab revolts and has been pro-longed by a powerful Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led counterrevolution. Transitions take anywhere from a quarter to half a century. In other words, the Middle East is just at the beginning.

China, like the United States did for decades, ignores the rumblings just below the surface even if the global trend is toward more authoritarian, more autocratic rule. 9/11 was the result of the United States and the West failing to put their ear to the ground and to take note of those rumblings.

Of course, current rumblings may never explode. But the lesson of the people’s power movement in the Philippines in 1986, the video in late 2010 of a fruit and vegetable vendor in Tunisia who set himself alight that sparked the Arab revolts, months of street and online protests in Morocco in the last year, the mass protests in Jordan earlier this year against a draft tax bill that have now restarted because of the legislation’s resurrection, and the current protests in the Iraqi city of Basra potentially are the writing on the wall. All it takes is a black swan.

Said Financial Times columnist Jamil Anderlini:” China is at risk of inadvertently embarking on its own colonial adventure in Pakistan— the biggest recipient of BRI investment and once the East India Company’s old stamping ground… Pakistan is now virtually a client state of China. Many within the country worry openly that its reliance on Beijing is already turning it into a colony of its huge neighbour. The risks that the relationship could turn problematic are greatly increased by Beijing’s ignorance of how China is perceived abroad and its reluctance to study history through a non-ideological lens… It is easy to envisage a scenario in which militant attacks on Chinese projects overwhelm the Pakistani military and China decides to openly deploy the People’s Liberation Army to protect its people and assets. That is how ‘win-win’ investment projects can quickly become the foundations of empire.”

The Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang could just be a black swan on multiple fronts given the fact that its fallout is felt far beyond China’s borders. For starters, the wall of Western and Muslim silence is cracking with potentially serious consequences for China as well as the Islamic world.

What is happening in Xinjiang is fundamentally different from past incidents including protests against a novel by Salman Rushdie and Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering his killing; the 2006 Muslim boycott of Danish products because of controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and the more recent protests sparked by the burning of a Qur’an by a Florida evangelist. The Chinese campaign in Xinjiang challenges fundamentals of the Islamic faith itself.

The earlier incidents were sparked by protests, primarily among South Asians in either Birmingham or Pakistan. This month has seen the first of Xinjiang-related anti-Chinese protests in Bangladesh and India. The first critical article on Xinjiang in the Pakistani press was published this week.

Malaysia is the first Muslim country to speak out with condemnations by a senior figure in Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s political party as well as the country’s likely next head of government, Anwar Ibrahim.

Consideration in Washington of Xinjiang-related sanctions by the Trump administration, coupled with United Nations reporting on the crackdown and a German and Swedish ban on deportations of Uyghurs, puts the issue on the map and increases pressure on Muslim nations, particularly those like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan that claim to speak on behalf of Islam.

This together with the fact that Chinese support for autocratic or authoritarian rule creates a potential opportunity to export its model of the surveillance state, the most extreme example of which is on display in Xinjiang, constitutes risks and involves potential black swans. To be sure, Pakistan can hardly be described as a liberal society, but it is also not exactly an authoritarian state, yet Pakistan is China’s first export target. And others closer to home could follow.

If all of this is more than enough to digest, factor in the geopolitics of Eurasia, certainly as they relate to the greater Middle East. The Chinese-backed Russian-Iranian-Turkish alliance is brittle at best, witness differences over the possible battle for Idlib and the post-war presence of Iran in Syria.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, and to a lesser degree Israel are players in what is a 21st century Great Game. That is particularly true in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as Pakistan and as it relates to port diplomacy in Pakistan’s Gwadar and the Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar.

Add to this the fact that if Saudi Arabia is the world’s swing oil producer, Iran is Eurasia’s swing gas producer with the potential to co-shape the supercontinent’s future energy architecture.

And finally, there are multiple ways that China risks being sucked into the Saudi-Iranian rivalry not least if the United States and Saudi Arabia decide to take plans off the drawing board and initiate a campaign to destabilize Iran by stirring unrest among its Baloch, Kurdish, Iranian Arab and Azeri minorities.

The long and short of this is that the Great Game in Eurasia remains largely undecided and that change in China’s foreign and defense policy is already a fact. The question is how all of this will affect China and how potential obstacles on the Belt and Road will play out.

Ilham Aliyev: ‘Azerbaijan Is The Homeland Of Carpet Weaving’– OpEd

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The steadfast leadership demonstrated by President Ilham Aliyev in the development of carpet weaving industry and carpet museums across Azerbaijan is a great contribution to strengthening the heritage of this nation and connecting the past with the present in the Caucasus region. Indeed the history of Azerbaijan is truly a global treasure, were carpet design and tailoring has always attracted international attention and prestige.

Why has carpet weaving received so much attention in the recent years? Why is there so much investment allocated to this sector? The president of Azerbaijan H. E. Mr. Ilham Aliyev states: “Carpet weaving is our national art and national wealth. The people of Azerbaijan have given to this art a new life for centuries. Our carpets are exhibited in the principal museums worldwide, and through this work of art, we show to the world an exceptional talent of Azerbaijani people.”

According to the President of Azerkhalcha Open Joint Stock Company, Prof. Vidadi Muradov: “Today, it is of great historical significance and ethnically important to note that precious and richly designed carpets have been woven in the Karabakh District. The Armenians, who have occupied the historic Azerbaijani lands, show and present Azerbaijani carpets as their own artistic works. However, the entire world must know the truth that the Republic of Azerbaijan is the homeland of carpet weaving and these carpets are woven using ancient designs created by our hardworking people.”

On August 25, 2018, was celebrated a historic, memorable day for Azerbaijani carpet masters. President Ilham Aliyev took part in the grand opening ceremony of the Ismayilli branch of “Azerkhalcha” Open Joint Stock Company. Every visit conducted by Azerbaijani President becomes an unforgettable experience for all carpet makers; they all know that this precious art, protected and excelled by each one of them, has received a special attention, funding and strategic importance thanks to the hard work and statecraft of President Ilham Aliyev.

Experience has shown that each meeting with the President of Azerbaijan opens new perspectives for further development of carpet weaving. During his speeches at the opening ceremonies of the branches of “Azerkhalcha,” the president highly appreciates the dedication of carpet makers and successful completion of their assignments.

On May 4, 2018, at the opening ceremony of the Khachmaz branch, President Ilham Aliyev talked about the achievement of several goals, adding that the work done in Ismayilli branch by the entity is admirable; “The carpet weaving has a great history and future. The establishment of the ‘Azerkhalcha’ Company was aiming this goal. The tasks and duties I have set up are being fulfilled and the carpet-weaving factory in Ismayilli is showing this hard work once again.”

Certainly, a great care by the state towards carpet weaving, as well as real work and concrete results, stands behind these valuable words.

The presidential care given to the carpet weaving has given to this ancient art a second life in Azerbaijan, the homeland of carpet weaving.

According to Mr. Tural Safarov, a distinguished Azerbaijani Journalist: “Artificial hindrances were created in the Soviet Union period in the field of investigating the carpet art and carpet production employing national designs because of their close ties with the history and life of the Azerbaijani people. Carpets are one of the essential tools in learning the history of our people. The ornaments used on carpets provide valuable information about the lifestyle of a specific period in Azerbaijan’s history. Despite of many issues in this field, great national leader Heydar Aliyev took important steps in the development of carpet weaving. In the 1970’s the Carpet Museum was launched in Azerbaijan, and the necessary conditions were established for the researchers and carpet makers. Similar to other national values at that time, the development of the carpet weaving was one of the most important steps taken by our national leader to build an independent state, because the carpet weaving had become an important instrument on the road to independence for our people. Giving life to our ancient history and rich statehood traditions in carpet patterns encouraged patriotic, nationalistic feelings to the younger generation.”

Special attention was given to the development of carpet weaving after gaining independence for the second time with Heydar Aliyev’s return to political power in Baku.

One of the most memorable moments of President Ilham Aliyev’s work in this field, while successfully pursuing the path of Azerbaijan’s national leader, is the establishment of the “Azerkhalcha” Open Joint Stock Company in 2016. The “Azerkhalcha” established at the initiative of the president, the architect of this idea, contributed to the accomplishment of several strategic goals.

One of the most important tasks faced by the Azerbaijani society is to develop the national carpet weaving, and the other is to increase the export potential of the country. This aspiration required the creation of a wide network of carpet weaving. “Azerbaijan is the homeland of carpet weaving, as well as our national values such as mugham and architectural monuments,” said President Ilham Aliyev, who has created a vast network of carpet weaving in the country by ensuring the improvement of this art.

The branches of “Azerkhalcha” in Fuzuli (Horadiz), Agdam (Guzanli), Tovuz, Agstafa, Gazakh, Shamkir, Guba, Ismayilli, Khachmaz and Gabala districts are operational. The construction of these buildings was completed in 2016-2017 and all branches are fully equipped.

Mr. Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, has participated in the opening ceremonies of: Fuzuli branch of the “Azerkhalcha” on November 12, 2016; Shamkir branch on August 20th; 2017, in Guba branch on December 7; and Khachmaz branch on May 4, 2018; and Ismayilli branch on August 25.

The construction of carpet-making workshops and the establishment of infrastructure in Baku and Nakhchivan cities, Absheron, Lankaran, Bilasuvar, Kurdamir, Gobustan, Shabran, Goranboy and Tartar districts are well under way, by the instruction of the Azerbaijani head of state; 10 more carpet production workshops will be set up in 2019. There is no doubt that Azerbaijani carpets will have a greater presence in International markets and conquer new horizons in the future.

Three Significant Religious Developments Other Than Ukrainian Autocephaly – OpEd

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The issue of Ukrainian autocephaly and its consequences has so dominated news about religion and politics in the former Soviet space over the last several weeks that other religious developments there which also have enormous political significance risk being overshadowed (cf. credo.press/monitoring-smi-strong-tretij-rim-petushki-strong/).

Three developments this past week fall into that category. They include a call by a Jewish leader to increase the number of synagogues in Moscow to 20, a reported agreement by the Armenian Catholicos to retire and give place to someone closer to the new government there, and the visit of Pope Francis to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

First, in an interview with Izvestiya, Aleksandr Boroda, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, says that Moscow needs “a minimum of 20 synagogues” and that other Russian cities need new synagogues as well (iz.ru/791073/valeriia-nodelman/aleksandr-boroda-v-moskve-budet-bolshe-sinagog).

He says that they won’t be put up all at once and notes that his organization does not have any agreement with the city of Moscow to open them. Instead, Boroda says, “we seek to purchase something, reconstruct it or rent” facilities. And he stresses that synagogues because they do not involve services that reach into the streets should not be a problem for anyone.

But Boroda’s call is likely to create problems nonetheless. On the one hand, many Russians, driven by anti-Semitic attitudes or simply NIMBY sentiments, are likely to oppose the opening of so many synagogues for the relatively small Jewish community in Moscow, the center in their view of Orthodox Russian civilization.

And on the other, his appeal is likely to lead Muslim leaders to renew their drive for most mosques in the Russian capital. At present, there are only six officially registered ones for a community that numbers more than two million. Muslim leaders are likely to invoke Boroda’s plans as the basis for making a claim of simple justice for their own faithful.

Second, Yerevan’s Zhokhovurd newspaper reports that Catholicos Garegin II, the patriarch of the Armenian Orthodox Church, has agreed with the new government of Armenia that he will step down in the near future, supposedly giving health as the explanation for the change (https://armlur.am/ժողովուրդ-թերթ/ in Armenian; credo.press/219877-2/ in Russian).

Many of the demonstrators who brought Nikol Pashinyan to power have been pressing for Garegin’s retirement given his close relationships over the last 27 years with now-discredited former Armenian presidents. They even staged demonstrations outside his residence in Echmiadzin.

The changeover at the top of the Armenian church will send shock waves through Armenia and the large Armenian diaspora around the world. But among the most powerful will be the signal it sends that post-Soviet states in their efforts to distance themselves from Moscow are going to be focusing on the leadership of religious groups as well.

Many of the most senior leaders were appointed in Soviet times. Now, ever more of them are likely to be forced out, including perhaps most prominently and, somewhat ironically, the longtime and often controversial head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of the Caucasus, Allashakhyur Pasha-zade, who is based in Baku, Azerbaijan.

And third, Pope Francis has begun a four-day trip to the three Baltic countries, going first to Lithuania, which is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and then to Latvia and Estonia which are not. His visit, like that of John Paul II in 1993, is being viewed by the Baltic peoples as one more sign that they are fully part of the West (echo.msk.ru/blog/frolnataly/2282652-echo/).

In his appeal to the Baltic peoples on the eve of his visit, the Holy Father more than met their expectations. He declared that his visit was timed to coincide with the centennial of the acquisition of independence by the three Baltic countries and that he wanted to show his respect to all those who had fought and died for “real freedom” (youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=su8ewso6GjI).

“Freedom as we know is a treasure which must be constantly defended and transmitted as a valuable inheritance to future generations,” Francis said.


Philly Refinery Fails To Include Public Input In Cleanup Efforts

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Over a decade of remediation planning and regulatory approvals at Philadelphia’s neighborhood refinery has occurred without the benefit of municipal or public involvement, says a new report from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Sunoco, an Energy Transfer Partners subsidiary, has not complied with the community involvement and public notice requirements outlined in Pennsylvania’s Act 2 Land Recycling Program, according to the report.

The Philadelphia refinery site, now owned by the recently bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), has been home to petroleum storage and refining activities for over 150 years and is highly contaminated with hydrocarbons in the soil and groundwater. Chemicals of concern include benzene (a human carcinogen), lead, MTBE, toluene, benzo (a)pyrene, and many other volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds. In some areas, pollution has migrated off site, and a drinking water aquifer used by the state of New Jersey may be impacted.

Independent from PES refinery operations, Sunoco maintains liability for legacy pollution at the site. Sunoco has been engaged in remediation planning activities to meet Act 2 requirements, aiming to meet site-specific remediation standards (in excess of statewide health-based standards) and release the company from further state and federal environmental liabilities.

The omission of key public notice and involvement requirements may open new opportunities for the City of Philadelphia, environmental justice communities surrounding the site, and other stakeholders.

The report recommends these stakeholders work with Sunoco and state regulators to: Audit the project to determine the extent of community involvement and notice and review deficiencies; Develop an approach to incorporate public input for relevant plans and reports that have already gained approval; and Require Sunoco to revise its public involvement plan for the remainder of the project, ensuring compliance with Act 2’s public involvement and notice requirements

Post-bankruptcy, PES is majority owned by bank creditors, has significant debts maturing in 2022, and is facing many structural challenges. Stakeholders should explore the highest and best uses for the site, and correspondingly appropriate cleanup standards, in the event the site no longer functions as a refinery.

Estimating Caregiving Costs For Families

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“Informal care” is the term used in medicine to describe unpaid care provided by family and friends. It’s an important lifeline for millions of older adults in the U.S. who need day-to-day help with shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, taking medicine, looking after their own daily well-being, and many other activities essential to our health and quality of life as we age.

In the U.S., more than 35 million people provided informal care to someone 50-years-old and older in 2015. We usually understand the costs associated with a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare worker providing professional care to older adults. However, we don’t understand what the true costs are when older adults are cared for by family members or friends. In part, that’s because most studies have focused on “direct” healthcare costs (the expenses associated with professional help/treatment). However, these studies have ignored the “indirect” costs associated with informal care.

When the costs of informal care are accounted for, most studies usually multiply the hours of informal care by the wage that a formal home healthcare provider would earn. But this doesn’t reflect the true cost of informal care. Informal caregivers often give up other activities such as leisure or employment, for example. Studies haven’t examined the value of leisure time and the other important aspects of life people may give up when they care for a friend or family member.

In a new study, researchers focused on one of the most common caregiving arrangements: daughters between the ages of 40 and 70 who were likely to need to provide informal care to their mothers at some point in the near future. Participants were identified using the Health and Retirement Study, a survey conducted by the University of Michigan since 1992. Findings from this new analysis were published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The researchers totaled the time the daughters spent in caregiving. They distinguished between light caregiving (providing fewer than 1,000 hours of care over a two-year period) and intensive caregiving (providing 1,000 or more hours of care). The daughters were also asked whether they worked full- or part-time outside their caregiving role.

The survey also asked the daughters about their mothers’ health. For example, it asked if their mothers needed help with “instrumental activities of daily living” (IADLs). IADLs include activities such as taking medicine or grocery shopping. The survey also asked if their mothers needed help with more general “activities of daily living” (ADLs), such as eating, bathing, and getting around. Daughters were also asked whether their mothers could be left alone for an hour or more, and whether their mothers were ever told by a doctor that they had a memory-related disease.

The researchers used these measures to define six states of health for the mothers:

  • Healthy
  • Has difficulty performing daily activities only
  • Has a memory-related disease only
  • Has difficulty performing daily activities and has a diagnosed memory-related disease
  • Cannot be left alone for an hour or more
  • Dead

The researchers noted that while there is a variety of health concerns that could make it difficult to leave an older person alone, two-thirds of the daughters said they could not leave their mothers unattended because of a doctor-diagnosed memory-related disease.

The researchers also said that the costs associated with care for a memory-related disease varied a great deal depending on whether the mother also had trouble performing daily activities. For example, caring for someone with memory-related disease but no ADL limitations cost approximately $163,000 over a two-year period. This is similar to the costs of providing care for a mother who only had ADL limitations ($167,000). However, when memory issues were paired with having difficulty performing ADLs, the costs of caregiving actually decreased to $144,000. On the other hand, when a mother cannot be left alone for more than one hour, caregiving costs rise to more than $200,000.

To put these costs in perspective, the average cost of a semi-private bed in a nursing home in 2017 was $85,775. This suggests that two years of nursing home care would cost $171,550.

The researchers concluded that their results suggest the costs of informal care to a daughter’s well-being are similar to the costs associated with full-time institutional care. Based on their study, the researchers believe that the impact of having unpaid family or friend caregivers differs depending on the health needs of the person receiving care. This is important for three reasons:

  • Providing informal care for someone with a memory-related health condition may be a different (sometimes more complex) experience than caring for someone who only needs assistance with physical limitations.
  • Memory-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), use a very large share of informal care.
  • Memory-related diseases currently affect more than 5 million Americans, and cases are predicted to double within the next 30 years.

Too Many People Missing Out On Health Benefits Of Golf

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The consensus–one of the first of its kind–comes on the eve of the Ryder Cup, the biennial golf tournament between Europe and the US.

Amid a growing body of evidence on the health impacts of the sport, the consensus aims to help current and would-be players maximise the health pros and minimise the health cons of golf, and to guide policy-makers and industry leaders on how best to make golf more inclusive and accessible and so encourage more people from all walks of life to take up the sport.

The statement draws on a systematic review of the available published evidence (342 eligible studies) and discussions among an international working group of 25 experts in public health and health policy, and industry leaders.

Agreement was reached on 79 statements in three areas. These set out what is currently known about golf’s associations with health; the factors that may help or hinder take-up of the sport; and a series of recommendations for golfers, industry leaders, and policy makers on how best to maximise its health benefits, promote sustainability, and widen participation.

The evidence shows that playing golf regularly is associated with longevity and reducing the risk factors for heart disease/stroke. And it can boost older people’s strength and balance.

The sport is also associated with good mental health and improving the overall health of those with disabilities.

Compared with other sports, the risk of injury is moderate, but as it’s an outdoor activity, golfers may be more at risk of skin cancer.

Golf is sociable, and gets people outdoors, connecting with nature. It can provide moderate intensity aerobic physical activity, and its health benefits are greatest for players (and spectators) who walk round the course rather than opt for a golf cart.

While around 60 million people play golf at least twice every year, the participant profile is quite narrow: players tend to be middle aged to older, male, of white European heritage, relatively well off, and living in North America, Europe, and Australasia.

And the sport is often perceived as expensive, male dominated, difficult to learn, and not a game for the young or those on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

This can put people off, says the statement. The sport needs to be more inclusive and welcoming of people from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds, and any such initiatives should be supported, it says.

More people might be keen to take it up if golf were promoted as an enjoyable, lifelong outdoors activity that affords a sense of community and competitive challenge while providing some ‘me time’ as well as helping to fulfil recommended exercise quotas, says the statement.

And the sport can do its bit for sustainability by “practices that prioritise diversity, healthy societies, connection with, and care of, the environment, environmental integrity and health and wellbeing,” the statement suggests.

Among its raft of recommendations, the consensus statement says that:

Golfers

  • Should aim to play for 150 minutes/week, or do less, but couple golf with other physical activity, and walk the course rather than ride a golf cart
  • Do warm-up/strengthening exercises to cut the risk of injury and use sun-cream and wear collared shirts/blouses to minimise the risk of skin cancer
  • Make everyone feel welcome

Clubs/Industry should:

  • Build on existing initiatives to promote inclusivity and develop environments and price structures that will be attractive to everyone
  • Develop a culture that will inspire more women and girls to play golf
  • Make every effort to promote equality and diversity, and boost accessibility
  • Promote sustainability through wildlife conservation and by restricting the use of water, energy, and pesticides
  • Provide additional facilities at clubs, such as a gym, walking routes, crèches and improve the focus on health and safety, with the provision of healthy foods, defibrillators, and speed limiters on golf carts, for example

Policy makers should:

  • Promote the benefits of regular physical activity, including golf, for people of all ages, genders, and income brackets
  • Promote the specific health enhancing aspects of golf
  • Support diversity, equality, and sustainability
  • Work with industry and national associations to boost take up of the sport, particularly in groups where physical activity levels are low
  • Work with industry and regulatory bodies to get golf included in the Paralympics

“These outputs, if widely shared and adopted, will contribute to an improved understanding of golf and health, and aid these groups in making evidence-informed decisions and to improve health and wellbeing,” the consensus statement concludes.

Matter Falling Into A Black Hole At 30 Percent Of The Speed Of Light

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A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team, led by Professor Ken Pounds of the University of Leicester, used data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory XMM-Newton to observe the black hole. Their results appear in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Black holes are objects with such strong gravitational fields that not even light travels quickly enough to escape their grasp, hence the description ‘black’. They are hugely important in astronomy because they offer the most efficient way of extracting energy from matter. As a direct result, gas in-fall – accretion – onto black holes must be powering the most energetic phenomena in the Universe.

The centre of almost every galaxy – like our own Milky Way – contains a so-called supermassive black hole, with masses of millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. With sufficient matter falling into the hole, these can become extremely luminous, and are seen as a quasar or active galactic nucleus (AGN).

However black holes are so compact that gas is almost always rotating too much to fall in directly. Instead it orbits the hole, approaching gradually through an accretion disc – a sequence of circular orbits of decreasing size. As gas spirals inwards, it moves faster and faster and becomes hot and luminous, turning gravitational energy into the radiation that astronomers observe.

The orbit of the gas around the black hole is often assumed to be aligned with the rotation of the black hole, but there is no compelling reason for this to be the case. In fact, the reason we have summer and winter is that the Earth’s daily rotation does not line up with its yearly orbit around the Sun.

Until now it has been unclear how misaligned rotation might affect the in-fall of gas. This is particularly relevant to the feeding of supermassive black holes since matter (interstellar gas clouds or even isolated stars) can fall in from any direction.

Using data from XMM-Newton, Prof. Pounds and his collaborators looked at X-ray spectra (where X-rays are dispersed by wavelength) from the galaxy PG211+143. This object lies more than one billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices, and is a Seyfert galaxy, characterised by a very bright AGN resulting from the presence of the massive black hole at its nucleus.

The researchers found the spectra to be strongly red-shifted, showing the observed matter to be falling into the black hole at the enormous speed of 30 per cent of the speed of light, or around 100,000 kilometres per second. The gas has almost no rotation around the hole, and is detected extremely close to it in astronomical terms, at a distance of only 20 times the hole’s size (its event horizon, the boundary of the region where escape is no longer possible).

The observation agrees closely with recent theoretical work, also at Leicester and using the UK’s Dirac supercomputer facility simulating the ‘tearing’ of misaligned accretion discs. This work has shown that rings of gas can break off and collide with each other, cancelling out their rotation and leaving gas to fall directly towards the black hole.

Prof. Pounds, from the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: “The galaxy we were observing with XMM-Newton has a 40 million solar mass black hole which is very bright and evidently well fed. Indeed some 15 years ago we detected a powerful wind indicating the hole was being over-fed. While such winds are now found in many active galaxies, PG1211+143 has now yielded another ‘first’, with the detection of matter plunging directly into the hole itself.”

He continues: “We were able to follow an Earth-sized clump of matter for about a day, as it was pulled towards the black hole, accelerating to a third of the velocity of light before being swallowed up by the hole.”

A further implication of the new research is that ‘chaotic accretion’ from misaligned discs is likely to be common for supermassive black holes. Such black holes would then spin quite slowly, being able to accept far more gas and grow their masses more rapidly than generally believed, providing an explanation for why black holes which formed in the early Universe quickly gained very large masses.

New Robot Picks A Peck Of Peppers And More

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The world’s most advanced sweet pepper harvesting robot, developed in a consortium including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, was introduced last week at the Research Station for Vegetable Production at St. Katelijne Waver in Belgium.

SWEEPER is designed to operate in a single stem row cropping system, with non-clustered fruits and little leaf occlusion. Preliminary test results showed that by using a commercially available crop modified to mimic the required conditions, the robot currently harvests ripe fruit in 24 seconds with a success rate of 62 percent.

The BGU team spearheaded efforts to improve the robot’s ability to detect ripe produce using computer vision, and has played a role in defining the specifications of the robot’s hardware and software interfaces, focusing on supervisory control activities.

Polina Kurtser, a Ph.D. candidate in the BGU Department of Industrial Engineering and Management and member of the team, says robotic harvesting will revolutionize the economics of the agriculture industry and dramatically reduce food waste.

“The Sweeper picks methodically and accurately,” she says. “When it is fully developed, it will enable harvesting 24/7, drastically reduce spoilage, cut labor costs and shield farmers from market fluctuations.”

Additional research is needed to increase the robot’s work speed to reach a higher harvest success rate. Based upon these latest results, the Sweeper consortium expects that a commercial sweet pepper harvesting robot will be available within four to five years, and that the technology could be adapted for harvesting other crops.

North America is the second largest producer of sweet (bell) and chili peppers in the world with a 31 percent market share. In 2017 Europe accounted for more than half the world’s pepper supply (53.2 percent) with exports valued at $2.7 billion.

SWEEPER is a partnership between BGU, Wageningen University & Research, and pepper grower De Tuindershoek BV, in the Netherlands, Umea University in Sweden, and the Research Station for Vegetable Cultivation and Bogaerts Greenhouse Logistics in Belgium.

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 644313.

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