The US military industrial complex reigns like a ravenous ruler in search of new funding prospects. It has done well this year, with the Trump administration pushing the sale that the imperium needs more ruddy cash and indulgent expenditure to cope with all manner of evils. Empire must be without equal.

The dissenters to this program have been pitiably small, concentrated amongst such outliers as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Those on the GOP side of the aisle have barely squeaked but relative to the Democrats, their sounds have been spectacularly noisy. There is, in fact, something to be said that, in the boisterous era of Donald Trump, the Democrats have shown very little by way of bucking any trend whatever in the continuingly expansive program that is US military spending.

As Peter Beinart observed in February this year, the Democrats might be moving to the left on the domestic front (a murmuring more than a lurch, it must be said); in terms of a foreign or defence policy, nothing of note comes to mind. Terrified of being left behind in the rat race of reaction, the Democrats have, for instance, done their bit to promise funding for the border wall with Mexico, albeit offering a lesser $1.6 billion in 2019 to the $5 billion demanded by Trump.

Beinart took note of the remarks of Nancy Pelosi, chipper in the run-up to the budget deal that dramatically increased US defence spending. “In our negotiations,” she enthused to fellow House Democrats in an email, “Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defence.”

Defence, notably when aligned with imperial cravings, supplies its own logic. The military industrial complex is an economy within, given the armouring rationales that make a reduction of spending heretical. Firms and employees need to be supported; infrastructure maintained. Forget those other menial things: roads, public transport, train tracks, bridges and airports can be left to one side. To reduce the amount would be tantamount to being treasonous, an anti-patriotic gesture.

“It’s not just a matter of buying fewer bombs,” suggests Brian Riedl of the conservatively inclined Manhattan Institute. “The United States spends $100,000 per troop on compensation – such as salaries, housing, health care – which also contributes to our defence budget exceeding that of countries like China.” As with such empires as Rome, the entire complex entails compensation, remuneration and nourishment for the industry of death and protection.

It became clear this month that, even with short-term spending bills, this rationale would repeat itself. Last week, the Senate considered such a bill that further supplemented the earlier budget package that would not only fund the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments; it would also add further largesse to the Pentagon. By a margin of 93-7, the package was passed and the Democrats found wanting, refusing to stage any protest that might result in an expiration of government funding come September 30.

Trump, in his amoral calculations, is all for such a disruptive measure, having expressed a desire both for and against a shutting down of the government in an effort to push funding towards his pet border security projects. “Finish the Wall!” he has intoned between sessions of hectoring, directed both at the Democrats and the GOP.

The Democrats have been weak in conviction. “This is necessary,” explained an unconvincing Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) of the Senate Appropriations Committee, “to ensure that we do not face a government shutdown in the event that we do not finish our work on other remaining bills.”

This supposedly necessitous state of affairs sees the Pentagon budget for 2019 receiving an outlay of $606.5 billion, an increase of $17 billion from 2018. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky) words were those of the patriot turned fetishist. “After subjecting America’s all-voluntary armed forces to years of belt tightening, this legislation will build on our recent progress in rebuilding the readiness of our military and investing more in the men and women who wear the uniform.”

As for what the appropriations will fund, 13 new Navy ships will be added to the inventory, including three DDG-51 guided missile destroyers and two Virginia-class submarines. The air arm can look forward to 93 of the previously mocked (by no less or more a person than Trump) F-35 aircraft, 58 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 66 AH-64 Apache helicopters, 13 V-22 aircraft. A further $1.5 billion will be set aside for upgrading 135 Abrams tanks.

In the tactics that ultimately saw a grand capitulation on the part of the Democrats, a policy obscenity manifested itself: to avoid squabbling over non-defence spending bills, the Senate agreed to pack the military budget bill along with that of full-year funding for the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Education. In wrapping these bills in the same ribbon, an abysmal reality surfaced: the military industrial complex finds a home in any legislative orientation, and will not be denied.

Over 70,000 newspapers and more than 500 satellite news channels, does not always translate to press freedom in India



Introduction

Considered to be the world’s largest democracy though freedom of press is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution, but the state time and again tries to exercise its control over the autonomy of press. The following essay tries to explore why the existence of over 70,000 newspapers and more than 500 satellite channels in India, does not necessarily mean having enough journalistic freedom. It will discuss how in India despite of not having any censorship laws, the government uses various tools and mechanism to curb journalists’ freedom. To explain this further various case studies has been done and newspaper reports including freedom of press index from reliable websites has been quoted.

The numerous newspaper reports have put forward a thorough analysis, eliciting the tug of war between journalists and the state. Videos of various television interviews has also been analyzed to study the same. Light has also been thrown on how editors and owners of newspapers acting at the behest of the state compel journalists to kill their explosive stories which are often critical of the state.

Starting with the ideals of journalism and its role in a democracy the essay also explains why curbing freedom of press and restraining journalists from freely and fairly reporting stories, causes the fabric of democracy to unstitch.

The state of press in China has also been briefly explained as a juxtaposition to emphasize on how China being a democratic dictatorship under an authoritarian government directly censors the press. On the other hand, India being a democracy tries controlling the press indirectly in a concealed manner, giving rise to the phenomenon of ‘invisible censorship’. Furthermore, studying about journalism in China will also give a deeper understanding of censorship and the various underlying questions around it.

Journalism and its role in democracy

For some journalism is a mere profession with sheer adventure along with perks of traveling to remotest locations and strife torn zones, while for certain people journalism is perhaps a profession of compulsive storytelling. While according to many, journalism is bearing the flag of being the voice of the mass.

However, surprisingly researchers apparently are of the opinion that there cannot be an absolute definition of journalism. According to John Russial, Peter Laufer and Janet Wasko, having a formal definition of journalism might invite problems for an organization, as a strict definition could be used in court against the organisation when it deviates from the parameters of journalism that has been set (Russial, Laufer, Wasko, 299).

Perhaps that is one reason why research about journalism among journalists has been established as a widely acknowledged field, particularly in the second half of the 20th century (Deuze, 442). In fact, Deuze in ‘What is Journalism?’ suggests that worldwide one can find universities, schools and colleges with dedicated departments, research and teaching programs in journalism and this field even has its own international and national journals (Deuze, 442).

What the article ‘Journalism in Crisis’ suggests is though journalism cannot have a definition but it is news that can be defined. It states that news can be defined as anything that changes the status quo and gets reported (Russial, Laufer, Wasko, 300).

With journalism comes its role in a democracy. Deuze believes that to delineate the role of journalism it is important to define journalism as an ideology. Doing so primarily means understanding journalism in terms of how journalists give meaning to their news-work (Deuze, 443). Ideology more aptly is a system of beliefs or characteristic of a particular group, including – but not limited to – the general process of the production of meanings and ideas (within that group) (Deuze, 445).

The second important thing why defining journalism as an ideology helps to understand it more is because according to popular believe of media scholars journalists’ professionalization is process of ideological development, emerging from an ideology served to continuously refine and reproduce a consensus about who was a ‘real’ journalist, and what (parts of) news media at any time would be considered examples of ‘real’ journalism (Deuze, 444). The following are Deuze’s journalistic ideals.

The first such ideal of journalism according to Deuze is, journalism is a public service and journalists are working as some kind of representative watchdog of the status quo in the name of people, who are indirectly paying for the service by means of purchasing newspapers, watching or listening news that is being broadcast or clicking on the news sites (Deuze, 447). What he calls journalists as the ones disseminating the information and public as consumers who are receiving the news.

Objectivity and neutrality has been stated as another most important trait of journalists by Deuze. Although objectivity has a problematic status in current thinking about the impossibility of value-neutrality, academics and journalists alike revisit this value through synonymous concepts like ‘fairness’, ‘professional distance’, ‘detachment’ or ‘impartiality’ to define and (re-)legitimize what media practitioners do (Deuze, 448). Although there have been numerous contradictions and debates around being objective however the bottom line in the words of Deuze is that the embrace, rejection as well as critical reappraisal of objectivity all help to keep it alive as an ideological cornerstone of journalism (Deuze, 448).

The second important journalistic ideal elicited by Deuze is journalists enjoying editorial autonomy and having the freedom to report. The reason as specified in ‘What is journalism?’ is, reporters across the globe feel that their work can only thrive and flourish in a society that protects its media from censorship; in a company that saves its journalists from the marketers; in a newsroom where journalists are not merely the lackeys of their editors; and at a desk where a journalist is adequately supported through further training and education (Deuze, 448).

Having a sense of immediacy among the journalists is Deuze’s another journalistic ideal. As the popular saying goes ‘today’s news is tomorrow’s history, perhaps that is the reason for journalists to be working in an aura of instantaneity and immediatism, as ‘news’ stresses the novelty of information as its defining principle (Deuze, 449). Therefore, work of journalists involves notions of speed, fast decision-making, hastiness, and working in accelerated real-time (Deuze, 449). Surveys has revealed how journalists are subjected to pressurizing environment as novices and as per scholars doing so propels journalists to work in a ‘non-stop’ 24/7-digital environment in due course of time (Deuze, 449).

The last and the most talked about ideals of journalism is ethics. Debates, discussions and perhaps research around ethical segment of journalism has been a never ending one.

Numerous organizations have laid their own set of ethical guidelines, which more or less speaks of adhering to the same professional standard. The BBC too has published their own set of guide lines which they call journalistic ‘values.’ However, surprisingly journalists worldwide disagree on whether a code of ethical conduct should be in place or not, they do share a sense of being ethical – which in turn legitimizes journalists’ claims to the position as (free and fair) watchdogs of society (Deuze, 449).

Apart from the above stated ideals few of the other roles of journalism may include, serving the political system by providing information, discussion and debate on public affairs, enlightening the public, safeguarding rights of an individual, maintaining its own self sufficiency (Siebert, Fred S, 1956).

However, there have been contradicting views as well to the above stated ideals of journalism and ‘objectivity’ has been at the centre of this never ending discussion. Eminent Indian journalist Abhinandan Shekhri during a Tedx (2015) talk stressed on the argument that there is no such thing called objectivity. He states that even in the field of science there cannot be anything as objective as according to scientists, the outcome depends on what experiment we conduct (00:04:13 – 00:04:20). According to Abhinandan there cannot be anything as objective news, there can be only fair and transparent news (Tedx, 2015, 00:04:31 – 00:04:38).

Understanding censorship on journalism through China

Censorship in a broader sense and as the dictionary defines, it is trying to curb speech, public communication or dissemination of other information by the establishment primarily because it believes that the information imparted may be objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient. The ones acting as gatekeeper between the sender and the receiver are governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions in power to suppress.

Press censorship was mostly prevalent during the early war times when information was being withheld from disseminating in order to protect national security of a nation and safeguard pubic morale from the corrosion of enemy propaganda (Eggleston, 313). The tactics as Eggleston mentions in ‘Press Censorship’ might be putting a ban on broadcast of certain news or forbidding from covering certain issues or even a control over the various communication mediums like radio, newspaper, television and telegraph (Eggleston, 313).

For an in-depth understanding of censorship in journalism, types and its implications we take the example of China. Over the years censorship in China has certainly been a point of great interest for media researchers and scholars.

Starting with the online arena. Going by numbers, to comply with the government, each individual site privately employs up to 1,000 censors (King, Pan, Roberts, 326). As compiled in the journal American Political Science review (2013), approximately 20,000–50,000 Internet police and Internet monitors as well as an estimated 250,000–300,000 “50 cent party members” at all levels of government—central, provincial, and local—participate in this huge effort (p 327). China overall is tied with Burma at 187th of 197 countries on a scale of press freedom, but the Chinese censorship effort is by far the largest (King, Pan, Roberts, 327).

Censorship on freedom to speak exists in all forms of media. Protection over the web space seems very much interesting. There are three primary ways of doing so, the first one is “The Great Firewall of China” that completely bans certain website from operating in the country (King, Pan, Roberts, 327). The other two ways according to the author are ‘keyword blocking,’ which abstains the user from posting certain words or phrases which are being banned. The third and the last one is when after content is posted on the web, the censors read and remove those they find objectionable (King, Pan, Roberts, 327).

Focusing specifically on journalism self-censorship is the most commonly used form of controlling content. Given the political setup of China, journalist prefer this mechanism to crop content because it minimises political risk (Tong, 593). Another important advantage of this is it helps the newsroom bypass the political ‘minefields’ and makes sure politically sensitive reports get published (Tong, 594).

In this self-censoring environment the original reports are sent by the journalist to the editors who takes the final call on if it would find a place in the publication or how it should be published based on the position of the media outlet, underlying ideology and socio-political situation (Tong, 594).

The government has a stringent control over the news arena, which prohibit the media from reporting on issues which might poses a threat to the national stability (Tong, 595). As explained by Tong (2009) the other topics that cannot be reported are criticism of the Party leaders, riots and human rights abuse and severe accidents and disasters. These topics which may be enlisted as the pre-publication restrictions where instructions on what should be reported and what not are imparted beforehand. But the authorities also take to post publication censorship where if the media organisations violate the guidelines, warnings are issued to the newsrooms which may often lead to political crackdowns on those media (Tong, 595). The Propaganda Department spearheads this media censorship, journalists flouting the ‘propaganda disciplines’ often leads to imprisonment, complete closure of the organisation and reorganisation of the media outlets (Thomas, Zaharom, 180).

Furthermore, since television journalism began in China it has been used by the government as a propaganda tool tasked at ‘propagate politics’, ‘disseminate knowledge’ and ‘enrich the lives of the masses’ with each and every news program serving as an ideological compass (Chang, Ren, 14). Throwing light on the most popular China Central Television (CCTV), it is the most tightly controlled television outlet in the country with regular monitoring of the content by Party elders (Thomas, Zaharom, 183).

Implications of press censorship on democracy

Democracy and journalism are very much complimentary to each other and perhaps that’s the reason why journalism is always termed as the fourth estate of democracy. The path journalism and democracy took, and the role journalism played in this development, have shaped the journalistic ethos (Josephi, 475). Josephi in the article ‘How much democracy does journalism need?’ (2012) points out journalism as synonym for democracy and that there can be no journalism without democracy and vice-versa.

For instance, in the Soviet Union too there was the existence of media since there existed communication but there was no journalism because there was no democracy (Josephi, 475).

This very much makes evident the importance of journalism in a democracy and censorship or control over the press certainly misbalances the core values of democracy that includes promoting values such as equality, social harmony, the legal framework for freedom of speech among others (Josephi, 479).

The first among the ill effects of press censorship on democracy is lack of a collective opinion among the mass.

Restraining the formation of a collective opinion in democracy is another ill effect of press censorship. This has been very much evident in the case of China. Curbing freedom of speech and expression reduces the probability of collective action by clipping social ties whenever any collective movements are in evidence or expected (King, Pan, Roberts, 326). Furthermore, having censorship also possesses great challenge for researchers studying various socio-political issues, because information available in the public domain are only from one source that is the government. Available information though answers important questions, but in gauging government intent, they are widely known to be indirect and often of dubious nature and offers a view of government interests thus appraising only one side of the story (King, Pan, Roberts, 327).

For journalists working in such kind of an environment greatest difficulty is finding voices from members of public to speak on sensitive and political stories. When people have the information that are sought by reporters they may not be willing to express themselves freely (King, Pan, Roberts, 327). Also journalists when working under censorship are in a lack of professional and personal security. In has been observed that reporters in China who try pushing the barriers of censorship tend to have a short professional life primarily due to the high pressured work environments they endure and the severe censorship imposed on their reporting (Shen, Zhang, 374). There’s also a threat to their personal life because not adhering to the guidelines provided by the government may land them up in prison.

As democracy is all about collective voice of all sections of the society and press plays a key role by participating in formation of a collective opinion (Shen, Zhang, 375). With control over the press, it ends up only serving the interest of the country’s political and economic elites thus supressing the marginalised and alternative voices of the nation (Thomas, Zaharom, 179).

Lastly but not least, press censorship kills the ethos of journalism. With control over journalism the very professional values – neutrality and participant, disseminating information to the public with an endeavour at social reform becomes obscure (Shen, Zhang, 375). This is because the establishment with its control over press, the objective of journalism shifts from raising people’s concern to promoting the legitimacy of the government (Thomas, Zaharom, 181).

Questions around journalistic freedom in India

Considered to be one of the largest democracies in the world the freedom of speech and expression has been enshrined in the very constitution of India. Article 19 of the Indian constitution affirms that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression along with various other rights pertaining to exercise of freedom.

Perhaps that’s what makes India home to more than 70,000 newspapers and over 500 satellite channels in several languages (BBC, 2012). However, despite such robust growth of media in the country, according to the 2016 Reporters without Border, Freedom of Press Index, India stands at 133 out of 180 countries. In terms of the colour category map it is assigned as red color which indicates ‘very bad’ state of press freedom. Despite its status as the world’s largest democracy, the extent of India’s freedom of expression remains a controversial topic (The World Street Journal, 2012). Surprisingly though there is a variation in the rankings but India in accordance to the colour category stands in the same position as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey and Iraq – countries that are facing sharp challenges when it comes to freedom of press.

The data of further elicits

Journalists and bloggers are attacked and anathematized by various religious groups that are quick to take offence. At the same time, it is hard for journalists to cover regions such as Kashmir that are regarded as sensitive by the government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems indifferent to these threats and problems, and there is no mechanism for protecting journalists. Instead, in a desire to increase control of media coverage, Modi envisages opening a journalism university run by former propaganda ministry officials. (RSF, 2016)

While the government has not openly exercised direct control over the press however time and again it has been observed that the state through various other machineries has indirectly attempted at curbing the freedom of press. This could be trailed to the existence of what we might call an ‘invisible press censorship’ in India.

Three newspapers published from Nagaland – a state on the hilly terrain of India’s northeastern region on November 16, 2016 decided to publish the newspaper keeping their editorial pages blank. The reason behind this was that The Assam Rifles – a wing of India’s paramilitary force in October 2016 had told editors to stop covering rebel group National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Khaplang (BBC, 2015). Nagaland has been an insurgent prone zone since long where rebels have been fighting for an independent homeland for more than 60 years in a bitter battle against Indian security forces. Often the press is caught in between this tug of war because they decide on publishing both sides of the story and that is a reason why newspapers in Nagaland face accusations from security forces of taking sides (BBC, 2015). The editors of the Morung Express, the Eastern Mirror and the Nagaland Page was quoted in BBC saying they were protesting against the diktat from paramilitary force.

This has been a very common mechanism of the state where it often tries to control the journalists on the pretext of law and order situation.

There has also been direct intimidation to journalists who are critical of the authorities. Malini Subramaniam a senior journalist who had extensively reported on human rights violations and police atrocities, allegations of sexual violence by security forces and fake encounters in Bastar region, was forced to pack up from the region following alleged intimidation by Bastar police and a self-styled anti-Maoist group (Hindustan Times, 2016). Bastar is considered to be India’s red corridor with the banned outfit Communist Party of India-Maoist fighting guerilla war to acquire their rights.

Interestingly the police took two days to lodge Malini’s complaint and on the other hand police wrote a letter to Malini’s landlord and summoned him to the police station leading to unwarranted harassment (Hindustan Times, 2016).

Journalists were also being targeted by police who were covering the Jawaharlal Nehru University row. The President of the university’s students’ union was arrested on February 2016 on charges of sedition for allegedly being involved in anti-national sloganeering during a protest demonstration (The Indian Express, 2016). Family member of Manas Roshan, a 26-year-old reporter working for the New Delhi Television channel was harassed by Delhi police for the channels critical coverage of authorities (Scroll, 2016). Three policemen in plain clothes arrived at the reporter’s home and threatened his brother on pretext of investigation as the police believed that Manas was in touch with the JNU students who were absconding (Scroll, 2016).

While it is a part of journalist’s job to be in touch with various people involved in story and also anonymous sources, but this seemed to be beyond the understanding of the authorities. Such acts of police irked the media fraternity at large including senior journalists. Sanjoy Narayan editor of ‘Hindustan Times’ maintained that journalists should not be the subject of police questioning over stories they are reporting (Scroll, 2016). According to him drawing journalists into the investigative processes of the police threatens independence of the press and hinders the ability to serve public interest (Scroll, 2016).

Back in 2001 with his sting operation journalist Mathew Samuel exposed a high profile bribery scandal in India’s defense ministry that saw the involvement of bureaucrats, politicians and generals of the India army (The New York Times, 2001). This resulted in resignation of the then India’s powerful defense minister, George Fernandes and also led to arrest of top notch officials. However, later on the journalist was arrested under the Official Secret Act and charged with snooping and espionage for intruding and disseminating sensitive information related to the country’s security (Outlook, 2012). Mathew was eventually acquitted of all the charges in 2016, but it took him 15 years of court battle to prove his innocence (Tehelka, 2016).

Apart from these incidents, previously there has been continuing violation of human rights in Chhattisgarh where journalists, critical of the police and the state, have been regularly harassed and has also led to arrests of journalists.

In the year 1991-92 a journalist Premraj reporting from this same Bastar, was booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activity (Prevention) Act (TADA). He was charged with being close to the Maoists but was later acquitted by the courts due to dearth of evidence (Outlook Magazine, 2016).
As of recently on March this year Deepak Jaiswal, a young reporter of a vernacular newspaper based in Dantewada district of Bastar , was arrested in a case of “entering the examination hall, trespassing, obstructing public servant in discharge of public function” (The Hindu, 2016).

News reports published in The Hindu informed that, Mr. Jaiswal was a close associate of journalist Prabhat Singh, another journalist who was arrested by the police earlier on March 2016. Mr. Jaiswal was nabbed from court premises in Dantewada, where he had gone to witness court proceedings in Mr. Singh’s case (The Hindu, 2016).

There have also been numerous instances of physical violence incited by police on the journalists. Back in 2012 Azhar Qadri, a Srinagar-based journalist with ‘The Tribune’ was ruthlessly beaten up by an Indian Police Service officer and detained for more than an hour at a police station while the former was covering a student protest in the city (The Tribune, 2013).

Furthermore, there has been allegations on police for murder of journalists as well.

Shahjahanpur based journalist, Jagendra Singh died from burn injuries on June 2015. Apart from being a freelance journalist he was very active on social media and his Facebook page became source of information for several local scribes for getting story cues (The Indian Express, 2015). In his dying declaration the journalist claimed that he was burnt by the local police at the behest of Minister Ram Murti Verma since Jagendra was constantly reporting about the minister’s involvement in unlawful activities, including forced land occupation and illegal mining (The Hindu, 2015).

Apart from the indirect means of controlling the press there has been also direct clampdown on journalism, though it is only the foreign press mostly on the radar.

The Al Jazeera English Channel was banned for five days in India for its reporting on the controversial Kashmir region (Al Jazeera, 2015). The channel was taken off-air due to its report that concerned maps which on occasions during 2013 and 2014 did not mark Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as a separate territory (Al Jazeera, 2015).

A 1990 report published in The New York Times explained at length about India government’s crackdown on both foreign and Indian journalists from reporting about the turbulent the Kashmir Valley. The report further mentioned about reporters being detained at hotels and then expelled from the Valley, the Muslim-dominated northern part of Jammu and Kashmir State (The New York Times, 1990).

During the same year a shipment of the Far East Economic Review 1990 Yearbook was seized, apparently because a map in it depicted the Jammu and Kashmir as an area in dispute between India and Pakistan and also because it reflected lost promises of India and Pakistan in 1948 and 1949 to hold a plebiscite in the valley that is yet to be fulfilled (The New York Times, 1990).

Back in 2008 visa applications of Swedish journalists Ulrika Nandra and foreign correspondent of Swedish daily Göteborgs-Posten and Marina Malmgren, were rejected by Indian authorities. The decision came in aftermath of the critical articles they wrote about social problems prevailing India, according to Swedish radio programme, ‘The Media’ (Business Standard, 2015). After filing her visa application when she did not get any response from the concerned authorities, representatives of the media for which Nandra worked, held a meeting with the Indian embassy in February 2008 in which the embassy said they were displeased with her reports, including one about sex trafficking in Mumbai and a series of articles about changing gender roles in India (Business Standard, 2015).

Also at times the state might use its various laws against journalists or anyone who according to the state is acting against the government. On August last year the state government of Maharashtra issued a circular to the police which entitled the police with powers to initiate actions against those critical of the state or central government (Economic Times, 2015).

Sedition has been one of the most commonly used laws in India to hound journalists and activists. The law and its use has always been a point of fierce debate. This law was introduced in India in 1870 during the British colonial regime to suppress India’s freedom movement and since then the law is prevalent in the country (The Times of India, 2016).

Back in 2012 journalist and cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested and tried under sedition for drawing and writing satirical pieces against the Indian parliament. He also ardently raised his voice against corruption through his website ‘cartoons against corruption’ which was suspended by the police (The Wall Street Journal, 2012)

The Amnesty International has time and again called for scrapping of the sedition laws. They are of the opinion that in healthy democracies there can be no place for draconian laws such as sedition that is slapped on people merely for questioning the government (The Time of India, 2016).

Censorship might also exist inside newsrooms where journalists are not given enough freedom to report and file stories, thus curbing the editorial freedom. Rahul Pandita the erstwhile Opinion and Special Stories Editor of ‘The Hindu’ newspaper, resigned in 2015 due to differences with the paper’s editor (Firstpost, 2015). In his resignation letter he mentioned about not given enough freedom by the senor editors.

Stories are also seen being killed by editors due to political pressures. Back in 2005 veteran journalist and former executive editor of ‘Tehelka’ magazine Vijay Simha did an exclusive interview with Indian politician Rahul Gandhi. Simha was the first ever journalist to interview this top politician. Rahul Gandhi at that time being a novice in politics spoke his heart out giving many explosive answers about his party (Zee News, 00:00:44 – 00:01:00). This irked many of the senior party leaders who started pressurizing the editor of Tehelka magazine, Tarun Tejpal to stop the story from getting published (Zee News, 00:01:02 – 00:01:23) Thus, at the end the story suffered due to political pressure.

Another young journalist working for one of India’s topnotch news channels, Zee News resigned this year on ethical grounds. Vishwa Deepak, the journalist in his resignation letter made it public that the channel was deliberately misinterpreting a story to serve interest of a certain political group (Hindustan Times, 2016).

Senior editors, owners and publishers dictating the content of the newspaper and not allowing enough editorial freedom often acts as another form of invisible press censorship. This makes the journalists stand in the middle of a battle and put up a fight that will eventually serve no purpose for anyone. When senior journalist and the then Resident editor of The Hindu, Praveen Swami quit the paper in 2014 citing editorial freedom, he stated that working in such kind of an environment feels like working for Pol Pot, who was at the helm of one of the most brutal, radical regimes in Cambodia (Firstpost, 2014).

Conclusion

After examining the incidents that pose questions around journalists’ freedom and autonomy in India and also briefly analyzing the journalism scenario in China, it can be concluded that all forms of state tries to control the press. Though the level of control and intensity might vary but no state can tolerate journalists being critical of the government.

While in China the press is being officially regulated by the propaganda department that lays down various editorial guidelines compelling the journalists to crop their reporting and self-censor news reports, in India no such direct law of press regulation exists. However, state clamps censorship on the press by using its various laws primarily Law of Sedition, Official Secret Act, charges of espionage etc. Unwarranted harassment, detention and intimidating journalists by using police and administration can also be seen as a tool to curb freedom of press.

Focusing of foreign journalist, government of India banning foreign publication and not granting visas to foreign correspondents because the reports were critical of the establishment can also be seen as a form of press censorship. The Indian government, unlike its Chinese counterpart is democratically elected and governed by the Constitution. It certainly cannot have a policy that demands positive news – and that too from foreign journalists.

Editors succumbing to political pressures and in turn asking their reporters to change the story angle or stories being completely halted from publication is a kind of censorship encompassing newsrooms thus inducing a form of self-censorship or rather invisible self-censorship. Threat to press freedom is always a slow poisoning for a democracy that endangers the freedoms guaranteed to the press and put at risk the sovereignty of the citizens (Gupta, 300). The state exercising its control over journalism will further diminish the role of the press in interest of the public and shrink opportunities to connect with people and ideas (Gupta, 300).

*Shamim Zakaria, is a journalist, writer and blogger hailing from the northeast Indian state of Assam’s Guwahati. A post-graduate in International Journalism from University of Sussex, United Kingdom. His website is http://www.shamimzakaria.com

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Despite having the bigest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases-over 180- in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21st century.

In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures.

The Lost Wars

The US has been engaged in multiple wars and coups since the beginning of the 21st century. These include Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Palestine, Venezuela and the Ukraine .Besides Washington’s secret intelligence agencies have financed five surrogate terrorist groups in Pakistan, China, Russia, Serbia and Nicaragua.

The US has invaded countries, declared victories and subsequently faced resistance and prolonged warfare which required a large US military presence to merely protect garrison outposts.

The US has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties- dead, maimed and deranged soldiers.. The more the Pentagon spends, the greater the losses and subsequent retreats.

The more numerous the vassal regimes, the greater the corruption and incompetence flourishes.
Every regime subject to US tutelage has failed to accomplish the objectives designed by its US military advisers.

The more spent on recruiting mercenary armies the greater the rate of defection and the transfer of arms to US adversaries.

Success in Starting Wars and Failures in Finishing Them

The US invaded Afghanistan, captured the capital (Kabul) defeated the standing army …and then spent the next two decades engaged in losing irregular warfare.

The initial victories laid the groundwork for future defeats. Bombings, drove millions of peasants and farmers ,shopkeepers and artisans into the local militia . The invaders were defeated by the forces of nationalism and religion linked to families and communities. The indigenous insurgents overcame arms and dollars in many of the villages, towns and provinces.

Similar outcomes were repeated in Iraq and Libya. The US invaded, defeated the standing armies, occupied the capital and imposed its clients—- which set the terrain for long-term, large-scale warfare by local insurgent armies.

The more frequent the western bombings, the greater the opposition forcing the retreat of the proxy army.

Somalia has been bombed frequently. Special Forces have recruited, trained, and armed the local puppet soldiers, sustained by mercenary African armies but they have remained holed up in the capital city, Mogadishu, surrounded and attacked by poorly armed but highly motivated and disciplined Islamic insurgents.

Syria is targeted by a US financed and armed mercenary army. In the beginning they advanced, uprooted millions, destroyed cities and homes and seized territory. All of which impressed their US – EU warlords. Once the Syrian army united the populace, with their Russian, Lebanese(Hezbollah) and Iranian allies, Damascus routed the mercenaries.

After the better part of a decade the separatist Kurds, alongside the Islamic terrorists and other western surrogates retreated, and made a last stand along the northern borders–the remaining bastions of Western surrogates.

The Ukraine coup of 2014 was financed and directed by the US and EU.They seized the capital (Kiev) but failed to conquer the Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Corruption among the US ruling kleptocrats devastated the country – over three million fled abroad to Poland, Russia and elsewhere in search of a livelihood.. The war continues, the corrupt US clients are discredited and will suffer electoral defeat unless they rig the vote .

Surrogate uprisings in Venezuela and Nicaragua were bankrolled by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They ruined economies but lost the street wars.

Conclusion

Wars are not won by arms alone. In fact, heavy bombing and extended military occupations ensure prolonged popular resistance, ultimate retreats and defeats.

The US major and minor wars of the 21st century have failed to incorporate targeted countries into the empire.

Imperial occupations are not military victories. They merely change the nature of the war, the protagonists of resistance, the scope and depth of the national struggle.

The US has been successful in defeating standing armies as was the case in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Ukraine. However, the conquest was limited in time and space. New armed resistance movements led by former officers, religious activists and grass roots activists took charge…

The imperial wars slaughtered millions, savaged traditional family, workplace and neighborhood relations and set in motion a new constellation of anti-imperialist leaders and militia fighters.
The imperial forces beheaded established leaders and decimated their followers. They raided and pillaged ancient treasures. The resistance followed by recruiting thousands of uprooted volunteers who served as human bombs, challenging missiles and drones.

The US imperial forces lack the ties to the occupied land and people. They are ‘aliens’ serving time; they seek to survive, secure promotions and exit with a bonus and an honorable discharge.

In contrast, the resistance fighters are there for the duration. As they advance, they target and demolish the imperial surrogates and mercenaries. They expose the corrupt client rulers who deny the subject people the elementary conditions of existence – employment, potable water, electricity etc.

The imperial vassals are not present at weddings, sacred holidays or funerals, unlike the resistance fighters. The presence of the latter signals a pledge of loyalty unto death. The resistance circulates freely in cities ,towns and villages with the protection of the local people; and by night they rule enemy terrain, under cover of their own people, who share intelligence and logistics.

Inspiration, solidarity and light arms are more than a match for the drones, missiles and helicopter gunships.

Even the mercenary soldiers ,trained by the Special Forces, defect from and betray their imperial masters. Temporary imperial advances serve only to allow the resistance forces to regroup and counter-attack. They view surrender as a betrayal of their traditional way of life, submission to the boot of western occupation forces and their corrupt officials.

Afghanistan is a prime example of an imperial ‘lost war’. After two decades of warfare and one trillion dollars in military spending, tens of thousands of casualties, the Taliban controls most of the countryside and towns; enters and takes over provincial capitals and bombs Kabul. They will take full control the day after the US departs.

The US military defeats are products of a fatal flaw: imperial planners cannot successfully replace indigenous people with colonial rulers and their local look-alikes.

Wars are not won by high tech weapons directed by absentee officials divorced from the people: they do not share their sense of peace and justice.

Exploited people informed by a spirit of communal resistance and self-sacrifice have demonstrated greater cohesion then rotating soldiers eager to return home and mercenary soldiers with dollar signs in their eyes.

The lessons of lost wars have not been learned by those who preach the power of the military – industrial complex– which makes, sells and profits from weapons but lack the mass of humanity with lesser arms but with great conviction who have demonstrated their capacity to defeat imperial armies.

The Stars and Stripes fly in Washington but remain folded in Embassy offices in Kabul, Tripoli, Damascus and in other lost battlegrounds.

By Frank Kane*

Time was ultimately on the side of UAE-based port operators in their efforts to break into the US business. A $600 million deal between Gulftainer, the Sharjah-based ports group that ranks among the largest independent terminal operators in the world, and the authorities in Delaware, on the US Atlantic seaboard, sets the seal on a successful campaign of persistence and industrial logic over political prejudice and opportunism.

In 2006, the attempt by DP World to buy the US ports then owned by British shipping group P&O fell foul of a well-orchestrated political campaign featuring none other than Hillary Clinton, then senator for New York where some of the port facilities were located. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, when memories of 9/11 were still intense and the war in Iraq was at its height, Clinton argued that ownership of US ports by a UAE government entity would be a threat to national security.

Her efforts were successful in so far as the US ports were eventually excluded from the global transaction and sold separately to private equity groups. Once bitten, DP World has never since looked seriously at adding US ports to its global portfolio.

Fast forward a dozen years, with Donald Trump in the White House and Clinton in the wilderness, Gulftainer appears to have learned well from the DP World experience. The Sharjah group, led by the Jafar family, faced similar opposition from US vested interests.

One Californian senator, Rep. Duncan Hunter, asked Trump to block the deal on national security grounds until it had been vetted by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the US (CFIUS), the gatekeeper for foreigners buying sensitive American assets.

The committee has been busy of late as Trump fights his war against China’s growing influence in the US economy, but on this occasion he obviously found nothing wrong with Gulftainer’s bid.

The deal was formally signed last week in Delaware, with John Carney, the state governor, shaking hands with Gulftainer’s Badr Jafar on a 50-year lease to operate and develop the port of Wilmington, one of the biggest on the eastern coast. To underline the historic and political significance of the deal, Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to Washington, was also present at the signing event.

The DP World setback in 2006 always rankled with the UAE, which could not understand why an ally like the US was using security fears to block a deal regarded as transformational for DP World at the time. Port deals involving Chinese companies faced much stiffer opposition, and some are still on hold.

Against that backdrop, the Gulftainer deal has been celebrated as a further sign that there is a new understanding in business between the Americans and their allies in the Arabian Gulf. Gulftainer paved the way for its Delaware deal with a 2014 deal to run facilities at Port Canaveral in Florida, which also faced opposition from Hunter but which was eventually allowed through CFIUS. To demonstrate the high regard in which Gulftainer is held by the US authorities, customers in the Florida port include the armed forces and the sensitive space industry.

Gulftainer liked what it saw in the US after the Canaveral deal, and it has committed significant resources to the Wilmington project. Of the total $600 million investment value of last week’s deal, some $400 million will be invested into a new container facility, and there are also significant pledges on creating jobs in the near-100-year-old port. A new training facility in the port will see 1,000 people acquire new skills each year in an industry subject to disruptive change from technology and automation.

The investment in Delaware represents the largest operation ever run by a UAE company in the US, as well as the largest investment there by a non-governmental UAE business. Both the Americans and the Emiratis highlighted the mutual benefits that would come from the deal, in terms of boosting the local economy and creating jobs.

Gulftainer, part of the UAE’s Crescent Enterprises conglomerate, may not have the global scale or breadth of DP World, which operates 78 terminals in 40 countries around the world, but it has found a way to crack the strategically important North American market.

* Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai. Twitter: @frankkanedubai

By Sam Morgan

(EurActiv) –Some of the world’s leading oil and gas producers pledged on Monday (24 September) to limit methane emissions to 0.25% of their total marketed product by 2025, as the fossil fuel industry moves towards curbing one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

Thirteen leading oil and gas majors in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) have signed up to a pact that will see average methane intensity cut to a quarter of a percentage point across global operations, with a stated ambition to go as far as 0.2%.

In a statement, the OGCI calculated that if the 0.25% target is met and so-called fugitive emissions are curbed, then around 350,000 tonnes of methane per year will be prevented from escaping into the atmosphere.

For the purposes of their calculations, 2017’s marker of 0.32% is used as a baseline. In a joint release, OGCI members said they will aim “towards near zero methane emissions” in order to try to meet the obligations of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with a far greater warming potential than carbon dioxide and the natural gas industry has long been urged externally and internally to plug leakages, in order to reduce the sector’s impact and improve its image as a transition fuel.

According to International Energy Agency data from 2012, 60% of methane emissions are man-made, with the biggest share coming from agriculture. In 2017, the IEA estimated that the fossil fuel industry emitted 76 megatonnes of methane.

The Environmental Defense Fund welcomed the OGCI methane pledge and its president, Fred Krupp, acknowledged that the companies “deserve real credit”.

Krupp added that the industry will have to adopt “more robust measurement protocols” than the rough estimates that are currently used. One of OGCI’s goals is to create standardised monitoring tools for all its members.

The EDF president also warned that the OGCI companies will have to be on the watch for “laggards” in the industry that try to ride on the coattails of their more progressive counterparts without making any effort of their own.

But Friends of the Earth Europe’s Antoine Simon dismissed it as nothing more than “a communication exercise”, warning that open and closed wells, and millions of kilometres of pipelines mean “no matter how much they cut methane emissions, fossil gas will remain a dangerous lethal greenhouse gas”.

New blood

OGCI, which was formed in 2014, announced last week that the largely European-populated group of industry leaders would be joined by American powerhouses Chevron, ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum, who will contribute $100 million to the climate change alliance.

That brings the OGCI’s war chest up to $1.3 billion.

The three companies, which boast a net worth well over half a trillion dollars and are responsible for 5% of global oil and gas production, had held out against joining the OGCI but will now line up with European peers like BP, Shell and Total.

“It will take the collective efforts of many in the energy industry and society to develop scalable, affordable solutions that will be needed to address the risks of climate change,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said of his company’s decision to join.

The announcements come ahead of the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius target and the make-or-break UN COP24 summit in Poland in December.

This week the House of Representatives will vote on a package of bills making the temporary tax cuts contained in last year’s tax reform bill permanent and making additional tax law changes. The bills will likely pass in the House, but will almost certainly be filibustered in the Senate if the Senate leadership tries to bring them to the floor.

The GOP tax plan does offset some of the damage caused by federal control of education by making it easier for parents to escape failing government schools or “edexit.” It accomplishes this by allowing money saved in a tax-free 529 education savings account to be used for homeschooling expenses.

This provision will help homeschooling families and inspire more families to consider homeschooling. Homeschooling parents must not only pay for all their children’s education expenses, they also must subsidize government schools via property taxes and other taxes. A commitment to homeschooling may also require a parent to limit or even forgo outside employment.

Despite the financial costs, more families are choosing to homeschool. This is due to increasing dissatisfaction with government schools, greater public acceptance of homeschooling, and the availability of quality online homeschooling curricula, such as my Ron Paul Curriculum.

My curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education including rigorous programs in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior oral and verbal communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Students also get the opportunity to create and run their own internet businesses.

The government and history sections emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education.

Unlike government schools, and even many private schools, my curriculum addresses the crucial role religion played in the development of Western civilization. However, the materials are drafted in such a way that parents of any or no religious belief can feel comfortable using the curriculum.

Interactive forums allow students to engage with and learn from each other. The forums ensure students are actively engaged in their education as well as give them an opportunity to interact with their peers outside of a formal setting.

The latest Republican tax plan has laudable features, such as allowing the use of tax-free education savings accounts for homeschooling. However, as long as Congress refuses to offset tax cuts with spending cuts, the benefits of tax cuts will be limited and short-lived. Therefore, while all lovers of liberty should support any and all tax cuts, we must work to pressure Congress to cut spending. Bringing the troops home and shutting down the Department of Education are two good places to start.

Parents interested in my homeschooling curriculum can find out more about it at ronpaulcurriculum.com.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

(RFE/RL) — The White House has said that U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on September 27 in Washington after the two spoke.

Talks between the two on September 24 came as U.S. media outlets reported that Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, would be fired by Trump.

But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Rosenstein and Trump “had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories” in a statement posted on Twitter on September 24. “They will meet on (September 27) when the president returns to Washington.”

Several media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that Rosenstein was expecting to be dismissed during his meeting with Trump on September 24, following the publication of reports that he had discussed ways to remove the president from office over incompetence.

Rosenstein has played a key role in overseeing the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Observers say his departure would leave the investigation at risk.

Trump has faces mounting pressure from Mueller’s investigation, which the president has regularly dismissed as a “witch hunt.”

There was widespread speculation that Trump would fire Rosenstein after a New York Times report on September 21 said in 2017 he had suggested secretly recording Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke a constitutional amendment to remove him from the office.

Researchers have developed a new way to model seismic risk, which they hope will better inform disaster risk reduction planning in earthquake-prone areas.

The study, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , and was led by academics from Durham University’s Department of Geography, has developed a methodology that assesses seismic risk by looking at multiple earthquake scenarios and identifying impacts that are common to multiple scenarios.

This approach, which the team calls ‘ensemble modelling’, allows the researchers to estimate whether particular impacts are specific to certain earthquakes, or occur irrespective of the location or magnitude of an earthquake.

The team hopes that this method will provide contingency planners with a more complete picture of earthquake risk and potentially help guide the use of limited resources available for earthquake risk reduction.

The ensemble modelling method is novel as it goes beyond the standard probabilistic (identifying all possible earthquake scenarios at a given site) and deterministic (worst-case-event) approaches, focusing instead on the impacts of multiple possible earthquake scenarios.

Dr Tom Robinson, Durham University Department of Geography, said: “Earthquakes remain one of the deadliest natural hazards in the world and are a significant planning challenge for governments and aid agencies.

“Traditional assessments of seismic risk focus primarily on improving understanding of earthquake hazard, in terms of potential ground shaking but for contingency planning, it is the potential impacts of an earthquake that are of more importance.

“Our method provides critical information on the likelihood, and probable scale, of impacts in future earthquakes. We hope this can help better inform how governments and aid agencies direct limited disaster mitigation resources, for example how they distribute resources geographically.”

The research team hope that the ensemble modelling method will help planners to better understand where risks are greater, for example because of the relative vulnerability of communities, or their location in relation to identified likely earthquake impacts, and direct resources in a more targeted, informed way.

As part of their study the research team worked with colleagues at Nepal’s National Society of Earthquake Technology to use Nepal as a case study for their modelling approach.

Together the team modelled fatalities from 90 different scenario earthquakes and established whether or not the impacts where specific to a certain scenario.

Dr Robinson said: “The results showed that for most districts in Nepal similar impacts occurred irrespective of the scenario earthquake and that impacts were typically closer to the minimum rather than the worst-case scenario.

“This suggests that planning for the worst-case scenario in Nepal may place an unnecessarily large burden on the limited resources available.

“Our results also showed that the most at-risk districts are predominantly in rural western Nepal and that there are around 9.5 million Nepalese people who live in districts that are at a higher seismic risk than the capital, Kathmandu.

“Disaster risk reduction planning therefore needs to focus on rural, as well as urban, communities, as our modelling shows they are at higher risk.”

The results of the case study allow the team to demonstrate that a sole planning focus on urban earthquake risk in Kathmandu could be inappropriate, as many rural populations within Nepal are at greater relative risk.

However, the new modelling approach is not only relevant to Nepal and can be applied anywhere, to help inform earthquake disaster risk reduction planning.

Populations of the termite species Glyptotermes nakajimai can form successful, reproducing colonies in absence of males, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Biology.

The findings by researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia and Kyoto University, Japan suggest that males are unnecessary for the maintenance of some advanced animal societies in which they previously played an active social role.

Toshihisa Yashiro, corresponding author of the said: “The complete loss of males from social insects has been previously reported only in ants and honey bees. Termite colonies were always found to have equal numbers of males and females, and to undergo sexual reproduction. Our paper is the first demonstration that termites can do away with males completely, and get along fine just with females.”

The authors discovered populations of G. nakajimai with no evidence of any males in remote coastal areas of Japan. They compared the morphology of individuals from 37 colonies in these areas with those from 37 mixed-sex colonies found elsewhere in Japan. Queens in all-female colonies had empty spermathecae (an insect organ where sperm is stored after mating), whereas the queens in the mixed-sex populations had plenty of stored sperm. The eggs in the all-female colonies were all unfertilized.

Toshihisa Yashiro said: “Interestingly, we observed the occasional development of unfertilized eggs in the mixed-sex populations too. This suggests the ability to produce offspring from unfertilized eggs may have originated in mixed-sex ancestors and provided a potential pathway to the evolution of all-female colonies. We also found that all-female colonies had a soldier caste with a more uniform head size than their mixed-sex counterparts and fewer soldiers overall. This suggests that uniform female soldiers are more efficient at defense which may have contributed to the persistence and spread of the all-female colonies.”

Further studies are required to find out if all-female colonies also occur in other termite species.

The world’s most widely used weed killer may also be indirectly killing bees. New research from The University of Texas at Austin shows that honey bees exposed to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, lose some of the beneficial bacteria in their guts and are more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria.

Scientists believe this is evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to the decline of honey bees and native bees around the world.

“We need better guidelines for glyphosate use, especially regarding bee exposure, because right now the guidelines assume bees are not harmed by the herbicide,” said Erick Motta, the graduate student who led the research, along with professor Nancy Moran. “Our study shows that’s not true.”

The findings are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Because glyphosate interferes with an important enzyme found in plants and microorganisms, but not in animals, it has long been assumed to be nontoxic to animals, including humans and bees. But this latest study shows that by altering a bee’s gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria living in the bee’s digestive tract, including those that protect it from harmful bacteria — glyphosate compromises its ability to fight infection.

The researchers exposed honey bees to glyphosate at levels known to occur in crop fields, yards and roadsides. The researchers painted the bees’ backs with colored dots so they could be tracked and later recaptured. Three days later, they observed that the herbicide significantly reduced healthy gut microbiota. Of eight dominant species of healthy bacteria in the exposed bees, four were found to be less abundant. The hardest hit bacterial species, Snodgrassella alvi, is a critical microbe that helps bees process food and defend against pathogens.

The bees with impaired gut microbiomes also were far more likely to die when later exposed to an opportunistic pathogen, Serratia marcescens, compared with bees with healthy guts. Serratia is a widespread opportunistic pathogen that infects bees around the world. About half of bees with a healthy microbiome were still alive eight days after exposure to the pathogen, while only about a tenth of bees whose microbiomes had been altered by exposure to the herbicide were still alive.

“Studies in humans, bees and other animals have shown that the gut microbiome is a stable community that resists infection by opportunistic invaders,” Moran said. “So if you disrupt the normal, stable community, you are more susceptible to this invasion of pathogens.”

Based on their results, Motta and Moran recommend that farmers, landscapers and homeowners avoid spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on flowering plants that bees are likely to visit.

More than a decade ago, U.S. beekeepers began finding their hives decimated by what became known as colony collapse disorder. Millions of bees mysteriously disappeared, leaving farms with fewer pollinators for crops. Explanations for the phenomenon have included exposure to pesticides or antibiotics, habitat loss and bacterial infections. This latest study adds herbicides as a possible contributing factor.

“It’s not the only thing causing all these bee deaths, but it is definitely something people should worry about because glyphosate is used everywhere,” said Motta.

Native bumble bees have microbiomes similar to honey bees, so Moran said it’s likely that they would be affected by glyphosate in a similar way.

The weird shapes and colors of the tiny Martian moons Phobos and Deimos have inspired a long-standing debate about their origins.

The dark faces of the moons resemble the primitive asteroids of the outer solar system, suggesting the moons might be asteroids caught long ago in Mars’ gravitational pull. But the shapes and angles of the moons’ orbits do not fit this capture scenario.

A fresh look at 20-year-old data from the Mars Global Surveyor mission lends support to the idea the moons of Mars formed after a large impact on the planet threw a lot of rock into orbit, according to a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The dataset held unplumbed clues to the stuff Phobos is made of, which may be more similar to the crust of the Red Planet than it appears, according to the study’s authors.

“The fun part for me has been taking a poke at some of the ideas out there using an old dataset that’s has been underutilized,” said Tim Glotch, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University in New York and the lead author of the new study.

Marc Fries, a planetary scientists and curator of cosmic dust at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, who was not involved in the new study, said the inability to explain the genesis of two moons around a neighboring planet is a glaring shortcoming in scientists’ understanding of moon formation. Clearing it up will help with interpretations of how other moons and planets formed in our solar system and beyond. The new study does not clinch the mystery, but it is a step in the right direction, he said.

“The issue of the origins of Phobos and Deimos is a fun sort of mystery, because we have two competing hypotheses that cannot both be true,” Fries said. “I would not consider this to be a final solution to the mystery of the moons’ origin, but it will help keep the discussion moving forward.”

Dark objects

The debate over the origin of Mars’ moons has split scientists for decades, since the early days of planetary science. In visible light, Phobos and Deimos look much darker than Mars, lending weight to the adoption hypothesis.

Scientists study the mineral composition of objects by breaking the light they reflect into component colors with a spectrophotometer, creating distinctive visual “fingerprints.” By comparing the spectral fingerprints of planetary surfaces to a library of spectra for known materials, they can infer the composition of these distant objects. Most of the research into the composition of asteroids has examined their spectra in visible light and in near-infrared light, which is just beyond human vision on the red side of the visible spectrum.

In visible and near-infrared light, Phobos and D-class asteroids look much the same–that is, both their spectra are nearly featureless because they are so dark. D-class asteroids are nearly black as coal because, like coal, they contain carbon. This dark aspect of Phobos led to the hypothesis that the moon is a captive asteroid that flew a little too close to Mars.

But scientists looking at the orbits of Mars’ moons argued they could not have been captured. These scientists believe the moons must have formed at the same time as Mars, or resulted from a massive impact on the planet during its formative millennia.

“If you talk to the people who are really good at orbital dynamics and figuring out why certain bodies orbit the way they do, they say that, given the inclination and the details of Phobos’ orbit, it’s almost impossible that it was captured. So you have the spectroscopists saying one thing and the dynamicists saying something else,” Glotch said.

Heat fingerprints

Glotch decided to look at the problem in a different light: the mid-infrared, which is in the same range as body temperature. He looked at the heat signature of Phobos captured in 1998 by an instrument he describes as a fancy thermometer carried on the Mars Global Surveyor. The robotic spacecraft spent most of its lifetime looking down at Mars, but took a quick look at Phobos when it passed near the moon before settling into a closer orbit around the planet.

Heat energy, like visible light, can be split into a spectrum of “colors.” Even objects that look black in visible light may glow in a distinctive infrared spectrum. Although Phobos is very cold, its heat spectrum has a discernable signature.

Glotch and his students compared the mid-infrared spectra of Phobos glimpsed by the Mars Global Explorer to samples of a meteorite that fell to Earth near Tagish Lake, British Columbia, which some scientists have suggested is a fragment of a D-class asteroid, and other rock types. In the lab, they subjected their samples to Phobos-like conditions of cold vacuum, heating them from above and below to simulate the extreme changes in temperature from the sunny to the shady sides of airless objects in space.

“We found, at these wavelength ranges, the Tagish Lake meteorite doesn’t look anything like Phobos, and in fact what matches Phobos most closely, or at least one of the features in the spectrum, is ground-up basalt, which is a common volcanic rock, and it’s what most of the Martian crust is made out of,” Glotch said. “That leads us to believe that perhaps Phobos might be a remnant of an impact that occurred early on in Martian history.”

Planetary crust baked in?

The new study does not argue Phobos is made entirely of material from Mars, but the new results are consistent with the moon containing a portion of the planet’s crust, perhaps as an amalgamation of debris from the planet and the remnants of the impacting object.

Fries, the scientist who was not involved in the new study, said the Tagish Lake meteorite is unusual, and perhaps not the best example of a D-class asteroid available for a compelling comparison with Phobos. Fries added the new study was unlikely to be able to produce a definitive answer because Phobos is subject to space weathering, which affects its reflectance spectrum and is difficult to replicate in the lab.

But Fries said he found it interesting that a mix of basalt and carbon-rich material made an appropriate match for Phobos. Another possibility is that carbon-rich space dust in the vicinity of Mars has collected on the close-orbiting moons, darkening their surfaces, he said.

Scientists may get their answer to Phobos’ origins in the next couple of years, if the Martian Moon eXploration spacecraft and the OSIRIS-Rex and Hayabusa2 asteroid explorers complete their missions to collect samples and return them to Earth for analysis. Hyabusa2 landed two mini robots on the asteroid known as Ryugu on September 21..

“The really cool thing is that this is a testable hypothesis, because the Japanese are developing a mission called MMX that is going to go to Phobos, collect a sample and bring it back to Earth for us to analyze,” Glotch said.

The new President and Vice-President elected at the Maldives elections are expected to be sworn in on 17 November 2018, the Maldives Foreign Ministry said. The Elections Commission of Maldives announced the provisional results of the elections to elect the President of the Maldives, for the next five years.

The candidate of the Maldivian Democratic Party, Member of Parliament Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, won the election, having received 134,616 votes. The candidate of the Progressive Party of the Maldives, incumbent President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom, received 96,132 votes. Of the 262,135 eligible voters in the election, 233,877 voters cast their votes at the 472 ballot boxes placed in the Maldives and in four countries abroad. This is a voter turnout of 89.22 percent.

The Maldives Elections Department said that voting proceeded smoothly, and peacefully, with no reported incidents. No major issues were reported in the vote counting process as well as with the voters list, which will affect the results.

Voting took place in the presence of a record number of representatives of candidates, observers and monitors. 945 representatives of candidates, 2610 local observers and international observers from 11 agencies, and 3329 local monitors and a number of international monitors are active in the election.Official results will be announced within the next seven days, before 30 September 2018.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Finance and Mass Media states that although some people try to show the depreciation of the rupee as a fall in the economy, the economic indicators remain strong. “Over the years there has emerged a fallacy that the value of the currency is a bellwether of the strength of the economy. Value of the Rupee is determined by the foreign exchange market, where value is determined by supply & demand,” the Minister said.

Speaking in parliament, Minister Samaraweera pointed out that the primary determinants of the demand for currency are exports and imports of goods and services and net capital flows.In Sri Lanka’s case these base indicators remain positive and are moving in the correct direction, he said.

Exports in 2017 reached US$ 11.3 billion, and when net services exports are considered this figure reaches US$ 15.8 billion, according to the Minister.He said the government has taken timely and prudential measures to control imports growth, especially vehicle imports, which is a major outflow of Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange.

The Finance Minister pointed out that currency depreciation against strengthening dollar is not limited to Sri Lanka.According to the Minister, from January 1st 2018 till the 18th of Sep 2018, LKR Rupee had depreciated by 7.4%. The Indian Rupee depreciated by 13.5%, Pakistani Rupee by 12.1%, Indonesian Rupiah by 9.5%, Russian Ruble by 18.2%, Brazilian Real by 24.8%, Turkey by 68% & Argentina 112%.

The Minister said further depreciation of rupee can be expected in the future.Responding to the claims that economy is collapsing due to the depreciation of rupee the Minister recalled that in 2011, the Central Bank sold US$ 3.184 billion of reserves in an attempt to defend the currency. “Further US$ 977 million was sold in the first two months of 2012. Nonetheless, the currency crashed from Rs. 113.90 in end 2011 to Rs. 132.55 by end-April 2012 a depreciation of 14% in a few months.”

“It is clear that Sri Lanka is by no means the only country subjected to the phenomenon of capital moving of all the frontier and emerging market economies. If we are to remain integrated with the global economy and sell our exports, attract FDI and engage in capital markets, we will certainly be exposed to such volatility,” the Minister said.

Minister Samaraweera responding to the concerns on economy said under the current global conditions, it is imperative to build up the safeguards and resilience to be able to meet up to such volatility and further consolidate macroeconomic stability, to provide confidence to global capital markets and towards this end the government has taken the appropriate steps.

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi’s lab have given the first demonstration of crowd counting through walls using only everyday communication signals such as WiFi. The technique, which requires only a wireless transmitter and receiver outside the area of interest, could have a variety of applications, including smart energy management, retail business planning and security.

“Our proposed approach makes it possible to estimate the number of people inside a room from outside,” said Mostofi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara. “This approach utilizes only WiFi RSSI measurements and does not rely on people to carry a device.”

Their research findings appeared in the 2018 IEEE PERCOM conference, as well as in their other related publications such as 2018 IEEE SECON and 2018 IEEE SAM.

In the team’s experiments, one WiFi transmitter and one WiFi receiver are behind walls, outside a room in which a number of people are present. The room can get very crowded with as many as 20 people zigzagging each other. The transmitter sends a wireless signal whose received signal strength (RSSI) is measured by the receiver. Using only such received signal power measurements, the receiver estimates how many people are inside the room — an estimate that closely matches the actual number. It is noteworthy that the researchers do not do any prior measurements or calibration in the area of interest; their approach has only a very short calibration phase that need not be done in the same area.

This development builds on previous work in the Mostofi Lab, which has pioneered sensing with everyday radio frequency signals such as WiFi, with several publications in this area since 2009. For instance, their 2015 paper showed crowd counting without relying on people to carry a device, but with the transmitter and receiver in the same area as the people.

“However, enabling through-wall crowd counting is considerably more challenging due to the high level of attenuation by the walls,” said Mostofi. Her lab’s success in this endeavor is due to the new proposed methodology they developed.

Key to this technology is that human presence and movement can result in significant drops — thought of in this project as “events” — in the received signal strength.

“Consider the event sequence that corresponds to the occurence of significant signal drops,” Mostofi said. “An inter-event time is then the time in between two consecutive events.” The researchers’ approach for enabling through-wall crowd counting is based on mathematically characterizing the information content of the received signal inter-event times, and relating it to the total number of occupants.

“We have observed that while the signal magnitude can be severely attenuated through walls, the inter-event times corresponding to the events of significant signal drops are more robust to wall attenuations,” Said Saandeep Depatla, the lead Ph.D. student on this project. Thus, the researchers’ approach is based on exploiting these inter-event times.

More specifically, by modeling the event sequence corresponding to the significant signal drops as a renewal-type process, the researchers have utilized mathematical tools from renewal process literature, a theoretical field that has found applications in areas such as reliability and risk analysis. After a long derivation, the researchers were able to mathematically model the statistics of the inter-event times and explicitly relate them to the total number of occupants in the area.

The Mostofi Lab has tested their new technology extensively, in different locations, with different wall properties and with several different numbers of people — up to and including 20. They showed a counting accuracy of 2 people or less 100 percent of the time with only one WiFi link. It is further noteworthy that their setup consists solely of off-the-shelf WiFi transceivers.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took part together with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in the Global Progress Forum, a meeting point for progressive leaders to debate global issues.

The debate between the two leaders revolved around the commitment to gender equality and the achievements on parity attained by their respective cabinets. They also reviewed the need to combine economic growth and social justice, one of the key factors in progressive ideology, and how to combat the fear policy being spread around the world by populist movements.

Following the debate with Justin Trudeau, the President of the Government held a meeting with the Spanish community, where he conveyed a message of support and the government’s commitment to eliminate the “voto rogado”.

Buried alive. Butchered. Decapitated. Hacked. Mutilated. Killed. Archaeologist Samuel K. Lothrop did not obfuscate when describing what he thought had happened to the 220 bodies his expedition excavated from Panama’s Playa Venado site in 1951. The only problem is that Lothrop likely got it wrong. A new evaluation of the site’s remains by Smithsonian archaeologists revealed no signs of trauma at or near time of death. The burial site likely tells a more culturally nuanced story.

The “long-overdue” reexamination of the Playa Venado site, which dates to 500-900 A.D. and is located near the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, revealed no evidence of ritual killing, said Nicole E. Smith-Guzmán, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Lothrop’s misinterpretations are likely due to the era of “Romantic archaeology,” underdeveloped methods for mortuary studies and literal readings of Spanish accounts of indigenous peoples after European contact.

“We now realize that many of these Spanish chroniclers were motivated to show the indigenous populations they encountered as ‘uncivilized’ and in need of conquering,” said Smith-Guzmán, adding that many accounts of sacrifice and cannibalism have not been confirmed by the archaeological record. “Rather than an example of violent death and careless deposition, Playa Venado presents an example of how pre-Columbian societies in the Isthmo-Colombian area showed respect and care for their kin after death.”

The article, co-authored by STRI staff archaeologist Richard Cooke, was published in Latin American Antiquity. But Lothrop’s 1954 paper, “Suicide, sacrifice and mutilations in burials at Venado Beach, Panama,” left its mark on the annals of Panamanian archaeology. It has been cited more than 35 times as evidence of violence, cannibalism or trophy decapitation. Some authors have used the paper to suggest Playa Venado is a mass burial site or a manifestation of conflict.

In defense of Lothrop, who was an archaeologist with Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Enthnology, bioarchaeology (the study of human remains from archaeological contexts) did not exist as a sub-discipline until two decades after his work concluded at Playa Venado. Today’s practitioners also benefit from methods developed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lothrop’s careful documentation and preservation of remains made reevaluation possible. Remains from more than 70 individuals from Playa Venado are at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, sent there by Lothrop for osteological evaluation.

Upon examination, Smith-Guzmán found only wounds that showed signs of healing well before the individuals died, including blows to the head and a dislocated thumb. Various broken bones and disarticulated remains discovered by Lothrop more likely explained by normal processes of decomposition and secondary burial of remains, which is believed to have a common ancestor-veneration practice in pre-Colombian Panama.

Evidence suggests certain people’s remains were preserved for long periods of time before being buried in ritual contexts. “At Playa Venado, we see a lot of evidence of adults being buried next to urns containing children, multiple burials including one primary and one secondary burial, and disturbance of previously laid graves in order to inter another individual in association,” said Smith-Guzmán.

“The uniform burial positioning and the absence of perimortem (around the time of death) trauma stands in contradiction to Lothrop’s interpretation of violent death at the site,” said Smith-Guzmán, who also used evidence from other archaeological sites around Panama about burial rites as part of the investigation. “There are low rates of trauma in general, and the open mouths of skeletons Lothrop noted are more easily explained by normal muscle relaxation after death and decay.”

Smith-Guzmán and Cooke’s reassessment of the Playa Venado burials suggests that ideas about widespread violence in pre-Columbian Panama need to be reconsidered. The research is part of a larger, interdisciplinary site reanalysis that will be published by the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C..

Historically, salt marshes have not only served as ecological nurseries for fish, birds, and other wildlife–they’ve been stalwart defenses against coastal storms. But recently, coastal development coupled with accelerated sea level rise has threatened wetlands across the globe. Among them are the salt marshes in New York City’s Jamaica Bay, an 18,000-acre estuary bordered by Queens and Brooklyn.

Using sediment cores to trace the evolution of Jamaica Bay’s wetlands, a team led by researchers within Columbia’s Earth Institute finds that urbanization is weakening the shoreline and starving the marshes of vital mineral sediment, causing their gradual but dramatic erosion. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also offers strategies to restore and preserve these important natural systems in Jamaica Bay and elsewhere.

“We knew that these marshes were disappearing, and there were lots of reasons people had proposed as to why,” said Dorothy Peteet, lead author and senior research scientist at NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, “but no one had actually looked at the organic and the inorganic part of it to see why the marshes are fragmenting.”

The Jamaica Bay wetlands have helped dampen waves and substantially block or slow down winds that accompany storms. The marshes have also been a haven for an estimated 325 species of migratory and resident birds and upwards of 90 types of fish. In recent decades, though, these marshes have been eroding at alarming rates–putting the shores and the animals at peril.

Two sediment cores, which the team drilled from the marsh surfaces, provided a window into the area’s past and revealed why the marshes are disappearing. A lack of inorganic sediment–or sand, silt, and clay–is depriving the marshes of mineral sediment that helps to hold the ecosystem together. Without these sediments, the marshes lose their structure and disintegrate.

“The major cause of decline is that we have changed the natural sediment supply–we have destroyed the input for sand, silt, and clay,” Peteet explained. Eighteen streams that once emptied into Jamaica Bay filled the estuary with rich amounts of sediment. Now only eight streams remain, and they bring “hardly anything but wastewater,” said Peteet. “In the centers, the marshes have kept up because we still have the native grasses here–but at the edges, they’re really not sustainable due to fragmentation.”

The Jamaica Bay wetlands are also being weakened by sea level rise–perhaps even more so than in other coastal regions of the U.S., since relative increases in sea levels due to climate change are greater in mid-Atlantic states such as New York. As such, regional sea levels are rising at faster rates than the marshes themselves–putting these mineral-depleted wetlands in danger of drowning.

“Now, we’re seeing almost five millimeters in sea level rise per year,” said Peteet. “If your accretion rate is below that, there is no way the marshes can keep up.”

To restore and strengthen the salt marshes, the study recommends filling in Jamaica Bay’s dredged areas and spraying sand, silt, and clay onto the remaining marshes. The estuary’s craters must be filled in first, Peteet explained, so that the sprayed sediment doesn’t leave the marshes and accumulate in the pits. Marshes were successfully restored in Los Angeles’ Wax Bay Delta using these tactics.

Collectively, upwards of $130 million has already been spent on tidal marsh restoration in Jamaica Bay over the past two decades, according to Adam Parris, executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute of Jamaica Bay. Government agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the city’s Parks Department are working to rebuild damaged marshes on the bay’s islands and restore marshes that have been buried by fill.

While these efforts are cause for hope, the rates and magnitude of sea-level rise anticipated for the next half-century remains concerning, Parris noted. “There is definitely no question that clean sediment will be required to help sustain those restoration projects over the long-term,” he said.

On a larger scale, manmade development has caused New York State to lose more than half of all its wetlands, and has resulted in the disappearance of marshes worldwide, said Peteet. “It is incumbent on us as people to remedy it.”

Russia may supply Syria with a S-300 system in response to the downing of the IL-20 reconnaissance aircraft off the coast of Latakia, a senior official told Kommersant newspaper on Monday, September 24 morning.

According to the report, Russia is mulling the potential of providing the S-300 missile defense system to Syria after blaming Israel for the downing of the IL-20 aircraft last Monday.

Russian officials have made similar statements regarding the possible supply of S-300 missile defense systems in the past; however, Syria has yet to receive them from Moscow or their Iranian counterparts.

Last year, Russia delivered the S-300 missile defense system to the Islamic Republic of Iran, marking the first major delivery of this anti-aircraft system to the Persian Gulf nation.

Since receiving the S-300, the Iranian military has been reportedly copying the model in order to provide it to its allies in Syria.

By Hannah Brockhaus

During an ecumenical prayer service in Latvia Monday, Pope Francis warned Christians to not let the faith turn into another piece of history, but to keep it an active part of their lives and communities.

“This is a recurring danger for all of us,” the pope said Sept. 24. “We can take what gives us our very identity and turn it into a curio from the past, a tourist attraction, a museum piece that recalls the achievements of earlier ages… The same thing can happen with faith.”

“We can stop feeling like ‘resident’ Christians and become tourists,” he continued. “We could even say that our whole Christian tradition can run the same risk. The risk of ending up as a museum piece, enclosed within the walls of our churches, and no longer giving out a tune capable of moving the hearts and inspiring the lives of those who hear it.”

Pope Francis spoke during an ecumenical prayer meeting in the Evangelical Lutheran cathedral in Riga, Latvia. The cathedral is one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks and houses a pipe organ considered among the best in the world.

Though the organ has been renovated and rebuilt several times over the years, it is also considered one of the oldest in Europe and was at one time the largest in the world.

During the prayer, Francis referenced the organ, pointing out how it must have “accompanied the life, the creativity, the imagination and the devotion of all those who were moved by its sound.”

“It has been the instrument of God and of men for lifting of eyes and hearts to heaven. Today it is a symbol of this city and its cathedral,” he said. “For those who live here, it is more than a monumental organ; it is part of the life, traditions and identity of this place.”

He said the organ can be a symbol of the Christian faith, which as St. Luke says, “is not to be hidden away, but to be made known and to resound in the various sectors of society.”

If the “music of the Gospel” is not heard in people’s lives, there can be no hope, he said. If the music of the Gospel does not sound in homes, in workplaces, in public, people will not recognize the duty to defend the dignity of every man and woman.

If the music of the Gospel stops, people will lose joy, compassion, trust, and the capacity for reconciliation. He stated: “If the music of the Gospel is no longer heard, we will lose the sounds that guide our lives to heaven and become locked into one of the worst ills of our day: loneliness and isolation.”

“Thank God” that the words of the Gospel of John continue to “echo in our midst,” the pope said: “Father, that all may be one… so that the world may believe.”

He explained that Jesus prayed these words before his Passion, “as he looked ahead to his own cross.” This constant and quiet prayer marks a path for everyone, shows the way to follow, he emphasized.

“We discover the only path possible for all ecumenism: that of confronting the cross of suffering… Jesus turning to his Father, and to us his brothers and sisters, continues to pray: ‘that all may be one.’”

These are not easy times, Francis said, especially for those who, even today, are experiencing exile and martyrdom for the faith. “Yet their witness makes us realize that the Lord continues to call us, asking us to live the Gospel radically, in joy and gratitude.”

“If Christ deemed us worthy to live in these times, at this hour – the only hour we have – we cannot let ourselves be overcome by fear, nor allow this time to pass without living it fully with joyful fidelity,” he said.

Following the prayer meeting Pope Francis met with elderly men and women in St. James’ Catholic Cathedral. Though a historically Lutheran country, Catholics make up around 25 percent of the population of just under 2 million.

At St. James’ the pope recalled the many trials older Latvians have experienced, such as war, political repression, persecution, and exile. “Yet you remained steadfast; you persevered in faith,” he said.

“Neither the Nazi regime, nor the Soviet regime could extinguish the faith in your hearts. Neither could they stop some of you from becoming priests, religious sisters, catechists, or from serving the Church in other ways that put your lives at risk,” he said. “You fought the good fight; you ran the race, you kept the faith.”

He pointed to the words of St. James to have constancy in faith, and encouraged those present to persevere, to “not yield to disappointment or grief,” to not lose gentleness or hope.

Francis encouraged them to have, in their homes and homeland, “patient endurance and patient expectation,” so that “in this way you will continue to build your people.”

Before the meetings in the two cathedrals, Pope Francis started his day in Latvia with a brief speech to the country’s authorities. To them he said he was happy to know that the Catholic Church, in cooperation with the other Christian churches, is an important part of the country’s roots.

“The Gospel has nourished the life of your people in the past; today it can continue to open new paths enabling you to face present challenges, to value differences and, above all, to encourage ‘com-union’ between all,” he said.

The pope also praised the country’s liberty, which is celebrated during this year’s 100th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence.

“If today we can celebrate, it is due to all those who blazed trails and opened a door to the future,” he said, “and bequeathed to you that same responsibility: to open a door to the future by looking to everything that stands at the service of life.”

He said a community’s development is not measured by the goods produced or resources possessed, but by the desire “to engender life and build for the future,” which is “measured by their capacity for self-sacrifice and commitment, in imitation of the example of past generations.”

By Arie Firdaus

Campaigning for next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Indonesia has begun, with analysts saying they expect smear tactics and vote-buying to mar the period leading to the 2019 vote.

The six-month campaign kicked off on Sunday with the two presidential candidates signing a pledge for a peaceful race and releasing white doves.

Incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo faces former special forces commander Gen. Prabowo Subianto in the election scheduled for April 17. It is a repeat of 2014 electoral battle, when Jokowi narrowly defeated Prabowo.

“God willing, it will be peaceful,” Prabowo, 66, told reporters on Monday.

About 187 million Indonesians are eligible to vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections, which will be held simultaneously for the first time.

With many voters undecided, analysts expect contestants and their supporters to employ smear tactics and buy votes.

“Money politics, fake news and hoaxes will still happen, especially during the later days of the campaign when they resort to whatever ammunition at their disposal,” Wawan Mas’udi, a political analyst at Gajah Mada University, told BenarNews.

Former Gen. Wiranto, the coordinating minister for politics and security, warned politicians against capitalizing on religious, ethnic and racial prejudices to attack opponents.

“We have to avoid such things to maintain our unity as a nation,” he said Monday.

A day after the campaign began, pollster Indonesia Survey Circle launched its survey results showing an increase in political intolerance over the past three years.

The national survey, which was carried out in August, involved 1,520 voters and focused on public perception of democracy, corruption and intolerance.

The survey showed 59 percent of Muslims objected to a non-Muslim becoming president. Non-Muslims, on the other hand, were more tolerant to the appointment of Muslim leaders, it said.

Presidential campaign

Jokowi has picked conservative cleric Ma’ruf Amin, 75, as his running mate, while Prabowo is teaming up with former Jakarta deputy governor and wealthy businessman Sandiaga Uno.

Analysts said Jokowi’s choice of Ma’ruf is intended to fend off accusations by conservative Muslims that he is not Islamic enough. In 2014, he had to deal with a smear campaign accusing him of being an ethnic Chinese communist.

“This is a celebration of democracy,” Jokowi said last week before the campaign began officially. “The most important thing is, we should not let the election divide us. It should not cause neighbors to stop talking to each other or make us feel that we are no longer brothers and sisters.”

At least three recent polls show Jokowi favored by 52 percent to 53 percent of voters, while Prabowo was favored by 30 percent to 35 percent.

Parliamentary election

Sixteen political parties are contesting the parliamentary election to fill 575 seats in the House and 136 in the Senate. Almost 8,000 candidates will appear on ballots across the country.

Some analysts said newly established parties, such as the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) and the Working Party (Partai Berkarya), would find it difficult to see their candidates get elected.

The Working Party was founded by Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of former dictator Suharto, who served as president from 1967 to 1998. Tommy Suharto was sentenced to prison in 2002 on charges he ordered the killing of a judge who previously convicted him of corruption. Suharto was released in 2006.

As campaigns heat up, police said they were deploying more than 270,000 personnel backed by the military, to maintain security.

The Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) urged people to report any campaign violation they see.

“We will take action on any violation,” Bawaslu member Rahmat Bagja said.

Ahmad Syamsudin in Jakarta contributed to this report.