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An Ode To A Village Postman – OpEd

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Wait Mr. Postman
Please Mr. Postman, look and see
Oh yeah
If there’s a letter in your bag for me….

These lyrics sung way back in the ’70s by the Carpenters immortalized the humble postman and his role in a lovesick teenager’s life. Closer to home, Rajesh Khanna did pretty much the same in Palkon ki chhaon mein (‘In the Shade of the Eyelids’), as he sang Dakiya dak laya (‘Come, the mailman has brought the mail’). These films and songs reflected a reality many middle-aged Indians were familiar with—the ineffectual man in khaki, his pants clipped firmly at the bottom to keep the well-starched fabric from getting smudged by the greased cycle chain, pedaling his bicycle and putting letters and postcards into eager. Come rain or sun, the postman would trudge on foot with his bag full of letters or cover difficult terrains on his bicycle.

In an Indian village a postman was much more than just a letter deliverer. He enjoyed a unique status unrivalled by his urban colleagues. His social perimeter straggled the constellation of villages he covered in his official errands which could be anywhere between 4-5 villages depending on the size of each village. No one could dare challenge his credentials about knowing so much of the realities of rural social life. He had access to even the most intimate and private affairs of families. In case the entire household was unlettered, he was the only channel of communication for it with their cousins. He would read aloud the letters to them and would also write out replies on their behalf.

He was the heart of the local social planet who commiserated with people and shared their common concerns. In return the people also loved him and lavished benedictions and eulogies on him. When he brought good news, the recipient would reward him with whatever sweets there were in the house. During festivities, he would be an important guest and be treated to goodies that the family had prepared. And, when he delivered the money orders, he would get some monetary tips. It was not mandatory but usually the giver gave and the postman did not have the heart to refuse.

For me the postman was more than just a benign messenger who delivered a trove of daily mail. He was a highly resourceful support to the local community. I always felt a strange kinship with him. He relieved us of a number of cumbersome tasks that were made simple by him on account of his knowledge of the local geography and the social arcana. “Those who have known us, continue to respect us. In fact, people trust us more than the courier guys.” he would chuckle. “There have been many a time when I have picked up letters dropped carelessly by the courierwallah and delivered them to the right address.”

In his Malgudi Days RK Narayan immortalized the tiny post office in Malgudi, where Thanappa the local postman delivers letters, on his bicycle, pedalling across the town. Thanappa is not just the postman of Malgudi, he is one of the most loved characters who is a link for so many families.

A village democracy is a microcosm of the national democracy. The villagers themselves are quaint heroes and most bewildering windows with which to view their world. The postman became my lens for gazing the rural horizon. He was an informal rural sociologist and demographer for all visiting government officials .We could clarify from him several complex issues which even a lifetime’s reading of Mead, Metcalfe, Shrinivas, Ghurye, Madan, Mandelbaum, Dumont and Lewis and scores of their celebrated ilk of anthropologists could not enlighten us.

The postman at the village where I was stationed was Vithal Batte, a demure man with a knack of striking up friendships with any stranger. With his grey hair and gentle demeanour, he cut a grandfatherly figure, but, as I quickly learned, he was a postal employee with a workaholic edge. Money was not a high priority for him. His wife was employed as a peon in a local school. The Battes didn’t have children. For them the entire village was their family. Batte had a special calm ability for defusing tension; he was a natural mediator. He handled every visitor to the village with warmth and sobriety. On account of his affable nature and his charming manners, Vithal was a much adored man. He was everybody’s family friend, the fond uncle for the kids.

After every short ride on his bicycle, he would waddle to a stop, lower his voluminous satchel, sending a few letters flying into the dust. Diligently he would brush off the dust and return them to his stockpile, don his satchel again and resume his daily rounds—a process which I watched with pleasure through the large window in my office. A dedicated postal carrier, he spent most of his day weighed down by letters as he navigated treacherous paths in order to ensure that the mail reached the remote villages in a timely fashion. He would sit using the seal to cancel blank postage stamps on letters, putting them into his old, worn out, discarded canvas bag that bulged with letters that had doomed addresses. It had also a seal, ’Returned Letters’.

For me, the postman was more than just a benign messenger who delivered a trove of daily mail. He was an informal but highly resourceful member of the local bank family. He relieved us of a number of cumbersome and mundane tasks, made simple by his knowledge of the local geography and the social arcana. He didn’t mind the long hours of work he had to put in despite his meagre salary. I think the greatest incentive for him was that he enjoyed the job and was able to realize his self-actualization needs. He always cared about the respect he could command. “Those who have known us, continue to respect us. In fact, people trust us more than the courier guys,” he would chuckle. “There have been many a time when I have picked up letters dropped carelessly by the courierwallah and delivered them to the right address.”

The postman was a key person in the village as he helped me with innovative solutions to intractable problems. One such problem was the difficulty experienced by the infirm and old customers in visiting the bank. A majority of the villages in our block were cut off by a river which had to be crossed to reach Bina, the larger village where the bank branch was located. The paths from other directions were treacherous, impassable for most of the year. People needed to be ferried across by canoes in order to transact their business with the bank. A large number of depositors were illiterate and could not sign their cheques. They had to be escorted by a family member who had to forego a day’s wage for the purpose. I felt that a solution must be found to mitigate the hardship of these people. I was also losing precious time as I had to keep bobbing across to villages on a fishing boat just for the sake of getting simple formalities completed by marginal farmers and agricultural labour.

On the suggestion of the postman, I worked out an innovative method for addressing this issue. I decided to use the postman’s services for delivering payment to those depositors. My staff compiled a list of such ailing or elderly customers and we decided to set apart a specified amount of cash to be delivered by the postman against cheques signed by the depositor. In case of illiterate customers, the postman would attest to the thumbprints. There was no provision of drawing cash from suspense account—an account which is normally debited in case of emergency expenses for the bank; so I decided to draw from my own account. Once the cheques were received and the accounts debited, my cash would get replenished. Since the postman was a contractual employee of the post department, I had absolutely no qualms about engaging him for this work. However, as a matter of caution and to circumvent the possible complications of labour laws, I decided to make the payment in his wife’s name.

It was Vithal again who inspired me to become a strong adherent and later a staunch champion of the experiments which reinforced that even a small loan to a woman tends to have far more beneficial ripple effects for the family compared to one made similarly to a man. Sociologists may debate endlessly about the reasons why men tend to spend the money on themselves while women tend to spend on their families, especially their children, but an assignment in a village can reveal this truth in its starkest colours. Vithal’s voice was not the only voice raised in the village in the favour of women but his was surely the loudest and most persistent, and—cumulatively—the most persuasive. He was such a zealous believer in the theory that he tramped through almost all the villages with me to demonstrate the creative potential of poor rural women in money management

Another area where his advice proved to be worthwhile was in dealing with defaulters of loans. Our normal practice was to print tersely worded standard letters in which we would fill the particulars of the borrowers and mail these letters to them. The postman had been observing me generating huge volumes of correspondence with unimpressive results. The mounting postal expenses for dispatching these letters were blowing holes in the balance sheet without yielding commensurate benefit. I happened to discuss my dilemma and anguish with the postman. He suggested I send postcards for small borrowers and telegrams for bigger ones.

What was so new about this strategy? The post card is not a sealed cover; its contents are always open for public reading. In villages, the postman normally drops the mail at the doorstep of the villager. If the person happens to be away, his neighbour or any visitor is quite likely to go through the contents. Similarly the villagers get alarmed and curious when there is a telegram. A telegram in a village normally triggers an instant alarm. The informal communications network of any village is so efficient that even the bowel movements of every man are known to his fellowmen.

Losing face is a devastating thing in a village context, and the villager will normally do anything to avoid it. The news of the bank’s notice catches immediate fire and the borrower becomes the butt of the village gossip mill. The villagers come up with wonderful theories about the likely fate of the poor borrower. This builds tremendous social pressure on the borrower’s family, forcing him to take immediate steps to regularize his loan. This strategy served me well for almost a decade during my professional career and would have continued to do so, had the internet not decimated these channels.

All that has changed. The postal departments have revamped their images to get a sleek new age look. The postman too has got a makeover. Gone are the days when he used to deliver picture postcards, letters to lovers and money orders from newly-employed sons and goodies from doting grandparents. Gone too is the time he was a window to the world, a tenuous link with loved ones, and was almost a family member. Communication is now via e-mail or SMS or mobile phones.

People are gradually forgetting the art of letter writing – in another decade, there will not be any letters on display penned by celebrities of today. The postman now visits the houses to drop the official statements of the bank or the insurance company or the telephone or electricity bills or printed pamphlets for promotion of products. In these high-tech times, lovers no longer write letters, instant banking has replaced money orders, grandparents rely on courier companies whose boys zip on sleek mobikes to deliver parcels of love and almost nobody has a pen pal when social networking sites work just as well or even better, for that matter.

I feel extremely dismayed with the way the Indian village postman has receded into the far horizons of the rural landscape .The traditional postman has been slowly consigned to grandma’s folklores and lullaby tales. But it is an image that just won’t get washed away by the driftwood of history. The image will keep revisiting us. The postman remains a hero for those of my generation .Everyone knows for sure that the new digital show kids can’t provide the warmth and intimacy that has gone along with the figure of the traditional postman.

A rural postman was not just a mail carrier; he was the social glue that bonded disparate communities. I remember the times when his sight would flood my mind with the excitement of the possibility of getting the news I had been long awaiting. I remember how eagerly our landlady listened for his knock –how tremulously she asked for whom the letters were directed—and the painfully repressed sigh and darkened countenance with which she turned away when there was none for her.

The new boys are savvy, attired in modern executive apparel, zipping on mobikes in a professional businesslike manner. They now offer many new services – filling out traffic challans and submitting them and also carry electronic devices that capture and transmit the signatures of the addressees digitally in case of registered letters or speed posts. In villages, they are data collectors and stock groceries and extend essential healthcare services. But despite all these add-ons the new boys can’t be a substitute for the romantic postman.

I remember my school lessons where we were told of the time when the mail was delivered by runners who carried a spear with two little bells attached to the shaft near the head. The spear was meant to protect them from robbers and wild animals and the bells just kept up their courage as they jogged along jungle trails.

There is an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City:

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”

W.H. Auden’s tribute to the postman will continue s to resonate for generations to come:

“They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?”


PM Sánchez Reiterates Spain’s Commitment To Mediterranean Corridor While Speaking With Ximo Puig

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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met on Wednesday morning at Moncloa Palace with the President of the Regional Government of Valencia, Ximo Puig, with whom he discussed the various issues on the table between the two authorities, including financing, infrastructures, transport and healthcare.

On the issue of financing, Pedro Sánchez said that Ximo Puig gave him new data that show conditions have been met to proceed with refinancing the debt held by the Regional Government of Valencia and invited him to do so before the deadline expires on 31 October. Pedro Sánchez also told him that the Government of Spain, as other countries are doing, will pass on the request made by the President of the Regional Government of Valencia to the European Commission for the spending on R&D made by public authorities in partnership with the private sector, to not be counted in deficit terms.

On infrastructures and on behalf of the General State Administration Services, he reaffirmed a commitment to maintaining investment in the region so that a per capita average similar to that of other autonomous regions in Spain can be reached as far as budgetary availability will allow. Specifically, work is actively under way on all sections of the Mediterranean Corridor in line with the various stages at which each one now is. These investments affect the Tarragona-Castellón, Castellón-Valencia and Valencia-Encina Hub sections.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Public Works will increase the number of Castellón-Vinarós and Alicante-Elda-Villena services (three-fold and two-fold, respectively), allocating more than 11 million euros to that end within a genuinely complicated budgetary situation. As is the case for other major Spanish cities, an agreement was reached for the 2019 Budget to include funding for metropolitan transport in Valencia, which is the third-largest city in Spain with a metropolitan population of more than 1.5 million. This funding will take the form of a subsidy and the precise amount will need to be specified with the Ministry of the Treasury during the process of drawing up the General State Budget.

The Prime Minister echoed the concerns expressed by the President of the Regional Government of Valencia about his region’s healthcare services looking after a high number of visitors given the significant tourism sector in Valencia. In this regard, a commitment was made to amend and develop Spanish Royal Decree-Law 16/2012 that set up the Healthcare Guarantee Fund in order to extend the services covered and streamline the inter-regional balancing mechanisms. Pedro Sánchez expressed the Spanish Government’s willingness to participate in the project to create a Study Centre on Aging in Alicante through the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

The two officialsagreed that the Central Government of Spain will continue providing maximum support for consolidation of the municipality of Quart de Poblet in Valencia as a digital headquarters for the United Nations. To that end, the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fernando Valenzuela, has scheduled a meeting with leaders from the Regional Government of Valencia in the coming days. Minister Josep Borrell will also hold a meeting shortly with the director-general from the United Nations responsible for this matter.

Pedro Sánchez also confirmed to Regional President Puig that the Government of Spain has accepted the request from the Regional Government of Valencia regarding equal wages for forest fire-fighters in the Region of Valencia when compared with other similar employees at the State company TRAGSA. The Minister for the Treasury will immediately authorise payment of this transitional wage bonus and the Regional Government of Valencia undertakes to finish incorporating this fire-fighting force into the Valencian Security and Emergency Response Agency in due time and form in order to avoid the need for another provisional instrument.

Finally, on the issue of culture, the Government of Spain has committed to studying the possibility of increasing its participation in such iconic culture centres as the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Spanish acronym: IVAM) under equal terms as other bodies from other autonomous regions.

Peru: Fujimori Begs Not To Be Put Back In Prison

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By Ken Schwartz

Former Peruvian strongman Alberto Fujimori is pleading with the current president not to send him back to prison, saying it would be a “death sentence.”

The Peruvian Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Fujimori was not entitled to be freed from jail last year because he was convicted of crimes against humanity. The court ruled he was not entitled to a pardon under Peruvian and international law.

“Please do not kill me,” Fujimori begged from a hospital bed message to President Martin Vizcarra. “If I return to prison, my heart will not support it. It is too weak to go through the same thing again. Don’t sentence me to death. I can give no more.”

Peruvian Interior Minister Mauro Medina appeared unmoved by the ex-dictator’s plea.

“He is already considered a prisoner. He is expected to leave the clinic to take him to the penitentiary,” Medina told Peruvian radio.

Fujimori was serving a 25-year-long sentence for crimes against humanity when he got a medical pardon last year and moved into a rented mansion in Lima.

​Fujimori is revered by some Peruvians and despised by others. He was elected in 1990 and in his 10 years in power, he put down a rebellion by the leftist Shining Path guerillas and saved Peru from economic ruin.

But Fujimori was an authoritarian leader whose far-right death squads massacred civilians as part of operations against the guerillas.

He was also accused of massive corruption and fled Peru for Japan in 2000, when he was mocked for handing in his resignation by fax.

Fujimori was arrested in Chile in 2006 and put on trial in Peru.

Former Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori last Christmas and barely survived an impeachment vote with the help from Fujimori allies in Congress.

Kuczynski resigned in March and is under investigation for the pardon.

Bolton: ‘Iran Has Been World’s Central Banker For Terrorism Since 1979’

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President Donald Trump’s national security adviser outlined the administration’s long-awaited counterterrorism strategy on Thursday and offered harsh words for Iran.

John Bolton called Iran the “central banker of international terrorism.” He said the strategy will rely on military and nonmilitary means to fight extremists, focusing on Daesh militants as well as those backed by Iran and other groups.

Bolton said the US wants to isolate militants from their supporters, modernize tools to counter them, protect US infrastructure and stymie recruitment efforts.

The plan that Trump has approved also calls for strengthening border control, limiting militants’ ability to recruit online and sharing the burden with allies.

It is the first US strategy on counterterrorism since President Barack Obama released his approach in 2011.

Bolton said that the US’ objective is that “there would be no waivers for purchasers of Iranian crude,” and that the US could look at possible cuts leading to zero.

New NAFTA Deal Not The Huge Win Trump Claims – OpEd

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By Andrew Hammond*

Donald Trump this week celebrated the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal — to be known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — as “wonderful” and a “historic transaction.” The breakthrough, coming when Canada cut into an accord agreed by Mexico and the US, buoyed financial markets and may provide a fillip for multilateralism too.

However, while Trump has claimed the renegotiation is a huge political and economic win for his “America first” approach, the final concessions are not as big as he had previously claimed possible, considering he had asserted that “we’re going to make some very big changes or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all.” To be sure, the deal contains multiple wins for the US, including a limited opening of Canada’s dairy markets, but Washington has also agreed to Ottawa’s request to preserve a trade dispute settlement mechanism, while protecting Canada’s auto industry from potential further US tariffs.

Nonetheless, the president will assert that the deal delivers on one of his key 2016 election promises, and he has certainly robustly challenged Mexico City and Ottawa through the process with a frequent war of words, undercutting significant goodwill in the process. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, for instance, has described the Trump team’s USMCA negotiation approach as, at times, “troubling,” completely unreasonable,” and “unconventional.” Trump has reciprocated by reportedly saying that Freeland “hates America.”

Sunday’s agreement will also give Trump renewed confidence that his agenda can continue to reshape the international political economy. This is especially so after his earlier decisions to withdraw US participation from deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership; launch new trade sanctions against world powers from the EU to China; and also threaten US withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

It is certainly true that Trump’s negotiation strategy, of dividing Mexico and Canada, put intense pressure on Ottawa to make a deal after the bilateral agreement between the US and Mexico several weeks ago. He had informed Congress of his intent to sign the bilateral Mexican trade agreement this month if Ottawa did not agree terms by Sunday.

The president tweeted his view that there was “no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the US after decades of abuse, Canada will be out.” This posed an acute dilemma for the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, given that NAFTA underpins three-quarters of the exports Canada sends south of its US border and 2.5 million jobs in the country depend on this trade.

Indeed, had Sunday’s deal not been cut, there was a significant and growing chance the trilateral accord could have collapsed. This was a growing and major concern for financial markets as, since 1994, the North American economy has more than doubled in size, driven to a large degree by expanding trade and investment flows. Trade between the three countries has more than tripled to form a trading bloc with a combined GDP of about $20 trillion.

Politicians and lobby groups had also begun to sound the alarm bells, even in the US, where the NAFTA brand has been most tarnished in recent years. This is because it is estimated that about 14 million US jobs depend on trilateral trade with Canada and Mexico.

Moving forward, the deal now turns to legislative scrutiny, including in the US Congress. The goal for Trump, Trudeau and outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is to sign it before Nieto is replaced on Dec. 1 by populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

While legislative approval in the US is now significantly more likely than not, hurdles still lie ahead. Knowing this, Trump has tweeted that: “Congress should not interfere with these negotiations.” His message here is largely aimed at congressional Democrats, who may make striking gains in the House of Representatives and/ or the Senate in November’s elections. Democrats are already qualifying their potential support for the new deal. Senator Carl Levin has said that the legislation needs more work, otherwise “few Democrats will vote for it,” while the party’s leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has declared that “any final agreement must be judged on how it benefits and protects the middle class and working people in our country,” leaving the political space open for him to potentially oppose it.

Taken overall, all three leaders can plausibly claim a win after Sunday’s breakthrough. Yet, despite Trump’s assertion that USMCA is a huge success for his approach, his negotiations have done damage to the US’ alliances with Mexico and Canada, and concessions have not been as big as he had previously sought, highlighting the significant continuities the new deal has with NAFTA.

*Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics

Conflict In Ingushetia Spiraling Out Of Control For Republic, Region And Moscow – OpEd

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Anger about the accord Yunus-Bek Yevkurov reached with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov prompted thousands of Ingush to come into the streets of Magas, the republic capital today, blocking the republic that either approved or did not approve the agreement, and led Russian Guardsmen to fire over the heads of the crowd.

In the course of the day, the protesters changed from demanding a referendum on the agreement to a demand that the accord be scrapped without one to an insistence that the republic government leave office and give way to new elections; and those taking part added Islamist slogans to the nationalist ones they had first used.

As frightening as the mass protests must be for the republic leadership and for Moscow, splits within the Ingush establishment should be even more worrisome. The republic supreme court came out against the accord, and some deputies of its parliament said that they had not approved the measure despite Yevkurov’s claims.

The situation within Ingushetia is fluid and changing fast. Among the best coverage of today’s events is found at takiedela.ru/news/2018/10/04/konflikt-o-granice/, newsru.com/russia/04oct2018/magas2.html, actualcomment.ru/miting-v-ingushetii-protiv-dogovora-o-granitse-s-chechney-glavnoe-1810041133.html, capost.media/news/mainhotnews/v-magase-otkryli-strelbu-vo-vremya-mitinga-protiv-peredela-granitsy-s-chechney/, and polit.ru/article/2018/10/04/border/.

But the events there have been compounded by three additional developments: Ingush in Moscow and other Russian cities are rushing to support the opponents of the treaty, new reports show that Putin’s rating in the North Caucasus has collapsed even further than elsewhere in the Russian Federation, and Kadyrov is threatening military action against Ingushetia (grani-ru-org.appspot.com/War/Chechnya/m.273167.html, censoru.net/29885-kavkaz-na-grani-vzryva-v-ingushetii-massovye-protesty-siloviki-otkryli-ogon.html, and aucasustimes.com/ru/opros-na-severnom-kavkaze-rejting-vladimira-putina-padaet-na-fone-jekonomicheskogo-spada/).

Given that the protesters in Magas have said that they will not end their protests until their demands are met and given that Kadyrov is threatening to use violence against them, there is a very real risk that the border agreement based on a territorial swap that Moscow thought would calm the situation is going to have exactly the opposite effect.

Indeed, it may provoke a new war in the North Caucasus, one in which Moscow will have to restrain its most important client there, Kadyrov, or face the prospect that it will lose control over much of the region. Indeed, some Western analysts are even suggesting that these developments could presage the end of the Putin presidency.

After all, Putin has put all his chips on Kadyrov; and now Kadyrov, despite massive subsidies from Moscow and despite being allowed to act almost without regard to Moscow’s interests is now acting in a way that threatens Russian control (rusmonitor.com/avraam-shmulevich-sobytiya-na-kavkaze-govoryat-o-skorom-padenii-putinskogo-rezhima.html).

The situation is changing far too rapidly for any such sweeping conclusions; but it is clear that what the Kremlin thought was a solution to a small problem has transformed the situation into a large one, raising questions about the stability of borders, on the one hand, and Moscow’s control of the republics, on the other.

Neither Putin nor anyone in his entourage imagined that things would come to such a pass, the latest example of when small things no one really expects to matter may cast an enormous shadow on the course of events.

Saudi Arabia To Invest In New Oil Refinery In Pakistan’s Gwadar Port City

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(RFE/RL) — Saudi Arabia will invest in a new oil refinery in Pakistan’s growing deep sea port of Gwadar in southwestern Balochistan Province, Islamabad announced on October 4.

The agreement follows a visit last month by Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan to the Gulf kingdom as he seeks to attract foreign investment.

A visiting Saudi delegation “showed an interest to immediately invest in the refinery,” Pakistani Petroleum Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said. “This has been agreed from both sides.”

The agreement is set to be signed between Pakistan State Oil company and Riyadh’s state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

“We sat down and held initial discussions with them and it was principally decided by both sides that it will be a government-to-government agreement,” Khan said.

Details of the refinery’s costs and scope are to be worked out later, he said.

Gwadar’s port is being developed as part of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an ambitious plan to build energy and transport links connecting the western Chinese region of Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea via Pakistan, as part of Beijing’s broader Silk Belt and Road initiative.

Gwadar is part of Pakistan’s mineral-rich Balochistan Province, which for years has been wracked by violent attacks staged by ethnic, Islamist, and sectarian militants.

UK Accuses Russia Of Cyberattacks On Western Countries

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The U.K. on Thursday accused Russian military intelligence agency GRU of staging “indiscriminate and reckless” cyberattacks on the Western countries.

“Today, the UK and its allies can expose a campaign by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, of indiscriminate and reckless cyber attacks targeting political institutions, businesses, media and sport,” a statement from the Foreign Office said.

It said Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has identified that the “attacks have been conducted in flagrant violation of international law, have affected citizens in a large number of countries, including Russia, and have cost national economies millions of pounds.”

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the cyberattacks “serve no legitimate national security interest, instead impacting the ability of people around the world to go about their daily lives free from interference, and even their ability to enjoy sport.”

Hunt said: “They try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries; they are even prepared to damage Russian companies and Russian citizens.”

“Our message is clear: together with our allies, we will expose and respond to the GRU’s attempts to undermine international stability,” he added.

The British Foreign Office also said the GRU is associated with hacking groups such as Fancy Bear, Voodoo Bear, APT28, Sofacy, Pawnstorm, Sednit, CyberCaliphate, Cyber Berku, BlackEnergy Actors, STRONTIUM, Tsar Team and Sandworm.

The U.K. said it identified four cyber-attacks by Russian hackers, including a 2017 ransomware attack known as BadRabbit, hacking of confidential medical files from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the 2016 hacking of the U.S. Democratic National Committee.

Nerve-agent attack

The GRU was a little known intelligence agency of the Russian army until a nerve-agent attack in Salisbury in March, which the U.K. says Kremlin ordered.

British prosecutors last month had revealed that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who are wanted for conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal and the attempted murder of Yulia Skripal and police officer Nick Bailey in Salisbury nerve agent attack, were former GRU officers.

The cyberattack claims by the U.K. came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin labelled poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal a “traitor” and a “scumbag” in a speech.

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter were admitted to a hospital after being found unconscious on March 4 in Salisbury. They were both since discharged from the Salisbury District Hospital.

In another incident, British authorities say involved the same nerve-agent in Amesbury, a woman died and a man fell seriously ill.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill on June 30 after handling an item contaminated with the nerve agent and was taken to hospital and her partner, Charlie Rowley, 45, was also exposed to the nerve agent and taken to hospital in a critical condition.

The Metropolitan Police continue a murder investigation into the death of Sturgess.

Original source


New Trends On Humanitarian Assistance: Blockchain For Humanitarian Aid, Problem Or Panacea? – Analysis

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A notable development in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is blockchain technology. Originally created as an alternative means of financial transfer, the technology can be applied to any type of information and asset. Organisations and countries are starting to explore ways of using it in the context of humanitarian aid. Is this a panacea or a problem?

By Christopher Chen*

The blockchain operates on a distributed database hosted across a network of multiple participants. Data – which can include financial transactions, personal information, supply manifests  ̶  is recorded on a digital ledger, which everyone within a designated network can access.

More importantly, this process occurs without the presence of a central authority or an intermediary; this removes some of the risks associated with the centralised control of data. Since the network reflects every change made on the blockchain, it is impossible for anyone to falsify any transaction without leaving a trace. This ensures traceability, transparency and security of the data.

Disrupting Current Aid Model?

The urgency to move cash during times of humanitarian crises makes it susceptible to mismanagement and corruption. This is an area where the blockchain could potentially make a big difference in.

In 2017, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) successfully trialled its Building Blocks initiative in Pakistan and Jordan. With a scan of their irises using the UN refugee agency UNHCR’s patented biometric identification system, Syrian refugees were able to purchase food from local shops.

These transactions were then authenticated and recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, which is a type of blockchain made accessible via a smartphone app. As a result, the WFP was able to disburse food and cash assistance more efficiently and quickly to a vulnerable population and in the process removed the need for physical money or food vouchers.

Another way in which blockchain could be used for humanitarian causes is by facilitating documented proof of identity for refugees.

ID2020, a public-private partnership that endeavours to empower individuals by increasing access to digital identity, recently unveiled an identity management system that captures and stores biometric data on a blockchain. This enables undocumented and stateless populations to have personal identity records that are stored on a decentralised system, thus ensuring their immutability.

The hype surrounding the technology is gaining traction. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is already investing in early-stage blockchain startups to explore possible applications of the technology for humanitarian causes.

A collaboration between The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) and the Digital Humanitarian Network produced a paper titled ‘Blockchain for the Humanitarian Sector: Future Opportunities’, which outlined some of the benefits and challenges of the technology and some areas within the humanitarian sector where it could be applied. Evidently, there is much interest in the use of blockchain for tangible humanitarian action.

Constraints + Paradoxes = An Unworthy Endeavour?

Despite the immense potential of blockchain technology, there are still many issues surrounding its use in a humanitarian setting. As a relatively new technology, it is difficult to assess the appropriateness of its usage when many of its applications are still untested. For instance, as a predominantly Internet-driven initiative, there are challenges in implementing it in areas with less than adequate critical internet infrastructure.

An obdurate commitment to test the technology in these settings might result in a ‘second disaster’. This traditionally refers to well-intended, unneeded donations that hamper overall relief efforts; in this case, it would refer to the inefficiency of relief efforts brought about by the use of inappropriate, untested technology.

Moreover, if humanitarians are too quick to use blockchain technology without first educating the affected populations on its characteristics, these populations might not fully grasp the control that they are supposed to have in their interactions with the technology.

The issue of governance and data protection also comes to the fore. The lack of a regulatory environment makes the use of the technology a minefield of legal and ethical problems. How do you ensure that the sensitive information of disenfranchised populations do not fall into the wrong hands?

What happens when transgressions occur in an unregulated space? For example, in the case of populations threatened by ethnic violence, this data could be used to enact further persecution if the blockchain network is compromised.

While the blockchain purports to be a secure means of transferring and storing data, there have nevertheless been instances of blockchain networks being hacked. In the case of a potential breach, the decentralised nature inadvertently becomes anathema to jurisdictional issues and accountability.

Downside of Decentralisation

The decentralised nature of blockchain precludes regulation. However, the presence of vulnerable populations in the equation increases the stakes of any potential fallout. Regulatory frameworks and legal standards would traditionally be the bulwark against such transgressions, but that goes against everything the blockchain stands for.

This creates a situation where it is difficult to reconcile the key tenets of blockchain technology with the need to protect vulnerable populations.

The humanitarian sector has a duty of care to their beneficiaries and donors to comprehensively assess the benefits and limitations of blockchain technology, before taking the plunge into this new territory.

Moreover, investment in blockchain technology will incur huge economic outlays. In a sector which is already competing for a limited pool of resources, it might not be prudent to pursue an endeavour that has so far proven, some say, to be more hype than substance.

Future Directions

Research into blockchain technology could be undertaken, but humanitarians should not be the ones driving this. It should be outsourced. To this end, humanitarian actors can tap on private sector expertise.

The ID2020 initiative is an example of how the public and private sectors can work together to ensure that blockchain technology development and implementation are informed by the needs of the affected populations. Even then, it is essential to institutionalise an understanding that blockchain technology be used only for the benefit of affected populations, and should not be implemented by private corporations and organisations solely for economic gains.

Partnerships between technology companies and humanitarian organisations should operate around this common understanding.

Blockchain could well be the next major disruptive technology, and its potential applications in the humanitarian setting should not be dismissed. However, humanitarians should not be too quick to succumb to the neophilia – the tendency to like anything new – surrounding blockchain technology.

*Christopher Chen is a Research Associate with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. This is the first in a series on New Trends in Humanitarian Assistance.

NATO Secretary Stoltenberg Addresses Russian Cyber Attacks

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The Netherlands briefed NATO Defence Ministers Thursday on the targeting of the offices of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague by a hostile cyber operation.

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the operation was carried out by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, but was disrupted by Dutch intelligence services in partnership with the UK. Moreover, the UK has identified the GRU as being behind a number of other cyber-attacks around the world. These have affected citizens in many countries, including Russia, and caused enormous economic costs, Stoltenberg said in a statement.

“NATO Allies stand in solidarity with the decision by the Dutch and British governments to call out Russia on its blatant attempts to undermine international law and institutions. Russia must stop its reckless pattern of behaviour, including the use of force against its neighbours, attempted interference in election processes, and widespread disinformation campaigns,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg added, that in response, NATO will continue to strengthen its defence and deterrence to deal with hybrid threats, including in the cyber domain.

“Defence Ministers discussed the progress we are making in setting up a new Cyber Operations Centre, integrating national cyber capabilities into our missions and operations, and bolstering our cyber resilience,” Stoltenberg said.

US Withdraws From Two International Accords, Says UN World Court ‘Politicised’

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(EurActiv) — The Trump administration on Wednesday (3 October) pulled out of two international agreements after Iran and the Palestinians complained to the International Court of Justice about US policies, the latest withdrawal by Washington from multilateral accords.

The US national security adviser John Bolton slammed the highest United Nations tribunal as “politicized and ineffective” as he announced that the United States would review all international agreements that could expose it to binding decisions by the ICJ.

Earlier on Wednesday the ICJ handed a victory to Tehran, ordering the United States to ensure that sanctions against Iran, due to be tightened next month, do not affect humanitarian aid or civil aviation safety.

Tehran had argued that the US sanctions imposed since May by the Trump administration violated the terms their 1955 Treaty of Amity. Washington responded by pulling out of the treaty, a little-known agreement that was signed long before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that turned the two countries into arch enemies.

The ICJ, based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, is the United Nations’ venue for resolving disputes between nations.

There have been mounting concerns among US allies about the Trump administration’s commitment to multilateralism.

In the nearly two years since being elected, President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from a nuclear agreement between six powers and Iran, pulled out of a global climate accord, left the UN cultural agency, and threatened NATO military allies that the United States would “go its own way” if members did not spend more on defence.

Bolton, citing what he called “Iran’s abuse of the ICJ,” said the United States would also withdraw from the “optional protocol” under the 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations.

“We will commence a review of all international agreements that may still expose the United States to purported binding jurisdiction, dispute resolution in the International Court of Justice,” Bolton said on Wednesday. “The United States will not sit idly by as baseless politicized claims are brought against us.”

The decision to withdraw from the optional protocol follows a complaint brought by the Palestinians in September, which challenged Washington’s decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Vienna Convention is an international treaty setting out diplomatic relations between states. It is often cited as a means to provide diplomatic immunity.

Earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States should have pulled out of the treaty of amity with Iran decades ago and said the ICJ it had no jurisdiction of sanctions that he said were essential to US security interests.

The United States has adopted a hardline policy against Tehran, withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions.

“Today marked a useful point, with the decision that was made this morning from the ICJ, this marked a useful point for us to demonstrate the absolute absurdity of the Treaty of Amity between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif criticized the US withdrawal, saying on Twitter, “Outlaw regime.”

In 2005, the Bush administration took issue with the ICJ after it ruled that the execution of a Mexican national in Texas breached US obligations under international law.

The Palestinians argued that the US government’s placement of its embassy in Jerusalem violated an international treaty and that it should be moved.

“This really has less to do with Iran and the Palestinians than with the continued consistent policy of the United States to reject the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, which we think is politicized and ineffective,” Bolton said.

“I’d like to stress,” he added, “the United States remains a party to the underlying Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and we expect all other parties to abide by their international obligations under the convention.”

Palestine was recognized by the UN General Assembly in 2012 as a non-member observer state, though its statehood is not recognized by either Israel or the United States.

EU’s Withdrawal Creating ‘Domino Effect’ Across Balkans – Analysis

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By Srecko Latal*

Bosnia’s general elections take place on Sunday amidst looming concerns of massive election fraud, heightened tensions – and fears that either political gridlock or the country’s broken election law could block the formation of new governments.

While the election results are likely to be as uncertain and inconclusive as ever, experts agree that even in the best scenario, the establishment of new governments will take months; that the process will be chaotic and that eventual new governments will most likely bring only more of the old self-centred, divisive politics.

If this is the best-case scenario, what are the worse ones?

Those could include a complete blockade of the implementation of the election results, either by some of the parties, dissatisfied with their election results, or because of the failure to fix the election law.

Either scenario could lead to the disintegration of the financial and political system in Bosnia’s Federation entity by year’s end, which would, in turn, affect the state and possibly other administrative levels.

The main responsibility for this dire situation lies primarily with the country’s own politicians its intellectuals, NGOs, the media and finally, its own citizens.

The one foreign actor that might have turned the tide of Bosnia’s zero-sum, destructive politics was the European Union.

However, once again, in Bosnia, the EU did not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

From moving goalposts to removing the playing field

The EU’s latest failure to address recent developments threatens to turn into a major political blunder with potentially devastating repercussions.

The stage for this blunder was set by a series of events this summer, which were supposed to mark a turning point in the slow process of integrating the six countries of the Western Balkans into Western frameworks.

However, after the EU-Western Balkan get-together in Sofia in May, an EU summit in Brussels in June and the Western Balkans Summit in London in July, EU membership has only further receded into the distance.

Besides handshakes and photos, the Sofia, Brussels and London summits produced vague commitments to speed up the process of integration at some later, undefined stage – at least after the European Parliament elections in May 2019.

The substance, however, told a different story – that Europe is consumed by its own internal problems, firstly the migrant crisis; Britain’s torturous exit from the bloc; but even more so by the growing conservatism and anti-EU feeling in a number of EU countries.

As a result, these three events showed the Balkan peoples only that EU expansion to the region will not be a topic of serious discussion for a long time, if ever.

The EU, which has long been (in)famous for changing its criteria and requirements – a practice known as “moving the goalposts” – has this time removed the entire playing field.

The full extent of this tectonic movement has yet to be revealed but its importance may be better comprehended in light of the fact that the EU perspective – no matter how distant – has been the last hope of the Balkan peoples for the past three decades.

Hope is the last thing to die – but what when it does?

The effective disappearance of the EU perspective has an impact that goes far beyond economic wellbeing and social reforms.

Hope of a future life within EU borders was the only thing that silenced the nationalist and separatist tendencies in the Balkans that erupted when the former Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s.

The effective disappearance of this European perspective will encourage new tensions, as well as new drives towards the establishment of a “Greater Albania”, “Greater Bosnia”, “Greater Croatia”, “Greater Serbia” or even a “Greater Turkey”.

The process may have already started, after the presidents of Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, Aleksandar Vucic, Hashim Thaci and Edi Rama, during the summer for the first time openly started debating a possible resolution of Serbia-Kosovo relations through an exchange of territories in Serbia and Kosovo.

One might argue that the second piece in this “domino effect” in the Balkans was the failure of last Sunday’s referendum in Macedonia on a deal with Greece.

In addition to all the other internal reasons – including the lack of support for the referendum from the opposition parties and an apparently big discrepancy between the number of registered voters and the number of people who still live in Macedonia – part of the responsibility for this setback also lies with the EU.

While European officials in recent months offered strong verbal support for the Macedonian referendum and a deal with Greece, the EU failed to do the one thing that could have made a real difference.

Macedonia, as well as Albania, had hoped to receive a date for the start of their EU negotiations during the EU summit in Brussels in July.

This symbolic announcement would have cost the EU nothing but would have made a big difference across the Balkans.

Instead, the EU postponed a decision owing to the objections from some EU member countries, especially France and The Netherlands.

Some experts warned that this move could come at a high price for the Balkans – but those words fell on deaf ears.

While the failure of Macedonia’s referendum does not necessarily means the Greek deal is doomed, it puts the country in a much more difficult position, as local politicians ponder their next moves, including possible new snap elections.

After Macedonia, Bosnia is well set as the next domino to fall.

With its quarrelling politicians, weak civil society, divided media and citizens, many of whom only wish to leave the country, Bosnia is ill-prepared for the difficult upcoming legal and political challenges, and their likely economic and social consequences.

EU seems to have forgotten how it started

The EU seems to have lost any institutional memory of its own beginnings – which were motivated by security needs besides economic reasons – as well as its experiences from the breakup of former Yugoslavia.

As a result, the EU has ignored the growing warnings signs from the Balkans and their potential to destabilize Europe.

Instead, preoccupied with its internal problems, many EU member countries have apparently assumed the new egocentric policy of the US under President Donald Trump – “America first” – and are replicating it.

While “Italy first,” “Hungary first”, “Poland first”, and similar narratives threaten the foundation of the European Union, the EU continues appeasing Balkans leaders with verbal innuendos to buy more time, at least until next year’s European Parliament elections indicate the EU’s immediate future.

Meanwhile, local and international experts have condemned the appearance of alternative ideas about a resolution of Balkan issues through exchanges of ethnic territories, warning that changes to borders will only lead to new conflicts.

They insist that the EU still remains the only alternative for the Balkans, even as the US and the EU seem to move away from their own principles and ideals.

But empty warnings do not work on Balkan politicians who are all too familiar with this tactic, having used it themselves so often in their own election campaigns.

Instead, some local leaders seem to be moving ahead with their new alternative plans and ideas.

On August 2, for example, Albania’s Diaspora Minister, Pandeli Majko, provocatively said that the physical borders between Albania and Kosovo would be removed by the beginning of 2019.

This was reiterated on September 19 by Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj.
The statements expectedly triggered strong reactions from Serbia, which threatened to defend what it still insists is Serbia’s own borders with force, if need be.

Amidst its heated pre-election campaign, Bosnia has seen its own share of nationalist initiatives.

The Bosnian Serb strongman, Milorad Dodik, has gone beyond his usual calls for of independence of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, hinting at an actual unification of Serbia and Republika Srpska.

His Bosnian Croat counterpart, Dragan Covic, has warned that his Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, will block the establishment of new governments if it dislikes the election results.

The leader of the main Bosniak (Muslim) party, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, has responded in kind, warning that Bosniaks will defend Bosnia’s territorial and constitutional integrity by all means necessary.

Choosing between a range of lesser evils:

In an environment of open political hostilities, it is difficult to perceive how these same parties will establish new governments after the October elections, even if the country’s broken election law gets fixed.

This will mean that all three neuralgic spots in the Balkans – Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia-Kosovo relations – will continue generating new crises in the near future.

The way out of the Balkan quagmire seems uncertain, with the best option – the effective revival of EU enlargement – being currently unavailable.

The Balkans is left, therefore, with different, worse scenarios.

One option is to continue insisting on the EU’s “reform agenda”. But this approach now looks dead, and would need to be quickly revitalized, to regain traction in the Balkans.

Instead of empty words, the EU would have to fill in the space between now and uncertain enlargement with concrete funds, projects and programs that would address real problems in the Balkans – poor infrastructure, declining agriculture and divided and corrupt political and rule of law systems.

Yet the EU seems unprepared to even contemplate something like this.

Meanwhile, other international actors seem ready to try a different approach and support local initiatives for resolution of Balkan issues through changes of borders, such as between Kosovo and Serbia.

As many experts have pointed out, this risky notion has brought about bloodshed in the Balkans in the past.

But blocking such initiatives carries its own risks as well.

If such initiatives gain public support, condemning them only risks increasing tensions, while not stopping them anyway. If the West blocks such local bilateral initiatives, it could only inspire even more dangerous unilateral moves.

Without a realistic EU option, choosing between lesser evils in the Balkans offers no guarantees that the region does not end up in the worst-case scenario that its peoples hoped to avoid.

*Srecko Latal is a journalist, editor and analyst who has been covering the Balkans since the 1990s.

Amazon Rainforest Conservation Victories Spill Losses To Neighbors

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New research suggests that protecting the Amazon rainforest from deforestation may just be shifting the damage to a less renowned neighbor. The unintended consequences are profound.

Efforts to rein in agriculture activities in the Amazon have led to an 80 percent reduction in rainforest destruction between the early 2000s to 2015. Yet in this month’s Journal of Geographic Sciences Michigan State University (MSU) researchers show that farming and ranching have caused 6.6 times more destruction of natural vegetation in the nearby Tocantins State of the Cerrado in central Brazil, without a corresponding uprising of concern.

“We are not saying reducing rainforest destruction in the Amazon shouldn’t get attention,” said Yue Dou, a research associate in MSU’s Centers for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). “But attention has to be paid in the major destruction of another area which also has significant biodiversity.”

Cerrado is a Brazilian savanna of varied, wooded grasslands that cover more than 20 percent of the country. Amazon’s rainforest terrain of towering, ancient broadleaf trees, has a wide appeal and international fascination. The Cerrado, though a global biodiversity hotspot, hasn’t commanded the same attention. Both areas of Brazil have been farmed aggressively. Two supply-chain agreements placed bans on purchasing soybeans grown on Amazonian lands after 2006 or beef raised on Amazon land deforested after 2009 vastly slowed deforestation. Researchers calculated that the policies reduced deforestation from 22,766 square miles to 11,013 square miles in the Amazon.

Yet destruction in the Cerrado surged as soybean farmers and cattle ranchers sought new places to produce highly demanded foods. In the state of Tocantins alone the conversion to agricultural land increased from 465 square miles to 3,067 square miles from 2007 to 2015.

The authors of “Spillover effect offsets the conservation effort in the Amazon” note that the reasons behind the hidden impacts are complex and can be difficult to understand – so it’s hard to realize success in one part of the country can be spilling over with setbacks in a neighboring area. Colonization, road building, available infrastructure and effectiveness of law enforcement are among the many moving parts that cause people to cut down natural vegetation and farm. Comparing rainforest to Cerrado also is challenging.

That’s why scientists worked with the telecoupling framework capable of examining many different factors. Telecoupling framework integrates many different scientific disciplines to allow scientists to holistically understand ecological and socioeconomic interactions over distances.

“In our increasingly complex world, we need to look at problems in new ways that can reflect subtleties and truths that are counterintuitive,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, CSIS director and co-author. “Progress in sustainability must be genuine and we can’t allow ourselves to be blinded by success in one place at the expense of invisible impacts on other places. The telecoupling framework helps to bring together many different kinds of information to fully understand important change in our telecoupled world.”

Modern Humans Inherited Viral Defenses From Neanderthals

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Neanderthals mysteriously disappeared about 40,000 years ago, but before vanishing they interbred with another human species that was just beginning its global spread. As a result of these ancient trysts, many modern Europeans and Asians today harbor about 2 percent of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes.

Curiously, some snippets of Neanderthal DNA pop up more often in modern human populations than others, leading scientists to wonder if their spread was propelled by chance or whether these frequently occurring genes confer some functional advantage.

Stanford scientists have now found compelling evidence for the latter. “Our research shows that a substantial number of frequently occurring Neanderthal DNA snippets were adaptive for a very cool reason,” said Dmitri Petrov, an evolutionary biologist at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “Neanderthal genes likely gave us some protection against viruses that our ancestors encountered when they left Africa.”

When first contact occurred between the two species, Neanderthals had been living outside of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, giving their immune systems ample time to evolve defenses against infectious viruses in Europe and Asia. Our newly emigrated ancestors, by comparison, would have been much more vulnerable. “It made much more sense for modern humans to just borrow the already adapted genetic defenses from Neanderthals rather than waiting for their own adaptive mutations to develop, which would have taken much more time,” said David Enard, a former postdoctoral fellow in Petrov’s lab.

Petrov and Enard said their findings are consistent with a “poison-antidote” model of gene swapping between two species. In this scenario, Neanderthals bequeathed to modern humans not only infectious viruses but also the genetic tools to combat the invaders.

“Modern humans and Neanderthals are so closely related that it really wasn’t much of a genetic barrier for these viruses to jump,” said Enard, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Arizona. “But that closeness also meant that Neanderthals could pass on protections against those viruses to us.”

In their new study, published online Oct. 4 in the journal Cell, the scientists show that the genetic defenses that Neanderthals passed to us were against RNA viruses, which encode their genes with RNA, a molecule that’s chemically similar to DNA.

Persistent genes

The scientists reached their conclusions after compiling a list of more than 4,500 genes in modern humans that are known to interact in some way with viruses. Enard then checked his list against a database of sequenced Neanderthal DNA and identified 152 fragments of those genes from modern humans that were also present in Neanderthals.

The scientists showed that in modern humans, the 152 genes we inherited from Neanderthals interact with modern day HIV, influenza A and hepatitis C – all types of RNA virus. From this, Enard and Petrov concluded that these genes helped our ancestors fend off ancient RNA viruses that they encountered upon leaving Africa.

Interestingly, the Neanderthal genes they identified are present only in modern Europeans, suggesting that different viruses influenced genetic swapping between Neanderthals and the ancient ancestors of today’s Asians. This makes sense, Enard said, since interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans is thought to have occurred multiple times and in multiple locales throughout prehistory, and different viruses were likely involved in each instance.

In addition to offering a new perspective on interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans, the new findings also demonstrate that it’s possible to comb through a species’ genome and find evidence of ancient diseases that once afflicted it – even when the viruses responsible for those diseases are long gone. This technique would work especially well for RNA viruses, whose RNA-based genomes are more frail than their DNA counterparts, Enard says.

“It’s similar to paleontology,” he added. “You can find hints of dinosaurs in different ways. Sometimes you’ll discover actual bones, but sometimes you find only footprints in fossilized mud. Our method is similarly indirect: Because we know which genes interact with which viruses, we can infer the types of viruses responsible for ancient disease outbreaks.”

Achieving Religious Harmony In A World Of Fear And Populism – OpEd

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This is a tough time for men and women of the cloth, at least those whose message is one of peace, tolerance, mutual respect, equality and inter-faith dialogue.

Underlying the rise of populism, nationalism, protectionism, fear of the other, anti-migrant and anti-foreigner sentiment, and hate speech is an erosion of the norms of debate. Articulation of hate speech has become permissible, if not fashionable. Often blunt and crude language employed by leaders, politicians and some people of the cloth help shape an environment in which civility has been lost.

Intolerant, racist and supremacist have risen in significance even in democratic societies that project themselves as open, tolerant guarantors of equal rights irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, religion, colour or sexuality. Suppressing those voices through laws and bans drives hate speech and racism underground, it doesn’t erase or eradicate it. Countering it with a message of tolerance and mutual respect won’t erase it either but can help shape an environment in which those principles become dominant again.

Let’s face it, prejudice is a fact of life. Its inbred in whatever culture each of us adheres to and whatever education at home and in schools that we have enjoyed, irrespective of how conservative or liberal our family and societal backgrounds are. We all were raised on implicit or more explicit notions that our culture is best or by implication other cultures are not as good.

In other words, prejudice is not the issue, its how we deal with it, how we manage it. The problem arises when we lose our sense of relativity, when we adopt an absolutist approach, the high way or no way. It arises when pluralism is thrown out the window and we abandon the notion that our world is populated by a multitude of equally valid faiths, worldviews and belief systems.

To quote Mahatma Gandhi, a deeply religious Hindu, who said in 1942: “I believe with my soul that the God of the Qur’an is also the God of Gita and that we are all, no matter by what name designated, children of the same God. My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures… To ascent to such a doctrine is for me a denial of God.”

In the battles in the late 1940s and 1950s over a proposed national ban in India on the slaughter of cows, Gandhi declared himself a worshipper of cows whom he regarded with the same veneration as he viewed his mother. Yet, Gandhi, went on to say that “the Hindu religion prohibits cow slaughter for the Hindus, not for the world. The religious prohibition comes from within. Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.”

On a visit in 1942 to a German camp populated by Indian prisoners of war captured from the British during fighting in North Africa, Subhas Chandra Bose, a deeply religious leader of the Indian independence movement, reportedly warned inmates that “if you use religion to unite yourself today, you leave the door open for someone to divide you later using the same sentiments.”

Recent history validates Bose’s warning, not only in India and Pakistan, but across the globe expressed in Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Shiism, just to name a few, as well as in conflicts, wars and brutal repression in places like Syria, Yemen and the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Many of you represent faiths with multiple sects, legal schools and interpretations – proof that your belief system in the narrow context of that system is open to multiple interpretation. Some of those interpretations may be intolerant, anti-pluralistic, supremacist. They too are a fact of life, like it or not. Countering them depends on the social environment one creates, a sphere within which men and women of the cloth have an important role to play as well. It is also a function of the social and economic policies implemented by governments.

Indeed, the key is not suppression, what is suppressed doesn’t go away, at best it goes into hibernation, only to re-emerge at some point in the future. The key is containment, communities and societies that make discriminatory, racist, supremacist expressions socially taboo. That key is not enforcement by force of law but by social custom and an environment in which those expressions are continuously challenged in public debate, social settings and individual encounters. I am not talking about political correctness that stifles debate.

Leaving aside those whose beliefs are absolute and intolerant of any other view, a majority of people gravitate towards the middle. It’s what some call moral shock or what former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb dubbed black swans coupled with economic, social and societal uncertainty and political manipulation that drives people towards more literal, absolutist, intolerant beliefs.

It is those circumstances in which normally tolerant communities and societies become more amenable to those beliefs. It’s what allows men like Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad to turn societies where inter-communal relations and inter-marriage were the norm into wastelands in which one community tries to exterminate the other.

Think of Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990s that seemingly transformed overnight from a beacon of harmony into a hell or the tensions in multiple countries ranging from Bahrain to Nigeria or the tenth parallel that journalist Elizabeth Rush aptly described as the fault line cutting across Africa and Asia between more strident forms of Islam and Christianity.

The last two decades have witnessed a renewed hardening of fault lines, not just ones between strands of Islam and Christianity, but across the board. This latest round started in 2001 with the moral shock of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington and subsequent attacks across Europe as well as in Asia and Africa that continue until today. 9/11 was the death knell of multi-culturalism and the cradle of the latest wave of Islamophobia and rising anti-Semitism.

The economic financial crisis of 2008/2009 with its decimating effect on the lower and middle classes, the flourishing of jihadism, the impact of heinous attacks close to home and the fear, a human being’s most irrational emotion, that generated the breeding ground for populism, nationalism, protectionism and the return to primordial, absolutist beliefs propagated by multiple sources, including men and women of the cloth.

To be sure, the groundwork for this pre-date 9/11, fuelled by some strands of Christianity, massive Saudi funding across the globe of ultra-conservative strains of Islam, and the use of religious intolerance by leaders and governments because it served a political purpose.

Pakistan illustrates what this can produce. The tolerant and live-let-live types live in a bubble, primarily in Pakistan’s three foremost cities, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The gravity of society has shifted towards intolerance, anti-pluralism and supremacism. Ultra-conservatism has been woven into the texture of segments of society and the culture of some institutions of the state. It is a world in which absolute truth rules supreme, discrimination based on an absolute truth is anchored into law, competence is determined not exclusively on the basis of merit but on what faith one adheres to, democratic freedoms are curtailed. Mob lynching becomes acceptable, violence against minorities the norm, and anti-blasphemy the tool.

It’s a trend that is not unique to Pakistan and not unique to the Muslim world. It is a trend that is nurtured by the rise of populism, nationalism, authoritarianism and autocracy visible across Western societies, the Muslim world and Israel, in other words irrespective of cultural-religious roots.

In most, if not all of these countries, significant segments of the population have no real stake in society. Intolerance, anti-pluralism, racism and supremacism fuel the perception of disenfranchisement and marginalization that often produces a sense of not having anything to lose. It is some combination of religious ultra-conservatism, exclusivist ethnic and nationalist sentiment, and lack of a stake that creates breeding grounds for militancy and extremism.

Men and women of the cloth working in Singapore are in many ways privileged. While Singapore regulates hate speech or expressions it believes would undermine harmony, it has been successful in ensuring that all segments of the population have a stake in society – perhaps the most important factor in combatting discrimination, racism and supremacism as well as militancy and extremism.

Singapore demonstrates messages of tolerance and inter-ethnic and inter-faith harmony can and will be heard in a political and social environment that fosters mutual respect and dialogue.

There is however one caveat. Peace and harmony in society requires peace and harmony at home. The divisions and animosity between different religions and ethnicities at large are reflected in divisions and animosity within faith groups.

Tolerance, mutual respect and dialogue starts in one’s own community and its message is as credible as one practices it without exception. That probably requires a redefinition of the concept of absolute truth. That’s a tough order, but no one claims that ensuring that a peaceful and harmonious existence and future would be easy. It also is a litmus test of one’s sincerity.


Anti-Kavanaugh Editorials Are Dishonest – OpEd

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The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times ran editorials opposing Brett Kavanaugh to be the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. This is hardly surprising. What is most disturbing about them is their dishonesty: they fail to mention their real reason for opposing him—abortion.

The Los Angeles Times says that “We oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination not because of his judicial philosophy,” but because of “lingering doubts” about the allegations and his “evasive and intemperate testimony.”

The Washington Post says that when Kavanaugh was chosen by President Trump, he “seemed to be…an accomplished judge whom any conservative president might have picked,” but “given Republicans’ refusal to properly vet Mr. Kavanaugh, and given what we have learned about him during the process, we now believe it would be a serious blow to the court and the nation if he were confirmed.”

The New York Times says that “President Trump has no shortage of highly qualified very conservative candidates to choose from, if he will look beyond this first, deeply compromised choice.”

None of the editorials mentioned a word about Roe v. Wade, “reproductive rights,” a “woman’s right to choose,” or abortion. Yet it was this issue that galvanized them to oppose Kavanaugh on July 10, the day after Trump chose him to be his nominee. Here is what they said.

“We worry about the future of reproductive freedom” is how the Los Angeles Times put it. The editorial in the Washington Post objected to Kavanaugh’s “narrow view of what constitutes an undue burden on a woman’s right to end her pregnancy.” The New York Times left no one wondering what it thought: it ran four op-ed articles bemoaning Kavanaugh’s views on abortion.

What makes this so nauseating is the fact that these same papers insist that the Catholic Church is hung up on sex. Nonsense. It is not the Church that is obsessed with sex—it’s the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and, most especially, the New York Times. Their refusal to admit why they really oppose Kavanaugh only adds to their deceitfulness.

Saudi Crown Prince Says He ‘Loves Working With’ Trump, Relationship With US Unchanged

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Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said relations with the US are still strong despite comments by Donald Trump that the Kingdom must pay for American military support.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said: “Actually we will pay nothing for our security.” The Kingdom pays for all its military equipment from the US, he said: “We believe that all the armaments we have from the United States of America are paid for, it’s not free armament.”

Since the beginning of Saudi-US relations “we’ve bought everything with money,” the crown prince told a group of Bloomberg reporters on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia changed its military spending strategy after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, with 60% of spending with the US over a decade, the prince said.

“That’s why we’ve created the $400 billion in opportunities, armaments and investment opportunities, and other trade opportunities,” which Prince Mohammed said was a good achievement for both countries.

The various deals, which were signed in 2017 when President Trump made Saudi Arabia his first overseas visit, means that “part of these armaments will be manufactured in Saudi Arabia, so it will create jobs in America and Saudi Arabia, good trade, good benefits for both countries and also good economic growth. Plus, it will help our security,” he said.

“I love working with him. I really like working with him and we have achieved a lot in the Middle East, especially against extremism, extremist ideologies, terrorism and Daesh,” said the crown prince.

President Trump and King Salman launched a global counter terror center in Riyadh during his visit to the country.

Prince Mohammed visited Washington in March where the president hailed the links between the two allies. “The relationship is probably the strongest it’s ever been,” Trump said at a joint press conference.

“We have huge investments between both countries. We have good improvement in our trade – a lot of achievements, so this is really great,” the prince said on Wednesday.

The US-Saudi efforts, along with global partners, have pushed back extremists and terrorists and countered Iran’s “negative moves in the Middle East in a good way,” he told the publication.

On the topic of controlling oil prices, the crown prince said the Kingdom has never “decided that this is the right or wrong oil price. The oil price depends on trade – consumer and supplier – and they decide the oil price based on trade and supply and demand.

What we are committed in Saudi Arabia is to make sure there is no shortage of supply. So we work with our allies in OPEC and also non-OPEC countries to be sure that we have a sustainable supply of oil and there is no shortage and that there is good demand, that it will not create problems for the consumers and their plans and development,” he said.

Prince Mohammed confirmed that Trump did make a request to Saudi Arabia and OPEC to replace whatever may be lost of supply from Iran. “And that happened. Because recently, Iran reduced their exports by 700,000 barrels a day, if I’m not mistaken. And Saudi Arabia and OPEC and non-OPEC countries, they’ve produced 1.5 million barrels a day. So we export as much as 2 barrels for any barrel that disappeared from Iran recently. So we did our job and more. We believe the higher price that we have in the last month, it’s not because of Iran. It’s mostly because of things happening in Canada, and Mexico, Libya, Venezuela and other countries that moved the price a little bit higher. But Iran, definitely no. Because they reduced 700,000 barrels and we’ve exported more than 1.5 million barrels a day,” the crown prince said.

When asked about diplomatic issues with Germany and Canada and how that differed from what Trump said, the prince replied: “It’s totally different. Canada, they gave an order to Saudi Arabia on an internal issue. It’s not an opinion of Canada about Saudi Arabia as much as they are giving an order to a different country. So we believe this is a totally different issue. Trump is speaking to his own people inside the United States of America about an issue.”

Professor Who Wished ‘Death & Castration’ To Kavanaugh Defenders Sent On Paid Working Trip

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A Georgetown University professor, suspended from Twitter over calls to murder ‘entitled white men’ for supporting Judge Brett Kavanaugh and to ‘castrate their corpses,’ is being sent to travel internationally for research.

Dr. Carol Christine Fair made headlines this week when she tweeted that “entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement” deserve “miserable deaths” and that, as a bonus, their corpses should be castrated and fed to pigs.

Twitter suspended her account over that post on Tuesday, temporarily, as it turns out, because Fair was back on the social network within a day. Meanwhile, Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where she teaches, has decided to “punish” her by sending her on a trip abroad.

We can and do strongly condemn the use of violent imagery, profanity, and insensitive labeling of individuals based on gender, ethnicity or political affiliation in any form of discourse,” SFS dean Joel Hellman said on Friday.

“To prevent further disruption to her students and out of an abundance of caution for the security of our community, we have mutually agreed for Professor Fair to go on research leave, effective immediately,” Hellman wrote in a statement, explaining that she will “accelerate previously scheduled international research travel.”

Fair, who describes herself on Twitter as an “inter-sectional feminist, pitbull apostle, scotch devotee, nontheist, resister,” was unrepentant. Taking a page from New York Times’ editor Sarah Jeong’s playbook, she argued that the tweet was “using the language of the abuse I receive by the hundreds.”

On Thursday, the National Coalition for Men (NCFM) filed a Title IX complaint against Fair with the Department of Education, arguing she is “an active and ongoing security threat to her male students, she cannot be expected to teach her male students in a fair manner, and her presence creates a hostile environment against young male students on campus.”

NCFM lawyer Marc Angelucci expressed surprise that Fair was not fired by Georgetown, saying that “if a male professor said those horrific things about female senators, he’d be fired immediately, not to mention mobbed and vilified in the media.”

Fair called the complaint “absurd” and “basically weapons-grade misogyny.”

“Anyone who confuses a critique of male privilege with animus towards men is being daft or willfully mendacious,” the professor told PJ Media.

Two New Laws Will Take Back Much That Putin Appeared To Give n Decriminalizing Internet Posts – OpEd

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In eight days, two new laws will go into effect that introduce serious civil fines and even imprisonment for individuals and groups who don’t obey judicial orders to stop distributing information the government finds offensive, thus reversing the “softening” of the anti-extremist laws for which Vladimir Putin has been given so much credit.

The texts of the laws which go into effect on October 13 now have been published in the government’s Rossiiskaya gazeta (rg.ru/2018/10/04/fz348-dok.html), but they haven’t received as much attention as Putin’s announcement. Viktor Kuznetsov’s commentary on Versiya is an exception (versia.ru/v-rossii-uzhestochat-nakazanie-za-otkaz-prekratit-rasprostranenie-informacii).

The Versiya writer makes it clear that both individuals and media outlets who run afoul of their provisions face enormous fines, potential detention, compulsory work for the good of the community, and even up to one year in prison if they continue to distribute materials Russian courts object to.

Among the kinds of posts that would potentially run afoul of these new measures are those that courts say distribute “illegal” or “unreliable” information, a potentially expansive category that could be used to go after all those who now run afoul of the anti-extremism laws Putin has “softened” and more besides.

What is particularly concerning, Kuznetsov says, is that the new laws apply “not only to citizens but also to the media, one of the chief distributors of information on the Internet.” Those courts hold to be in violation of their orders will find it difficult to defend themselves. And that will have a chilling effect on them as well as on individuals going on line.

That is because the new laws specify that anyone or any institution that doesn’t stop distributing information courts object to “within the course of a single day” face the threat of being blocked and entered into a government list as someone distributing “prohibited information.”

Going Full Circle For Growth And The Planet – OpEd

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The business case for making our economy more sustainable is clear. Globally, transitioning to a circular economy – where materials are reused, re-manufactured or recycled-could significantly reduce carbon emissions and deliver over US$1 trillion in material cost savings by 2025. The benefits for Asia and the Pacific would be huge. But to make this happen, the region needs to reconcile its need for economic growth with its ambition for sustainable business.

Today, the way we consume is wasteful. We extract resources, use them to produce goods and services, often wastefully, and then sell them and discard them. However, resources can only stretch so far. By 2050, the global population will reach 10 billion. In the next decade, 2.5 billion new middle-class consumers will enter the fray. If we are to meet their demands and protect the planet, we must disconnect prosperity and well-being from inefficient resource use and extraction. And create a circular economy, making the shift to extending product lifetimes, reusing and recycling in order to turn waste into wealth.

These imperatives underpin the 5th Green Industry Conference held in Bangkok this week, hosted by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Royal Thai government. High-level policymakers, captains of industry and scientists gathered to discuss solutions on how to engineer waste and pollution out of our economy, keep products and materials in use for longer and regenerate the natural system in which we live.

The goal is to embed sustainability into industries which we depend on for our jobs, prosperity and well-being. Action in Asia and the Pacific could make a major difference. Sixty percent of the world’s fastmoving consumer goods are manufactured in the region. Five Asia-Pacific countries account for over half of the plastic in the world’s oceans. The region’s material footprint per unit of Gross Domestic Product is twice the world average and the amount of solid waste generated by Asian cities is expected to double by 2025.

If companies could build circular supply chains to reduce material use and increase the rate of reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycling – powered by renewable energy – the value of materials could be maximized. This would cushion businesses, manufacturing industries in particular, from the volatility of commodity prices by decoupling production from finite supplies of primary resources. This is increasingly important as many elements vital for industrial production could become scarce in the coming decades.

With these goals in mind, the United Nations is working with governments and businesses to support innovation and upgrade production technologies to use less materials, energy and water. UNIDO is engaged across industrial sectors, from food production to textiles, from automotive to construction. Over the past twenty-five years, its network of Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production Centres has helped thousands of businesses to “green” their processes and their products. The Global Cleantech initiative has supported entrepreneurs to produce greener building materials. Industrial renewable energy use is being accelerated by the Global Network of Sustainable Energy Centres. New business models such as chemical leasing help reduce chemical emissions. And the creation of eco-industrial parks has contributed to the sustainable development of our towns and cities.

In Asia and the Pacific, the UN is intensifying its efforts to reducing and banning single use plastics. The Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy is implementing programmes to reduce plastics consumption, marine litter and electronics waste, and encourage sustainable procurement practices. UNESCAP is identifying opportunities in Asian cities to return plastic resources into the production cycle by linking waste pickers in the informal economy with local authorities to recover plastic waste and reduce pollution.

The 5th Green Industry Conference is an opportunity to give scale to these efforts. The gap between our ambition for sustainability and many business practices is significant. So it’s essential for best practice to be shared, common approaches coordinated, and success stories replicated. We need to learn from each other’s businesses to innovate, sharpen our rules and increase consumer awareness. Let’s step up our efforts to build a circular economy in Asia and the Pacific.

*Mr. LI Yong is Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Mr. Hongjoo Hahm is Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

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