By T. Norman Van Cott*

In discussions of international trade, the pervasive mind-set is that exports are a positive entry in a country’s “economic well-being” ledger, while imports are a negative entry in the ledger. In other words, exports are intrinsically “good” and imports intrinsically “bad.”

Who hasn’t heard that imports “destroy” jobs while exports “create” jobs? Likewise for imports being “dumped” on Americans. Ditto for imports being likened to “invading foreign armies.” In international trade negotiations, countries grant import “concessions” only if their trading partners reciprocate with “concessions” of their own. That is, countries grudgingly import in order to export, not the other way around.

In my many years of teaching the essentials of international economics to university sophomores, I found that virtually all of them were afflicted with this mind-set. Against this backdrop, I enjoyed asking students about what Abraham Lincoln’s (who was a lifelong protectionist) northern states did to Confederate seaports during the War Between the States. Despite students’ general historical illiteracy, some were able to correctly respond that the North blockaded these seaports to keep Confederates from importing goods and services. Next question was: did this help or hinder the Confederacy’s war effort? To which the students responded:, “It hurt their war effort.”

At this point the students had fallen into a glaring contradiction. To wit, if imports are harmful to a nation’s economic health, then the northern states’ blockade of Confederate seaports, by reducing Confederate imports, strengthened the Confederacy. Yes, that what it means. Which, in turn, suggests that Lincoln was an unwitting agent for the Confederacy! This is absurd.

Some students, probably attempting to save face, pointed out that the North’s blockade also deterred Confederate exports (primarily cotton). Did this harm the Confederacy? Yes, but not because exports are intrinsically good and less of them would be harmful. Exports, by themselves, represent goods and services leaving the Confederacy. What’s intrinsically beneficial about having fewer goods and services available, particularly when you’re trying to fight a war?

The problem here is that the popular mind-set regarding exports and imports is bogus! Rather than imports being intrinsically bad and exports intrinsically good, the truth is just the opposite. Lincoln escaped this popular mind-set only once in his political career when he undermined the Confederacy by blockading its harbors. In doing so, he anticipated the late 19^th century economist Henry George’s observation that nations do to their citizens when peace prevails what they do to their adversaries during wartime.

None of the politicians/ commentators, together with their business/labor allies, who peddle this economic nonsense about exports and imports behaves in their personal lives as they suggest the nation posture itself with respect to the rest of the world. Indeed, their income earning activities (their exports) enable them to buy things produced by others (their imports). Hopefully, lots of imports. The more the better, in fact. Their exports—that is—their incomes, are what enable them to do this. The bottom line is that people in their private lives export in order to import.

If actions speak louder than words, we should look at what our politicians/commentators and their business/labor cohorts do when managing their own affairs, not the affairs of the nation. It demonstrates Adam Smith’s insight in his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations: “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.”

About the author:
*T. Norman Van Cott, an adjunct scholar with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is professor of economics at Ball State University, Muncie, IN.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Bill Clinton had gotten a lot of things right, here is what he got wrong.

By Akshobh Giridharadas

The Clinton Doctrine in many ways was seen as epitomising a sound economy and a sensible foreign policy. Particularly one that eschewed from the conflicts in the West Asia, unlike that of his predecessor and successor, both from the same family. In fact, if anything, Clinton could take credit for trying to restart the peace process between Israel and Palestine.

Bill Clinton was the first president elected since the fall of the Soviet Union, which brought an end to the decades of hostility that epitomised the Cold War. The fall of the ‘evil empire’ left the United States as the undisputed superpower.

An overview of the 1995 national security strategy reveals telling insights. Clinton’s doctrine prioritised fiscal prudence and economic sagacity. This was par for the course, given that he ran on a campaign of “it’s the economy stupid.” However, a closer look at Clinton’s national security strategy throws a few elements into the spotlight.

As the first post-Cold War president, the priority was very much towards the spread of democracy in the eastern bloc and other erstwhile communist nations. As cited in the strategy document: “hundreds of millions of people have thrown off communism, dictatorship or apartheid. Former adversaries now cooperate with us in diplomacy and global problem solving.”

The fallacy being that countries that have thrown off the shackles of communism will now embrace democratic norms espoused in the west. The Clinton strategy document spoke about the triumph of democracy being inevitable in the vacuum created by the absence of communism.

However, democracy has been far from stable. The West Asia continues to be ruled by some despotic rulers. The Kim family have consolidated their hold over the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. The rise of the authoritarian strongman leader has been evinced with Vladimir Putin in Russia, Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, Recep Erdogan in Turkey and Xi Jinping in China.

In an ephemeral world, change is not unfathomable. But the extent of change from Clinton’s Oval Office to Trump’s Oval Office has been remarkable. In 1994, Clinton’s inner circle and foreign policy wonks attested that relations with all major powers were largely positive.

Today, the Washington inner circle would see the increased bellicosity emanating from Russia and China as major threats to the Western liberal order.

When India and Pakistan both officially went nuclear in the late 1990s, the Clinton administration did not hesitate to slap sanctions on the South Asian rivals. Counter-proliferation was seen as a top priority and one that was attainable through economic sanctions and deft statecraft. Today, that is far from fruition, given that the US continues to remain paranoid about Iran and North Korea’s weapon programme, while Pakistan continues to increase its nuclear arsenal.

Clinton showed remarkable perspicacity on the security front. The document rightly highlighted that “the spread of weapons of mass destruction poses serious threats. Violent extremists threaten fragile peace processes in many parts of the world.”

 Towards the mid 1990s, Al Qaeda was beginning to flourish in various parts of the world. Radical fundamentalism was on the rise as the Taliban consolidated their stronghold over Afghanistan. The administration was cognizant of the fact that there was “a resurgence of militant nationalism as well as ethnic and religious conflict.”

Clinton, drawing on his own experiences of dealing with the crises in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia, acknowledged the rising threat that terrorism posed. The increased use of non-conventional warfare and the growing threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of these rogue groups is a well-established threat today. But the Clinton administration showed foresight in understanding the possible pervasiveness of these forces.

However, prior to 9/11, most western foreign policy and security wonks viewed terrorism as a regional constraint. They saw terror threats as endemic to dystopic regions in fissiparous states. In short, they viewed terrorism as a manageable problem. Ironically, it was the other Clinton, who stated on the primary trail in 2016 that terror groups such as the Islamic State cannot be contained but must be destroyed. Highlighting a vast shift in US foreign policy thought process from the time her husband sat in office.

On the economic front, Clinton oversaw a period of robust economic growth and left office with a budget surplus (one that hadn’t been witnessed since three decades). The fall of the Soviet Union saw a dent in the communist framework and the administration believed there would be a leaning towards democratic institutions in erstwhile red states.

Clinton’s inner circle of economic advisors highlighted “democracies create free markets” and it is this free market that will eventually “offer economic opportunity, make for more reliable trading partners, and are far less likely to wage war on one another.” The belief was that globalism was on the rise and one that would usher in global prosperity and better trade relations. Clinton signed NAFTA and many other free trade agreements into law, believing this to be the gold standard of an era of free trade.

 The last decade has seen the meteoric rise of China, and the Asian dragon has been seen as an adversary in Washington, which has long accused Beijing of playing an unfair game in the trade arena. This has been epitomised by the Trump administration which has slapped tariffs on China, thus escalating a trade war.

The administration believed that the “dynamism of the global economy is transforming commerce, culture and global politics, promising greater prosperity for America and greater cooperation among nations.” The belief was that globalism was on the rise and one that would usher in global prosperity.

 Clinton espoused that open foreign markets would spur global economic growth. While this a salient economic principle, however ironically under Clinton, The Glass–Steagall act, which kept the investment banks and financial institutions in check, was repealed by president Clinton himself. Some commentators have attributed that this was one of the prime reasons for the financial crisis of 2007-08.

Towards the end of the Clinton administration, the Eurozone came into existence and a single currency of the Euro was introduced. This heralded the belief of European integration and a robust EU economic outlook.

Over a decade later, there has been a Eurozone crisis with the economies of Greece, Spain and Portugal all in a financially precarious scenario. The British exit from the European Union has now punctured holes in the belief of a united EU entity and could pave the way for others to exit a single European entity.

Perhaps, the biggest overreaching belief was that the in the absence of the Soviet Union, the United States would continue to stand unchallenged in its global hegemony and the liberal world order would be intact.

China’s ascendancy and the protectionist agenda of the Trump agenda would dilute that claim, especially since most commentators may just attest that the liberal world order is indeed in retreat.

People are hard-wired to respond to stories, but climate-denial narratives can be just as compelling as those that convey the facts about global warming. A new collection, “Confronting Climate Change in the Age of Denial,” publishing 9 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology, explores the challenges and pitfalls of using stories to communicate scientific evidence around climate change, offering both caveats and potential solutions to telling evidence-based climate change stories that can resonate with the public.

Science communicators and educators have long wrestled with the challenges of communicating evidence that contradicts people’s personal, religious, or political beliefs, particularly regarding evolution, vaccine safety, and climate change. A perfect case study of people’s tendency to create their own narratives to explain the seemingly inexplicable is the recent viral response to a photo of a starving polar bear. The photographers had hoped the starving bear could help people grasp what the future may hold for animals who can no longer depend on sea ice for hunting and shelter as global warming continues to melt polar ice sheets. But climate change deniers countered by circulating photos of healthy bears to claim that global warming is a hoax.

The collection features two articles by social scientists who offer different perspectives on enlisting narratives to convey climate change science and one by marine mammal experts who set the record straight on the likely impacts of climate change on Arctic wildlife.

“Marine mammals are ecosystem sentinels, capable of reflecting ocean variability through changes in their ecology and body condition,” argue Sue Moore, a biological oceanographer, and Randall Reeves, a marine mammal biologist, in “Tracking Arctic Marine Mammal Resilience in an Era of Rapid Ecosystem Alteration.” They propose a framework that adds ecological (e.g., geographic range and behavior) and physiological indicators to traditional demographics to provide a more comprehensive view of the health of populations. The authors hope that their framework, which can feed into existing global ocean surveys, offers “a path toward sustainability through improved prediction, more precaution, and wiser policy in this era of global environmental change.”

In “Climate Communication for Biologists: When a Picture Can Tell a Thousand Words,” psychologists Stephan Lewandowsky and Lorraine Whitmarsh examine strategies for using the anecdotes and images that satisfy our need for narrative without sacrificing scientific accuracy.

Science communication experts Michael Dahlstrom and Dietram Scheufele explore another dimension of the peril and promise of using stories to communicate science in “(Escaping) the Paradox of Scientific Storytelling.” Rather than telling stories to simply impart knowledge–which may prove unsuccessful, they say, since increased scientific literacy does not lead to greater acceptance of science–it may be better to tell stories about how scientific knowledge is produced. “In the end, using storytelling to primarily build scientific support through knowledge, attitude, or behavior goals without also engaging scientific reasoning might not help science in the long run.”

In publishing this collection, PLOS Biology editors hope that everyone who values unbiased scientific evidence thinks about ways to harness storytelling to help people grasp this complex but very real threat to our planet. We need to reclaim the storyline before it’s too late.

Young people in England aren’t just drinking less alcohol – a new study published in BMC Public Health shows that more of them are never taking up alcohol at all, and that the increase is widespread among young people.

Researchers at University College London analysed data from the annual Health Survey for England and found that the proportion of 16-24 year olds who don’t drink alcohol has increased from 18% in 2005 to 29% in 2015.

The authors found this trend to be largely due to an increasing number of people who had never been drinkers, from 9% in 2005 to 17% in 2015. There were also significant decreases in the number of young people who drank above recommended limits (from 43% to 28%) or who binge drank (27% to 18%). More young people were also engaging in weekly abstinence (from 35% to 50%)

Dr Linda Ng Fat, corresponding author of the study said: “Increases in non-drinking among young people were found across a broad range of groups, including those living in northern or southern regions of England, among the white population, those in full-time education, in employment and across all social classes and healthier groups. That the increase in non-drinking was found across many different groups suggests that non-drinking may becoming more mainstream among young people which could be caused by cultural factors.”

Dr Ng Fat said: “These trends are to be welcomed from a public-health standpoint. Factors influencing the shift away from drinking should be capitalised on going forward to ensure that healthier drinking behaviours in young people continue to be encouraged.”

Dr Linda Ng Fat added: “The increase in young people who choose not to drink alcohol suggests that this behaviour maybe becoming more acceptable, whereas risky behaviours such as binge drinking may be becoming less normalised.”

Increases in non-drinking however were not found among ethnic minorities, those with poor mental health and smokers suggesting that the risky behaviours of smoking and alcohol continue to cluster.

The researchers examined data on 9,699 people aged 16-24 years collected as part of the Health Survey for England 2005-2015, an annual, cross-sectional, nationally representative survey looking at changes in the health and lifestyles of people across England. The authors analysed the proportion of non-drinkers among social demographic and health sub-groups, along with alcohol units consumed by those that did drink and levels of binge drinking.

The authors caution that the cross-sectional, observational nature of this study does not allow for conclusions about cause and effect.

A crash by one of Uber Technologies, Inc.’s self-driving cars earlier this year resulted in the first pedestrian death associated with self-driving technology. The incident highlighted the challenges technology companies are facing in developing software that can adequately detect and respond to hazards in the road and immediate surroundings. The vehicle could have come to a complete stop in three seconds but did not employ emergency braking until 1.3 seconds before impact. Should emergency braking have been the default action taken immediately following the detection of roadway hazard?

A new study, “How should autonomous cars drive? A preference for defaults in moral judgments under risk and uncertainty,” published in Risk Analysis: An International Journal addressed this challenge by asking the public what they believed would be the most morally and ethically sound behavior for an autonomous vehicle (AV) faced with an oncoming collision. Even a perfectly functioning AV will not be able to avoid every collision and in some situations, every option will result in some type of crash.

The research team, comprised of Björn Meder, Nadine Fleischhut, and Nina-Carolin Krumnau of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Michael R. Waldmann of the University of Göttingen, addressed this question by asking participants to choose between staying in their lane (and braking), or swerving, where each action could lead to a collision with another road user at varying degrees of uncertainty.

The key finding from this study is that people generally preferred for the car to stay in its lane and perform an emergency stop. This supports the idea that people consider the stay option a reasonable default, as it conforms to general rules of driving and provides a better degree of controllability, even if it does not minimize expected loss. Employing this action as a simple default rule requires less processing of information and will often lead to better results. The researchers also found that even if staying in the lane resulted in an accident, people were less likely to alter their moral evaluation of the action taken in retrospect, whereas a bad outcome heavily influenced a retrospective analysis of a decision to swerve out of the lane.

In their first experiment, participants were presented with a scenario in which an AV had to perform one of two maneuvers: stay in the lane or swerve. Staying in the lane puts a pedestrian in the street in danger while swerving puts a bystander on the sidewalk at risk. The likelihood of colliding with the pedestrian and the bystander were varied creating different scenarios with specified or unknown risks. Data were collected from 872 individuals online through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) platform. Participants were presented with a written description of a traffic scenario in which a car is traveling down a road when suddenly a pedestrian appears in its path. The car can either stay in the lane and perform an emergency stop, in which case it might collide with the pedestrian, or the car can swerve to the right and perform an emergency stop, in which case it might collide with a bystander on the sidewalk.

The likelihood of colliding with the pedestrian in the street was either 20 percent, 50 percent or 80 percent. In the ‘risk condition’ the likelihood of colliding with the bystander was 50 percent. In the ‘uncertainty’ condition, the likelihood was unknown because the car’s systems were unable to make the estimate. The results showed a general preference for staying in the lane with more than 85 percent of subjects opting to stay in the lane. When the likelihood of colliding with the bystander was unknown, about 70 percent of subjects still preferred to stay in the lane. When the likelihood of colliding with the pedestrian was 20 percent and the likelihood of colliding with the bystander was 50 percent no one opted to swerve. Even when the likelihood for both collisions was 50 percent, staying was considered more acceptable than swerving.

The second experiment examined how people morally evaluate AV behavior in retrospect when a collision has occurred. From a policy perspective, AVs should act in ways that society deems acceptable even if collisions do occur. The researchers once again recruited 766 subjects via the AMT platform. The participants were asked how an AV should perform in a specific situation and to evaluate the moral acceptability of both staying and swerving. The results showed that if the car stayed in its lane, the outcome of the situation (collision or no collision with another road user) did not affect participants’ judgments of how an AV should behave. If the car swerved, however, the outcome was highly persuasive in retrospect. If no collision occurred, about 40 percent preferred to swerve, but less than 20 percent held that preference when a collision did occur. Thus, even when a collision occurred, staying in the lane was considered more acceptable.

“Our research highlights the importance of gaining a better understanding of how people think about the behavior of autonomous vehicles under different degrees of uncertainty,” states Meder. “The findings will help to inform policy making and public discussion of the ethical implications of technological advances that will transform society in a variety of ways.”

Overall, there is a general preference for staying in the lane and it is a morally acceptable default option in critical traffic situations even if it does not minimize expected loss. This simple default requires no information to be gathered by the AV’s systems about alternative actions or probabilities. Despite these findings, policy makers are faced with the challenge of developing policies that are morally sound but also appeal to the general public’s desire for self-preservation. Previous studies (Bonnefon, Shariff, & Rahwan, 2016, Science) have shown that subjects will show a preference for AVs that would sacrifice their own passengers to minimize the total number of casualties, but they wanted their own AVs to put a premium on passenger safety. So, while this study demonstrates a general acceptability for a default action to minimize potential losses, AV owners would prefer actions intended to save the vehicle passengers.

By Steve Herman

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is resigning.

“It has been an honor of a lifetime,” said Haley, sitting alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, where on Tuesday they announced her pending departure. “I’m not leaving until the end of the year.”

“We will miss you,” Trump said to Haley. “You have done a fantastic job.”

Thanking Haley for her service, Trump characterized the diplomat as “very special to me” and someone whom he had teamed with and “solved a lot of problems,” citing, in particular, issues with Iran and North Korea.

“Hopefully, you’ll be coming back at some point,” added the president, saying “you can have your pick” of other jobs in his administration.

“I don’t have anything set on where I’m going to go,” said Haley.

The former governor of South Carolina has been seen by some as a relatively moderate voice in Trump’s Cabinet.

Her appointment as ambassador to the U.N. was seen as a surprise because she had been viewed as a critic of Trump’s confrontational style during the 2016 presidential campaign. She also has been a proponent of free markets and global trade, in contrast to the president’s “America First” policies.

“Countries may not like what we do, but they respect what we do,” Haley said Tuesday, summarizing her tenure as Trump’s envoy to the world body.

Speaking to reporters later in the day, Trump said his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who works in the White House as an adviser to her father, could succeed Haley.

Ivanka Trump “would be dynamite, but then I would be accused of nepotism if you can believe it,” he said. “I’m not sure there’s anybody more competent in the world.”

Trump also said, in an extended exchange with reporters on the South Lawn: “I think CNN would support her.”

Trump also mentioned Dina Habib Powell, an Egyptian-born fluent Arabic speaker who was previously his deputy national security adviser for strategy.

“Dina’s certainly a person I would consider and she’s under consideration,” he said.

Proud of administration role

Haley responded recently to an anonymous opinion article in The New York Times by an unnamed senior official who claimed to be part of a “resistance” inside the Trump administration to thwart parts of the president’s agenda and his “worst inclinations.”

Haley, writing in The Washington Post, said that she was proudly serving in Trump administration and “I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country.”

As ambassador to the world body, Haley had clashed with her first immediate boss in the Trump administration, Rex Tillerson, who was fired by the president in March.

Current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised Haley “for the good work that she’s done,” saying she has been a great partner.

“She has been unique in this administration, not because she’s pushed a strong U.S. agenda, but in showing that to accomplish our goals we need to sit down with other countries and work in concert with allies and friendly countries,” Richard Boucher, a Brown University Watson Institute senior fellow and former assistant secretary of state, told VOA. “Secretary Pompeo now takes this approach as well. Others have tended to bluster and think that’s how to get what we want.”

Former diplomat Mintaro Oba, who spent three years on the Korea desk at the State Department, said he did not see Haley’s departure prompting any major changes for most policies, including those related to North Korea.

“A bigger question mark is how the United States will replace the relationships and trust she built with others at the U.N. and how that will impact key U.S. initiatives in the U.N. Security Council, like the North Korea pressure campaign,” Oba told VOA.

Trump agenda

Trump has been a loud and frequent critic of the United Nations, and Haley pushed his agenda against what he saw as mismanagement and biases at the world body.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described his relationship with Haley as “very productive and strong,” lauding her for promoting “constructive ties between the United Nations and the United States, showing the value of the United Nations.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Twitter, thanked Haley for leading what he termed “the uncompromising struggle against hypocrisy at the U.N., and on behalf of the truth and justice of our country.”

As governor of South Carolina, Haley came to national prominence for taking down the flag of the Confederacy at the State House in Columbia. The flag is a symbol of the losing Southern side during America’s mid-19th century Civil War.

Haley, 46, whose parents emigrated from India, is one of six women in Trump’s Cabinet and has been regarded by some as a potential Republican Party presidential contender.

“No, I’m not running for 2020,” Haley told reporters Tuesday, adding that she would be campaigning for Trump’s re-election in the next presidential election.

Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer, who focuses on the U.N., said, “I think she’s absolutely a star in the making. She’s relatively young. She has a bright political future ahead of her, in my opinion.”

Republicans only respect strength and Democrats can only afford civility if they win in the upcoming midterms, Hillary Clinton has argued against the backdrop of increasingly violent US politics.

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” the former presidential candidate told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Tuesday. “That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then the only thing the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

Her comments come amid calls for a return to civility following an ugly political battle over President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. Democrats sought to stop Kavanaugh by any and all means, from procedural delays and accusations of sexual impropriety in high school and college to mass protests, activists accosting Republican senators in elevators and airports, and death threats.

They failed. Kavanaugh was sworn in on Monday as the ninth Justice of the Supreme Court.

Clinton described the Republicans as an “ideological party that is driven by the lust for power,” and said only winning elections, not civility, can stop “what they intend to do” with America.

While some Republican lawmakers have condemned Clinton’s remarks and asked her party to denounce them, others have embraced them as a talking point to mobilize their base.

“What an irresponsible statement. Every Democrat should denounce,” tweeted Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), pointing out that Republicans have been “shot, stabbed, doxxed, beaten, mailed powder, run out of restaurants, and sent death threats.”

“Seriously, Hillary?” was the reaction of Congressman Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), who was seriously wounded last year when a shooter – who was a registered Democrat – targeted a Congressional Republican baseball practice in Virginia.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) held up Clinton’s remarks as an embodiment of what the Democrats stood for.

“She told CNN exactly how she views millions of Americans who hold different political views than her own,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “No peace until they get their way? More of these unhinged tactics? Apparently, these are the left’s rallying cry.”

NRA TV seems to think so as well, using Clinton’s remarks to promote a show hosted by former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino.

Saudi whistle-blower Mujtahid, who is believed to be a member of or have a well-connected source in the royal family, underlined that Turkey’s investigations into the death of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi would suffice to prove the Al-Saud’s crimes and overthrow Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“It seems that the details that Turkey will announce (in the near future about the fate of Khashoggi) are enough to put an end to the political career of Mohammed bin Salman. It is also likely that an international stance will be formed against Saudi Arabia which is a law-breaking government and bin Salman will be sued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” Mujtahid wrote on his twitter page on Tuesday.

He also predicted that final results of Turkey’s investigations may dissuade the US administration and Trump from continued support for bin Salman.

Mujtahid said that the Turkish judicial authorities are already in possession of sufficient proof and evidence to prove the Saudi government’s role in Khashoggi’s death, but they are waiting for completion of the legal and judicial process so that the final report would condemn bin Salman.

Turkish officials said they had concrete evidence missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, with a friend of the prominent writer saying they think he might have been dismembered.

A contributor to The Washington Post, Khashoggi has not been seen since Tuesday last week, when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to collect papers for his upcoming wedding.

Saudi officials said he left shortly afterwards but his fiancee, who was waiting outside, said he never came out.

Khashoggi, 59, who was once close to the Saudi royal family and has served as an adviser for senior Saudi officials, left the country last year to live in the US in self-imposed exile, saying he feared retribution for his criticism of Saudi policy in the Yemen war and its crackdown on dissent.

Turan Kislakci, a friend of Khashoggi and the head of the Turkish-Arab Media Association, said that Turkish officials said the journalist has been brutally murdered.

“What was explained to us is this: ‘He was killed, make your funeral preparations’,” Kislakci said.

“We called a few other places, these are lower officials, but they said: ‘We have evidence he was killed in a barbaric way, we will announce it tomorrow or the day after’.”

Kislakci also alleged, based on conversations with officials he did not name, that Khashoggi was made to “faint”, then was dismembered.

The Commission has proposed Total Allowable Catches (TAC) for a number of species for 2019 and 2020, in an effort to restore deep-sea fish stocks in the North-East Atlantic. Based on scientific advice, these new measures will enable stocks to gradually rebuild to sustainable levels.

“Our proposal invites Member States to apply a precautionary approach to reverse the worrying situation of declining deep-sea fish stocks”, said Commissioner Karmenu Vella, responsible for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. “It is in our shared interest to ensure that we have healthy fish stocks in deep-sea waters, for the sake of our fishermen and coastal communities, their livelihoods and for our marine ecosystems. Evidence also shows that sustainable fish stocks go hand in hand with a thriving industry.”

The majority of deep-sea species are highly vulnerable and take a long time to mature. The Commission’s proposal is based on precautionary scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES), and takes into account the obligation for fishermen to bring to land all catches as of 1st January 2019. The proposal reduces the catch limits in seven fish management areas compared to 2017-2018 levels, including for alfonsinos and black scabbardfish. Fishing for orange roughy will remain prohibited.

At the same time, positive scientific advice concerning red seabream around the Azores and roundnose grenadier in South Western waters, has allowed the Commission to propose increased quotas for these species over the next two years.

The Commission also proposes to cancel the TAC management system for three species (greater forkbeard in the North-East Atlantic, roundnose grenadier in the North Sea and black scabbardfish in the North Sea and Skagerrak), as they are fished in small quantity which does not prevent them from reproducing.

The scientific advice for deep-sea sharks was delivered on 5 October and is currently being analysed. The Commission will complete the current proposal in view of its adoption by EU Member States in the Council, currently scheduled for 19-20 November.

Deep-sea fisheries account for less than 1% of all fish caught in the North-East Atlantic. Over the years, fishing activity and associated jobs have been declining together with deep-sea stocks. At the same time, data on the structure of the stocks, age classes or frequency of young fish recruitment are often difficult to gather because of the deep-sea marine environment. Scientific advice recommends applying the precautionary approach to these stocks. The goal is to improve the state of stocks and allow for fishing at Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), the level that allows the fishing industry to take the highest amount of fish from the sea while keeping fish stocks healthy.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States has condemned the “outrageous” claims about the fate of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a “personal message” reported by Al-Arabiya Prince Khaled bin Salman said he wanted to address the “malicious leaks and grim rumors flying around about Jamal’s whereabouts and fate.”

“I assure you that the reports that suggest that Jamal Khashoggi went missing in the Consulate in Istanbul or that the Kingdom’s authorities have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless,” Prince Khaled said in the statement released on Monday evening.

“Jamal has many friends in the Kingdom, including myself, and despite our differences, and his choice to go into his so called ‘self-exile,’ we still maintained regular contact when he was in Washington.”

Khashoggi went missing in Istanbul last week.

A security delegation consisting of Saudi investigators arrived in Istanbul on Saturday to take part in the investigations.

Prince Khaled said the aim is to “chase every lead to uncover the truth behind his disappearance.”

“We will not spare any effort to locate him, just as we would if it were any other Saudi citizen.”

——

The Saudi ambassador’s full statement can be read below:

“I am sure you are following the news stories about Jamal Khashoggi. There are many facts regarding his whereabouts that will hopefully be revealed through the ongoing investigation. Despite that, we have seen over the last few days various malicious leaks and grim rumors flying around about Jamal’s whereabouts and fate.

“I would normally prefer not to address such outrageous claims, especially when it concerns the wellbeing of a missing citizen who dedicated a great portion of his life to serve his country. It goes without saying that his family in the Kingdom remain gravely concerned about him, and so are we. Jamal has many friends in the Kingdom, including myself, and despite our differences, and his choice to go into his so called “self-exile,” we still maintained regular contact when he was in Washington.

“I know many in Washington, and the world over share this concern for his wellbeing. I assure you that the reports that suggest that Jamal Khashoggi went missing in the Consulate in Istanbul or that the Kingdom’s authorities have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless. The first reports out of Turkey were that he exited the Consulate and then disappeared. Shortly after the relevant authorities in the Kingdom became engaged in his case, the accusations changed to him being held inside the Consulate. After Turkish authorities and the media were allowed to inspect the Consulate building in its entirety, the accusations changed to the outrageous claim that he was murdered, in the Consulate, during business hours, and with dozens of staff and visitors in the building. I don’t know who is behind these claims, or their intentions, nor do I care frankly.

“What we do care about is Jamal’s wellbeing, and revealing the truth about what occurred. Jamal is a Saudi citizen who went missing after leaving the Consulate. This was not his first visit to the Consulate in Istanbul, as he regularly came to the Consulate (as well as the Embassy in Washington) in the last few months for citizen services. The Saudi Consulate is fully cooperating with the local authorities to uncover what happened after he left.

“In addition, the Kingdom has sent a security team, with the Turkish government’s approval, to work with their Turkish counterparts on the investigation. Our aim is to chase every lead to uncover the truth behind his disappearance.

“Though the situation is extraordinary, these measures are not. Jamal is a Saudi citizen whose safety and security is a top priority for the Kingdom, just as is the case with any other citizen. We will not spare any effort to locate him, just as we would if it were any other Saudi citizen.”

By Yossi Mekelberg*

In his rather dystopian foray into an educated prophecy about what society will look like 100 years from now, the celebrated historian Yuval Noah Harari remarked: “We will be the last generation of homo sapiens. In 100 years, the species that will inherit the Earth will be as different to us as we are from Neanderthals or chimpanzees.” Equally telling was his assertion that the future of humankind will be decided by the people that own our data. With the pace at which the development of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) is gathering momentum and influencing our daily lives, this is probably going to happen much faster than Harari predicted.

We, as humanity, submit ourselves to technological innovations that are radically changing our way of life and compromising our privacy beyond repair, without stopping to reflect on what it may be doing to us as individuals or societies. Public debates and legislation on containing the hazards that stem from technology are constantly lagging behind the pace of innovation. In a matter of just over two decades, the big data collectors — be they governments, businesses or any other organizations with which we interact— have turned into hungry monsters with an infinite appetite for information. We the public acquiesce with our thirst for innovation marketed in shiny gadgets, and are throwing away basic human rights that collectively have taken many centuries to achieve, including the freedom to be autonomous decision-makers, and to control the extent to which we are prepared to share our private information with others.

As a consequence, those with vested interests who follow our activities are feeding AI with this information, aiming to influence our behavior to their own advantage, not ours. Thus we become puppets on a string controlled by those behind AI. This process is making redundant that which makes us humans and a unique species capable of thinking for ourselves, being creative, being intuitive as much as rational, and learning through trial and error — and not programmed machines.

Last month, John Hancock, one of the largest life insurance providers in North America, announced that it would no longer offer policies that do not include digital fitness tracking. Had this been a project aimed at encouraging people to exercise, especially considering the obesity epidemic that is affecting many parts of the world, John Hancock would have deserved a hearty slap on the back. After all, exercise has been proven to increase both life expectancy and improve quality of life. Many of us who harbor a guilty conscience because we have paid for membership of a gym we hardly ever use, do recognize the need for more time spent doing sport instead of watching it.

However, before we rush to congratulate the John Hancocks of this world, we should actually be afraid; very, very afraid. John Hancock’s move is an example of the corporate world dictating — not suggesting, recommending or advising — how to improve our health. The company’s new policy will give it the power to track its customers’ whereabouts, their intake and expenditure of calories, monitor their heart rate and blood pressure at any given time, and tell them how they should alter their way of life.

Offering policyholders discounts and rewards, such as gift cards, for hitting exercise targets cannot compensate for taking away individuals’ judgment and responsibility over their own lives. Canceling someone’s life policy for behavior deemed by an insurance company to be responsible for one’s untimely demise will leave many families not only heartbroken, but also penniless. What might be the next condition insurers impose before they issue a certificate of life insurance? A DNA test perhaps, followed by a hike in the premium or even an outright refusal to insure a person if they don’t like the results? This will end in further enriching insurance companies while exposing too many of us to their whims.

There is also an element of arrogance in the claims made by those who believe that big data and the rise and rise of the algorithm can provide an answer to all of society’s ills. Any data, big or small, is only as good as its analysis and interpretation. Moreover, big data supporters appear unable to accept that humans are imperfect and hence make imperfect choices — themselves included. AI is only as good as those humans who develop and program it. What is inevitable is that tracking any and every single human action will eventually lead to authoritarianism, but this time we will not be controlled by the people with political or military power, but by those who possess information about every aspect of our lives.

Cyberspace data vultures follow us every time we surf the internet, logging our interests, preferences, and our social and political habits. Then, with the help of some obscure algorithm, bounce it back to us with endless advertisements and promotions, tailor-made to alter or reinforce our behavior. Free will as a concept was a complex issue that was open to interpretation long before we became so careless about sharing information with complete strangers. In the age of smartphones and smartwatches, where information is a source of social and political power, not to mention money, free will becomes a dwindling commodity.

There is a huge difference between technology mobilized to improve the human condition, and technology that uses data to spy on and control people’s lives. Who doesn’t find it spooky that, when they leave a restaurant, their phone is asking them to review that restaurant? A private meal with your friends or business associates is being monitored by someone or something.

It is, of course, of more concern when medical, personal or financial details are collected with no forewarning or explicit permission. It is an unsettling and frightening invasion of what in a free society is regarded as private space. This space should be displaying a huge sign declaring “no unauthorized entry.” Innovation in the name of improving human health and well-being is something to be encouraged, but “algoritocracy” is a menace to all free people and societies.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

By Pulack Ghatack

Lawyers for Bangladesh’s main opposition party allege that hundreds of thousands of its members have been named in police reports lodged in recent weeks in a bid to prevent them from participating in political activities ahead of upcoming national elections.

Thousands of people have been jailed as a result, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, joint secretary of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), told BenarNews on Tuesday.

A petition demanding an investigation of the matter had its first hearing in Bangladesh’s High Court on Monday and Tuesday, but the two judges could not agree on the case, so it will now be assigned to a different bench, according to Bangladesh Attorney General Mahbubey Alam.

“Between the 1st and 20th of September, police filed 4,000 cases against BNP leaders and workers all over the country. More than 300,000 people were accused or listed,” BNP lawyer Sanaullah Miah told BenarNews.

“The intention is essentially to stop opposition leaders and workers from participating in election activities. That’s why we have submitted a writ petition asking to investigate the merit of those cases,” said Khandaker Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, a BNP lawyer who joined in filing the petition on Sept. 22.

In comments on Monday, Law Minister Anisul Huq appeared to acknowledge that key BNP members had been named in multiple police cases.

“Investigations will be conducted to find out whether any of the cases recently filed against the BNP leaders and activists are false or fictitious. If anybody is not involved in offenses, they’ll be cleared of the cases through final reports submitted to the courts,” he said.

Earlier, Assistant Police Inspector-General Sohel Rana denied that the cases were baseless or politically-motivated.

“Police always file cases on the basis of specific allegations,” he said on Oct. 2. “If we made any mistake in filing cases, then the court will decide about those.”

The officials did not specify how long this legal process would take. The date of the election has not been formally announced but is expected in late December or by Jan. 28, 2019 at the latest.

BNP and its 20-party alliance opted not to participate in the last general election, in 2014, saying it would not be free and fair.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been in power since 2009, which together with her earlier 5-year stint (1996-2001) makes her the longest-serving leader of the South Asian country.

BNP has not declared its intentions this year. Its figurehead, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 73, is ailing and imprisoned on corruption charges. Her son, Tareq Rahman, is in exile and on trial in absentia for a 2004 grenade attack on a ruling party rally that killed 24 people.

The BNP has been considering linking up with a new alliance led by former law minister Kamal Hossain, 81, and former president Badruddoza Chowdhury, 86. Either of those senior figures could serve as prime-minister in waiting, but as a condition of joining, the BNP would have to part ways with its longtime partner, faith-based Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Awami League government has been using police reports to suppress the opposition for a decade, BNP leaders claim.

Addressing a press conference at his party’s headquarters on Oct. 7, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir claimed that around 90,340 cases had been filed against more than 2.5 million party members since 2009.

By Courtney Grogan

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has invited Pope Francis to meet in Pyongyang, a South Korean spokesman said Tuesday.

Pope Francis is already set to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in Oct. 18 for an audience at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, where Moon will personally deliver the invitation from Kim Jong Un.

President Moon, a Catholic, will also participate in a Mass for peace on the Korean peninsula in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 17 celebrated by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

During the most recent summit between Korean leaders in September, Kim told Moon that he would “greatly welcome” the pope Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s presidential office.

On Oct. 7, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea to discuss details for a second summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim to continue negotiation of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, according to the State Department.

“One of the key pillars of the statement between Chairman Kim and President Trump was that we would have better relationships, confidence-building measures. We would fundamentally change the nature of North Korea’s relationship with the rest of the world,” Secretary Pompeo told press in South Korea on Oct. 8 after the meeting with Kim.

Vatican Secretary for Relations with States Paul Gallagher visited the Joint Security Area on the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea on July 5, where he said, “it is a very historic period, a period of hope and the Holy Father is supporting that movement.”

“I am sure with the prayers and support of Christians and other men and women in good faith around the world that many good things will be achieved in the coming months. We pray for that,” Archbishop Gallagher said during the visit.

Diplomatic negotiations continued at the third inter-Korean summit between Kim and Moon, which took place on Sept. 18 in Pyongyang during a week in which Catholics in South Korea celebrated the peninsula’s martyr saints.

The First Lady of South Korea, Kim Jung-sook, participated in the Mass with Korean bishops as a part of the festivities. She asked for prayers for the diplomatic negotiations at Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral days prior to heading to Pyongyang for the summit.

Twenty-five million people live in North Korea, which has one of the worst human rights records in the world. A United Nations investigation in 2014 produced a 372-page report that documented crimes against humanity, including execution, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, forced abortions, and knowingly causing prolonged starvation.

There are currently an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people in North Korea’s six political prison camps, in which the U.S. State Department has found evidence of starvation, forced labor, and torture.

South Korean bishops have been leading Catholics in prayer for the reconciliation and unity of the divided Korean peninsula for decades.

“Since 1965, the Korean Catholic Church has been praying for the true peace of the two Koreas and the reconciliation of the nation,” Archbishop Kim Hee-Jung of Gwangju wrote in April following the first meeting between the Korean leaders. chairman of the Korean bishops’ conference in April.

“Through these prayers, something miraculous is happening in this land by the help of God for whom nothing will be impossible,” Archbishop Kim continued.

“Until the day when complete peace is established on the Korean peninsula and divided peoples are united, the Catholic Church of Korea will accompany the journey for reconciliation of the people in unity.”

By Zahid Hussain

Pakistan’s Supreme Court said on Oct. 8 it has reserved its verdict in the final appeal by Catholic mother “Asia” Bibi to escape capital punishment in a blasphemy case that began with a dispute with field workers a decade ago.

Chief Justice Saqib Nisar headed the three-member court bench that heard her long-awaited appeal after she was handed the death sentenced in 2010 under the country’s draconian blasphemy laws.

Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan made up the rest of the bench.

When asked if Asia Bibi was a Christian preacher, her lawyer Saiful Mulook responded, “She has never been a preacher.”

After hearing the arguments from both sides the court reserved judgment and said it would announce its verdict later. No date was given.

Chief Justice Nisar said the delay was “for reasons to be recorded later” and warned the media to refrain from commenting on or discussing the case until the verdict has been delivered.

If her appeal is rejected, her final recourse will be to seek clemency from Pakistan President Arif Alvi who has risen to power along with newly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The mother of five from a small village in central Pakistan has spent nine years behind bars after a fight broke out after with her Muslim co-workers over a cup of water while picking berries on June 14, 2009.

Asia Bibi claims one of the women attacked her for “dirtying” the drinking water because she was not a Muslim, to which she reportedly fired back, “What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?” This sparked another confrontation a few days later that saw her beaten and dragged before a village imam who gave her an ultimatum: Convert to Islam or die.

The case has made headlines around the world and even led Pope Benedict XVI to urge Pakistan to drop the charges against her.

Prior to yesterday’s announcement, Mulook pleaded to the judges to set aside her conviction on the basis that the complaint against her was not filed until five days after the alleged altercation, and was filed the imam of a mosque who had not even been present when it reportedly occurred.

“There were contradictions regarding how the notice of the incident was taken. Moreover, no permission was sought from district officials or police to legally register the complaint,” he said.

On the day the news of the verdict being delayed was released, a petition surfaced online seeking 500 signatures to push for Asia Bibi’s immediate release. Shortly after it was uploaded it had received three times this target. Another petition started by a British woman in 2015 on social action website change.org garnered over half a million signatures.

As of Oct. 8, the defendant’s name was among the top trending words on Twitter in Pakistan as support continued to pour in for the jailed Catholic woman.

“Over 71 years since Independence it’s time for Pakistan to move on from its contentious blasphemy laws introduced by Britain during the British Raj and inherited by Pakistan at the time of partition. Praying that humanity and compassion prevail at the SC tomorrow,” tweeted Sayeed Warsi, a British lawyer and former co-chair of the Conservative Party.

Rights activist Kashif Chaudhry also threw his two cents into the debate raging through the Twittersphere.

“In a few hours, Asia Bibi’s final appeal will be heard by Supreme Court. Let’s hope sanity prevails and the poor Christian mother of five is reunited with family. The real blasphemy here is the pain through which Asia has been put through. Prayers are with her,” he wrote.

“Last chance for Pakistan to right the wrong it did,” tweeted Naila Inayat, a female rights activist.

In a statement shortly after the hearing, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, head of the hard-line Sunni group Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, said no blasphemer could escape punishment regardless of the verdict.

Anyone who attempts to save a blasphemer would face the wraith of the public, he said, implying vigilante justice could supplant the court’s decision if the appeal goes in Asia Bibi’s favor.

“International lobbyists encourage blasphemers in Pakistan,” he added.

By Mladen Lakic

Milorad Dodik, the newly-elected Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite presidency, said he will launch an initiative for the country to recognise annexed Crimea as part of Russia.

Milorad Dodik, who won the Serb seat on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite state presidency at the weekend, told Russian newspaper Izvestia on Tuesday that one of his first moves will be to launch an initiative to recognise Crimea as part of Russia.

“I will put forward such an initiative, and I intend to achieve recognition of the status of Crimea at the [state] level of Bosnia,” Dodik told Izvestia.

Dodik, who is well known for his close ties to Moscow and repeated visits to meet Vladimir Putin, said that Crimea historically belongs to Russia and that he wants to visit the annexed peninsula as soon as possible as a new member of Bosnia’s presidency.

“I would like my first meetings in my new position to be held with the presidents of Russia and Serbia — Vladimir Putin and Aleksandar Vucic,” he added.

Crimea was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in February 2014, but it is still regarded as being part of Ukraine by the US and EU states.

Dodik also told Izvestia that he will prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from getting involved in any activities to implement the country’s NATO Membership Action Plan, a key step towards joining the Western military alliance.

In October 2017, parliament in Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity passed a largely symbolic resolution declaring the neutrality of Republika Srpska in relation to military alliances – a perceived counterpoint to Bosnian state moves to join NATO.

Dodik also said he would support idea of creation of a Russian-Serbian humanitarian centre in Bosnia, similar to the one that is currently operating in the Serbian city of Nis.

However, decisions made by the Bosnian tripartite presidency are based on a consensus of all three members.

Loyola University Economics Professor Walter Block starts off his Tuesday article at lewrockwell.com stating it has come to his attention “that many Loyola students will not enroll in my classes, will boycott my public lectures, will have nothing to do with me, because they think I favor slavery and am a racist and a sexist.” Block then proceeds to refute each of the assertions put forward to urge students to boycott him.

In addition to the boycott effort being based on false claims, it threatens to cause participating students to receive a much lesser college education. That is an argument Robert Wenzel convincingly presents in a Tuesday Target Liberty article. After providing his own refutation of the assertions used to support the Block boycott, Wenzel concludes with some comments regarding what students participating in the boycott will miss out on. Wenzel writes:

But aside from the specifics of Dr. Block’s views, it is a particularly limited student mind that refuses to contemplate or consider thinking that is different from what a student already thinks he knows.

College should be a period of open thinking and consideration of all types of views.

The students boycotting Dr. Block will never do anything impressive on the intellectual front. They will be moved by the intellectual fads of the day. They will be anti-plastic straw today, and who knows, maybe pro-butt tattoos tomorrow. They are in an important way insignificant. The student that takes Dr. Block’s class to challenge him or learn from him is taking the first step toward deep thought, independent thought and maybe original thought. This will be the type of person that may make an intellectual contribution down the road.

At the Ron Paul Institute, we highly value Block’s insights, especially regarding the institute’s areas of focus — advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home. We are thankful for Block’s membership in the institute’s Academic Board and hopeful that many Loyola University students will both reject the call to boycott Block and take advantage of their opportunity to learn with him.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

A friend in Tehran tells me that he marvels at the attitude of the United States ruling establishment towards Iran. ‘Why do they hate us so much’, he asks? It is a fair question. His country, he says, is not perfect, but it is certainly not a threat to the world. The current government – led by Hassan Rouhani (Iran’s seventh president since the 1979 Revolution) – is moderate in many ways, its foreign minister – Javad Zarif – a man of dignity. Certainly, my friend says, there are elements inside the higher reaches of government that are erratic. But, ‘don’t all countries have such people in power’, he says, the smile pointing towards India’s Narendra Modi and Donald Trump of the United States. Can any country these days, he eggs me on, say that it does not have its own version of Trump?

In 1953, the United States and its allies overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran. The reason why Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh bothered the West was that he began to nationalise the oil sector. Oil firms could not tolerate this. He had to go. The overthrow of Mosaddegh brought to power the repellent Shah of Iran, who then ruled Iran with an iron fist till the Revolution of 1979. Two years into the Shah’s reign, the United States and Iran signed a Treaty of Amity – a normal agreement signed between countries to promise fair treatment on a wide variety of matters. It is important to underscore that the US signed this treaty not with a democratic government – which it had overthrown – but with the autocratic regime of the Shah – which it had installed.

This week, the United States withdrew from the Treaty of Amity (1955). US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States should have torn up the treaty in 1979, thirty-nine years ago. Iran has never reneged on that treaty, despite the fact that it was signed by an autocratic regime.

Nor has Iran reneged on the 2015 nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that it signed with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union – an agreement ratified by the full UN Security Council.

The United States unilaterally walked away from the nuclear agreement earlier this year, which provoked Iran to sue the US in the International Court of Justice. This week, the Court ruled in Iran’s favour. My friends in Tehran say that they would have been surprised if the Court had not ruled on Iran’s behalf. There was no reason why the US should have withdrawn from the 2015 agreement nor why the US should threaten to increase sanctions on 5 November. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear Security Report (2018) notes, ‘Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’. This sentence is clear enough. At the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting this September, its Director General Yukiya Amano said that he hoped Iran would continue to fully ‘implement its commitments’. There was no sense that Iran has violated the agreement. Based on this, and on the Treaty of Amity, there was no other option for the International Court of Justice. It had to rule on Iran’s behalf.

There is no reason why the United States should ramp up its sanctions against the 82 million people of Iran.

Against all evidence, the United States – and other Western powers – continue to reiterate the view that Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. But, there is no evidence of Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons apart from the statements by Western and Israeli leaders. In the 1990s, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, wrote a fatwa that condemned nuclear weapons. This fatwa built on one written by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that was written in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War and was against the use of any chemical or biological weapons. Khamenei’s fatwa was not released, but in October 2003 he made an oral fatwa against the production and use of any weapons of mass destruction. This was in the context of the US war on Iraq and threats of a US expansion of that war into Iran. The IAEA has not found any evidence of nuclear weapons production in Iran. What Iran had begun – with US help from 1957 – was a nuclear energy programme.

The UN’s position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. Yet, they have allowed the US and Israel to push against Iran. They have allowed Iran’s people to suffer under an intolerable sanctions regime and are now allowing Iran to go through an even tighter sanctions policy. No legal shield from Europe is going to help. No mild criticism of the United States is sufficient. My friends in Tehran – who have their own differences with their government – appeal to the world, asking for a break with the US-Israeli position on Iran, an opening to the people of Iran who are being strangled by the sanctions.

In 2010, the brilliant Iranian artist Farah Ossouli did a miniature painting called Put Your Gun Down. It depicts two angels, the woman feeding water to a bird and the man with a gun in his lap. They have their backs to each other. It looks like hope has been banished. But, the picture has a strong name – put your gun down. That was the message of the 2015 nuclear agreement and the message against sanctions, another form of war. It remains the message today.

I know it’s considered bad manners to bring data into an economic debate, but after seeing numerous stories telling us how bad China’s economy has been hit by Trump’s tariffs (e.g. this NYT piece), I thought it was worth looking at the numbers.

In the first eight months of 2018, China’s exports to the US were $344.7 billion. This is up by $25.4 billion from $319.3 billion in the first eight months of 2017.

I’m afraid I have a hard time seeing how China’s economy could be hurt all that much from tariffs that still did not prevent its exports from rising year-over-year. I’m sure there have been some businesses and specific industries that have been hurt, but I have a hard time seeing how a $14 trillion economy ($25 trillion in purchasing power parity terms) could be sunk by reducing its exports to the US by $60 or even $100 billion.

And, since we are constantly told that much of the value of these exports actually comes from third countries like Japan or South Korea, the impact would be even less.

Of course, if China’s exports are still rising in spite of Trump’s trade war, it is even harder to understand how it could be sinking its economy.

This piece originally appeared on Dean Baker’s blog, Beat the Press.

Polar bears likely survived past warm periods in the Arctic, when sea ice cover was low, by scavenging on the carcasses of stranded large whales. This food source sustained the bears when they were largely restricted to land, unable to roam the ice in search of seals to hunt.

A new study led by the University of Washington found that although dead whales are still valuable sources of fat and protein for some polar bears, this resource will likely not be enough to sustain most bear populations in the future when the Arctic becomes ice-free in summers, which is likely to occur by 2040 due to climate change. The results were published online in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

“If the rate of sea ice loss and warming continues unmitigated, what is going to happen to polar bear habitat will exceed anything documented over the last million years. The extremely rapid pace of this change makes it almost impossible for us to use history to predict the future,” said lead author Kristin Laidre, a marine biologist at the UW’s Polar Science Center and associate professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

Polar bears need sea ice to survive because it is an essential platform for hunting seals, their main food source. They travel over the ice, searching for breathing holes or seal birth dens. When the ice breaks up in late spring, polar bears in some populations will fast on land, waiting for the ice to re-form so they can resume hunting.

Still, polar bears are opportunistic feeders and have been observed in multiple locations eating the carcasses of whales that died at sea and washed ashore. The bears can quickly consume and store large amounts of fat, which works in their favor. In some cases, between 40 and 60 different polar bears have been observed feeding on large bowhead and gray whale carcasses and, in 2017, more than 180 bears were seen scavenging on a single dead bowhead whale. Individual bears frequently return to the same carcass over multiple years.

The authors drew upon years of observations in the field to assess the potential importance of whale carcasses and how they might help polar bears survive an ice-free Arctic. It is clear that polar bears persisted through low-ice interglacial periods in the past that resulted from naturally occurring climate cycles. The researchers hypothesized that, to a significant degree, the bears likely survived by scavenging on whale carcasses, storing large amounts of fats when hunting seals was not an option.

“I think this is likely one of the most probable explanations for how polar bears made it through previous warm interglacial periods,” said co-author Ian Stirling, former research scientist with the Canadian Department of Environment and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, who has studied polar bears for 45 years.

“But when we look at the situation now, ecologically, with respect to food sources, it’s a very different picture,” Stirling added. “The potential of whale carcasses to bail bears out may still be important in a few areas but, quite simply, their overall availability is going to be substantially less than before humans invaded the Arctic.”

The researchers wanted to determine whether enough large whales dying and washing ashore each year could replace seals as a food source for polar bears in some areas. They first calculated how much blubber and meat an average population of 1,000 polar bears would need as a food source each year.

Then, they looked at the abundance of gray and bowhead whale populations — focusing on the coasts of Chukotka and Alaska — and estimated the number of potential strandings, factoring in that about 10 percent of whales that die will float to the surface, and only some of those end up on land that is accessible to bears.

Their analysis found that during ice-free summer months, a hypothetical population of 1,000 polar bears would need to eat about eight whales, and during the springtime feast when bears eat more, about 20 whales would be needed to satisfy the same 1,000 bears. In the Chukchi Sea, long-term data collected in Russia indicate that enough whales die and float to shore each year to potentially meet this need, the authors found.

But feeding on dead whales, while possibly critical in historical times, seems unlikely to help most polar bear populations survive a rapidly warming Arctic. The Arctic is home to 19 subpopulations of polar bears, but not every region sees large whales strand and die as regularly as the Chukchi Sea. Additionally, though whale carcasses likely helped polar bears survive in past low-ice periods, the Arctic landscape has changed drastically since then. Present-day whale populations are much smaller due to past human exploitation, and recent human activity in the region such as shipping, coastal communities and offshore industrial activity can further impact polar bears, whales, and the ability of bears to make use of whale carcasses.

“Scavenging on large whale carcasses is probably important for bears in some areas and may buffer them from sea ice loss,” Laidre said. “However, carcasses of large whales are not expected to replace seals as nutritional resources as we move towards an ice-free Arctic. In most regions, the environmental changes are too large and the whale carcasses are too few.”

Archbishop Charles Chaput possesses both the brilliance to astutely analyze the content of the dominant culture, and the courage to challenge us to think more clearly about it. His recent remarks before the Youth Synod in Rome, which were refreshingly countercultural, are a case in point.

Chaput takes issue with Chapter IV, paragraphs 51-63, of the Vatican Youth Synod document. For example, the document refers to young people as the “watchmen and seismographs of every age,” something which Chaput rightly labels as “false flattery.” Young people, he says, are “too often products of the age” and today this means they are strongly affected “by a culture that is both deeply appealing and essentially atheist.”

Chaput’s observation makes eminently good sense. Young people need to be tutored in the wisdom of Catholic teachings, not left to themselves to negotiate a morally debased culture. Furthermore, there is no virtue in sentimentalism: young people deserve an honest response. They are not now, and never were, the “watchmen and seismographs” of the culture. It would be more accurate to say they are a barometer of the culture, a reflection of its norms and values.

Leaders in and out of the Church have too often failed young people, Chaput says, abdicating their responsibilities “out of a combination of ignorance, cowardice and laziness in forming young people to carry the faith into the future.” Those three attributes—ignorance, cowardice, and laziness—have sadly taken the place of wisdom, fortitude, and diligence, virtues that have served the Catholic community well in the past.

The critics of Chaput’s remarks focus heavily on his contention that there is no such thing as an “LGBTQ Catholic,” or a “transgender Catholic,” or a “heterosexual Catholic.” He is adamant in his conviction that “‘LGBTQ‘ and similar language should not be used in Church documents, because it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the Church simply doesn’t categorize people that way.”

Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, who heads a dissident group that stands outside the Catholic Church, takes Chaput to task saying there is no difference between being an LGBTQ Catholic and an Italian Catholic. He even says that those who describe themselves as LGBTQ do not consider their sexual orientation to be “the dominant marker of themselves,” comparing them again to Italian Catholics.

Unfortunately, DeBernardo is flatly wrong. Catholics who are Italian may also be New Yorkers, Democrats, and the like. Chances are they are also heterosexual. But their sexual orientation would never be their master status, any more than their being left-handed might be. But to many of those who identify as LGBTQ—which is not a monolithic entity—their master status is their sexual orientation. It is they who tribalize their sexuality, not others.

Identity politics is perverse and un-American, to say nothing of violating every tenet of our Judeo-Christian heritage. It makes individuals invisible, reducing every human being to some ascribed group status, thus depriving them of their God-given dignity. Moreover, America treasures individual rights, not group identities.

Archbishop Chaput is one of the great princes of the Catholic Church in the United States. He proved that once again with his seminal commentary at the Youth Synod.