Is there a second Earth out there in space? Our knowledge of planetary systems far, far away is increasing constantly, as new technologies continue to sharpen our gaze into space. To date, 3,700 planets have already been discovered outside our solar system. The planetary masses and radii of these exoplanets can be used to infer their mean density, but not their exact chemical composition and structure. The intriguing question about what these planets could look like is thus still open.

“Theoretically, we can assume various compositions, such as a world of pure water, a world of pure rock, and planets that have hydrogen-helium atmospheres and explore what radii are expected” explains Michael Lozovsky, a doctoral candidate in the group of Prof. Ravit Helled at the Institute for Computational Science at the University of Zurich.

Thresholds for planetary composition

Lozovsky and collaborators have used databases and statistical tools to characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres. These are fairly common and surrounded by a volatile layer of hydrogen and helium. However, the directly measured data previously didn’t allow the researchers to determine the exact structure, since different compositions may lead to the same mass and radius. In addition to the accuracy of the data relating to mass and radius, the research team thus also investigated the assumed internal structure, temperature and reflected radiation in 83 of the 3,700 known planets, for which the masses and radii are well-determined.

“We used a statistical analysis to set limits on possible compositions. Using a database of detected exoplanets, we found that every theoretical planetary structure has a ‘threshold radius’, a planetary radius above which no planets of this composition exist,” explains Michael Lozovsky. The amount of elements in the gaseous layer that are heavier than helium, the percentage of hydrogen and helium, as well as the distribution of elements in the atmosphere are important factors in determining the threshold radius.

Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes

The researchers from the Institute for Computational Science found that planets with a radius of up to 1.4 times that of Earth (6,371 kilometers) can be earth-like, i.e. they have a composition similar to Earth. Planets with radii above this threshold have a higher share of silicates or other light materials. Most of the planets with a radius above 1.6 radii of the Earth must have a layer of hydrogen-helium gas or water in addition to their rocky core, while those larger than 2.6 Earth radii can’t be water worlds and therefore might be surrounded by an atmosphere. Planets with radii larger than 4 Earth radii are expected to be very gaseous and consist of at least 10 percent hydrogen and helium, similarly to Uranus and Neptune.

The findings of the study provide new insights into the development and diversity of these planets. One particularly interesting threshold concerns the difference between large terrestrial-like planets – otherwise known as super-Earths – and small gaseous planets, also referred to as mini-Neptunes. According to the researchers, this threshold lies at a radius of three times that of Earth. Below this threshold, it is therefore possible to find earth-like planets in the vast expanse of the galaxy.

By Ronen Hoffman*

(FPRI) — Over the past few weeks, media attention in Israel was mainly focused on developments on the northern front, such as threats from Iran, Hezbollah, Syria—and the potential limits posed by Russia on the Israeli air force’s maneuvering space above Syria. Without diminishing the seriousness of the threats in the north, it seems that the challenges facing Israel on the Gaza Strip front in the south are similarly serious.

In many ways, Gaza is a ticking bomb that could ignite a local fire—and perhaps a regional one—with the potential to drag Israel into a ground military operation. Such an operation would entail high prices not just for number of casualties, but also for the possibility that by the end of the operation Israel would have to resume its pre-1994 role as Gaza’s governor when it was directly responsible for funding the area’s infrastructure (electricity, water, sewage, and health system). Gaza turned out to be Israel’s main problem coming from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long avoidance from defining a clear policy on the general Palestinian issue and particularly on the Gaza challenge. While former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had a clear long-term policy for Gaza (under Sharon, Israel completely disengaged from Gaza and under Olmert, Gaza was included in the negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas as a part of the future Palestinian state), under the current Netanyahu government, as with many other political issues, the policy on Gaza is reactive, short term, and shortsighted.

On the declaratory level, Israel has refused to politically recognize Hamas as the government in Gaza, but at the same time, it holds Hamas responsible for Gaza’s entire security and economic situation. Senior Israeli officials, e.g. Education Minister Naftali Bennett (2014) and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (2016), threatened to forcefully overthrow the Hamas regime, but so far, Israel has refrained from sending troops into Gaza with the aim of destroying Hamas. In fact, Israel’s policy under Netanyahu aimed solely to deter, weaken, and restrain Hamas. The long continuity of that policy has turned out to be a de facto recognition of Hamas by Israel as the sovereign of the Gaza Strip.

From one violent eruption to another, it became clearer to Israel that the Hamas leadership is the exclusive authority responsible for the Gaza Strip, since every violent cycle was ended with an armistice between Israel and the Hamas as if there are two equal players. Additionally, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) unwillingness and inability to return to the Strip and to regain its control over Gaza has strengthened that view. The practical implication from Israel’s lack of a political, proactive, long-term strategy over Gaza created “quiet for quiet” intervals between violent rounds. That status quo model weakens the PA and strengthens the narrative that the current Israeli government is trying to assimilate, according to which there is no partner for a long-term political arrangement on the Palestinian side.

Consolidating Hamas’ sovereignty in the Gaza Strip, the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, and the deepening split between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip do not serve Israel’s long-term interests. On the contrary, they only perpetuate the deep economic distress and the humanitarian crisis which Hamas is trying to extricate from this adversity through the help of international elements imposing responsibility on Israel.

Key International Players

Since apparently neither Israeli nor Hamas initiative for change in the situation is expected in the foreseeable future, and since it is clear that such a change is necessary in order to avoid a major explosive crisis in Gaza, it is appropriate to review the position and policies of the other players in the arena and to examine whether they will be able to act as a catalyst for this necessary strategic change.

First, the Palestinian Authority: President Mahmoud Abbas is waging a determined economic struggle against Gaza in order to weaken Hamas. He has stopped paying salaries to government officials in Gaza and stopped transferring funds to supply electricity and fuel to the Strip. Abbas unequivocally conditioned his return to Gaza as full PA control: “one authority, one law, and one weapon.” Abbas’ policy makes the Gaza issue to be even more complex for Israel since any Israeli humanitarian gesture in Gaza means disregard for the PA effort to diminish Hamas’ power.

Second, Egypt: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime is ready to conduct a dialogue with Hamas based on the organization’s willingness to cooperate with Egypt in its war against Salafist jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula. In fact, Egypt expresses willingness to deepen its involvement in the Gaza Strip and assume greater responsibility for establishing peace and stability, promoting reconciliation between the PA and Hamas, easing restrictions on the Gaza Strip, and promoting economic projects for the benefit of Gaza’s population. Although for the time being Egyptian efforts have not succeeded, for Israel, Egypt is certainly a potential strategic partner in regard to long-term arrangements in Gaza, but for this reason Israel must first formulate its own clear long-term policy toward the Gaza issue.

Third, the United States: it will be interesting to see whether President Donald Trump’s peace initiative, which is expected to be presented to the relevant parties within a few months, will reflect a U.S. understanding that the first step necessary to jumpstart a political process between Israel and the Palestinians must be dealing with the humanitarian situation in Gaza. For the time being, there is no sign that the U.S. is willing to intervene and pressure Israel or Hamas in any long-term aspect. What makes the U.S. role in the process very complicated is Trump’s decisions to move the American embassy to Jerusalem and to cut aid for Palestinian organizations. These two moves are perceived by the Palestinians as evidence that the U.S. has never been an honest broker in this conflict.

Prospects for a Gaza Deal

In the meantime, in the absence of local or international momentum for a fundamental change, the situation in the Gaza Strip is deteriorating not only from the economic aspects of poverty and unemployment, but also from a social and political standpoint. There are growing tensions and stress among the population, particularly noticed amid the young, relatively educated generations which grew up in Gaza. They feel angry and frustrated; many of them hold extreme worldviews towards Israel even compared to Hamas. The use of media and social networks, as well as the ability to influence international elements, creates a consciousness among the new generation that sees Israel as the main party responsible for the situation in Gaza, even more than in the past.

The opening conditions for the possibility of a long-term solution are even more complex and challenging since it is clear that the main Israeli pre-condition for any possible strategic change will be the demilitarization of Hamas from its strategic weapons (missiles, rockets, and terror-tunnels) or at least significantly limit its military buildup. It is also clear that Hamas sees its military power as key to its existence as a movement and as a regime. Demilitarization of Hamas could only be possible if a decisive and determined international coalition of regional stakeholders—headed by the United States, which has the power and the authority to persuade and lead the parties—gets involved. This coalition will actively lead such a process as part of a future arrangement that will involve the integration of Hamas into a unified Palestinian government headed by the PA. As long as Abbas, who is weak and not healthy, is still the head of the Palestinian Authority, the chances for that are extremely small.

The issue of the economy in Gaza will also play a major role in any potential long-term agreement. The combination of armed activity, political conflict, and a prolonged closure has so far exacted a large price from the Gaza Strip’s economy. A real long-term rehabilitation of Gaza will generate a wide overall change in the living conditions and the well-being of the population and hence will affect security and stability domestically and in the region.

From the purely economic aspect, that international coalition will lead the transformation of the Strip into a developing environment with advanced industrial zones, tourism, innovative transportation channels, and infrastructures that meet the needs of the residents. The possibilities for a significant change in the economy include the development of tourism along the seashore, the development of the service sector, the renewal of agricultural exports, and even the establishment of a high-tech industry, as happened in Ramallah and Nablus. Gaza has also an estimated 30-40 billion cubic meters (bcm) of offshore natural gas, which was discovered in the year 2000 and is potentially capable of supplying its energy needs for 20 years, but that requires large-scale investments.

International agencies, i.e. World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Development Bank, that have the reputation and the “know how” need to be involved in order to achieve conditions that will lead to real economic change. Minor, tactical symbolic steps will not achieve the desired goals and in the long term may lead to further deterioration. Small steps may evoke the illusion of progress, but they do not provide a real answer to the problem.

For Israel’s long-term interests, it is essential to construct a comprehensive plan, a sort of “Marshall Plan,” that will enable the Gaza Strip to achieve real economic reconstruction—without Hamas being able to oppose it or prevent it. That creates a dilemma for the Israeli government as to the Palestinian Authority’s potential consent for the creation of such a plan. It is expected that the PA will support such a move only by extending it to the areas of Judea and Samaria while demanding a renewal of a political process that will eventually lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on the borders of 1967. Although at present it seems unlikely that the Israeli government would agree to make even one step in this direction—with the expected U.S. peace plan and with a possible new coalition in the Israeli government that will follow the next coming elections in Israel—a resumption of serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians could be a reasonable scenario.

Therefore, the process of transforming the Gaza Strip into a developing region with positive momentum is very complex, although not impossible. This process may take a long time, and building trust requires a degree of patience and consistency among all the parties involved. To enable the initiation of this vital process, Israel must formulate principles for a long-term policy, including action from international actors, primarily the United States, to assist in doing so. For the sake of its own long-term national interests, Israel must be prepared to lead such a process proactively and resolutely, even if it encounters serious obstacles along the way.

About the author:
*Dr. Ronen Hoffman, a 2018-2019 Robert A. Fox Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East, is an academician and former member of Knesset 2013-2015. He served as a member of Israel’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the chairman of the sub-committee on Foreign Affairs and Public Diplomacy.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

By John Feffer*

The news that Canada has caved on trade has me depressed.

The glee with which Donald Trump has announced his latest “victory” is galling. Sure, he didn’t force Mexico and Canada to do everything he wanted in the NAFTA replacement. But he certainly can claim a public-relations coup. And his supporters in Congress are milking the moment for all it’s worth.

“While many in Washington claimed it could not be done, President Trump worked tirelessly to bring Canada to the table and negotiate a new trade deal that is better for American workers and consumers,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

Yes, yes, I know: the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice. The problem is, how long is the arc and how big is the universe? In the shorter term, such as the span of a human lifetime, injustice seems more likely the norm.

I would like to believe that Trump’s game of chicken on foreign trade is simply not going to work. But what if it does? What if China blinks? What if the EU buckles? The game of trade is not simply won by those who can negotiate the longest or write the most detailed treaties. It’s often won by those who use crude displays of power.

Geopolitics is not a game for the faint of heart. It’s the perfect playground for bullies.

Bullies were on the ascendant even before America’s Top Tyrant won the presidency in 2016. Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Daniel Ortega: these leaders all believe that their might makes right.

But Trump brings it to another level. Russia, Turkey, Nicaragua, and the Philippines all have rich histories of strong men imposing their wills on resistant populations. The United States lacks that tradition. The rule of law is supposed to keep the bullies in check.

Now Trump is bringing into government a whole club of likeminded pugilists. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are running foreign policy. The god-awful Jeff Sessions is rewriting the rules of law. And now Trump wants to stuff the Supreme Court with frat boys like Brett Kavanaugh, someone who has never known the difference between right and wrong and, in his most recent testimony, tried to bully Congress into confirming his nomination simple because he’s, well, entitled to it. Ruthlessness got him this far in his career — why shouldn’t he stick with this tactic?

It reminds me of my first day in middle school, when an older boy picked me out of the crowd of incoming sixth graders to punch my arm, a display of power that he enjoyed so much that he turned it into a daily ritual.

But the current situation is much worse than that. It’s like going to school and discovering that not only is that gang of jerks that hates you still controlling the hallways during breaks. Not only are they still extorting lunch money from the weak at lunch.

Not only that, but they’ve taken over the classrooms and the administration, they decide who gets into what courses and what colleges, and they want to make your entire day a living hell.

Bullying Tactics

Bullies are often, though not always, scared of a real fight. They pick on the weak and the easily intimidated. They talk big.

Donald Trump has always talked big. And he seems never to shy away from a fight. But those are verbal battles — in the press or in the courtroom. As for actual fighting, he notoriously avoided the Vietnam War, not for moral reasons but because of supposed bone spurs in his heels.

Like most chickenhawks, Trump talks big about blowing up other countries and taking out their leaders. So far, however, he has only attacked some usual suspects — a few targets in Syria, a widespread bombing campaign in one of the poorest countries on earth (Afghanistan), and a continuation of the U.S. drone program.

True, Trump might be gearing up for a war with Iran. He’s being pushed in that direction by people inside his administration (like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo) as well as neocon hawks like Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (who recently called Trump a “Twitter tiger”).

But I suspect that Trump wants simply to bully Iran into submission. He has hit the country with the sanctions that the previous administration had removed as a result of the nuclear deal. Already, Iran’s oil exports have dropped steeply by 870,000 barrels a day since April. The Trump administration has threatened to penalize any country that imports Iranian oil with secondary sanctions. As a result, South Korea and Japan have already stopped their orders. Meanwhile, U.S. oil exports have gone up, in part to fill the gap.

Of course, not everyone has gone along with Trump. China in particular will continue to purchase Iranian products. And Europeans are openly defying Trump by crafting a deal with Tehran to preserve the nuclear deal and keep open trade and investment links. And oil prices are on the rise, which means more discontent at the pump in the United States, particularly among Trump’s carbon-guzzling supporters.

Trump says he wants a new nuclear deal. But really the end game is regime change in Tehran. For all but the craziest of neocons, the Iraq War has created a new kind of syndrome: maximum pressure, minimum military involvement. It’s what some observers have cannily described as “regime change on the cheap.” So far, thanks to some powerful allies, Iran is hanging tough.

Big Stick, Then Talk

Perhaps if Kim Jong Un were Muslim or didn’t have nuclear weapons or had made the supreme mistake of being nice to Barack Obama, Trump wouldn’t be interested in sitting down to talk with him. As it was, Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric against North Korea in the first year of his term. Then he pivoted, against the advice of many in his administration, toward negotiations. The result was the Singapore summit in June, the first time a sitting American president met with a North Korean leader.

There have been a few interesting changes in the U.S.-North Korean dynamic. The Pentagon agreed to suspend war games with South Korea last summer. Pyongyang has continued a moratorium on nuclear and missile testing as well as dismantled some non-essential parts of the nuclear complex.

But the key problem remains the same. Who will make the first bold move?

Meanwhile, North and South Korea aren’t waiting for Trump to get off the dime. They’ve already begun removing landmines from the DMZ. At the last inter-Korean summit, North and South agreed to significant de-escalation, from a no-fly zone over the border to a transformation of the DMZ into a peace park. That’s bold, and it’s happening now.

As for Trump and Kim? They are apparently enjoying those early days in a romance when men’s thoughts turn constantly to love. As Trump said at a rally in West Virginia last weekend:

I was really being tough and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love, ok? No really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they’re great letters. And then we fell in love.

So, the two bullies have hit it off. No surprise there. But as in Romeo and Juliet, today’s Montagues and Capulets haven’t yet ended their generational conflict despite the love of the two principals. Such love affairs usually don’t end well.

But let’s say that it does, and the mutual bullying works. In reality, the détente between Washington and Pyongyang will have more to do with the patient negotiations of the quintessential anti-bully, Moon Jae-in.

Stomping on the Palestinians

Donald Trump has promised a brand new deal for Middle East peace. That’s the fraudulent businessman at work. He’s slapped a “new and improved” sticker on a product that is demonstrably inferior to its previous versions, and somehow he thinks the world will buy it.

The Trump administration has put maximum pressure on Palestinians to negotiate from a progressively weaker position and minimum pressure on Israel to make any concessions at all. Trump has moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem (a major Israeli demand), zeroed out $200 million in bilateral assistance for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, cut U.S. financial support for a UN agency that has long helped Palestinian refugees, and closed down the Palestinians’ de facto embassy in Washington, DC.

The proper response to this bullying is, of course, to tell the Trump administration to shove its “deal of the century” right up its Foggy Bottom.

And it’s not just Palestinians and liberal American Jews who feel this way. Here’s what former Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner has to say:

While it is Trump’s prerogative to pick and choose whom to support, and how to support them, the ramifications of these abrupt steps will only empower the radicals. The deal of the century can’t be made with Israel alone, and hardballing the Palestinians into submission is likely to blow up on Israel’s doorstep. 

It’s one thing bullying Iran and North Korea. These countries might be backed up against a wall, but they have choices. The Palestinians, after losing so much and then losing even more under Trump, basically have nothing left to lose — except their dignity. Why should they come to the negotiating table to trade this last resource for a manifestly unfair deal?

So, in the four examples cited, bullying worked with Canada, has half-worked with Iran and North Korea, and has had nothing but malign impact on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Unfortunately, for Trump and his minions, bullying isn’t just a tactic, it’s a way of life.

The Comeuppance?

If life imitated Hollywood, the bullies would either experience a life-affirming conversion or get their just desserts.

Let’s forget about the first option. Donald Trump, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo: These guys are not going to pull a David Brock and suddenly realize the many errors of their ways.

Then what about option two? I’d love to see Trump and his crew escorted from the federal government to the federal penitentiary. But how many members of the George W. Bush administration faced prison time for the mishandling of the Iraq War, the torture policy, and the other disasters of U.S. foreign policy? Only one: Lewis Libby, for his role in the Valerie Plame affair.

And how many members of the financial community went to prison for their role in the banking crisis of 2008? Again, only one.

It may turn out that a couple more Trumpsters have to face jail time as a result of the Mueller probe. Maybe even the president himself will be Caponed over his myriad tax scams. But I have my doubts that the aftermath of the 2020 elections will provide us with the grand spectacle of a mass perp walk from the White House.

Unfortunately, the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 election disproved the adage that “cheaters never prosper.” Indeed, his whole life stands testament to the grim truth that cheaters, if they cheat on a truly grand scale, can get away with it. The same, alas, applies to bullies.

But not always.

The #MeToo movement is only the latest reminder that organized resistance can bring down very powerful bullies. It’s not exactly a Hollywood ending — not until they make a movie about Harvey Weinstein’s rise and fall — but it’s a whole lot better than suffering in silence. As for the Trump administration, well, I don’t know about you but I’d like to shorten the arc of the moral universe and bend it a lot more acutely toward justice.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands

Like people in many countries, Russians keep track of how many Nobel Prizes their country wins or, in their case, doesn’t win. (It hasn’t won many in recent years and didn’t win any this year either.) But the enterprising Telegram channel SerpomPo argues that the Nobel committee is clearly overlooking Russia’s special achievements.

That Russia didn’t win some this year, the channel says, is “undeserved and unjust. The Nobel Committee is [obviously] inclined against Russia” because if one takes a larger view of just what constitutes an achievement or an innovation, Russia has some “good prospects” (t.me/SerpomPo/1629, reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5BBB856B1B528).

“For example,” the channel says, surely the inventors of the Novichok poison are worthy competitors for the chemistry prize as are those who were behind the doping at Sochi. Moreover, Putin should get the peace prize for using bombs to solve the Syrian conflict. Russian ministers who’re talking about extending life to 120 to 150 years surely should get the prize in medicine. And the Russian journalists at REN-TV should have a good chance to win the prize in physics for their “daily discoveries” like the earth being flat and humanoids living on Mars.

But, the Nobel committees ignored all these Russian achievements, SerpomPo says.

The Nobel committees did not award the literature prize this year; but if they do next, Russia has a strong candidate there, if one applies the same principles that the Telegram channel does.   It should go to Samira Khan, a Russia Today journalist in Washington, D.C., for her remarkable writings about Stalin’s GULAG.

On her Twitter account, the journalist said that “Capitalists have fooled you” about the GULAG. In her telling, GULAG prisoners got two-week vacations each year, were allowed to marry, families could stay with prisoners, there were no uniforms or handcuffs, and there was free movement on the GULAG territory (medialeaks.ru/0910amv-rt-gulag/ and znak.com/2018-10-09/zhurnalistka_rt_opravdala_gulag_iz_za_volny_gneva_twitter_ey_prishlos_udalit).

In her second post, she declared that “80 percent of the cases [of prisoners] had been decided by civil courts,” that there were no bars on the windows, that it wasn’t a prison at all but a labor colony far from population points, that the maximum sense was ten years and most received five or less, and for good behavior prisoners were released early.

Screenshots of her posts featured the reference “Stalin haters don’t believe any sources;” but no one has been able to find sources even those who defend the Soviet dictator which make the claims she does, at least none published since his death in 1953. Not surprisingly, she was sharply criticized and had her account closed down.

But because of the scandal, American journalist Ben Collins found that elsewhere in her account, Khan had declared that she “would die for Stalin, the Red Army and the USSR. Without any questions being asked … Without a second thought, I would give my life for the return of Stalin.”

In response, Khan apologized; but that was hardly enough – although writing like hers, if Nobel committees used the principles SerpomPo suggested, should be enough to guarantee her the literature prize next year when presumably she will still be broadcasting for Russia Today in the US.

Pakistan, following in the footsteps of Malaysia and Myanmar, is the latest country to balk at the China and infrastructure focus of Beijing’s Belt and Road-related investments.

Preparing for his first visit to China as Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan is insisting that the focus of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$60 billion plus crown jewel of the Belt and Road, shift from infrastructure to agriculture, job creation and foreign investment.

“Earlier, the CPEC was only aimed at construction of motorways and highways, but now the prime minister decided that it will be used to support the agriculture sector, create more jobs and attract other foreign countries like Saudi Arabia to invest in the country,” said information minister Fawad Chaudhry.

Mr. Khan’s determination to ensure that more benefits accrue to Pakistan from Chinese investment comes at a time that various Asian and African countries worry that Belt and Road-related investments in infrastructure risk trapping them in debt and forcing them to surrender control of critical national infrastructure, and in some cases media assets.

Preceding Mr. Khan’s move, protests against the forced resettlement of eight Nepali villages persuaded CWE Investment Corporation, a subsidiary of China Three Gorges, to consider pulling out of a 750MW hydropower project.

Malaysia has suspended or cancelled US$26 billion in Chinese-funded projects while Myanmar is negotiating a significant scaling back of a Chinese-funded port project on the Bay of Bengal from one that would cost US$ 7.3 billion to a more modest development that would cost US$1.3 billion in a bid to avoid shouldering an unsustainable debt.

Fears of a debt trap started late last year when unsustainable debt forced Sri Lanka to hand China an 80% stake in Hambantota port.

Mr. Khan’s move takes on added significance given that Pakistan appears to have decided to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it avert a financial crisis with a loan of up to US$12 billion and discussions with Saudi Arabia that could produce up to US$10 billion in investments that would be separate but associated with CPEC.

Pakistani finance minister Asad Umar is expected later this week to initiate discussions with the IMF during the fund’s annual meeting in Bali. The decision was taken after Saudi Arabia refused to delay Pakistani payments for oil imports, opting instead to build a refinery and strategic oil reserve in the CPEC port of Gwadar.

Pakistani officials see investment by Saudi Arabia as one possible way of facilitating a Pakistani request to the IMF for help. They hope that even an informal association with CPEC of Saudi Arabia, one of the United States’ closest allies in the greater Middle East, may alleviate Washington’s concern that IMF money could be used to repay Chinese debt.

Yet, even that is unlikely to prevent the IMF, backed by the United States, from demanding that the veil of secrecy be lifted that shrouds the commercial and financial terms of many CPEC-related, Chinese-funded projects, as a pre-condition for assistance from the fund.

Apparently concerned about Pakistan’s intentions, China’s deputy chief of mission in Islamabad, Lijian Zhao, insisted in an interview as well as a series of tweets that China welcomed Saudi investment and “always supported & stood behind @ Pakistan, helping #develop it’s #infrastructure & raise #living standards while creating #job.”

Mr. Lijian’s comments followed a statement last month by Chinese foreign minister Wang Ji after talks with Mr. Khan in Islamabad that appeared to indicate that China, while acknowledging Pakistani demands, would not address them immediately. Mr. Wang suggested that CPEC would only “gradually shift to industrial cooperation.”

Indications suggest further that China may be looking to Pakistan’s military to shave off the rough ends of the government’s determination to effectively renegotiate CPEC.

Pakistan’s army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa visited Beijing in August days after commerce minister Abdul Razak Dawood suggested that the government may suspend CPEC projects for a year.

Making his comments shortly after Mr. Wang’s departure from Islamabad, Mr. Dawood also asserted that the previous government had negotiated terms that were favourable to China rather than Pakistan.

China this week, in a move likely designed as much to strengthen Pakistani counter-terrorism capabilities as a gesture towards the country’s politically influential armed forces, made Pakistan the second country after Saudi Arabia to receive killer drones and the associated technology.

The US has refused to sell its more advanced killer drones to either Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

The Khan government’s desire to refocus CPEC tackles key issues raised by critics of the project that potentially could impact China’s plan to pacify its troubled north-western province of Xinjiang through a combination of economic development and brutal repression and re-education of its Turkic Muslim population.

The initial plan for CPEC appeared to position Pakistan as a raw materials supplier for China, an export market for Chinese products and labour, and an experimental ground for the export of the surveillance state China is rolling out in Xinjiang.

The plan envisioned Chinese state-owned companies leasing thousands of hectares of agricultural land to set up “demonstration projects” in areas ranging from seed varieties to irrigation technology. Chinese agricultural companies would be offered “free capital and loans” from various Chinese ministries as well as the China Development Bank.

The plan envisaged the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps introducing mechanization as well as new technologies in Pakistani livestock breeding, development of hybrid varieties, and precision irrigation. Pakistan effectively would become a raw materials supplier rather than an added-value producer, a prerequisite for a sustainable textiles industry.

The plan saw the Pakistani textile sector as a supplier of materials such as yarn and coarse cloth to textile manufacturers in Xinjiang. “China can make the most of the Pakistani market in cheap raw materials to develop the textiles & garments industry and help soak up surplus labour forces in (Xinjiang’s) Kashgar,” the plan said. Chinese companies would be offered preferential treatment with regard to “land, tax, logistics and services” as well as “enterprise income tax, tariff reduction and exemption and sales tax rate” incentives.

For Mr. Khan to ensure that Pakistani agriculture benefits, the very concept of Chinese investment in Pakistani agriculture would have to renegotiated.

Similarly, Mr. Khan has yet to express an opinion on the plan’s incorporation of a full system of monitoring and surveillance that would be built in Pakistani cities to ensure law and order. The system would involve deployment of explosive detectors and scanners to “cover major roads, case-prone areas and crowded places…in urban areas to conduct real-time monitoring and 24-hour video recording.”

The surveillance aspect of the plan that identifies Pakistani politics, such as competing parties, religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western intervention” as well as security as the greatest risk to CPEC could, if unaddressed, transform Pakistani society in ways that go far beyond economic and infrastructure development.

llegal trade of oil and other hydrocarbons flourishes and poses serious environmental and security challenges.

By Peri-Khan Aqrawi-Whitcomb, Morgan D. Bazilian and Cyril Widdershoven*

Oil is still the world’s leading energy source, with growing demand, a fluctuating pricing system, and much of its production in volatile regions. The oil market’s value is larger than the world’s valuable raw metal markets combined, with an annual production valued at US$1.7 trillion. A flourishing black market is no surprise, with about US$133 billion worth of fuels stolen or adulterated every year. These practices fund dangerous non-state actors such as the Islamic State, Mexican drug cartels, Italian Mafia, Eastern European criminal groups, Libyan militias, Nigerian rebels and more – and are a major global security concern.

The top five countries accused of oil trafficking – Nigeria, Mexico, Iraq, Russia, and Indonesia – are also producers. It is estimated that Nigeria alone loses US$1.5 billion a month due to pipeline tapping, illegal production and other sophisticated schemes. In Southeast Asia, about 3 percent of the fuel consumed is sourced from the black market, estimated to be worth up to US$10 billion a year. In Mexico, drug cartels launder drug revenues through the oil trade.

Other countries are not immune. Turkey is not an oil producer, yet serves as a major transit route for hydrocarbons flowing to Europe from OPEC countries like Iraq and Iran. As an energy hub, Turkey is strategically situated for the illegal trade and lost an estimated US$5 billion in tax revenue in 2017. An uptick in smuggling oil and other refined products began 2014, when ISIS took control of major Syrian and Iraqi oil fields.

As with most commodities, the volume of oil smuggling is primarily linked to fluctuating prices. With climbing oil prices, illicit trade is expected to increase. The European Union is a prime example on how price disparities of fuel within its own member state countries tend to incentivize illegal trade producing counterintuitive routes. Lower oil prices in Eastern Europe have created maritime smuggling routes to the United Kingdom and Ireland. Ireland estimates it loses up to $200 million annually with fuel fraud, while up to 20 percent of fuel sold in regular gas stations in Greece is illegal.

The legal complexities and ambiguities of the global oil and gas trade often create an opening for illegal activity.

In some cases, subnational actors openly export oil despite official prohibition by central governments. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq maintains it is their region’s constitutional right to export oil independently, in defiance of the central government. With Baghdad withholding the region’s 17 percent of budget share, the regional government sought economic independence through hydrocarbons and found a degree of international sympathy, given its role in combatting ISIS and hosting 1.9 million refugees and internally displaced people. The unrefined product was sent via pipeline through Turkey’s Ceyhan port, loaded by various Greek shipping companies on tankers, then stored in Malta or Israel until buyers were found. Shifting routes of Kurdish oil tankers can be observed on sites like tankertrackers.com.

Authorities who benefit from the trade often stymie efforts to combat illegal trafficking, as seen in countries like Iraq or North Korea, with terrible consequences for citizens. Conflict and illicit trading near the Niger River Delta reduced overall foreign direct investment in recent decades.

With 90 percent of the world’s goods, 30 percent of which are total hydrocarbons, traded by sea, much of the illegal fuel trade is conducted on water. Two thirds of global daily oil exports are transported by sea, reports the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and a staggering 64 percent of international waters are areas beyond any national jurisdiction. Non-state actors offshore West Africa, Bangladesh or Indonesia take advantage of loopholes created by international law and the law of the sea. Transfer of illegal fuel is often done ship to ship on neutral waters – with one ship commercially legal, recognized as carrying legitimate imports at the final port of destination. Thus, illegal crude from countries such as Libya or Syria finds its way to EU markets.  Recently Russian ships have been found involved in smuggling oil products to North Korea through ship to ship transfers.

Armed theft and piracy also occurs. Hijackings off the coast of Somalia resumed in 2017, the first since 2012, after the international community reduced enforcement. Beyond jurisdictional issues, many governments are overwhelmed by other maritime security threats and cannot prioritize the illegal trade. In fact, fuel traders have reported that the problem is so pervasive that many companies calculate in advance for losses up to 0.4 percent of any ordered cargo volumes.

By Manoj Joshi

On Thursday, US vice president Mike Pence accused China of using its military, intelligence agents, economic power and propaganda to undermine the US across the world and reiterated an unproven claim that China is seeking to influence US domestic politics. The speech at Hudson Institute, amounted to the US directly declaring China as a malign adversary.

Bid to contain China

It should be clear by now that the trade war is not about trade, but about the US seeking to contain the rise of China. The US appears to be working on a multi-pronged policy that will see, first, a major show of strength in the South China Sea as a warning to Beijing. Second, a strategy to remove China from the centre of the global supply chains. And, third, encourage multinational companies like Google or Samsung to take their businesses out of China.

Some of this became clearer in recent days when the US said it had worked out its trade issues with Mexico, Canada and South Korea. Mexico accepted new rules relating to the manufacturing of cars, as well as the wages of workers making them.

Korea agreed to buy more American cars and agricultural products and Canada conceded more market access to US dairy farmers and cap its auto exports to the US. But in both cases, the original trade pacts remain largely untouched. Japan, which was reluctant to engage in a bilateral trade deal with the US, will now enter into negotiations for one.

This is in sharp contrast with what it happening to the Sino-US trade issue. On Monday, September 24, the United States and China imposed tariff hikes on each other’s goods. The US put a 10 per cent tax on some 5,745 Chinese products, including bicycles, furniture. China retaliated by 5- 10 per cent additional taxes on 5,207 goods ranging from honey to industrial chemicals. Trump has threatened to put additional tariffs of another $267 billion worth on Chinese goods if Beijing retaliates. But this step remains to be taken.

The politics overlap

But the die has been cast. For a while, it appeared that the US and China would keep trade and their political relations apart. But, increasingly now, both are overlapping.

This became evident in President Trump’s charge at the UN Security Council on September 26, that China was interfering in the upcoming US elections and these activities were linked to the ongoing trade disputes between the two countries. He said that “China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 elections coming up in November against my administration.” Without providing any evidence, he said that “they do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade.”

On the same day, in a press conference he held, Trump declared that China’s President Xi Jinping “may not be a friend of mine anymore.”

At the event, he also claimed that the US had evidence of the Chinese actions. Some hours later, in a background briefing, an unnamed US official charged that China had targeted farmers and workers in districts that make up part of Trump’s electoral base. Trump’s ire was on the China Daily’s paid inserts in a newspaper in Iowa criticising US trade policy.

The military ties

A fallout of this has been on the military-to-military ties between the two countries. Last week, on September 20th the US State Department announced that it was imposing sanctions on the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission and its Director for violating the CAATSA because China was purchasing Russian S-400s and Su-35 fighter jets.

China was outraged recalled a visiting naval official from the US and summoned the US ambassador to China to lodge a protest. At the same time, it announced that an upcoming meeting of Chinese and American officials would be cancelled.

Beijing also denied the request of a US warship to visit Hong Kong. And, even as Trump was questioning the state of his friendship with Xi in New York, US B-52 bombers flew over the South China Sea twice in three days. Earlier, in May, the US had decided to disinvite China from attending the 2018 RIMPAC military exercise.

The big question in everyone’s mind is whether US and China are slow-marching to an armed conflict? Are forecasts about the Thucydides Trap, where an established power seeks to prevent the rise of a potential rival, coming true?

This article originally appeared in DailyO.

By Tsvetana Paraskova

Tesla’s competition is about to get more crowded next year with many legacy automakers and luxury brands launching a record number of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

All EV makers will have one common element that could help lift demand for battery vehicles—rising oil prices leading to fuel prices at four-year highs, which could turn consumers towards EVs.

To be sure, charging infrastructure and range are still key concerns in consumers’ minds regarding EVs, but utilities and major oil firms such as Shell and BP are already looking to expand the charging infrastructure, especially in Europe.

Battery pack prices have been dropping constantly this decade and are expected to continue to fall. In terms of cost comparison, some estimates point to battery pack costs becoming competitive with the internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2027.

Rallying oil prices, with Brent Crude topping $85 a barrel this week, come just as the number of global offerings of EVs next year is expected to rise by 20 percent to 216 models, research by Bloomberg NEF shows.

“The higher the price of oil the more tailwind we’re going to have behind electric cars,” Bloomberg quoted Carlos Ghosn, chairman of Renault and Nissan Motor, as saying at the Paris Motor Show this week.

Next year, Nissan will launch the sale of a longer-range model of its best-selling EV Leaf.

German carmakers are also jumping into the EV competition.

Mercedes-Benz unveiled last month its first all-electric model Mercedes-Benz EQC, which will be launched on the market in 2019. BMW is teasing the premiere of a new concept EV, BMW Vision iNEXT. Audi has started mass production of the Audi e-tron, the brand’s first all-electric SUV, and deliveries are scheduled to begin in the spring of 2019.

Ultra-luxury brands will also be offering electric vehicles. Aston Martin is building Rapide E with a target range of over 200 miles and projected top speed of 155 mph, with customer deliveries set for Q4 2019. Porsche is working on its first purely electric series, Taycan, and plans to invest more than US$6.9 billion (6 billion euro) in electromobility by 2022, doubling its initially planned expenditure.

While almost every carmaker out there is unveiling or planning EV models, gasoline prices are up and even after the end of the U.S. driving season, the national gas price average as of October 1 was $2.88 – a pump price not seen since mid-July.

“The last quarter of the year has kicked off with gas prices that feel more like summer than fall,” AAA spokesperson Jeanette Casselano said.

“This time of year, motorists are accustomed to seeing prices drop steadily, but due to continued global supply and demand concerns as well as very expensive summertime crude oil prices, motorists are not seeing relief at the pump.”

High fuel prices could be part of consumers’ motivation to buy more EVs.

Global cumulative EV sales are already 4 million, according to Bloomberg NEF, which notes that the time for reaching each of the million sales has been rapidly shrinking. The first million in sales, reached in Q4 2015, took around 60 months to achieve; the second million came in 17 months; the third million took 10 months; and the fourth million needed just six months. Bloomberg NEF expects the next million EVs to take just over 6 months and the five-millionth EV to be sold in March next year.

The EV share of the global car fleet is still miniscule, considering that the world’s stock of cars is 1.2 billion units. But battery costs and range are less and less the stumbling blocks in EV adoption, according to Wood Mackenzie. Battery is one third of the cost of an EV today. Yet, costs have already declined by 80 percent this decade and will fall further. Battery pack prices will drop below US$200/kWh this year and then fall by around 10 percent each year, WoodMac said in July.

“The critical threshold is US$100/kWh – that’s when EVs will compete on commercial terms with ICE vehicles. We think we’ll get there by 2027,” WoodMac says.

EVs will displace around 5 million bpd to 6 million bpd of oil demand by 2040—some 5 percent of total oil demand, the consultancy has estimated.

ICE cars are not going anywhere in the next decade or two, but the higher the price of oil, the more competition they’ll have from EVs and the more incentives consumers will get to pick an EV for their next new car.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Price-Rally-Boosts-Electric-Car-Sales.html

Universities have become bastions of sessional torment, feeding grounds for despair. The term “sessional” is merely a euphemised way of describing an academic employee who has no ongoing employment other than what is offered, a person ever at the mercy of the subject or course coordinator of a department. They are the toiling poor, the barrel scrapers, the trudged upon and demanded.

The problem here is loathsomely international. In 2014, CBC News noted the increasing use of contracted sessionals in the university curriculum in Canada. The case of Kimberley Ellis Hale was cited, an instructor in sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, who had essentially slaved for sixteen years on a precarious contract. Despite those years of service, “she has no job security. She still needs to apply to teach her courses every semester. She gets none of the perks a full time professor gets”.

As with Canada, the United Kingdom’s tertiary education system sees approximately half of all academic staff employed on low-paid temporary contracts. In the United States, half-time work characterises half of faculty staff while the majority do not fall within a “tenure track” category. The doors to employment security are, for the most part, barred.

In Australia, as a consequence largely of shifts that took place in university education in the early 1990s, teaching and research institutions became servers of market goals and ideologies, overseen by a none-too-benevolent master in the form of the Commonwealth. Casual academic staff are the “proletariat of the academic profession”, something akin to a tribe abandoned and lost. “It seems,” reflect Jane Kenway and Diana Langmead rather ruefully, “that the triumph of economics over university education is now complete.”

Central to this is fragmentation and increased expectation: the former, focused on splitting management from workers and ongoing workers from casual employees; the latter, on converting the academic into a consultant, entrepreneur and wearer of all hats of incongruous size and meaning, all the while inflating workloads on diminishing returns.

Casual academic staff are, according to research done by Robyn Day, David Peetz and Glenda Strachan, “not integrated with the permanent academic labour market and that discipline is a key determinant of the level of ‘frustration’ of casual academic staff.”

With this environment comes a subservience peppered by anxiety. Free thinking is feared and despised; grovelling and silence is rewarded, if only sporadically. Colleagues compete for diminishing resources; the casual labour force fears the loss of favour and, to that end, remain consciously indifferent to university policy that might well undermine pedagogy and research. Resistance and protest is, in some cases brutally, quelled.

Little wonder then, that university politburos and their over-remunerated consultancies insist on collective binges of wellness days, the psychobabble that substitutes decent policies for crank panaceas. (We care for you by showing how we detest you.) “Searching for wellness and well-being on most university websites,” write Brad Wright and Matthew Winslade in The Conversation, “will lead to a dedicated page detailing a wealth of independent strategies and programs focusing on specific areas of health, such as mental health or workplace safety.”

These grotesque exercises serve one purpose: to demonstrate the ongoing failings of a university system to either care for teaching and research staff and, in a grim spinoff, the students themselves. Staff employed on a casual basis will emit levels of psychological distress so acute as to be contagious; the students, in turn, will react.

The university politburos are, however, on to this, appropriating such fairly meaningless concepts as the “healthy university”. Issuing from the 2015 International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges in Canada, such holistic approaches find ample room in conference proceedings but serve to remain stuck in a management, public relations void. While the Okanagan Charter arising from the gathering was fed by the thoughts of health professionals, researchers, students and policy makers from 45 countries, local implementation remains within the purview of the management classes long lost to academic thought.

The dictates of finance and delivery are all powerful. Quality can be left to hang. While a tenured or ongoing employee at academic rank might well be given a set number of courses to teach, those same courses, and number, can be taught by a sessional staff member for a fraction of the price.

The academic sweatshop, in other words, burgeons with desperate members hoping for admission. Managers and higher academics, noting this, see chances to mine the pool of labour, and boast accordingly of having lesser teaching loads to enable them to pursue fictional and, in most cases, the stodge that counts as research. (Evaluators, take note.)

The sessional curse also extends to undermining the broader university environment. While fat cat managers gorge themselves upon increasing salaries to cut ribbons, imbibe, identify appropriate paperclips and fill rooms with their insipid and, in the end, irrelevant presences, the pay for the sessional academic remains fairly constant in its impecuniousness.

Hours are capped; students are not permitted, depending on the policy of the department, any attention beyond an hour in terms of marking and consultations. The learning process, in other words, is cut at its most vital point, discouraging the sessional from marking the paper in any way beyond the bare limit whilst depriving the student of the rigour necessary to benefit from that said education.

This age of education is marked by the struggling part-timer and the looting manager barricaded behind protocols of control and discipline (do not, academics are told, challenge the management line). Any reconciling of these is impossible on current trajectories and requires an enthusiastic, collectively orchestrated coup d’état.

The Indian Agriculture sector employs more than 50% of the total workforce in India and contributes 17% to 18% of country’s GDP.  Around 70 percent of its rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their survival..

India has been witnessing repeated scenes of thousands of farmers organizing themselves and marching on the streets protesting against the “injustice meted out to them” and sometimes indulging in violent activities demanding loan waivers, rise in the level of minimum support price etc.

Traditionally, farmers are held in high esteem in India, though this scenario may not have benefited the farming community economically. When the farmers protest, large section of country men tend to support them emotionally, as farming is considered as the noblest profession in India. No government in India can afford to displease the farming community when the demands are raised, as agriculture is considered as “the soul of India.” Whatever the agitational approach adopted by the farmers, if any government would criticise them, certainly that government would be voted out of power.

However, as the farmers’ agitations have become too frequent and farmers indulge in all forms of protest such as pouring thousands of litres of milk on the streets, throwing tons of potatoes and tomatoes on the road, it is high time to introspect as to whether the farmers’ protests are justified and their agitational approach are needed.

Government’s response

During the farmers’ agitation, it is now common to hear that the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission on agricultural reforms ,which was submitted in the form of five reports between 2004 and 2006 ( more than ten years back) should be implemented in letter and spirit.

Swaminathan Commission has made many suggestions relating to land reform, irrigation reform, productivity growth, etc.

The fact is that the governments during the last several years have been striving to implement various meaningful measures to strengthen the agriculture sector. Most of the proactive measures initiated by the governments broadly follow the recommendations made by Swaminathan Commission.

Many schemes implemented by the governments to support the farming community include the issue of kisan card, crop insurance, free electricity for conducting agricultural operations, promotion of e commerce to enable smooth agri-products marketing and eliminate the middle men, providing fund support for agri-related diversified activities such as goat rearing etc. In a vast country like India where millions of farmers are involved, it certainly takes time to implement proactive measures to the satisfaction of all concerned. Certainly, it is work in progress with benefits steadily reaching the farmers , though not with the speed that the farmers expect.

Of course, there are some suggestions relating to land reforms, where Swaminathan Commission has said that top 10% of the farmers hold 54% of the land ownership and the commission wanted the land ownership in the country to be redistributed in favour of the poor farmers. Such suggestions are hard to implement in practice. A few decades back, when Kerala government tried to implement land reforms to shift the ownership pattern in favour of the agricultural workers by adopting coercive methods  when E.M.S. Namboodripad was the Chief Minister, it only resulted in violence and heart burn leading to further class conflicts and bitterness in the agricultural farms and in the society.

Who are the farmers?

While discussing the farmers protests, one has to think as to which segment of the farmers are protesting and agitating. Today, the farmers can be divided into three segments namely absentee land owners who are employed elsewhere and give their agriculture land on lease; the other type of farmers who employ labour and never physically work themselves on the field and the third segment of agricultural workers who are known as the tillers and mostly unskilled and consist of both men and women who physically work in the agri-field getting daily wages and without job security or any long term benefits.

The most depressed section of farming community are the tillers and not the agri-land owners. These tillers are certainly not in significant number amongst the crowd of protesting farmers and such tillers are millions in number and no one talks about their grievances during the farmers’ agitation.

Why farmers’ suicides?

The entire country writhes in agony when news spread about the suicides by farmers due to distress conditions. Many investigations have led to the conclusion that farmers are led to commit suicides mostly due to debt burden and harassment by private money lenders.

The fact is that there are many government schemes to provide loans to the farmers for agricultural operations at very low interest rate. In most cases, farmers take loan from private money lenders at exhorbitant interest rates not to meet their need of money for farming operations but for other reasons such as may be towards medical treatment, education for their children, expenses on social functions etc. for which, the loans are not available from commercial banks.

While farmers’ suicides are regrettable and shake the conscience of the nation, the fact is that hundreds of suicides from those who are not involved in farming activity have also been taking place all over India.

If economic distress could be considered as adequate justification for committing suicides, then not only farmers but hundreds of other people belonging to other areas of activities can be included in this category.

Knee jerk reaction

When farmers protest , the governments become panicky and in knee jerk reaction, it concedes several of their demands including massive loan waivers , increasing the minimum support price etc. without analyzing the financial implications for the government and national economy, in it’s anxiety to buy peace with the farmers,.

Of course, the farmers are adopting the same strategies and tactics as adopted by the central and state government employees, bank staff and others and even government teachers , who agitate frequently and bring the government to its knees and get their demands met, though they are all much better off than the farmers. Farmers ask that when the government treat it’s employees with kid glove, why not it extend similar treatment to the farmers also.

Need fundamental solutions

No doubt, the farming community is vulnerable to several factors beyond their control such as excess rain fall or drought conditions, pest attacks etc.

The farmers do have genuine grievance that unlike the much pampered government employees , bank staff and other organized employees, who have assured income and regular increments irrespective of their efficiency and performance, the farmers are left to themselves to suffer. Most crucial role of farming community in the economy and welfare of the country should be duly recognized, appreciated and rewarded. But, then, to achieve this end, meaningful and fundamental solutions are called for.

Realising the importance of agriculture sector, Prime Minister Modi has announced that the government would strive to double the income of the farmers by 2022. While the Prime Minister has taken several initiatives, farmers seem to be skeptical whether their income would really double by 2022.

Several suggestions made by Swaminathan Commission are appropriate and number of suggestions have been implemented earnestly by the governments. Of course, there are pitfalls due to poor efficiency and corruption in the government machinery, exploitation of the middle men, etc.

It is high time that Prof. M.S. Swaminathan should be requested to revisit the recommendations of Swaminathan commission submitted more than ten years back review the progress and modify and improve the recommendations in tune with the trend in the present days and rising expectations amongst a cross section of people in India.

Recent evidence of above-average levels of education among genocide perpetrators and terrorists, such as those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, has challenged the consensus among scholars that education has a general pacifying effect. Is it true that more schooling can promote peaceful behavior and reduce civil conflict and other forms of politically-motivated group violence?

In a study released online in Review of Educational Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, three Norwegian researchers attempt to bring clarity to this question by undertaking the first systematic examination of quantitative research on this topic.

For their analysis, Gudrun Østby, Henrik Urdal, and Kendra Dupuy of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) reviewed the last 20 years’ worth of statistical studies-42 published between 1996 and 2016-on the relationship between education and political violence.

“Based on our analysis, the evidence very strongly suggests that increasing education levels in the population at all levels of the education system-primary, secondary, and postsecondary-reduces most forms of armed conflict and fosters peace,” said Østby, a senior researcher at PRIO.

“This has important policy implications since, compared to other factors that affect political violence, education is something that almost all governments can do something about through national policy,” Østby said.

The researchers note that while the expansion of postsecondary education has been voiced as a concern-particularly as it relates to recruiting terrorists and promoting low-level protests-the evidence suggests there is little reason that governments should be cautious about rapidly expanding access to education.

“Although some evidence suggests that terrorists are often well educated and rarely marginalized, this does not imply that providing education in areas prone to terror will lead to more terrorist violence,” said Urdal, director of PRIO. “The higher-than-average education levels among recruits to terrorist organizations are likely to be a selection effect, whereby more educated and thus qualified recruits are chosen over those who are less qualified.”

“Restricting educational opportunities for young people is not likely to be a productive strategy for governments seeking to curb terrorism,” Urdal said.

Overall, the researchers found that lack of male education appears to be the strongest predictor of conflict. Systematic inequalities in access to education between religious and ethnic groups also appear to fuel conflict, whether this is caused by grievances among or simply by too few opportunities for young people in the disadvantaged group. Higher levels of gender parity in educational outcomes are also associated with less violence.

“While the policy implication of our findings-invest in education-is already pursued as a broader economic development agenda, security arguments may be helpful for generating domestic and international support for education programs,” said Dupuy, a senior researcher at PRIO. “There is every reason to keep up the pressure for education expansion, especially at the postsecondary level, and for policymakers to be particularly committed to reducing educational inequalities related to gender, ethnicity, and religion.”

The researchers note that there is very limited research available on the effects of religious versus secular education, including research on the possible links between curricula and violence.

“We were surprised that there was no evidence on the effect of education content or quality on the risk of political violence,” said Østby. “The lack of such data warrants more attention from future research.”

By Dr Subhash Kapila

Contemporary and unfolding geopolitical imperatives dictate that both the United States and Russia need to stand committed to the power-buildup of India as the pivotal Indo Pacific Power. India’s power attributes of a proven responsible stakeholder in Indo Pacific security management could serve security interests of both the United States and Russia.

It is my firm belief that both the United States and Russia at some stage in time compelled by the churning dynamics of Indo Pacific Asia will be forced to reset their policies by both ridding themselves of the old Cold War mindsets and strategic distrust of ‘the other’. A new Cold War has been in the offing since 2001 which is not of Russia’s making but that of its presently close partner China. Could Russia afford a secondary involvement in a second Cold War?

The evolving geopolitical landscape in the vast Indo Pacific landmass and maritime spaces arising from China’s geopolitical moves laced with threatening contours are generating counter-moves in open manifestations like the United Sates of contributing towards India’s Major Power buildup and Russia’s implicit moves in the same direction by sales of advanced military systems like the state of the art S400 Air Defence Systems and lease of nuclear powered submarines and an undertaking to assist India in the launch of its manned Space Missions.

These geopolitical strategic moves by the United States and Russia are recognition of India’s emergence as an existential counterweight to China though neither the United States, nor Russia nor even India would like to own it up as directed towards containment of China.

Geopolitically, India stands much above China in that it has had no historical conflictual record with either the United States or Russia and therefore well placed to receive strategic trust from the United States and Russia without impinging on their national interests. Nor is India unlike China in its power aspirations seeking strategic equivalence with the United States or Russia.

Unlike China which in different decades opportunistically used its propensity to adopt its “Swing Strategy” oscillated between strategic nexuses with Russia and the United States and played these mighty global Powers one against the other, India has not demonstrated such oscillatory propensities.

Both the United States and Russia engage India in ‘Privileged Special Strategic Partnerships’ on date and optically and otherwise India engages both these global Powers in a compartmentalised manner in a way that there is no conflict of strategic interests or playing one Power against the other.

With such credentials India stands uniquely qualified to expect ‘power buildup’ inputs from both the United States and Russia. India has at least till now not indicated any diffidence that India was averse to receiving Russian power-buildup additives.

Similarly, the United States having moved inexorably towards strategic proximity with India should feel that India was in any way devaluing its privileged strategic relationship with the United States by going in for purchases of advanced Russian military systems. India at this stage of her power ascendancy needs fast-track power additives from all quarters as it prepares after a decade of military neglect by the previous Government in New Delhi to meet the Dual Military Threat of the China-Pakistan Axis.

India therefore in 2018 needs to be viewed by the United States and Russia on a transitory trajectory of an “Ascendant Indo Pacific Power” in the making which dictates imperatives of power buildup assistance from all genuine Major Powers. Of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, with the exception of China all other Major Powers have no reservations in India’s ascendant trajectory.

India is today a ‘Natural Ally’ of the United States, West and Japan and would have emerged as such if the United States at the height of the Cold War not geopolitically isolated India because of its non-alignment shibboleths and patronised Pakistan to spite India. Resultantly, India had no choice then but to turn towards the Former USSR for its military hardware in the immediate period preceding the Indo Pak War 1965.

Prior to 1965, Indian military inventories were predominantly British and French. USSR for its own geopolitical reasons when its relations with China were adverse emerged as a ready supplier of Russian military hardware and at the turn of the Millennium India’s dependence on Russia was nearly seventy percent.

Russia too cannot forget that in the wake of the USSR disintegration in the decade of the 1990s through statements by its then Foreign Minister had started terming Russia as the ‘Natural Ally of the West.

In 2018, the perspectives of Russia and the United States may stand changed of each other but the perspectives of India on the United States and Russia in 2018, as I would read it, are complementary to India’s buildup of India as a Major Power.

Visibly in 2018 is the reality that India has geopolitically and in terms of privileged military relationships arising from geopolitical convergences moved far down the road in evolving integrations with the United States, Japan and Australia in terms of Indo Pacific Security templates for security and stability.

The United States has strongly underwritten its commitments in terms of India’s build-up as the Pivotal Indo Pacific Power. The manifestations of the same are in the open domain with the more recently concluded military agreements signed at the US-India 2+2 Summit Meet in New Delhi.

Russia too after some South Asian policy aberrations of pivoting towards Pakistan seems visibly retracing its steps if nothing else but for sales of advanced military equipment like the S400 Air Defence Missiles Systems. Implicit in this decision is that by such sales of S400 systems it is contributing to the ‘degradation’ of China’s and Pakistan’s deterrence capabilities against India.

The final point that needs to be made in this connection is that India’s trajectory of Power ascendancy cannot be arrested. It is inevitable given India’s naturally endowed power attributes. India’s trajectory could be slowed down if power buildup additives are slow in materialisation from external sources. It is for this contingency that India’s present dynamic PM Modi has launched on priority a “Make in India” indigenous defence production drive.

Concluding, it needs to be stressed that with India not having displayed the propensity to adopt “Swing Strategy” of China in its strategic relationships with the United States or Russia, therefore it becomes more incumbent that both the United States and Russia engage themselves in India’s power buildup as the Pivotal Indo Pacific Power. India unlike China is and would continue to be a ‘Benign Power’ as a responsible stakeholder in Indo Pacific security and stability. The United States has moved in that direction unambiguously and Russia needs to be more geopolitically convergent with India.

A Green Brexit could be under threat without greater cooperation between devolved nations and the UK government, a study led by the University of Sheffield has found.

The Brexit and Environment network spent a year researching the implications of Brexit for environmental policy, working closely with stakeholders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In a suite of reports published today (10 October 2018), they identify a set of key challenges that threaten the delivery of a Green Brexit.

Key findings include:

• Brexit preparations threaten the common environmental ambitions that currently unite the Scottish, Welsh and UK governments, heightening the risk that the environment will be downgraded on the policy agenda.
• The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) wants to co-design policy, but the experience of the devolved nations is that they are given little notice of announcements and have limited opportunities to shape policy.
• There is concern that future trade deals will limit the ability of devolved governments to devise their own policies, for example on the use of Genetically Modified Organisms.
• Stakeholders are worried that the new environmental watchdog will be an English body with insufficient interest in or understanding of the devolved nations.
• There is deep concern that the ability of the devolved nations to engage in innovative and ambitious policy-making will be undermined by Brexit.
• Northern Ireland risks being excluded from the post-Brexit environmental settlement because currently it has no voice. This matters because Northern Ireland shares many cross-border environmental challenges with Ireland but has a history of relatively weak environmental governance.

Professor Charlotte Burns, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics and lead author of the UK report, said: “It is clear that there is ambition across the UK to maintain and enhance environmental standards once the UK leaves the EU. But stakeholders in the devolved nations are concerned that their ability to innovate and devise policies that suit their local circumstances will be eroded post-Brexit.

“The governments of the UK need to work together more effectively and in a genuinely consultative manner. This will ensure that if environmental policies do diverge after Brexit day, they do so as part of a coordinated race to the top rather than an ad hoc race to the bottom.”

If US sanctions under president Donald Trump achieve one thing, it will probably be accelerating the dollar’s decline as the dominant currency in the international system. After being slapped with sanctions for years, Russia is now moving to de-link its economy from the greenback in order to circumvent financial restrictions. Moscow intends to implement a means for banks and companies to convert dollar settlements into other currencies, and the plan is supported by other countries hoping to minimize their reliance on the greenback.

China and Turkey have welcomed the initiative, and they are not alone, as a concerted global push-back against US sanctions is gathering momentum. This was unequivocally shown during Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly at the end of September. In an attempt to save the Iran nuclear deal that will come to an end once US sanctions are reinstated against Tehran in November, the European Union (EU), working in tandem with China and Russia, announced a new plan to sidestep the sanctions.

The plan, forged in Brussels, envisions a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), a legal entity resembling a complex barter system, with Iranian oil being traded for European goods – similar to the conduits used by the Soviets to avoid American blockades during the Cold War. International companies would be able to do business with Tehran without needing to use dollars, making the transactions invisible to the US, and thereby undermining the legal ground for penalization.

The approach  seems to be closely based on a paper published earlier this year by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Axel Hellman, which advocated “a new banking architecture” to avoid American sanctions, using “gateway banks” built on SPVs. Were this plan seen through to the end, the dollar’s decades-long hold on global transactions would take a grievous blow, serving as a blueprint for similar such moves.

New World Order?

EU officials have openly talked of breaking the greenback’s monopoly before: European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker used his recent State of the Union address to suggest that the use of dollars in foreign trade should be abandoned. In addition to the Iran sanctions, the straw that broke the camel’s back for the EU were the sanctions imposed on Rusal, the Russian aluminium giant, in April this year.

The threat to bar Rusal from international markets, issued as part of a tirade against the company’s former president Oleg Deripaska, certainly hit home. As a major supplier of both aluminium and alumina for the European market, the sanctions are threatening smelters closures across the EU, causing prices to soar on the London Metal Exchange.

Given that global alumina supply – required for making aluminium – is already being squeezed by the shutdown of one of the world’s biggest smelters in Brazil, the sanctions are adding to a precarious situation. The prospect of shortages already sent the aluminium supply chain into a tailspin, and European policy-makers have scrambled frantically since April to find a solution to the problem.

Fearing potentially catastrophic impacts for European downstream industries – mostly consisting of small- and medium-sized companies contributing to numerous major sectors like car manufacturing – industry associations have warned of market shocks and the difficulties in finding new suppliers. The EU’s leaders, including Germany’s Merkel and France’s Macron, subsequently rushed to Washington to secure exemptions for their businesses in dealing with Rusal, but their concerns fell on deaf ears.

As a result, the fact that the EU would find willing allies in Russia and China, both themselves subject to sanctions and hawkish tariffs from Trump, during the UN meeting is not surprising. By weaponizing the greenback and adopting a consistently confrontational tone, Trump has successfully driven these disparate powers to unite against him.

US Policy Backfires

China reacted to American trade policies by proposing in July a trade alliance with the EU against Washington. Meanwhile Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has refused to drop the NordStream 2 pipeline it is building with Russia. Trump dedicated part of his UN speech to the issue, warning Berlin against Russian “extortion and intimidation.” Reports suggest he even demanded an end to the project as a condition for foregoing punitive steel and aluminium tariffs on the EU. But Berlin has refused to backtrack, despite its frequent squabbles with Moscow: as economy minister Peter Altmaier pointedly told Trump, just as America protects its own interests, so will Europe.

Far from advancing American interests, Trump is therefore actively damaging the country’s international standing. His blunderbuss excuse for diplomacy has hurt allies and strengthened rivals, isolating the US and heralding the downfall of the dollar-based financial system. The reaction is understandable: if the international community wants to minimize sanctions and tariff fallout, establishing a new system circumventing the dollar may well be the only choice.

By Caleb Mills

The fault of statesmen will always be that they take themselves too seriously, needlessly complicating problems that could easily be solved with human genuineness. And no, you don’t necessarily need to seek that out through a state dinner or big dramatic international conference of nations. As Chinese sportsman Zhuang Zedong showed the diplomatic world, all you really need is a good heart, a tank full of gas, and directions to Tokyo.

The story begins in Nagoya, Japan, a manufacturing and shipping hub located in central Honshu, the site of the 1971 World Table Tennis Championship. Teams from all over the world flew into the old Asian city to compete in a series of games that would not only display the healthy competitive spirits between the players, but also a lineup of rather unhealthy geopolitical grudges. But it’s difficult at times to remember that back then, that was the normal state of international relations. The anxious realities of the Cold War had invaded every single aspect of the lives of its participants, from the classroom to suburbia. The concept of absolute destruction threatens everything absolutely, equally. Even ping-pong couldn’t offer refuge.

In today’s political climate, we don’t know what a crisis feels like. We know what it’s like to look at our CNN app or plop in front of the evening news to hear the tales of growing storms far away from our secluded state of security. We are closed in, separated, disassociated from struggles we do not experience. Our worst form of distress is paranoia, beset by watching the trauma of others; we immediately think of ourselves. But the fears stoked by the Cold War didn’t originate from the fearmongering views-motivated script that David Brinkley would read out every night. They were in fact very real, and touched all of us. Which is why it’s all the more surprising that the Chinese ping-pong team’s captain would potentially risk an international incident by inviting a stranded U.S. player to hitch a ride with them to the tournament.

China had historically pursued a policy of isolationism when it came to foreign policy. Some of the only people who ever got to see more than their little slice of the Orient were sports players like Zedong. Teams were told not to socialize with their competitors.

But when American Glenn Cowan nervously stumbled onto the bus and took a seat, Zedong couldn’t help but feel sorry for the stranded player. So, he got up from the back of the bus and presented Cowan with a picture of a Chinese mountain scene, a gift to the newcomer to make him feel welcome. “Even now,” Zhuang recalled 35 years later, “I can’t forget the naive smile on [Cowen’s] face.” Cowan, who only had a comb in his bag, hesitantly replied, “I can’t give you a comb. I wish I could give you something, but I can’t.” But the two still hit it off, and Zhuang took a seat next to Cowan. An invitation was given and accepted that shocked the world: the U.S. team would officially visit China for a series of competitive matches.

Zhuang would later say more about the encounter during an interview with media mogul Chen Luyu in 2002. “The trip on the bus took 15 minutes, and I hesitated for 10 minutes. I grew up with the slogan ‘down with the American imperialism!’ And during the Cultural Revolution, the string of class struggle was tightened unprecedentedly, and I was asking myself: “Is it okay to have anything to do with your number one enemy?’”

Time called it “The ping heard round the world” and nothing could’ve been truer. However, the Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs wasn’t so receptive to the idea of bringing American athletes to the mainland and refused to honor the invite. It took Chinese Primer Mao Zedong’s direct intervention to get the Americans to Beijing, and even he was apparently hesitant. Speaking at the University of Southern California in the fall of 2007, Zhuang said of the intervention, “[Mao] told us that friendship was number one and sports and ranking were number two.”

Neither country was certainly looking for friendship, but they both had political climates that yearned for some sort of thaw. President Richard Nixon might have been a stalwart Republican, but he wanted peace just as badly as the liberal hippies parading around the Washington Monument. Nixon realized his top foreign policy goal needed to be neutralizing China’s role as an active political combatant, or at least soften it. And the Chinese were having their own problems with their supposed Russian allies and knew an American thaw, if not at least beneficial to their meager but growing economy, would show the Russians that Beijing had more than one option at the diplomatic table.

The team’s arrival hailed the first time an American delegation had set foot in China for two decades, and its success set the stage for Nixon’s China visit, which reshaped the international political system for the next century. America eventually lifted the trade embargo; China gained enough support from US allies to get a permanent presence in the UN; and the Shanghai Communique set forth the blueprint for modern Sino-American relations. The United States and China had both been seeking out an avenue with which to pursue a de-escalation of tensions, but after all the fancy gimmicks and State Department tricks had failed, the kindness of a single man saved the world from another decade of passive aggression and potential devastation.

There’s an array of things that could’ve wrong on that bus. The language difference could’ve stopped the two sportsmen from effectively communicating, a misinterpretation of words could’ve been taken as a slant against the other, or Zhuang Zedong could’ve simply shrugged his shoulders and stayed in the back of the bus.

We find ourselves today surrounded by challenges molded by mistakes from the past. But in spite of this, we have the opportunity to find that long chased peace in places like North Korea and Iran, and while it’s undoubtedly important to forge connections using traditional diplomatic means, it’s imperative not to forget the human element of a foreign policy debate. Whether it’s sports, books, or politics, we can find ways to see the best in people. Enemies are temporary if you want them to be.

Maybe we don’t need President Trump to fly to Tehran to meet with President Rouhani, or Secretary of State Pompeo to shake hands with Kim Jung-un in Pyongyang. Maybe all we need is a friendly game of hoops at the Georgetown YMCA. Sounds naive? Perhaps. But the human spirit is drenched with improbable dreams. So let’s chase one.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect the official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com or any other institution.

The Ohio State Law Journal, a top-50 law review, has published an article by animal-law scholar and PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Delcianna Winders that condemns the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) use of warnings as its primary means of “enforcing” the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA).

In the first half of the 2018 fiscal year, more than 80 percent of the USDA’s AWA enforcement actions were simply warnings–and Winders’ analysis in “Administrative Law Enforcement, Warnings, and Transparency” finds that such warnings frequently fail to prevent further violations of the AWA. Facilities such as roadside zoos, laboratories, and puppy mills that ignored warnings and continued violating the AWA most often faced no further consequences–except, in some cases, a second (or even third) meaningless warning.

“Over and over, we’ve seen that warnings from the USDA don’t stop laboratories, roadside zoos, and other animal exploiters from denying animals veterinary care or confining them to tiny, filthy cages,” says Winders. “PETA is calling on the USDA to levy significant fines, suspend or revoke licenses, and issue criminal penalties in order to stop abuse.”

Winders’ article comes on the heels of a sudden decline in overall AWA enforcement actions–just 47 in the first three quarters of the 2018 fiscal year, compared with 207 actions in 2017 and 252 in 2016–combined with the USDA’s refusal to disclose enforcement records, which previously were routinely posted online, publicly. The agency’s recent lack of transparency is the subject of lawsuits filed by PETA-led coalitions in which Winders is also a plaintiff.

In addition to her work with PETA–whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”–Winders taught animal law at Vermont Law School this summer, was recently a visiting scholar at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, and was Harvard’s first Animal Law & Policy fellow. Her other recent and forthcoming law review articles address the USDA’s assault on transparency and its policy of automatically renewing AWA licenses even when licensees have repeatedly violated the law.

The overall inflation rate in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) slowed to 2.3 percent in September, as energy prices fell 0.5 percent in the month. The drop in energy prices over the last year brought the overall index close to a 2.2 percent increase in the core index. Both indices increased by just 0.1 percent in September.

The lower inflation rate shown in the CPI means that the average hourly wage has now increased by 0.5 percent over the last year. While this is not a large gain, it is close to the rate of productivity growth when adjusted for differences in indices.

Inflation in most all? areas seems well under control. The core index, excluding shelter, increased just 1.4 percent over the last year. The shelter index has risen by 3.3 percent over the last year and continues to be by far the most important factor driving inflation.

While there is little evidence of any slowing in the shelter index overall, there are large divergences across cities, and rental inflation has slowed sharply in some cities. For example, in Washington, DC, rental inflation had peaked at 3.5 percent in 2015. It is now down to 2.0 percent over the last year. In San Francisco it peaked at 7.2 percent in 2017. Over the last year rent has risen by 3.7 percent.

By contrast, rent has increased by 6.5 percent over the last year in Seattle, little changed from its peak rate of 6.7 percent last year. Chicago is also now seeing rapid increases in rents, with a rental inflation rate of 3.8 percent over the last year. That is up from rates slightly over 2.0 percent in 2017. (These figures refer to owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence, which excludes the effect of utility prices.)

Outside of rents, inflation seems to be edging lower. Prescription drug prices fell 0.2 percent in September and are up just 1.2 percent over the last year. It is important to remember that this index reflects the prices of drugs that are already on the market, it is not affected by new drugs, which are introduced at high prices. The overall medical care index rose 0.2 percent in September and is up 1.7 percent over the last year.

New and used vehicle prices both fell in September, by 0.1 and 3.0 percent, respectively. Over the last year the former have risen by 0.5 percent, while the latter have fallen by 1.5 percent. Apparel prices rose 0.9 percent in the month, but that followed a 1.6 percent drop in August. They are down 0.6 percent over the last year.

Car insurance prices rose 0.8 percent in September after being flat in August. This component, which has been a major driver of inflation, has increased by 6.6 percent over the last year. College tuition prices rose 0.1 percent for the month and are up 2.4 percent over the last year.

Air fares have also been a driver of inflation in recent months. They rose 1.0 percent in September, after increases of 2.7 percent and 2.4 percent in the prior two months, bringing their annualized rate over the last three months to 14.4 percent. Nonetheless, airfares have actually fallen by 0.4 percent over the last year. While these data are seasonally adjusted, it seems that there are new seasonal patterns that are not being fully picked up by the adjustments.

The annualized inflation in the CPI over the last three months (July, August, September) compared with the prior three (April, May, June) was 2.0 percent. For the core index the annualized rate was also 2.0 percent, a modest slowing from the 2.2 percent rate over the last year.

If the core inflation rate stabilizes near 2.0 percent, and there are no further spikes in energy prices, it will mean that real wages will be rising at close to a 1.0 percent annual rate going forward. While this is not enough to make up the ground workers lost in the downturn, it should mean that workers are seeing improvements in living standards. This is especially true of workers who own their homes and do not see the increase in rental inflation.

By Tsvetana Paraskova

The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

The one moment that will change everything … and that moment may be near.

Vanadium is lithium on steroids—wildly bigger and the only way forward from here. We may have already reached the peak of our electric revolution through batteries with lithium.

We need bigger batteries, preferably the size of a football field—or 20.

That’s vanadium—Element 23. The answer to our issue of scale.

“It’s no longer a technological maybe,” says Matt Rhoades, president and CEO of United Battery Metals, a Colorado vanadium explorer sitting on one of the few known sources of the next big battery metal in the entire United States.

Rhoades should know … his company is behind the discovery that hopes to put America definitively on the vanadium map. UBM’s Wray Mesa Project in Colorado has a mineral resource base estimate indicating resource of around 2.7 million pounds of vanadium—not to mention all the uranium they already know is there for additional upside.

“Vanadium is here, and lithium is scared because the $13-billion energy storage market has already found its new poster boy,” Rhoades told Oilprice.com.

The Moment of Truth

Indeed, Rhoades is an expert at timing.

The worldwide battle for vanadium is ramping up …

The Chinese have already had their Elon Musk moment …

The U.S. has none …

And vanadium was the best-performing battery metal last year, beating out even lithium and cobalt.

The truth is that it’s been a long road for vanadium to not only break into the energy storage market, but to actually become the future of the energy storage market.

The next ‘moment’ will be when someone in the U.S.—always one step behind the Chinese—announces plans for an American vanadium battery gigafactory. Anyone who hasn’t gotten in before that moment will be nursing their lithium hangover.

China is already building the world’s largest vanadium flow battery (VFB) gigafactory in Dalian, with the massively powerful (200MW/800MWh) batteries to be manufactured by Rongke Power.

It covers an area bigger than 20 soccer fields.

And thanks to the Chinese, vanadium was the best-performing battery metal last year.

And this year is the kicker. In just the past month, ferro vanadium prices have soared 33%. A month ago, ferro vanadium prices were at $79 per kilogram. Now we’re looking at $105 per kilogram.

Vanadium pentoxide flake is following the same speedy upward mobility.

And it’s vanadium pentoxide that is the main ingredient in vanadium redox flow batteries used for grid energy storage.

For a junior minor like UBM with a market cap of just over $10 million—that potential 2.7 million pounds of vanadium begins to sound like strategy at its best and brightest.

Why Vanadium Changes Everything

But let’s back up a bit …

If you were just getting the hang of lithium and cobalt in the battery mix, vanadium might sound complicated—but it’s not.

It’s as simple as size. This is where we get to scale up because when it comes to energy storage, bigger is better. In fact, bigger is the only way forward in this game.

This is possible because vanadium flow batteries store their energy in tanks. The fluid (electrolyte) that transfers charges inside a battery flows from one tank through the system and back again, making a closed circuit. They can charge and discharge simultaneously.

We’re talking tanks that can be as big as you want them: an aquarium, a shipping container or even an Olympic swimming pool—as big as your imagination can take you.

For renewable energy it is a game-changer. VRBs will forever change the capacity of wind and solar energy, making it limitless and cheap.

Vanadium is superior to lithium in every way. Not only does it have eternal life (unlike lithium), it’s not explosive, flammable or toxic.

Not only can it be scaled up cheaply, but it’s actually cheaper to scale it up, making it the antithesis of lithium.

Put in another way: It’s tough to scale up a lithium-ion system. If you double the size, you double the cost. Not so with vanadium: All you have to do is make the tank bigger, and the bigger the scale the lower the cost.

And that scaling up is already happening. Vanadium batteries are already providing complete energy storage system for $500 per kilowatt hour. In less than a year, that is expected to be down to $300. By 2020, we could be looking at $150/kilowatt hour.

A lithium-ion battery gigafactory couldn’t come close to this fast-paced cost reduction.

Vanadium: Finally, America Gets A Piece of the Pie

Even though this is the biggest energy story right now, vanadium isn’t just a bet on batteries—that’s why Mining.com calls it “the metal we can’t do without and don’t produce”.

Just as UBM’s new vanadium discovery is also an original uranium resource, vanadium can also be used in nuclear energy. By 2025, analysts estimate that 85 percent of all vehicles will incorporate vanadium alloy to reduce their weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Still, strategic as it is, America has fallen behind, and now that the global race for vanadium is on in the battery game, that will hurt.

In China, vanadium is already becoming the alternative to lithium. The next big moment will be this:

“If a vanadium battery producer steps forward with bold plans to produce vanadium flow at mass scale, giving the industry its Elon Musk or lithium ion moment, the potential for the technology to be the second most deployed ESS battery in the world is there,” says Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a battery materials research and price discovery provider out of London.

Rhoades certainly agrees and UBM is in that wonderful position of potentially becoming the only American source for the key rare earth metal that will power our scaled-up “liquid electricity” breakthrough.

“The vanadium flow battery scale-up for massive energy storage makes the electric vehicle push look like child’s play,” he said. “Lithium was a teaser. Vanadium is where it all gets huge.”

We watched lithium take center stage, but that may be just the prologue. Vanadium could be the conclusion.

Other companies in the booming commodity space you should keep an eye on:

Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA): No large cap company has dazzled over the past couple of years like Tesla, which overtook giant GM this year in market cap—a major, unexpected feat. Tesla is the future, and its stock price agrees.

Tesla’s electric cars will eventually be more profitable than traditional cars, and easier to produce. Costs will keep coming down, especially now that Tesla’s has launched its battery gigafactory in Nevada, and when it gets battery (and lithium) prices down.

It is entirely feasible that Tesla will be selling over 2 million cars annually in less 6-7 years from now, despite recent management issues.

General Motors (NYSE:GM) is a household name. GM was born at the turn of the 20th century and has been a leading innovator in the automotive industry ever since. Even though it’s been surpassed in market cap by Tesla (of all companies), it is still the furthest ahead of the Big 3 car makers from Detroit in terms of EVs and self-driving cars.

Recently, GM acquired Cruise Automation—a self-driving car company, and it seems determined to forge ahead even faster to play catch-up with the future. Additionally, GM is a leader in the booming electric vehicle market. As countries across the world begin to pass regulations on combustion engines, GM stands to gain significantly as an early adopter in the EV game.

Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ) Cameco is one of the largest global producers and sellers of uranium and nuclear fuel. Its operating uranium properties include the McArthur River/Key Lake, Cigar Lake, and Rabbit Lake properties located in Saskatchewan, Canada; the Inkai property situated in Kazakhstan; the Smith Ranch-Highland property located in Wyoming, the United States; and the Crow Butte property situated in Nebraska.

While many analysts see low uranium prices as a problem for miners, the OPEC like move from world uranium leader Kazakhstan to bump prices has benefited Cameco and its peers significantly.

FMC Corp. (NYSE:FMC) founded in 1883, FMC has been around the block and back. FMC has a long history stretching between many different industries, but within all of them, FMC has remained a leader in innovation.

FMC’s involvement in the lithium industry is particularly notable. The company is one of the top three in lithium and associated technologies. And recently, the company announced that it will be launching a new company, Livent, which aims to raise $100 million in an initial public offering to establish its place as a dominant lithium supplier.

Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ:BLPD) Ballard develops and produces hydrogen fuel cell products for markets such as heavy-duty motive, portable power, material handling and transportation. In addition to its production and development of fuel cell products, Ballard also holds over 2,000 patents/applications.

At the end of August, Ballard announced a huge divestment agreement, releasing non-core assets to Revision Military Ltd., for up to $16 million in cash to provide a hefty boost to its fuel cell business.

By. James Burgess

Forward-Looking Statements

This article contains forward-looking information which is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements include that United Battery Metals has a vanadium resource that it can economically mine, and that vanadium will be a key element in future energy storage. UBM may not be able to mine its resource, even if a substantial resource is verified on its property, as a result of lack of lack of funds, lack of permits, labor or equipment, environmental issues may arise to block mining, and there may not be economically viable way to mine the resources there. The type of vanadium on UBM’s property may not be the right type for maximum energy storage. In energy storage, other technologies may become better, cheaper, more available or simply become the standard in the industry. Vanadium storage batteries may never achieve their hoped for success. Other sources of vanadium may become plentiful and therefore much cheaper than expected.

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Link to original article: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Move-Aside-Lithium-Vanadium-Is-The-New-Super-Metal.html

The fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, assuming that his disappearance was the work of Saudi security and military officials, threatens to upend the fundaments of fault lines in the Middle East.

At stake is not only the fate of a widely respected journalist and the future of Turkish-Saudi relations.

Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, whether he was kidnapped by Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul to obtain proof of his divorce or murdered on its premises, threatens to severely disrupt the US-Saudi alliance that underwrites much of the Middle East’s fault lines.

A US investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s fate mandated by members of the US Congress and an expected meeting between President Donald J. Trump, and the journalist’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, could result in a US and European embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and impact the kingdom’s brutal proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

It also would project Saudi Arabia as a rogue state and call into question US and Saudi allegations that Iran is the Middle East’s main state supporter of terrorism.

The allegations formed a key reason for the United States’ withdrawal with Saudi, United Arab Emirates and Israeli backing from the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program and the re-imposition of crippling economic sanctions.

They also would undermine Saudi and UAE justification of their 15-month old economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar that the two Gulf states, alongside Egypt and Bahrain, accuse of supporting terrorism.

Condemnation and sanctioning of Saudi Arabia by the international community would complicate Chinese and Russian efforts to walk a fine line in their attempts to ensure that they are not sucked into the Saudi-Iranian rivalry.

Russia and China would be at a crossroads if Saudi Arabia were proven to be responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and the issue of sanctions would be brought to the United Nations Security Council.

Both Russia and China have so far been able to maintain close ties to Saudi Arabia despite their efforts to defeat US sanctions against Iran and Russia’s alliance with the Islamic republic in their support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

A significantly weakened Saudi Arabia would furthermore undermine Arab cover provided by the kingdom for Mr. Trump’s efforts to impose a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would favour Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

Finally, a conclusive determination that Saudi Arabia was responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s fate would likely spark renewed debate about the wisdom of the international community’s support for Arab autocracy that has proven to be unashamedly brutal in its violation of human rights and disregard for international law and conventions.

Meanwhile, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has suffered significant reputational damage irrespective of Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, raising the question of his viability if Saudi Arabia were condemned internationally and stability in the kingdom, a key tenant of US, Chinese and Russian Middle East policy, were to be at risk.

The reputational damage suffered by Prince Mohammed embarrasses UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, who together with his aides and representatives in world capitals, worked hard to project his Saudi counterpart as the kingdom’s future.

Saudi Arabia has so far done itself few favours by flatly rejecting any responsibility for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance with no evidence that the journalist left the consulate at his own volition; asserting that claims that it was involved were fabrications by Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood; seeking to defame Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé and supporters; and refusing to fully cooperate with Turkish investigators.

Saudi reluctance to cooperate as well as the US investigation and Ms. Cengiz’s expected meeting with Mr. Trump complicate apparent Turkish efforts to find a resolution of the escalating crisis that would allow Saudi Arabia to save face and salvage Turkey’s economic relationship with the kingdom.

Turkey, despite deep policy differences with Saudi Arabia over Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood, has so far refrained from statements that go beyond demanding that Saudi Arabia prove its assertion that Mr. Khashoggi left the Istanbul consulate at his own volition and fully cooperate with the Turkish investigation.

Reports by anonymous Turkish officials detailing gruesome details of Mr. Khashoggi’s alleged murder by Saudi agents appear designed to pressure Saudi Arabia to comply with the Turkish demands and efforts to manage the crisis.

Widely acclaimed, Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, irrespective of whether he as yet emerges alive or is proven to have been brutally murdered, is reshaping the political map of the Middle East. The possibility, if not likelihood is that he paid a horrendous price for sparking the earthquake that is already rumbling across the region.

By Mladen Lakic

Almost a week after the general election in Bosnia, the Central Election Committee, CIK, has still not released the final results – prompting some critics to say that the process is too slow.

While Bosnia awaits the final results of the general elections of 2018, many experts and even MPs are complaining that the counting process is taking to much time and must improve.

Electoral law prescribes that the official results of the October 7 election must be published no later than November 7, which marks the one-month legal deadline.

The Central Electoral Committee, CIK, is obliged to publish the first results by midnight on election day, and to publish new reports on counted votes twice the following day.

Over the next five days, the CIK publishes new results every 24 hours and after that, every 48 hours, until the final report appears.

Results published before that deadline are considered preliminary and unconfirmed, although they give a clear perspective of the final outcome.

Once the final results are published, Bosnian officials have six months to form governments on all levels.

However, many argue that the process could and should be shorter and quicker.

“The whole election system in Bosnia can be improved and I personally advocated some changes, but the ruling parties did not support those ideas,” Sasa Magazinovic, an opposition MP in the state-level parliament, told BIRN.

Magazinovic recalled one idea proposed earlier this year, when Bosnia had a chance to get video surveillance and scanners during polling.

“Scanning the ballot papers could prevent any kind of manipulation, and online identification can also prevent someone from voting under the name of another person and in the end, mean a faster process of counting,” Magazinovic said.

Based on around 95 per cent of votes counted and published on October 10, the three members of Bosnia’s state presidency will be Sefik Dzaferovic – for the Bosniaks, Zeljko Komsic- for the Croats, and Milorad Dodik – for the Serbs.

In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two entities in the country, the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, won 210,787 votes, the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia, SDP, 118,159 and the Croatian Democratic Union 117, 506.

The Democratic Front won 77,952 votes, the Alliance for a Better Future, 55,340, Our Party, 38,240, the Independent Bloc, 35,902, the Movement of Democratic Action, 33,257 and the Party of Democratic Activities 26,352.

In the Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, won 227,500 votes, the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, 145,192, the Party of Democratic Progress, 75,432, the Democratic People’s Alliance 60, 424 and the Socialist Party, 27,339.

A total of 3,352,933 registered voters was able to choose between 58 parties, 36 coalitions, and 34 independent candidates. The turnout was 53.26 per cent, unofficial data show.