Pollster Ibope released an opinion survey showing that Brazilian presidential hopeful Jair Bolsonaro, of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), has 52 percent of intended votes, while Fernando Haddad, of the Workers’ Party (PT), has 37 percent.

Undecided electors and voters who said they would cast a blank ballot add up to nine percent. Two percent did know know or refused to answer.

Considering valid votes only (blank, null, and undecided left out), the gap between Bolsonaro (59 percent) and Haddad (41 percent) is 18 percentage points.

This is the first Ibope poll for the second round of the vote. The survey heard 2,506 people on Saturday (Oct. 13) and Sunday (Oct. 14).The margin of error is plus or minus two points, with the confidence margin at 95 percent.

The employment rate among non-elderly adults in the US remains low by historical standards and in comparison to other rich countries. This column reviews the evidence on the main causes of the secular decline in employment since the turn of the century. Labour demand factors – notably import competition from China and the rise of industrial robots – emerge as the key drivers. Some labour supply and institutional factors also have contributed to the decline, but to a lesser extent.

By Katharine G. Abraham and Melissa Kearney*

The question of how Russia will evolve in the next decades is one of the most perplexing and at the same time central questions in modern geopolitics. Nowadays, Western leaders and analysts are preoccupied with how to influence Russia’s behavior in Eurasia. For the last four years, economic and political sanctions imposed by the West against Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula served as a major component in forcing Moscow to change its geopolitical outlook.

Sanctions and overall western pressure did work in a way: the Russian economy took a toll, poverty levels have risen, while decade-long forecasts do not augur a fine future for the country. Western pressure also stabilized the situation in Ukraine as it is unlikely that any further penetration by Russian military will take place beyond the Donbass area. The situation in Georgia is likewise stable, as Russia is seen to have reached its limit of influence, namely deployment of military bases in Abkhazia and Samachablo.

Seen from a strategic perspective, these successes are only short-term. Russia, with her military and economic potential, will use to her benefit international tensions across Eurasia. Then what should also be made to influence Russia’s behavior, knowing how loyal the Russians generally are to their authorities? Political power in the country, unlike in western countries, does not emanate from the people, but is rooted in the stable state apparatus made up from security, intelligence and army agencies.

It makes the question of influencing the Russians doubly difficult. In other words, economic problems inside the country and western pressure through sanctions are only short-term solutions. Russia’s history, however, provides some interesting insights on how the Russian state is generally susceptible to crises. The foreign policy realm is what has been crucial in causing changes in the politics of Russia and the subsequent change of political order in the country. Take the following examples.

The war with Japan in 1904-1905 ushered in the 1905 Revolution when deep internal problems began. People were revolting, workers’ soviets (councils) were created and Russia’s foreign policy decision-making process influenced. 12 years later, defeats during World War I and economic troubles caused by it, brought the 1917 February and October revolutions. Russia saw a dramatic change when the imperial pattern was substituted by a nominal workers’ government. During the Soviet Union, the war in Afghanistan was one of the defining moments in the decline of the Communist state and a major cause of its eventual disintegration.

True that in all the above cases Russia’s internal economic and social troubles played an important role, but it is direct foreign military pressure that has been instrumental to causing reverberations in Russia. Although this pattern might relate to most big geopolitical players, the Russian case is different. I mentioned above how loyal the Russians have been to their rulers throughout history – it is a part of the Russian mindset and not necessarily wrong in concept.

This brings to mind current geopolitical circumstances in and around Russia. The current crisis between Russia and the West, the product of many fundamental geopolitical differences in both the former Soviet space and elsewhere, will remain unabated at least for the coming years. Moreover, the successful western expansion into what was always considered the “Russian backyard” halted Moscow’s projection of power and diminished its reach to the north of Eurasia, between fast-developing China, Japan, and other Asian countries and the technologically modern European landmass.

However, overall, this might not be enough to dramatically influence Russia’s behavior. Protracted Russian military involvement in foreign countries is what the Russians fear most. Westerners hoped that the Russian troops would be bogged down in Syria: it did not happen. Similarly, many thought Ukraine might have turned into the major battleground, but it does not seem so. NATO’s expansion might seem a fundamental issue to Russia, but it is unlikely that there a major military confrontation will come to pass between the two.

Thus we may conclude that nowadays, we see how much Russia has lost throughout the last several decades in the former Soviet space. But internal problems alone do not suffice for changes in Russia’s geopolitical outlook. In fact, Russian history shows that foreign military pressure is fundamental, and this is the one thing Russia is not facing right now.

This article was published by Georgia Today.

Grade 12th Afghan student Jamila Omary asked, “Do you have any plans to arm yourselves, because of the threats and dangers you have faced?”

Iqbal Khyber answered, “No. Though it is easy to buy weapons today, arming ourselves will worsen the war. Weapons will make us less secure.”

What a breath of fresh air in the stench of war-as-usual!

Iqbal and his fellow People’s Peace Movement ( PPM ) representative, Badshah Khan, had an unusual and delightfully different conversation with the young Afghan participants of the ‘Youth on the Road to Peace Conference’ on the 26th of September 2018, organized by the Afghan Peace Volunteers ( APVs ) in Kabul.

“Many governments and corporations have a thriving weapons business. I feel that this is dangerous because as they seek greater profits, they are threatening not just Afghanistan, but the whole world. We human beings may soon destroy ourselves,” Iqbal Khyber had said to me afterwards.

We acquiesce to continued international arms sales because we are comfortable in our pet beliefs and fixed ideas about defeating ‘terrorists’ through superior warfare. Just as we preserve our fossil-fuel habits despite our awareness of climate science, we ignore U.S. congressionally-mandated evidence that the ‘war against terrorism’ has in fact increased terrorist attacks five-fold.

The majority of us are not the ones being killed, so we casually get used to wars festering in other places. But the smoke of war is catching up on all of us, making us sick at two minutes to midnight, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have warned. Eventually the business of war can stifle and kill all of us, just as Iqbal fears.

It is remarkable that amidst war’s unforgiving flames, Iqbal and Badshah wish to douse the inaccurate and unimaginative beliefs about the Afghan war.

They want fellow Afghans and the people of the world to consider nonviolence as a pragmatic solution, and they are ‘walking their talk’ beautifully.

So that we can consciously open our shut ears, Iqbal, Badshah and five other ordinary Afghan folk initiated the PPM as the Helmand Peace Convoy, walking more than 700 km from their unrestful home province of Helmand to Kabul. They were so passionately thirsty about delivering their message of peace that they walked in the fasting month of Ramadan, under the blazing summer sun.

They met the Conference participants after they had returned to Kabul from their barefoot convoy to several Northern Afghan provinces.

I got dizzy thinking about these Afghan youth standing before the militants and the strongest militaries of the world that are ‘congregated’ in Afghanistan, and saying, “We don’t want your weapons and your armies. We want peace.”

Iqbal continued his story, “Near the province of Samangan, we were told that the Taliban had laid an ambush, intending to hurt us. I discussed this with Badshah Khan and another core member of the PPM. We didn’t tell the other members as we didn’t want them to be un-necessarily afraid. The three of us decided to press on. In fact, we decided to go right to the ‘headquarters’ of the Taliban in that area.”

Iqbal and his friends set up camp in Taliban territory, and though their ‘microphones were taken away”, no one harmed them physically.

The faces of the youth in the discussion room were drawn with both tension and excitement. They were hopeful, but they also had doubts.

Mohammad Jamil, a university student, was even suspicious of fellow Afghans living in Helmand Province, “Do the people of Helmand really want peace? What is the war in Helmand about?”
Iqbal replied, “The people are all tired of war. They want it to end. This is an economic war. In Helmand, minerals are extracted, and opium is traded.”

Ending the war in Afghanistan without armies and weapons may seem overwhelming. Unsure about the PPM achieving favorable outcomes, Mah Gul asked, “What are your future plans and actions?”

“We wish to go to mosques, and have conversations with the people at the mosques,” Iqbal stated.

Members of the PPM are showing that instead of using bullets and bombs, every individual and society can choose other ways to build peace. They suggest that peace has been elusive so far because we have largely presumed that war was necessary, and only chosen military strategies.

We have all been smoking the cigarette of war, despite the evidence on its cancer-causing nature.

What we should do is to quit smoking. Quit the human behavior of war!

What can each of us do to support the People’s Peace Movement and Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs), instead of continuing an ineffective and unkind Trumpian non-strategy of ‘killing people’ ?

We can work through our doubts by having honest conversations with them by writing to the People’s Peace Movement (PPM) or borderfree@mail2world.com

We can sign “The People’s Agreement to Abolish War” or World Beyond War’s Peace Declaration.

Just as more and more of us are steering away from fossil fuels, we can look for and divest from war-making jobs, businesses and policies.

War is not inevitable. It is an obsolete, repetitive choice. Everywhere, each of us can emulate these new-generation Afghans by ushering in breaths of fresh air!

It is strange that in a country where around 80% of the population declare themselves as belonging to Hindu religion, there is widespread feeling among a cross section of Hindus that the Hindu religion is discriminated in variety of ways by successive governments in India.

Though BJP, which is described as “Hindu nationalist party” by western media, is in power for more than four and half years now, such feeling of Hindu religion being discriminated persist.

Several instances can be readily pointed out to highlight such discrimination.

Takeover of Hindu temples

Several Hindu temples of great importance and history have been taken over by state governments and have been brought under the administrative control of the government. The income from the temples go to the government treasury. However, no churches or mosques or gurudwaras have been taken over by the government. It is said that churches, mosques etc. belong to the minority religions and therefore, they cannot be under government control. However, there are some states in India where Hindus are in minority and even in these states churches or mosques are not taken over by the government.

In Tamil Nadu, government appoints priests for Hindu temples and choose them for the job based on it’s own regulations. But, the government never interferes in the appointment of priests or in the qualification required for the priests in the case of churches, Mosques and Gurudwaras.

Cow slaughter issue

Hindus consider cow as a holy and sacred animal and have been worshiping cows historically for several centuries. Many Hindus think that cow slaughter should be prevented. When cows are taken to slaughter house by anyone, some Hindus protest and they are dubbed by the media as “cow vigilantes”

When some people try to prevent the cows being taken to slaughter house, they are criticized as law breakers and arrested. They are dubbed as Hindu extremists and the campaign against them become so strong that no government want to speak for the protesters against the cow slaughter move.

In the case of Islam religion , millions of innocent goats are being slaughtered at the time of Bakrid festival. No media or animal activists have spoken against this practice.

Sabarimala episode

The latest episode with regard to the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala is a glaring example.

the Sabarimala temple in Kerala is one of the holiest of the temples in India. This temple of great importance observe some strict regulations of which one is the restriction on women in certain age group from visiting the temple. The restriction is not on girl children or elderly women.

This tradition of restricting the women’s entry in certain age group has been banned by Supreme Court terming the practice as discriminatory and not doing gender justice.

All over the world, traditional practices are followed over centuries ,since the devotees believe in such practices out of faith and irrespective of the fact whether they are logical and scientifically appropriate at the present time.

For example, in the case of Sikh religion, for entering Gurudwara, the devotees have to cover their head. In Islam religion women are not allowed to pray in the mosque along with men. In Christianity, there is discrimination between men and women in holding positions in the church. No woman can become a pope.

The Sabarimala temple in Kerala alone, which has lakhs of Hindu devotees, is being targeted by the so called “activists and reformists”

In the case of the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala in Kerala, restrictions do exist in the case of women of certain age group entering the temple. However, there are so many other temples for Lord Ayyappa in India and abroad, where women of all age groups are allowed free entry. Therefore, it should be recognized that there is no anti women sentiments in Lord Ayyappa temples.

It should be noted that the practice in the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala is not against women as such but only women in certain age group and therefore, it cannot be considered gender injustice in anyway. Entry of women are not banned for their entire life time. Women of all age group are free to visit and pray in any other Lord Ayyappa temple any where else in the world at any time.

Is it a case of appeasement of minorities?

Many wonder whether the government or the media would be daring enough to criticize any aspect of the faith of other religions. If they would do so ,perhaps, the reaction from the religious groups would be so strong that could even lead to violence. Such developments rarely take place when Hindu faith are questioned.

The main reason for the discriminatory approach of several political parties and government towards Hindu religion vis a vis other religions appear to be vote bank politics. It is very well known that in elections, almost the entire Christian community or Muslim community vote for a particular party en bloc as directed by the religious heads. This does not happen in the case of Hindus.

Therefore, the political parties always try to keep those belonging to minority religions in good humor and take particular care not to displease them in any way. On the other hand, the political parties believe that Hindu votes always get dissipated as there is no unified leadership for Hindus and there is considerable difference of views among Hindus and therefore, there is no particular need to appease those belonging to Hindu religion.

French army forces deployed in Syria intend to establish a military base in the US-occupied region in Raqqa.

The Arabic-language Baladi News website affiliated to the terrorists reported on Thursday that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are busy with drilling operations in an area stretching from the Brigade 17 region to Sahlat al-Banat region in Northeast of Raqqa city and from Sahlat al-Banat region to the North of the Sugar plant in Northern Raqqa.

It added that operations to build the walls and construction of buildings in the area will start after drilling operations, noting that a military base is due to be set up for the French forces with the aim of supporting the SDF in Raqqa.

According to the report, the US military troops are in talks with the SDF to further equip al-Tabaqah airbase in Western Raqqa and turn it into their new military base in the region next year.

Sources in the past few months said that the French army has sent weapons, military equipment and forces to Raqqa.

A joint military convoy of the US and French forces was sent to al-Tabaqah airbase in July as tensions increased between civilians and the US-backed forces in Raqqa.

Local sources in Western Raqqa reported that a military convoy of the US and French forces have been dispatched from the town of al-Tabaqah to its airbase.

They added that the convoy consisted of 7 trucks, carrying military equipment, noting that the SDF had declared curfew in al-Tabaqah.

(RFE/RL) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Islamic State militants recently seized about 700 hostages in a part of Syria controlled by U.S.-backed forces, and are carrying out executions — a claim questioned by the Pentagon.

At an international policy forum in Sochi on October 18, Putin said the hostages include several Americans and Europeans, and claimed that IS is expanding its territory on the left bank of the Euphrates River, currently controlled by the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces.

Putin did not specify what the militants’ demands were, but said “they took about 130 families hostage, which accounts for about 700 people.”

He said the militants have warned that they would kill 10 people a day if their demands are not met.

“They have issued ultimatums, specific demands, and warned that if these ultimatums are not met. they will execute 10 people every day. The day before yesterday they executed 10 people,” he said.

“They are now carrying out their threats. It’s horrible,” he said.

Russian state-run news agency TASS on October 17 cited an unnamed “diplomatic-military source” as saying the hostages were seized in a raid on a refugee camp in Syria’s Deir-al Zor province on October 13 and the militants were demanding the release of detained IS members.

In Washington, the Pentagon cast doubt on Putin’s claims.

“While we have confirmed that there was an attack on an [internally displaced persons] camp near [Deir-al Zor] last week, we have no information supporting the large number of hostages alleged by President Putin, and we are skeptical of its accuracy,” Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

“We are also unaware of any U.S. nationals located in that camp,” Robertson said.

By Steve Herman

Asked Thursday by reporters whether Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dead, U.S. President Donald Trump responded it “certainly looks” as if he is and that is “very sad.”

There will be “very severe” consequences if the Saudis killed him, promised Trump, speaking on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One.

Trump’s administration is willing to give Saudi Arabia a bit more time to finish its investigation into Turkish allegations that agents from the kingdom killed Khashoggi inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul.

More time

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after meeting with Saudi and Turkish leaders this week, briefed Trump at the White House earlier Thursday, telling him to give Saudi Arabia a few more days to complete its investigation of the disappearance of the writer, who lived in the U.S. state of Virginia.

After the U.S. assesses the Saudi report, Pompeo said, “the United States will determine what the appropriate response might be.”

Pompeo said there were “a lot of stories out there about what has happened” to Khashoggi, but he declined to speculate on the outcome of investigations in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The top U.S. diplomat said he believed “a complete picture will emerge” from the probes.

Pompeo said he told Saudi King Salman and the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that the U.S. was taking Khashoggi’s fate “very seriously,” but also noted that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have had a “strategic alliance” for decades.

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was dropping out of next week’s Saudi investment conference in Riyadh. The conference is designed to showcase the crown prince’s effort to diversify the Saudi economy beyond its role as the world’s leading oil exporter. Numerous Western corporate chieftains had already pulled out of the three-day gathering as Saudi Arabia struggles to answer questions about Khashoggi’s fate.

Pompeo’s discussion with Trump came as Turkish investigators carried out a new search of the consulate, their second this week, and completed a nine-hour search of the nearby residence of the Saudi consul to Istanbul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, who abruptly returned to Riyadh on Tuesday.

Results to be released

Saudi Arabia has denied knowledge of Khashoggi’s disappearance. Pompeo said as he left Riyadh that the Saudi leaders did not want to discuss any facts of the case while they carried out their investigation. They have promised to release results to the public.

After meeting with the Saudi leaders, Pompeo flew to the Turkish capital, Ankara, to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Pro-government Turkish media have published investigators’ claims that the Saudi agents cut off Khashoggi’s fingers, decapitated him and then dismembered his body shortly after he arrived at the consulate Oct. 2 to pick up documents so he could marry his fiancee, Turkish national Hatice Cengiz. She waited in vain outside for Khashoggi’s return. Khashoggi has not been seen since.

The pro-government newspaper Sabah identified Saudi security official Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb as the leader of what it said was a 15-member “assassination team” that flew into Istanbul to carry out the execution of Khashoggi.

Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States while writing columns for The Washington Post that criticized the crown prince and the Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen.

On surveillance tapes

The Turkish newspaper said Mutreb, who has been photographed near the crown prince on his foreign travels this year, was spotted on surveillance tapes entering the consulate more than three hours before Khashoggi arrived, then later the same day outside the consul’s residence and then again in the evening at the airport as he left Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Post published what it said it thought would be Khashoggi’s last column, one in which he decried the lack of freedom of the press in the Arab world.

“The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power,” he wrote.

“The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices,” Khashoggi said.

Trump said Wednesday that he wanted audio and video intelligence from Turkey, “if it exists,” while saying it “probably does.”

Trump’s demand came as he expressed support for Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally, and said he expected its investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance would be completed by the end of the week.

Ken Bredemeier, Chris Hannas and State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report.

Israeli forces detained at least eight Palestinians, including former prisoners during predawn Thursday raids, throughout the occupied West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), Israeli forces detained two Palestinians in the southern West Bank district of Hebron; They were identified as Murad Riad al-Sawayti and Anas al-Najjar.

In the central West Bank district of Jerusalem, three Palestinians were detained; PPS identified them as Fadi al-Matour, Abdullah Alqam, and Kamal Abu Qawaidar.

In the northern West Bank district of Nablus, Israeli forces detained a former Palestinian prisoner, who was identified as Tareq al-Samhan.

In the northern West Bank district of Tulkarem, another two former Palestinian prisoners were detained; PPS identified them as Walid Issam Asfour, 25, and Munther Muhammad Ashour, 30.

According to prisoners rights group Addameer, there are 5,640 Palestinian prisoners currently being held in Israeli prisons.
Original source

By Ahmad Syamsudin

LGBT people in Indonesia are facing renewed pressure after a ride-sharing company’s message of support triggered an anti-gay response in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.

In a message on Facebook that has since been deleted, Brata Santoso, a vice president at the ride-sharing company Go-Jek, wrote about a campaign called GOingALLin to celebrate Coming Out Day on Oct. 11.

“I’m happy to say that Go-Jek is taking diversity to the next level by the adoption of non-discrimination policy toward the underrepresented group, ie LGBT,” Brata wrote, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“In the spirit of Coming Out Day, we wanted to give space for the brave ones who embrace diversity and share what freedom, self-acceptance, authenticity, equality and tolerance really means to them,” Brata wrote.

A screenshot of the message went viral on social media and led to calls to boycott the app using the hashtag #uninstallgojek on Twitter.

Since then, the company released a statement that the post was Brata’s personal opinion.

“Go-Jek strives to hold up high the culture and values of Indonesia,” it said.

On Thursday, a Go-Jek spokesman said the company required that Brata take part in social activities “to make him more sensitive,” Tempo.co news website reported.

A day earlier, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin urged Indonesians to treat the LGBT community with empathy and respect, but he called their behavior deviant.

Conservative Muslims have accused Lukman of supporting the LGBT community because of his moderate views and because he attended an event in 2016 organized by the Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists where LGBT members were honored.

“It is our obligation as religious people and religious leaders to provide guidance to them with empathy so that they cease doing what they do,” he said in a video message posted on the ministry’s official Twitter account.

Homosexuality is not a crime in Indonesia except in Aceh where Sharia law is in force.

That could change.

Under a draft revision to the criminal code being debated in the House of Representatives, a person engaging in “a lewd act” with another person of the same sex who is younger than 18 could face 12 years in prison. If the act involves violence, the penalty is up to 15 years.

The draft stipulates that a lewd act committed in public between two people of the same sex is punishable by up to 18 months in prison. It also says sex between a man and a woman who are not married to each other is punishable by up to five years.

Pressure on LGBT community

Police have raided places frequented by gay people and briefly detained hundreds suspected of being homosexuals. Officer filed charges against some of them for committing prostitution or pornographic acts.

The government of Cianjur regency, in West Java province, issued a circular urging Muslim preachers to talk about the dangers of homosexuality during their Friday sermons.

“It’s one of the efforts to prevent the spread of LGBT in our area,” said Gagan Rusganda, a spokesman for the regency office.

Arus Pelangi, an LGBT advocacy group, said anti-gay sermons would endanger members of the community.

“Such calls will only increase the persecution of LGBT people. Even without it, LGBT people are already threatened,” Arus Pelangi chairwoman Yuli Rustinawati said.

The mayor of Balikpapan, in East Kalimantan province, said he would issue an anti-gay regulation in response to the emergence of a Facebook group “Pin Gay Balikpapan.” He said such a decree did not require the approval of the city council.

Meanwhile, Cholil Nafis a leader of the Indonesian Council of Ulema, said he supported the crackdown.

“We are facing an LGBT emergency, because people with the disease now feel normal,” Cholil said.

“Sermons calling for avoiding LGBT are necessary. We have to counter this,” he said.

Slamet, an activist for Gaya Nusantara advocating for LGBT rights, said the reactions by officials were political posturing during the election season.

“This is just a repeat of old stuff, because I think they know that LGBT isn’t a disease or deviance,” he said. “The political undertone is very strong, because people are passionate about the LGBT issue.”

Most of the country sees the LGBT community as a threat, according to a survey last year by a Jakarta-based firm, Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting. The survey showed 85.4 percent of the nation felt threatened by LGBT people – a figure that increased to 87.6 percent three months later.

Additionally, 79.1 percent of respondents objected to having LGBT neighbors. Despite those concerns, 57.7 percent of Indonesians believed that LGBT members had rights and about 50 percent believed the government was obligated to protect them, according to the survey.

After a Brooklyn occult shop made headlines with a public hexing of controversial Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh, exorcist Father Gary Thomas has stepped up to defend the judge’s spiritual flank with a well-timed mass.

When he heard the self-styled witches’ coven was planning to put a curse on Kavanaugh, Thomas – a bona fide Rome-trained Catholic exorcist who was profiled in The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, film and book – stepped up to defend the judge from the forces of evil.

Father Thomas takes exorcism very seriously, and so do “a load of exorcists” to whom he sent the headline about the upcoming hex. “Their reaction was similar to mine. That shows this is not something that is make believe.”

As the official exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, Father Thomas has been casting out demons for 12 years. During that time, he says, he’s seen the forces of evil becoming “more confident that the general public will be more accepting of the demonic,” blaming freedom of speech and freedom of religion. “Conjuring up personified evil does not fall under free speech,” he added.

Catholics less nostalgic for the Inquisition have also rushed to defend the embattled judge. One anonymous apostolate manager told the National Catholic Register news of the impending spiritual attack led her to fast and pray the Rosary for three days, and the fasting-praying combo seems to be catching on among other concerned Catholics concerned for Kavanaugh’s eternal soul.

The Brooklyn witches made headlines last week with their plans to stage an “act of resistance” at occult bookstore Catland, charging $10-a-head to attend the hexing. Rather than limit the event to Kavanaugh-haters, the EventBrite description explains the hex will target “all rapists” and invites attendees to “bring your rage and all of the axes you’ve got to grind.”

Event organizer Dakota Bracciale promised USA Today the ritual would include effigies, graveyard dirt, coffin nails, and a spell. Bracciale, who co-owns Catland, has already hosted three hexes on President Trump, who doesn’t seem to be the worse for wear – yet.

Turkey should urgently ask UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to establish a United Nations investigation into the possible extrajudicial execution of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders said.

The investigation should determine the circumstances surrounding Saudi Arabia’s role in the enforced disappearance and possible killing of Khashoggi. It should aim to identify everyone responsible for ordering, planning, and executing any operations connected with the case.

“Turkey should enlist the UN to initiate a timely, credible, and transparent investigation” said Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “UN involvement is the best guarantee against a Saudi whitewash or attempts by other governments to sweep the issue under the carpet to preserve lucrative business ties with Riyadh.”

Evidence collected by the UN investigation team should be preserved for use in future prosecutions. The investigation team should have complete access to travel where it needs to and to interview potential witnesses or suspects without interference. The team should also recommend avenues for bringing to justice anyone against whom credible and admissible evidence of involvement is found.

Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 and has not been seen or heard from since. Saudi Arabia has denied involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance, claiming he left the consulate on his own shortly after his arrival, but it has failed to produce any evidence supporting this claim.

Saudi authorities have escalated their crackdown on dissenting voices in the country since Mohammad bin Salman became crown prince in June 2017, marked by systematic repression of dissent, including peaceful expression directed to the promotion and protection of human rights. Virtually all human rights defenders and critical voices, including religious clerics, journalists, and academics, have been targeted in the recent arrests.

Khashoggi’s disappearance comes after more than a year of arrests targeting journalists who reported on corruption, women’s rights, and other sensitive issues. Several are being held in unknown locations, without charges, according to research by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Many individuals, including the prominent women human rights defenders Loujain al-Hathloul, Iman al-Nafjan, and Aziza al-Yousef, have been arbitrarily detained without charge for months. These women activists and many others may face lengthy prison terms or the death penalty following grossly unfair trials before the counterterrorism court for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, or assembly.

The Turkish authorities announced that they had initiated a criminal investigation on the day of Khashoggi’s disappearance on October 2. As part of this investigation, they conducted a forensic examination of the Saudi Arabian consulate on October 15. Information from the investigation has been shared with the media through a series of leaks, including claims regarding the existence of audio and visual records proving that Khashoggi was murdered in the consulate.

On October 15, Saudi Arabia’s king ordered the Public Prosecution to open an investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance. Given the possible involvement of Saudi authorities in Khashoggi’s enforced disappearance and possible murder, and the lack of independence of Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, the impartiality of any investigation by the Saudi authorities would be in question.

Khashoggi’s fiancé, Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish national, told media outlets that when Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate on October 2 to obtain their marriage documents, he left her his phones and instructions to alert the Turkish authorities if he did not return after two hours. That was the last time Cengiz saw him. Turkish authorities believe Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents inside the consulate.

“This demonstrates all the more clearly how imperative an impartial and independent investigation is in order to establish the truth and ensure justice for Jamal Khashoggi,” said Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders. “If the UN is truly mobilized to fight impunity for crimes against journalists, then at the very least they must be fully engaged in one of the most shocking and extreme cases in recent years by undertaking this investigation.”

There is a precedent for such a UN investigation. In 2008, Pakistan asked then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to establish an investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. That investigation uncovered what investigators said was an attempt by Pakistani authorities to whitewash the events surrounding Bhutto’s murder.

An investigation into Khashoggi’s enforced disappearance and possible murder should start promptly and be thorough, impartial, and independent. UN Secretary-General Guterres should appoint a senior criminal investigator with extensive experience in international investigations to head the team. Once the investigation is concluded, the secretary-general should issue a public report on the overall findings along with his recommendations for following up.

“Jamal Khashoggi’s family and the rest of the world deserve the full truth about what happened to him,” said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch. “Partial explanations and one-sided investigations by Saudi Arabia, which is suspected of involvement, aren’t good enough. Only the UN has the credibility and independence required to expose the masterminds behind Khashoggi’s enforced disappearance and to hold them to account.”

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and all other UN member countries should fully cooperate with the UN investigation to ensure that it has all the access and support necessary to determine what happened to Khashoggi. To facilitate the investigation, Saudi Arabia should immediately waive diplomatic protections such as the inviolability or immunity of all relevant premises and officials bestowed by treaties such as the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for waiving these diplomatic protections in the case.

Turkey should turn over all evidence, including audio and visual records that Turkish officials have repeatedly claimed to the media reveal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi consulate. A newly formed Turkish-Saudi working group investigating the murder will be unable to make progress in the face of Saudi Arabia’s blanket denials and rejection of any involvement in Khashoggi’s enforced disappearance.

“If the government of Saudi Arabia is not involved in Jamal Khashoggi’s fate, it has the most to gain in seeing an impartial UN investigation determine what happened,” said Sherine Tadros, head the New York office of Amnesty International. “Without a credible UN inquiry, there will always be a cloud of suspicion hanging over Saudi Arabia, no matter what its leadership says to explain away how Khashoggi vanished.”

The Associated Press has learned, from anonymous sources, that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania. AP reports that U.S. Attorney William McSwain of Philadelphia has issued subpoenas seeking information on the clergy and seminarians who may have committed federal crimes. This follows the release in August of a Pennsylvania grand jury report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania.

A few years back, after one teacher, Brother Stephen Baker, in a northwestern Pennsylvania Catholic high school, was found to be an abuser in the 1990s, the Cambria County District Attorney asked the Pennsylvania Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, to launch a grand jury investigation into Bishop McCort Catholic High School.

Kane, who was subsequently found guilty on nine counts, including two felony perjury charges, dutifully complied. Next came a probe of six of the eight dioceses in the state (two had already been investigated).

The grand jury report by Kane’s successor, Josh Shapiro, was released in August. It was so incredibly delinquent—it is strewn with lies and unsubstantiated claims—that it occasioned a lawsuit by the Catholic League in September (it is before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court).

Why would the Trump administration decide to join the hunt for offending priests—most of whom are either dead or kicked out of the priesthood—at this juncture? If all it takes is one molester to trigger this avalanche of investigations, why is it that every other institution in Pennsylvania, beginning with the public schools, is free from scrutiny?

I have some suggestions for Mr. McSwain. He can begin by reading the Catholic League brief detailing the recklessness of Attorney General Shapiro. Then he should interview all the people named in our brief who contest the allegations made against them. Be sure to interview retired Bishop Donald Trautman and ask him about the lies made about him in the report. Ditto for Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

McSwain should then interview Shapiro and ask him why he won’t cooperate with those who are demanding the public release of a 10-year-old report on former East Stroudsburg University Vice President Isaac Sanders. He is charged with bribing students, sexually assaulting them, and forcing them to perform oral sex on him. Why is Shapiro protecting his buddies in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education who don’t want the truth known about one of their own?

The duplicity is sickening. We have one system of justice for the Catholic Church and one for everyone else. And now the Trump administration is jumping on board as well? Catholics need some fast answers.

A poll by CBS of American Catholics reveals that Pope Francis is no longer receiving the high marks he once enjoyed, especially with regards to his handling of clergy sexual abuse. Three years ago, roughly half of Catholics thought he was doing a good job dealing with this issue, but now only 29% feel this way. It has even led about a quarter of Catholics to question whether they will remain in the Church.

These results are not good, but they are not as bad as they seem.

Current reports of past instances of sexual abuse have had no serious effect on 70% of Catholics (they are not contemplating leaving). The figure is even higher for those who regularly attend Mass; conversely, those who only occasionally attend Mass are the most prone to question whether they will remain in the Church.

Moreover, fully 10% of those polled say they never go to Church, yet their response to survey questions count as much as those who attend Mass more than once a week. Thus, these respondents skew the findings in a negative direction.

Perhaps the most revealing question and answer in the survey is the following: How serious a problem is sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church today?

Very serious                            69%
Somewhat serious                  21%
Not that serious                         7%
Don’t know/No answer              4%

If this question had been asked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, the results would likely have been reverse: we would expect that approximately 7% would say there is a “very serious” problem, and roughly 69% would say it is “not that serious.”

Here is the paradox: the timeline just cited is exactly the period when most of the sexual abuse of minors took place, but few were aware of it. It therefore had no real effect on Catholics. Today, there is almost no abuse taking place: in the last two years for which we have data, the average percent of the clergy found to have had a credible (not proven) accusation against them is .005%. Yet the alarms are going off now.

In 1928, sociologist W.I. Thomas provided insight into this phenomenon. “If men define situations as real,” he wrote, “they are real in their consequences.” Ergo, if Catholics perceive the issue of sexual abuse to be a big problem today—even though it is not—then it is.

The reason why Catholics believe there is a serious problem today has everything to do with media reports of sexual abuse. So as not to be misunderstood, the media are not to blame for reporting on the three most important reasons why so many Catholics (and obviously non-Catholics) have a false perception of reality: the McCarrick scandal, the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse, and the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

Most of Theodore McCarrick’s predatory behavior took place in the 1980s. The lion’s share of the predatory behavior reported in the Pennsylvania grand jury report took place in the last century. Cardinal Wuerl had a better record of handling this issue than most bishops and cardinals, but because he was the “big fish” cited in the report, he paid a price for a few bad judgments that he made in the last century.

As for the pope, his handling of the McCarrick scandal accounts for his low numbers.

Here is a question no one asks: Why did the media have something to report on in the first place?

Most Catholics, and most of the public as well, don’t realize that the reason why we know about McCarrick is because of a reporting program instituted by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York. It was his program dealing with sexual abuse that inspired one of McCarrick’s victims to come forward. Dolan acted on that accusation and the rest is history.

The Pennsylvania grand jury report was not launched because of a widespread problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church today. No, it was done because Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (now in prison) decided to go after the Catholic Church and open a wide investigation of past practices merely because of reports that one teacher at a Catholic high school in the northwestern part of the state had been an abuser.

This is why I contend that Catholics are being played.

Is there a single institution in the United States, religious or secular, that has conducted an internal review of sexual misconduct that comes even close to what the Catholic Church has done? Is there a prominent leader in any institution that has turned in one of his own leaders, the way Cardinal Dolan turned in McCarrick?

Why has Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood behind a grand jury report that is strewn with palpable lies and unsubstantiated accusations? Why did he single out the Catholic Church for a probe, destroying the reputation of innocent men (this, and other issues, is why the Catholic League filed a brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court)?  Why has he shown no interest in pursuing the sexual abuse of minors that is going on right now in Pennsylvania public schools?

Perception may function as reality, as W.I. Thomas instructed, but misperceptions are not analogous to truth. Truth does not turn on interpretation.

The US media are in high dudgeon over the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi living in the US in self-imposed exile who among other things had been writing articles critical of the current Saudi royal leadership, and especially Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Certainly outrage is justified. It seems clear from the evidence that Khashoggi was deliberately lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to be killed by a team of government assassins who were flown in from Saudi Arabia complete with a coroner carrying his bone saw. Since Khashoggi was captured on a video surveillance camera entering the consulate, but never came out, while the team of assassins were seen leaving and then departed the country only hours after their arrival, the suspicion is that after killing their victim, they dismembered his body and removed the evidence in their attache cases to be disposed of elsewhere. (As diplomatic passport-holders they would not have had to put their carry-on luggage through an X-ray machine.)

Although the Trump administration is soft-pedaling its concern, with Trump comparing the accusations against the Saudi government to accusations of sexual abuse leveled against his latest Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and even suggesting “rogue killers” outside the government might have been responsible, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying he has insisted the Saudis conduct a “transparent” investigation into the murder, it has been forced by public and media outrage to at least pretend to be troubled by Khashoggi’s slaying.

But looking back, we see a totally different response — or more properly, a total lack of response in either government or media — to the equally brutal murder back in 2010 of not just a US legal resident, but a US-born citizen: 19-year-old Furkan Dogan.

Dogan, born and raised in the US to Turkish immigrant parents, was brutally beaten, kicked and then shot in the back and head by several members of the so-called Israeli Defense Force who on May 31, 2010 boarded a Turkish-flagged vessel, the Mavi Marmara in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. There is video of the attack on Furkan, who was unarmed with anything but a cell phone that he was using to video the IDF assault on the ship, the leading vessel of a “Peace Flotilla” delivering medicine, food and building supplies to Gaza, the fenced-in Palestinian ghetto controlled by Israel.

The Obama administration never raised the slightest protest over the killing of this young US citizen. Indeed, Secretary of State Clinton warned Americans not to participate in the flotilla, essentially saying they were asking for trouble if they did so. Following the commandeering of the boats making the journey by Israeli military forces, and the arrest of many of the flotilla participants, most of them Americans, no protest was made by the State Department.

In both of these extra-judicial murders by agents of the governments of US allies the US response has been shameful, though the non-response in the case of young Dogan is far worse given that he was not just a legal resident of the US but a citizen.

One can only imagine the US response had either incident been  perpetrated by Russia, Cuba, China or Venezuela or any other perceived “enemy” of the US. But both Saudi Arabia and Israel are US allies, and in the case of Israel, a special ally that has long been virtually immune from official US criticism.

What is different in these two cases is how the media have responded to them.

In the case of the Khashoggi murder the media are expressing measured outrage. Take Washington Post journalist David Ignatius. On NPR’s “Morning Edition” program today he offered a kind of even-handed praise/criticism of the brutal bin Salman, saying that he had been a great “reformer” in Saudi Arabia (he cited the example of his pressing for the lifting of a ban on women driving cars), but that he also had a “dark side.”  It’s the same kind of thing that has been said about various Mafia dons over the years. But Ignatius never had anything critical to say about the Dogan murder by the IDF in the months following his slaying.

Indeed, there was barely a word in the US corporate media about Dogan’s murder even after it was learned that an official Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine inquest had established how he had been killed by IDF shotguns fired at point blank range.

The only reason we know that the Obama administration was informed in July 2010 of the inquest results (via a formal note from the Turkish Embassy in Washington) is that the issue of the US government ignoring the murder of one of its citizens by the US was raised with the US president by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an official visit to the White House over a  year later.

The White House, it turned out, had kept that embassy communication from the Turkish government quiet for over a year. But even then it was not a major media report that revealed that conversation between the two leaders, but an article that ran in the Jewish Daily Forward, a small US-based publication based in New York that circulates in the US Jewish community.

Nothing was ever done about the murder of Furkan Dorgan because the US has a “special relation” with the Jewish state which precludes any serious criticism of Israel by the US government.

Nothing will be done either about the Saudi government’s murder of a political critic because Saudi Arabia is a huge supplier of oil and  a huge customer for US arms manufacturers, and because that country is also a key US ally in its efforts to contain neighboring Iran, which the Trump administration and its ally Israel view as a threat.

But at least the US media are willing to work up a modicum of outrage at the Khashoggi murder by Saudi Arabia’s government. No such outrage on the part of the US punditry is apparently merited though, when Israel kills a young American citizen.

There are a lot of people who are so stupid that they think foreign aid is a major part of the federal budget. Ever wonder why people could be so stupid?

Well, the NYT tells us at least part of the reason in a news article on a new agency established by Donald Trump to provide loans and loan guarantees as a way to help developing countries and extend U.S. influence. The article tells us that the bill that established the new agency, the United States International Development Finance Corporation [USIDFC],”gave it authority to provide $60 billion in loans, loan guarantees and insurance to companies willing to do business in developing nations.”

Okay, $60 billion is a lot of money, more than almost anyone other than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos will see in a lifetime, but how much does it matter to our budget? My guess is that almost no NYT readers has a clue. Yeah, I know the NYT has a very well-educated readership, but very few of them have their heads in the federal budget.

To get a rough idea, we need to remember that this is $60 billion in loans and guarantees, it is not actual spending. And, it is a stock figure, it is a level of commitment, not an annual flow.

So let’s say that the subsidy component of the loan and guarantee averages 5 percent of the value. (That is probably high, it would mean for example that a loan that should carry a 10 percent interest rate would instead carry a 5 percent interest rate.) In this case, the subsidies coming from the USIDFC would be equal to $3 billion.

But again this is a stock figure. That would mean we hit this level of subsidy once the USIDFC has reached its $60 billion liability limit. Let’s say that takes five years, so the USIDFC is lending at its limits by 2023. At that point, the federal budget is projected to be $5.5 trillion.

This means that Trump’s new foreign aid program will be costing us a bit more than 0.05 percent of federal spending. Alternatively, we can put it at dollars per person and say that this program will be costing us a bit less than $9 per person.

This would have been useful information for the NYT to provide its readers. It would likely be very helpful the next time some right-wing politician wants to eliminate waste in the budget by cutting foreign aid.

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

The Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are doing all they can to block the Orthodox of Ukraine from gaining autocephalous status within that branch of Christianity, and both are fearful that Orthodox churches including those in Belarus and Moldova, may follow Ukraine’s lead and break with Moscow.

But the civil and religious leaders in Moscow could may face another challenge, one that would be even more subversive of their ideas about the nature of Russia and the Russian church: the demand for greater autonomy or autocephaly by one or more of the bishoprics within the ROC MP, who may use the threat of pursuing autocephaly to get their way.

Given the powers of the secular authorities and of the Moscow Patriarchate, such a development and even more its success are highly unlikely. But both regional challenges within the ROC MP in the past decade, the history of autocephalous groups within Russia, and anger among believers about Moscow’s new restrictions on them make it far from impossible.

The most important regional frond within the ROC MP was led by Bishop Diomid a decade ago (windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/07/window-on-eurasia-orthodox-schism.html, windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/08/window-on-eurasia-diomid-tapping-into.html, windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/07/window-on-eurasia-bishop-diomid-raises.html, windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/06/window-on-eurasia-diomid-case.html and windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/07/window-on-eurasia-how-much-support-does.html).

It did not succeed, but it called attention to dissent within the church and anger about the hyper-centralist approach that Patriarch Kirill has adopted. (On this dissent, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/01/window-on-eurasia-priestly-dissent-on.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/07/russian-orthodox-activists-increasingly.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/09/russia-doesnt-face-orange-revolution.html).

In the current environment when Patriarch Kirill’s leadership is clearly in question and when many are talking about autocephaly elsewhere, it is at least possible that some priests and even hierarchs may be thinking about autocephaly as a way out from under the yoke of the Moscow Patriarchate. If so, that could lead to a parade of autocephalies in Russia in the future.

There is even a precedent for an autocephalous Orthodox church in a Russian region. In an important article for Radio Svoboda’s IdelReal portal, Ramazan Alpaut points to the existence of one in Chuvashia in the early years of Soviet power and argues that this shows that “the preconditions” for something similar now exist (idelreal.org/a/29546780.html).

The Chuvash Autocephalous National Orthodox Church was registered by the Soviets on August 7, 1924. It was made up of Chuvash national congregations and was extremely conservative. But “by the end of the 1930s,” he continues, this church ceased to exist.

Now, however, it is attracting new attention from journalists and historians, although most of those discussing it say that there are no serious demands for autocephaly now. But they do suggest that “the rebirth of the Chuvash Autocephalous Church could help the development of the Chuvash people” given that the ROC MP has pursued a Russianizing policy.

If priests or bishops should demand a change in the current climate, they might be able to play on ethnic or regional communities and that too could contribute to the possibility that demands for autocephaly might spread even if Moscow were at least for the time being able to block their realization.

But it is the third factor, rising anger among Russian Orthodox faithful that the response of the Moscow Patriarchate to the possibility that Ukraine will receive autocephaly, that may be provide the most powerful impulse in this direction. That response includes restricting the ability of Russian Orthodox to visit Holy Sites abroad or have relics come from there to Russia.

Many Russian Orthodox are furious with the Moscow Patriarchate about that and are now petitioning Kirill to annual his decision about breaking relations with the Universal Patriarchate in Constantinople (change.org/p/патриарху-московскому-и-всея-руси-кириллу-и-членам-священного-синода-отменить-решение-синода-рпц-о-разрыве-евхаристического-общения-с-кон).

That ongoing effort is discussed at znak.com/2018-10-18/veruyuchie_obratilis_k_patriarhu_kirillu_s_prosboy_otmenit_reshenie_o_razryve_s_konstantinopolem. At the very least, this shows that Patriarch Kirill’s position is not supported by everyone in the ROC; and potentially, this may lead to a situation in which some Russian Orthodox may decide that seeking autocephaly is preferable to remaining under Moscow, a drive the Universal Patriarch under certain circumstances would welcome and even support.

With a body the size of a fist and wings that span more than a foot, the big brown bat must gorge on 6,000 to 8,000 bugs a night to maintain its stature. This mighty appetite can be a boon to farmers battling crop-eating pests.

But few types of bats live on American farms. That’s because the current practice of monoculture – dedicating large swathes of land to a single crop – doesn’t give the bats many places to land or to nest.

Diversifying working lands – including farmland, rangeland and forests – may be key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change, says a new review paper published this week in Science by conservation biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

Diversification could be as simple as adding trees or hedgerows along the edges of fields, giving animals like birds, bats and insects places to live, or as complex as incorporating a patchwork of fields, orchards, pasture and flowers into a single working farm.

These changes could extend the habitat of critters like bats, but also much larger creatures like bears, elk and other wildlife, outside the boundaries of parks and other protected areas, while creating more sustainable, and potentially more productive, working lands.

“Protected areas are extremely important, but we can’t rely on those on their own to prevent the pending sixth mass extinction,” said study co-author Adina Merenlender, a Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. “This is even more true in the face of climate change, because species will need to move around to adapt to shifts in temperature and climate.”

Maintaining even small pieces of the original landscape – even a single tree- can help conserve the original diversity of species, Merenlender said.

Clearing oak woodlands and shrublands to establish large vineyards hits many native species hard. Animals that are well adapted to urban and agricultural areas, such as mockingbirds, house finches and free-tail bats, continue to flourish, while animals that are more sensitive to disturbance, like acorn woodpeckers, orange-crowned warblers and big brown bats, begin to drop away.

“If you can leave shrubs, trees and flowering plants, the habitat suitability — not just for sensitive birds but also for other vertebrates – goes way up,” Merenlender said. This is true not only in California’s vineyards, but on working lands around the world.

Incorporating natural vegetation makes the farm more hospitable to more creatures, while reducing the use of environmentally degrading chemicals like herbicides, pesticides and man-made fertilizer.

The ideal farming landscape includes woodland pastures and vegetable plots bumping up against orchards and small fields, said Claire Kremen, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

Integrating livestock produces manure which can fertilize the crops, while those same crops produce feed for livestock. Birds and bats provide pest control, and bees boost crop production by pollinating plants.

“It is possible for these working landscapes to support biodiversity but also be productive and profitable,” Kremen said. “And ultimately, this is where we have to go. We just can’t keep mining our soils for their fertility and polluting our streams – in the end, this will diminish our capacity to continue producing the food that we need. Instead, we must pay attention to the species, from microbes to mammals, that supply us with critical services, like pollination, pest control and nutrient cycling”

“We have some amazing diversified farms, sustainably managed forests and species-rich rangelands here in California that exemplify working lands for conservation around the world,” Merenlender said. “We are calling for a scaling up of this approach around the world, and to do that we champion community-based action and more supportive polices” Kremen concludes.

For more than 15 years, the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars to clean up its deadly air pollution, focusing intensely on reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants.

These efforts have succeeded in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, but extreme pollution events are still a regular wintertime occurrence and experts estimate that more than 1 million people die per year in China from particulate air pollution.

New research from Harvard may explain why. It shows that a key to reducing extreme wintertime air pollution may be reducing formaldehyde emissions rather than sulfur dioxide.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We show that policies aimed at reducing formaldehyde emissions may be much more effective at reducing extreme wintertime haze than policies aimed at reducing only sulfur dioxide,” said Jonathan M. Moch, a graduate student at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and first author of the paper. “Our research points towards ways that can more quickly clean up air pollution. It could help save millions of lives and guide billions of dollars of investment in air pollution reductions.”

Moch is also an affiliate of Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

This research was a collaboration between Harvard University, Tsinghua University, and the Harbin Institute of Technology.

Measurements in Beijing from days with especially high particulate air pollution, known as PM2.5, have shown a large enhancement in sulfur compounds, which have been typically interpreted as sulfate. Based on these measurements, the Chinese government has focused on reducing sulfur dioxide (SO₂ ), the source of sulfate, as a means to reduce air pollution. As a result of these efforts, SO₂ over eastern China has decreased significantly since 2005. The problem is, particulate air pollution hasn’t followed the same path.

Moch collaborated with SEAS graduate student Eleni Dovrou and Frank Keutsch, Stonington Professor of Engineering and Atmospheric Science and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. They found that the instruments used to analyze haze particles can easily misinterpret sulfur compounds as sulfate when they are, in fact, a molecule called hydroxymethane sulfonate (HMS). HMS is formed by the reaction of SO₂ with formaldehyde in clouds or fog droplets.

Using a computer simulation, the researchers demonstrated that HMS molecules may constitute a large portion of the sulfur compounds observed in PM2.5 in winter haze, which would help explain the persistence of extreme air pollution events despite the reduction of SO₂.

“By including this overlooked chemistry in air quality models, we can explain why the number of wintertime extremely polluted days in Beijing did not improve between 2013 and January 2017 despite major success in reducing sulfur dioxide,” said Moch. “The sulfur-formaldehyde mechanism can also explain why polices seemed to suddenly reduce extreme pollution last winter. During that winter, significant restrictions on SO₂ emissions brought concentrations below levels of formaldehyde for the first time, and made SO₂ the limiting factor for HMS production.”

The primary sources of formaldehyde emissions in eastern China are vehicles and major industrial facilities such as chemical and oil refineries. The researchers recommend that policymakers focus efforts on reducing emissions from these sources to reduce extreme haze in the Beijing area.

Next, the team aims to directly measure and quantify HMS in Beijing haze using modified observation systems. The team will also implement the sulfur-formaldehyde chemistry within an atmospheric chemistry model to quantify the potential importance of the sulfur-formaldehyde chemistry that creates HMS across all of China.

“Our work suggests a key role for this overlooked chemical pathway during episodes of extreme pollution in Beijing,” said Loretta J. Mickley, Senior Research Fellow in SEAS.

By Biswajit Dhar*

Leaders at the sixth Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial Meeting in August 2018 appear to have taken steps towards concluding the deal by the end of the year. With a possible endgame in sight, India’s stance in the negotiations should be of utmost interest. The viability of the proposed grouping hinges on India’s response to the more active RCEP participating countries’ calls for a highly ambitious trade liberalisation agenda.

The prospect of India’s positive response to these calls hinges on two sets of factors: the internal dynamics of the RCEP negotiations and India’s own domestic compulsions.

India has long been arguing that RCEP negotiations must put goods and services negotiations on parallel tracks. This is in keeping with New Delhi’s understanding that there are gains to be had in the services sector, such as loosening restrictions on labour mobility, that can soften the impact of granting market access concessions in the goods sector. But there are no clear indications from the other RCEP participating countries that they are willing to include services in the negotiating agenda in the manner that India is seeking.

A second issue internal to the negotiating dynamics of RCEP is the extent of market access that India is willing to provide. Initially in 2015, India’s offer to China was elimination of tariffs on 42.5 per cent of its traded products, while for other countries India was willing to offer between 65–80 per cent tariff elimination.

Since then, India has indicated that its tariff elimination offers would be 74 per cent for China, Australia and New Zealand, and 86 per cent for ASEAN. These offers fall short of the 90–92 per cent tariff elimination that most other participating countries are seeking in their aim to achieve a ‘high quality’ agreement.

At home a major concern is India’s rapidly deteriorating balance of trade that is being dragged down by weak merchandise exports. In 2009, India entered into a free trade agreement with ASEAN with the expectation that its footprint in its immediate neighbourhood could be significantly increased.

But this agreement has not worked out as planned for India. Instead its trade deficit with ASEAN has increased since the implementation of the agreement, mainly because of a lack of thrust in exports. The deficit went up from US$7.7 billion in 2009–10 to nearly US$13 billion in 2017-18.

India’s economic agreements with two other RCEP participating countries, Japan and South Korea, show similar trends. India’s trade deficit with Japan was US$3 billion in 2009–10 and has now doubled. The India-South Korea trade deficit has also more than doubled from US$5 billion to US$12 billion over the same period.

India’s overall trade deficit with the RCEP participating countries looks far worse, accounting for US$104 billion of India’s US$162 billion trade deficit in 2017–18, largely because of the China factor.

With virtually stagnant exports and imports growing by more than a fifth, India’s trade deficit in 2017-18 shot up by 50 per cent – the second highest this decade. Two adverse consequences of this situation have now emerged.

The first is the widening current account deficit, which is pushing towards a worrying threshold of 3 per cent of GDP. The second is the severe pressure on the Indian rupee, which has seen the currency fall to its weakest level ever. There are no signs yet that the textbook prescription – which says currency depreciation encourages exports and discourages imports, leading to an improvement in the trade balance — is working for India. If anything, the past few months have seen a worsening of the trade balance.

This unfolding situation is causing considerable anxiety among Indian policymakers, who are responding with across-the-board tariff increases. In February 2018 tariffs were hiked on mobile phones and select machinery, and more recently tariffs on more than 300 textiles and clothing products were increased from 10 to 20 per cent. The tariff increases are not limited to manufacturing products alone. Several agricultural products, including edible oils and lentils, are also covered by the tariff hikes.

An announcement in September 2018 by the Indian government that tariffs on ‘non-essential’ imports will be increased to stem the import surge will take the uncertainties around India’s trade policies a few notches higher. The criteria for identifying ‘non-essential’ products are yet to be disclosed.

The message from India is unambiguous: substantial market opening may not be on offer in an RCEP deal, at least until its current domestic economic uncertainties blow over. But the harsh reality is that India’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors have been stuck in the quagmire of low productivity for decades, and the policy framework that can break this vicious cycle has remained elusive. In order for India to be a willing partner in the regional integration project in Asia, Indian policymakers and businesses must work towards a quick turnaround of the domestic economy.

*The author is Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article first appeared on October 9, 2018 in EastAsiaForum.