In addition to the current threat of extremists and radicalised individuals, returning fighters are posing new challenges to state. Danish authorities have pioneered de-radicalisation programmes that focused on providing terrorists as well as former fighters the opportunity to reintegrate with mainstream society.

By Ahmad Saiful Rijal Bin Hassan*

Danish authorities have estimated that 145 of Denmark’s citizens have left for Syria/Iraq since 2012. At least half of them have returned to Denmark and nearly a quarter remains in the conflict zone. Another quarter is assumed dead. Danish fighters account for the second highest number of fighters per capita in Europe according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) report in 2015.

The deradicalisation programmes initiated by Danish authorities have gained much attention worldwide because of its soft approach to returning fighters from Syria/Iraq as well as other extremists and radicalised individuals. It is based on holistic, collaborative efforts between various agencies. They include social-service providers, the education sector, health-care agencies, the police, and the intelligence and security services.

Finetuned Through Trial and Error

This collaborative effort stems from years of experience and benefits from other structures and processes designed to confront common criminal activity. These programmes have been developed in practice through trial and error by various local agency practitioners comprising schools, youth clubs and social services.

The state plays a role in providing guidelines and receives feedback from the practitioners before being implemented fully. Currently, de-radicalisation processes, in ways that echo more contemporary peace and conflict resolution measures, are continuously being developed from top-down and bottom-up consultations to suit the challenges faced.

Two Types of Programmes

The Danish government has implemented two types of de-radicalisation programmes. The first called “Deradicalisation – Targeted Intervention” aims at helping individuals leave extremist environments and/or prevent them from getting involved in extremist environments.

It is achieved through developing tools that provide the youth with social support and advice to distance themselves from extremist circles. This programme comprises two approaches – Mentor support and Exit talks.

The Mentor support approach is the development of methods for individual mentorship for individuals who are showing signs of radicalisation. Mentors and resource personnel provide advice, guidance, counselling and social support that is needed for radicalised individuals to stay out of extremist circles.

The Exit talks approach is the concept of preventive talks targeted at individuals who are assessed to be in the process of radicalisation and who accept violence as a legitimate means to achieve personal and political goals. Counsellors are assigned to foster an understanding of the consequences of an extremist and criminal way of life; at the same time, they offer legitimate alternatives to the infatuation experienced by people joining extremist circles for the first time.

Back on Track

The second programme called “De-radicalisation – Back on Track” aims at helping prison inmates who have been convicted of terrorism or charged with criminal activities involving hate crimes by providing the necessary support needed to get “back on track”. It also serves as a tool to support them in leaving far-right, far-left or religious extremism behind and their efforts to reintegrate into mainstream society upon their release.

The approach is established within the framework of an existing mentoring programme targeted at terrorist inmates who are placed in special units where they cannot exert their influence over other inmates. Mentors will then be assigned to their designated inmates and assessment made to facilitate the mentorship process better.

The local network of social service, healthcare providers and schools also participates in the rehabilitation process. It is a requirement for the detainees to participate in all aspects of the rehabilitation programme to be released on parole.

Guiding Principles

The Danish experience comprises three main guiding principles. The first is the principle of inclusion rather than exclusion or stigmatisation. This principle of inclusion denotes meaningful participation in common cultural, social, and societal life. It means that the Danish government recognises these individuals are no different from the rest of Danish citizens who can get an education and a job, provided detainees put violence by the wayside in efforts to achieve their goals.

The idea of inclusion is embedded in the concept of modern democracy and pluralism in Denmark which is built by legal participation of many different communities in finding the best possible solutions to emerging challenges. It is, therefore, the aim of the programme to transform the personal, social, cultural, and political motivations into legal modes of participation and citizenship.

The second principle is the importance of quality relationships between different private sector bodies and institutions working with various government agencies in the implementation process. At the national level, the focus is on building capacity and supporting these local initiatives by offering skill enhancement activities, developing concrete methods in combating extremism and radicalisation, and counselling workshops.

Scientific Discipline

The third principle is that the programme is based on a scientific discipline called Life Psychology. Developed by the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at the Aarhus University, it provides a theoretical grounding in the understanding of radicalisation processes, risk factors, and resilience.

The basis of Life Psychology lies primarily in the presumption that every individual aspires for a “good life”. And to achieve that, one must overcome various obstacles, challenges and setbacks to achieve his or her aspiration. The second presumption is that to have a “good life”, the person must possess sufficient skills to enable him or her to cope with life tasks.

These tasks involve daily activities that fall into the realm of social, work or leisure domains and emphasise the process of making important decisions. The third presumption lies in the fact that every individual regardless of gender, life history and religious, social and cultural background, encounters the same fundamental life tasks.

Challenges

The use of existing structures to counter extremism and radicalisation has proven to be valuable, and the model itself boasts sufficient capacity and resources. Its effectiveness, however, remains difficult to measure.

There are challenges in the implementation of the de-radicalisation programme in Denmark. Some experts are of the opinion that there should be a greater focus on punitive measures and they contest whether the soft approach is effective. Another challenge is the question of to what extent the government should be allowed to intervene in the lives of citizens in a welfare state; this remains unanswered.

Although the challenges faced may not be completely addressed by the authorities in a short period, the experiences of various stakeholders in Denmark dealing with de-radicalisation show that the challenges can be dealt with. In the broader sense, the stakeholders managed to perform a huge task with minimum resources available through intensive cooperation with each other.

*Ahmad Saiful Rijal Hassan is an Associate Research Fellow with the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also a religious counsellor with the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG).

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will help sustain the economic growth of China and will highlight the strategic importance of Pakistan. It will offer Pakistan with a chance to broaden the horizon of its economy and enlarge its foreign reserves. However, whilst venturing towards industrialization and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), CPEC in Pakistan faces certain challenges that have so far impeded the industries in realizing their full growth potential. Principal obstructions to investment in this regard are various security and political factors as well as the non-availability of infrastructure and power crises.

The answer to these challenges is that the FDI is very much necessary for raising the value of capital. Eventually, once the high capital value is achieved it will helps in developing infrastructure and for initiating large industries. Thus through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) the dearth of capital will be lessened to greater extent. In order to set up competitive industries in the globalized world one of the priorities is the accessibility to the productive and high tech transportation for maneuvering of raw materials and finished goods. This is an understood observation that, economic expansion strengthens infrastructure advancement and vis a vis.

The second most important aspect is how far CPEC is beneficial for the Pakistani labors and how the industrial advancement will be creating Jobs through CPEC for Pakistani people? The youth surge is often named as asset and it should be chief concern of the State, because this strength has turned into burden owing to unemployment.

In this regard CPEC could offer appropriate interference in the course of employment creation to take in hand the grievances of unemployed youth. The electricity shortage and network of infrastructure further minimizes the on hand base of small industries in Pakistan. The first phase of energy projects in early harvest program of CPEC will be effective in reducing the electricity shortfall. The inexpensive and unremitting power availability is indispensable for stimulating Pakistan’s manufacturing sector. This will increase the economic activities, create jobs and catch the attention of foreign investors to invest in trade zone of Pakistan.

Eventually all the projects which are part of CPEC, whether they are electricity production projects or infrastructural advancement projects need man power – engineers; civil mechanical, electrical. Along with disciplines of engineering technicians: masons, welders, carpenters, surveyors, steel fixer, machine operators, etc are also required. Moreover not only the labor and technical workforce, there is also a need of professional economists, finance, accounting, management HR and interpreters of Chinese language who will monitor and manage these projects. Thus to sum up the answer to the question that how far CPEC is effective in creating jobs, one can say that according to the resources and as the above mentioned, CPEC will be generating around two million jobs implicitly or explicitly till 2030.

Moreover, this is also worth noting that if the Pakistan stakeholders are making their living and paying high tax regardless of the Chinese who are investing and they are exempt from taxes. Under such conditions how CPEC will be profitable for Pakistani investors and local industrialists if Chinese are tax exempt and local industries are not? In that case CPEC Special Economic Zones (SEZs) will be a fruitful strategy for promoting trade, employment and economic growth.

Consequently to upgrade the industries, through SEZs, one of the intended objectives of the CPEC is to best serve the private sector of Pakistan to strengthen local industries through Free Trade Agreements (FTA). The proclaimed incentives which CPEC promises to offer the local enterprises include the promotion of Pakistan’s industries from accumulating imported parts and components to localized production of parts by utilizing the available resources, offering employment opportunities to the people and encourage bilateral connectivity between various Chinese and Pakistani enterprises. It will also expand trade volume and logistics, business-to-business (B2B) links, two-pronged trade arrangement, regional connectivity and encourage evenhanded trade maturity. Subsequently in order to facilitate the local business sector, Board of Investment (BoI) established “CPEC-SEZ Cell” in February 2017 in order to address the concerns of the stakeholders on the matters related to the CPEC and Special Economic Zones. The prime function of this support cell is to attract, facilitate and promote both local and foreign investment in the country as per Special Economic Zones (Amendment) Act, 2016 of Pakistan.

Further more in line with changing global economic structure CPEC will bring trade openness. For that Pakistan has prioritized the establishment of SEZs. So far 41 sites have been identified for SEZs and the Board of Investment (BoI) has mapped out nine exclusive Industrial Zones to be built under the larger umbrella of CPEC. It is also pertinent to mention that the CPEC project is not merely a route that connects Gwadar port with Kashgar but an opportunity for both China and Pakistan to enjoy the fruits of trade openness with Europe, Middle East, South and Central Asia as well. Thus the establishment of SEZs promises to bring Trade Openness through a massive socio-economic development in the country specifically in the areas of energy, trade, agricultural, infrastructural development, connectivity, industries, poverty alleviation, tourism, cooperation between financial institutions and markets, and financial cooperation between Free Trade Zones (FTZs).

Last but not the least the difficulty of capital and capacity insufficiency can be alleviated through joint ventures between Chinese and Pakistani business community under CPEC. It is necessary to enlarge the stakes of domestic industry and protect their interests under CPEC. Pakistani entrepreneur should be given incentives similar to Chinese investors for investment in the CPEC projects.

*Qura tul ain Hafeez has done M Phil in international relations from Quaid-I Azam University Islamabad. She is currently working as a Research Associate at Strategic Vision Institute Islamabad. She can be reached at Quraathashmi@gmail.com

Politics can, after a time, becomes a myopic exercise of expedient measures and desperate hope. Politics, raw and crude, is at its best at points where survival matters. Conversely, it can illustrate human vices in raw fashion, low points of idiocy and the disaster of folly.

The Morrison government in Australia risks succumbing to another march of folly. Having arisen from a decision to summarily execute its leader (politically speaking), Malcolm Turnbull’s replacement looks wooden, a hulk of swaying confusion in search of a purpose. No perspective to exploit is beyond Scott Morrison’s purview, be it psychologically ruined children on Manus Island or the prospect of disturbing relations with a move of the Australian embassy to Jerusalem.

The latest shot to Morrison’s less than tranquil ship has come from the abrupt move to consider Jerusalem as the new seat of Australia’s representation, one made simultaneously with a not so considered contemplation of repudiating the Iran nuclear deal. Some figures, cocooned by security and a cultivated sense of obliviousness, felt it sensible. Colin Rubinstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council felt it politically savvy. “Look at his backbench. Look at his ministry. If you took a poll I think you’d find a lot of support.”

A cruder rationale lurks behind the decision: an attempt, made at short notice, to shore up the Jewish vote in the federal seat of Wentworth, vacated by Turnbull in the aftermath of the Liberal Party’s leadership challenge. The good, irate citizens of that seat are being asked whether to return a Liberal member to Canberra, a point complicated by a competitive field of candidates and dollops of anger.

In this instance, a leaked briefing or bulletin by the Australian domestic intelligence service on the possible disturbance of any such announcement found its way into the public domain. Marked “Secret” and “AUSTEO” (Australian eyes only), it received distribution on October 15, a day before Morrison floated the idea of an embassy relocation.

The ASIO Bulletin is sombre and reflective, no doubt aware that the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem came with much blood (dozens of Palestinians slaughtered along with 2,400 injured during protests in May): “We expect any announcement on the possible relocation of the Australian embassy to Jerusalem, or consideration of voting against Palestinians in the United Nations, may provoke protest, unrest and possibly some violence in Gaza and the West Bank.” The document also noted that, “possible Australian interests may be the target of protest activity following any announcement.”

Morrison, having been caught off guard (why would you listen to cautious intelligence officials?) sought a second opinion from ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis to placate critics. “I want to… reassure Australians that ASIO has no evidence at this time of any planned violence in response to the government’s announcement on 16 October and the matter was fully discussed by Cabinet.”

Another (failed) element of Morrison’s Jerusalem botching stems from attempts to minimise the reaction from various Muslim states to the prospects of moving Australian diplomats from Tel Aviv. One state, Australia’s northern neighbour with the largest Muslim populace on the planet, came to mind.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi had been rather busy on the WhatsApp program conveying notes of concern to Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, a point that was dismissed by the Morrison government as small beer. A spokesman for Senator Payne went so far as to call the exchange part of a “constructive discussion.”

The messages, also leaked, suggested that the term “constructive” had been rather worn. The action would, according to Marsudi, prove a “slap” to “Indonesia’s face”. Irritated at the timing of the announcement (Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki was visiting Jakarta), Payne’s counterpart wondered: “Is it really necessary to do this on Tuesday?”

Payne’s spokesman, briefed to soften the agitation, explained his boss’s position: “Minister Payne emphasised that there had been no change to Australia’s commitment to the Middle East peace process and to a durable and resilient two-state solution that allowed Israel and a future Palestinian state to exist side by side, within internationally recognised borders.”

This did little to calm Marsudi, who badgered Australia’s ambassador Gary Quinlan for two meetings in three days to explain why the contents of her conversation with Payne had made their merry way into the public domain.

The statement from the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Canberra, signed by Egyptian ambassador Mohamad Khairat as head of the Council, did much to blow off any suggestions that Morrison’s grand idea would not be damaging. “The two-state solution means nothing without an equitable resolution of these final-status issues. In the absence of functioning peace process, the sensible course of action would be for Australia to recognise the State of Palestine based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The waters of diplomacy have been muddied, and Morrison is keen to find convenient scapegoats. The Victorian Labor government has been accused of leaking the ASIO bulletin to The Guardian Australia, though this vaguely libellous accusation ignores the genuine possibility that staff on Morrison’s own side might well have done so. According to an ASIO spokesman, Lewis had spoken to the Australian Federal Police head Andrew Colvin and “formally referred this matter to the AFP for investigation.”

This entire tie-up revealed a standard perversion in Australian attitudes to classified information: the disclosure of WhatsApp messages between representatives of a foreign country is frowned upon but less egregious than a sober, relevant document warning government officials about the consequences of an expedient foreign policy decision. The latter informs an otherwise ignorant public about a government making policy on the hop; the former is a disclosure of tittle-tattle and anger, useful in exposing hypocrisy. Both, at this terminus of the Morrison government, reveal a slide into imminent electoral extinction.

By Nick Cunningham

Oil prices are down a bit, but are still close to multi-year highs. That should leave the shale industry flush with cash. However, a long list of U.S. shale companies are still struggling to turn a profit.

A new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the Sightline Institute detail the “alarming volumes of red ink” within the shale industry.

“Even after two and a half years of rising oil prices and growing expectations for improved financial results, a review of 33 publicly traded oil and gas fracking companies shows the companies posting negative free cash flows through June,” the report’s authors write. The 33 small and medium-sized drillers posted a combined $3.9 billion in negative cash flow in the first half of 2018.

The glaring problem with the poor financial results is that 2018 was supposed to be the year that the shale industry finally turned a corner. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency painted a rosy portrait of U.S. shale, arguing in a report that “higher prices and operational improvements are putting the US shale sector on track to achieve positive free cash flow in 2018 for the first time ever.”

The improved outlook came after years of mounting debt and negative cash flow. The IEA estimates that the U.S. shale industry generated cumulative negative free cash flow of over $200 billion between 2010 and 2014. The oil market downturn that began in 2014 was supposed to have changed profligate spending, pushing out inefficient companies and leaving the sector as a whole much leaner and healthier.

“Current trends suggest that the shale industry as a whole may finally turn a profit in 2018, although downside risks remain,” the IEA wrote in July. “Several companies expect positive free cash flow based on an assumed oil price well below the levels seen so far in 2018 and there are clear indications that bond markets and banks are taking a more positive attitude to the sector, following encouraging financial results for the first quarter.”

But the warning signs have been clear for some time. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that the second quarter was a disappointment. The WSJ analyzed 50 companies, finding that they spent a combined $2 billion more than they generated in the second quarter.

The new report from IEEFA and the Sightline Institute add more detail the industry’s recent performance. Only seven out of the 33 companies analyzed in the report had positive cash flow in the first half of the year, and the whole group burned through a combined $5 billion in cash reserves over that time period.

Even more remarkable is the fact that the negative financials come amidst a production boom. The U.S. continues to break production records week after week, and at over 11 million barrels per day, the U.S. could soon become the world’s largest oil producer. Analysts differ over the trajectory of shale, but they only argue over how fast output will grow.

Yet, even as drillers extract ever greater volumes of oil from the ground, they still are not turning a profit. “To outward appearances, the U.S. oil and gas industry is in the midst of a decade-long boom,” IEEFA and the Sightline Institute write in their report. However, “America’s fracking boom has been a world-class bust.”

The ongoing struggles raises questions about the long-term. If the industry is still not profitable – after a decade of drilling, after major efficiency improvements since 2014, and after a sharp rebound in oil prices – when will it ever be profitable? Is there something fundamentally problematic about the nature of shale drilling, which suffers from steep decline rates over relatively short periods of time and requires constant spending and drilling to maintain?

Third quarter results will start trickling in over the next few days and weeks, which should provide more clues into the shale industry’s health. There is even more pressure on drillers to post profits because the third quarter saw much higher oil prices.

“Until the industry as a whole improves, producing both sustained profits and consistently positive cash flows, careful investors would be wise to view fracking companies as speculative investments,” the authors of the report concluded.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Shale-Has-A-Glaring-Problem.html

The South Korean government ratified Tuesday the inter-Korean agreements signed at the North-South Korea summit in Pyongyang last month.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed and ratified the Pyongyang Declaration and the military agreement at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. The two agreements were signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the September summit in Pyongyang.

Moon said the ratification will “improve inter-Korean relations and reduce military tensions,” which will be necessary to “facilitate the process for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

“This will help rid the country of risks and protect the people’s lives and safety. Moreover, it will benefit the residents living on the border areas,” Moon said at the cabinet meeting.

The government earlier pursued a parliamentary ratification for the agreements. However, the Ministry of Government Legislation concluded that the agreements do not need a parliamentary approval.

The major ruling party, where Moon is a member, welcomed the decision to ratify the two agreements.

“This makes it clear for our role at the National Assembly. We should ratify the Panmunjom Declaration, pending right now due to the opposition by the Liberty Korea Party, as soon as possible,” the Democratic Party of Korea said Tuesday.

However, the major opposition Liberty Korea Party criticized Moon.

‘This is an abuse of the ministry of government legislation’s review on the matter and an act that disregards the National Assembly,” Kim Sung-tae, floor leader of the Liberty Korea Party, told reporters, according to Yonhap News.

The Panmunjom Declaration, signed at the first summit between South and North Korean leaders in April, was submitted to the National Assembly for ratification but has been pending due to oppositions by the major opposition party.

The presidential office said that the Panmunjom Declaration needs a parliamentary ratification as the agreement would require a consent from lawmakers for a future budget use for its implementation.

Original source

Strong monsoons in the Indian Ocean can induce easterly winds that push Atlantic Ocean hurricanes westward, increasing the likelihood they’ll make landfall in the Americas, according to new research.

A new study finds that in years where summer rainstorms in India are stronger, Atlantic hurricanes move further westward towards land. In years where the rains aren’t as strong, hurricanes tend to curve northward earlier and fizzle out in the north Atlantic Ocean.

This newly-discovered relationship could help scientists better predict the path of oncoming hurricanes, especially in late summer months like September, when Atlantic hurricane activity peaks, according to the study’s authors.

“What amazes me is how rainfall near India can drive important changes to Atlantic hurricanes half a world away,” said Patrick Kelly, an atmospheric researcher at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “This research is the first to draw the connection between Atlantic hurricanes and the Indian monsoon.”

The Indian monsoon season has typically waned by September, but climate projections suggest that under future warming conditions, monsoon precipitation will increase, and the monsoon season could end later in the year. As the climate continues to warm, the monsoon could have an increasing influence on the paths of Atlantic hurricanes, according to the new study.

“Forecasting for landfall of hurricanes on seasonal timescales is something we just haven’t typically done,” said Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of meteorology at the University of Miami who was not involved in the new research. “The thing that is profoundly exciting about this work is its potential to improve seasonal forecasting and predict landfalling hurricanes.”

Finding an unexpected connection

Previous research has attributed changes in hurricane steering to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a periodic fluctuation in sea surface temperature and air pressure in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Scientists have traditionally relied on the La Niña cool phase of ENSO to make predictions about how strong a particular Atlantic hurricane season will be, but have trouble forecasting the paths of individual hurricanes.

“In seasonal forecasting of hurricanes, our biggest predictor of what’s going to happen has typically been La Niña,” Kirtman said. “Unfortunately, seasonal forecasting based on La Niña hasn’t been able to tell us much about landfall.”

In the new study, Kelly and his colleagues wanted to find out how the Indian monsoon, a known source of climate variability, affected hurricane tracks, since the Indian monsoon had not yet been investigated in the context of Atlantic hurricanes. They conducted simulations of hurricane tracks with a model that incorporates observed variations of monsoon intensity and found that in response to strong monsoons, hurricanes shifted significantly westward.

Strong monsoons influence hurricane steering by enhancing the effects of the North Atlantic subtropical high, a center of high atmospheric pressure in the Atlantic Ocean. When the subtropical high increases, stronger winds come from the east and push hurricanes westward.

According to Kelly, La Niña and the Indian monsoon are correlated, but the strength of the monsoon influences the steering of hurricanes independently of La Niña fluctuations, which are responsible for changes in hurricane frequency. In other words, La Niña fluctuations may result in more Atlantic hurricanes, but strong Indian monsoons steer them further westward, making it more likely they will make landfall in the Americas.

It’s important to account for the correlation when studying hurricane steering and landfall probability.

“This work untangles La Niña’s role on frequency, whether there are more or less hurricanes, from the steering impacts of winds, governed by the Indian monsoon,” Kelly said. “La Niña events often happen during a strong monsoon, and they are correlated, but this work helps separate the independent influence of those two phenomena.”

Many of the plants inhabiting northern mountains depend on the snow cover lingering until late spring or summer. Snow provides shelter for plants from winter-time extreme events but at the same time it shortens the length of growing season, which prevents the establishment of more southern plants. This is why the reduced snow cover may be an even larger threat to the Arctic plants than rising temperatures.

In a study published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Climate Change, researchers from the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Environment Institute analysed how projected changes in temperature and snow cover duration will affect the risk for extinction in northern flora. The results show that many plant species can benefit from a warmer climate, but the rapidly receding snow cover may irradicate a large part of the flora typical to northern mountains. Many of these species are already endangered, which makes their conservation an urgent challenge.

“Though the significance of snow is widely recognised, winter conditions are often ignored when studying the northern and mountainous areas,” said Doctoral Student Pekka Niittynen from the University of Helsinki.

Help from remote sensing and satellite images

Gathering data in the winter used to be very difficult but remote sensing and satellite imaging have enabled detailed monitoring of the snow cover since the 1980s.

With the help of remote sensing and species distribution models, we showed that winter has an enormous significance for northern nature and the future of its organisms, says Niittynen.

Many Arctic and mountain plants are specialised to grow and flower during very short summer. If snow cover duration shortens and summers lengthen, more southern species benefit and can compete the Arctic species to extinction.

According to the researchers, the climate of northern areas is changing more rapidly than in the rest of the world, and these changes are especially forceful during winter. This makes the current results all the more significant.

Hard to predict the effect of warming on snow cover

“We are worried that we don’t know exactly how the snow will change as the climate warms up. We can predict temperatures fairly accurately, but it’s more difficult to predict rainfall. With snow, it is even more uncertain. In parts of Siberia, for example, the amount of snow may increase due to more precipitation during winter, but the snow cover duration in the Northern countries is predicted to become much shorter,: Pekka Niittynen said.

“Our findings show that the future changes in northern species populations may be abrupt, giving rise to ecological surprises that are hard to predict, such as fast eradication of populations in some places and the invasion of flexible species into new places,” said Senior Researcher Risto Heikkinen from the Finnish Environment Institute.

Glacier buttercup and other Arctic and mountain plants need thick snowpacks

“Many iconic species of the Arctic areas, such as the glacier buttercup, will decrease significantly thanks to the changing snow situation,” said Miska Luoto, professor of natural geography, University of Helsinki.

Many of the species in the northern mountains only thrive in areas with snowdrifts.

“Decreasing drifts will increase the risk for extinction for plants like the snow buttercup, mountain sorrel, and mossplant.”

The newly published research focuses on plants, moss, and lichen, but the results will probably apply to many other organism populations in the Arctic. Many of the Arctic species are threatened by extinction if the species dependent on snow have no suitable areas in the vicinity where the snow cover will stay on the ground long enough in future. The means of adapting to changes in the snow coverage in Arctic areas may be few in practice. This is why the mitigation actions against climate change are vital for the preservation of northern nature.

Tiny robots no bigger than a cell could be mass-produced using a new method developed by researchers at MIT. The microscopic devices, which the team calls “syncells” (short for synthetic cells), might eventually be used to monitor conditions inside an oil or gas pipeline, or to search out disease while floating through the bloodstream.

The key to making such tiny devices in large quantities lies in a method the team developed for controlling the natural fracturing process of atomically-thin, brittle materials, directing the fracture lines so that they produce miniscule pockets of a predictable size and shape. Embedded inside these pockets are electronic circuits and materials that can collect, record, and output data.

The novel process, called “autoperforation,” is described in a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, by MIT Professor Michael Strano, postdoc Pingwei Liu, graduate student Albert Liu, and eight others at MIT.

The system uses a two-dimensional form of carbon called graphene, which forms the outer structure of the tiny syncells. One layer of the material is laid down on a surface, then tiny dots of a polymer material, containing the electronics for the devices, are deposited by a sophisticated laboratory version of an inkjet printer. Then, a second layer of graphene is laid on top.

Controlled fracturing

People think of graphene, an ultrathin but extremely strong material, as being “floppy,” but it is actually brittle, Strano explains. But rather than considering that brittleness a problem, the team figured out that it could be used to their advantage.

“We discovered that you can use the brittleness,” says Strano, who is the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “It’s counterintuitive. Before this work, if you told me you could fracture a material to control its shape at the nanoscale, I would have been incredulous.”

But the new system does just that. It controls the fracturing process so that rather than generating random shards of material, like the remains of a broken window, it produces pieces of uniform shape and size. “What we discovered is that you can impose a strain field to cause the fracture to be guided, and you can use that for controlled fabrication,” Strano says.

When the top layer of graphene is placed over the array of polymer dots, which form round pillar shapes, the places where the graphene drapes over the round edges of the pillars form lines of high strain in the material. As Albert Liu describes it, “imagine a tablecloth falling slowly down onto the surface of a circular table. One can very easily visualize the developing circular strain toward the table edges, and that’s very much analogous to what happens when a flat sheet of graphene folds around these printed polymer pillars.”

As a result, the fractures are concentrated right along those boundaries, Strano says. “And then something pretty amazing happens: The graphene will completely fracture, but the fracture will be guided around the periphery of the pillar.” The result is a neat, round piece of graphene that looks as if it had been cleanly cut out by a microscopic hole punch.

Because there are two layers of graphene, above and below the polymer pillars, the two resulting disks adhere at their edges to form something like a tiny pita bread pocket, with the polymer sealed inside. “And the advantage here is that this is essentially a single step,” in contrast to many complex clean-room steps needed by other processes to try to make microscopic robotic devices, Strano says.

The researchers have also shown that other two-dimensional materials in addition to graphene, such as molybdenum disulfide and hexagonal boronitride, work just as well.

Cell-like robots

Ranging in size from that of a human red blood cell, about 10 micrometers across, up to about 10 times that size, these tiny objects “start to look and behave like a living biological cell. In fact, under a microscope, you could probably convince most people that it is a cell,” Strano says.

This work follows up on earlier research by Strano and his students on developing syncells that could gather information about the chemistry or other properties of their surroundings using sensors on their surface, and store the information for later retrieval, for example injecting a swarm of such particles in one end of a pipeline and retrieving them at the other to gain data about conditions inside it. While the new syncells do not yet have as many capabilities as the earlier ones, those were assembled individually, whereas this work demonstrates a way of easily mass-producing such devices.

Apart from the syncells’ potential uses for industrial or biomedical monitoring, the way the tiny devices are made is itself an innovation with great potential, according to Albert Liu. “This general procedure of using controlled fracture as a production method can be extended across many length scales,” he says. “[It could potentially be used with] essentially any 2-D materials of choice, in principle allowing future researchers to tailor these atomically thin surfaces into any desired shape or form for applications in other disciplines.”

This is, Albert Liu says, “one of the only ways available right now to produce stand-alone integrated microelectronics on a large scale” that can function as independent, free-floating devices. Depending on the nature of the electronics inside, the devices could be provided with capabilities for movement, detection of various chemicals or other parameters, and memory storage.

There are a wide range of potential new applications for such cell-sized robotic devices, says Strano, who details many such possible uses in a book he co-authored with Shawn Walsh, an expert at Army Research Laboratories, on the subject, called “Robotic Systems and Autonomous Platforms,” which is being published this month by Elsevier Press.

As a demonstration, the team “wrote” the letters M, I, and T into a memory array within a syncell, which stores the information as varying levels of electrical conductivity. This information can then be “read” using an electrical probe, showing that the material can function as a form of electronic memory into which data can be written, read, and erased at will. It can also retain the data without the need for power, allowing information to be collected at a later time. The researchers have demonstrated that the particles are stable over a period of months even when floating around in water, which is a harsh solvent for electronics, according to Strano.

“I think it opens up a whole new toolkit for micro- and nanofabrication,” he says.

New research, published  in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, has found evidence for a large number of double supermassive black holes, likely precursors of gigantic black hole merging events. This confirms the current understanding of cosmological evolution – that galaxies and their associated black holes merge over time, forming bigger and bigger galaxies and black holes.

Astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire, together with an international team of scientists, have looked at radio maps of powerful jet sources and found signs that would usually be present when looking at black holes that are closely orbiting each other.

Before black holes merge they form a binary black hole, where the two black holes orbit around each other. Gravitational wave telescopes have been able to evidence the merging of smaller black holes since 2015, by measuring the strong bursts of gravitational waves that are emitted when binary black holes merge, but current technology cannot be used to demonstrate the presence of supermassive binary black holes.

Supermassive black holes emit powerful jets. When supermassive binary black holes orbit it causes the jet emanating from the nucleus of a galaxy to periodically change its direction. Astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire studied the direction that these jets are emitted in, and variances in these directions; they compared the direction of the jets with the one of the radio lobes (that store all the particles that ever went through the jet channels) to demonstrate that this method can be used to indicate the presence of supermassive binary black holes.

Dr Martin Krause, lead author and senior lecturer in Astronomy at the University of Hertfordshire, said: “We have studied the jets in different conditions for a long time with computer simulations. In this first systematic comparison to high-resolution radio maps of the most powerful radio sources, we were astonished to find signatures that were compatible with jet precession in three quarters of the sources.”

The fact that the most powerful jets are associated with binary black holes could have important consequences for the formation of stars in galaxies; stars form from cold gas, jets heat this gas and thus suppress the formation of stars. A jet that always heads in the same direction only heats a limited amount of gas in its vicinity. However, jets from binary black holes change direction continuously. Therefore, they can heat much more gas, suppressing the formation of stars much more efficiently, and thus contributing towards keeping the number of stars in galaxies within the observed limits.

A lack of affordable housing is linked with many health problems, including asthma, stress and alcoholism. Penn State researchers found that while some Americans may be less aware of this link, there may be ways to communicate this connection in a way that resonates with those groups.

The researchers found that high-income citizens and conservatives were less likely to acknowledge the link between housing affordability and health than people in lower income brackets or other political affiliations. These groups were also more responsive to the themes of “personal responsibility” and “stability and security.”

Selena Ortiz, assistant professor of health policy and administration, said she hopes these insights — recently published in the journal SSM – Population Health — can help improve communications about health and housing affordability.

“If there’s a way we can use those themes and incorporate them into communications, maybe our message can resonate with those groups more,” Ortiz said. “If we can talk about improving housing affordability in terms of allowing someone to secure a healthy, stable life, while also not discounting this theme of personal responsibility, maybe that could help.”

Ortiz says that while the term “affordable housing crisis” makes it sound like this is a new problem, the issue has been around for decades. She said that currently, a worker making minimum wage is unable to spend less than 30 percent of their income on rent or a mortgage anywhere in the U.S. Additionally, an estimated 12 million American households pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing.

The researchers said that people living in unaffordable housing are at risk for many negative health outcomes, both physically and mentally. Unsafe living conditions could put them at risk for lead or asbestos poisoning, while also placing them at a higher risk for drug or alcohol abuse and stress from the threat of eviction.

“There’s real consequences, including having to worry every single month about how are you going to scrape the money together to pay for your rent or mortgage,” Ortiz said. “The fear and act of eviction is also pretty powerful. And with children who go through that, there could be effects that linger throughout their lives — which we just don’t know about yet.”

To investigate how Americans feel about the link between health and housing affordability, the researchers used data from 400 adults who were members of the Survey Sampling International online research panel, which is representative of the U.S. in terms of gender, age, race, income and educational levels.

The participants were asked questions about their income and political affiliation, along with whether they agreed that the cost and affordability of housing was related to a person’s health. They also answered an open-ended question about how and why housing affordability matters.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that overall, most of the participants agreed that housing affordability was linked to health. About 83 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Independents and 61 percent of Republicans agreed with the connection. About 43 percent of respondents in the highest income bracket agreed, contrasted with 70 percent in the lower income groups.

Ortiz said that while the participants largely agreed to the first question of whether housing affordability matters to health, when asked an open-ended question about why housing affordability matters, health rarely came up.

“Even in this short survey, the concept of health wasn’t very salient,” Ortiz said. “It just goes to show that we need to be very explicit and very forthcoming in our messaging about this link again and again and again, because it doesn’t stick in our minds.”

The groups that were less likely to agree that housing affordability was linked with health were also more likely to talk about “personal responsibility” and “security and stability” when asked why housing affordability matters.

“If we know these groups value these themes, maybe we can fold them into our communications in a way that doesn’t discount these beliefs,” Ortiz said. “Is there a way, for example, to not discount personal responsibility while also explaining that you can still have an individual that’s working 40 hours plus and they still can’t afford their home and provide for their family? How do we emphasize that affordable housing enables individuals to exercise their own agency to secure a better life for them and their families?”

Ortiz said she hopes her research can help bring Americans together to agree on housing policies that can make affordable housing a possibility for everyone.

“This isn’t an issue of people not working hard enough,” Ortiz said. “These are real families and individuals who are struggling, and it has severe public health consequences, not just for them but for us as a society. We have to continue to talk about it and be creative about how we communicate about it.”

Rising sea levels driven by climate change make for salty soil, and that is likely to force about 200,000 coastal farmers in Bangladesh inland as glaciers melt into the world’s oceans, according to estimates from a new study.

Frequent flooding with salt water is already pushing farmers in Bangladesh to shift from growing rice to raising shrimp and other seafood, but not all coastal residents will be able to stay put and maintain their agricultural livelihoods, said study co-lead author Joyce Chen of The Ohio State University.

“Unfortunately, this is likely to be most challenging for those farming families who have the fewest resources to begin with,” said Chen, an associate professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics.

The study appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Chen and her co-author, Valerie Mueller of Arizona State University and the International Food Policy Research Institute, pulled together a variety of socioeconomic, population, geographic and climate change data to create models that allowed them to estimate population shifts based on rising water encroaching on coastal farmland and subsequent increases in soil salinity. Salty soil impedes growth of rice and most other crops. It’s the first study of its kind.

The researchers found that the farming potential lost with increased soil salinity is and will be a large driver of migration. The researchers estimated that a farm would be expected to lose 21 percent of its crop revenue each year when faced with moderate salt contamination.

In the next 120 years, coastal communities that are home to 1.3 billion people will be inundated with seawater, according to scientific forecasts. This puts about 40 percent of Bangladesh’s agricultural fields in jeopardy and already, residents of coastal areas are experiencing frequent flooding from rising oceans and adapting to the new normal.

“Many farmers have already converted some of their operations to aquaculture, raising shrimp and fish that do well in brackish – or somewhat salty – water,” Chen said.

According to the study, as soil salinity moves from low to high, the share of agricultural revenue from shrimp and other seafood farming goes up almost 60 percent. Converting from rice to aquaculture isn’t a simple or cheap endeavor, however, and many farmers can’t afford to make the change on a large-scale level, Chen said.

The shift from rice to seafood also presents a challenge for those looking to curtail the encroaching seawater, because shrimp and other seafood farmers now need and want it to maintain their livelihoods. Balancing those competing interests is something policymakers must consider, Chen said.

Another interesting finding from the study: While internal migration will likely increase by about 25 percent, migration abroad is estimated to decrease by 66 percent as soil salinity increases, because the resulting aquaculture produces jobs that are likely to keep Bangladesh residents in the country, she said.

The rising sea level and increase in frequency of catastrophic storms inevitably will leave Bangladesh vulnerable to losing coastal land, which is expected to disappear at a rate of 10 to 18 millimeters per year, the study says.

“My concern is that the most vulnerable people will be the least resilient in the face of climate change, because they have limited resources to adapt their farming practices or to move longer distances in search of other employment,” Chen said.

Mueller said policymakers would benefit from planning early for population shifts related to climate change.

“The Bangladesh study offers interesting insights for governments of countries facing similar imminent threats of sea level rise. As internal migration patterns are expected to shift in countries vulnerable to sea level rise, ministries of planning may benefit from developing economic strategies that integrate and even leverage the expected additional number of workers coming from vulnerable areas,” she said.

Neighboring countries also should begin to think about policies to accommodate international migrants, Mueller said.

“Given the humanitarian nature of climate migrants, additional financial support from the international community may be necessary to foster resettlement programs.”

How well are immigrants integrating in the United States? Are they doing better or worse than in Germany or France? Under what conditions have immigrants most successfully integrated into their host societies? Despite great advances in social science, the answers to these important questions remain contested.

There are now over 250 million international migrants throughout the world. Each has a unique story and many face deep challenges not only to establish a new home, but also to build a new life once they arrive. Policymakers throughout the world have grappled with how best to integrate newly arrived immigrants to ensure that the economic and societal benefits of immigration become a reality. And they are doing so without clear guidelines as to what policies work best.

A key challenge to date for policymakers and service providers is that there is no common approach to measuring immigrant integration. As academics have offered vigorous debate on the meaning of ‘integration’ and used varied definitions and measures in hundreds of studies, it would be nearly impossible to generate systematic knowledge to assess and improve immigrant integration because the benchmark is constantly being moved. What’s learned from one study or evaluation of a policy is of little systematic value, relative to another study, because the concept of ‘integration’ keeps changing.

Overcoming this barrier is not insurmountable. Just as researchers have created widely accepted measures of country wealth (GDP) and mental health (the Kessler-6) to build cumulative knowledge, there is an opportunity to generate systematic and pragmatic information about immigrant integration as well.

Researchers at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University and ETH Zurich developed a new pragmatic survey tool to measure immigrant integration. The IPL Integration Index provides researchers, policymakers, and service providers with quick and easy to implement survey modules to measure various dimensions of integration. The measure is available in a 12-item short form (IPL-12) and 24-item long form (IPL-24).

Integration: A multidimensional concept

Academic researchers have offered varied definitions of integration and most would likely agree that integration is a complex concept and cannot be measured by a single question. Therefore, the IPL team focused on developing a pragmatic survey tool that would be capable of capturing integration’s various dimensions. The IPL-12/24 includes six key dimensions of integration: psychological, economic, political, social, linguistic, and navigational.

To develop questions for each dimension the researchers applied seven criteria to potential questions in reviewing a multitude of surveys. The criteria for questions include, for instance, directionality so that higher values are associated with higher-levels of integration, and inclusivity so that the question could be answered by all adult immigrants and host country natives to avoid issues of missing data. Using multidimensionality and the criteria as a guide, the team tested over 200 questions through almost 4,000 interviews.

Creating a valid survey tool

After exhaustive testing to select a final set of questions, is there a way to determine if the IPL-12/24 accurately measures integration? Since researchers can’t exactly take out a ruler to determine how close or distant the index is to capturing levels of integration, there are a number of ways to assess the validity of the index. “What you hope to demonstrate in testing the validity of the index is that it shows higher-levels of integration where you would expect, such as naturalized citizens having higher-levels of integration than recently-arrived immigrants,” said Niklas Harder, a postdoctoral fellow and co-author of the study.

The results from a wide range of empirical tests strongly suggest that the IPL-12/24 is capable of differentiating between levels of integration across groups of immigrants and tracks well with commonly used predictors of integration (e.g., citizenship, language of the home country, and length of stay in host country).

For example, IPL researchers computed the index for four sample populations, each with a declining expectation of immigration success – at one extreme, a sample of computer savvy and wealthy immigrants who were fluent in English; at the other extreme, a class of recently arrived immigrants who were enrolled in an English as a Second Language class. As expected, the overall integration index declines with less exposure to the host country. The declining integration scores, in conjunction with other tests, gave the researchers confidence in the validity of the measure.

A pragmatic tool to inform policy

The goal of the project is to create a survey tool that government agencies, nonprofit service providers, and academic researchers could all use to build more knowledge about integration that is comparable. In turn, this can inform policy development and 2Immigrant Residency and Level of Integration programmatic innovation to support the integration of immigrants.

To be sure, the designers of the IPL-12/24 recognize that this index does not capture all aspects of integration. Their goal was to develop a tool that can provide a core measure of integration to generate cumulative knowledge. Other researchers are invited to add and build upon it to enhance its validity as a general measure. “If we want to improve our understanding of what affects integration, we need a common starting point,” said David Laitin, faculty co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab.

The IPL-12/24 website facilitates widespread adoption. On it, the index is publicly available in a variety of languages and formats for use in multiple countries. “The hope of the Immigration Policy Lab,” as articulated by David Laitin, “is that the dissemination of this research tool will help policy makers learn about the relative merits of their integration policies in a way that will benefit both immigrants and the communities in which they settle.”

Bullying and harassment in the NHS in England could be costing the organization over £2 billion per year, according to new research published in Public Money & Management.

The first comprehensive estimate of the financial costs of bullying and harassment in the NHS, the study used data from NHS Digital to gauge the impact of bullying upon sickness absence, employee turnover, productivity, sickness presenteeism, and employment relations.

The financial cost of each of these factors was then combined to produce the overall figure of £2.281 billion per year. Of each individual component, sickness presenteeism was estimated to have the biggest financial impact.

Described as the productivity lost when staff continue to come to work while being bullied, and are more prone to making mistakes, presenteeism due to bullying was estimated to cost £604.4 million. This is double the cost of sickness absence because of bullying.

Study authors Professor Duncan Lewis and Dr Roger Kline described the overall cost as ‘extremely cautious’, as there are several costs that lack reliable evidence to estimate accurately. These include the impact upon spectators of bullying at work (who may need additional healthcare or counselling due to witnessing bullying), NHS reputational damage, and investigation costs for bodies such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The overall cost is therefore likely to be substantially higher than that reported in the study.

In the most recent NHS England staff survey, almost a quarter of staff reported being bullied or harassed by colleagues. In an extremely pressurized working environment under increasing strain from unprecedented demand and diminishing resources, there are pressing concerns about NHS staff wellbeing and patient safety.

Although policymakers increasingly regard reducing levels of bullying and harassment in the NHS as a priority, it is an ongoing issue, with little change in the reported levels of bullying for the past three years.

The study’s authors therefore hope that this research will give policymakers a crucial financial incentive to tackle bullying in the NHS.

“The NHS in recent years has seen an increase in reported levels of bullying to the point where its impact requires much greater scrutiny,” said Professor Lewis, of the University of Plymouth.

“Research has increasingly demonstrated the risks to patient care and safety, but not addressed the cost to the organizational effectiveness of the NHS. We hope this study kick-starts serious attention to the substantial diversion of funding away from patient care that current levels of bullying cause.”

To address this serious problem, the study’s authors suggest improving existing staff surveys to better capture the types of behaviors attributable to bullying, and to understand how staff feel about current procedures to tackle workplace bullying. With a better idea of the effectiveness of current strategies, improved methods could be developed.

In the longer-term, these improved methods would not only lead to a happier, more productive workforce, but also save vast amounts of money that could be directed elsewhere, to areas such as patient care.

Professor Lewis added: “Estimating the financial cost of bullying should not come at the expense of the moral reasons for tackling bullying and harassment. Nonetheless, if our paper means that NHS Trust executives realize the heinous costs of bullying, they may then think about where the additional resources currently wasted through bullying and harassment might be better deployed, which ultimately means more effective patient care.”

By Mladen Lakic, Maja Zivanovic and Anja Vladisavljevic

Croatian police said false information that the EU country would open its borders led to hundreds of migrants and refugees gathering at border crossings in Serbia and Bosnia, hoping to enter Croatia.

Some 400 migrants and refugees gathered on Tuesday on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s border with Croatia, with a similar number massing on Serbia’s border with Croatia, local media reported.

Croatian police announced that misinformation had been spread that the EU state would open its borders.

“Among the migrant populations on the territory of Bosnia and Serbia, false information is spreading that the Republic of Croatia will allow their entry into its territory as well as further passage to the countries of Western Europe,” a police statement said.

Local police and members of Bosnia’s border force were deployed to the Maljevac border crossing in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where several hundred migrants and refugees hoped to cross over into Croatia, but the situation remained calm with no incidents reported.

A few hundred also gathered at the Batrovci border crossing between Serbia and Croatia, near the town of Sid, also hoping to get into the EU country.

According to Serbian media, the migrants and refugees came from the Adasevci and Principovci camps.

Later reports from local media suggested that some migrants and refugees have already been returning to the camps.

On Monday night, a group of some 100 migrants and refugees arrived at Bosnia’s Izacic border crossing and spent all night in the open, but they have since been returned to migrant centres in Bihac and Velika Kladusa, Sanela Dujkovic, a spokeswoman for the Bosnian Border police told local media.

Some expressed disappointment that they were not allowed to continue their journey into the EU.

“We are waiting and praying that the border will open. We do not want to go back,” one of them, Nagris, told BIRN.

According to estimates from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the number of refugees and migrants in Serbia in October was about 3,900, of whom about 3,400 were housed in state-owned asylum centres and reception centres, including around 200 accommodated in tents in Principovac and Adasevci.

Data from the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights suggested that there are also about 500 people at informal sites, mostly in the Belgrade area and in the border zones.

Most however are being housed at a reception centre in Obrenovac and an asylum centre in Krnjaca in Belgrade.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina from the beginning of the year to October 17, just over 18,000 migrants and refugees were registered on the new so-called ‘Balkan route’, which passes through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and in some instances Serbia.

A total of 6,411 of the migrants came from Pakistan. Others came from Iran (2,944), Syria (2,533), Afghanistan (2,962) and Iraq (1,675), the Bosnian Service for Foreign Affairs told BIRN.

Mexico has impressive bilateral relations with the Russian Federation. During the last decade, Mexico has been exploring new opportunities with its partners in this part of Europe, in particular, with Russia. In this interview, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Mexico to the Russian Federation, H.E. Norma Pensado Moreno, talks about the key priorities, challenges and the economic changes that could possibly influence future bilateral directions of Mexico-Russia.

Interview Excerpts follow:

Q:What are your Government’s priorities in and expectations from the Russian Federation?

NPM: Mexico´s Government issued new objectives of foreign policy; one of them is building stronger relations with our partners beyond North America. In this endeavor, Eastern Europe plays a key role. Moreover, due to its dynamism during the last decade, Mexico has a special interest in exploring new cooperation opportunities with its partners in this part of Europe, in particular with Russia.

For Mexico and the Russian Federation, there is great potential in their bilateral relationship. In 2017 and 2018, considerable progress was made in its political dialogue and cooperation in various areas, but a real deepening still remains, mainly in the economic field, in order to match the size of its economies, being both among the 15 biggest in the world.

Both countries are of decisive importance in their respective regions. Within the group of Latin American countries, Mexico occupies an important place for Russia’s foreign policy agenda. For Mexico, Russia is a country with high political, scientific, cultural, energy, tourist, investment and commercial potential.

The bilateral dialogue between the two countries has focused on the Mechanism of Political Consultations, official reciprocal visits, exchange and cooperation (educational, cultural, scientific and technical), energy, economy, trade and tourism. Mexico and Russia agree on positions in many International Forums and on principles such as the promotion of multilateralism. In this context, they have prioritized the issues of international security, the pacific use of cosmic space, the fight against drug trafficking and transnational crime.

The bilateral relationship is in a very good dynamic, due to the presidential meetings in BRICS and APEC summits, as well as the meetings of foreign ministers, in August and November of 2017. The celebration of the V Joint Commission of Cooperation in Culture, Education and Sports took place last February after many years, and the VI Economic Commission Mexico-Russia is expected to take place during 2019.

In short, our Government priorities and expectations are to continue and deepen the cooperation Mexico and the Russian Federation have both in our bilateral relationship in all areas and in the multilateral agenda, as well as to exploring new cooperation in areas such as energy and telecommunications, in which Russia has strengths.

Q: Do you have the same business agenda in other ex-Soviet republics where you are accredited?

NPM: I am also accredited as Ambassador to Armenia and Belarus. Overall, Mexico’s business agenda is similar in the three countries. We want to expand trade, promote investments and connect our business community to their counterparts in these countries through the organization of business missions and participation in commercial promotional events. It is also a common goal in the three countries to promote Mexico as a tourist destination.

However, we have also set specific goals based on the prospects identified in each country. Russia is a big country and it represents a wide scope of opportunities. In the case of our Armenian counterparts, we have talked about the many opportunities in the IT and renewable energies sectors. As for Belarus, we are aware of its potential in the production of tractors and agriculture machines as well as in its new industrial technologies. We need to do some work to translate this flow of information into real opportunities that can be explored by our business communities.

Q: Could you please discuss the level of Russia’s economic engagement in Mexico? Is your Government satisfied with Russia’s investment interest as compared to, most probably, other foreign players in Mexico?

NPM: Both Russia and Mexico are conscious that there is significant room to grow in our bilateral economic relations given the size of our economies and the possibilities of complementarity. We want to increase economic exchanges and investments.

That said, I want to highlight that Russia has made significant steps regarding its economic engagement in Mexico. It is Mexico’s most important investment partner among Eastern European countries, with a total investment of $20.9 million between 1999 and 2017. There are Russian investments in more than 80 Mexican companies, in fields such as transportation, hotels, and mining.

In June 2017, as a result of Mexico’s public tender process in its oil industry, Lukoil was awarded an exploration and extraction contract in the Gulf of Mexico. In March 2018, the company announced that, in consortium with the Italian company Eni, it had been awarded another contract. This consolidates its presence in Mexico since it started to cooperate with Pemex in 2014.

Last year Minister of Trade and Industry visited Mexico heading a business delegation in sectors such as aerospace, automotive, equipment and energy. And this October, the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry also went to Mexico with a delegation of companies in the construction sector. I can thus say that we see a positive trend in Russia’s engagement in Mexico and we hope it will remain.

Q: On the other hand, how does Mexico engage Russia? How do you view the possibility of effective trade exchanges between the two countries?

NPM: Mexican investment in Russia is also growing. In 2017 Gruma, one of the biggest producers of tortillas and other agro products opened a plant in the Moscow region with an investment of $50 million. Other companies with presence in the country are Kidzania –with an entertainment center in the Moscow region- and Nemak –with a manufacturing center for automotive components in Zavolzhie, near Ulyanovsk. Also, the Mexican air company Interjet has acquired several Russian-developed units, the Sukhoi SuperJet-100.

In addition, different Mexican governmental agencies have been encouraging Mexican producers from the agricultural sector to explore opportunities in the Russian market. As a result, representatives from more than twenty companies have visited Russia in the last four months to get acquainted with potential partners. We had a big delegation in Moscow last June, within the framework of the FIFA World Cup, and the second one in mid-September, which attended the World Food fair in Moscow.

Therefore, I can confidently say that there is keen interest from the Mexican side to strengthen its economic ties with Russia. Our goal is to translate all these steps into a substantial growth in trade exchanges.

Q: How is Mexico’s tourism business developing in Russia? Are the number of Russian tourists increasing compared to the previous years? What strategies have you adopted to further popularize your country’s recreational destinations?

NPM: One of the main priorities of the Government of Mexico is tourism. Thanks to the efforts of our government in this area, in 2017 Mexico ranked sixth in the world in reception of foreign tourists, according to the World Tourism Organization, with almost 40 million visitors (39.3 million). Out of this amount, only 37,300 Russian visitors entered Mexico by airplane (an increase of 21.5% in comparison to 2016); it means less than 0.1% of all the tourists we received last year; even if it is increasing, it does not correspond to the importance of Russia in the world.

We strive for having again the numbers we had in 2013 when almost 108,000 Russians visited Mexico. The good news is that in the first 8 months of 2018, Mexico received more Russian visitors than in the whole 2017. If this trend continues we will receive more than 50,000 Russian tourists at the end of the year -something not seen since 2014-, it means almost 65% more than two years ago.

For the coming years, we are confident that the number of Russians who will visit Mexico will continue increasing thanks to the actions implemented by the Government of Mexico to popularize my country in Russia, among them:

1) the organization or participation in events aimed at the main Russian tour operators; 2) the participation in tourism exhibitions in Russia; 3) the publication of brochures or information in Russian language including the version in this language of the Website of our Tourism Office, which will be in force in the next weeks.

In this framework, a key role play the recent visit to Russia of more than 45,000 Mexican football fans to attend the World Cup who brought with them our “Fiesta”, something that Russians liked very much and has motivated them to visit Mexico in the near future.

Q: What are views about economic changes in Russia and the Eurasian region? And how would the changes possibly influence future directions in economic cooperation in Mexico?

NPM: We closely follow the economic developments in Russia, Armenia, and Belarus, including the regional integration efforts within the Eurasian Economic Union. We are aware of the challenges the countries are facing, but also of the opportunities that are being open. We want to focus on the opportunities. As I mentioned before, the interest in deepening economic relations is mutual and is growing. We will carry on with the work that has been done in the last years.

In the case of Russia, we have still to agree on a date for the next meeting of the Economic Intergovernmental Commission, which will be key to strengthen our cooperation framework. Experts from the two countries are engaged in processes that we hope will lead to the reopening of the Russian market for Mexican beef and seafood products. The trends are very positive, and we can remain optimistic in that regard.

Jean Paul Sartre through his writings had elaborately explained the unbridgeable divide between Post-Colonial and anti-Colonial struggle. But, he presented a different nature of Post-Colonial theory and was extensively concerned with the colonial and Third World issues since 1948 onwards.

He also well-defined about the colonial violence in his famous work “The critique of dialectical reason” and became one of the founder of the epistemological revolution. It was Sartre and Algerian Born Philosopher Frantz Fanon, who put the anti-colonial struggle at the heart of the Political agenda as part of their commitment as Marxist. Moreover, they both were influenced by the ideas of extreme Bolshevism.

In “Being and Nothingness”, Sartre rejects Marx argument that “Consciousness is determined by life, by proposing ‘Freedom’ as the central characteristic of being human”. Likewise, Sartre also rewrites Descartian Cogito as “I am my choice, I am my freedom”. What Sartre said; the individuals are not fixed but in a constant state of self-transformation and self-reproduction playing an active role within the masses as conscious assortment of individuals; who make history.

As Marx wrote: “Men makes their own history, but not of their own free will, not under the circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted”. However, Sartre was not agreeing with the Marxian standpoint that individuals are wholly determined by the circumstances (Historical and economical) rather Sartre believed that “Individuals possess responsibilities for themselves”.

Sartre repositioned his philosophy and Political views after experiencing the colonial war in Morocco and, Algeria, when the Muslim Towns of Casablanca and Satif was indiscriminately bombed. He was also a strong supporter of Negritude (The conception of African and Caribbean identity) and has critically worked on racism and tried to approach Racism through phenomenology, via which he associated racism with the ideology of Colonial rule.

It was famous writer Richard Wright, who famously remarked on racism that: “The problem of racism does not lie with Negros rather it is the problem with Whites,” but Sartre elucidated racism in the context of anti-Semitism, what he said; it is the Jewish character, that provokes anti-Semitism. Basically, the main problem lies in the split between annihilated and the Triumph and the colonial legacy of the Western European empires had widened this split. Thus, the anti-Semitism has not created the un-assimilation of Jews rather it is their strange behavior that creates contradiction. What Sartre said: if the existence precedes essence, then the essence of colonized subjects aspiring to a “White-Mask” is one of inauthenticity and bad faith (means I am no longer master of the situation).

On the other hand, Frantz Fanon also staunchly criticized the psychopathology of the Colonial rule, which had given birth to the concepts like inferior subjects or inferiority across the colonial territories. According to Sartre colonial subjects oscillated between the two states, internalizing the colonial ideology of inferiority and being less than fully human—until he or she assumes the responsibility and choses authenticity and freedom. Basically, it was Sartre’s Hegelian training that enabled him to recognize that Power is a Dialectical phenomenon that torturer and tortured, racist and victim, colonizer and colonized, and the powered and the disempowered were all locked in symbiotic relations in which the first could not escape the consequence of his relations with the second. What Frantz fanon said “it is the system that has choked him and reduced him to silence”.

Hegel through his dialectics also put forward the concept of “excluded Middle”, which refers to the spectral presence of subaltern, liminal figures who slip between two antithetical categories. With this preposition Sartre argued; the racial hierarchy is the major ideological pivot of Colonial rule.

Moreover, the Western discourse of “Humanism” and “Human rights” Sartre argued had worked by excluding a majority of world Population from the category of Humanism.

Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara had aphorized this kind of harsh colonial rule in their famous writings “The wretched of the Earth” and “men and socialism in Cuba”, both writings stressed on the necessity of the creation of New men. Thus, both according to Sartre, Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon: “It was through revolution that oppressed could attained their own humanity as well as their Freedom”. What Fanon said:

“At the individual level, violence is the cleansing force; it frees the native from his inferiority complex, despair and inaction”.

It was Karl Marx, who famously argued that, ‘Colonialism has presented Capitalism in a naked form—stripped off the decorated Clothing of the European Bourgeoisie’. And, three kind of divisions emerged during Colonial rule that were the hall mark of Capitalism in its naked form, as follows:

1. Cosmopolitan Modernity
2. Peasantry
3. Nationalist ideals

On the contrary, according to Sartre, colonialism has presented a deliberate and systematic form of exploitation that could analyzed with the latter divisions. Basically, Sartre was the first European Marxists who developed the theory of history by encompassing Colonialism and the endemic violence of the colonial regimes. He articulated the material history through the philosophy of existentialism.

On the contrary, it was the anti-colonial and post-colonial theories that has the subjective and objective history—here the post-colonial theory is the product of the anti-colonial and anti-Eurocentric political knowledge, experience and its construction of tri-continental modernity. In a nut shell, through post-colonial studies philosophers had basically repositioned the West in terms of culture and political fervor.

*Shahzada Rahim is a postgraduate student of Politics and International studies with keen interest of writing on History, current affairs, geopolitics and international political economy.

Last month’s near-collision between the US warship Decatur and a Chinese warship is only the most recent in a series of near misses between their warships and warplanes in and over the South China Sea.  The most serious was the 2001 collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a US surveillance plane resulting in the loss of the Chinese jet and its pilot and the emergency landing on Hainan and the detention of the US plane and its crew.   This incident was followed by many others such as those involving the Bowditch (2001), the Impeccable (2009), the Cowpens (2013) , and several Poseiden 8As (20014,2015 and 2018). https://www.nbr.org/publication/foreign-military-activities-in-asian-eezs-conflict-ahead/

Now the US Navy is proposing a major show of force in the Taiwan Strait and against China’s claims and actions in the South China Sea. Given this history and the current context of deteriorating US- China relations across the board, this could result in military confrontation and even conflict.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2166910/us-navy-plans-major-show-strength-south-china-sea-warning

A series of similar dangerous military incidents between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a stimulus for their 1972 ground breaking Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on and over the High Seas (INCSEA) https://www.state.gov/t/isn/4791.htm

The US-Soviet incidents in the 1960’s involved dangerously close encounters between war planes, war ships shouldering one another, and both ships and aircraft undertaking threatening movements against their counterparts.  The U.S. proposed talks on preventing such incidents from becoming more serious.  The resulting INCSEA agreement supposedly serves to “enhance mutual knowledge and understanding of military activities; to reduce the possibility of conflict by accident, miscalculation, or the failure of communication; and to increase stability in times of both calm and crisis”.  INCSEA agreements have subsequently been negotiated between Russia and South Korea, Russia and Japan, and Malaysia and Indonesia.

The US –Soviet INCSEA was followed in 1989 by an Agreement on the Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities that established a high level forum similar to that provided by the INCSEA to focus on ways to avoid confrontation because of such activities over land and in 12 nautical mile territorial waters. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Dangerous_Military_Activities_Agreement

But there are of course significant differences between the then Soviet Union – and China.  China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy – – unlike the former Soviet navy – – is not yet a blue water force with global reach and responsibilities.  But that is its ambition and it may soon be achieved.  Another difference is that the US-Soviet INCSEA agreement was a product of a Cold War.  To enter such an agreement would enhance the perception that the U.S. and China are entering a Cold War.  But perhaps they are. http://www.atimes.com/are-the-us-and-china-on-the-brink-of-a-cold-war/

Despite these differences a fundamental similarity is that “the prospect of a minor accident escalating into an act of war between nuclear powers was something that worried knowledgeable authorities then, just as it should worry decision makers in China and the United States now.”  It is in neither’s interest to have a mistake or a miscalculation at sea trigger an unwanted political crisis. https://studylib.net/doc/8845597/us-china-maritime-confidence-building

The U.S. has not offered to discuss an INCSEA with China. But the two do have a 1998 Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) and it was hoped that such consultations might eventually lead to an INCSEA agreement.  But the MMCA has so far been little more than an agreement “to talk about talking,” and worse, did not prevent nor resolve the 2001 US-China aircraft collision and subsequent incidents. https://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/why-the-china-us-mil-to-mil-framework-is-and-isnt The U.S. and China also have a series of memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) that set out agreed  guidelines for the conduct of their respective ships and aircraft operating near each other.   https://thediplomat.com/2014/11/the-us-china-mou-on-air-and-maritime-encounters/; http://www.jag.navy.mil/distrib/instructions/CUES_2014.pdf

But contrary to the earlier US-Soviet Agreements which used binding, obligatory language like “shall”  and are considered binding international law, the MMCA, the US-China MOUs and CUES are both explicitly voluntary and framed with optional language like “should” and “may.”  For example, one MOU’s language dealing with unsafe aircraft intercepts leaves it up to the pilots involved to determine what constitutes “professional airmanship” and “safe separation”. Given this ambiguity,  what the U.S. perceives as “unsafe and unprofessional” Chinese intercepts of its surveillance flights are seen by China as professional and appropriate.

Another argument against a US-China INCSEA is that the US-Soviet INCSEA was not very effective and it did not prevent deliberate incidents.  It is true that it did not stop such incidents all together.  Indeed, a 1988 incident in the Black Sea precipitated by a US Freedom of Navigation Operation brought the two to the brink of kinetic conflict.  This is similar to the serious political repercussions of the recent Decatur incident. But the INCSEA did provide the basis for a compromise which reduced the frequency and severity of such incidents.

In the Black Sea incident, a US Navy cruiser tried to exercise innocent passages in the Soviet territorial sea.  The cruiser was shouldered by a Soviet frigate that tried to push it onto the high seas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Black_Sea_bumping_incident    When the two sides met for their annual consultation agreed under their INCSEA, they discovered that they had different interpretations of the UN Convention the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – which the U.S. had not and still has not ratified.  This is not greatly different from the contrasting interpretations by the U.S. and China of key UNCLOS terms related to freedom of navigation. https://thediplomat.com/2016/03/china-and-the-freedom-of-navigation/  In the US-Soviet case, their representatives made recommendations to their respective governments that resulted in a mutual acceptable compromise.

The US-China agreements have obviously not prevented the litany of incidents in and over China’s near shore waters.  The problem is that these “encounters” are not really “unplanned”.  They are purposeful and perhaps expected intercepts designed to send a message.  Indeed they are ‘unfriendly’ acts in response to what is perceived as ‘unfriendly’ behavior.  Rules of the Road, MOUs and CUES will not prevent them or make them more ‘friendly’.  A political compromise is necessary.

The protocol to the US-Soviet INCSEA Agreement grew out of the Consultative Committee established by it and was helpful in harmonizing goals and identifying important specific areas of agreement and disagreement.

Perhaps the Decatur incident will stimulate the U.S. and China to reconsider  upgrading their existing ambiguous and voluntary ‘understandings’ to a binding agreement and thus force a focus on their different interpretations of relevant terms and provisions.

One US-China MOU provides for an annual ‘assessment’ of any incidents in the previous year under the auspices of the MMCA.  This forum could be used to explore their different interpretations of key UNCLOS terms related to freedom of navigation of warships and warplanes. These include “other internationally lawful uses of the sea”, “due regard”,  “peaceful purposes”, “abuse of rights” and “marine scientific research”.

However, even an INCSEA would only be a basic agreement on appropriate and inappropriate behavior when platforms of both parties encounter each other at sea.  It would not address the fundamental sources of the problem that are rooted in their struggle for regional and global dominance. But it could make these encounters less frequent and less dangerous.

*Mark J. Valencia, Adjunct Senior Scholar, National Institute for South China Sea studies, Haikou, China

This piece first appeared in the IPP Review. https://ippreview.com/index.php/Blog/single/id/812.html

By firing missiles over Iraq into Syria, the Iranians delivered a powerful message to Washington at a time when the Trump administration ratchets up its aggression against the Islamic Republic.

On October 1, Iran carried out six missile strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Abu Kamal, situated in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border. Iran’s state-owned television showed one missile carrying slogans “Death to America,” “Death to Israel” and “Death to al Saud.” The bold move was officially a retaliation for the deadly attack in Ahvaz, in the Iranian Province of Khuzestan, nine days earlier, which the Iranian leadership blames on IS. In addition to killing “many terrorists” in Abu Kamal, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed, the missiles also eviscerated stockpiles of the Islamic State’s ammunition and infrastructure. By firing missiles over Iraq into Syria, the Iranians delivered a powerful message to Washington at a time when the Trump administration ratchets up its aggression against the Islamic Republic.

Put simply, the message is that five months after the US withdrew from the Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran will not change its regional conduct or cave in to pressure from the United States, Israel and certain Arab Gulf states. When it comes to Syria, Iran is set to remain in the country despite the White House’s stated goal to cause a retreat of Iranian forces and proxies. As Tehran begins conducting a more muscular and “offensive” approach in the region following America’s JCPOA decision, hardline elements within the Iranian regime — chiefly within the IRGC, which carried out the October 1 missile strikes — are being empowered.

Also, the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) October 3 ruling ordered Washington to ensure that its anti-Iran sanctions do not harm humanitarian assistance or civil aviation security. This left officials in Tehran more determined to stay their rigid course even if the ICJ lacks the teeth to enforce the ruling against the United States, which was rejected by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Other recent instances of Tehran acting confidently against perceived security menaces and asserting a stronger regional clout came on September 8 when Iran killed at least 11 people in long-range missile attacks on the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan’s headquarters in Koya, Iraq, which belongs to the Kurdistan Regional Government. During the previous month, Iranian officials stated that over the previous several months, Iran’s military had transferred several dozen short-range ballistic missiles to Tehran-sponsored Shia militias in Iraq to deter attacks against Iran’s homeland. Depending on from where in Iraq they are placed, these missiles (Zelzal, Fateh-110 and Zolfaqar) can reach both the Saudi and Israeli capitals.

Pressures Within Iran

Such acts, along with the Iranian intelligence ministry’s alleged role in the foiled plot to attack a gathering by the militant Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e Khalq in France in June, illustrate how hardliners within the Islamic Republic are demonstrating more will to operate with greater autonomy from the central government, without obtaining permission before acting in the region. As the Iranian economy continues to suffer many ills, from rising unemployment and inflation to excess liquidity, as Washington’s sanctions continue to hurt the country, President Hassan Rouhani appears to find himself in a difficult political situation. That the parliament has summoned Rouhani to provide answers to questions about the country’s economic crises, and with a number of voices calling for his impeachment, the extent to which his centrist government has failed to meet the average Iranian citizen’s expectations about the economic rewards that JCPOA was to bring is clearly highlighted.

As such pressures within Iran intensify, moderate elements within the government struggle to maintain relevance in the country’s political arena. With nationalist sentiments on the rise, moderates have been prompted to align, at least to some degree, with hardliners in support of Tehran’s assertive conduct across the region. For the Iranian leadership, given the Trump administration’s rhetoric and conduct that leave many Iranians fearing a US-orchestrated regime change plot, engaging the White House at this point would be humiliating, particularly given how anti-Iranian Trump’s foreign policy has been since he entered the Oval Office.

Now with the Trump administration calling on Iran to leave Syria, and with a number of Sunni Arab states appearing set on welcoming the regime of Bashar al-Assad back from the cold, the White House, along with its Arab Gulf allies, seems optimistic about plans to accept Assad staying in power for the long term, but only with his regime putting space between itself and Iran. IRGC leaders, however, have declared that Iranian forces will remain in Syria as long as the Damascus regime demands their presence. Given how much Assad owes Iran for his survival, it is difficult to imagine the Syrian regime being in any position to push out the Iranians, who currently wield unprecedented influence over the Baathist order in Damascus.

Further Away from Diplomacy

That Iran’s missiles landed within three miles of US troops in Syria on October 1 shows how grave the risks are of intense friction originating in Washington and Tehran spiraling out of control in the Middle East. With US National Security Adviser John Bolton declaring on September 24 that the US military would remain in Syria “as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias,” the 2,000 US troops currently in the country face a likelier possibility of a direct confrontation with Iran’s roughly 10,000 IRGC forces in Syria.

Doubtless, Syria will remain a major point of contention between the US and Iran. Even when bilateral relations were at their warmest after the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 while Barack Obama was in the White House, Washington and Tehran had serious conflicts of interest in Syria notwithstanding their mutual interest in defeating IS. The JCPOA resolved neither both sides’ opposing stakes in the Syrian crisis, nor any other non-nuclear issue. Yet the nuclear deal afforded both the US and Iran the means to build on some degree of trust to work toward finding common ground on such regional issues such as Syria, along with Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Without the JCPOA as a foundation, Washington and Tehran are set to address their conflicting interests in Syria on terms that move farther away from diplomatic strategies, raising serious risks of an American-Iranian war that could bring far more devastation and instability to the Middle East than the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This article was published at Fair Observer

The recent uprising by the Iranian people that still continues in different forms and intensities across the country is evidence that Iran is ready for regime change; it is only a matter of time. Iran may one day sooner or later erupt into a serious struggle for achieving freedom and democracy, ending the dictatorial rule of clergies that has forcefully ruled the country for nearly four decades.

In Iran, according to Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, since the ending of international sanctions and the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) in 2015, the Islamic Regime (IR) has systematically continued to suppress the Iranian people in all aspects even more intensely than before: mainly freedom of expression, the press, religion and completely in gender equality. Further, the general standard of living in Iran also has continuously deteriorated so rapidly and so profoundly. The burden, however, has fallen most heavily on what remains of the middle class, and on the lower class which makes up the majority of the Iranian population today. Undoubtedly, young Iranians, including high school and university graduates who are unemployed and financially ruined, see no bright future with these clergy dictators and are more concerned.

Regime Behavior

According to the official reports coming from Iran, the economic crisis has increased corruption within the system and with governing officials that openly practice it daily. Inflation, unemployment, homelessness, and substance abuse, among other socioeconomic difficulties, have naturally discouraged civil obligation and created steep rises in crime.

The clergies in Iran have consolidated their regime by supporting international terrorism mainly in neighboring countries, including Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and interfering in their internal affairs. Further, the IR has given away Iranian oil at a great discount to Asian countries- mainly China, India, and Turkey- for diplomatic support. The IR has also swapped resources with Russia for the same purpose. In addition, the IR has delivered free petroleum products to Syria to appease dictator Assad, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars of oil revenue yearly to the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon to keep Israel’s army occupied.

The bottom line is that income which is supposed to help struggling Iranians instead goes to foreigners and international terrorist organizations around the world. This irrefutably demonstrates that the Islamic regime is sacrificing the welfare of the Iranian people for its own gain and survival. Evidently, the removal of sanctions (JCPA) in 2015 also have not stopped the terrorist behavior of the clergies and certainly will not end the suffering of the Iranian people as long as this evil dictatorship remains in power.

World Expectations

Those few countries, mainly America’s European allies that do not agree with President Trump’s firm policy toward the IR, should think through the implications of a free Iran. One that puts aside forced fanaticism, puts aside the Islamic revolution’s manners and ISIS-type behavior, puts aside repression and systematic execution of its own people, puts aside the supra-state power structures of the clergies, puts aside anti-American sentiment and its position against American allies Saudi Arabia and Israel in the region, puts aside the support of international terrorism, puts aside intervention in neighboring countries’ domestic affairs, and finally puts aside the effort of making an atomic bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles. This will be an Iran that the free world expects to see, and one with which the free world naturally can have fair political and economic relations.

A free Iran opens up a prospect for a grand democratically-oriented region which would have the resources to foster moderation throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. This new Iran would definitely have the potential of emerging as one of the most democratic countries in the world. Therefore, it could become one of the West’s leading partners in the Middle East, as it was before the Islamic revolution, rather than Russia and China’s handyman in the region. Certainly, a free Iran has the ability to play a dignified role in the free world.

Investment in Iran

Last February, the United States’ National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond (H.R.) McMaster spoke at the Munich, Germany Security Conference and emphasized that businesses should not invest in Iran or do any transactions with the IR. He stated that any investment in Iran means investment in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been sanctioned by the United States government for their involvement in international terrorism and their ballistic missile program. The fact is that the IRGC is in total control of the political and economic matters of the country. Furthermore, the IRGC recently has announced it is ready to engage with the American and Israeli forces in the region, close the Strait of Hormuz, and halt the passage of about 18 million barrels of oil daily through the Persian Gulf.

Despite the European countries’ enthusiasm over Iran’s lavish economic opportunities, the free Europe should avoid behavior that might be mistaken as support of a regime which indulges itself while the Iranian people are practically starving. The Iran in which European companies wish to be involved economically is a democratic one, and therefore an Iran without clergies in power.

As free world investors try to imagine such a place and plan for their work within it, their focus should be the people of Iran. Of course, it will be mainly outside investors that will ultimately revitalize the Iranian economy. But it will be demonstrations of humanitarian concern for suffering Iranians at this time that will earn foreign companies their welcome when the time comes.

Presently, the IR in Iran is one of a few governments that the US has accused of promoting international terrorism, testing ballistic missiles, disregarding the approval of “UN Security Council Resolution 2231”, and furthermore systematically abusing human rights in Iran. Critics believe that the oil revenues are making these programs possible. Any EU officials or oil companies that oppose sanctions against the IR are intentionally supporting an undemocratic and pro-terrorist government, and by doing that they are advocating hostilities toward the freedom-loving Iranian people and internationally the US and its allies in the region.

Therefore, Russian, Chinese, Indian and a few European oil companies that are still eagerly racing to enter the Iranian oil and gas industries after the US left the JCPA need to realize that the IR’s governing system alone, not the American sanctions or any sanctions, deserves to be blamed for the current misery of the Iranian people. Conditions in Iran today, almost four decades after the so-called Islamic revolution, are worse than ever. No one can recall any part of the world at any time where a country so rich in natural resources (10 percent of total world oil and 18 percent of total world gas) experienced such a profound and rapid deterioration of the general standard of living as happened in Iran after the Islamic clergies that took over in 1979. The Iranian economy is ruined and the majority of the people in the country live below the poverty line, and with this regime in power, there is no sign of relief in sight.

The bottom line is that for a sound operation and a secure source of oil and gas, businesses should side with the people of Iran. Certainly, their distance from an uncivilized regime, their intention of supporting democracy in Iran, and their expression of concern for suffering Iranians at this time of oppression will gain oil companies and any investors their welcome when a new Iran is in place.

Mansour Kashfi, Ph.D., is president of Kashex International Petroleum Consulting and is a college professor in Dallas, Texas. He is also the author of innumerable articles and books about the petroleum industry and its market behavior worldwide. mkashfi@tx.rr.com

Hamas, Fatah and Israel – three entities locked in an unproductive relationship. Hamas and Fatah may both consider Israel their mortal enemy, but their hatred for each other is just as bitter.

Meanwhile Israel may not actively hate the warring Palestinian organizations, but it totally mistrusts both of them and looks on as they strive against each other.

The Islamist world is fratricidal. Many groups are in bitter conflict with one another, not always along the traditional Sunni-Shia divide. One long-running feud – the continuing struggle between Hamas and Fatah – does not concern religious doctrine, nor even basic political objectives. Both bodies are Sunni Muslim; both are pledged to restore to Islamic rule the whole of Mandate Palestine, including the area currently occupied by the state of Israel. Their fundamental disagreement is over the strategy for achieving their common purpose, and their struggle is a struggle for power within the Palestinian body politic.

At just about 10 a.m. on March 13, 2018 Rami Hamdallah, prime minister of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, drove in a motorcade from Israel, through the Erez Crossing, into the Gaza strip. A few seconds later, some 200 meters into Gaza, his car was blasted by a roadside bomb which brought the convoy to an abrupt halt. Seven staff members were injured, but Hamdallah and his intelligence chief Majid Faraj, who was travelling with him, were unharmed, and the whole party quickly retreated to the safety of Israel.

Within two minutes the Palestinian Authority had issued a statement accusing Hamas of responsibility for the incident, an accusation reiterated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself a week later. On March 20 Abbas, speaking to Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, said that if the assassination attempt had succeeded it would have “opened the way for a bloody civil war”.

The incident, he said, would “not be allowed to pass”, and he announced that he had taken new “national, legal and financial measures” in retaliation. He did not specify what they were, but they would be on top of cuts ordered by Abbas in 2017 in budgets allocated to Gaza for electricity, medical services, government employees’ salaries and other purposes – steps taken by Abbas in an attempt to pressurize Hamas into ceding control of Gaza to the PA.

Two days after Abbas’s speech, on March 22, Hamas-run security forces in Gaza announced the death in a gun battle of the main suspect in the assassination attempt.  The official statement declared that the suspect, Anas Abdel Malik Abu Khousa, and two colleagues were involved in a shootout with security forces that surrounded his hideout at al-Nuseirat Camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. Two security officers were also killed,

This incident and its aftermath produced a sharp reversal in Hamas-Fatah reconciliation efforts being diligently pursued at the time by the Egyptian government. Egypt had been trying to broker a deal under which the PA would resume administrative and security control over the two million inhabitants of the Gaza strip.

Abbas maintained that there had been “zero progress” in the reconciliation process – scarcely surprising, since it was only the latest in at least a dozen unsuccessful attempts since 2005 to reconcile the two warring factions. Despite the suspension of talks, Fatah tried to enlist support for Abbas in the streets of Gaza ahead of his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 27. Hamas prevented this. It warned the owners of printing houses in Gaza not to publish posters supporting Abbas, while detaining dozens of Fatah operatives.

The PA responded. Nearly 50 Hamas activists were taken into custody in the West Bank.

Now Abbas is said to be jittery following recent statements from the Hamas leadership indicating that Hamas is seeking a new truce agreement with Israel to incorporate the lifting of sanctions.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar recently told an Italian journalist that despite the continuing tensions along the Gaza– Israel border, Hamas is not interested in another war. A new war with Israel could well end Hamas’s rule over the Gaza Strip. Some of its top leaders are convinced that this is precisely what Abbas wants, which explains why they are prepared to accept a long-term truce with Israel under the auspices of Egypt and the UN.

Abbas opposes the truce concept tooth and nail. He sees it as entrenching Hamas in Gaza indefinitely. What he probably hopes for is what the Hamas leadership opposes – a new Hamas-Israeli conflict which results in the total defeat of Hamas and the extension of PA rule over Gaza’s two million Palestinians.

Netanyahu, at a press conference on October 4 with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that over the last year Abbas “has made the situation in Gaza more difficult by choking off the flow of funds from the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”

And indeed, two days later, a senior Hamas official revealed that although Qatar had paid for the fuel needed to keep power plants in Gaza running, and Israel had agreed to the pumping of the fuel into the Strip, the PA was hindering the initiative.

“The PA threatened the transportation company workers and the employees of the electricity company,” he said, “that they would be held accountable if they received the fuel and operated the power plant for more than four hours. So,” he concluded,” who is besieging you, people of Gaza?”

Subsequently, in the light of particularly savage attacks on the Israel-Gaza border, Israel has rescinded its cooperation, while the Gaza leadership asserts that the border attacks will continue until Israel lifts its blockade on the export into the Strip of proscribed “dual-use” materials that can be used for military purposes.

To term all this a merry-go-round is to belittle the seriousness of the issues at stake, and especially the humanitarian disaster that has overtaken the people of Gaza. They have become pawns in a struggle for power between Hamas and Fatah in which Israel, a major player, has to stand to one side till it is played out.