Several hundred troops are being sent to beef up security at the US’ southern border with Mexico, the Department of Defense said. It comes as a caravan of several thousand migrants makes it way north through Mexico.

Defense Secretary James Mattis is expected to sign an order sending at least 800 troops to the border in anticipation of the caravan’s arrival, a government source told AP.

The news seems to deliver on President Trump’s repeated warnings that he would deploy the military to the border in some capacity, if Mexican authorities did not do enough to halt the caravan’s advance.

While the president and his predecessors have requested state governors to deploy the National Guard to the border before, as Trump did in April when a smaller migrant caravan tried to cross into the US, he had warned last weekend that he would send in “the military, not the guard.”

Departing crime- and poverty-stricken Honduras two weeks ago, the caravan swelled in number as it approached the US, with the UN estimating it to be 7,000 strong last week. Since crossing into Mexico almost a week ago, the caravan has advanced north to the town of Mapastepec. Authorities there reckon that many of the 7,000 have dropped off, and that the caravan now numbers between 4,000 and 5,000 people.

Mapastepec is still over 1,000 miles from the US, a journey of several weeks for the remaining members. Some of the drop-offs have taken another route to the US, others have stayed in Mexico, and more have turned and gone home, some falling ill and some fearing attacks and harassment by criminals.

One student, Jose David Sarmientos Aguilar, told CNBC that he joined the march “without thinking about what could happen and the consequences it could bring,” and decided to turn back when he heard rumors of two other migrants falling off a truck and dying on Monday.

President Trump has vowed to stop the caravan since it departed, declaring border security a “national emergency,” and tweeting on Thursday that he is “bringing out the military” to deal with it.

Whatever branch of the military the troops are drawn from, they are unlikely to stand at the border with weapons drawn. A federal law dating back to the 1870s forbids the military from engaging in law enforcement on US soil, unless authorized by Congress. The troops will therefore likely provide reconnaissance, logistics, and assistance to Customs and Border Patrol agents.

The US’ southern border with Mexico is just under 2,000 miles long, and officials told CNN that any troops deployed will likely be reinforcing key positions along it.

US law enforcement officials arrested almost 17,000 people trying to cross the southern border in September, up 31 percent from August. A total of 397,000 migrants were arrested in the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in September, a marked increase over the 304,000 apprehended in 2017.

Many migrants reckon that ravelling en masse offers safety in numbers and similar, albeit smaller, caravans have made the same journey for the last decade. A second caravan of 1,000 people is reportedly gathering in Guatemala this week, the migrants there hoping to follow the route of the larger group.

By Ahmad Syamsudin

A $1.6-billion hydroelectric power plant being built by China in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province will divide the habitat of the world’s rarest great ape, increasing the risk of the critically endangered primate’s extinction, scientists and environmentalists said.

PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy (NSHE), an independent power producer in which China’s ZheFu Holding owns a majority stake, is building the 510-megawatt hydropower dam in the Batang Toru rainforest of Sumatra.

The power plant could stabilize electric supply in the northern part of the island, officials said.

But the project – part of Beijing’s One Belt, One Road grand plan – could split the habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, underscoring how China’s global infrastructure drive can threaten the environment, scientists and conservationists told BenarNews.

“The development will significantly increase the likelihood of extinction of Pongo tapanuliensis,” said Erik Meijaard, director of conservation at Borneo Futures and professor at the Center of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, using the scientific name of the orangutans.

Meijaard said construction would destroy some of the most critical low-altitude habitats of the orangutans, cutting the connection between the eastern and western block of the habitat.

“So instead of one connected population there will be two smaller populations,” Meijaard, who is one of the scientists who carried out initial research on the Tapanuli orangutan, told BenarNews.

Small populations have a higher chance of extinction than large ones, he said.

The Batang Toru Ecosystem is the only known home to an 800-strong Tapanuli orangutan, which was discovered in 1939, identified as a distinct species last year and recently listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

But NSHE denied that the project would threaten the habitats of protected animals.

It said the plant would only cover an area of 122 hectares (301 acres), or only 0.07 percent of the Batang Toru Ecosystem.

“The company freed 669 hectares, all of which were bought from local people. At the end of the construction, the remaining unused land of 400 hectares will be replanted with trees that could be sources of food for wild animals,” said Agus Djoko Ismanto, a representative at NSHE.

A small part of the project area is the home range of up to seven orangutans, he said.

“The company has been monitoring wild animals since before the land clearing, including the existence of protected species such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers and pangolins,” Agus told Benar.

“Our finding shows that the project location is not the main habitat of orangutans. Their habitat is in the forest at 600 meters above the sea level,” he said.

Conservationists predict that the project will have an immediate impact on 10 percent of the orangutan’s dwindling habitat.

The project is backed by the China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation, also known as Sinosure, a major Chinese state-owned enterprise, and the Bank of China. Beijing-based Sinohydro hydropower engineering company has been awarded the contract to build the plant.

Like building a Berlin Wall

According to Meijaard, while the company claims that only a small amount of forest will be lost, the area is where some of the highest densities of the orangutans were found before project activities started.

“Any road developments into forest areas in Indonesia lead to encroachment, increased hunting and poaching, people settling along the road et cetera. These indirect impacts will be much more than the direct ones,” he said.

Dividing the orangutan population into two would be “a bit like building a Berlin Wall through the middle of Jakarta, with no one able to cross from the north to south of the city or vice versa,” he said.

Twenty-five members of the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers (ALERT) sent a letter to Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in July, urging him to stop further developments in the orangutan habitat.

“An action of this nature would bring you the enduring gratitude of many Indonesians and overseas citizens eager to see global conservation leaders emerging in our increasingly self-interested world, at a time when leaders of many other nations seem to have lost sight of the importance of a healthy environment for our citizens and children,” the letter said.

The power plant is one of the priority projects under the Jokowi government’s drive to upgrade the country’s dilapidated infrastructure.

But the project has attracted criticism from environmentalists worldwide, as China’s aims to link Beijing with Asia, Europe and Africa by building massive highways, railways, ports and other infrastructure under its One Belt, One Road initiative.

“I think this crystallizes, in a way that people can understand, what a tsunami of 7,000-plus projects will mean for nature,” professor Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia, told AFP news service. “This issue is becoming in some ways the face of the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative.”

Agung Pribadi, a spokesman for the Energy and Mineral Resources, defended the building of the hydroelectric plant, scheduled to be competed in four years.

“NSHE has conducted an environment, social and health impact assessment, including a study on the population of orangutans, which has been approved by the lender,” Agung told BenarNews.

“We expect the Batang Toru plant to strengthen electricity supply in the northern part of Sumatra. This plant produces renewable energy,” he said.

Agung said small-scale protests against the project had been linked to land compensation, employment opportunities and the possible impact on the environment.

“The majority of the local population supports the project. Only a small number of people still have negative views,” he said.

Bali project

Yuyun Indradi, a campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, told BenarNews that the controversy over the power plant highlighted problems with China-funded projects in Indonesia.

“China has been investing in dirty energy, including coal-fired powered plants in Java, Bali and Sumatra,” he said.

Greenpeace said the Celukan Bawang coal-fired power station in Bali, a $700-million project built by China Huadian Corporation, was “poisoning” the resort island.

The project has been riddled with problems, such as inadequate land compensation and the impoverishment and health issues it is causing, Yuyun said.

In August, a court threw out a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and local people against the Bali governor and the company, ruling that the local government’s decision to issue a permit for the project was lawful.

The plaintiffs have brought the case to the State Administrative Court but a decision is still pending, Yuyun said.

“The government at every level has ignored the socio-economic, environmental and health impact caused by the Celukan Bawang power plant. The local people have been left to fend for themselves,” he said.

By Niranjani Roland

More than 2,000 protesters have demanded that the government of Sri Lanka increase the current daily minimum wage of tea estate workers from 500 rupees (US$2.90) to 1,000 rupees.

After employers only offered an increase to 600 rupees, protesters dressed in black gathered on Oct. 24 at the seafront Galle Face Green park in capital Colombo.

Tea worker salaries are revised once every two years, but the most recent collective wage discussions failed to reach agreement.

Tea workers were first brought from India some 150 years ago and suffer from substandard estate housing as well as a lack of health and other services.

Female tea picker Kandasamy Amurdhavalli, 67, from the Thalgaswala estate of Elpitiya in the island nation’s south, said her family can’t survive on the existing low wage.

“We pluck tea leaves even in the rain and under the hot sun,” she said. “Leopards attack us on the estates, but our wages are very poor. The estate owners never consider our fundamental rights.”

She said pay rate increases should reflect rising living costs, including for children’s schooling, and added that an advance for the annual Deepavali festival should be paid at the stipulated time.

Sri Lanka is the world’s second-largest exporter of tea and the industry is one of the country’s main foreign exchange earners, but tea estate workers are the poorest and are mainly landless.

Methodist minister Senkan Devathasan, from Bulathsinhala in Western Province, joined the Colombo protest.

He said as tea workers make a massive contribution to the economy, it is the responsibility of the government and companies to provide a realistic pay rise.

He noted that most tea industry workers had few personal possessions despite generations of toil.

Kithnan Selvaraj, president of All Ceylon Estate Workers Union, said estate workers received a daily wage in 2001 of 101 rupees, but 17 years later it had only increased by 399 rupees.

Minister of Plantation Industries Navin Dissanayaka told media representatives that the industry could not afford to pay a minimum of 1,000 rupees per day due to already high production costs.

Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN), who will retire in January after 30 years in the United States House of Representatives, is the subject of a new biographical feature article at the Knoxville News Sentinel. Included with the article is video of an interview with Duncan in which he describes how he developed “into sort of an antiwar Republican” in the process of examining US military actions in Iraq and experiencing pressure from successive presidential administrations to support that intervention and its escalation.

After having voted in the House to authorize the Gulf War in 1991, Duncan explains that watching the ensuing US invasion of Iraq led him to realize that the war had been promoted based on false information. In particular, Duncan mentions being told before the vote about “all these elite troops” in Iraq under the control of Iraq President Saddam Hussein, who was made to “sound like another Hitler.” “And then,” says Duncan, “I saw those same ‘elite troops’ surrendering to CNN camera crews and empty tanks, and I decided then that the threat had been greatly exaggerated.”

Moving forward five or six years, Duncan relates that his questioning of the propriety of US military action in Iraq increased during the years of US bombing that took place between the Gulf War and later Iraq War due to reading reports, including one detailing that “one of our bombs had gone astray and killed I think it was seven little boys who were playing soccer in a field in Iraq, and it described this horrible anguish of this father whose little boy had had his head blown off.”

Years later, the 2002 House vote on a new authorization for use of military force (AUMF) for Iraq, which would authorize a second invasion of the Middle East country, was approaching. By then, Duncan’s antiwar sentiment had firmed. He mentions in the interview a meeting he had at the White House at that time with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as George Tenet and John McLaughlin who were then, respectively, the director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A purpose of the meeting was to convince Duncan to vote for the Iraq War. They failed in that effort.

As Duncan relates his comments at the meeting, he told Rice, Tenet, and McLaughlin that “traditional conservative positions” of “being against massive foreign aid,” “being against huge deficit spending,” “not wanting the US to be the policeman of the world,” and “being the biggest critics of the [United Nations]” all lined up against voting to authorize the Iraq War. The war was justified as enforcing UN resolutions. “If you get past all those traditional conservative positions,” Duncan then asked, “do you have any evidence of any imminent threat?” “They didn’t,” continues Duncan.

On October 10, 2002, Duncan, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, was one of only six Republican House members to vote against the Iraq War authorization. Duncan, in the interview, describes that vote as being, over the next three to four years, “clearly the most unpopular vote I had ever cast.” “When I pushed that button to vote against that war,” Duncan says, he wondered if he was ending his political career.

Watch here Duncan’s discussion, from the interview, of US intervention in Iraq and his move toward the antiwar position:

Watch more of Duncan’s interview and read the feature article about him here.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute

By Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Heat will destroy genetic diversity and trigger migration to cooler climes, water scarcity will constrain food crops, warmer and more acidic seas will denude coral reefs and marine food resources and sea level rise will submerge low islands and coastal areas.

Climate change seems inevitable. Risk takers who go long on property should check out locations in Canada, Siberia and Greenland. These hitherto frozen places are expected to become attractive relocation favourites in a rapidly warming world.

The international institutional architecture for concerted effort has been negligent in protecting future generations. The petty mindedness of the “haves”, particularly the United States, has been less than helpful. But it is not easy to make sacrifices today for the common good two generations hence. We Indians, spend our lives risk proofing our families. But even we baulk at collective action.

Nonetheless, both China and India were aligned with international concerns at Paris in 2015. China (10 per cent of world GDP), with aspirations of global leadership, seized the opportunity to showcase their responsiveness and sense of environmental responsibility versus the renegade behaviour of the US (18 per cent of world GDP). India, though not in the same league, with three per cent of the world GDP — per capita carbon dioxide emissions lower than most economies in our income class (lower medium) and with 25 per cent of the world’s 800 million chronically under-nourished people — bravely punched above its weight and pledged a massive programme of renewable energy.

If the science on climate change is right, the world is already warmer by 1ºC above the 1,850-1,900 level by 2011 and has used up two thirds of the envelope (1,900 against an allowable 2,900 gigatonnes of CO2) of cumulative emissions to contain temperature rise to 2ºC. Annual emissions are 36 gigatonnes of which 40 per cent remains in the atmosphere, 30 per cent is absorbed by the sea which warms it and the residual 30 per cent is captured by land and plants. By 2050 we would have used up our CO2 emissions limit.

Thereafter, we will be on track to a temperature rise between 3.7º to 4ºC by 2100. Our actions cannot avoid global warming. But they can mitigate the scale of the increase and the associated suffering. Heat will destroy genetic diversity and trigger migration to cooler climes, water scarcity will constrain food crops, warmer and more acidic seas will denude coral reefs and marine food resources and sea level rise will submerge low islands and coastal areas.

The Paris Agreement 2015 was about containing temperature increase to 2ºC. It was less an agreement and more a voluntary, collective expression of what each country could do. And clearly that was not enough. Seeking a more rigid agreement would have meant having no agreement at all. Envirocrats abhor not tabling some results. So instead of less CO2 we were sold plans and forecasts.

At the heart of the matter is the trade-off between retaining developed economy consumption standards and in the poor economies, growth prospects versus sustainability. But in a fractious world order today no great power exists which has the capacity or the incentive to mitigate the pain of others. The US is looking inwards, Europe and Japan are ageing and China is still only an upper-middle income country although with cash to spare.

Globally, 40 per cent of emissions are on account of petro-based transportation and coal-based electricity generation. Electric cars, buses and trucks and the charging infrastructure to match might become commercially available by 2030-2040. It will not be a day sooner.

The sustainability objective is to reduce emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and to zero emission levels by 2050. Emission reduction at this scale would require the complete abandonment of coal-based electricity generation by 2050. That prospect is scary for countries, like India, where the coal economy provides relatively better paid employment concentrated in eastern India. Large swathes of population still live in darkness without electricity — and not just in the far-flung rural areas.

Climate change is not all pain. It is expected to improve precipitation in India by three to 12 per cent. But this comes at the cost of less water in snow-fed Himalayan rivers. Sanjeev Sanyal — a government economist — stresses that adaptation is the key to survival. Mitigation is a humungous task with uncertain results from collective action by sovereigns. Don’t forget African growth is yet to take off and India itself has not plateaued. What then are the likely drivers of success?

First, ensuring sustainability is a classic public good because private actions can never monetise the positive spillovers of their effort and private polluters have no incentives to become responsible without strict regulation. This means the government must view public allocations and tax incentives through the sustainability lens. Consider that the plan to grow bio-fuels is a big no-no. It will strain land and water resources which should instead be allocated to food or forests. Denuded forests must be revived and the decentralised greening of all habitats pursued with vigour.

Second, industrial scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an innovative approach for coal-dominated economies. Currently India is peripheral to the CCS technology dialogue, where the US, Canada and Norway lead. China’s first CCS unit will be operational by 2020. The global target is to capture three per cent of annual CO2 emissions (two gigatonnes) by 2020 and seven per cent (seven gigatonnes) by 2050.

Third, India missed the bus on manufacturing solar cells and panels. But manufacturing efficient storage batteries is the new frontier we cannot ignore for harnessing the full economic benefits from scaling up solar energy.

Fourth, decentralising the emissions control programme can tap into local cultural practices which promote sustainability. Frugal innovation in water catchment, storage and management and renewable energy generation and use must be incentivised to create green, local employment and benign outcomes. Genetic engineering of crops to make them drought resistant can protect farmer income, enhance productivity and free up land for water storage and enlarging forest cover.

Multiple objectives are the bane of all government programmes. But sustainable growth should be at the top of this long list.

This article originally appeared in The Asian Age.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

In the period from 2009 to 2013 when Hillary Clinton was US Secretary of State, Saudi Arabia contributed with at least 10 million US dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Especially in the phases when, incidentally, Hillary Clinton permitted the sale of advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia

As stated by Prince Regent Mohammed Bin Salman in an interview released in 2016 to the Jordanian news agency “Petra”, Saudi Arabia also paid over 20% of Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

However, it also subsidized the other candidates to the US Presidency, although to a lesser extent.

In the political campaign for the US Presidency, no foreign investor puts all his/her eggs in the same basket – just to follow a typical US piece of advice.

Moreover, like Russia and other countries, also the Saudi Kingdom has always backed both US presidential candidates financially.

During the electoral campaign, Trump theorized the ban on entry into the USA of tourists and migrants from most Islamic States, including Saudi Arabia. He was also harshly criticized by Prince Muhammad Bin Salman and by the famous Saudi multimillionaire, Al Walid bin Talal, the owner of the Kingdon Holding Company of Riyadh, a huge world financial holding, with packages of personal shares in Coca Cola, AOL, Amazon, Apple until 2005, Pepsi Cola, Fininvest, as well as a 5% shareholding in Rupert Murdoch’s media companies, and many other investments that it is even useless to mention here.

After becoming US President, Trump apologized and made his first trip abroad to Saudi Arabia in May 20-22, 2017. It was there that he placed his hands on an illuminated globe that marked the birthof the Global Center for Combating Terrorism in Riyadh.

Once released from his prison in the Ritz Carlton of Riyadh on January 27, Al Walid bin Talal, the nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, paid a 6 billion dollar fine to the winning faction of the royal family, led by Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

After finally realizing to what extent the Wahabite Kingdom is important for the US economy, also Trump has relented and seen reason with the Al Saud’s dynasty.

In an interview with Fox News Night TV released on October 19 last, the US President said that he was interested in knowing the truth about the assassination of Saudi journalist Kashoggi – who, indeed, was also resident in the USA – recently occurred in his country’s Consulate in Istanbul. Nevertheless, President Trump has refused to stop all the arms sales to Saudi Arabia for this reason.

At the end of May 2017, during his first trip abroad, precisely to Saudi Arabia, Donald J. Trump also signed a contract for the sale of arms and for other economic transactions with Riyadh – an agreement worth as many as 110 billion US dollars immediately and additional 350 billion dollars over the next ten years, with the political aim of countering Daesh-Isis, in particular.

The purchases include 18 billion dollars for C4 systems (Command, Control, Communications and Computers); 13.5 billion dollars for seven THAAD units (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), anti-missile defense systems; 6.65 billion dollars for the old Patriot-class anti-missile systems; 25 billion dollars for the recapitalization of the Saudi purchase of the F-35 fighters; 5.8 billion dollars for three KC130J and 20 C130J transport aircraft; 6 billion dollars for 4 coastal battleships and additional 11.5 billion dollars for ships already ordered by Saudi Arabia in 2015 and blocked by former President Obama, although with the interested pressure of his Secretary of State.

Other Saudi investments are aimed at spy planes, fine electronics, troop movement and ground attack vehicles, as well as the purchase of Apache helicopters and M1A2 tanks, and finally for many human and computer-interactive military training programs for all the Saudi Armed Forces.

Clearly Saudi Arabia has turned a blind eye to the technological upgrading of the weapon systems ordered – far more advanced than the level of current purchases – but in view of a strong future bond with the United States.

Saudi official sources also state that until May 2017 the Kingdom suffered over 60 terrorist attacks by Isis-Daesh and Al Qaeda, with over 25 of them over the last two years.

According to the documents of the Saudi Center for Combating Terrorism, over 200 Saudi citizens, including policemen and civilians, have been killed by Islamist terrorism.

It is strange that a deeply Islamic State defines the “sword jihad” as “terrorism”, as if it did not know what the jihad rules and techniques are.

Some terminologies are used only by Western States, which have not yet well understood what is happening in the Islamic religious and political universe.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia claims to have organized at least 341 air raids against the positions of the self-proclaimed Caliphate in Syria, thus resulting the second counterterrorist power operating in the region after the United States.

Nothing to do, however, with the air raids of the Russian Federation, which the US intelligence services have already counted to thousands.

Reverting to the Saudi Kingdom, the Wahhabi regime has also started to control private donations to the self-proclaimed Caliphate.

A special and semi-secret Counter ISIL Finance Group between Saudi Arabia, the United States and Italy was created in 2015, with a view to countering the financial networks of the Caliphate.

Saudi Arabia alone has also established a Financial Intelligence Unit, which is also member of the Egmont Group, a network of 159 Financial Intelligence Units between EU, “dangerous” countries and Middle East networks.

Moreover, regardless of their being registered in the Kingdom, the Saudi charities can operate only through the Riyadh center of the Saudi Red Crescent and the King Salman Humanitarian Aid. Any autonomous fundraising through mosques and even through the mere charity public centers is forbidden.

Money transfers without a license (accounting for 60% of the total transfers) are also banned, but there are also sanctions against Hezbollah.

Two birds with one stone, of course.

Until September 30, 2017 -that is the end of the last fiscal year available -the United States sold as many as 55.6 billion US dollars of arms worldwide, that is over 33% more than the previous year.

As President Trump has declared openly, he does not want “to stop a 110 billion dollar investment in the United States” – a sum that, however, also includes the 23 billion dollars of Saudi arms purchases, those already granted by the former Obama administration.

At least since 2012, one fifth of all US foreign arms sales has gone to Saudi Arabia.

One third of all arms sales in the world originates from the United States.

Half of US arms sales, however, goes to the whole Middle East and Africa.

With specific reference to the weapon systems, the largest share of US exports is in the aeronautics sector, followed by the missile sector and finally by the ground weapon systems and transport vehicles.

The countries buying more weapons from the USA are Saudi Arabia, Poland, Japan, Romania, Bahrain, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Greece and Singapore.

Reverting to Saudi Arabia, a royal decree of April 22, 2017 appointed Khalid bin Salman Al Saud -the son of the current King and former pilot of fighter aircraft, who demonstrated excellence in dangerous missions against the self-proclaimed Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate – as the new Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

On October 2, 2018, with his usual frankness, President Trump stated that the Saudi Kingdom would collapse in two weeks without the US protection.

It is true and the current Prince and leader of Saudi Arabia knows it all too well. It is not yet certain that the Kingdom will last only two weeks without the United States, but it knows it is at risk.

Hence Prince Muhammad bin Salman is newly recreating the traditional relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, in spite of the unfortunate incident of the journalist Khashoggi, by underlining two important factors such as the relevance of the Wahabi Kingdom’s investments for the United States, which are now essential for this country, and the bilateral and strategic relationship with the United States that the Al Saud’s dynasty hopes will become even more stable.

Without America, Saudi Arabia is lost. Without Saudi Arabia the United States would definitely become poorer, and no President can accept this.

This holds true also for Yemen, where, since 2015, the United States has been training, arming and sharing intelligence with the Saudis against the Houthi, the Shiite guerrillas of the seventh Imam, obviously organized by Iran. What if the Saudis were afraid of one thing only, i.e. the uprising of the Shiites who are many in the area of their main oil wells?

It was exactly in 2015, the year when King Salman came to the throne and immediately delegated power to his son Mohammed.

Hence a military exchange on an equal footing between the United States and Saudi Arabia? Let us analyze the oil situation between the two countries more closely. Ultimately this is what really matters. However, we will talk about it at a later stage.

Meanwhile, however, let us see how Saudi Arabia presses the US companies and the economy, not only with the most well-known shareholdings.

At the time of the assassination of journalist Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the Emirates’ Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nayhan, immediately expressed his full support for Saudi Arabia.

Even Oman, which had certainly not been a supporter of the Saudi-led anti-Iranian coalition, supported the Kingdom in that harsh situation.

Also the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullatif Al Zayani, supported Saudi Arabia.

Even the Secretary-General of the Arab League, however, has recently expressed his support for Saudi Arabia.

At strategic and economic levels, harshly punishing the Saudi Kingdom for the assassination of journalist Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate of Istanbul – an assassination which has currently turned out to be premeditated and particularly brutal – leaves no other chance for Prince Muhammad bin Salman than resorting to the usual countermoves.

Some Saudi leaders have openly mentioned the “oil weapon”, which would be used as a hefty club against European oil consumers, and not as it happened after the Kippur war of October 6-25, 1973 – when someone, namely ENI, escaped the grip of the Saudi-led OPEC.

If the oil price increased, also the US economy would suffer inflationary pressures and pressure on interest rates. This would greatly slow the US economic growth down – and the EU one even more.

Europeans should not believe they can use the Russian oil and gas to counteract the rise in Saudi and Sunni OPEC prices.

Russia fully agrees with OPEC and will not give up a general increase in the oil barrel and natural gas prices.

Certainly the increase in the oil barrel price, which is supposed to reach approximately 90 US dollars by next year, would favor the sale of shale oil and natural gas – a production which has doubled in the United States, but with a shorter price cycle: higher prices generate greater supply, which inevitably leads to a subsequent lowering of the oil barrel price.

The less Iranian oil on the market, the greater tension for the price increase – not to mention the reduction of the Russian and OPEC supply and the almost cessation of extraction in Venezuela for the well-known internal political reasons.

All this happens while the demand for oil and gas is increasing rapidly all over the world.

Combining the restriction to the Saudi and Sunni OPEC production with the growth of US production, it is certain that the growth of the North American supply has significantly reduced the Saudi power to exert pressure. In fact, Saudi Arabia can raise prices only in a way not stimulating a further growth of the extractive production in the United States.

Hence the “oil war” that Prince Mohammed bin Salman has in mind – if it were to start – would lead to a great energy crisis, stronger in Europe than in the United States.

Naturally the weak and now demented European Union has said nothing serious in this phase.

If Europe thinks President Trump can pull its chestnuts out of the fire, it is completely wrong.

The US President does not like Europe at all. He will soon put an end to the German trade surplus and he can scarcely bear NATO. Even Israel, however, has no regard for this EU and not even Russia takes it too seriously.

In this framework of isolation, Europe does not even pursue its most immediate interests.

Every day it only deals with pseudo-economic matters and quarrels with its South that some German economists would already like to leave to the fate of a “Southern” Euro to be separated from the “Northern” Euro.

We will see how the monetary competition between the two “Euros” will be structured – a competition which could be fatal for the Northern and Southern versions of the unsuccessful European monetary union.

A currency that would like to be global, but without the characteristics of a lender of last resort it makes us laugh. Nevertheless, the EU leaders still believe in it.

The economy is made up of geopolitics and global strategy, not the other way round.

The old neoclassical handbooks which are read in Strasbourg and Brussels are now antiques.

If the United States or other countries were to apply sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – who is in a hurry to relinquish the too oil-led economy which, however, made the huge fortunes of his country – would have very good cards to play.

Certainly, since 2015 Saudi Arabia has had public budgets in the red. For the first time in its financial history it has issued public debt securities. Probably it has also problems of slow depletion of some wells, in addition to the insecurity generated by the essential fact that their maximum extraction area has a very strong Shiite minority, on which Iran is constantly operating – from Bahrain and from Oman, which turns a blind eye.

The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF)is a sovereign fund which largely operates in the United States, in Europe and in Asia.

The aforementioned Sovereign Fund of Riyadh has a 5% shareholding of Tesla, as well as other stakes in Tesla’s direct competitor, namely Lucid Motors. It has invested 3.5 billion dollars in Uber, the global leader of unlicensed taxis, as well as 20 billion dollars in a US infrastructure fund managed by Blackstone. PIF has built three new cities on the Red Sea coast and invested 45 billion dollars in the Soft Bank. Furthermore, the Prince Regent – who directly leads PIF – said he wanted to invest additional 170 billion dollars over the next three to four years.

However, Saudi Arabia has also other geoeconomic weapons in its hands: in the United States, PIF owns 70% of Sabic, a large plastics-producing company. There are also the Saudi Telecom Company and the Saudi Electricity, with significant shareholdings in the sector in North America. There is also the aforementioned Blackstone Fund for Infrastructure, as well as a 45% shareholding of the National Commercial Bank, the Saudi Arabian Mining Company, the Entertainment Investment Company and the Fund of Funds.

PIF has also Saudi investments in Europe: the main ones are in Krups, Siemens, Arcelor Mittal and in many other sectors and small and medium-size enterprises.

PIF has also operations in place, of a size comparable to those in the USA, China, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines.

In South Africa, the Saudi government is negotiating with the Denel arms factory for cooperation with the Kingdom’s defense industries.

According to the Saudi press sources, the country would already have in mind at least 30 major operations to harshly respond to the possible US sanctions for the Khashoggi case.

They would not be oil sanctions, but rather financial, banking and industrial sanctions.

A “Samson” operation is also planned, with a fast and very significant reduction in oil production, capable of making the oil barrel price jump up to an incredible level of 400 US dollars.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman could also block the purchases of weapons already planned in the USA – and it is worth recalling that the Saudi Kingdom is the second largest importer of weapons in the world.

The Prince Regent has also invested significantly in the Silicon Valley industries, which he is integrating into the Saudi Giga Projects.

Finally, the Saudi investment line could head to countries such as China, Russia and India, instead of the USA and the EU.

Egypt, too, would soon participate in this game, with currently unpredictable consequences in the Maghreb region, and especially in Libya – where Egypt is the major supporter of General Khalifa Haftar – as well as in the United Arab Emirates.

A transition from the West to the East that would probably be the tombstone of Western economic and financial development.

It would also create a structural financial crisis in the United States, which could partly retaliate by unleashing a harsh trade war precisely with the European Union.

About the author:
*Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Caleb Mills

We all know bold promises and fantastical rhetoric make good political banter, but as Italy’s newly initiated populist government coalition is learning: they’re useful for very little else. Widespread discontent with the former ruling Democratic Party’s domestic policies may have been the catalyst that sprung the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the League into power, but now, lacking any institutional villain, the populist coalition is struggling to deliver on the bold promises that won them elected office.

Both populist giants swept into Rome, winning a combined 50% of the total vote; the Five Star Movement alone took a total of 349 seats in Parliament. The parties campaigned on reforming the tax system into separate flat tax brackets at 15% and 20%, reforming the pension system, enacting mass deportations of illegal migrants, reaching out to Russia, and establishing a guaranteed basic income for those living under the poverty line.

The problem? Italy’s practically broke.

The tax reforms will cost Italy 50 billion euros and the guaranteed income program 17 billion, not to mention the government was already running an alarmingly high deficit before the power transition. The country currently has a larger national debt than its own GDP. Standing barely behind Greece in terms of a debt crisis, the new government is even proposing a sweeping rollback of austerity on top of its spending increases.

It’s no surprise that when the government’s budget reveal showed that the deficit would stay at 2.4%, violating the EU rules on fiscal responsibility, the market’s weren’t receptive. The euro dropped, stocks plunged, and yields on government debt spiked.

“We have to do everything to avoid a new Greece — this time an Italy — crisis,” was European Commission’s president Jean-Claude Juncker’s bleak assessment of the budget.

But Brussels wasn’t the only one who had issues with the budget. While Economic Development Minister and leader of the Five Star Movement Luigi Di Maio has no issue with increasing the national debt to pay for the coalition’s promised initiatives, finance minister Giovanni Tria does. Di Maio has even accused his political opponents of changing the budget plan to accommodate fiscal purists behind his back, taking his attacks to national television.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has been trying to moderate between the two competing economic philosophies in the cabinet, but recent reports have surfaced suggesting that unless a compromise is reached, Conte is threatening to resign.

Meanwhile, Salvini has attempted to separate himself from the infighting. When asked if he’d show up for a cabinet meeting on the conflict, he told reporters, “I’m away and on Saturday I have [another scheduled meeting] plus I’m seeing my kids and there’s a football match.” Conte took the comment as a slant and hit back: “I don’t know if Salvini plans to be there but I’m the prime minister, the one who decides,” he said during a press conference in Brussels.

Money problems are nothing new to the Italians, as they’ve been running a budget deficit for over 20 years, peaking in the 2008 financial crisis. But in the absence of a relatively moderate government in control in Rome, the looming struggle sets itself apart from past budget fights in that the European Union might have to step in or risk another Greece. The contradictions between the coalition’s domestic spending increases and revenue slashes threaten to exacerbate an already pressing fiscal crisis, maybe even taking many European creditors down the drain with them. But some analysts say in terms of budget negotiations, Rome still has some leeway.

“I think it is important that the European Union gives them some leeway and allows them to have some kind of deficit,” Bryn Jones, head of fixed income at Rathbones, told CNBC during an interview.

“I think the Italians are actually in a very strong negotiation position. If they (the EU) don’t want to jettison Italy from Europe, the whole project dies. They have to be quite sensible,” Jones said.

This isn’t the first time the EU has clashed with Italy’s new governing body, and probably won’t be the last. But nonetheless, it threatens the stability of an economic system that European diplomats have desperately tried to preserve. Either Italy will get its spending increases and break their past pledge to pursue fiscal responsibility, or bow to Brussel’s pressures and backtrack on domestic programs that got them elected. Either way, the markets should buckle up, because the show hasn’t even reached intermission.

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

David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has reiterated the call for an “independent investigative body” to examine the case of the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was reportedly killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. He stressed the need for a “credible statement about what actually happened.”

In an interview with UN Radio and UN Web TV at UN Headquarters on October 22, Kaye said he was disappointed that his calls for an international investigation – along with those of Special Rapporteur on summary executions Anges Callamard and the UN working group on enforced disappearances – have not been taken up by States.

He added: “I would really urge all governments to respond not just in the context of the November 2 Day To End Impunity For Crimes Against Journalists, but also in the context of this moment when journalists are under such attack that they should step up; and whether it’s through the Security Council, or the Human Rights Council, or persuading the Secretary General to do this.”

The Special Rapporteur said the investigative body could evaluate the data and provide the international community with a credible report of what happened. He said: “It may not answer every question, but it would hopefully identify who’s responsible and what exactly happened.”

Kaye said it would be up to the international community to decide what to do with the investigation outcome, but underscored that in the absence of that, “we’re going to be in this situation where we’ll be under kind of constant disputation about what the facts are, and we need a credible statement about what actually happened.”

Special Rapporteurs are part of the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and work on a voluntary basis. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

The interview at UN headquarters in New York took place a week before the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, on November 2, when UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, will launch a new campaign, Truth Never Dies, to raise awareness of the dangers they face: Every four days, a journalist somewhere around the world is killed.

By Lisa Vives

The Namibian government has leased four farms for 99 years to a company, Comsar Properties SA, owned by a Russian billionaire, Rashid Sardarov. Valued at USD$3 million and measuring a total 42,000 acres, the farms were registered as state property by the land reform ministry.

Land reform minister Utoni Nujoma has been flip-flopping on whether or not he was involved in the transaction, according to The Namibian.

The transaction was done exactly two days before the second national land conference started on October 1, 2018.

Public scrutiny of the transaction reached fever pitch [middle of October] when the official opposition Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) said it will take the government to court over the deal, while the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement said it will approach the Anti-Corruption Commission and the ombudsman to investigate the transaction.

Documents seen by The Namibian show that Nujoma was involved in the transaction, and he signed the title deeds of the farms on behalf of the government.

On October 18, Nujoma told the National Assembly that the government had considered Sardarov’s offer because of the “massive developmental and economic benefits and various employment opportunities” that would follow his investment.

He said before the agreement was completed, the matter was taken to Cabinet for deliberation, and it was agreed to grant approval to Sardarov’s company to take the farms on leasehold “under stringent conditions”.

However, one day later, Nujoma denied any involvement in the transaction, and said the documents made public by the AR movement were fake, and that his signature was forged on the deed documents.

He also stated that the government did not use public funds to buy the four farms.

“I have not purchased any farm. I have already made it clear; why are you insisting on fake news? I have not signed that, that is what I am telling you. We have not paid any money,” Nujoma told the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), adding that he would investigate the title deeds made public by AR leader Job Amupanda to determine whether “they were authentic”.

Nujoma’s denial comes despite a lease agreement for the property provided by Sardarov’s lawyer, Sisa Namandje, stating that the land reform minister suggested that the government buys the farms at the full cost of Sardarov.

“The minister, in view of the developmental and economic benefit that will arise from the investment to be made by the lessee [Sardarov], has proposed that the four farms should rather be acquired by the government at the full cost and account of the lessee (including both the purchase price and compensation demanded by the farm owners), and the latter to lease the four farms on a 99-year lease in accordance with this agreement,” Namandje’s document states.

When contacted for comment on October 21, Nujoma said he could not comment, and promised to respond, but did not do so by the time of going to print.

In the meantime, criticism about the deal has escalated, with National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) deputy secretary general Vetaruhe Kandorozu October 21 calling on Nujoma to resign with immediate effect.

“If he can’t resign now, it is high time for the appointing authority, the president, to release the minister of his duties and give him another assignment, as he has demonstrated a high level of incompetence on land-related matters,” charged Kandorozu.

He further called on president Hage Geingob to reverse the transaction between the government and the Russian billionaire.

“Allocate those farms for the resettlement of the landless dispossessed and all Namibians to be resettled there [sic] as per the resolutions of the just-ended land conference.

“Nujoma, please do the honourable thing and ask the president to release you from duty […],” Kandorozu said.

Quantum computers could solve complex tasks that are beyond the capabilities of conventional computers. However, the quantum states are extremely sensitive to constant interference from their environment. The plan is to combat this using active protection based on quantum error correction. Florian Marquardt, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and his team have now presented a quantum error correction system that is capable of learning thanks to artificial intelligence.

In 2016, the computer program AlphaGo won four out of five games of Go against the world’s best human player. Given that a game of Go has more combinations of moves than there are estimated to be atoms in the universe, this required more than just sheer processing power. Rather, AlphaGo used artificial neural networks, which can recognize visual patterns and are even capable of learning. Unlike a human, the program was able to practise hundreds of thousands of games in a short time, eventually surpassing the best human player. Now, the Erlangen-based researchers are using neural networks of this kind to develop error-correction learning for a quantum computer.

Artificial neural networks are computer programs that mimic the behaviour of interconnected nerve cells (neurons) – in the case of the research in Erlangen, around two thousand artificial neurons are connected with one another. “We take the latest ideas from computer science and apply them to physical systems,” explains Florian Marquardt. “By doing so, we profit from rapid progress in the area of artificial intelligence.”

Artificial neural networks could outstrip other error-correction strategies

The first area of application are quantum computers, as shown by the recent paper, which includes a significant contribution by Thomas Fösel, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen. In the paper, the team demonstrates that artificial neural networks with an AlphaGo-inspired architecture are capable of learning – for themselves – how to perform a task that will be essential for the operation of future quantum computers: quantum error correction. There is even the prospect that, with sufficient training, this approach will outstrip other error-correction strategies.

To understand what it involves, you need to look at the way quantum computers work. The basis for quantum information is the quantum bit, or qubit. Unlike conventional digital bits, a qubit can adopt not only the two states zero and one, but also superpositions of both states. In a quantum computer’s processor, there are even multiple qubits superimposed as part of a joint state. This entanglement explains the tremendous processing power of quantum computers when it comes to solving certain complex tasks at which conventional computers are doomed to fail. The downside is that quantum information is highly sensitive to noise from its environment. This and other peculiarities of the quantum world mean that quantum information needs regular repairs – that is, quantum error correction. However, the operations that this requires are not only complex but must also leave the quantum information itself intact.

Quantum error-correction is like a game of Go with strange rules

“You can imagine the elements of a quantum computer as being just like a Go board,” says Marquardt, getting to the core idea behind his project. The qubits are distributed across the board like pieces. However, there are certain key differences from a conventional game of Go: all the pieces are already distributed around the board, and each of them is white on one side and black on the other. One colour corresponds to the state zero, the other to one, and a move in a game of quantum Go involves turning pieces over. According to the rules of the quantum world, the pieces can also adopt grey mixed colours, which represent the superposition and entanglement of quantum states.

When it comes to playing the game, a player – we’ll call her Alice – makes moves that are intended to preserve a pattern representing a certain quantum state. These are the quantum error correction operations. In the meantime, her opponent does everything they can to destroy the pattern. This represents the constant noise from the plethora of interference that real qubits experience from their environment. In addition, a game of quantum Go is made especially difficult by a peculiar quantum rule: Alice is not allowed to look at the board during the game. Any glimpse that reveals the state of the qubit pieces to her destroys the sensitive quantum state that the game is currently occupying. The question is: how can she make the right moves despite this?

Auxiliary qubits reveal defects in the quantum computer

In quantum computers, this problem is solved by positioning additional qubits between the qubits that store the actual quantum information. Occasional measurements can be taken to monitor the state of these auxiliary qubits, allowing the quantum computer’s controller to identify where faults lie and to perform correction operations on the information-carrying qubits in those areas. In our game of quantum Go, the auxiliary qubits would be represented by additional pieces distributed between the actual game pieces. Alice is allowed to look occasionally, but only at these auxiliary pieces.

In the Erlangen researchers’ work, Alice’s role is performed by artificial neural networks. The idea is that, through training, the networks will become so good at this role that they can even outstrip correction strategies devised by intelligent human minds. However, when the team studied an example involving five simulated qubits, a number that is still manageable for conventional computers, they were able to show that one artificial neural network alone is not enough. As the network can only gather small amounts of information about the state of the quantum bits, or rather the game of quantum Go, it never gets beyond the stage of random trial and error. Ultimately, these attempts destroy the quantum state instead of restoring it.

One neural network uses its prior knowledge to train another

The solution comes in the form of an additional neural network that acts as a teacher to the first network. With its prior knowledge of the quantum computer that is to be controlled, this teacher network is able to train the other network – its student – and thus to guide its attempts towards successful quantum correction. First, however, the teacher network itself needs to learn enough about the quantum computer or the component of it that is to be controlled.

In principle, artificial neural networks are trained using a reward system, just like their natural models. The actual reward is provided for successfully restoring the original quantum state by quantum error correction. “However, if onliy the achievement of this long-term aim gave a reward, it would come at too late a stage in the numerous correction attempts,” Marquardt explains. The Erlangen-based researchers have therefore developed a reward system that, even at the training stage, incentivizes the teacher neural network to adopt a promising strategy. In the game of quantum Go, this reward system would provide Alice with an indication of the general state of the game at a given time without giving away the details.

The student network can surpass its teacher through its own actions

“Our first aim was for the teacher network to learn to perform successful quantum error correction operations without further human assistance,” says Marquardt. Unlike the school student network, the teacher network can do this based not only on measurement results but also on the overall quantum state of the computer. The student network trained by the teacher network will then be equally good at first, but can become even better through its own actions.

In addition to error correction in quantum computers, Florian Marquardt envisages other applications for artificial intelligence. In his opinion, physics offers many systems that could benefit from the use of pattern recognition by artificial neural networks.

One of the many challenges with battling alcohol addiction and other substance abuse disorders is the risk of relapse, even after progress toward recovery. Even pesky fruit flies have a hankering for alcohol, and because the molecular signals involved in forming flies’ reward and avoidance memories are much the same as those in humans, they’re a good model for study.

A new study in flies finds that alcohol hijacks this memory formation pathway and changes the proteins expressed in the neurons, forming cravings. Just a few drinks in an evening changes how memories are formed at the fundamental, molecular level.

The findings were published in the journal Neuron.

Karla Kaun, assistant professor of neuroscience at Brown University and senior author on the paper, worked with a team of undergraduates, technicians and postdoctoral researchers to uncover the molecular signaling pathways and changes in gene expression involved in making and maintaining reward memories.

“One of the things I want to understand is why drugs of abuse can produce really rewarding memories when they’re actually neurotoxins,” said Kaun, who is affiliated with Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science. “All drugs of abuse — alcohol, opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine — have adverse side effects. They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? My team is trying to understand on a molecular level what drugs of abuse are doing to memories and why they’re causing cravings.”

Once researchers understand what molecules are changing when cravings are formed, then they can figure out how to help recovering alcoholics and addicts by perhaps decreasing how long the craving memories last, or how intense they are, Kaun said.

Molecular manipulation

Fruit flies have only 100,000 neurons, while humans have more than 100 billion. The smaller scale — plus the fact that generations of scientists have developed genetic tools to manipulate the activity of these neurons at the circuit and molecular level — made the fruit fly the perfect model organism for Kaun’s team to tease apart the genes and molecular signaling pathways involved in alcohol reward memories, she said.

Led by postdoctoral researcher Emily Petruccelli, who is now an assistant professor with her own lab at Southern Illinois University, the team used genetic tools to selectively turn off key genes while training the flies where to find alcohol. This enabled them to see what proteins were required for this reward behavior.

One of the proteins responsible for the flies’ preference for alcohol is Notch, the researchers found. Notch is the first “domino” in a signaling pathway involved in embryo development, brain development and adult brain function in humans and all other animals. Molecular signaling pathways are not unlike a cascade of dominos — when the first domino falls (in this case, the biological molecule activates), it triggers more that trigger more and so on.

One of the downstream dominos in the signaling pathway affected by alcohol is a gene called dopamine-2-like receptor, which makes a protein on neurons that recognizes dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter.

“The dopamine-2-like receptor is known to be involved in encoding whether a memory is pleasing or aversive,” Petruccelli said. And alcohol hijacks this conserved memory pathway to form cravings.

In the case of the alcohol reward pathway studied, the signaling cascade didn’t turn the dopamine receptor gene on or off, or increase or decrease the amount of protein made, Kaun said. Instead, it had a subtler effect — it changed the version of the protein made by a single amino acid “letter” in an important area.

“We don’t know what the biological consequences of that small change are, but one of the important findings from this study is that scientists need to look not only at which genes are being turned on and off, but which forms of each gene are getting turned on and off,” Kaun said. “We think these results are highly likely to translate to other forms of addiction, but nobody has investigated that.”

The team is continuing its work by studying the effects that opiates have on the same conserved molecular pathways. Additionally, Kaun is working with John McGeary, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown, to look at DNA samples from patients with alcohol abuse disorders to see if they have genetic polymorphisms in any of the craving-related genes discovered in flies.

“If this works the same way in humans, one glass of wine is enough to activate the pathway, but it returns to normal within an hour,” Kaun said. “After three glasses, with an hour break in between, the pathway doesn’t return to normal after 24 hours. We think this persistence is likely what is changing the gene expression in memory circuits.

“Just something to keep in mind the next time you split a bottle of wine with a friend or spouse,” she added.

f everyone on the planet wanted to eat a healthy diet, there wouldn’t be enough fruit and vegetables to go around, according to a new University of Guelph study.

A team of researchers compared global agricultural production with nutritionists’ consumption recommendations and found a drastic mismatch.

“We simply can’t all adopt a healthy diet under the current global agriculture system,” said study co-author Prof. Evan Fraser, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and director of U of G’s Arrell Food Institute. “Results show that the global system currently overproduces grains, fats and sugars, while production of fruits and vegetables and, to a smaller degree, protein is not sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the current population.”

Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study calculated the number of servings per person on the planet for each food group based on the Harvard University’s “Healthy Eating Plate” guide, which recommends that half of our diet consist of fruits and vegetables; 25 per cent, whole grains; and 25 per cent, protein, fat and dairy.

Researchers calculated how much land is currently used for farming and how much would be needed if everyone followed the nutritional recommendations. They then projected those numbers for 2050, when the global population is expected to reach 9.8 billion.

They found that we now produce 12 servings of grains per person instead of the recommended eight; five servings of fruits and vegetables instead of 15; three servings of oil and fat instead of one; three servings of protein instead of five; and four servings of sugar instead of none.

“What we are producing at a global level is not what we should be producing according to nutritionists,” said Fraser, whose co-authors include Krishna KC, research scientist in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, Profs. Nigel Raine and Madhur Anand, School of Environmental Sciences, and Prof. Malcolm Campbell, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Because carbohydrates are relatively easy to produce and can feed many people, developing countries focus on growing grains, said KC, lead author of the study.

He said developed countries have subsidized grain and corn production for decades in order to become self-sufficient and to establish global leadership in their production. These countries have also spent far more money on research and innovation for these crops than for fruits and vegetables.

“Also fat, sugar and salt are tasty and are what we humans crave, so we have a real hunger for these foods,” said KC. “All of these factors combined have resulted in a world system that is really overproducing these types of foods.”

The study found that adopting a more nutritious diet is not only good for us but also good for the planet.

“If we do switch to nutritious diets, we would see a drop in the amount of land required to feed our growing population,” said KC.

The researchers also found that shifting production to match nutritional dietary guidelines would require 50 million fewer hectares of arable land, because fruits and vegetables take less land to grow than grain, sugar and fat.

But to achieve this decrease, consumers would need to eat less meat, and the agri-food sector would have to produce more plant proteins.

“Major players in the protein industry are investing in alternative protein options such as plant-based proteins, and consumers are taking advantage of the recent increase in alternative protein options hitting the market,” said Fraser.

Without any change, feeding 9.8 billion people will require 12 million more hectares of arable land and at least one billion more hectares of pasture land, said Fraser.

“Feeding the next generation is one of the most pressing challenges facing the 21st century. For a growing population, our calculations suggest that the only way to eat a nutritionally balanced diet, save land and reduce greenhouse gas emission is to consume and produce more fruits and vegetables as well as transition to diets higher in plant-based protein.”

The earthquakes are so small and deep that someone standing in Seattle would never feel them. In fact, until the early 2000s, nobody knew they happened at all. Now, scientists at Rice University have unearthed details about the structure of Earth where these tiny tremors occur.

Rice postdoctoral researcher and seismologist Jonathan Delph and Earth scientists Fenglin Niu and Alan Levander make a case for the incursion of fluid related to slippage deep inside the Cascadia margin off the Pacific Northwest’s coast.

Their paper, which appears in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, links fluids escaping from deep subduction to the frequent shakes that Delph said happen in relative slow motion when compared to the sudden, violent jolts occasionally felt by Southern Californians at the southern end of the west coast.

“These aren’t large, instantaneous events like a typical earthquake,” Delph said. “They’re seismically small, but there’s a lot of them and they are part of the slow-slip type of earthquake that can last for weeks instead of seconds.”

Delph’s paper is the first to show variations in the scale and extent of fluids that come from dehydrating minerals and how they relate to these low-velocity quakes. “We are finally at the point where we can address the incredible amount of research that’s been done in the Pacific Northwest and try to bring it all together,” he said. “The result is a better understanding of how the seismic velocity structure of the margin relates to other geologic and tectonic observations.”

The North American plate and Juan de Fuca plate, a small remnant of a much larger tectonic plate that used to subduct beneath North America, meet at the Cascadia subduction zone, which extends from the coast of northern California well into Canada. As the Juan de Fuca plate moves to the northeast, it sinks below the North American plate.

Delph said fluids released from minerals as they heat up at depths of 30 to 80 kilometers propagate upward along the boundary of the plates in the northern and southern portions of the margin, and get trapped in sediments that are subducting beneath the Cascadia margin.

“This underthrust sedimentary material is being stuck onto the bottom of the North American plate,” he said. “This can allow fluids to infiltrate. We don’t know why, exactly, but it correlates well with the spatial variations in tremor density we observe. We’re starting to understand the structure of the margin where these tremors are more prevalent.”

Delph’s research is based on extensive seismic records gathered over decades and housed at the National Science Foundation-backed IRIS seismic data repository, an institutional collaboration to make seismic data available to the public.

“We didn’t know these tremors existed until the early 2000s, when they were correlated with small changes in the direction of GPS stations at the surface,” he said. “They’re extremely difficult to spot. Basically, they don’t look like earthquakes. They look like periods of higher noise on seismometers.

“We needed high-accuracy GPS and seismometer measurements to see that these tremors accompany changes in GPS motion,” Delph said. “We know from GPS records that some parts of the Pacific Northwest coast change direction over a period of weeks. That correlates with high-noise ‘tremor’ signals we see in the seismometers. We call these slow-slip events because they slip for much longer than traditional earthquakes, at much slower speeds.”

He said the phenomenon isn’t present in all subduction zones. “This process is pretty constrained to what we call ‘hot subduction zones,’ where the subducting plate is relatively young and therefore warm,” Delph said. “This allows for minerals that carry water to dehydrate at shallower depths.

“In ‘colder’ subduction zones, like central Chile or the Tohoku region of Japan, we don’t see these tremors as much, and we think this is because minerals don’t release their water until they’re at greater depths,” he said. “The Cascadia subduction zone seems to behave quite differently than these colder subduction zones, which generate large earthquakes more frequently than Cascadia. This could be related in some way to these slow-slip earthquakes, which can release as much energy as a magnitude 7 earthquake over their duration. This is an ongoing area of research.”

A study shows that while those adult coloring books can reduce stress, they’re still not art therapy.

Often, the now-ubiquitous adult coloring books will advertise themselves as “art therapy.” But actual art therapists contend that such a claim is misleading, that true art therapy is about growth and relationships and not simply about “feeling better.”

In light of that, Girija Kaimal, EdD, assistant professor in Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions led a study that shows that while coloring alone does have some positive effect, it is not nearly as potent as involving an art therapist.

“The main takeaway is that coloring has some limited benefits like reducing stress and negative mental states,” Kaimal said. “But it does not shift anything else of substance, develop relationships, nor result in any personal development.”

Kaimal and her Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal study co-authors — Janell Mensinger, PhD, associate research professor in Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health, and doctoral stduents Jessica Drass and Rebekka Dieterich-Hartwell — ran two, separate 40-minute exercises, one consisting of pure coloring and the other involving direct input from an art therapist, to see if one of the other led to significant differences in mood and stress levels.

“The art therapists’ open studio sessions resulted in more empowerment, creativity and improved mood, which are significant for individuals striving to improve their quality of life and make lasting change,” Kaimal said.

Every participant — of which there were 29, ranging in age from 19 to 67 — took part in each exercise. In the pure coloring exercise, the participants colored in a pattern or design. Although an art therapist was in the room, they did not interact with the person coloring.

In the other exercise, participants were put in an “open studio” situation, where an art therapist was present and able to facilitate the session, as well as provide guidance and support to process the experience and artwork. The participants were able to make any type of art they wished, whether it involved coloring, sketching, doodling, or working with modeling clay. As the participants worked on their piece, the art therapists created art as well, and were available to assist the participants if they asked for it.

Each person took standardized surveys before and after their sessions that ranked their stress levels and feelings.

Perceived stress levels went down by at roughly the same levels for both exercises (10 percent for coloring; 14 percent for open studio). Negative mental states also showed similar decreases in levels (roughly a 7 percent decrease for coloring; 6 percent for open studio).

But while the coloring exercise didn’t show significant changes for any other effects, the participants displayed an approximate 7 percent increase in self-efficacy, 4 percent increase in creative agency, and a 25 percent increase in positive feelings after their art therapist-aided open studio sessions.

“Many of the outcomes were enabled through the relational support from the art therapist,” Kaimal explained. “The art therapist-facilitated session involves more interpersonal interaction, problem solving around creative choices and expression, empowerment and perhaps more learning about the self and others. That all contributes to the outcomes we saw.”

So while coloring did help alleviate bad feelings, it didn’t create good feelings in the way that actual art therapy might.

“Coloring might allow for some reduction in distress or negativity, but since it is a structured task, it might not allow for further creative expression, discovery and exploration which we think is associated with the positive mood improvements we saw in the open studio condition,” Kaimal said.

In yet another of many disruptive foreign policy initiatives that US President Donald Trump has taken since coming to power, he announced on October 20, 2018 of US withdrawal from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia, a decades-old agreement signed on December 8, 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. The argument that Trump offered in defence of his decision was that Russia has been violating the agreement for many years. Trump even went further in accusing his predecessor Barack Obama for not taking any action on Russia for not honouring the agreement and decided to terminate the agreement.

What obligations the treaty put on the two parties when it was signed and what implications would it mean in abrogating now? The landmark treaty that came into force after signing in 1987 obliged both countries to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between approximately 300 and 3,400 miles. It was successful in eliminating nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles from both sides altogether. It offered a blanket of protection to the US’ European allies and marked a watershed agreement between the two nations at the centre of the arms race during the Cold War.

Trump now accuses that Russia has violated the treaty, pointing that even the predecessor Obama administration had in 2014 accused Russia of violating the INF treaty, citing cruise missile tests dating to 2008. At that time, the US had informed its NATO allies of Russia’s suspected breach. The NATO opinion was articulated in early October 2018 by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of Russia’s lack of respect for its international commitments, including the INF treaty. The Nuclear Posture Review published by the US Defence Department also observed in February that Russia “continues to violate a series of arms control treaties and commitments”.

Reactions of China

Interestingly, China that could itself be a beneficiary of the Trump decision strongly opposed this unilateral decision by the US to pull out of the treaty, saying that the “wrong” move will have a negative impact on the world. Beijing was miffed that Trump hinted China as a possible another reason, though China was not a party to the treaty. What Washington felt was that restriction on developing these missiles will put it at a disadvantage in the face of growing rivalry with Beijing.

China saw Trump’s decision to annul the INF treaty as a meaning of blackmailing Beijing. Not surprisingly, Beijing warned the US that it would “never accept any form of blackmail” if Washington has any intention to link its decision to pull out of the INF treaty with Russia to China’s arsenal. Trump’s accusations of China as a party to the violations along with Russia and followed by the threat of building up its own nuclear arsenal “until people come to their senses” drew sharp response and condemnation from Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying reacted by terming the US action as “utterly unjustifiable and unreasonable”. She also warned that Beijing would “never accept any form of blackmail”.

It seems that China has been caught in the US-Russia crossfire with apparently the larger prism of US-China problems, which is why Trump is also targeting Beijing with violation accusations. In recent years, both Moscow and Washington have often accused each other of violating the agreement within the treaty. Late in 2017, Russia accused the US of violating the treaty, arguing that the missile defense system in Romania – also planned for deployment in Poland later in 2018 – could launch Tomahawk medium-range missiles apart from interceptor missiles. Also in May 2018, the Russian defence ministry said that the US produced a series of target missiles.

Fear of Arms Race

The question that arises is, is pulling out of the treaty by the US the right answer to make Russia mend its ways, if at all? Experts warn that putting the Reykjavik INF deal to the dustbin of history could provoke a dangerous arms race across Europe, something unfolding during 1980 but was eventually averted by the INF. The INF treaty helped cool Cold War tensions and anxiety about nuclear annihilation but accusing Russia now of cheating on the INF could encourage China to continue in building its own medium range missiles, thus nullifying Trump’s intention to punish Russia. Others would not be expected to wait to join in this new arms race.

The overwhelming opinion emerging across continent is that Trump is blundering, setting the path for an arms race. Though the US can outspend Russia and China on nuclear weapons, it does not mean that it could eventually win. Trump might boast to have the bigger leverage by pulling out of the 19876 INF treaty but it would be inadvisable to compare that the world situation now as it is dramatically much different than what it was in the 1980s. When then Reagan boasted the US to remain ahead of any other nation in amassing nuclear arsenal and never accept second place, he was trying to prove a point that the dynamic success of capitalism shall triumph over communism based on money power. He wrote in his memoir, An American Life, thus: “The Russians could never win the arms race; we could outspend them forever”. Though Trump echoed Reagan’s description of his stance in the early 1980s, the situation now is not the same and as such comparison may not be appropriate.

Though the US outspends over Russia on the military, Russia has paid special attention to its nuclear forces, most recently with a major rearmament program, to compensate for the relative weakness of its conventional forces. The nuclear deterrent is relatively more potent in the Russian strategy than for the US and therefore comparison between the two could be wrong. If the US kills the INF treaty, Russian military strategy could be altered wherein Russia is likely to drop relatively expensive efforts to get around it by producing sea-and air-launched intermediate-range weapons and focus on cheaper mobile land-based launchers. This time Trump’s challenge shall be twosome as Russia and China, both equally equipped militarily, could throw potent challenge to the US. If Trump of today resembles Reagan of the 1980s, then Putin and Xi Jinping today could jointly resemble Gorbachev of the 1980s.

In modern times, diplomacy as a powerful tool has greater relevance that it was ever before as the world has become more dangerous with many countries are armed with devastating weapons capable to cause heavy damage to humanity. The time when the US was the only country in possession of nuclear weapons had the freedom to decide whether to use them or not and it decided to use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now with many countries in possession of such nuclear weapons, the US cannot have such luxury, which is what has made the world a safer place for the past over seven decades and a nuclear war has been averted. Trump would be expected to factor such argument in conducting diplomacy.

Other perspectives

There are several views, either supporting or opposing and sometimes conflicting on Trump’s decision to pullout from the INF. Writing for Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky, an opinion columnist covering European politics and business, observes that Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear treaty could hurt US allies the hardest. According to him, Germany has more to lose than Russia. He says that ditching the INF would be a clear advantage for both Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin but would be a problem for countries in the middle and can impact the treaty-based global order. Bershidsky cites Columbia University professor Stephen Sestanovich, who served as senior director for policy development at the U.S. National Security Council from 1984 to 1987, the year the INF Treaty was signed, saying the deal as “the most one-sidedly good arms-control agreement any U.S. President has ever signed.” He says it eliminated 1,752 Soviet missiles, including all the feared SS-20s aimed at the European allies of the US, along with 859 less powerful US missiles deployed in Europe to counter the threat. By the time Soviet President Gorbachev unexpectedly agreed to the trade-off, the Soviet economy was faltering and Gorbachev was intent on ending the arms race with the US. The truism is that the deal was not really so one-sided: The Soviet leadership was spooked by the Pershing II missiles the US had deployed in Germany, which were far more precise than the SS-20s.

When Gorbachev agreed to sign the treaty, he was protecting the USSR from a possible Western strike on Moscow as the Pershing II deployed in Germany could reach in about 10 minutes. On the other hand, Reagan was ensuring that the SS-20 threat got rid of and that the uneasiness of European allies are assuaged. At a time when USSR was suspected of taking countermeasures, China not bound by the Reagan-Gorbachev deal was free to deploy short- and medium-range missiles, creating a potential threat to US allies in Asia. Russia was seized of this anomaly that China was free of treaty’s constraints as it was not a party to it.

When the US and Russia continue to weigh who lost or gained what by Trump’s decision, the countries that lose are the ones caught in the middle. While the UK response was rather mute, Germany would not rejoice a possible repeat of the mass demonstrations that rocked the country when the Pershing IIs were deployed, which is why it expressed regret about the US decision to abandon “an important element of arms control that especially serves European interests”.

There could be other fallouts as well. While the European members of the NATO look to work for a security system that is less dependent on the US, the US allies in Asia are likely to ponder if this is the right time to challenge China and Russia by US decision to exit the INF treaty. If Trump’s intention to withdraw from the treaty was to induce Russia and China not to develop new weapons and was thus the ultimate goal, Trump could have worked to make “the treaty multilateral and negotiate additional provisions covering specific Chinese, Russian and, inevitably also U.S. weapons programs”.

Hal Brands offers a different perspective. According to him, Trump could have taken the dual-track approach used by Carter and Reagan in the lead-up to the INF: working with allies to design and deploy medium-range missiles, while negotiating with Russia to stop cheating and China to join the pact. The process of diplomacy in achieving this goal could have been long drawn but that could have a better alternative than just to kill the treaty. Just walking away from the treaty would hurt the US as much as any other country. Therefore, Trump’s could have been the right in seeing that the Cold War-era pact no longer suits American interests but simply walking away could be the wrong approach as it is unlikely to improve US’ competitive position. As with many earlier decisions taken by Trump that have proved to be counterproductive, declaring his intention to terminate a key arms-control treaty with Russia would be as yet another self-inflicted wound.

If Trump finally decides to withdraw from the treaty, the US will invite criticism, not Russia, that it is destroying a landmark arms-control agreement. It will alienate NATO allies and could make them feel uncomfortable if NATO-Russia tensions escalate.

There is yet another view offered by Eli Lake who disagrees and suggests the US will have more leverage by simply ditching the INF now. According to Lake, Russia was not honouring it and China is not even a party to it and so killing it now is a better option than to retain with loopholes exploited by Russia. But Russia says that Trump’s decision to dump the INF treaty will bring the world closer to the nuclear apocalypse.

The INF treaty worked for 21 years. Both sides abided in the beginning by the treaty agreement. Trouble started in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia. The US saw this cheating on the part of Russia. In retaliation, Russia began testing “a ground-launched cruise missile that flies to ranges banned by the treaty” and continued further, posing a threat to NATO allies. Trump, according to Lake, had two choices: continue to what Obama administration did – shame the Russians into compliance – and seek to renegotiate or withdraw from the pact, which he announced now. There could be no single opinion on Trump’s act and whether it was the right or wrong choice is difficult to say.

The decision to kill the pact comes at a time, writes James Stavridis, when the US and NATO are about to launch major war games in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea, partly to counter Russia’s scary build-up in the small but important province of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. As the risk of confrontation grows, anxiety is palpable. Under the circumstance, it would have been prudent on the part of Trump to make efforts to renegotiate the treaty and bring in China into the new pact as almost 95 per cent of China’s missiles would be prohibited by the new INF treaty. Seen from this larger perspective, Trump’s withdrawal decision is a dangerous gamble fraught with possible unintended consequences.

Morocco is pushing ahead with an ambitious strategy to grow its automotive manufacturing industry, creating a lower-cost hub for supplying nearby wealthy European markets and other regional ones.

In fact, the car industry in Morocco represents the first industrial exporting sector with more than 7 billion U.S. dollars turnover in 2017. The country is on track to reach its goal of making 10 billion U.S. dollars auto industry export turnover by 2020. The sector created some 83,845 jobs, which represents 93 percent of the goal set for 2020. An ambitious goal that can be achieved only if the government elaborates a comprehensive vocational training program as instructed by King Mohammed VI. It is worth reminding of latest royal speech made August 20th wherein the Moroccan Sovereign called on the government to carry out a thorough review of vocational training programs to align them with the needs of businesses and the public sector, and to make sure they are adapted to changes in industry and trades in general, thereby increasing graduates’ chances to access professional life.

The government should absolutely develop a new growth model that will deliver more and better jobs. But for the economy to adapt to these new sources of growth, the labour force needs to have the right skills. If young Moroccans are offered high quality training, they will certainly have much better chance to succeed.

Morocco’s automotive industry is rapidly growing due to government incentives as well as other competitive factors. The Moroccan Society of Automotive Construction (SOMACA) by doubling its production capacity will reach 160,000 vehicles per year by 2022. The production target was revealed by Renault chairman and chief executive Carlos Ghosn at a meeting with King Mohammed VI in Marrakesh today.

The twofold increase will enable the Renault group to increase its production capacity in Morocco to 500,000 vehicles per year, including 340,000 produced at the Tangier plant under the Industrial Acceleration Program.

In 2007, SOMACA had exported its first “Made in Morroco” vehicle. Since then, it has become a real exportation platform with over 60% of its production destined for export. The SOMACA extension is part of the development of the automotive sector to achieve a production capacity of one million vehicles, all manufacturers combined, with a projected turnover of 100 billion dirhams yearly.

Morocco will continue to be very attractive to potential car manufacturers especially that Investment incentives include a five-year corporate tax exemption for automotive companies setting up in Morocco, and a 25-year exemption if most production is exported. Other benefits include VAT exemptions, land purchase subsidies and rebates of up to 30% on investment cost.

Now the ball is in the government ‘s court that should elaborate a strong strategy and lay the foundations for sustainable growth. More incentives and skilled labor force will certainly be appealing to more car manufacturers.

President Donald J. Trump has made it his signature move to repudiate the signatures of others, and the latest, promised evacuation from the old US-Soviet pact otherwise known as the intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) treaty was merely another artefact to be abandoned.

When it came into force after 1987, it banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles within the range of 500 km and 5,500 km. Of primary concern to the US had been the deployment by the Soviets of the SS-20, the result of which was the deployment of Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe.

According to the Arms Control Association, the INF Treaty “successfully eliminated an entire class of destabilizing nuclear weapons that were deployed in Europe and helped bring an end to the spiralling Cold War arms race.” Some 2,700 missiles and their requisite launchers were destroyed in the arrangement. It suggested a certain degree of trust: both Washington and Moscow were permitted verification about installations.

The usual withdrawal technique (the Trump retraction style) has become known. Trump is an expert practitioner of interruptus, but the issue is what he replaces it with: a new vision with provisions and obligations, or butchered nonsense wrapped in ribbon? “I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.” The Russians had “been violating it for many years.” This included the testing, and ultimate deployment of the 9M729, a ground-launched cruise missile that purportedly edged well and beyond the confines of the treaty. The initial response to such alleged violations was one of pressure, convincing Moscow to come back to the fold via an “integrated strategy”. That, evidently, proved too measured an approach.

Yet even now, the Russians, typified by the reaction of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, are both bemused and irritated. The veteran official preferred to avoid divining coffee grounds on where the White House might move next, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that no formal measures to exit the treaty have yet been undertaken. Ruslan Pukhov of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies was even optimistic: “If there’s good will on both sides, including ours, then probably the treaty can be saved.”

It was Russian President Vladimir Putin who had anticipated this circus of retraction, suggesting in 2007 with a degree of appropriate cheek that the treaty did not advance Russia’s interests. That huffing response had come as a direct response to Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, yet another Cold War artefact confined to the mausoleum of agreements long dead.

The nuclear intermediate treaty was meant to eliminate merely one category of madness, another blubber of criminal insanity that typifies the creatures of the megadeath complex. (In any future war crimes court, they will always claim that weapons of mass murder were needed to prevent mass murder, even if they did ensure the logical consequences of such killing.)

The INF Treaty always troubled such national security hawks of the ilk of John Bolton, who felt as far back as 2011 that Washington should leave the treaty for no better reason than combating an impetuous China. That was hardly surprising for a man who subscribes to the view of Charles de Gaulle that, “Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: They last while they last.” The INF had “outlived its usefulness in its current form – so it should either be changed or thrown out.”

Trump’s arguments are those of his counterparts. Both Russia and the United States have been cheating, baulking, adjusting, reading between clauses and playing before their meanings. Violations have been treated as instances of mild infidelity, and even the European states have shown little by way of concern. They are the faithless partners in a marriage of inconvenience, but in so far as it lasted, it afforded a cover for the couple to behave at international forums with a degree of questionable decorum. In Trump’s era, decorum is an unnecessary encumbrance fit to be scorned. The animal must be set free, the hand must grab, and everything else is left to chance.

Such moves might well be cheered in the Kremlin. Washington, as Steven Fifer, former State Department official and arms control expert based at the Brookings Institute predicts, “will get the blame for killing the treaty.” The debate, if you could venture to use that term, was bound to “devolve into an exchange of charges, counter-charges and denials.”

In concrete terms, Trump has changed props, but risks unnecessary costs in attempting to develop weapons that would have fallen within the INF’s remit. For one, it will ruffle Russia’s security concerns regarding central and eastern European states. “Tomahawks with nuclear warheads could be loaded with anti-missile sites in Romania and Poland as soon as US leaves INF Treaty,” tweeted National Defense editor Igor Korotchenko. The enthusiasm by such governments for US hardware in combating the wily Russian bear makes that prospect a distinct possibility.

Then comes the more practical side of things, making such a decision unnecessarily boisterous. The US is more than capable in deploying various systems (both air and sea launched) that could threaten Russian targets, should Washington ever take leave of its senses.

The withdrawal also risks the direction of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), an agreement near and dear to weapons control experts. Yet for all this jazzing of the show, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev had his antennae up: the Kremlin was still keen to work with Washington to eliminate “mutual” grievances concerning the INF. The dance on these gruesome weapons continues to enchant even the most irritated, and irritating, of rivals

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was recently honoured with the United Nation Environment’s Champion of the Earth. This award, launched in 2005, ‘celebrates outstanding figures from the public and private sectors and from civil society whose actions have had a transformative positive impact on the environment.’ The recognition falls into the following categories – Lifetime Achievement, Policy Leadership, Action and Inspiration, Entrepreneurial Vision, Science and Innovation.

Mr. Modi received the award for his ‘leadership in the fight against plastic pollution in India, and his unwavering commitment to tackling climate change around the world….’ The award was shared with Mr. Macron who, along with Mr. Modi, has championed solar power as a renewable source of energy through the International Solar Alliance.

It is another matter that Mr.Modi’s concept of climate change may be limited and that his government, in 2017, had committed itself to doubling plastic use and then almost to a year promised to eliminate single use plastics by 2022. The issue here is of optics and marketing and not about the intent. These are almost bi-polar aspirations, swinging between extremes causing a lot of ‘head-scratching’ and puzzlement.

This recent recognition of Modi is another step in building credibility for him and his adulating masses. One must remember that after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, which occurred under his chief ministership, he became a global pariah.

The Early days in Modi’s Tenure

One cannot ignore his campaign speeches that spoke of his manliness, the country’s loss of respect and his desire and capability to regain that respect for the country. It was almost as if he envisaged that this ‘rise of the country’ would also raise him and his stature. Even though he carried the BJP to victory, the quest for validation and respect was a necessary reboot post the Gujarat horror that transpired under his stewardship.

Thus the choreographed pilgrimage, to foreign countries as India’s 14th Prime Minister, to meet the diaspora immediately after his election. The packed auditoriums and the hosannas sung in his praise gave many in India and abroad much to think about.

Here was a ‘tainted’ leader, whose party, though having only won 31% of the vote share, was being heralded as a messiah.

Though people may consider this to be a leaf from the book of Ponzi scheme’s, one can’t deny its efficacy.

Later, the Modi-hug traveled internationally and the optics of it delivered a multi-layered message. The first implying that the PM and therefore the country are to-the-manor-born and rightfully taking a seat at the hallowed table. The second being that he was forgiving his counterpart’s country for the treatment meted out to him post the Gujarat pogrom.

Mid Tenure

The UN declaring 21st June as the International Day of Yoga was another blandishment that the Modi government gifted to the citizens of India. That Yoga was already an established Indian export people the world over had accepted as their own and that Modi was just piggy back riding on it was glossed over. Instead to many, this global recognition and acknowledgement for the land’s rich cultural history was accomplished by Modi and his team. Such recognition by world bodies raises the question of the locus-standi of at-home opposition to the Government’s Hindutva agenda. Even though his speech on this 21st of June Modi said ‘we should not hesitate to honour our own legacy and heritage if we want the rest of the world to respect us.’ was not singing paeans to the Mughal period, it seems to be irrelevant to such world institutions. By focusing on the benigness of the Hindutva agenda peddled by the Indian government, the global community is not only giving wings to the saffron brigade and their Moriarty’s but are also putting at risk the lives of those opposed to the ongoing saffronisation.

Last year, Modi tested his global relevance with the surgical strikes. Though it did nothing for the country’s security, there was not an international peep. This silence only strengthened Modi’s stature at home. That the country is now being forced to celebrate 29th September as National Surgical Strike day only cements Modi’s credentials as a leader taking India to greater global respect.

The Present

Over the last few years Modi has moved from seeking validation, to testing the waters and finally to his global coronation. A lot has been written about the snake-oil salesman like ploys that beguile, create his aura and pave the way for him. However, one can’t diss them because it is creating a narrative that is, to say the least, unsettling.

The Champion of the Earth Award comes to Modi at a time when Indian cities dominate world air pollution lists. As per the NITI Aayog 2018 Composite Water Management Index, India ranks 120 out of 122 on the Water Quality Index. It also notes that nearly 70% of water is contaminated. However, his promise to deal with plastics and make it’s disposal a business venture is somehow seen glowingly enough to put everything else in the shade.

By honouring Modi, the award acts as a big international sign-off for his government policies be they the investment in 100 so called Waste-to-Energy plants, slashing of the environment clearance time from 600 days to just 170 without indication of any corresponding increase in manpower, or the carte blanche given to thermal power plants to pollute by the Central Pollution Control Board, the unspent or underspent monies collected for the environment and renewable energy or the manner in which the high-handedness with which the Indian government handles those who oppose their environmental and social policies.

The UN may have just given Modi, his government and the Hindutva brigade a weapon to use against those opposing them. The Modi government recently charged the Congress I with getting foreign assistance to destabilise the country. How long will it be before Modi uses his foreign adulations to quell dissent at home?

Modi’s hagiography is being carefully scripted. There are many who participate willingly, others are conned or give in to participating. One would not be incorrect in assuming that Modi is being crafted into a Maryada Purush, but the question is whether it is the Ramayana version, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee version or the one that the belligerent Hindu seeks shelter in and is goaded by.

*Samir Nazareth is the author of 1400 Bananas, 76 Towns & 1 Million People. He tweets at @samirwrites

The death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is proving to be a blessing in disguise for cash- strapped Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Mr. Khan’s blessing is also likely to offer Saudi Arabia geopolitical advantage.

On the principle of all good things are three, Mr. Khan struck gold on his second visit to the kingdom since coming to office in August.

Mr. Khan was rewarded for attending Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s showcase investors conference in Riyadh, dubbed Davos in the Desert, that was being shunned by numerous CEOs of Western financial institutions, tech entrepreneurs and media moguls as well as senior Western government officials because of the Khashoggi affair.

In talks with King Salman and the crown prince, Saudi Arabia promised to deposit US$3 billion in Pakistan’s central bank as balance of payments support and to defer up to US$3 billion in payments for oil imports for a year.

Saudi Arabia declined Mr. Khan’s request for financial aid during his first visit to the kingdom in September but was willing to consider investing billions of dollars in a refinery in the Chinese-operated Arabian Sea port of Gwadar as well as in mining but was reluctant to acquiesce to Pakistani requests for financial relief.

Saudi Arabia’s subsequent agreement to provided finance is likely to help Mr. Khan reduce the size of the US$8-12 billion bailout he is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Speaking in an interview before leaving for Riyadh, Mr. Khan said he was attending the conference despite the “shocking” killing of Mr. Khashoggi because “unless we get loans from friendly countries or the IMF, we actually won’t have in another two or three months enough foreign exchange to service our debts or to pay for our imports. So we’re desperate at the moment.”

Pakistan’s foreign reserves dropped this month to US$8.1 billion, a four-year low and barely enough to cover sovereign debt payments due through the end of the year. The current account deficit has swelled to about $18 billion.

Potential Saudi investment in the Reko Diq copper and gold mine as well as a refinery in Gwadar, both close to Pakistan’s border with Iran would give it a further foothold in the troubled province of Balochistan. Gwadar is a mere 70 kilometres down the coast from the Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar.

Pakistani militants reported last year that funds from the kingdom were flowing into the coffers of ultra-conservative anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian Sunni Muslim madrassahs or religious seminars in the region. It was unclear whether the funds originated with the Saudi government or Saudi nationals of Baloch descent and members of the two million-strong Pakistani Diaspora in the kingdom.

It was equally unclear how Saudi Arabia expected to capitalize on its rewarding of Mr. Khan in its competition with Iran for Pakistan’s favours.

Ensuring that Pakistan, home to the world’s largest Shiite minority, does not snuggle up too much to Iran has become even more crucial for Saudi Arabia as it seeks in the wake of Mr. Khashoggi’s death to enhance its indispensability to US President Donald J. Trump’s effort to isolate and cripple Iran economically, if not to engineer a change of regime in Tehran.

Mr. Trump sees Saudi Arabia as central to his strategy aimed at forcing the Islamic republic to halt its support for proxies in Yemen and Lebanon, withdraw its forces from Syria, and permanently dismantle its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.

Saudi financial support means that Mr. Khan may find it more difficult to shield Pakistan from being sucked into the US-Saudi effort.

Insurgents last week kidnapped 14 Iranian security personnel, reportedly including Revolutionary Guards on the Iranian side of the border with Pakistan. Pakistan pledged to help liberate the abductees who are believed to have been taken across the border into Balochistan, long a militant and Baloch nationalist hotbed.

“Members of terrorist groups that are guided and supported by foreign forces carried this out through deceiving and bribing infiltrators,” the Guards said in a statement that appeared to blame Saudi Arabia and the United States without mentioning them by name.

The incident is likely to heighten Chinese concerns that in a worst-case scenario, Saudi investment rather than boosting economic activity and helping Gwadar get out of the starting blocks, could ensnare it too in one of the Middle East’s most debilitating conflicts.

China is further concerned that there would be a set of third-party eyes monitoring activity if and when it decides to use Gwadar not only for commercial purposes but also as a naval facility.

Saudi investment could further thwart potential Chinese plans to link the ports of Gwadar and Chabahar, a prospect that Pakistani and Iranian officials have in the past not excluded. With Saudi financial aid, that may no longer be an option that Mr. Khan can entertain.

Mr. Khan will have to take that into account when he travels to Beijing next week in a bid to secure Chinese financial support and convince Beijing to fast forward focusing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$45 billion plus infrastructure and energy generation-driven Belt and Road crown jewel, on issues such as job creation, manufacturing and agriculture.

Mr. Khan appeared to anticipate in his interview with Middle East Eye on the eve of his participation in the Riyadh investment conference that he would have reduced leeway by blaming the United States for increased tensions with Iran and hinting that Pakistan did not want to be drawn into conflict with the Islamic republic.

Said Mr. Khan: “The US-Iran situation is disturbing for all of us in the Muslim world… The last thing the Muslim world wants is another conflict. The worrying part is that the Trump administration is moving towards some sort of conflict with Iran.”

As the Mediterranean Basin is experiencing the impact of climate change more than ever, an international network of scientists has worked together to synthesize the effects of climate change and environmental problems, as well as the incurred risks, in the region, to facilitate decision-making in addressing the issues.

This first-ever synthesis of multiple environmental changes and risks affecting the livelihoods of people in the entire region has just been published in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change.

The rates of climate change observed in the Mediterranean Basin exceed the global trends for most variables. The impact has further exacerbated the existing environmental problems caused by land use changes such as urbanization and agricultural intensification, increasing pollution and declining biodiversity.

Led by Professor Dr Wolfgang Cramer from the Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, an international team of scientists has just published a review article in Nature Climate Change to address the current and future risks related to these changes, titled “Climate change and interconnected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean”.

Professor Michael Tsimplis from the School of Law at City University of Hong Kong who is part of the international team and has multidisciplinary background with research in oceanography and climate change said, “this paper suggests that the risks posed by climate change in the Mediterranean Sea were underestimated because each was only examined independently. But in reality, they are interconnected and interact with social and economic problems exacerbating their impacts. So they all have to be addressed at the same time and within the same financial constraints.”

The paper reviews the various environmental changes and the risks posed by these changes in the five major interconnected domains, namely water resources, ecosystems, food safety and security, health, and human security.

For an instance, average temperatures in this region have already risen by 1.4°C since the pre-industrial era, 0.4°C more than the global average. Even if future global warming is limited to 2°C, as prescribed by the Paris Agreement, summer rainfall is at risk to be reduced by 10 to 30% in some regions, thereby enhancing existing water shortages and decreasing agricultural productivity, particularly in southern countries.

Due to climate change alone, the irrigation demands in the region are projected to increase between 4 and 18% by the end of the century. Population growth may escalate these numbers furthers to 22-74%. Tourism development, new industries and urban sprawl may increase water pollution, too.

The acidification of sea water, increasing heatwaves in combination with drought and land-use change also affect the natural ecosystems, posing risks in biodiversity and fisheries.

Food production from agriculture and fisheries across the Mediterranean region is also changing due to the social, economic and environmental changes. Combined with the ongoing switch to more animal-based food production, southern countries are at risk to increase their dependence on trade.

Public health is impacted by multiple trends of change, through heat waves, pollution (higher risk of cardiovascular or respiratory diseases), and the increased spread of disease vectors (West Nile virus, Dengue, Chikungunya). In politically unstable countries, environmental change is an increasingly relevant factor for socio-economic risks, due to famines, migration and conflict. Human security will also be threatened due to extreme weather, such as a rise in sea level posing a higher risk of storm surges for people living in coastal areas in the region.

To facilitate decision-making in the face of these risks, the authors call for a pan-Mediterranean integrated risk assessment. Therefore, the Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change (MedECC) network has been established, currently involving 400 scientific experts, supported by government agencies and other partners, to produce a full synthesis of risks and present it to decision makers for debate and approval.