By Eurasia Review

Decades of oppression make Poles wary of being subjugated in name of “climate protection”

By David Rothbard

A cabal of climate change alarmists landed in Warsaw, Poland last weekend, to hammer out terms and rally support for a new binding global agreement to “save the planet” from “dangerous global warming.”

Not so fast, tens of thousands of Poles responded. The facts support their position.

Average global temperatures have not risen in 16 years, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased steadily, helping plants grow faster and better. Antarctic ice is at a record high, Arctic sea ice is back to normal, and at current rates Greenland would not melt for 13,000 years. A new research paper in Global and Planetary Change reveals that global sea level rise has decelerated by 44% since 2004, to barely 7 inches per century!

These realities were underscored during a climate policy conference in Warsaw, on the eve of the UN confab. The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) keynoted the event, which was sponsored by Solidarity, the Institute for Globalization, and other Polish and European NGOs. Capping off the program, representatives from the United States, Italy, Sweden, Hungary and Poland formally signed the “Warsaw Declaration.”

The declaration calls on the United Nations to discontinue work on a new treaty until a genuine “scientific consensus is reached on the phenomenon of so-called global warming,” including both its natural and human causes.

The next day, more than 50,000 enthusiastic Poles gathered in downtown Warsaw to celebrate National Independence Day, which commemorates the restoration of Poland’s statehood in 1918, after 123 years of partition and occupation by Russia, Prussia and Austria.

As millions more watched on live television, I was honored to be invited to the stage, to deliver an address celebrating freedom and warning against the UN’s dangerous, oppressive climate agenda. It was undoubtedly the largest audiences ever to hear a speech denouncing UN global warming policies, and I was proud to stand next to a CFACT banner that read “No to UN Climate Hype” in Polish, and be surrounded by thousands of people wearing stickers bearing the same message.

It was clear that – after twelve decades of partition, six years of Nazi terror, and 44 years of Russian and Communist subjugation – few Poles are in any mood to have their lives, liberties and living standards dictated by the European Union and United Nations, under the guise of “protecting the planet” from the supposed “ravages” of “cataclysmic” global warming (or “climate change” or “climate disruption” or whatever the catch-phrase of the week might be).

This is “a new battle for freedom,” I emphasized, “against those who would use environmental and climate alarmism to steal away our liberties and give international bureaucrats control over our energy sources, our daily lives, our prosperity, and our national sovereignty.”

During last year’s climate meeting in Rio de Janeiro, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that what the UN intends is “a complete economic transformation of the world.” In 2000, former French President Jacques Chirac called the Kyoto climate treaty “the first component of authentic global governance.” And last year IPCC Working Group III co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer said international climate policy is not about environmental policy; it is about “how we redistribute the world’s wealth.”

These attitudes and agendas are bad news for those of us who love freedom. UN climate policy is bad news for the people of Poland, I stressed. The good news is that my address was carried live on Polish national television, covered by many international media outlets, and heartily endorsed by the throngs of independence celebrants, who gave a rousing chant in support of my message, following my address.

My talk was certainly noticed by the UN climate alarmists, who were kicking off their COP-19 climate conference, power grab and wealth redistribution schemes just a few kilometers away.

“The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion,” I continued, quoting from the Book of Proverbs. That is why environmentalists and climate bureaucrats don’t want to debate these issues or show anyone the assumptions, massaged temperature data and secret codes that they use in their misleading global warming computer models. “They know they are deceiving the world.”

Those of us gathered in Warsaw that day, I concluded, “stand for freedom. We stand for opportunity. We stand for our families. We stand for a strong and prosperous future. Together let us be bold as a lion.”

The UN made a big mistake in choosing Poland to host this global warming treaty summit. The Poles see right through the global warming hype and propaganda. Having to endure generations of Nazi and Communist oppression, pollution and economic deprivation has left them with a deep distaste for bureaucratic control and further curbs on freedom, opportunity and growth. Having to live according to grim ideologies enforced by threats of jail, or worse, has made them angry about new codes of ecologically correct speech.

Poland deserves freedom and prosperity. It knows it cannot move forward without energy – the Master Resource, the lifeblood of modern industrialized societies. The brave Poles are not about to cede their sovereignty to UN control – not about to let phony climate Armageddon alarms dictate their lives, livelihoods, liberties, living standards and life spans. They will not let the EU or UN control virtually everything they make, grow, ship, eat, drive and do.

They are fully aware that Poland is blessed with some of the biggest coal and shale gas reserves in all of Europe. They know Japan has reversed course, and will now allow a 3% increase in greenhouse gas emissions above 1990 levels, instead of mandating a 25% cut. They realize that “rich nations” (or more accurately, formerly rich nations) have rejected demands that they fork over $30 billion immediately, followed by $100 billion annually – in “compensation,” “adaptation” and “mitigation” money, to pay for “damages” from more frequent, more intense climate changes that aren’t happening, but are supposedly caused by industrialized nations.

They also know Germany is expanding its coal use to generate affordable electricity, and reverse the skyrocketing energy prices and job destruction that are sending shock waves through the German economy. Poland too needs all the coal, oil and natural gas power it can muster, to build an economy that was held back for decades by war and Communist misrule.

CFACT has been an officially recognized NGO at United Nations conferences for nearly two decades. It will be in Warsaw throughout the two-week-long COP-19 confab, with a delegation headlined by Apollo VII astronaut Colonel Walter Cunningham, who is highly critical of UN climate pseudo-science.

We will steadfastly present the facts about natural and manmade climate change, and the absolute requirement that environmental policies must reflect genuine science and the needs of human beings.

We will also support Polish feelings about the UN climate treaty – which boil down to what Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher told the Soviet Union: “Let Poland be Poland!”

David Rothbard is president of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), which sponsors the award-winning www.ClimateDepot.com website.

The article Poland Recognizes The Real Global Warming Agenda – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Al Bawaba News

Kuwaiti officials disputed a news report alleging that donors in Kuwait are funding extremist Syrian rebels, but experts said the findings were unsurprising due to lax controls and steadily rising sentiment over the uprising.

Last week, The New York Times reported on the funding of rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad by private Kuwaiti donors, saying the transfer of millions of dollars in cash was contributing to the fracturing of the country and to the propping up of extremist elements.

“The report was unfair,” a senior official source in Kuwait told The Daily Star in response to a question on the report. “Kuwait will not allow itself to be used in a destabilization role.”

The source said that the Times’ report focused on the realm of private donations, which have posed a challenge throughout the world and are difficult to scrutinize, since individuals are allowed to travel with thousands of dollars in cash in their pockets.

He added that Kuwait had strict laws on donations by organizations, with intense scrutiny on foreign transfers to ensure that donations “go in the right direction.”

“We don’t accept that charity work is exploited for other reasons,” he said.

But he acknowledged the protracted conflict in Syria had inflamed the emotions of many people, prompting them to donate their own money to have an impact on the conflict, which has raged since 2011.

The source said that Kuwait respected freedom of speech but would issue a response to the Times story.

Kuwaiti news outlets reported on the story, with Kuwait Times, an English-language daily, republishing the Times’ article Thursday on its front page.

Annahar, another local daily, carried remarks by Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry undersecretary, Khaled al-Jarallah, who stressed that his country was cooperating with the US and the United Nations on the issue of regulating charities, saying that charity work in Kuwait was “above suspicion.”

While some donated funds might go to legitimate humanitarian causes, analysts and experts said the problem of terrorism financing in Kuwait had persisted despite measures passed in recent years to control money transfers. The country’s formidable Islamist current and the challenges of clamping down on smaller-scale private donors both play a role in the phenomenon.

“Kuwait has long been a problem,” said Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury Department official who worked on terrorism and financial intelligence and senior fellow and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In 2008, Levitt co-wrote a report on terrorism financing, which noted that Kuwait had made clear progress in tightening controls on religious donation drives.

But the report said that the prevalence of Islamist ideology in Kuwait led to official tolerance of some preaching and fundraising on behalf of jihadist causes abroad. Another problem, Levitt said, is that Kuwait does not require currency reporting when individuals exit the country, “making it easy to smuggle cash to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

In June 2008, the Treasury Department designated a Kuwait-based charity, the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, for its support to terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda.

The U.S. and the U.N. have also increasingly been targeting Kuwaiti individuals for sanctions.

In January 2008, the U.N. added three Kuwaiti men to its list of individuals and entities tied to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, for offenses ranging from fatwas condoning 9/11 and suicide bombings to providing financial and logistical support to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and raising funds for terrorist organizations including Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, according to Levitt’s report.

Reports that donated funds are helping to finance extremists are “consistent with mounting signs that Kuwait is one of the major fundraising hubs for both Sunni and Shiite supporters of, respectively, the rebels and the Assad regime,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute fellow for Kuwait who has written extensively about Gulf politics.

“The fact that prominent public figures in Kuwait have been so outspoken in support of groups across the Syrian spectrum has itself strained sectarian relations within Kuwait.”

Ulrichsen said that Kuwait emerged as a hub for coordinating financial flows to rebel groups in Syria since it has more lax controls on transactions and charity work than Saudi Arabia or the UAE, which tightened their surveillance after the 9/11 attacks.

He said that it was difficult for Kuwait to stop citizens from providing cash to rebels through third parties, adding that the private nature of fund-raising, which takes place through tribal networks and other means, poses a challenge in Kuwait as well as the rest of the world.

Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum who has written extensively on sectarianism and Syria’s rebels, also said the findings were not a surprise.

“Private Gulf money in general has long been suspected as a source of funding for groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Ash-Sham [Greater Syria],” he said, referring to the powerful Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group known as ISIS.

Al-Tamimi has documented many of the expressions of solidarity with ISIS in the form of declarations of support in Saudi Arabia and other locations in the Gulf.

Al-Tamimi said that Kuwait in particular appeared to be a problem due to the prevalence of Islamist ideology among the wealthy. In addition, some Arab governments “turn a blind eye to an extent” to private donations as they try to prop up a Syrian rebellion that few states are willing to actively fund.

The impact in Syria, he continued, has meant greater financial influence for extremist groups such as ISIS, allowing them to establish urgently needed social services in towns and villages they control.

Original article

The article Kuwaiti Donors Funding Extremist Rebels In Syria? appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IRIN

Limited humanitarian access continues to have an adverse effect on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in southeastern Bangladesh. Aid workers and activists say Rohingya communities fear that what little support they have might disappear as a result of threats made by the Bangladeshi government to further limit humanitarian activities.

“When we hear the humanitarians might leave I feel really bad. Whatever [medical] treatment and support we get, we wouldn’t get it anymore,” said Munrul Indrus, a Rohingya employee of an international humanitarian organization in the Cox’s Bazar area, who declined to give his real name. “At least now we have a latrine and running water and some [medical] treatment – none of those would be there anymore,” he told IRIN.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are more than 200,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh, of whom only 30,000 are documented and living in two government camps assisted by the agency, both within 2km of Myanmar. The vast majority live in informal settlements or towns and cities with scant or no assistance.

UNHCR is only allowed to assist those who registered before 1992, when the process was discontinued by the government, leaving most Rohingya – an ethnic, linguistic and religious minority who fled en masse from neighbouring Myanmar decades ago – undocumented. Under Myanmar law, the Rohingya are considered stateless.

This leaves the hundreds of thousands who arrived subsequently in Bangladesh without access to documentation or registration, and living in what Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) describes as “deplorable conditions,” in their latest activity report.

Assistance for the Rohingya has been precarious for some time. In July 2012 the Bangladesh government ordered three prominent international NGOs – MSF, Action Contre la Faim (ACF), and Muslim Aid – to cease aid to the Rohingyas in and around Cox’s Bazaar, sparking renewed concern about the deteriorating situation, including increased levels of malnutrition and an environment rife with abuse and impunity.

Dhaka has long insisted that the presence of humanitarian aid organizations in Rohingya communities creates a “pull factor” for other Rohingya to enter the country. It has blamed bouts of sectarian violence between Muslims and Buddhists in Bangladesh on the persecuted minority from Myanmar and has restricted their movement.

In June 2012, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister declared that the government would not be opening the country’s borders to those fleeing sectarian violence in Myanmar, even though UNHCR had requested that the border be kept open.

More than 176,000 people are now in need across the frontier in Myanmar, following two bouts of inter-communal violence between Buddhist ethnic Rakhine residents and Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine State in June and October 2012, which left 167 people dead and more than 10,000 homes and buildings destroyed, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

In Myanmar, 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly Rohingya Muslims, are living in more than 70 camps and camp-like settings, with another 36,000 vulnerable people living in 113 isolated and remote host communities in Minbya, Myebon, Pauktaw, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, and Sittwe in Rakhine State.

Falling health indicators

In 2010, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a US-based human rights organization, found that acute malnutrition rates in children under the age of five were above 18 percent in some unregistered Rohingya settlements in Bangladesh, exceeding the “critical” 15 percent threshold set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to Refugees International, a UK-based advocacy organization, in 2013 malnutrition rates in one unofficial camp were double the emergency threshold, with 30 percent of the camp population malnourished.

Calling the camps “open-air prisons”, PHR alleged that “refugees are being left to die from starvation”.

But without a proper account as to how many Rohingya are actually in the country, it is difficult to move forward. “There is a general knowledge in Bangladesh that there are many more Rohingya in the country [than those in registered camps],” said Stina Ljungdell, the UNHCR representative to Bangladesh.

A few organizations operate in both registered and unregistered camps: ACF works to address malnutrition and sanitation, but aid restrictions hamper wider assistance.

Violence against women a major concern

“When one of the local men broke into my house and started to rape me, all of my neighbours knew it, but they didn’t do anything because they know there is no justice system for refugees,” said Binara Salil (not her real name), 38, a Rohingya mother of three who lives in a UNHCR-administered camp.

She reported the rape to the camp administration and the UNHCR immediately afterwards, but it was two to three months before a security guard was stationed temporarily at her home, and the perpetrator was never punished.

Experts also point to growing violence against the Rohingyas, stressing the need for access to justice.

The environment around some of the Rohingya settlements has become more aggressive recently, “with fights breaking out and an increase in violence against women,” Melanie Teff, a senior advocate for Refugees International, told IRIN from London. “Without registration or any legal status in Bangladesh, refugees who fall victim to such violence have no legal recourse,” she said.

Desperate situations call for desperate measures

Without food aid, unregistered people are forced into illegal activities to survive.

“We have latrines and water, but people also need housing and food. As we don’t have it, we have to go find work to pay for it,” said Indrus. In January 2013, the UNHCR released a statement saying that “people [living outside the official camp] have found informal ways to survive without government or UNHCR support.”

But such coping methods can also put people in danger of abuse and arrest. “Whenever we leave our homes to seek work, there are now two check posts even before we reach the first town. If we get caught, the police ask us for money or send us to jail,” said Indrus.

In Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, “strong competition over work, living space and resources is inevitable at a local level [and] the stateless Rohingya are left highly vulnerable,” MSF reported in 2010.

Humanitarian hands tied?

Critics say the sheer number of Rohingyas in Bangladesh signals a failed humanitarian effort, with an “embarrassing gap between the numbers in-country, and those officially recognized by the UN agency responsible for protecting them, and the host government,” said Chowdhury R. Abrar, professor of International Relations and Coordinator of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit at the University of Dhaka. Only 10 percent of all Rohingyas have international protection, he noted.

“Although UNHCR is not involved in the provision of assistance… [we have] for many years been advocating with the Bangladeshi authorities for a more inclusive approach to the displacement of all Rohingyas,” UNHCR’s Ljungdell said.

A 2011 review of UNHCR’s work with the Rohingya in Bangladesh said the agency had been unable “to develop an effective advocacy strategy” for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of unregistered Rohingya residing in “emergency-like conditions” in makeshift sites.

Abrar warns that the effects will not remain limited to Rohingya populations. “No disease outbreak is going to limit itself to the camps, for example; it will affect everyone in the area. The lack of humanitarian access to provide basic services will precipitate this.”

The article Bangladesh Aid Restrictions Impact Rohingyas – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Observer Research Foundation

By N Sathiya Moorthy

At the end of weeks of competitive, though not confrontational, politics on the streets and precedent-setting constitutional calculus in court rooms, Parliament and elsewhere, the ‘numbers’ have prevailed. Reflecting the dynamics of coalition politics in the Maldivian context, visible since the first multi-party presidential polls of 2008, Abdulla Yameen, officially the candidate of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) but supported by a near-equal number of voters from outside, won the nation’s presidency by a wafer-thin majority against former President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, leader of the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in a closely-fought second-round run-off polls on Saturday, 16 November 2013.

“We will work to make Maldives a peaceful nation, a nation that achieves progress. Will work for an all-inclusive economy,” Yameen said in his maiden national address immediately after being sworn in President by Chief Justice Ahmed Faiz Hussain, along with his Vice-President, Dr Mohammed Jameel Ahmed. “We will appoint capable people to the government, establish a small government, a government that achieves its goals,” the local media quoted President Yameen, who also said that the welfare of women and youth would be given special focus, with economic recovery and lessening government spending as the immediate goals. “We will work to promote nationalism,” President Yameen said.

Coalition stranglehold

The final results showed Yameen polling 111, 203 votes, or 51.39 percent vote-share, against the required minimum of 50-percent-plus-one vote. Nasheed got 105,181 votes, or 48.61 percent vote-share. In a total turn-out of 218,621 votes from an electorate of 239,165, or the highest-ever 91.41 percent under the multi-party electoral scheme, Yameen’s victory margin added up to 6,022 votes. In percentile terms, it was a 2.78 percent difference between the winner and loser – or, a mere 1.39 percent over the mandated minimum vote-share.

Clearly the support of Jumbhooree Party’s Gasim Ibrahim and his coalition partners for Yameen made the difference. Coming third with 48,023 votes (23.07 percent) in the first-round of the court-ordered re-poll on 9 November, a reluctant Gasim changed his ‘neutral’ stand to back the PPM nominee after his coalition partners from the first-round, particularly the religion-centred Adhaalath Party (AP). The arithmetic proved right, with only minor variations and without affecting the final tally.

Thus, Yameen, who had polled 25.35 percent vote-share in the annulled poll and improved it to a substantially high 29.82 percent in the first-round re-poll after incumbent President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik (5.13 percent) ‘retired’ from contest, benefitted from Gasim’s ‘transferrable vote-share’, possibly the only one of its kind in the Indian Ocean archipelago at the moment. The arithmetic is boxed in such a way that from Gasim’s first-round re-poll figure of 23.30 percent vote-share, a high 21. 57 percent has gone to Yameen in the second-round, and the remaining 1.73 percent to Nasheed, making up the final tally.

Leave aside the contribution of the Adhaalath Party (AP) and other alliance partners of the PPM in the second-round, the results clearly show that it is Gasim who matters to the voters of the Jumhooree Party. His one-time aides, including former president of the JP and MDP, Dr Ibrahim Didi, did not fit into the JP voters’ calculus. Didi and a few others had joined the MDP on the very eve of the second-round vote, but could not contribute much to Nasheed’s final vote-share. Or, so it would seem.

A succession of polls, instead of causing ‘voter-fatigue’, and ‘politics-fatigue’, as may have been anticipated, brought the best out of average Maldivians. From the then highest voter turn-out of 88.48 percent in the annulled polls to a marginally low 87.16 percent, the figure moved up by 4.25 percentage points – high under the circumstances — to 91.41 percent in the final round. The irony is striking as MDP’s Nasheed, who could have won the presidency with an additional 6,000 votes (approximately) in the first round of the re-poll, got an 8,500-plus votes more in the final round, yet lost.

It only goes to explain the continuing stranglehold of ‘coalition politics’ in the contemporary Maldivian context. It became visible when Nasheed defeated incumbent Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the second round of the 2008 polls, after securing only 25 percent vote-share in the first round. It will be even more visible in the upcoming local council polls in December, followed by the more-important parliamentary polls in May next.

Yet, the question will remain if the presidential candidates and/or their parties could ‘transfer’ their votes to the candidates chosen/backed by them in the two rounds of upcoming polls – or, would they be able to ‘identify’ candidates who could make up for possible losses, island or constituency-wise, as the case may be. Given that the MDP coalition has an absolute majority in the People’s Majlis’ just now, and has behaved in some questionable ways on some questionable issues – and others, too – the parliamentary proceedings from now on, and hence the polls next year, assume greater significance.

There may be a message or two for those outsiders harbouring anxieties about the return of Gayoom’s ‘autocratic rule’, though by proxy. To Gayoom should go the credit of democratisation of the Maldivian polity, that too when the otherwise divided opposition to his leadership was united only at the fringes. With the addition of close to 30,000 new voters in five years (209, 294 in 2008 to 239,165 in 2013), most of whom are first-time voters after turning 18 years of age, the dynamics of, and priorities in electoral politics in the country may have already begun shifting away from democracy-related issues, unknown to the outside world and not fully acknowledged by domestic players. This time around, President Gayoom was not the election issue – President Nasheed and his MDP instead were.

Inter-dependable, not inter-changeable

It should be said to the credit of President Nasheed and the MDP that they have almost doubled their vote-share over the past five years, against adverse circumstances in conventional political terms – displaying the fire and fight still retained in them. That they came very close to breaking the stranglehold of ‘coalition politics’ but failed does not mean that the presence of a strong, single party in the country can be wished away.

A lot will however depend on how the MDP relates to the existing and emerging circumstances – and how individuals within the party address their changed circumstances, from being the government-in-waiting to the reality of being in the Opposition for full five years, even if they returned to Parliament after next year’s elections. The question is who blinks first, between the party and the leaders, viz the new government and the new leadership, to create the kind of ‘comfort zone’ from within which all stake-holders can continue to don their new and due role in the nation’s political administration and/or politics.

Today, the MDP is not only the single largest party in the country in terms of registered membership but it is also the single largest party in electoral terms. The proven poll results have thus justified post facto, the international calls for ‘inclusive polls’ when Nasheed was faced with possible disqualification, in the name of the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’, which is still pending. ‘Inclusive’ the poll was also may have made it peaceful, free and fair.

Presidential Polls-2013 has shown that the leadership qualities of the party and its nominee were not a ‘democratic freak’ in 2008. President-elect Yameen was the first one to acknowledge it. Addressing the media with coalition partners, including PPM founder Gayoom, he cited the poll results and said that close to a half of the electorate was not with him, and he needed to carry them all with him.

In political and electoral terms, the MDP and President Nasheed have once again proved that the two are inter-dependable, yet may not be inter-changeable. In the coming days and weeks, as the party and the leader braces up to face the upcoming elections, the MDP may be introspecting on what (all) went wrong with its strategy and tactic, where personality and policy had become one and the same – did deliver a lot in five years and more, yet not just enough on their own.

For one thing, the new-generation voters of 2013 did not seem to have embraced the party and its democracy credentials as much as their earlier generation in 2008. For another, the party constitution does not now provide a designated position for President Nasheed, but it cannot afford to let him go just now. He himself will have to decide on his future course before the party can consider its. How the MDP negotiates this patch will be both interesting and inspiring to watch.

‘No harm to Nasheed, MDP’

In the post-victory news conference, every PPM coalition leader, from Gayoom onwards, stressed that they should put the past behind them and work for national reconciliation. Local media reported Gayoom as saying that the “future PPM government will not continue with a sense of retribution and that the coalition government will not harm Nasheed or the MDP”. It was possibly a reflection on the attitude and approach of the Nasheed presidency after Gayoom had lost power after 30 long years in office – but did not work through and through, contributing to the current unease and unsureness.

Every other speaker on the occasion spoke in reconciliatory tones. Among them, the religion-centric Adhaalath Party leader Imran Abdulla asked the President-elect “to work for unity”. He said that “opposition ideologies should also be granted due respect in the future”. All speakers thanked God for the electoral victory and swore by Islam, indicating where the ideological hitch may lie for being smoothened out.

‘Gracefully’ conceding defeat, President Nasheed indicated after an emergency meeting of the party’s national council that about 5,000 voters had made the difference to the final results. Nasheed extended the ‘grace’ further, to be present at President Yameen’s Inauguration with his wife, clearly reflecting the national mood for rapprochement and reconciliation for the larger good of the nation, its polity, democracy, development and population. Parliament Speaker Abdulla Shahid, now in the MDP, was present as the prime-mover behind the swearing-in ceremony, so were many party MPs.

Notable among the absentees was outgoing President Waheed, whose much-criticised early and silent exit from the country on the very eve of the second-round polling, citing his wife’s health condition as the reason, too may have caused the contesting parties and their cadres to ‘behave’ once the results were known. With the court-ordered continuance in office behind him after the conclusion of the second-round poll, Waheed’s early exit from the country meant that any re-poll hereafter would have to be conducted by Speaker Shahid, as per the constitutional provision. On the reverse side, the nation would have been forced to live with a ‘constitutional void’ and ‘political uncertainty’, which would not have bee to the liking of the people and polity of the country.

In his midnight news conference after the results were known, Nasheed also said that the MDP “should now focus on becoming an opposition party loyal to the State” – thus, leaving the past behind and focussing on the future. “The MDP will also focus on winning the parliamentary elections,” he said and promised that the “MDP will not incite violence” – a promise that the party has kept since the unsavoury events nation-wide, on 8 February 2012, a day after Nasheed’s untimely exit as President.

Reflecting the national mood, post-poll yet sounding as politically-guarded as President Nasheed, MDP parliamentary leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih too said that the party would “show a fine example of an Opposition party?Unlike in the past, the people will see the difference of an effective Opposition in holding the government accountable”. Ibu Solih also “assured that the MDP will in no way try to stymie the functioning of the government? We will show that a multi-party democracy can be effective in this country?We will observe the pledges made by President Yameen to the people and ? definitely support and cooperate with such efforts.” The MDP was in a minority in the Majlis during the short-lived Nasheed presidency and had problems that the Opposition was not cooperating with the Government in giving effect to the party’s poll pledges.

Given the member-strength and cadre-spirit of the MDP, for any true reconciliation of the kind to occur on the ground will have to be initiated by the new Government and President Yameen. The MDP’s response too should be positive. There are clear first issues that they can and should address if the situation were not to regress to past levels, something that Maldives cannot afford and Maldivians would not relish either. All political parties and leaders will need to remember that the voter is watching, and he has in him the right to punish them here and now, in the two rounds of elections that are now due within the next six months.

The Government has to provide the political space for the MDP to mainstream itself even more. The latter, given its current majority in the Majlis, should provide the required space and cooperation for the Government to operate within the four walls of the Constitution – as generally understood and accepted, and not as interpreted by the party over the past five years in general, and since President Nasheed’s exit from office in February 2012.

It can begin with the new Government reviewing the pending court cases against President Nasheed and some of his party colleagues, both parliamentarians and others. President Yameen having conceded, though in the reverse, that close to half the voters in the country had backed Nasheed, should go by the spirit of his mandate than the letter of the law. The MDP in turn should refrain from hijacking Parliament and parliamentary committees, where all they also have a majority, to sub-serve their political campaigns that may not hold legal and/or constitutional water, otherwise.

The continued Majlis ‘refuge’ of MDP parliamentarian Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, wanted in a criminal offence pertaining to liquor consumption, despite a court order for his appearance, is only a case in point. Under the changed circumstances and the nation’s appetite for peace and harmony, post-poll, the MDP parliamentary party and leadership may also have to review some of the committee proceedings that it had initiated at a different and difficult time for the party, so as to help the nation open a new chapter in political co-existence between the Government and the Opposition on the one hand, and the Executive and the Legislature on the other. Among the more recent of such decisions could the parliamentary resolution authorising the Speaker to appoint a separate security force under his care, in violation of the specific constitutional provision, entrusting the job to the nation’s Defence forces. If a review is needed and for valid reasons, it may have to be taken up separately and all over again.

The incoming Government will have to address issues pertaining to ‘Independent Institutions’ under the Constitution and take the political Opposition along – and in ways that facilitate the deepening and widening of the limitations of the democratic scheme, as they have understood its benefits, the latter as much from experience now as expectations earlier. In the present case, the perceived over-independence of sorts by some of these institutions may have rendered the Maldivian State over-dependent on such other institutions – contributing to constitutional challenges, if not outright calamity.

If there is an area where both President Yameen and the MDP Opposition with its parliamentary majority can start working together, it is on the nation’s frail and fragile economy. A one-time Finance Minister under President Gayoom, President Yameen can be expected to have a hands-on role in the economic management of the country, unlike his immediate predecessors even while retaining Finance Minister Abdulla Jihad of the Adhaalath Party (AP) in the job.

Hearty congratulations: India

As the closest and strongest neighbour with concern for Maldives’ stability all along, India has reiterated at every turn that it would do business with whichever government the Maldivians elected. Extending “hearty congratulations” from the Government and people of India to Yameen on his election, a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi did “welcome the acceptance of the verdict of the people of Maldives by all sides and commitment expressed to take the country forward on the path of stability, progress and development”.

The Indian statement recalled the high turn-out in the run-off polls, and also its peaceful manner of conduct. The US too has since congratulated Yameen on his election. The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), which had placed Maldives on its ‘agenda’ after President Waheed decided to stay on under Supreme Court advisory pending second-round polls on 16 November, restored by the nation’s highest judiciary against mid-stream advancement to 10 November, has since removed the nation from the said ‘agenda’. Incidentally, PPM founder and former President Gayoom went hammer and tongs against the CMAG once Maldives was put on the ‘agenda’, saying that the country should consider quitting the Commonwealth as it interfered with the nation’s sovereignty.

In his post-victory news conference, Yameen assured the “Maldivian people that a PPM government will foster relations with foreign countries similar to the good relations held during former President Gayoom’s administration”. Though Yameen did not mention India specifically, bilateral relations had blossomed under the Gayoom presidency, the high-point of which was India dispatching armed forces to thwart a coup bid in November 1988. The ‘stability’ of Maldives had influenced the Indian decision then as now.

Along with these are reports in recent years of the emergence of religious fundamentalism in Maldives, which is of concern for India’s own socio-political stability and internal security. Individual Indian’s perceptions of democracy, which India had tweaked over time to suit local conditions and conditionalities is another aspect. Maldives needs time and space to indigenise what essentially is a ‘hybrid, template model’ of democracy. Five years of democratic elections have already begun changing perceptions about their past for Maldivians. It takes time for ‘outsiders’ to understand and begin appreciating the same.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)

The article Maldives: The Stranglehold Of Coalition Politics Continues – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By RT

To keep Amsterdam clean, the city now hires chronic alcoholics. For five cans of beer, tobacco and about $13 in cash per day they have to sweep the city’s streets. The new project aims at tackling anti-social behavior by keeping addicts busy.

Alcoholics start their work day at 9 am – not with brooms in hands, but rather with two cans of beer. They end their work 3 pm – also with a can of beer. Sometime in the afternoon anti-social workers are offered a hot meal, which is served with two cans of beer.

For every day they turn up at work, the Rainbow Foundation that runs the project gives alcoholics, in addiction to beer, 10 euros ($13), half-a pack of rolling tobacco.

“This group of chronic alcoholics was causing a nuisance in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark: fights, noise, disagreeable comments to women,” Gerrie Holterman, who heads the Rainbow Foundation project, told AFP.

There are about 20 alcoholics working in the streets of Amsterdam now. They are split into two teams of around 10 and work three days a weeks.

“The aim is to keep them occupied, to get them doing something so they no longer cause trouble at the park,” Holterman said.

She believes, everyone benefits from the project, which is financed by the government and donations – streets are clean, alcoholics are busy and happy.

Addicts say they would not participate if they were not given beer.

“We need alcohol to function, that’s the disadvantage of chronic alcoholism,” 45-year-old Frank said.

Gerrie notes each person’s beer consumption. If she happens to leave her desk, the alcoholics themselves record how much they have drunk.

“They’re no longer in the park, they drink less, they eat better and they have something to keep them busy during the day,” Holterman says.

Alcoholics, who are taking part in the project voluntarily, say they are happy to be there as it gives their lives “some structure”.

“Lots of us haven’t had any structure in our lives for years, we just don’t know what it is, and so this is good for us,” Frank echoes.

As for drinking less, not everyone agrees. While some admit that after busy work day they “don’t necessarily want to drink”, Frank says he is still drinking the same, but it is now structured.

“When we leave here, we go to the supermarket and transform the 10 euros we earned into beers….,” he said.

But what alcoholics like is that Gerrie and the Rainbow Foundation gives them light, 5 per cent beer, not 11 percent or 12 percent.

This project is not the first experience for the Foundation. It was initially set up to help heroin addicts 35 years ago.
One of its projects – “drug rooms” in Amsterdam – lets drug users to use drugs in a safe environment.

They also run “underground tours” during which former addicts guide tourists around meaningful locations where they used to hang out.

The article Amsterdam Pays Alcoholics Five Cans Of Beer A Day To Sweep Streets appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Trend News Agency

By Fatih Karimov

The managing director of the Trade Promotion Organisation of Iran (TPOI) has said that the necessary infrastructures for boosting trade ties with Turkmenistan should be provided, IRIB reported on November 18.

There are some bottlenecks in Iran-Turkmenistan trade, TPOI head Valiollah Afkhami said, adding that Turkmenistan enjoys a notable potential to increase the volume of trade.

Iran mainly exports cement, potatoes and apples, types of flour and pipe fittings to Turkmenistan.

In July, the IRNA news agency reported that Iranian and Turkmen merchants plan to boost trade turnover by 100 per cent reaching $10 billion.

Iranian-Turkmen trade turnover reached some $5billion in the last solar year (end on March 21).

According to the Iran Custom Administration report, Turkmenistan exported some $244 million worth of gas during first three months of the current solar year. The value of imports was some $15 million in the same period.

Iran imported 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas worth $3.5 billion from Turkmenistan in the last solar year. This indicates a 50 per cent decrease compared to the previous solar year.

Iran is Turkmenistan’s second largest trade partner after Russia, the report said.

Iran’s highest foreign trade balance was with Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Egypt during the first quarter of the current solar year.

The article Iran Seeks To Boost Trade Ties With Turkmenistan appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By MINA

The European Parliament on Tuesday formally approved the seven-year budget for the European Union (EU), paving the way for financial aid to boost several economic sectors.

The so-called Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) was adopted by 537 votes to 126 during parliament’s meeting on Tuesday, allowing the EU to invest up to 960 billion euros (1.29 trillion U.S. dollars) in commitments and 908.4 billion euros in payments.

“This is a great day for Europe. The European Parliament has given its final blessing to the European budget from 2014 until 2020, thus bringing successfully an end to long negotiations,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

According to the EU, the budget will invest almost 1 trillion euros in some sectors could boost economic growth and employment.

At least 70 billion euros will be available for a significant contribution to job creation through the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, complementing national action in this field.

Around 80 billion euros, 30 percent more than in the current framework in real terms, will be allocated to research and innovation sectors aimed at improving Europeans’ quality of life and the EU’s global competitiveness.

The budget is expected to deliver 2.3 billion euros to support small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of Europe’s economy accounting for around 99 percent of all European businesses and providing two out of three private sector jobs.

“The shape, size and priorities of our new budget are clear. Businesses, regions, cities and farmers can plan their investments; researchers can conceive their projects, and students can start to prepare for their stay abroad,” Barroso added. (1 euro = 1.35 U.S. dollars).

The article EU Parliament Formally Approves Seven Year Budget appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By RFA

By Richard Finne

A Spanish court on Tuesday ordered that international warrants of arrest be issued for ex-Chinese President Jiang Zemin and four other former senior leaders in a case brought by rights groups alleging crimes of genocide in Tibet.

The action by Spain’s National Court was pursued under the law of “universal jurisdiction,” raising the possibility that those named in the warrants could be taken into custody to face trial if they travel outside of China.

The court’s decision sends a “strong signal” to China’s leaders, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in a statement Tuesday.

“None of the leaders named, and others too, are likely to take the risk of traveling outside the [People’s Republic of China] as they could be arrested for questioning on the crimes they are accused of,” ICT said, adding, “All the leaders face the possibility of bank accounts overseas being preventively frozen.”

Last month, Spain’s National Court agreed to hear charges of genocide in Tibet against former Chinese president Hu Jintao, drawing a rebuke from Beijing, which called the move an “attack” on the Chinese government.

China consistently rejects all outside criticism of its policies in Tibet as interference in its internal affairs, claiming that the complaints are orchestrated by a group, or “clique,” led by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

The Spanish legal system recognizes the universal justice principle, under which genocide or war-crimes suspects can be put on trial outside their home country, but Spanish law requires that any case brought forward must directly involve Spain or a citizen or resident of Spain.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Thubten Wangchen, an ethnic Tibetan, is a Spanish citizen.

Political, military links

Announcing its ruling Tuesday, the Spanish court pointed to “indications of participation” by Jiang and four other former leaders in genocide and crimes against humanity in Tibetan areas of China given their “political or military responsibility” at the time the acts were committed.

Also named in the warrants were Li Peng, China’s premier during periods of crackdown in Tibet in the late 1980’s and early 1990s; Qiao Shi, state security chief during a period of martial law in Tibet in the late 1980s; Chen Kuiyuan, ruling Chinese Communist Party Secretary in Tibet from 1992-2001; and Deng Delyun, former head of family planning in the 1990s.

In pursuing its investigation, the court had considered testimony from former Tibetan political prisoners and international experts, and had reviewed extensive documentation of abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings, committed by Chinese security forces in Tibet.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Spanish activist Alan Cantos hailed the latest court decision, though he said the orders for arrest may not be quickly carried out.

“It’s not easy, but it’s a big step,” said Cantos, president of Spain’s Tibet Support Committee, which brought the case pursued by the National Court.

The former Chinese leaders named in the warrants are “stuck in their own country, and a competent court is pointing a finger at them,” Cantos said.

“It’s so they don’t have it too easy,” he said.

The article Spain: Court Orders Arrest Warrant For Ex-Chinese President appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By RFE RL

(RFE/RL) — Washington and Kabul have agreed on the text of a security pact ahead of the opening of the Loya Jirga in Kabul on November 21.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made the announcement in Washington on November 20, hours before the traditional assembly of some 3,000 elders and other leaders begins in the Afghan capital.

He said he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai had agreed on the final language of the bilateral security agreement, which will govern the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission ends next year, but did not provide details.

He also said there was no discussion whatsoever of the possibility of a U.S. apology to Afghanistan during U.S.-Afghan talks about the pact and that Karzai had not asked for an apology.

The article Loya Jirga To Open With US-Afghan Security Pact Text Finalized appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IRIN

Aid efforts in the Philippines are intensifying since Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) struck, tearing through 36 provinces on 8 November. Over half a million men, women and children are homeless and living in the open, desperate for food, safe drinking water, basic shelter and sanitation.

“We’re making progress, but huge challenges remain,” the UN’s Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator ai, Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, told IRIN in Tacloban city, one of the worst affected areas. “The needs in some parts of the affected zone are absolutely immense”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says some 13 million people were affected by the category-5 storm, which displaced over four million and forced about 400,000 into more than 1,000 evacuation centres.

Over 4,000 people lost their lives and around 18,000 were injured, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), reported on 20 November. Over 650,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

The UN Children’s Fund estimates 4.9 million are at risk of malnutrition, and the World Food Programme says more than two million need emergency food assistance.

The Philippines government has mobilized relief operations under conditions that prompted the international humanitarian community to declare the highest level of emergency response, making this one of the biggest humanitarian actions of 2013. On 12 November, a humanitarian response plan was launched, seeking US$301 million for the UN and its partners to provide emergency food, shelter, clean water and sanitation, and health services for six months.

OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service said on 20 November funding of the Typhoon Haiyan Action Plan reached 37 percent, but much more is urgently needed.

The article Philippines Typhoon Relief Intensifies appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Albany Tribune

Today, Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Mark Begich (D-AK) introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) urging Congressional approval as a condition for any American troop presence in Afghanistan past 2014.

The Administration is reportedly negotiating an agreement that could keep as many as 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan for another ten years.

“It is long past time to end the longest war in American history and bring our sons and daughters home,” Senator Merkley said. “The American people deserve to weigh in and Congress should vote before we decide to commit massive resources and thousands of troops to another decade in Afghanistan. These are resources that could be used here at home creating jobs, improving education, and cutting the deficit.”

“With our military involvement in Afghanistan winding down, it is vital for the elected representatives of the American people to approve or disapprove of further involvement past the 2014 timeline,” Senator Lee said. “This amendment protects the democratic rights of the American people to shape our foreign and military policy.”

“When Congress authorized the war in Afghanistan it was not intended to last forever,” Senator Wyden said. “It has now become the longest war in American history. If the president believes there are compelling national security reasons to require a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan after 2014 he should come to Congress and make that case.”

“After spending over a decade at war in Afghanistan, it is time to transition our troops home,” Senator Paul said. “This bipartisan amendment reinforces the fact that the president needs to consult the American people and their representatives in Congress before increasing our troop involvement in Afghanistan.”

“After over a decade of war and thousands of American casualties, we need to focus on supporting our veterans and doing some nation-building here at home,” Senator Tester said. “This amendment makes sure Congress and the American people have a say when it comes to our national priorities.”

“After years of war in which thousands of soldiers lost their lives and billions of dollars have been spent, Americans have the right to expect checks and balances should the President deviate from the current plan to end combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.” said Sen. Begich. “This amendment ensures that the President can’t make unilateral decisions that commit our country to another decade of conflict in Afghanistan.”

After 12 years and nearly $600 billion spent, the Administration has declared that the war in Afghanistan will be wound down by December 31, 2014. However, the Administration is also negotiating an agreement with the Government of Afghanistan that would set guidelines for U.S. troops to remain in training, support, and counter-terrorism roles through at least 2024.

In June, the House of Representatives approved a similar amendment to the NDAA stating that it is the Sense of Congress that if the President determines that it is necessary to maintain U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, any such presence and missions should be authorized by Congress. The House amendment passed by a robust, bipartisan 305-121 margin.

The article Senators: Congress Should Vote On Keeping Troops In Afghanistan Past 2014 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By James M. Dorsey

When Burak Karan, an up and coming German-Turkish soccer star, was killed last month during a Syrian military raid on anti-Bashar al Assad rebels near the Turkish border, he joined a list of football players turned militants who were in the Middle East and North Africa or had roots in the region or in Islam.

In contrast to Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel a decade ago who were rooted in a West Bank soccer team, the 2004 Madrid train bombers who played the beautiful game together or several Saudi players who joined the anti-American jihad in Iraq following a fatwa or religious ruling by conservative Muslim preachers denouncing football as a game of the infidels, it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Karan was driven to give up his promising soccer career by a radical interpretation of Islam or a deep-seated humanitarian concern for the victims of brutal wars like that in Syria.

What Mr. Karan shared with players-turned-jihadists as well as various jihadist leaders including Osama Bin Laden, Hamas Gaza foreman Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was a deep-seated passion for the sport and that their road towards militancy often involved an action-oriented activity, soccer. Mr. Karan’s case is nevertheless more similar to that of Yann Nsaku or Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, individuals who radicalized, rather than the Hamas or Madrid bombers or the Saudi players who turned militant in the context of a group.

Mr. Nsaku, a Congolese born convert to Islam and former Portsmouth FC youth center back, was one of 11 converts arrested in France a year ago on suspicion of being violent jihadists and for “suspected Islamic terrorist plotting of anti-Semitic attacks,” according to French police. Police said the group aimed to spark a “war across France” with the intention of imposing Islamic law.

A 19-year old, 6ft 2ins player, Mr. Nsaku was signed in 1998 by Portsmouth from Cannes FC but never made it into the troubled 2008 FA Cup winners’ first team. His promising career ended in 2011 when he suffered a knee injury.

Mr. Trabelsi, , a Tunisian who played for Germany’s Fortuna Düsseldorf and FC Wuppertal, was arrested and convicted in Belgium a decade ago on charges of illegal arms possession and being a member of a private militia. Mr. Trabelsi was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In all cases, soccer proved to be a fruitful grooming if not recruiting ground. Mr. Karan may not have been recruited off the pitch and instead have reached out to individuals or groups who could him help join a militant cause. However, men like assassinated Bin Laden and Messrs. Haniyeh and Nasrallah recognized the game’s useful bonding and recruitment qualities. It brings recruits into the fold, encourages camaraderie and reinforces militancy among those who have already joined.

Unlike Mr. Nsaku, 26-year old Mr. Karan, who adopted the nom du guerre Abu Abdullah at-Turki, appeared to be destined for stardom, before he opted out at age 20 in favor of the Syrian struggle. He had played internationally seven times for Germany alongside soccer giants as Sami Khedira, Kevin-Prince Boateng and Dennis Aogo.

Mr. Karan’s death by a bomb dropped by the Syrian air forces in the village of Azaz, near the Turkish border became public in a an almost seven-minute You Tube video believed to have been posted by an unidentified Islamist group. Amid ideological justifications of jihad and pictures of him with children whose faces are unidentifiable but are believed to be his sons who together with his 23-year old wife travelled with him to Syria as well a Kalashnikov rifle, Mr. Karan asks his mother in Arabic not to bemoan his death. Speaking to German media, Mr. Karan’s brother Mustafa cast doubt on the video saying Burak struggled to speak Arabic.

A text in Arabic and German cautioned “not to assume that those who died on Allah’s way are dead. No. They are alive with their Lord and being taken care of… Those that listened to Allah and the Messenger (Prophet Mohammed) after they suffered a wound – for those among them who do good and are fearful of God, there will a fabulous reward.”

Mr. Karan’s jihadist history appears to suggest that he prepared for his engagement in Syria alongside an estimated 200 other Germans mostly of Turkish origin, while in an Al Qaida training camp in Pakistan. German intelligence sources said Mr. Karan had first appeared on their radar because of his contacts with Emrah Erdogan, a German Turk, who was arrested a year ago in Tanzania on suspicion of involvement in the bombing of a Kenyan shopping center and extradited to Germany, and according to German news magazine Der Spiegel, with Austrian-Egyptian imam Mohamed Mahmoud.

Mr. Emrah is on trial in Frankfurt on charges of being a member of Al Qaida in Pakistan and of the Al Shabab in Somalia. He is alleged to have been in the Pakistan-Afghan border region in 2010 and to have then joined Al-Shabab.

Mr. Mahmoud was an imam at a mosque in the western German town of Solingen and leader of an Islamist group called Millatu-Ibrahim that was banned in Germany last year for “efforts against the constitutional order and against the concept of international understanding.” He evaded arrest at the time but has since been detained in Turkey where he is believed to be in prison.

Mr. Karan joined the rebels after collecting relief donations and sending food and drugs to Syria. “If he armed himself it was to protect transports. Was he supposed to throw stones? He always told me he doesn’t want to fight,” Mustafa told Germany’s Bild Zeitung.

The article Potential German Soccer Star Joins List Of Players-Turned-Jihadists – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Said Temsamani

U.S. policy toward Africa has been on autopilot for much of the past four years, following a laundry list of good intentions that established priorities for Africa’s well-being and U.S. security interests.

However, a truly sustainable and forward-looking U.S. policy toward Africa should refocus attention on Africa’s opportunity as an economic powerhouse of the future, a strategy that combines both domestic self-interest and an opportunity to help Africa move forward.

An emerging landscape of stable economies and growing democratic freedoms in much of Africa is allowing the continent, for the first time, to take advantage of its extensive natural resource endowments, its improving human capital, and its increasing attractiveness to global investors. U.S. policymakers have shown recent signs of understanding Africa’s position and are seeking to strengthen economic relations with African countries. They would be wise to formulate a comprehensive economic policy, not just with interagency coordination, but also in full partnership with the legislative branch, with the private sectors in America and Africa, and with African governments.

Morocco and because of geographical proximity and historical ties, Morocco will naturally look north to the European Union for trade and investment. Cultural differences are smaller than with the United States. A strong euro against the dollar makes the EU market more profitable for Morocco.

Moroccan exporters have established links with the EU market and adapted their production to the needs of that market. Moroccan companies some- times pass over opportunities to export to the United States because it is easier to deal with the European Union. But they will not successfully penetrate the US market unless strategies are implemented to put firms in contact with appropriate partners, familiarize them with the rules and standards, and establish a market presence in the United States.

With the right strategies, Morocco and the United States could reap greater benefits from the FTA. Morocco would improve its access to the US market. The United States could use Morocco as a platform for the entire Africa.

Morocco-US FTA represents a step in the right direction for the economic integration of the whole African continent. Pursuing this theme, the gains from the Morocco-US FTA could be significantly boosted if accompanied by a comprehensive process of regional integration in the Maghreb and Africa. Through the FTA, the United States could promote such integration by allowing for the cumulation of origin for products from neighboring Maghreb and African countries using a QIZ system, specifically by conditioning QIZ- type benefits on zero rate Moroccan tariffs on inputs from other Maghreb and African countries.

The experience of the EU Pan-Euro-Med cumulation systems is estimated to have increased trade flows among participating countries by 43 percent. In addition, the United States should encourage the regional harmonization of investment regimes, business regulations, customs procedures, and standards in key industries. Morocco, therefore could become an interesting trade and economic platform to American potential investors and at the same time African countries could benefit from this important trade agreement to access the American market.

The article US Could Use Morocco As Platform For African Market – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ramzy Baroud

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “the world’s most influential Jew”, Bernard-Henri Levy is number 45, according to an article published in the Jerusalem Post, on May 21, 2010. Levy, per the Post’s standards, came only two spots behind Irving Moskowitz, a “Florida-based tycoon considered the leading supporter of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem”.

To claim that at best Levy is an intellectual fraud is to miss a clear logic that seems to unite much of the man’s activities, work and writings. He seems obsessed with “liberating” Muslims, from Bosnia to Pakistan, to Libya and elsewhere. However, this would not qualify as a healthy obsession stemming from overt love for and fascination with their religion, culture and myriad ways of life.

Throughout his oddly defined career, Levy has done much harm by at times serving as a lackey for those in power, and at others leading his own crusades. He is a big fan of military intervention, and his profile is dotted with references to Muslim countries and military intervention from Afghanistan to Sudan and finally Libya.

Writing in the New York magazine on Dec 26, 2011, Benjamin Wallace-Wells spoke of the French “philosopher” as if he were referencing a messiah that was not afraid to promote violence for the greater good of mankind.

In “European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator”, Wallace-Wells wrote of the “philosopher [who] managed to goad the world into vanquishing an evil villain”. The villain in question is, of course, Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader who was ousted and brutally murdered after reportedly being sodomized by rebels following his capture in October 2011.

A detailed analysis by Global Post of the sexual assault of the leader of one of Africa’s most prominent countries was published in CBS news and other media.

Levy, who at times appeared to be the West’s most visible war-on-Libya advocate, has largely disappeared from view within the Libyan context. He is perhaps stirring trouble in some other place in the name of his dubious philosophy. His mission in Libya, which is now in a much worse state it has ever reached during the reign of Gaddafi, has been accomplished. The “evil dictator” has been defeated, and that’s that.

Never mind that the country is now divided between tribes and militias, and that the “post-democracy” Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was recently kidnapped by one unruly militia to be freed by another.

In March 2011, Levy took it upon himself to fly to Benghazi to “engage” Libya’s insurgents. It was a defining moment, for it was that type of mediation that empowered armed groups to transform a regional uprising into an all-out war involving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Armed with what was a willful misinterpretation of UN resolution 1973, of March 17, 2011, NATO lead a major military offensive on a country armed with primitive air defenses and a poorly equipped army. Western countries channeled massive shipments of weapons to Libyan groups in the name of preventing massacres allegedly about to be carried out by Gaddafi’s loyalists.

Massacres were indeed carried out but not in the way Western “humanitarian interventionists” suggested. The last was merely days ago, last Friday, when 43 people were reportedly killed and 235 were wounded as militiamen attacked peaceful protesters in Tripoli who were simply demanding Misrata militants leave their city.

These are the very people that Levy and his ilk spent numerous hours lobbying for. One of Levy’s greatest achievements in Libya was to muster international recognition of the National Transitional Council (NTC). France and other countries lead a campaign to promote the NTC as an alternative to Gaddafi’s state institution, which NATO had systematically destroyed.

In his New York Magazine interview, Levy was quoted as saying “sometimes you are inhabited by intuitions that are not clear to you”. The statement was sourced in reference to the supposed epiphany the “philosopher” had on February 23, 2011, watching TV images of Gaddafi’s forces threatening to drown Benghazi with “rivers of blood”.

Far from unclear intuitions, Levy’s agenda is that of the calculated politician-ideologue. Like a French version of the US neoconservatives who justified their country’s devastating war on Iraq with all sorts of moral, philosophical and other fraudulent reasoning. For them, it was first and foremost a war for Israel’s “security”, with supposed other practical perks, little of which has actualized. Levy’s legacy is indeed loaded with unmistakable references to that same agenda.

Israel’s right-wingers are fascinated with Levy. The Post’s celebration of his global influence was summed up in this quote: “A French philosopher and one of the leaders of the Nouvelle Philosophie movement who said that Jews ought to provide a unique moral voice in the world.”

But morality has nothing to do with it. The man’s philosophical exploits seem to exclusively target Muslims and their cultures. “The veil is an invitation to rape,” he told the Jewish Chronicle in 2006.

Philosophy for Levy seems to be perfectly tailored to fit a political agenda promoting military interventions. His advocacy helped destroy Libya, but still didn’t stop him from writing a book on Libya’s “spring”. He spoke of the veil as an invitation for rape, while saying nothing of the numerous cases of rape reported in Libya after the NATO war. In May 2011, he was one of few people who defended International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, when the latter was accused of raping a chambermaid in New York City. It was a “conspiracy” he said, in which the maid was taking part.

One could perhaps understand Levy’s hate for dictators and war criminals; after all, Gaddafi was no human rights champion. But Levy is no philosopher. A fundamental element of any genuine philosophy is moral consistency. Levy has none. A week after the Jerusalem Post celebrated Levy’s world influence, the Israeli daily Haaretz wrote of his support of the Israeli army.

“Bernard Henri Levy: I have never seen an army as democratic as the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” was the title of an article on May 30, 2010, reporting on the “Democracy and Its Challenges” Conference in Tel Aviv. “I have never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions. There is something unusually vital about Israeli democracy.”

Considering the wars and massacres conducted by the Israeli army against Gaza in 2008-9 and 2012, one cannot find appropriate phrases to describe Levy’s moral blindness and misguided philosophy. In fact, it is safe to argue that neither morality nor philosophy has much to do with Levy and his unending quest for war.

The article Bernard Henri Levy And The Destruction Of Libya – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Margaret Kimberley

Iran has never invaded or occupied another nation, it hasn’t killed civilians with drones, it never had any colonies, nor did it enslave millions of people or keep a huge portion of its population behind bars. Its political system is run by a class of conservative clerics and can’t be called democratic in the classic sense. Then again, the same can be said for countries who only choose leadership from among those given a stamp of approval by the wealthiest 1%. Despite these attributes, Iran is demonized by forces in the West who want that nation to exist only as a vassal state.

Because Iran refuses to give up its nuclear power capabilities western nations have exacted crippling sanctions which have impoverished its people and deprived them of food and medicine. This country is a target of imperialism and Zionism and literally cannot win, no matter how much it bows down to the wishes of western powers.

The United States is also in a no win situation with Israel, its alleged ally. Israel gets the lion share of American foreign aid and pledges of fealty from politicians at every level of government. In return for this largesse Israel routinely gives American presidents marching orders about what it does and does not want.

Right now Israel wants Iran to be completely destroyed as a political and economic force. Sanctions are never harsh enough and threats are never bellicose enough to please America’s “greatest ally.” President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are now like the school wimp who gets tired of being beaten up for his lunch money and they want to change the game, if only a tiny bit.

So it was inevitable that recent talks between Iran, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and China were doomed to be scuttled by Israel. Like his predecessors, Obama is punished by Jerusalem no matter how deftly he toes the line, especially because other states can be counted on to do Netanyahu’s bidding.

France has joined with Israel and with Saudi Arabia in quashing the true Arab spring, deciding who does and does not stay in power in Syria or Libya and finally in scuttling any chance for a nuclear power agreement with Iran. The Saudis and the French are equal opportunity crooks. The Saudis will give the French the right to build nuclear power plants there, the French sell the Saudis armaments and voila, a deal between two devils.

Israel and its most hard line American friends have been trying to push the United States into attacking Iran for many years. George W. Bush was stopped in 2007 when his own National Intelligence Estimate inconveniently reported that Iran had no nuclear weapons capability. Obama in his shrewdness concluded that it would be too difficult. He has not given up on American imperial design but there is a point beyond which the United States will not go. When Vladimir Putin stepped up to Obama and put an end to talk of attacking Syria, the US tacitly admitted that it wasn’t attacking Iran either.

Of course NATO nations, Russia and China all have nuclear weapons and so does Israel. The treachery is all the more despicable because Iran shouldn’t be forced into negotiations in the first place. As a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty it has the right to develop nuclear energy and in fact it has the right to develop nuclear weapons, something its arch-enemy Israel has already done. But rights are only for people and governments who have the power to exercise them.

At the eleventh hour the French threw a monkey wrench into the agreement. Like a good little supplicant, Secretary of State John Kerry denied what was true to anyone who was paying attention and instead blamed the Iranians who are in fact the most eager for a deal.

The Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif was driven to complain on twitter. Apparently diplomatic circles are not unlike feuds between gossiping teenagers.

“No amount of spinning can change what happened within 5+1 in Geneva from 6PM Thursday to 545 PM Saturday. But it can further erode confidence”

“Mr. Secretary, was it Iran that gutted over half of US draft Thursday night? and publicly commented against it Friday morning?”

These talks will resume once again but will remain a farce. Not only are Israel and its fellow criminals eager to keep any agreement from taking place but they have enlisted the help of congressional accomplices like John McCain who have vowed to increase the disastrous sanctions.

Obama and Kerry don’t deserve any sympathy because they are in their own league of wrong doing. It is the people of Iran and of the whole world who are suffering. Imperialism and Zionism are true threats to peace in the world and the government of the United States is in the thrall of both.

The article Axis Of Evil: France, Israel, Saudi Arabia – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By CGNews

By Aisha Habli

The glow of the Arab Spring wore off in the media a while ago. Violence, internal division and widespread frustration have replaced the hopeful scenes of youth standing up to demand change. But have youth really stepped back from the frontlines of such change? I followed up with my peers, co-participants at an Arab Youth Leadership workshop earlier this year, to find out.

I first checked in with Marouane Bakit, a social activist in Libya and co-founder of a project, Sonaah Al Amal (Makers of Hope), which brings together youth of different races and ethnicities to discuss and engage in post-Arab Spring development. They are buoyed to continue their work due to the impact of some of their early results.

At the end of 2012, in post-war Libya, Marouane and a small team of youth visited the refugee camps in their city, Tripoli, to which hundreds of families have sought refuge from Bani Walid, Sirte, Tawergha and Misrata that were badly affected during the war. Marouane’s team was inspired to change the terrible conditions they observed – people were drinking seawater and kids were sleeping on the ground, with no shelter in cold weather.

They reported their findings to government authorities, who responded by relocating about 300 people who were living in the worst conditions to places with better living conditions, and later investigated the refugee camps in Tripoli. Marouane reports, “This success gave us a push, so we did a video report on refugee camps in Tripoli which was broadcast on the most widely-viewed Libyan TV channels. We were a young and small organization, and we changed the lives of 250-300 people in the camps. We were a positive change in their lives.”

In Palestine, social activist Ohood Murqaten describes how many youth initiatives have been active in calling for national dialogue around the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. She mentions her involvement in The YaLa Young Leaders Online Academy (YLO@), a year-long educational program that teaches critical skills, empowers youth and serves as a communication platform for young leaders from the region. “For many this is the first time Arabs, Palestinians, and Israelis are getting together and studying and becoming friends. For many of the Israeli participants, this is the first opportunity they have had to sit and talk and listen to Palestinians and Arabs, and to learn that we have ideas, languages and creativity, and are educated,” Ohood tells me in an elated tone over Skype.

She recalls, “The conversations would often turn highly emotional, but there was never any arguing. During a cultural night, participants shared their music, food, and dance. In the Israeli session, we all danced the horah in a big circle, and during the Palestinian session, the Israeli participants joined in the dabke traditional dance, and wore the hatta (Palestinian traditional head dress) and for a while, we were all the same.”

Like Marouane and Ohood, other youth in the MENA region remain engaged, advocating for dialogue and youth engagement. Bassam Ghaber, an organiser at the Yemen Elections Monitoring Network (YEMN) mentioned that youth-led organizations have been working to promote a culture of comprehensive national dialogue and raising awareness on the importance of civil participation in their communities. And Najwa Uheba, another Libyan participant and activist, shares how youth initiatives in her country are tailored to critical current events. “Several youth initiatives advocate for nonviolent expression, particularly in demonstrations and protests,” says Najwa.

The desires of youth are simple. They want safety and security. They want to be free from armed conflict and they want to take part in the development taking place in their respective countries.

Achieving these lofty goals is not an easy process. Newly formed democratic bodies need to mature and create better mechanisms for public involvement, and in some cases new ones need to be created. Youth-led organisations in MENA also often struggle to become independent and self-sustainable.

Nonetheless, MENA youth are resilient and remain determined to be agents of positive change. Despite the frustration and the challenges, they have refused to give up, or to sit passively on the sidelines. We have a big role in carrying our communities forward even when the older generations may have grown tired, and we will continue to create positive change.

Aisha Habli works as a public relations and media specialist. She is a peace activist and a member of the Media Association for Peace and MasterPeace Lebanon. You can follow her on Twitter @HyperchickAisha.

The article MENA Youth Refuse To Step Down Despite Setbacks – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By CGNews

By Jessica Murrey

Genocide, school shootings, rape… it’s easy to express outrage after the fact. It is obvious that senseless violence is wrong. But what about the root cause?

Bias. Fear. Hate.

They are alive and kicking in every community. None of us is off the hook.

It could be towards people of different ethnicities, religions or ideologies. Or maybe you just think people who eat at McDonalds are ignorant. Or you think people who refuse to eat fast food are stuck up.

If we want to end violent conflict, we must eradicate prejudice, understand life in one another’s shoes and see conflicts as opportunities – not threats. We must discover constructive solutions to our mutual problems, rather than letting our relationships – or even the government – shut down.

This is the thinking behind Join the Search, the global movement to end violence. United Network of Young Peacebuilders, the Peace and Collaborative Development Network, and dozens more local youth organizations are already onboard. By International Day of Peace 2014, we’re aiming to get one million people to take the pledge to end violent conflict and join the movement.

Violent conflict means physical and sexual violence, but it also includes verbal abuse, bullying and systematic discrimination. Violent conflict is a root cause of hunger, poverty, low education and poor healthcare. It disrupts trade for decades and destroys the environment.

Eighteen of the world’s hungriest countries experienced recent violent conflict. While varying from conflict to conflict, civilian deaths in war have increased in the last century, up to 90 percent of all deaths, with the vast bulk of these being women and children. The total cost to contain violence is U.S. $9.5 trillion, equal to 11 percent of global GDP.

It has to end.

It starts with you and me, but it’s got to go global. Join the Search strives to raise awareness about the impact of violent conflict, shift attitudes on how relevant and preventable violent conflict is, and empower a network of people with the skills to handle conflict in their own lives.

That’s why my Marine and pacifist friends both took the pledge. It’s not about being a doormat. It’s not about changing your beliefs or who you are. It’s about changing your response to conflict. It’s about having the skills to create constructive dialogue in heated situations, with uncomfortable topics.

We’re all wary of clicktivism. So how does signing a pledge online help us end violent conflict? Each month pledgers receive one email with: 1) A Join the Search challenge to exercise their conflict-solving muscles, 2) an inspirational story from the field, showing peacebuilders in action and 3) an invite to a virtual event with amazing speakers all over the world.

Each month the JTS Challenge will dare us to better ourselves by pushing us to look outside our own selective scope. The movement provides loads of opportunities to connect with other pledgers all over the globe, giving us a chance to understand violent conflict in a different context or country. When you put it all together, that is a mass of people on every continent equipped to constructively deal with conflict on both an individual and global level.

If a million people thought twice before writing off the other side, led their communities to constructive solutions during troubling times, and believed that ending violence was possible, think of how the world could change.

It starts with you and me. Take the pledge today.

Jessica Murrey is the Communications Manager at Search for Common Ground. This article was first posted on The Huffington Post on 7 November.

The article An Online Pledge That Might Actually Change The World – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Bigger dishes can cause adults to serve and consume more food, but a new study reveals that kids are also vulnerable to this bowl-size bias. Researchers Brian Wansink, Koert van Ittersum, and Collin Payne found that children will not only ask for more food to fill larger bowls—they’ll also eat 52% more.

To examine how bowl-size impacts the amount of food kids request, researchers served 69 preschoolers a familiar beloved breakfast—sugary cereal—in either small 8-oz bowls or large 16-oz bowls. Adults poured the sweetened cereal and milk in small increments, continually asking “Is that enough or do you want more?” until the kids indicated that they were satisfied with the amount served. No consumption was allowed in this study. Results showed that when using the bigger bowl, kids requested 87% more cereal—regardless of their age, gender, and BMI.

Bowl size may have a massive effect on how much food kids say they want, but will they actually eat the enormous portions they ask for? To find out, the researchers ran a second similar study of 18 kids ages 6-10, at summer camp. As in the first study, adults served the kids cereal and milk in increments until the kids indicated that they had enough food. This time, however, the researchers used secret scales embedded within the tables to weigh each cereal portion before and after the kids ate to measure exactly how much they consumed. The kids requested 69% more cereal and milk when using large bowls and also ate52% more! In addition to taking and eating more, kids with large bowls also wasted about 14% more food than those with small bowls. Interestingly, 78% of the kids in this study reported using the same size bowl as their parents at home, which may be causing them to over- serve and overeat.

Bigger bowls cause kids to request nearly twice as much food, leading to increased intake as well as higher food waste. Based on these findings, decreasing the size of plates and bowls may be an easy way to prevent kids from over-consuming. Having a separate set of smaller dishware for children may be a simple solution for caregivers who are concerned about their kids’ caloric intake!

The article Large Dishes Increase How Much Cereal Kids Request, Eat And Waste appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Tropical Cyclone 04B has strengthened and been renamed “Helen” as it slowly nears landfall in southeastern India.

On Wednesday at 1200 UTC/7 a.m. EST, Tropical Cyclone Helen had maximum sustained winds near 50 knots/57.5 mph/92.6 kph. It was centered near 15.5 north and 83.9 east, about 499 nautical miles/574.2 miles/924.1 km south-southwest of Calcutta, India. Helen was crawling to the northwest at 1 knot/1.1 mph/1.8 kph. A mid-level subtropical ridge (elongated area) of high pressure is expected to slowly build east of Helen and steer the storm on a more western track in the next day.

Current warnings are in effect for fishermen along the coasts of Andhra Pradesh, who are advised to return to shore.

Animated multispectral satellite showed a resurgence of deep convection over the low-level center of circulation. Satellite data also showed that the band of thunderstorms that appeared strong to the north has weakened and become fragmented. Visible/short wave infrared data from ESA’s METEO-7 satellite and rainfall data from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite was combined at the Naval Research Laboratory to create a composite image of the storm on Nov. 20. The image showed the clouds associated with Helen were mostly still over the open waters of the Arabian Sea, and that south of the center, light rainfall was occurring.

Helen is expected to intensify to 60 knots/69.0 mph/111.1 kph over the next two days and weaken before landfall. Helen is forecast to pass just south of the Yelichetladibba Palem and Nachugunta Reserved Forests in Andhra Pradesh, located in the coastal plain of Krishna Delta. Helen is expected to make landfall in the vicinity of Chinnaganjam in southeastern India.

The article Tropical Cyclone Helen Headed For Landfall In India appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

When Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first otherworldly steps in 1969, he didn’t know what a nuisance the lunar soil beneath his feet would prove to be. The scratchy dust clung to everything it touched, causing scientific instruments to overheat and, for Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a sort of lunar dust hay fever. The annoying particles even prompted a scientific experiment to figure out how fast they collect, but NASA’s data got lost.

Or, so NASA thought. Now, more than 40 years later, scientists have used the rediscovered data to make the first determination of how fast lunar dust accumulates. It builds up unbelievably slowly by the standards of any Earth-bound housekeeper, their calculations show – just fast enough to form a layer about a millimeter (0.04 inches) thick every 1,000 years. Yet, that rate is 10 times previous estimates. It’s also more than speedy enough to pose a serious problem for the solar cells that serve as critical power sources for space exploration missions.
A picture taken by Apollo 12 astronauts of a experiment package containing the Lunar Dust Detector.

“You wouldn’t see it; it’s very thin indeed,” said University of Western Australia Professor Brian O’Brien, a physicist who developed the experiment while working on the Apollo missions in the 1960s and now has led the new analysis. “But, as the Apollo astronauts learned, you can have a devil of a time overcoming even a small amount of dust.”

That faster-than-expected pile-up also implies that lunar dust could have more ways to move around than previously thought, O’Brien added.

In his experiment, dust collected on small solar cells attached to a matchbox-sized case over the course of six years, throughout three Apollo missions. As the granules blocked light from coming in, the voltage the solar cells produced dropped. The electrical measurements indicated that each year 100 micrograms of lunar dust collected per square centimeter. At that rate, a basketball court on the Moon would collect roughly 450 grams (1 pound) of lunar dust annually.

Comparing the effects on cells from dust and from damaging high-energy radiation from the sun, O’Brien found that long-term dust accretion could diminish the output from shielded power supplies of a lunar outpost more than even the most intense solar outbursts.

Because the threat posed by radiation damage was recognized early on, solar-cell makers fortified their devices against that sort of harm. Yet, “while solar cells have become hardier to radiation, nothing really has been done to make them more resistant to dust,” said O’Brien’s colleague on the project Monique Hollick, who is also a researcher at the University of Western Australia, in Crawley. “That’s going to be a problem for future lunar missions.”

The work is detailed this week in Space Weather, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

Answers from Apollo

Before Apollo 11 blasted off to the Moon in 1969, NASA scientists realized the Lunar Module would likely kick up a large amount of lunar soil on takeoff, potentially coating nearby science experiments with dust. Detachable covers would require either a small explosive or a physical mechanism to remove after the astronauts left, creating more engineering challenges and room for failure.

“Then I asked what I thought was a pretty common sense question,” recalled O’Brien. “If we’ve got to guard ourselves against damage from the lunar module taking off, who’s measuring whether any damage actually took place; who’s measuring the dust?”

O’Brien proceeded to quickly invent the Lunar Dust Detector experiment as a small add-on device to the larger experiments. Requiring little power and weighing only 270 grams (0.6 pounds), the dust detector reported back to Earth alongside the non-scientific housekeeping data.

“It really got a free ride,” O’Brien said.

The detectors flown on Apollo 12, 14 and 15 operated until NASA shut them off in September 1977 due to budgetary concerns. While the detectors worked properly, NASA did not preserve the archival tapes of the data they collected. For three decades NASA assumed the dust detector data had been lost forever, until 2006 when O’Brien heard about NASA’s mistake and told them he still had a set of backup copies.

Lunar levitation

Each detector in the experiment had three solar cells, each covered with a different amount of shielding against incoming radiation. By comparing damage to the unshielded and shielded solar cells, O’Brien made his determination that dust, rather than radiation, caused the most degradation to the protected cells.

Previous model-based estimates of lunar dust accumulation assumed the dust came entirely from meteor impacts and falling cosmic dust. “But that’s not enough to account for what we measured,” O’Brien said.

With no atmosphere for wind, the Moon’s soil should be stagnant. However, O’Brien said a popular idea of a “dust atmosphere” on the Moon could explain the difference. The concept goes that, during each lunar day, solar radiation is strong enough to knock a few electrons out of atoms in dust particles, building up a slight positive charge. On the nighttime side of the Moon, electrons from the flow of energetic particles, called the solar wind, which comes off the Sun strike dust particles and give them a small negative charge. Where the illuminated and dark regions of the moon meet, electric forces could levitate this charged dust, potentially lofting grains high into the lunar sky.

“Something similar was reported by Apollo astronauts orbiting the Moon who looked out and saw dust glowing on the horizon,” said Hollick.

The idea of levitating lunar dust could soon be confirmed by NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), launched in September. The spacecraft orbits 250 kilometers (155 miles) above the surface of the Moon, searching for dust in the lunar atmosphere.

While LADEE scours the Moon’s atmosphere, O’Brien looks back on a decades-long science experiment that finally has a result.

“It’s been a long haul,” said O’Brien. “I invented [the detector] in 1966, long before Monique was even born. At the age of 79, I’m working with a 23-year old working on 46-year-old data and we discovered something exciting—it’s delightful.”

The article Rediscovered Apollo Data Gives First Measure Of How Fast Moon Dust Piles Up appeared first on Eurasia Review.