By Kanya D’Almeida

Such stigma now surrounds the word ‘terrorist’ that most recoil from it, or anyone associated with it, as though from a thing contagious; as though, by simple association, one could land in that black hole where civil liberties are suspended in the name of national security.

For many Muslim citizens of the United States, such ostracism has become a matter of routine, forcing family members of terror suspects to double up as legal advocates and political supporters for their brothers, husbands and sons.

A budding nationwide movement to shed light on rights abuses in domestic terror cases is straining to turn that tide. One of its primary sites of congregation is the patch of concrete outside the New York Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC), where suspects deemed violent are held incommunicado.

But the families that gather at the monthly vigils held there, sponsored by a growing coalition known as the No Separate Justice Campaign, speak of a different side to the story: one that involves the government abusing post-9/11 laws to round up non-violent, law-abiding Muslims for exercising their rights to free speech and religion.

At a Mar. 10 vigil outside the MCC, IPS spoke with Tamer Mehanna, brother of Tarek Mehanna, a Pittsburgh-born pharmacist who is serving out a 17-year sentence in Terra Haute, Indiana.

Prior to his conviction on several counts including material support for terrorism, Tarek spent two years in 23-hour isolation, the MCC in New York being just one of the locations where he was all but prevented from communicating with the outside world.

Advocates say Mehanna’s case represents the ‘separate justice system’ for Muslims, in microcosm.

Tamer recounted how, between 2004 and 2008, the FBI courted his brother, using everything from polite requests to psychological intimidation to convince him to become an informant. When all failed, Tarek was arrested at an airport in New York City on his way to Saudi Arabia.

In addition to shelling out 1.3 million dollars in bail, Tarek’s family was shunned by their community in Massachusetts, spent endless hours in court and even gave up their jobs in order to advocate on his behalf.

“We are a very tight-knit family, and this has been hell for us,” Tamer told IPS. “When my brother was arrested, my mother had to watch her son, a respectable guy, being thrown on the ground and handcuffed like an animal in front of crowds of spectators – it was deeply traumatic.

“The second time he was arrested she was stronger, but it was my father’s turn to break down. Before this happened, I never even saw my father shed a tear,” he added. “But this just crushed him. He fell into a depression, into hopelessness, even lashed out at us for advocating on Tarek’s behalf.”

In their firm belief in Tarek’s innocence, the Mehanna family is not alone. An upcoming study co-authored by members of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) and Project SALAM (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims) documents hundreds of cases of Muslims imprisoned on terror-related charges despite a lack of evidence linking them with any tangible crime.

Former NCPCF Executive Director Stephen Downs told IPS that family members of what he calls ‘political prisoners’ – Muslim citizens tried and sentenced for nothing more than political views or religious beliefs – are deeply traumatised and often isolated.

“They share commonalities,” he said, “of being made to feel unwelcome at their mosques, losing their jobs, having people slip into depression. These outcomes are entirely predictable, but to have them deliberately inflicted on you by your own government is kind of shocking.”

Bi-annual conferences hosted by NCPCF attract 30 or 40 family members, who Downs says cherish the opportunity to come together and be heard, as respectable citizens with genuine grievances.

“They get to talk to the few people in the world who understand what they’re going through,” he said, “because if you haven’t experienced it, you just don’t get it.”

Extreme isolation

Family members speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity said their isolation from the community is nothing compared to the extreme forms of solitary confinement imposed on their loved ones, most of whom are housed in what the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) calls Communication Management Units (CMUs).

According to Alexis Agathocleous, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), CMUs came quietly into existence during the George W. Bush administration, the first in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2006 and the second in Marion, Illinois in 2008.

“These units are quite unparalleled within the federal prison system,” Agathocleous told IPS. “They segregate prisoners from the rest of the population and impose very strict restrictions on prisoners’ ability to communicate with the outside world – this translates to drastically reduced access to social telephone calls and visits, and when visits do occur they are strictly non-contact.”

Of the roughly 80 prisoners held in CMUs, Agathocleous estimates that between 66 and 72 percent are Muslims, despite the fact that Muslims make up just six percent of the federal prison population.

He referred to this significant over-representation as “troubling”, adding, “There seems to be the use of religious profiling to select prisoners for CMU designation.”

Speaking at a rain-soaked vigil outside the MCC in early April, Andy Stepanian – an animal rights activist who spent six months in the CMU at Marion – said the Muslim men he met there were “exceptionally generous and caring.”

“There has not been a single night in the four and a half years since I’ve gotten out that I’ve not either had a nightmare or stayed up for hours wondering, ‘Why was I the lucky one who got out? Is it just because of the pigment of my skin?’” Stepanian said.

In 2010 CCR filed litigation representing several inmates housed in CMUs, challenging both the arbitrary and seemingly retaliatory nature of the designation, which is made worse by the fact that the BoP offers “no meaningful process through which [prisoners] can earn their way out – no hearing, no discernible limit on the amount of time someone can spend in a CMU and no meaningful criteria that a prisoner can work at in order to [gain] their release,” Agathocleous said.

Those fortunate enough to afford the monthly trips out to Indiana and Illinois have recorded their testimony of these tightly controlled visits, painful on both sides of the Plexiglas screens that separate loved ones.

At a recent NCPCF conference, Majida Salem, wife of Ghassan Elashi, recounted how her 12-year-old Down’s syndrome child refused to enter the visitation room at Marion.

“He cried and said, ‘It’s an ugly visit. Baba no touch… it’s bad,’” Salem said. “To me this is so merciless, keeping a man who did nothing but feed widows and orphans locked up in a CMU… for 65 years.”

France has information but no solid proof that the Syrian government is still using chemical weapons, President Francois Hollande said Sunday.

“We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,” the French president said in a radio interview after he was asked about reports coming out of Syria that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is still using chemical weapons, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

“What I do know is what we have seen from this regime is the horrific methods it is capable of using and the rejection of any political transition,” he told the Europe 1 radio station, according to AFP.

Also speaking out on the matter, foreign minister Laurent Fabius told the radio station that France had recieved “indications, which have yet to be verified, that there have been recent chemical attacks.”

Fabius noted that the latest indications are “much less significant than those in Damascus a few months ago but very deadly”, and had taken place near Syria’s border with Lebanon, in the northwest of the war-torn country.

Syria has until June to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal under the guidelines of a U.S.-Russia brokered deal that was reached last year. If Damascus fails to comply, it may face strict penalties and the threat of international and U.S. airstrikes, according to AFP.

The chemical weapons agreement came about last year after a deadly chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Damascus killed up to 1,400 people. The West blamed the attack on Assad’s regime, as it was known to have used chemical weapons against civilians in the conflict previously.

Also on Sunday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical watchdog overseeing the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, said that Damascus has so far surrendered 80 percent of its chemical weapons, according to Reuters.

Original article

By Mladen Dragojlovic

Uncertainty about the rebuilding of the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka has ended, as the Turkish International Co-operation and Development Agency (TIKA) donated the money needed to complete the years-long project.

TIKA will finance all necessary reconstruction in order to restore the mosque, which was erased from the city landscape in May 1993. Ferhadija, which had stood since 1579, was one of 16 mosques in Banja Luka that were destroyed during the 1992-1995 conflict.

Efforts to rebuild Ferhadija have been under way since 2001. Citizens and religious officials say recent progress on the project is an indication that relations are being smoothed between Serbs and Bosniak Muslims in the city.

TIKA hopes to have the prayer space finished by October and to have the entire reconstruction finished by the end of the year.

Ferhadija has cultural and historic value and is a monument of importance in the joint history of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Turkey, said Zulkuf Oruc, TIKA’s co-ordinator for BiH.

During a recent visit to Ferhadija, Oruc said the mosque belongs to every Banja Luka citizen and that they must be proud to have such a valuable building in their city. Oruc declined to say how much TIKA is donating to complete the project because the funding is a gift.

More important for Banja Luka citizens is the fact that reconstruction of Ferhadija has helped to improve relations between Serbs and Bosniaks in the city. The Serb-Bosniak relationship in Banja Luka had previously been strained for years. During an anti-Bosniak demonstration in May 2001, the year reconstruction of the mosque began, several buses were set on fire and two Bosniaks were stoned to death.

Ferhadija imam Vahdet Alemic told SETimes that the mosque had significant architectural and historical value, not just for Bosniaks in Banja Luka but for all citizens.

“In the past you would hear the sentence, ‘I’ll see you in front of Ferhadija,’ as place for meeting of people,” Alemic said. “Ferhadija remembers good and bad times in history but it must be stressed that different ethnic groups are involved in reconstruction. Some of them are Orthodox, some are Catholics or Muslims but they worked together on every detail of reconstruction.”

He added that more and more people are glad to hear the call for prayer in Banja Luka, which 10 years ago was impossible. Alemic said he feels citizens will be happy when Ferhadija reopens its doors.

Olivera Isovic, a second-hand shop owner from Banja Luka, said one building cannot ease a relationship between nations, but as a symbol and institution, Ferhadija is important for citizens and their relations.

“I think that Ferhadija was not supposed to be devastated at all. It was a dark time and some people in their heads were convinced that explosions and devastation of mosques in Banja Luka can erase the presence of Bosniaks,” Isovic told SETimes. “Ferhadija, as an institution, can make this easier because people see it every day and now most citizens look at it with understanding as a religious object, but not as a danger for their Serb identity.”

By Mladen Dragojlovic for Southeast European Times in Banja Luka — 17/04/14

With help from the Turkish International Co-operation and Development Agency, the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka is scheduled to reopen later this year. [Mladen Dragojlovic/SETimes]

Uncertainty about the rebuilding of the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka has ended, as the Turkish International Co-operation and Development Agency (TIKA) donated the money needed to complete the years-long project.

TIKA will finance all necessary reconstruction in order to restore the mosque, which was erased from the city landscape in May 1993. Ferhadija, which had stood since 1579, was one of 16 mosques in Banja Luka that were destroyed during the 1992-1995 conflict.

Efforts to rebuild Ferhadija have been under way since 2001. Citizens and religious officials say recent progress on the project is an indication that relations are being smoothed between Serbs and Bosniak Muslims in the city.

TIKA hopes to have the prayer space finished by October and to have the entire reconstruction finished by the end of the year.

Ferhadija has cultural and historic value and is a monument of importance in the joint history of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Turkey, said Zulkuf Oruc, TIKA’s co-ordinator for BiH.

During a recent visit to Ferhadija, Oruc said the mosque belongs to every Banja Luka citizen and that they must be proud to have such a valuable building in their city. Oruc declined to say how much TIKA is donating to complete the project because the funding is a gift.

More important for Banja Luka citizens is the fact that reconstruction of Ferhadija has helped to improve relations between Serbs and Bosniaks in the city. The Serb-Bosniak relationship in Banja Luka had previously been strained for years. During an anti-Bosniak demonstration in May 2001, the year reconstruction of the mosque began, several buses were set on fire and two Bosniaks were stoned to death.

Ferhadija imam Vahdet Alemic told SETimes that the mosque had significant architectural and historical value, not just for Bosniaks in Banja Luka but for all citizens.

“In the past you would hear the sentence, ‘I’ll see you in front of Ferhadija,’ as place for meeting of people,” Alemic said. “Ferhadija remembers good and bad times in history but it must be stressed that different ethnic groups are involved in reconstruction. Some of them are Orthodox, some are Catholics or Muslims but they worked together on every detail of reconstruction.”

He added that more and more people are glad to hear the call for prayer in Banja Luka, which 10 years ago was impossible. Alemic said he feels citizens will be happy when Ferhadija reopens its doors.

Olivera Isovic, a second-hand shop owner from Banja Luka, said one building cannot ease a relationship between nations, but as a symbol and institution, Ferhadija is important for citizens and their relations.

“I think that Ferhadija was not supposed to be devastated at all. It was a dark time and some people in their heads were convinced that explosions and devastation of mosques in Banja Luka can erase the presence of Bosniaks,” Isovic told SETimes. “Ferhadija, as an institution, can make this easier because people see it every day and now most citizens look at it with understanding as a religious object, but not as a danger for their Serb identity.”

She added that relations between Serbs and Bosniaks in the city were better two or three years ago before politicians began a campaign for Republika Srpska independence.

Aida M., 24, left Banja Luka with her family during the war when she was 3 and returned a few years ago. She covers her head with a religious headscarf, and said that when she first came back to the city, her headscarf drew attention.

“Now is a different situation, but some pedestrians look confused when they see me,” she said. “The first time I was walking through Banja Luka, I could feel the views on my back, but now it became normal. In a few years, I hope young people will forget these differences and we will respect each other.”

She added that the rebuilding of Ferhadija is symbolically significant because it confirms the historical existence of Bosniaks and creates a positive atmosphere in city.

She added that relations between Serbs and Bosniaks in the city were better two or three years ago before politicians began a campaign for Republika Srpska independence.

“Now is a different situation, but some pedestrians look confused when they see me,” she said. “The first time I was walking through Banja Luka, I could feel the views on my back, but now it became normal. In a few years, I hope young people will forget these differences and we will respect each other.”

She added that the rebuilding of Ferhadija is symbolically significant because it confirms the historical existence of Bosniaks and creates a positive atmosphere in city.

By Jamel Arfaoui

In an effort to address the violence and insecurity in Libya, former rebels launched a reconciliation initiative.

Thwar, tribal figures and field commanders were among those gathered Tuesday (April 15th) in Tunis to discuss their proposal to bridge the gap between warring Libyan parties.

The initiative dubbed “For you Libya” aims to guarantee harmony for everyone, including Libyans who fled the country, the project’s media co-ordinator told Magharebia.

“We came to Tunisia to send them a clear message: go back home and you will not be harmed. As for those who are fugitives from justice and committed crimes against the Libyan people, we will ensure a fair trial,” Imad Soueri added.

There are no official figures about the number of Libyan families who chose to leave and settle in Tunisia, Soueri said. Unofficial estimates however, indicate that more than 600,000 Libyans stayed in Tunisia after the fall of the Kadhafi regime.

They reside mainly in a number of residential neighbourhoods in the Tunisian capital and its suburbs.

“The Libyan rebels who contributed actively in the revolution of February 17th gathered to achieve freedom, security and prosperity for all Libyans without exception and to raise grievances, achieve stability and establish a culture of civil society,” the head of the “For You Libya” project told TAP.

“This gesture aims to achieve national reconciliation among all Libyans and to create conditions for the return of Libyan families who sought refuge in Tunisia beginning three years ago,” Nasr Belkacem Miftah added.

For her part, political activist Ghaida Touati said, “We follow continuously how Tunisians chose a path to see their revolution succeed. In Libya however, it is the counter-revolution that is controlling the political scene, while those who have made sacrifices for the revolution are today on the side-lines.”

“Thus, what is happening today is considered part of the internal, regional, and international conflict. Each one has his own calculations,” she noted.

Tunisian political activist Maher Bouaziz said he feared that returnees to Libya could be mistreated.

“I noticed a big emphasis on repatriating Libyans residing in Tunisia without specifying the means they will use to achieve it,” he said. “I have learned this morning that they had opened an office to follow up on the repatriation of the displaced, the majority of whom are considered to be affiliated with the former regime.”

According to the organisers of “For you Libya”, the goal is to “accelerate the building of the security services while abolishing any parallel practices outside constitutional legitimacy”.

Dialogue and national consensus provide “the strategic basis for building the future of Libya, embracing everyone and strengthening and consolidating the Libyan social fabric”, the group said in a statement.

Of note, the Tunis forum was attended by the Libyan ambassador and consul general.

By Amitava Mukherjee

A China watcher named Claude Arpi has drawn attention to a recently posted article on the website of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission under China’s Ministry of Water Resources. The article speaks of the necessity and feasibility of diverting the waters of some rivers, including the Brahmaputra (called Yarlung Tsangpo in China), to meet water supply needs in China’s arid north and northwest. This further confirms the fact that, in spite of several denials, China is still progressing with the controversial project that could spell doom in not just large parts of India but Bangladesh as well.

If the article is to be believed, engineers in China’s Ministry of Water Resources have already completed a feasibility study. In 1999, Jiang Zemin, a former president of China, announced the grandiose “Great Western Extraction” plan which would transfer huge volume of water from Tibet to the Yellow River. In 2008, Prime Minister Singh raised the issue with the Chinese leadership, but Wen Jiabao, the then Chinese prime minister, replied that the water diversion plan was imperative due to China’s water insecurity.

There was a grain of truth in Wen Jiabao’s statement, and herein lies a grave source of tension in the Indian subcontinent. Fast-paced development has raised water imbalance in China to such an extent that the Chinese government has no other option but to look at unconventional replenishment options. Already 300 million people in China have no access to safe drinking water and 400 of the country’s 600 major towns are suffering from water shortages. While southern China has 80 inches of average annual rainfall, northern China – with massive population centers like Beijing with over 20 million people and Tianjin with 12 million – receives only 8-16 inches of annual rainfall on average. Groundwater levels under Beijing have fallen by 2.5 meters since 1999 and a staggering 59 meters since 1959.

The situation is very alarming, as water conflicts may soon become the main source of discord between India and China, replacing the two countries’ ongoing boundary dispute. China has 2.8 trillion cubic meters of water and stands fourth in the world in this regard. But due to the gigantic size of its population, China’s per-capita water reserves stand at only 2,300 cubic meters. The northern portion of the country has 44.3 percent of overall population and 59.6 percent of its arable land – but it has only 4.5 percent of the country’s water resources. The region has an average per-capita water reserve of 747 cubic meters, which is one third the national average.

The burning question then becomes: how much of the Brahmaputra’s water does China plan to divert? To all intents and purposes Beijing seems to have a two pronged strategy. The first one is called the South-North Water Diversion Project, which seeks to transfer 45 billion cubic meters of water from the Yangtze River to the north and northwest of the country. The first phase of this project has already gone operational. But the most ambitious strategy aims to shift 50 billion cubic meters of water from the Brahmaputra to the Yellow River. Experts believe that the energy generated from these proposed hydro-electric projects on the Brahmaputra might turn out to be useful in pushing up river waters through difficult mountainous terrains.

No one knows whether there are any Chinese plans for the river Indus, which also originates in Tibet. If Beijing were to divert the Indus, then several other Indian rivers, like the Sutlej, Kosi, Gandak, and Mahakali which get their replenishment from it would run dry.

The Brahmaputra is a trans-national river. It enters India from China at Arunachal Pradesh, where it is known as the Siang. While in Assam it takes the name Brahmaputra and enters Bangladesh at a place named Bahadurabad. On March 1, 2012 residents of Pasighat, a town on the bank of the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh, witnessed a very strange sight. On that date, the Siang – which used to be nearly several kilometers wide – ran completely dry. Since then the river has continued to shrink.

There is no doubt that China is in need of water. However, the Mumbai-based Strategic Foresight Group has calculated that the Himalayan river basins in Bangladesh, China, India, and Nepal shelter 1.3 billion people. In the next two decades, annual per-capita water availability in these basins will decline by 13-35 percent. Moreover, 10-20 percent of the Himalayan rivers are largely dependent on glaciers and lakes for their supplies and 70 percent of these glaciers may melt in the next 100 years.

Within China there are two opposing schools in regard to the Brahmaputra water diversion proposal. In 2006, Wang Schucheng, the then Minister for Water Resources, described the proposal as unnecessary, unfeasible, and unscientific. But Wang Guangqian, an expert on the subject who enjoys great influence over the present Chinese power set-up, threw his weight behind the idea of Brahmaputra water diversion. In such a milieu, India has also stepped up its efforts to make use of the river’s flow. Already New Delhi has sanctioned an 800-megawatt hydro-electric project on the Brahmaputra. A technical expert group (TEG) constituted by the Indian government has suggested the construction of hydro power projects on the rivers Lohit and Subansiri, both tributaries of the Brahmaputra, at sites close to India’s border with China. India has also decided to speed up studies on the basins of the rivers Subansiri, Lohit, and Siang for their strategic utilization.

Bangladesh will face serious problems if China and India start actively competing over the Brahmaputra. Bangladesh receives around 1,106 cubic kilometers of water per year from external sources, out of which around 600 cubic kilometers of water come from the Brahmaputra. Bangladesh’s own internal generation is only 105 cubic kilometers, which means the country’s dependence on external water supplies is around 91 percent.

Thus, the need of the hour is a multilateral approach for solving this growing controversy over the Brahmaputra – before it starts to do real harm to Sino-Indian relations.

Amitava Mukherjee is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was first published.

Opening Remarks by Mr. Naoyuki Shinohara, Deputy Managing Director International Monetary Fund

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 5th IMF-Japan High Level Tax Conference for Asian Countries organized by our Fiscal Affairs Department, and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. I’d like to thank our co-host, the Ministry of Finance, for its generous support to the conference, and staff of the Fiscal Affairs Department and Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific for their efforts for making this conference possible. I also thank the delegates from Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore for volunteering to participate in the conference to share their experiences with other participants. I also welcome representatives of the OECD and Asian Development Bank.

This conference takes place at a time when fiscal policy needs to focus on rebuilding fiscal space as the recovery of the global economy is strengthening. This will allow automatic stabilizers to work fully, provide room for a discretionary fiscal response if needed, and ensure debt sustainability. Fiscal policy should also support broader policy objectives such as fostering inclusive growth and equity. Let me first say a few words on the recent development of fiscal conditions.

In most advanced economies, the pace of fiscal consolidation will slow in 2014 as average gross debt stabilizes and the focus appropriately shifts toward ensuring that the composition of adjustment supports the still fragile recovery. The main exception is Japan, where fiscal consolidation measures are starting this year, with the welcome first step in increasing the rate of the Consumption Tax (VAT). Among emerging market economies, deficits remain significantly above precrisis levels as most countries opted to postpone fiscal adjustment in 2014. In countries more closely integrated with international capital markets, the normalization of global liquidity conditions has begun to raise borrowing costs and financial volatility, giving yet greater urgency to fiscal consolidation. Fiscal space is shrinking in many low-income countries as revenue mobilization has lagged behind fast spending growth. Reduced availability of aid resources and commodity price volatility remain key risks for these economies.

So the question is how to rebuild fiscal space. Efforts should be made to step up the mobilization of domestic revenue, as well as to undertake reforms that will increase spending efficiency, including through the streamlining of subsidies. Let me discuss further these revenue mobilization issues, which of course are of particular interest and importance to you all. The key challenges are: How can taxation best respond to mounting spending needs in developing countries, and help bring down debt ratios in advanced economies? And how can equity concerns be balanced—especially in hard times—with the efficiency that is needed to secure long-term growth?

Can countries tax more, better, more fairly? In emerging market economies and low-income countries, where the potential for raising revenue is often substantial, improving compliance remains a central challenge. Several advanced economies could still mobilize significant amounts while limiting distortions and adverse effects on growth. Broadening the base of the value-added tax ranks high in terms of economic efficiency almost everywhere and can in most cases be combined with adequate protection for the poor, though this can of course be a particular challenge in lower income economies. Reforming international taxation—high on the global fiscal agenda—will be hard but is especially important for developing countries, given their greater reliance on corporate taxation, with revenue from this source often coming from a handful of multinationals. And there is a strong case in most countries, advanced or developing, for rising substantially more from property taxes.

This conference will look in detail at some of the key issues that arise in addressing these revenue challenges, with a particular focus on those paramount in the region. Let me say a little about the importance of each.

Energy taxation: Many energy prices are set at levels that do not reflect environmental damages, notably global warming, local pollution and traffic congestion. In doing so, they forego an efficient way to meet revenue needs that are acute in many countries—or to reduce reliance on more damaging ways of raising revenue. In order to get the prices right, fiscal instruments must be center-stage in ‘correcting’ the major environmental side effects of energy use; taxes on coal, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel must reflect these environmental costs.

Regional harmonization of tax system: In the region, there are two regional economic associations, ASEAN and SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). While SAARC aims to form South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), ASEAN will transform to ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) (ACM) in 2016. SAFTA and AEC focus on customs, and there are little discussions on how tax system should be harmonized at this stage. However, in looking to possible futures, it is important to learn lessons from efforts towards the coordination of tax systems in other regional economic communities. And all of its members need to pay close attention to WTO rules, which can place significant constraints on national tax system, especially in relation to tax incentives linked to exports.

Analytical tools to strengthen tax administration: the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) is now promoting three important initiatives to help strengthen tax administration, including the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool, otherwise known as TADAT. This tool—which now has its own secretariat, located in the Fund—has been strongly supported by the tax, development, and donor communities—including several regional organizations of tax administrations, national tax administrations, the World Bank, as well as bilateral and multilateral donors. It is designed as a diagnostic tool to assess tax administration performance in an objective fashion, using an evidence-based approach that will identify the strengths and weaknesses of tax administrations. In doing so it will provide an assessment baseline that can be used to determine reform priorities and investments, and, with subsequent repeat assessments, highlight reform achievements.

Another important tax administration tool developed at FAD, RA-FIT, aims to collect comparative data on administrative structures, practices and results that can greatly assist national tax administrations. A presentation last year introduced the tool—this year we will learn some of the results from its first implementation.

International taxation: International aspects of corporate taxation, which have long arisen in IMF technical assistance, have come to prominence in public debate. Most notably. the G20-OECD project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) is an ambitious and constructive effort to strengthen the international corporate tax system. Building on the central role that the OECD has played in developing and maintaining that system, and its unique ability to draw on countries’ knowledge and experience, the BEPS Action Plan aims to make progress on 15 areas by the latter part of 2015. This is an unprecedented effort, and one that is already having some effect on national tax policies and, perhaps, MNE behavior. Drawing on its own distinct perspective, coming from its near-universal membership, technical assistance expertise and strong analytical capability, the IMF is complementing current initiatives by identifying and analyzing macro-relevant spillovers arising through international corporate taxation—under both present and possibly reformed arrangements. Among the key issues we are addressing in this work are assessing the importance of international corporate tax spillovers matter for macroeconomic performance, and reflecting on how they can best be addressed.

Taxation of High Income and Wealth Individuals: The issue is here how countries can achieve their desired degree of progressivity in tax design. Policy options include the shaping of the progressivity of Personal Income Tax, reviewing the efficient taxation of capital incomes; and deciding the proper role of inheritance and wealth taxes.

In closing, I am happy to inform you that this year marks a number of special anniversaries for us here at the IMF. It is the 70th anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference that gave birth to the IMF; and it is the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fiscal Affairs Department. Fifty years ago, our predecessors at the Fund decided that macroeconomic and financial stability could not be achieved by relying solely on monetary and exchange rate policies; we also needed to strengthen our fiscal policy capacity—and hence the creation of the Fiscal Affairs Department in 1964. Clearly, as we look at the fiscal challenges the world still faces, there is plenty more work for FAD to do.

I wish you all productive discussions.

As India goes to the polls, the nation’s Election Commission estimates India’s electoral population in 2014 to be 18.45 crore, an increase of 10 crore newly eligible voters. The nation’s electoral population is the largest in the world. And, by the sheer size of numbers and the spectacular diversity they represent, India’s will be the most fascinating poll exercise in the world.

Interesting in association has been the generous use of the term ‘Participative Democracy’ which has been doing the rounds among the intelligentsia and the media of late. It’s widely feared that Democracy risks being reduced to a parody is it isn’t truly ‘participative’.

Every election, every political party brings out a manifesto. Now, let’s examine what a manifesto does. While, on the face of it, a manifesto details what a political party stands for and promises to achieve if voted to power, in reality, it panders to the whims of a niche electorate. So, a party’s manifesto is aimed to stir sentiments of a ‘target’ electorate enraged for being marginalised in ‘a’ or many ways. Similarly, another party’s manifesto will pander to ‘its target’ electorate’s sensibilities and so on and forth. The polarisations are complete and absolute in their demarcations.

From among others, Aam Aadmi Party has been insistent with its seemingly new-fangled pitch on the need for India’s democracy to be ‘participative’. Democracy, any which way one see, should be ‘participative’, as a rule. That, in India it isn’t ‘participative’ is a widely-held belief modelled mostly on issues such as the ‘use of NOTA’, the electorate’s ‘inability to recall’ an elected candidate for non-performance and ‘money and alcohol’ being pooled in to sway voters. These factors indicate the electorate is deprived of the right to freely exercise franchise and a corresponding lack of control on his or her choice of candidate.

In a democracy, every political party has a pitch that appeases ‘an’ electorate which has been loyal to it for a set of reasons. That the reasons may be founded on some absolutely wrong notions or fascist don’t matter. Traders have been known to be Bharatiya Janata Party loyalists. Muslims and Christians have, historically, been Congress supporters. And, the ‘hurt’ local has had his interests served by regional parties such as the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in Maharashtra and their counterparts elsewhere.
Those who insist on a democracy to be ‘participative’ feel it can be achieved by simply empowering the electorate to exercise the choice of NOTA, the ability to ‘recall’ an elected candidate or reject all contesting candidates and stop the sway of money and alcohol ‘during election time’.

There are a few presumptions associated with ‘participative democracy’ that need urgent redress. Firstly, it’s presumed that everyone in India has a Voter’s Card and ‘will’ exercise his or her right to franchise. Secondly, it’s presumed that everyone is an ‘informed’ voter and exercises his or her right to franchise keeping a political party’s achievements and a candidate’s true potential in mind before casting one’s vote. Thirdly, it’s presumed that everyone who is a major and casts a vote isn’t biased or prejudiced by caste, creed, race, religion, place of birth and other misguiding factors. If money and alcohol should not, ideally, sway an electorate’s opinion, nor should caste, religion, creed, place of birth. Fourthly, it’s presumed the electorate, educated or otherwise, is ‘informed’ about his or her decision of choice and exercises right to franchise armed with an ‘informed consent.’ All the presumptions lack any form of validation and can be easily questioned if not quashed.

Democracies all over the world struggle with border problems with their immediate neighbours and issues with migration. The most developed have a tough time upholding human rights of immigrants and aliens, particularly in keeping with global conventions and foreign policy norms while, at the same time, quelling popular simmering within its local population that feels wrongly deprived of a right, it feels is, of “first and exclusive use”. Political parties all over the democratic world have to pander to sentiments, however autocratic and despotic, to garner poll support. India’s isn’t, in that way, as unique as may seem.

Poll manifestos aren’t binding on political parties and promises are made, as a rule, to be broken. An ideal democracy is one in which the electorate is empowered enough to develop an “informed consent”, is truly free of ‘prejudice’ and exercises the right to franchise. Voting will, in time, become mandatory in India but that will not guarantee freedom from prejudice. That is a human quality.

Prejudice has a symbiotic relationship with politics all over the democratic world. An agenda sans prejudice seems utopian and, correspondingly, unreal.

In that context, India’s is real. And, with its sheer size and diversity, its poll processes – as participative as can get – are all set to underline the power of democracy. Who could do it better than the world’s largest?

Interview with Michelle Gunderson co-founder of the Network for Social Justice Unionism

By Roshan Bliss

Earlier this month at the Labor Notes Conference, rank and file labor leaders announced for the first time the creation of the Network for Social Justice Unionism (NSJU), a new infrastructure that unionists concerned with advancing social justice beyond the workplace hope to use to organize for a shift in the way the labor movement operates.

The NSJU seeks to encourage the creation of social justice caucuses in union locals across the nation and to establish working relationships between those caucuses to be able to support each other’s struggles. Together, these caucuses hope to create an movement inside of organized labor that pushes union leaders across the country to do more to see that union power benefits not just workers themselves, but also the communities that unions are embedded in and rely upon.

Plans for the NSJU have been in the works for over a year, and NSJU members are optimistic that their work will not only be enthusiastically received by workers and social justice activists, but that it could eventually transform and revitalize an aging labor movement. The NSJU effort has its roots in recent struggles for change led by teachers, but seeks to encourage workers of all kinds to commit to lending their knowledge, resources, and influence to other ongoing struggles for justice beyond their workplaces.

NSJU co-founder Michelle Gunderson is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) who helped start the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). She sat down to talk about creation and purpose of Network for Social Justice Unionism and the potential of it work.

Talk about the Network for Social Justice Unionism. Where did it come from?

It came from a definition. What does it mean to be a social justice unionist? What that means, in my mind, is that we hold workers’ rights in the same plane and in the same balance as students’ rights and community rights. We don’t hold our needs above students’. I will fight to the death for the right of a teacher to have good compensation and job security and due process as much as I will for my students to have text books or proper health care and the things that they need to do well.

The Network for Social Justice Unionism started from the Caucus of Rank and File Educators and Labor Notes thinking together, and we believe that social justice unionism is actually going to be what saves unionism as a movement. We are the antithesis of the union thug. We are the people who aren’t out for ourselves who aren’t only about our work and our jobs. And we also are very much in favor of democratic union process.

That isn’t always true in our unions and it scares leadership at times, but without it we’re not going to get new members especially in right to work states and in places like Milwaukee where you have to opt in to your union. We have to decide to use the structure and the power that’s already there. It’s a good structure and there’s a lot of power, but we have to be using it for our students and workers alike

Is the NSJU a response to some of the failures of labor? What are some of the things that the labor movement needs to work on the most?

Social justice unionism is about activating membership to actually do something, not just call the union when they have a problem. And it’s about a lot more than contracts. So the NSJU is taking what used to be called the business model of unionism – where the union was only involved with things that involved work and your 8 hour day – and taking it to the broader political and social realm.

Social justice unionists realize that we don’t live in vacuums and that our students live in a huge context. We can’t’ teach unless our students are well, we can’t teach unless our students have resources. And we can’t teach if there’s inequity in our schools and we have to fight those things.

Teachers as unionists are also changing. The National Education Association (NEA), for a long time, called itself a “professional organization” and shied away from being thought of as a union. We changed that narrative in CORE, and we changed it as social justice unionists.

We’re willing to be militant about workers rights, and we also don’t feel the need to separate ourselves as “professionals” from other workers. I’m as much a sister to an electrician as I am to a pediatrician, and I think that’s a shift in thought. Absolutely, I do want to be treated professionally and honored for my educational status and for what I bring to this world, but I don’t separate myself from my janitor at all.

What do you hope to accomplish with the new Network for Social Justice Unionism?

We can’t make the change we need to see today without political change, and in both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), you have to have a certain amount of momentum before you can change those organizations. So we are hoping for caucus work around the country that can win union elections, especially the election in Los Angeles – the second largest local in the country.

Social justice unionists have to win union elections so we can push leadership to then become political and not always be just a rubber stamp for the Democratic Party. I can’t speak for all social justice unionists, but I know for myself that whatever party is in power, I need to be able to push them to the left.

I used to think that if a local was working well and doing well by its members, it didn’t need a social justice caucus. But I’ve changed my mind – I’ve had a shift in thinking. We in CORE have become the conscience of the CTU; we’ve become the eyes and ears of our union. Now I think every local needs a social justice caucus.

What do social justice caucuses do that is different from the rest of the union?

First of all, for the union to make good decisions, there are constitutions and bylaws in place for good reason. We shouldn’t make decisions quickly and arbitrarily.

But a caucus can move very quickly – we just have to call a meeting and get it done. We don’t have to go through a committee process and have a resolution.

Many times in a union as large as CTU with 30,000 members, if you want change or you want something to happen, it’s like turning an air craft carrier around. But if we have to respond quickly to something or we want something that’s more radical than our union can participate in, such as the boycott of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), that’s what the caucus is for.

We recently had teachers from CORE who were boycotting the ISAT state test. If the union backed that, they would actually be promoting an action that goes against Illinois school code. The CTU can’t be put in that position, but a caucus can. So a social justice caucus can be a militant arm. And “militancy” is not a scary word.

Why should militancy not be a scary word? What is it?

I think we got brainwashed in the ’60s to believe that militancy meant people who create molotov cocktails or bombs or people who harm others.

Militancy, in my mind, is when people are willing to put their bodies on the line, are willing to do acts of civil disobedience that don’t harm others, but not willing to roll over and play dead for the bosses, for politicians, or for their union bosses. I look to militancy for change.

Given NSJU’s roots in teacher unions, do you see any special intersections or relationship between social justice unionism and student activists who are working on social justice issues on their campuses or in their schools? What do you think that interaction should look like?

One of the most exciting things that has happened is that many higher education unions want to become part of our group. So what I see here is that when you start wanting democracy for yourself, and when you actually experience it, you want it for your students as well.

Both university and community college faculty members have already reached out to us about getting involved. We’re unionizing higher education faculties at a great rate. Once the professors start experiencing union democracy in their own lives, they’re going to want it for their students too. I think it’s going to be a genesis.

From the beginning, CORE always involved students, so I think the model has always been in place that youth will be involved.

How does CORE involve students?

Well for one thing, they can become members if they want to be – associate members, that is. The only members with voting rights have to be CTU members, and that makes sense. Students pay $20, and I think that barely covers the cost of what we take care of.

Even at the conference last year, we invited leaders from Students United for Public Education, a national network of student education activists, and other student activists attend from around the country because they need to see what we’re doing – to either accept, reject, or model after us.

I think that the interests [of students and teachers] are so convergent that we can’t exist without each other. We need to be going through this together.

If there were to be a more structured or ongoing relationship between student activism and teacher activism, what do you think the first priority for should be for that collaboration?

Educational equity, especially parity in resources. And testing – the bias in testing, how testing controls education. It just has to be approached, and I think that that’s a major point.

I also think that political action is something that we share in common as well. Adults need to recognize the political lives of youth and do what they can to support it.

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The potential of the NSJU and the rise of social justice unionism is vast, and especially as the student unionism movement spreads to campuses in the US, it holds great potential to provide genuine venues for the labor movement to earn the respect and participation of the rising Millennial generation. NSJU is only getting started, and will remain an organization – and potentially, a movement – for radicals to keep an eye on.

Roshan Bliss is a student organizer, inclusivity & anti-oppression trainer, and democratic process specialist with a passion for empowering young people to defend their futures and democratize their schools. Bliss, a former occupy activist, serves as Assistant Secretary of Education for Higher Education for the Green Shadow Cabinet.

One day after Iran’s Supreme Leader denounced gender equality as a Western cliché, Iranian President Hassan Rohani stressed the need for gender equality in all strata of the country, adding “the fear of women’s presence and their excellence” should not be attributed to Islam and religion.

In a speech on April 20, Hassan Rohani said Iranian women have struggled for their rights for centuries during various social movements in Iranian history including the 1979 Revolution.

“Those who fear the presence and excellence of women and have such beliefs should not attribute these ideas to Islam, the religion or the Quran,” Rohani said.

In an echo of Ayatollah Khamenei’s concern that working outside the house can distract women from paying attention to their families, Rohani said: “A father that enters society does not forget his paternal responsibilities, nor does a mother give up her maternal responsibilities once she enters society.”

He added that women’s personal safety should not be restricted to the boundaries of the house, adding that women feel safe in society, on the streets and wherever they go.

The Iranian president stressed the need for “equal opportunities, equal immunity and equal social rights” and added: “I confess that there are still plenty of shortcomings in women’s rights and gender issues in the country.”

Hassan Rohani’s speech marked Iranian Women’s Day, which is celebrated on the birthday of Fatemeh, the daughter of Muslim Prophet Mohammad.

Iranian women do not have equal rights with men in terms of inheritance, divorce, child custody, education, employment and travel.

Easter services today are expected to kick off a record-breaking week at the Vatican.

Two beloved modern popes — John Paul II and John XXIII — are to be canonized at the Vatican next Sunday by Pope Francis.

There will be services all week, which could draw the most pilgrims ever to the Catholic capital.

John Paul II is remembered for helping to bring down communism and for inspiring a generation of Catholics. Many now call him “The Great,” only the fourth pope to have earned the moniker.

And while much of the crowd’s focus will be on the Polish pope’s remarkable achievements, Pope John XXIII — known as the “Good Pope” for his kindhearted nature — was no less revolutionary.

Pope Francis bypassed the second miracle typically required for canonization for John XXIII, declaring that he deserved the honor for having convened the Second Vatican Council.

Rome officials said they expected 3 million visitors in the city during the period from the Easter celebrations this weekend and the canonization next Sunday.

Nineteen heads of state and 24 prime ministers are expected to attend the canonization ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.

In line with Pope Francis’s no-frills papacy, organizers said the canonizations would be a much more sober affair than the three-day extravaganza that marked John Paul’s beatification, the last step before sainthood, in 2011.

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the vicar of Rome, said some churches would remain open overnight on the eve of the canonization to provide a spiritual retreat for pilgrims, “but not much else.”

Francis has long signaled his support for making a saint of John Paul II, whose funeral nine years ago saw mourners chant, “Santo subito [Saint now]!”

In his 2005 testimony to officials responsible for the sainthood cause, Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, praised John Paul’s approach to death as “heroic”: John Paul considered stepping down as pope but chose to serve until his death.

“John Paul II taught us, by hiding nothing from others, to suffer and to die, and that, in my opinion, is heroic,” said Bergoglio at the time.

By Michael Bowman

A deadly shootout in eastern Ukraine has cast doubt on the viability of an accord between Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the European Union aimed at pacifying Ukraine’s restive eastern territories. The parties reached the deal in Geneva on Thursday.

Although much is unclear about Sunday’s gun battle at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian separatists, the incident shattered an Easter truce and appeared to dash already-scant hopes for a swift end to the unrest.

​Russian and Ukrainian officials traded accusations of responsibility for the shootout and the worsening chaos engulfing eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press television program broadcast in the United States.

“[Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin has a dream to restore the Soviet Union,” said Yatsenyuk. “And every day he goes further and further, and God knows where is the final destination.”

The prime minister demanded Moscow adopt a hands-off policy towards his country.

“They have their own country. We have our own country,” said Yatsenyuk. “If Russia pulls back, we will have Ukraine as one united, territorially-integral, sovereign and independent state.”

Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak, says Moscow’s only goal is to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine. The ambassador appeared on Fox News Sunday.

“We just want the Ukrainians to find a way of dialogue, a new constitution that would help them live in a country that is democratic, that supports the rights of all the ethnic groups, including, certainly, Russians,” Kislyak said.

Kislyak said Russia remains committed to last week’s international accord that called for disarming militants in eastern Ukraine. Even before Sunday’s shootout, U.S. President Barack Obama said he was not sure the deal would work.

“My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days,” Obama said. “But I don’t think given past performance that we can count on that, and we have to be prepared to potentially respond to what continue to be efforts of interference by the Russians in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.”

Some U.S. lawmakers are urging the administration to take additional steps to pressure Russia. Appearing on NBC, Republican Senator Bob Corker said U.S. sanctions have had no effect on Moscow.

“To me, unless they [Russia] immediately begin moving the 40,000 troops on the border, which are intimidating people in Ukraine, unless they begin immediately moving them away, I really do believe we should be sanctioning some of the [Russian] companies in the energy sector — Gazprom and others,” Corker said. “I think we should hit some of the large banks there. And certainly we should beef up our security relationships with Ukraine.”

The Obama administration has ruled out lethal military assistance to Kyiv, and said it stands ready to expand existing sanctions against Russia and order new ones.

THE DEATH of Ron Pundak, one of the original Israeli architects of the 1993 Oslo agreement, brought that historic event back into the public eye.

Gideon Levy reminded us that the Rightist rabble-rousers, in their furious onslaught on the agreement, called the initiators “Oslo criminals” – a conscious echo of one of Adolf Hitler’s main slogans on his way to power. Nazi propaganda applied the term “November criminals” to the German statesmen who signed the 1918 armistice agreement that put an end to World War I – by the way, at the request of the army General Staff who had lost the war.

In his book, Mein Kampf (which is about to lose its copyright, so that anyone can print it again) Hitler also revealed another insight: that a lie will be believed if it is big enough, and if it is repeated often enough.

That, too, applies to the Oslo agreement. For more than 20 years now the Israel right-wing has relentlessly repeated the lie that the Oslo agreement was not only an act of treason, but also a total failure.

Oslo is dead, we are told. It actually died at birth. And by extension, this will be the lot of every peace agreement in the future. A large part of the Israeli public has come to believe this.

THE MAIN achievement of the Oslo agreement, an act of history-changing dimensions, bears the date of September 10, 1993 – which happened to be my 70th birthday.

On that day, the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Prime Minister of the State of Israel exchanged letters of mutual recognition. Yasser Arafat recognized Israel, Yitzhak Rabin recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

Today’s younger generation (on both sides) cannot realize the huge significance of these twin acts.

From its inception almost a hundred years earlier, the Zionist movement had denied the very existence of a Palestinian people. I myself have spent many hundreds of hours of my life in trying to convince Israeli audiences that a Palestinian nation really exists. Golda Meir famously declared: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” I am rather proud of my reply to her, in a Knesset debate: “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps a Palestinian people really does not exist. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people and act like a people, they are a people!”

The Zionist denial was not an arbitrary quirk. The basic Zionist aim was to take hold of Palestine, all of it. This necessitated the displacement of the inhabitants of the country. But Zionism was an idealistic movement. Many of its East European activists were deeply imbued with the ideas of Lev Tolstoy and other utopian moralists. They could not face the fact that their utopia could only be realized on the ruins of another people. Therefore the denial was an absolute moral necessity.

Recognizing the existence of the Palestinian people was, therefore, a revolutionary act.

ON THE other side, recognition was even harder.

From the first day of the conflict, practically all Palestinians, and indeed almost all Arabs, looked upon the Zionists as an invading tribe that was out to rob them of their homeland, drive them out and build a robber-state on their ruins. The aim of the Palestinian national movement was therefore to demolish the Zionist state and throw the Jews into the sea, as their forefathers had thrown the last of the Crusaders quite literally from the quay of Acre.

And here came their revered leader, Yasser Arafat, and recognized the legality of Israel, reversing the ideology of a hundred years of struggle, in which the Palestinian people had lost most of their country and most of their homesteads.

In the Oslo agreement, signed three days later on the White House lawn, Arafat did something else, which has been completely ignored in Israel: he gave up 78% of historical Palestine. The man who actually signed the agreement was Mahmoud Abbas. I wonder if his hand shook when he signed this momentous concession, minutes before Rabin and Arafat shook hands.

Oslo did not die. In spite of the glaring faults of the agreement (“the best possible agreement in the worst possible situation,” as Arafat put it), it changed the nature of the conflict, though it did not change the conflict itself. The Palestinian Authority, the basic structure of the Palestinian State-in-the-Making, is a reality. Palestine is recognized by most countries and, at least partly, by the UN. The Two-State Solution, once the idea of a crazy fringe group, is today a world consensus. A quiet but real cooperation between Israel and Palestine is going on in many fields.

But, of course, all this is far from the reality of peace which many of us, including Ron Pundak, envisioned on that happily optimistic day, September 13, 1993. Just over twenty years later, the flames of conflict are blazing, and most people don’t dare to even utter the word “peace”, as if it were a pornographic abomination.

WHAT WENT wrong? Many Palestinians believe that Arafat’s historic concessions were premature, that he should not have made them before Israel had recognized the State of Palestine as the final aim.

Rabin changed his whole world-view at the age of 71 and took a historic decision, but he was not the man to follow through. He hesitated, wavered, and famously declared “there are no sacred dates”.

This slogan became the umbrella for breaking our obligations. The final agreement should have been signed in 1999. Long before that, four “safe passages” should have been opened between the West Bank and Gaza. By violating this obligation, Israel laid the foundation for the break-away of Gaza.

Israel also violated the obligation to implement the “third stage” of the withdrawal from the West Bank. “Area C” has now become practically a part of Israel, waiting for official annexation, which is demanded by right-wing parties.

There was no obligation under Oslo to release prisoners. But wisdom dictated it. The return of ten thousand prisoners home would have electrified the atmosphere. Instead, successive Israeli governments, both left and right, built settlements on Arab land at a frantic pace and took more prisoners.

The initial violations of the agreement and the dysfunctionality of the entire process encouraged the extremists on both sides. The Israeli extremists assassinated Rabin, and the Palestinian extremists started a campaign of murderous attacks.

LAST WEEK I already commented on our government’s habit of abstaining from fulfilling signed obligations, whenever it thought that the national interest demanded it.

As a soldier in the 1948 war, I took part in the great offensive to open the way to the Negev, which had been cut off by the Egyptian army. This was done in violation of the cease-fire arranged by the UN. We used a simple ruse for putting the blame on the enemy.

The same technique was later used by Ariel Sharon to break the armistice on the Syrian front and provoke incidents there, in order to annex the so-called “demilitarized zones”. Still later, the memory of these incidents was used to annex the Golan Heights.

The start of Lebanon War I was a direct violation of the cease-fire arranged a year earlier by American diplomats. The pretext was flimsy as usual: an anti-PLO terrorist outfit had tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London. When Prime Minister Menachem Begin was told by his Mossad chief that the assassins were enemies of the PLO, Begin famously answered: “For me, they are all PLO!”

As a matter of fact, Arafat had kept the cease-fire meticulously. Since he wanted to avoid an Israeli invasion, he had imposed his authority even on the opposition elements. For 11 months, not a single bullet was fired on that border. Yet when I spoke a few days ago with a former senior security official, he assured me seriously that “they shot at us every day. It was intolerable.”

After six days of war, a cease-fire was agreed. However, at that time our troops had not yet succeeded in surrounding Beirut. So Sharon broke the cease-fire to cut the vital Beirut-Damascus highway.

The present crisis in the “peace process” was caused by the Israeli government’s breaking its agreement to release Palestinian prisoners on a certain day. This violation was so blatant that it could not be hidden or explained away. It caused the famous “poof” of John Kerry.

In fact, Binyamin Netanyahu just did not dare to fulfill his obligation after he and his acolytes in the media had for weeks incited the public against the release of “murderers” with “blood on their hands”. Even on the so-called “center-left”, voices were mute.

Now another mendacious narrative is taking shape before our eyes. The large majority in Israel is already totally convinced that the Palestinians had brought about the crisis by joining 15 international conventions. After this flagrant violation of the agreement, the Israeli government was right in its refusal to release the prisoners. The media have repeated this falsification of the course of events so often, that it has by now acquired the status of fact.

BACK TO the Oslo Criminals. I did not belong to them, though I visited Arafat in Tunis while the talks in Oslo were going on (unbeknownst to me), and talked with him about the whole range of possible compromises.

May Ron Pundak rest in peace – even though the peace he was working for still seems far away.

But come It will.

Dozens of Palestinian worshipers were wounded and dozens were detained after clashes broke in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday morning with Israeli forces who had stormed the courtyards firing stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets.

The raid comes amid frequent clashes in recent days after right-wing Jewish groups urged Jews to flock to the compound — which they believe is the site of a former Jewish temple — and conduct Passover rituals inside.

Director of Al-Aqsa Mosque Omar Kiswani told Ma’an that more than 400 police officers stormed the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque through the Moroccan Gate and the Chain Gate escorting extremist Jews other Jewish visitors into the compound.

Israeli forces, Kiswani said, “besieged” worshipers in the southern mosque “attacking them with clubs and pepper spray,” after clashes broke out with Palestinian worshipers in the compound.

Dozens of Palestinians sustained injuries during the assault, while several others suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation. Twenty-five young men were reportedly detained by Israeli forces.

Kiswani said that Likud member of Knesset Moshe Feiglin had also entered the compound during the raid, accompanied by special security units. Feiglin has visited the site frequently in recent months, and he has vocally supported the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the compound.

Earlier on Sunday morning, clashes erupted outside the Lions’ Gate (Bab al-Asbat) and Gate of Remission (Bab al-Hutta) of the Al-Aqsa compound when Israeli police denied hundreds of worshippers access to the compound.

Witnesses said that Israeli officers had denied all Palestinian residents of Jerusalem under the age of 60 access to the compound, including students who attend schools inside. Men and women were also attacked with clubs and pepper spray, witnesses said.

Israeli forces detained a young man after he was beaten brutally.

Israeli police spokesman said in a statement that police had detained 16 Palestinian “rioters,” adding that they were all detained “as they threw stones/blocks at officers at the scene this morning.”

He also said that two police officers lightly injured in the clashes, which broke out after the Palestinians threw stones as “tourists visited.”

Saudi Arabia confirmed 13 new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) on Sunday, adding up to 49 infections in six days, a sudden increase of a disease that kills about a third of the people infected and has no cure.

The virus has infected 244 people in the Kingdom, of whom 75 have died, the Health Ministry said Sunday.

However, Health Minister Abdullah Al-Rabeeah told reporters there was no scientific evidence yet to justify ordering additional preventative measures such as travel restrictions. He said he did not know why there had been a surge of cases in Jeddah but said it might be part of a seasonal pattern since there was also a big rise in infections last April and May.

Al-Rabeeah said of the 13 new infections reported on Sunday, seven were in Jeddah, four in Riyadh and one each in Madinah and Najran. He also pointed out that the number of deaths among paramedics has reduced while cases of deaths have been declined from 60 to 32 percent.

Meanwhile, a delegation from an international pharmaceutical company will soon visit the Kingdom to explore with Health Ministry officials the possibility of manufacturing vaccines for the MERS.
The name of the company is yet to be known, but sources said it would take at least three months to begin production in the Kingdom.

Al-Rabeeah said no MERS cases have been reported in the Kingdom’s schools.

“The situation is under control,” he said. “The ministry has conducted tests on more than 2,000 suspected cases and we want to provide accurate information to the public in full transparency.”

Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Khaled Mirghalani told Arab News on Sunday that the ministry is hopeful that constructive endeavors could be made toward resolving the problems posed by the virus.

He said the two parties would also review the ongoing efforts made by the Kingdom in keeping the disease under control and confirmed that the ministry is hopeful it would succeed in containing the virus.

Mirghalani also said the ministry had sought the support and services of local organizations, research organizations and universities in finding a definitive cure for the disease.

He pointed out that experts on infectious diseases from the WHO and officials from disease control departments from the US, Canada, Europe, East Asia, as well as officials from GCC countries, will arrive in Riyadh at the end of this month on invitation from the Kingdom to take stock of the situation and exchange experiences about the coronavirus.

The National Scientific Committee for Infectious Diseases, which has set up a 24-hour alert to monitor the movement of the disease both within and outside the Kingdom, will now meet daily to review the day’s status on the virus throughout the Kingdom, the spokesman said.

Face masks and hand sanitizers are flying off the shelves in Jeddah as thousands of students in the city rush to purchase such products amid coronavirus fears. The unexpected demand of these products has also pushed up prices fivefold.

Several pharmacies reported a shortage of supplies over the past four days due to increased demand.

Customers are willing to pay any price for these items, according to shop salesmen.

Multinational branded products are running out of stock in most shops in several parts of the city, while local products are being sold at more than double the price. The price of a 50ml bottle of hand sanitizer, previously priced at SR4, has gone up to anywhere between SR6 and SR10.

Separately, the ministry has urged insurance companies to treat coronavirus cases as they would influenza and other diseases. The statement was made on Sunday in a daily newspaper. “Insurance companies are obliged to provide therapeutic service for all insurance cardholders,” said sources.

Umrah and Haj services establishments, meanwhile, have begun providing medical safety to Umrah pilgrims. “We do not expect current climate to have a negative impact on Haj and Umrah services,” said Saad Al-Quraishy, president of the Umrah and Haj Committee at the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The ministry has set up a toll free number 8002494444 and will provide free treatment and free health education.

British envoy to India Sir James Bevan’s politically significant decision to travel to Nagpur on Election Day in an apparent bid to enlighten himself to the nuances of voting system in the world’s largest democracy has raised a few eyebrows.

Defying protocol, he accepted the hospitality of Nitin Gadkari, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Nagpur constituency rather unabashedly. Nagpur incidentally is the headquarters of the Rashtriya Sayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which happens to be BJP’s ideological parent and invisible remote-controller of the party’s prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi. Some believe there is more to this trip than meets the eye especially because the envoy had a fairly long private conversation at Gadkari’s residence, a stone’s throw away from the RSS office in Nagpur.

And it is an open secret that the RSS is trying to consolidate its grip over the democratic institutions in the country, that too with the sole objective of turning India into a Hindu nation. The BJP and its fraternal groups have openly advocated assimilation of minority Muslim and Christian population into the Hindutva fold.

The Hindutva Brigade has overtly threatened to expunge minorities if they do not drape themselves in the shade of saffron and embrace the depraved and communal ideology. Indeed, what made a foreign diplomat — representing a nation that claims to work for practical realization of Human Rights throughout the Commonwealth and the globe — rush to a BJP candidates’ residence on Election Day is a big question that has started stirring every mind.

Had it been a study tour, as Sir Bevan has explained publicly, the Election Commission of India should have made appropriate arrangements for his visit and stay in Nagpur. So, the logical question that comes to the fore is whether Britain has started taking undue interest in the election process of its former colony and even trying to manipulate its outcome in favor of Modi?

Unfortunately, David Cameron’s government, which recently co-sponsored a resolution against the Sri Lankan government at the United Nations Human Rights Council for failing to prevent a massive human rights abuse in the South Asian island nation during the ethnic conflict, has exposed itself badly. Cameron, despite his oft-repeated concerns on human rights, has shown more enthusiasm in preserving the business interest of British investors in India rather than ensuring justice for the hapless victims of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.

Maybe Cameron’s Conservative Party somehow believes that a tumultuous India under Modi will offer a better strategic leverage to London so far as South Asia is concerned and serve the British business interest more appropriately. Hence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Hugo Swire had no qualm in proudly declaring that in British national interest London will upgrade its relationship with Modi despite the presence of a scathing fact-finding report on the Gujarat riots prepared by the British High Commission in 2002. So much damning were the attached evidences that even the then Prime Minister Vajpayee and his man Friday Brajesh Mishra were left perturbed.

The report could have led to the indictment of Modi in British court on charges of complicity in mass murder and abetting genocide had the Indian government not used its influence astutely. Prepared by First Secretary Peter Holland, the report had the following nerve-racking observations. Firstly, the principal objective of the 2002 communal conflagration in Gujarat, that took 2,000 innocent lives, was intended to remove Muslim influence from large parts of the state. Muslim-owned property and establishments were deliberately targeted consequently.

Secondly, the violence was pre-planned and lethal weapons stockpiled accordingly. Alternative arrangement for flashpoint was ready in case the “Sabarmati Express Mission” did not yielded result.

Thirdly, the civil and police administration was under specific instruction to remain idle till further order. The ghastliness of the genocide had even prompted the then Spanish envoy to describe Gujarat as a “state gone berserk.” Former US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was terrified by the gruesome events and termed the carnage as “horrible and chilling”.

Indeed, not many humane Indians will ever forget those nauseating days of ubiquitous chaos and rioting when barbarous rioters had ripped pregnant women and flung the fetus into fire. Intriguing it is that the western nations, who claim monopoly in championing the cause of human rights across the globe, have gone all out to embrace the man behind the darkness in Gujarat by sacrificing human rights at the altar of commercial consideration.

Does the leadership of these western countries and even China and Japan not know that the Gujarat massacre is one of the worst pogroms committed against minorities anywhere on earth under state-patronage and that it was designed not only to teach Indian Muslims a hard lesson but also to alter the demography of the state? Besides, Modi’s administration refused to setup relief camps for the hapless victims. Is it not a deliberate discrimination against religious minorities that the world has pledged to fight?

Email: sengupta.seema@gmail.com

This article appeared at Arab News

Two days after 16 Sherpas lost their lives in the service of a party of Everest-climbing tourists, Jon Reiter, one of the climbers, wrote on his blog:

This is a tough time for everyone here on the mountain but accidents, and even death, are part of the deal. If climbing Everest were easy and risk free, I suspect we’d all take a hike to the top of the world. The price that has been paid over the last 24 hours is a large price indeed. I guess the climbing Sherpa as well as all of us western climbers need a few moments or days to re-evaluate what’s worth what in this life.

Early this morning I read a comment written about me where the author said, “I hope he finds what he’s looking for up there.” I appreciated that notion because it got me to thinking about what am I looking for, and I think I have found it whether I see the summit of Everest or not. I’m looking for an adventurous life. I want to see the whole world and all of its people. I want to lay in my death bed and know that I did and saw all that I wanted to in the time I spent spinning through space on this ball of mud. I want to know that I lived fully! So far in this life the things that I regret the most are the things I didn’t do; the things I didn’t have time for; the situations that scared me to much. I want to push myself to do and see until I can’t anymore. I want to inspire my two boys to aim high, to take from this world and give to mankind more than they can imagine now. I hope I have a lot of life left to live and I hope I keep finding what I’m looking for. I’m glad my friend brought this topic up because I needed to remember today just why I’m here.

I’m so flattered that so many of you are following this adventure. It’s awesome that I get to follow my dreams and I remember everyday that all of this would be hollow and meaningless without all of you being part of my life.

Please send positive thoughts or prayers to the families of our fallen Sherpa brothers.

Reiter might be an experienced climber, yet like his companions who had paid $48,500 each to be guided up the world’s tallest mountain, he approached this adventure with the mindset of a tourist.

“We were moving up to Camp 1 just after dawn when we heard that ‘crack,’” said Reiter, 49. “I thought ‘wow, that’s a big one.’ My first thought was to film it, and I reached for my camera. But the Sherpa yelled to get down.”

Freddie Wilkinson describes how almost a century ago the first fatalities occurred on Everest:

On a bright afternoon in June of 1922, the Mount Everest pioneer George Mallory was leading a group of 17 men tied together in three separate rope teams toward the North Col of the mountain when he heard an ominous sound, and turned to see an avalanche fracturing the steep slope above them.

Mallory and his rope mates were spared the brunt force of the slide, but the two teams following them — comprising 14 porters from Darjeeling, India — were swept down the mountain. Seven died. Mount Everest had claimed its first known victims.

One of Mallory’s companions, Howard Somervell, would later write, “I would gladly at that moment have been lying there dead in the snow, if only to give those fine chaps who had survived the feeling that we had shared their loss….”

On Friday, about 6:30 in the morning, another avalanche rumbled down Everest. This one caught a group of 25 climbers at 19,000 feet near the top of the notorious Khumbu Icefall, a frightful jumble of seracs and crevasses, killing at least 12 as of Friday in the worst reported disaster in the mountain’s history.

Although commercially organized groups make up the overwhelming majority of Everest expeditions today, not a single international client or guide was caught in the avalanche. The victims were Nepalese. They were carrying supplies to aid their employer’s clients, who pay commercial outfitters tens of thousands of dollars to get to the top of the world’s tallest mountain.

Today, as was the case in Mallory’s day, it is these professional climbing Sherpas who bear a disproportionate amount of the risk of Himalayan climbing. In fact, the odds may be worse for them than they were in the days of those grand British expeditions.

Mallory was racked with guilt over the 1922 tragedy and resolved never to let a team of porters climb without a British mountaineer sharing the same rope. Eric Shipton, another legendary British alpinist whose 1951 reconnaissance pioneered the route through the icefall, paving the way for the first ascent of the mountain two years later, found it ethically questionable to ask the climbing Sherpas to venture into the icefall to help Westerners make it to the top.

At least when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first two men to reach the summit in 1953, Hillary was gracious enough to immortalize that moment in history with a photograph of Tenzing rather than himself.

But implicit in the very idea that this could be viewed as a human accomplishment is the suggestion that it would never have happened without the adventurous spirit of Western pioneers — men such as Hillary who would proclaim afterwards, “we knocked the bastard off,” another of nature’s challenges having been duly conquered.

What was one to infer about the fact that the people who had lived at the foot of the mountain for centuries, had not on their own initiative taken on the venture of its ascent?

Certainly, neither Hillary nor any other foreign mountaineer has been able to climb Everest without relying on the courage, perseverance, and strength of Sherpas.

Was the only thing the Sherpas lacked, equipment?

Maybe.

But maybe they didn’t lack anything at all.

Maybe the Sherpas possessed something that the Westerners lacked: a sense that Everest could be appreciated as much, or even more, from below rather then above — that the mountain called for reverence rather than conquest.

After all, what kind of man would pretend he is greater than a mountain?

Using lies to shore up policies built on shaky foundations of climate, peak oil and sustainability

By Paul Driessen

Built on a foundation of sand, the Leaning Tower of Pisa would have toppled over long ago, if not for ingenious engineering projects that keep it from tilting any further. The same thing is true of ethanol, automobile mileage, power plant pollution and many other environmental policies.

Not only are they built on flimsy foundations of peak oil, sustainability and dangerous manmade climate change. They are perpetuated by garbage in-garbage out computer models and a system that rewards activists, politicians, bureaucrats and corporations that support the hypotheses and policies.

At the heart of this system is the increasingly secretive and deceptive U.S. Environmental Protection Administration. Among its perpetrators are two ideologically driven regulators who are responsible for many of today’s excessive environmental regulations. When the corruption is combined with the EPA’s history of regulatory overkill and empire building, it paints a portrait of an agency that’s out of control.

EPA’s culture of misconduct has already raised congressional hackles over the misuse of government credit cards (a recent EPA audit found that 93% of purchases were personal and contrary to agency guidelines); former regional EPA administrator (and now Sierra Club official) Al Amendariz wanting to “crucify” oil companies to make examples of them; and former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, who masqueraded as “Richard Windsor,” to avoid revelation and oversight of her emails with activists.

However, these sorry tales pale in comparison to damaging EPA malfeasance detailed in a new U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff report about convicted felon and con artist John Beale. This guy was convicted of bilking taxpayers out of $900,000 – by convincing EPA bosses and colleagues that he was a CIA agent, failing to show up for work for months, but continuing to receive his six-figure salary. However, these were minor transgressions compared to what he was not prosecuted for.

Beale has admitted he had no legislative or environmental policy experience prior to being hired. Yet he became the lead official for the nation’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone and Particulate Matter. He and Robert Brenner, his friend and immediate supervisor at EPA, concocted a nefarious plan that used manipulated scientific studies, faulty or even bogus regulatory cost assessments, “heavy-handed management of interagency review processes,” and even illegal experiments on human test subjects, to impose increasingly tougher, job-killing regulations on US industries.

One of Beale & Brenner’s first actions was to work with the American Lung Association in 1997 in a sue-and-settle arrangement, which led to ozone and particulate matter standards. This underhanded practice enables EPA officials to meet with environmentalist groups behind closed doors and agree to new proposed regulations. Later, the group files a “friendly suit,” and a court orders the agency to adopt the pre-arranged rules.

Meanwhile, EPA awarded the ALA $20 million between 2001 and 2010. (Had a business had such an arrangement, it would likely have been prosecuted as an illegal kickback.)

The EPW Committee’s report notes that Beale & Brenner fine-tuned the sue-and-settle idea – and then intentionally overstated the benefits and understated the costs of new regulations. As a result, Beale & Brenner successfully rammed the PM2.5 and ozone standards through the EPA’s approval process and set the stage for myriad additional regulations that likewise did not receive appropriate scientific scrutiny.

In the case of PM2.5 soot particles, the ALA worked with Beale & Brenner to claim tougher regulations would eliminate up to 35,700 premature deaths and 1.4 million cases of aggravated asthma annually. Scientists questioned the figures and said EPA’s flawed research merely “assumed” a cause-and-effect relationship between soot and health effects, but failed to prove one. Indeed, EPA’s illegal experiments exposed people to “lethal” doses of soot, but harmed only an elderly woman with heart problems.

Beale & Brenner pressed on. Not only were the initial PM2.5 and ozone regulations put into effect, but the questionable and non-peer-reviewed data has been used repeatedly as the basis for additional regulations. According to the Senate report, “up to 80 percent of the benefits associated with all federal regulations are attributed to supposed PM 2.5 reductions… [and] the EPA has continued to rely upon the secret science … to justify the vast majority of all Clean Air Act regulations issued to this day.”

As a House subcommittee has pointed out, the long and growing list of EPA regulations involves costly changes to automobiles, trucks, ships, utilities, cement plants, refineries and gasoline, to name a few. The rules also raise consumer prices, eliminate jobs, and thus actually reduce human living standards, health and welfare – all of which EPA steadfastly ignores, in violation of federal laws and regulations.

Just one EPA industrial boiler emissions regulation will put as many as 16,000 jobs at risk for every $1 billion spent in upgrade or compliance costs, IHS Global Insight calculates. The Administration’s regulatory War on Coal, amply illustrated by President Obama’s call to bankrupt the coal industry in the name of alleged manmade climate change, could eliminate up to 16,600 direct and indirect jobs by 2015.

Despite the economic damage, EPA applauded Beale’s regulatory success, and he quickly became one of the federal government’s most powerful and highest paid employees. Even Administrator Gina McCarthy had a hand in advancing his fraudulent and pernicious career, when she appointed him to manage the office of Air and Radiation’s climate change and other international work in 2010.

Then in June 2011, Beale stopped going to work. Despite having filed no retirement papers, under an arrangement with McCarthy, he was allowed to continue receiving his salary. When she finally met with him 15 months later, he said he had no plans to retire. Two months later, Beale’s long-term unexcused absence was finally referred to the Office of Inspector General for investigation.

After McCarthy became the EPA Administrator in July 2013, Beale pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison. His partner-in-crime Brenner retired in 2011 before the agency could take action against him for accepting an illegal gift from a golfing buddy serving on the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee. But again, these crimes pale in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars that their junk science, sue-and-settle lawsuits and other actions have cost US businesses and families.

Now Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are trying to get to the bottom of the Brenner-Beale-EPA “secret science” that has been used to justify so many regulations. On March 17, Sen. David Vitter (R- LA) sent a letter to Dr. Francesca Grifo, EPA’s Scientific Integrity Official, asking for the original scientific data and voicing concerns about EPA’s apparent violations of international guidelines for ensuring best practices and preventing scientific misconduct. EPA thus far is claiming the research and data are proprietary or the agency cannot find them. Teachers demand that students show their work; we should demand the same from EPA – especially since we pay for it.

The agency’s onslaught of carbon dioxide and other climate change regulations – including proposed rules on cow flatulence (!) – is similarly founded on fraudulent EPA and IPCC reports, false and irrelevant claims of scientific “consensus,” and computer models that bear no relationship to temperature, hurricane, drought and other planetary realities. Even worse, it is on this flimsy, fraudulent, lawless foundation that our government’s costly, intrusive environmental and renewable energy policies are based – threatening our economy, employment, living standards and families.

Meanwhile, Ms. McCarthy is conducting business as usual. She recently presented her proposed EPA’s FY 2015 budget to Congress. She says the increased funding should be viewed as an “investment in maintaining a high performing environmental protection organization.” You cannot make this up.

Governors, attorneys general, state legislatures and private citizen groups need to initiate legal actions and demand full discovery of all relevant EPA documents. Congress too needs to take action. Along with one on the IRS targeting scandal, it needs to appoint a select committee or independent counsel to determine which data, computer models and studies EPA used – and which ones it ignored – in reaching its decisions.

Otherwise our nation’s downward economic slide, and distrust of government, will accelerate.

By Amanda Ufheil-Somers

Among the would-be therapists of the foreign policy world, the alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a textbook case of a “loveless marriage.”

Though the values of the two states are at odds, or so the thinking goes, the great democracy and the absolute monarchy are bound together by mutual interest in the stability of the Persian Gulf, home to almost half of the world’s proven oil and natural gas reserves.

Defenders of this coupling argue that Saudi transgressions—human rights violations, sectarian rhetoric, funding of radical Islamist groups — should be forgiven for the sake of long-term happiness. This strategy amounts to a “never go to bed angry” diplomacy theory.

Along these lines, President Barack Obama’s meeting with King Abdullah in late March was said to be about reassuring the aging potentate that Washington remains committed to the seven-decade “special relationship.”

U.S. leaders will stay faithful, despite disagreements with Riyadh over how to support rebel forces in Syria, the Egyptian junta’s repression of the Muslim Brothers, and the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Saudi regime, meanwhile, is flirting with other powers, such as China, Japan, and India.

Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.

The U.S. commitment to Saudi dominance in the Persian Gulf has real costs. The kingdom has used its wealth, privilege, and considerable cache of U.S. military hardware to prop up friendly autocratic regimes in the Gulf and beyond.

Saudi Arabian soldiers helped crush popular demonstrations in neighboring Bahrain in 2011. Multi-billion dollar loans to Egypt let the military patch up a weak economy while consolidating its power by imprisoning (or worse) thousands of Muslim Brothers and secular opposition activists.

In Syria, the kingdom continues to fuel the conflict by supplying money and weapons to various anti-Assad militias, and has urged the U.S. to lift its ban on sending anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels.

Despite talk of ending the bloodshed, the Saudi regime views the civil war as a proxy battle in its struggle with Iran over regional influence. Ongoing war may suit Riyadh’s interests even more than a rebel victory. Hints that the Obama administration may be caving to royal pressure on more armaments thus bode ill for Syrians and for the prospects of easing diplomatic relations with Iran.

Unwavering U.S. support has also given the Saudi regime a blank check to suppress — often brutally — any domestic critics. Women, the sizable Shiite minority, and the millions of foreign workers all lack any semblance of equal rights and protections under the law.

It’s hard for Washington to argue that it supports pro-democracy movements in the Arab world when its closest Arab ally is resolutely anti-democratic.

In January, Saudi Arabia expanded its legal definition of terrorism to include any act that disturbs public order or insults the state. As Human Rights Watch pointed out, the law doesn’t even specify that acts must be violent to qualify as terrorist. The wording of the new code is so vague that taking part in a protest or publishing a critical op-ed could now constitute terrorism.

Enforcing violent censorship at home and seeding permanent crises abroad are two dubious pillars of stability. If anything, this witches’ brew of repression and chaos will likely lead to more explosive conflicts.

As with all dysfunctional relationships, the U.S. approach toward Saudi Arabia appears to be driven more by habit than strategy. And it’s irresponsible to look the other way while the regime steamrolls any challenges to the oppressive status quo.

Loveless marriages have no future besides betrayal, bitterness, and despair. It’s time for the United States to part ways with Saudi Arabia.

Amanda Ufheil-Somers is the assistant editor of Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project. MERIP.org

Using corn crop residue to make ethanol and other biofuels reduces soil carbon and can generate more greenhouse gases than gasoline, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The findings by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln team of researchers cast doubt on whether corn residue can be used to meet federal mandates to ramp up ethanol production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Corn stover — the stalks, leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest — has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production. The U.S. Department of Energy has provided more than $1 billion in federal funds to support research to develop cellulosic biofuels, including ethanol made from corn stover. While the cellulosic biofuel production process has yet to be extensively commercialized, several private companies are developing specialized biorefineries capable of converting tough corn fibers into fuel.

The researchers, led by assistant professor Adam Liska, used a supercomputer model at UNL’s Holland Computing Center to estimate the effect of residue removal on 128 million acres across 12 Corn Belt states. The team found that removing crop residue from cornfields generates an additional 50 to 70 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of biofuel energy produced (a joule is a measure of energy and is roughly equivalent to 1 BTU). Total annual production emissions, averaged over five years, would equal about 100 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule — which is 7 percent greater than gasoline emissions and 62 grams above the 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

Importantly, they found the rate of carbon emissions is constant whether a small amount of stover is removed or nearly all of it is stripped.

“If less residue is removed, there is less decrease in soil carbon, but it results in a smaller biofuel energy yield,” Liska said.

To mitigate increased carbon dioxide emissions and reduced soil carbon, the study suggests planting cover crops to fix more carbon in the soil. Cellulosic ethanol producers also could turn to alternative feedstocks, such as perennial grasses or wood residue, or export electricity from biofuel production facilities to offset emissions from coal-fueled power plants. Another possible alternative is to develop more fuel-efficient automobiles and significantly reduce the nation’s demand for fuel, as required by the 2012 CAFE standards.

Liska said his team tried, without success, to poke holes in the study.

“If this research is accurate, and nearly all evidence suggests so, then it should be known sooner rather than later, as it will be shown by others to be true regardless,” he said. “Many others have come close recently to accurately quantifying this emission.”

The study’s findings likely will not surprise farmers, who have long recognized the importance of retaining crop residue on their fields to protect against erosion and preserve soil quality.

Until now, scientists have not been able to fully quantify how much soil carbon is lost to carbon dioxide emissions after removing crop residue. They’ve been hampered by limited carbon dioxide measurements in cornfields, by the fact that annual carbon losses are comparatively small and difficult to measure, and the lack of a proven model to estimate carbon dioxide emissions that could be coupled with a geospatial analysis.

Liska’s study, which was funded through a three-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, used carbon dioxide measurements taken from 2001 to 2010 to validate a soil carbon model that was built using data from 36 field studies across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Using USDA soil maps and crop yields, they extrapolated potential carbon dioxide emissions across 580 million 30-meter by 30-meter “geospatial cells” in Corn Belt states. It showed that the states of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin had the highest net loss of carbon from residue removal because they have cooler temperatures and more carbon in the soil.

The research has been in progress since 2007, involving the coordinated effort of faculty, staff and students from four academic departments at UNL. Liska is an assistant professor of biological systems engineering and agronomy and horticulture. He worked with Haishun Yang, an associate professor of agronomy and horticulture, to adapt Yang’s soil carbon model, and with Andrew Suyker, an associate professor in the School of Natural Resources, to validate the model findings with field research. Liska also drew upon research conducted by former graduate students Matthew Pelton and Xiao Xue Fang. Pelton’s master’s degree thesis reprogrammed the soil carbon model, while Fang developed a method to incorporate carbon dioxide emissions into life cycle assessments of cellulosic ethanol.

Liska also worked with Maribeth Milner, a GIS specialist with the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, Steve Goddard, professor of computer science and engineering and interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and graduate student Haitao Zhu to design the computational experiment at the core of the paper. Humberto Blanco-Canqui, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture, also helped to address previous studies on the topic.

Although doctors have long known that people with Down syndrome have a heightened risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) during childhood, they haven’t been able to explain why. Now, a team of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators has uncovered a connection between the two conditions.

In a study posted online by the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers track the genetic chain of events that links a chromosomal abnormality in Down syndrome to the cellular havoc that occurs in ALL. Their findings are relevant not only to people with Down syndrome but also to many others who develop ALL.

“For 80 years, it hasn’t been clear why children with Down syndrome face a sharply elevated risk of ALL,” said the study’s lead author, Andrew Lane, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber’s Division of Hematologic Neoplasia. “Advances in technology – which make it possible to study blood cells and leukemias that model Down syndrome in the laboratory – have enabled us to make that link.”

People with Down syndrome have an increased risk for a variety of health problems, including heart defects, respiratory and hearing difficulties, and thyroid conditions. Their risk for childhood ALL is 20 times that of the general population.

The syndrome occurs in people who have an extra copy of a single chromosome, known as chromosome 21. The addition may involve the entire chromosome or a portion of it.

To trace the link between Down syndrome and ALL – specifically, the most common form of the disease known as B cell ALL, or B-ALL – Lane, who is also a medical oncologist in the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center Adult Stem Cell Transplantation Program, and his colleagues acquired a strain of mice that carry an extra copy of 31 genes found on chromosome 21 in humans.

“B-ALL occurs when the body produces too many immature B cells, which are a type of white blood cell that normally fights infections,” Lane explained. “When we tested the mice’s B cells in the laboratory, we found they were abnormal and grew uncontrollably – just as B cells from B-ALL patients do.”

The researchers then scanned the mice’s B cells to ascertain their “molecular signature” – the pattern of gene activity that distinguished them from normal B cells in mice. The chief difference was that in the abnormal cells, the group of proteins called PRC2 was not functioning. Somehow, the loss of PRC2 was spurring the B cells to divide and proliferate before they were fully mature.

To confirm that a shutdown of PRC2 is critical to the formation of B-ALL in people with Down syndrome, Lane’s team focused on the genes controlled by PRC2. Using two sets of B-ALL cell samples – one from patients with Down syndrome, the other from patients without the syndrome – they measured the activity of thousands of different genes, looking for differences between the two sets. About 100 genes turned out to be much more active in the Down syndrome group, and all of them were under control of PRC2. When PRC2 is silenced – as it is in the B cells of Down syndrome patients – those 100 genes respond with a burst of activity, driving cell growth and division.

The question then was, what gene or group of genes was stifling PRC2 in Down syndrome patients’ B cells? Using cells from the mice with an extra copy of 31 genes, the investigators systematically switched off each of those genes to see its effect on the cells. When they turned off the gene HMGN1, the cells stopped growing and died.

“We concluded that the extra copy of HMGN1 is important for turning off PRC2, and that, in turn, increases the cell proliferation,” Lane remarked. “This provides the long-sought after molecular link between Down syndrome and the development of B cell ALL.”

Although there are currently no drugs that target HMGN1, which could potentially short-circuit the leukemia process in people with Down syndrome, the researchers suggest that drugs that switch on PRC2 could have an anti-leukemic effect in some of those people. Work is under way to improve these drugs, known as histone demethylase inhibitors, so they can be tested in cell samples and animal models.

As other forms of B-ALL also have the same 100-gene signature as the one discovered for B-ALL associated with Down syndrome, drug agents that target PRC2 might be effective in those cancers as well, Lane added.