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Malaysia Energy Profile: Second-Largest Oil And Natural Gas Producer In Southeast Asia – Analysis

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Malaysia’s energy industry is a critical sector of growth for the entire economy, and it makes up almost 20% of the total gross domestic product. New tax and investment incentives, starting in 2010, aim to promote oil and natural gas exploration and development in the country’s deepwater and marginal fields as well as promote energy efficiency measures and use of alternative energy sources. These fiscal incentives are part of the country’s economic transformation program to leverage its resources and geographic location to be one of Asia’s top energy players by 2020. Another key pillar in Malaysia’s energy strategy is to become a regional oil and natural gas storage, trading, and development hub that will attract technical expertise and downstream services that can compete in Asia.

Malaysia, located within Southeast Asia, has two distinct parts. The western half contains the Peninsular Malaysia, and the eastern half includes the states of Sarawak and Sabah, which share the island of Borneo with Indonesia and Brunei. The country’s western coast runs alongside the Strait of Malacca, an important route for the seaborne trade that links the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Malaysia’s position in the South China Sea exposes the country to various disputes among neighboring countries over competing claims to the sea’s resources. While it has bilaterally resolved competing claims with Vietnam, Brunei, and Thailand, an area of the Celebes Basin remains in dispute with Indonesia. Potential territorial disputes with China, Vietnam, and the Philippines could emerge as exploration initiatives move into the deepwater areas of the South China Sea.

Malaysia has unveiled several major upstream and downstream oil and natural gas projects, some coming online in the next few months, as part of the country’s strategy to enhance output from existing oil and natural gas fields and to advance exploration in deepwater areas. The incumbent and long-ruling Barisan Nasional party (BNP) won the May 2013 general election. The BNP has a track record of promoting hydrocarbon investment and intends to continue boosting oil and natural gas production, making energy sector reforms to attract investment, and developing the country’s energy infrastructure.

Primary energy consumption

As Malaysia targets economic development and increased manufacturing, the country is focused on securing energy through cost-effective means and diversifying its fuel supply portfolio. Petroleum and other liquids and natural gas are the main primary energy sources consumed in Malaysia, with estimated shares of 40% and 36%, respectively in 2012. About 17% of the country’s energy consumption is met by coal. Biomass and waste make up another 4%, and hydropower contributes 3% to total consumption. Malaysia’s heavy reliance on oil and natural gas to sustain its economic growth is causing the government to emphasize fuel diversification through coal imports and to promote investments in renewable energy.

Petroleum and other liquids

Malaysia’s oil reserves are the fourth-highest in Asia-Pacific after China, India, and Vietnam. Nearly all of Malaysia’s oil comes from offshore fields.

According to the Oil & Gas Journal (OGJ), Malaysia held proved oil reserves of 4 billion barrels as of January 2014, the fourth-highest reserves in Asia-Pacific after China, India, and Vietnam. Nearly all of Malaysia’s oil comes from offshore fields. The continental shelf is divided into three producing basins: the Malay basin offshore peninsular Malaysia in the west and the Sarawak and Sabah basins in the east. Most of the country’s oil reserves are located in the Malay basin and tend to be light and sweet crude. Malaysia’s benchmark crude oil, Tapis Blend, is a light and sweet crude oil, with an API gravity of 42.7° and a sulfur content of 0.04% by weight.

Sector organization

Energy policy in Malaysia is set and overseen by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) and the Implementation and Coordination Unit (ICU), which report directly to the Prime Minister. Malaysia’s national oil and gas company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas), holds exclusive ownership rights to all oil and natural gas exploration and production projects in Malaysia, and is responsible for managing all licensing procedures. The company is directed by the Prime Minister, who also controls appointments to the company board. Petronas holds stakes in the majority of oil and gas blocks in Malaysia, and it is the single largest contributor to Malaysian government revenues, up to 45%, by way of taxes and dividends. Since its incorporation in 1974, Petronas has grown to be a world-renowned integrated international oil and gas company with business interests in more than 30 countries. Under legislation enacted in 1985, Petronas is required to hold a 15% minimum equity in production sharing contracts (PSC) with all foreign and private companies.

ExxonMobil, Shell, and Murphy Oil are currently the largest foreign oil companies by production volume. New opportunities for investment in Malaysia’s energy sector have attracted small- and medium-sized foreign oil independents such as Talisman Energy (Canada), Lundin Petroleum (Sweden), Roc Oil Company (Australia), and Petrofac (UK).

In 2010, Malaysia provided tax incentives for upstream investment in both enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and marginal field development projects. According to Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), the income tax rate for marginal fields dropped from 38% to 25%, and the government waived export duties on total oil production from these smaller fields. Malaysia also provided income tax allowances of up to 100% of capital expenditure for EOR projects. Additionally, the government announced more tax incentives for oil and gas trading companies in late 2012.

Malaysia’s oil and gas policy historically has focused on maintaining the reserve base to ensure long-term supply security while providing affordable fuel to its population through subsidized fuel sales. High international oil prices and Malaysia’s increasing crude oil import levels have put pressure on government expenditures. As part of Malaysia’s goal to lower the government’s budget deficit and lift some of the financial burden on Petronas to allow the company to invest more upstream, the government began introducing subsidy reforms. In July 2010, the government initiated the first subsidy reductions for gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with the aim of phasing out fuel subsidies by 2015. Public sensitivities over higher fuel costs stalled the reforms until September 2013, when the government increased the price of gasoline and diesel by 10.5% and 11.1%, respectively.

Exploration and production

Declines in production at Malaysia’s major producing oil fields in the past decade have led government efforts to encourage investment in enhanced oil recovery and development of smaller and marginal fields, as well as deepwater fields.

Malaysia is Southeast Asia’s second-largest oil producer behind Indonesia. Petroleum and other liquids production (including crude oil, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, biofuels, and refinery processing gains) in 2013 was nearly 670,000 barrels per day (bbl/d), hovering around the same level since 2011 and down from the country’s peak production of 844,000 bbl/d in 2003. More than a fourth of Malaysian oil production currently originates from the Tapis field in the offshore Malay Basin. The country’s oil production has experienced overall decline as a result of maturing fields, particularly larger fields in the shallow waters offshore Peninsular Malaysia. Some recent drilling efforts in the area such as Lundin Petroleum’s Bertam oilfield in the Penyu Basin are expected to offset some production declines from mature fields.

Malaysia’s domestic oil consumption has risen while production has fallen over the past decade, leaving smaller volumes of oil available for exports. Petronas is working to attract new investment opportunities and reverse production declines by enhancing output from existing fields through advanced EOR techniques and developing small, marginal fields through risk service contracts (RSCs). These contracts are designed for companies to share the risk, where Petronas is the project owner, and investors are the service providers receiving revenues for oil produced throughout the entire life of the project. IOCs are also tapping into new oil and natural gas discoveries in deepwater offshore areas of the Sarawak Basin and the Sabah Basin. These deepwater offshore fields pose more technical challenges, requiring greater investment by Malaysian and foreign energy firms. In 2013, Petronas reported plans to spend more than $61 billion over five years in Malaysia’s oil and natural gas sector to boost oil and natural gas production and offset the current declines from ageing fields.

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects

Petronas is conducting several EOR projects to extend the production life of Malaysia’s oldest oil fields. ExxonMobil and Petronas began work on the Tapis EOR project, which lies 118 miles off Terengganu, in the second half of 2014. Tapis is one of seven mature fields offshore Peninsular Malaysia that ExxonMobil and Petronas agreed to develop as part of a 25-year production-sharing contract that was finalized in June 2010. Under the agreement, which includes provisions for the deployment of EOR, work is being carried out on the seven fields that are part of the Tapis crude oil blend — Seligi, Guntong, Tapis, Semangkok, Irong Barat, Tebu, and Palas. The project is expected to extend the fields’ lives by 30 years and add another 25,000 bbl/d to current production.

In 2011, Shell and Petronas agreed to invest $12 billion over 30 years in two EOR projects offshore Sarawak (Baram Delta offshore covering nine fields) and Sabah (North Sabah development area covering three fields). The projects are expected to boost production by 90,000 bbl/d and use the world’s first offshore, chemical injection process for resource recovery. In 2014, Petronas expanded the Baram Delta EOR PSC to include natural gas production, which will be used both for reinjection purposes to assist in oil extraction and for direct gas sales to the domestic and international markets.

Risk service contracts (RSC) projects

In addition to its EOR projects, Malaysia is also maximizing its production potential by issuing RSCs for smaller, underexplored fields beginning in 2011. These contracts involve risks shared between Petronas, the project owner, and the contractors (foreign and domestic companies), which act as service providers. These companies receive compensation for cost and a return on investment.

As part of its RSC licensing rounds, Petronas has awarded six RSCs since 2011. As of mid-2014, three of these RSCs have commenced production of oil and natural gas including the Berantai fields and the Kapal, Benang, and Meranti cluster located offshore Peninuslar Malaysia, and the Balai cluster located offshore Sarawak. These fields were producing more than 30,000 bbl/d in 2014.
Deep water projects – Sarawak and Sabah

Several major projects are under development in the deepwater area offshore the Sabah state, which could bolster Malaysia’s oil production over the next decade. The Kikeh oil field, operated by Murphy Oil in partnership with Petronas, is currently Malaysia’s only producing deepwater oil field. The Kikeh field came on stream in 2007 at an initial rate of 20,000 bbl/d, and estimated production in 2013 was 60,000 bbl/d of oil. Output has been hampered by operational delays. Murphy Oil has been working to restore production, which is expected to peak at 120,000 bbl/d.

Also, in offshore Sabah, the Gumusut/Kakap project is under development and will include the region’s first deepwater floating production system from 19 subsea wells. The Kakap field came on stream at the end of 2011 with production of 25,000 bbl/d. Production from Gumusut will commence in 2014, and production from both fields is expected to ramp up to 120,000 bbl/d by 2015, according to FGE. Project shareholders are operator Shell with 33%, ConocoPhillips with 33%, Petronas with 20%, and Murphy Oil with 14%. The system will be connected via pipelines to the new Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal being built in Kimanis in the northeastern Sabah state.

The Malikai oil and natural gas field, first discovered in 2004, is another deepwater find located offshore northwestern Sabah and has a peak production capacity of 60,000 bbl/d. The Malikai project will use a tension-leg platform and will tie into the Kebabangan Northern Hub development project (KBB) via a petroleum liquids and dry natural gas pipeline. Shell, the operator and a 35% stakeholder, expects to bring Malikai online at the end of 2016. Other project partners include ConocoPhillips (35%) and Petronas (30%).

Development is underway at the KBB slated to begin operations in late 2014. KBB will be a floating platform hub for the development of a cluster of deepwater natural gas fields offshore Sabah and will tie in the Malikai oil field. The KBB platform has a design capacity of 825 MMcf/d of natural gas and 22,000 bbl/d of condensate.

Boundary disputes

Malaysia began cooperating with neighboring countries bordering the South China Sea (SCS) to exploit the area’s significant hydrocarbon potential. The country holds estimated reserves of 5 billion barrels of crude oil and liquids and 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the South China Sea, the largest of any of the border countries. In May 2009, Malaysia submitted SCS territorial claims to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and disputes China’s territorial claims through its nine-dash line, a series of lines encompassing most of the South China Sea and based on China’s historical territorial claims. Malaysia has not filed a legal case against China and has preferred to advance bilateral relations between the two countries.

The 20-year dispute between Malaysia and Brunei over land and sea boundaries, particularly in the Baram Delta Basin, was resolved when the two countries signed a boundary agreement in April 2009. Oil blocks L and M were ceded to Brunei, while Limbang, on the Sarawak-Brunei border, was ceded to Malaysia. Since the agreement, energy cooperation between Malaysia and Brunei has strengthened. In 2010, Petronas and the Brunei government agreed to jointly develop the two blocks offshore Borneo Island, and they signed a 40-year PSA for newly named Blocks CA1 and CA2. Drilling commenced in 2011, along with further investment plans. The two countries signed several energy cooperation agreements in 2013 for joint development of some deepwater fields and for Brunei to purchase a 3% share as part of Petronas’ stake in the Canadian Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal.

Malaysia and Vietnam share the 520-square mile area of the PM-3 Commercial Arrangement Area (CAA) in the Malay Basin. PM-3 CAA commenced production in 1997 and contributes to the country’s oil production from six offshore fields. Talisman Energy (Canada) holds operating interests in the Northern and Southern oil fields in the CAA. Talisman holds a 41% interest, Petronas holds a 46% interest, and PetroVietnam has a 13% interest.

As discussed in further detail below in the natural gas section, Thailand and Malaysia signed an agreement in 1979 to jointly develop oil and natural gas reserves from the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area (MTJDA), which overlap the maritime borders of both countries.

Other areas in the South China Sea such as the Celebes Basin that borders Indonesia and Malaysia have remained underexplored because there are competing territorial claims between the two countries. Shell holds an exploration contract with Petronas for two deepwater blocks off the east coast of Sabah; however, Indonesia also awarded separate PSCs for the blocks and claims them. It is likely these PSCs will be dormant as long as territorial maritime disputes remain unresolved.

Oil pipelines

Malaysia has a relatively limited oil pipeline network and relies on tankers and trucks to distribute products onshore. Malaysia’s main oil pipelines connect oil fields offshore Peninsular Malaysia to onshore storage and terminal facilities. The 124-mile Tapis pipeline runs from the Tapis oil field and terminates at the Kerteh plant in Terengganu, as does the 145-mile Jerneh condensate pipeline. The oil pipeline network for Sabah connects offshore oil fields with the onshore Labuan oil terminal. This network is currently expanding following the launch of development projects including the Kebabangan cluster, the Malikai, Gumusut/Kakap, and Kikeh oil fields. For Sarawak, there are a few other oil pipelines connecting offshore fields with the onshore Bintulu oil terminal. The majority of pipelines are operated by Petronas, although ExxonMobil also operates a number of pipelines connected with its significant upstream holdings located offshore Peninsular Malaysia.

An international oil products pipeline runs from the Dumai oil refinery in Indonesia to the Melaka oil refinery in Melaka City, Malaysia. An interconnecting oil products pipeline runs from the Melaka refinery via Shell’s Port Dickson refinery to the Klang Valley airport and to the Klang oil distribution center.

Oil trade

Malaysia remained a net oil exporter of crude oil and petroleum products in 2013 despite the narrowing gap between production and consumption in the past several years. Malaysia exports about half of its crude oil production because the crude quality (light and sweet) is attractive to the Asian markets and fetches a higher premium compared to other crude oil blends. In return, Malaysia imports lower-cost heavy sour crude oil, about half from the Middle East and the rest from several other regions, for its refineries and domestic needs. In 2013, Malaysia imported 183,000 bbl/d of lower-cost crude oil for processing at its oil refineries.

Malaysia exported 240,000 bbl/d of crude oil in 2013, according to Global Trade Atlas, significantly lower than the 400,000 bbl/d export volume in 2000. All of Malaysia’s crude oil is exported within Asia Pacific, the bulk of which is sent to Australia, India, Thailand, and Japan. Japan began buying more crude oil for direct burn in 2011 after it lost nuclear electric generation following the Fukushima accident.

The country’s imports of petroleum products have grown faster than its exports in the past few years. Much of Malaysia’s oil product trade occurs in Asia, especially with neighboring Singapore. Gasoline is the key import product, making up about 45% of product imports and about a third of all oil product demand.

Refining, storage, and transit terminals

As a result of rising regional and domestic demand for crude oil and oil products, Malaysia plans to become a regional oil trading and storage hub by increasing the country’s refining and storage capacity.

According to FGE, Malaysia has 591,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) of refining capacity at six facilities. Malaysia invested heavily in refining activities during the past two decades and is now able to meet most of its demand for petroleum products domestically, after relying on refineries in Singapore for many years.

As part of Malaysia’s goal to compete with the oil refining and storage hub in Singapore, Petronas plans to build a $16 billion refining and petrochemicals integrated development project (RAPID) in Johor state at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia. This project includes a 300,000 bbl/d refinery, which industry expects will turn Malaysia from a net oil product importer to a net oil product exporter once it is operational. The project, which was sanctioned in 2011, has incurred several delays, although Petronas made a final investment decision in 2014. The NOC plans to bring the refinery online in 2019.

Malaysia is expanding its oil terminal and storage capacity as the need for more oil storage and trading grows within Asia and as its neighbor, Singapore, lacks the space to continue increasing its massive storage capacity. Most of Malaysia’s oil product and crude oil terminals are located along the eastern coast of Peninsular Malaysia and offshore as floating storage and production facilities. Malaysia intends to expand its storage capacity to about 83 million barrels by 2020 and is in the process of constructing several projects in the next few years.

Malaysia is developing several storage terminals in Johor, adjacent to Singapore. Malaysia International Shipping Corporation (MISC), and global oil trader, Vitol Group, are expanding storage capacity at the new ATT Tanjung Bin Terminal by 2015. This terminal brought 7 million barrels of oil storage capacity online in 2013.

The Pengerang oil storage terminal in Johor, Malaysia’s largest commercial oil storage facility, started operations in early 2014. The facility is owned by a joint venture of Vopak (Dutch) and Dialogue Groups (Malaysia) and will have a storage capacity of more than 10 million barrels to house crude oil and oil products by the end of 2014 with a potential to expand to 41 million barrels in the future. This terminal bolstered southern Malaysia’s oil storage capacity by 70% to more than 25 million barrels. Concord Energy (Singaporean oil trading firm) and Dialogue proposed another Johor-based terminal with a capacity of 16 million barrels.

As part of Petronas’ plan to invest in upstream and downstream activities in the Sabah state, the national oil company (NOC) is constructing the Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal (SOGT) in Kimanis, Sabah. The terminal is scheduled to receive oil and natural gas by the second half of 2014. SOGT will become a central hub for much of the hydrocarbon development in offshore Sabah from new fields coming online recently – Gumusut/Kakap, Kikeh, and Malikai. The terminal has a design capacity to process 300,000 bbl/d of crude oil, more than 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas, and 77,000 bbl/d of condensate.

Malaysia’s existing and planned refineries
Refinery Operator Capacity
(bbl/d)
Notes
Existing LNG terminals
Melaka 1 (PSR-1) Petronas 95,000 Distills sweet crude oil and condensate
Melaka 2 (PSR-2) JV of Petronas and ConocoPhillips 125,000 Processes sour crude oil grades
Port Dickson Shell 145,000 Supplies solely domestic market; can accept heavier crude oil grades
Port Dickson San Miguel/Petron (Philippines) 85,000
Kertih Petronas 121,000 Processes naphtha condensates through a splitter
Kemaman Kemaman Bitumen Company 20,000 Converts heavy crude oils to bitumen
Planned projects
RAPID Petronas 300,000 Financial investment decision: April 2014. Operational: 2019
Sources: FACTS Global Energy, International Energy Agency, OGJ, company websites

Biofuels

Malaysia produced negligible quantities of biofuels in 2013, although the country plays a significant role in supplying palm oil, a key raw material used in biodiesel production.

Although Malaysia produced no significant quantities of ethanol and only 6,000 bbl/d of biodiesel in 2013, the country plays a significant role in the industry by supplying more than one-third of the world’s total palm oil, a vegetable oil and key product used in biodiesel production. Collectively, Indonesia and Malaysia represent 85% of global palm oil production. While a majority of this oil is used in food, both countries have also marketed their palm oil for biodiesel production.

Currently, only about 10% of global palm oil supply goes toward biofuels production. However, palm oil is the second-largest feedstock (after soy oil) used to produce biodiesel. In contrast to Indonesia, Malaysia historically has not converted much of its raw palm oil to biodiesel locally. Instead, Malaysia exports the palm oil to be refined elsewhere like in neighboring Singapore or Europe. Singapore’s large renewable diesel plant is a particularly good destination since its advanced hydrotreating capabilities result in a higher quality fuel product that can be used at high blend levels without operational issues.

Despite its currently low biodiesel fuel production, Malaysia has much higher production capacity. Some analysts estimate the country has up to 50,000 bbl/d of capacity, which is 40% of U.S. capacity. However, since 2010, Malaysia’s biodiesel capacity has been significantly underutilized as many consuming nations have added land-use criteria for feedstocks used to comply with their biofuels mandates. Production has grown recently from an estimated 1,000 bbl/d in 2011 to 6,000 bbl/d in 2013 and is currently on a pace to increase production in the next few years.

New blending mandates in Malaysia will likely increase local production significantly for domestic consumption. The National Biofuel Policy in 2006 instituted limited B5 blending requirements (blending 5% of biodiesel with 95% of diesel petroleum) in Peninsular Malaysia. A national B5 program was scheduled to be rolled out on a national scale in July 2014, but has since been delayed until December 2014, after several necessary blending terminals could not be completed in time. Malaysia is following up on the B5 mandate and plans to increase the biodiesel blend to 7% in certain areas starting in 2014.

Increased palm oil production also provides a significant amount of solid biomass, which is mostly contained in the husk of the palm seed known as an empty fruit bunch (EFB). There has been increasing interest expressed in using EFB as a cellulosic fuel source. If successful, this would open Malaysia to new markets in countries willing to pay a premium for products capable of lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural gas

Malaysia was the world’s second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas after Qatar in 2013. Although the country’s growing domestic demand and regional gas imbalances in the past few years caused the country to open its first regasification terminal as another source of imports.

According to the OGJ, Malaysia held 83 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proved natural gas reserves as of January 2014, and it was the third-largest natural gas reserve holder in the Asia-Pacific region. More than half of the country’s natural gas reserves are located in its eastern areas, predominantly offshore Sarawak. Most of Malaysia’s gas reserves are associated with oil basins, although Sarawak and Sabah have an increasing amount of non-associated gas reserves that have offset some of the declines from mature oil and gas basins offshore Peninsular Malaysia.

Sector organization

As in the oil sector, Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas dominates the natural gas sector. The company has a monopoly on all upstream natural gas developments, and it also plays a leading role in downstream activities and in the LNG trade. Most natural gas production comes from PSAs operated by foreign companies in conjunction with Petronas. Shell remains the largest gas producer and a key player in the development of deepwater fields in Malaysia.

MISC, which is 63% owned by Petronas, owns and operates ships for transporting hydrocarbons and chemicals around the world. The company has 27 LNG tankers, placing the company as the second-largest LNG fleet operator in the world, according to PFC Energy. The company also owns and charters 73 petroleum tankers and 18 ships for chemical transport.

Gas Malaysia is the largest non-power gas distribution company in Malaysia and the only one that can operate on Peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak Gas Distribution Company which is 70% owned by the state government, serves Sarawak gas consumers, and Sabah Energy Corporation distributes gas in the Sabah state.

Natural gas prices for end users are regulated by the Malaysian government, which caps the domestic rates at a level more than half of that for imported LNG. In an effort to reduce gas subsidies that the government pays to Petronas and power producers and to create more incentives for upstream natural gas investment, the government installed a price reform in 2011 that seeks to raise the natural gas price for electric power users every six months and eventually allow domestic natural gas prices to rise to international market levels. Although gas prices remained the same for more than two years, in January 2014 the government lowered the natural gas subsidy level and effectively raised the prices of natural gas for power users by about 11% to about $4.64/MMbtu. In May 2014, the government also raised the price for large non-power gas users (industrial and commercial sectors) by an average of 20% to about $5.86/MMbtu.

Exploration and production

Malaysia’s natural gas production has risen over the past two decades to serve the growing domestic demand and export contracts. Recent foreign investment in deepwater and technically challenging fields, primarily in the Sarawak and Sabah states, provides impetus to maintain natural gas production levels over the next few years.

Although Malaysia’s dry natural gas production has risen steadily over the past two decades, reaching an estimated 2.3 Tcf in 2012, growth slowed somewhat since 2007. Meanwhile domestic natural gas consumption has increased, reaching 1.1 Tcf in 2013, and it accounted for about 50% of production. The power sector consumed about 51% while the industrial sector accounted for 33% of the Malaysia’s natural gas market sales in 2013, according to FGE. Demand for power, especially in Peninsular Malaysia, is expected to steadily increase, and gas demand for industrial development is likely to remain strong as the government pursues greater economic development. Rising domestic demand, particularly in Peninsular Malaysia, and LNG export contract obligations are placing pressure on the natural gas supply and driving Malaysia to actively seek investments for reservoir development. There are several ongoing projects that will expand natural gas production in Malaysia over the near term. Exploration and development activities in Malaysia continue to focus on offshore Sarawak and Sabah. Over the long term, Malaysia needs to attract higher levels of investment and technical capabilities to develop deepwater fields and those fields containing high levels of carbon dioxide and sulfur.

Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area

One of the most active areas for natural gas exploration and production is the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area (MTJDA), located in the lower part of the Gulf of Thailand and the northern part of the Malay Basin. The MTJDA covers 2,800 square miles of territory. The MTJDA reportedly holds 9.5 Tcf of proved plus probable natural gas reserves. The area is divided into three blocks, A-18, B-17, and C-19, and is administered by the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Authority (MTJA), with each country owning 50% of the MTJDA’s hydrocarbon resources. Production at Block A-18 started in 2005 at the Cakerwala field, and the project’s second phase brought on the Bumi, Suriya, and Bulan fields in 2008. Initial gas production from Block A-18 was 390 MMcf/d, and the second phase added 400 MMcf/d of contracted gas supply. Block B-17 came online in 2009 with a contracted level of 270 MMcf/d. MTJA continues to explore the area for more hydrocarbon discoveries.

Projects in Sarawak and Sabah

Most of Malaysia’s natural gas production is offshore Sarawak and supports LNG exports from Bintulu. Shell has signed three oil and gas PSCs with Petronas in 2012 and stepped up drilling efforts in 2011 to continue developing gas and condensate production offshore Sarawak. The PSCs cover blocks SK319, SK318, and 2B in the Central Luconia Basin.

In 2009, Murphy Oil announced the startup of several smaller new gas fields located in Blocks SK309 and SK311. The Sarawak Gas Project, located 137 miles offshore Sarawak, contains a cluster of fields that are being developed as part of a multi-phase project to supply gas to the Bintulu LNG Terminal. Murphy Oil holds an 85% interest in the project, and Petronas holds a 15% interest. Murphy Oil holds a gas sales contract with Petronas and provides up to 250 MMcf/d.

Newfield Exploration, which recently divested its Asian upstream assets, made a significant gas discovery in the SK-310 PSC offshore Sarawak in 2013. The company claimed the find could boost gas resources by 1.5 Tcf. In 2014, SapuraKencana Petroleum, a Malaysia oil services company, purchased Newfield’s Malaysian upstream assets and now holds a 30% share of the SK-310 Block, while Petronas and Mitsubishi have 40% and 30% shares, respectively. SapuraKencana reported that it plans to bring the fields on stream by 2017.

The Kebabangan Petroleum Operating Company (KPOC), a consortium consisting of Petronas (40%), ConocoPhillips (30%), and Shell, the operator, (30%), are developing three contiguous gas and condensate fields including Kebabangan, Kamunsu East, and Kamunsu East Upthrown Canyon (KBB Cluster) in the northwest Sabah state. The Kebabangan gas cluster is estimated to hold 4.9 Tcf of gas, according to PFC Energy. Production for KBB is expected to begin in 2014.

As part of the Sabah-Sarawak Integrated Oil and Gas Project, Petronas is commissioning the Kinabalu Non-Associated Gas (NAG) development. The Kinabalu NAG development, comprised of two gas fields located offshore northwest of Sabah, is slated to begin producing by 2015.

Pipelines

Malaysia has an extensive gas pipeline network running through Peninsular Malaysia and pipelines that connect offshore fields in all three states to key infrastructure onshore.

Malaysia has one of the most extensive natural gas pipeline networks in Asia, totaling about 1,530 miles. The Peninsular Gas Utilization (PGU) project, completed in 1998, expanded the natural gas transmission infrastructure on Peninsular Malaysia. The PGU system spans more than 880 miles and has the capacity to transport 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas. Other natural gas pipelines run from offshore gas fields to gas processing facilities at Kertih. Also, a number of pipelines link Sarawak’s offshore gas fields to the Bintulu LNG facility. However, there is limited gas distribution coverage in much of the Sarawak and Sabah states.

The Sabah-Sarawak Integrated Oil and Gas Project, slated to be completed by 2015, includes the 325-mile Sabah-Sarawak Gas Pipeline (SSGP) that will transport 1 Bcf/d of gas from Sabah’s offshore fields to the Petronas LNG complex for liquefaction and export. Some natural gas from the terminal is also reserved for fueling downstream industrial projects and for power generation in Sabah. The SSGP is expected to be ready for operations in conjunction with the SOGT in 2014. Other pipelines link natural gas fields located in offshore Sabah to the Labuan Gas Terminal.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is promoting the development of a Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline system (TAGP) aimed at linking ASEAN’s major gas production and consumption centers by 2024. Because of Malaysia’s extensive natural gas infrastructure and its location, the country is a natural candidate to serve as a hub in the ongoing TAGP project, which currently has 1,800 miles of pipelines in operation out of a proposed 4,500 miles. The first pipeline connected Malaysia with Singapore and was commissioned in 1991. Singapore currently has two contracts to import 84 Bcf/y of gas from Malaysia. Gas pipelines between West Natuna, Indonesia, and Duyong, Malaysia were installed in 2002, and Malaysia imported more than 40 Bcf of gas from Indonesia in 2013, according to the BP Statistical Review 2014. The Trans-Thailand-Malaysia Gas Pipeline was commissioned in 2005, which allows Malaysia to transport natural gas from the Malaysia-Thailand JDA to its domestic pipeline system.

A key component of expanding the TAGP is to transit natural gas from the massive East Natuna gas field, located in the South China Sea to Southeast Asia. The field is being developed by a joint venture consisting of Pertamina (Indonesia), ExxonMobil, Total, and PTT Exploration and Production (Thailand). Malaysia’s Petronas exited the project in 2012, and the field’s development has encountered several delays as a result of its remote location and high carbon dioxide levels. These challenges to East Natuna’s development could also delay the TAGP, and several Southeast Asian countries are turning to LNG imports to deal with the region’s gas shortages.

LNG trade

Malaysia remains a key exporter of LNG as the second-largest exporter in the world after Qatar in 2013. However, the limited natural gas supplies and rising demand in the western part of the country triggered investment in regasification terminals, the first of which commenced in 2013.

Malaysia remains a key global LNG exporter as the second-largest exporter after Qatar in 2013. Malaysia is developing sizeable reserves in its eastern region. However, growing natural gas supply shortages in demand centers in the western region have prompted Petronas to construct the country’s first LNG import terminal in the western region to augment the supply from pipelines.

LNG exports

Malaysia shipped more than 1.2 Tcf/y of LNG and contributed to 11% of LNG exports worldwide, according to IHS Energy. Key importers of Malaysia’s LNG are Japan (60%), South Korea (17%), Taiwan (12%), and China (11%), all holding medium- or long-term supply contracts with Malaysia. Malaysia also has sold LNG cargoes to Petronas LNG Limited, a trading company based in Malaysia, which ships spot LNG cargoes to many locations around the world. Despite growing demand for natural gas at home, Petronas is keen to maintain its long-term export contracts as they currently capture a higher price than natural gas sold domestically where the gas prices are regulated and subsidized.

The Petronas LNG complex located in Bintulu in the state of Sarawak is the main hub for Malaysia’s natural gas industry. Petronas owns majority interests in facility’s three LNG processing plants (Dua, Tiga, and Satu), which are supplied by the country’s offshore natural gas fields. Petronas LNG is one of the largest LNG complexes in the world, with eight production trains and a total liquefaction capacity of 1.1 Tcf/y. Japanese financing has been critical to the development of Malaysia’s LNG facilities. The complex at Bintulu also hosts Shell’s GTL project, which converts natural gas into nearly 15,000 bbl/d of petroleum liquids. Petronas is currently developing a ninth train and a small-scale expansion at Petronas LNG, and these facilities combined will add 205 Bcf/y of capacity by the end of 2015.

Petronas proposed two floating liquefaction terminals offshore Sarawak and Sabah to capture greater economic value from the country’s smaller, more remote gas fields. These plants would have flexibility to serve the export or domestic markets. The Petronas FLNG project, located off Sarawak near the Petronas LNG complex, will have a capacity of 58 Bcf/y and will use natural gas from the Kanowit field. Petronas plans to market gas from the facility to the domestic market. The project is under construction and is scheduled to commence in 2016. Rotan FLNG, the second proposed offshore LNG terminal, will monetize gas production from the Rotan field northeast of Sabah in the South China Sea. The terminal has a design capacity of 72 Bcf/y and could serve some domestic demand in Sabah by reprocessing at the proposed Lahad Datu regasfication plant. The project partners intend for the project to be online by 2018. Altogether, proposed liquefaction projects and expansions are likely to add about 335 Bcf/y to Malaysia’s export capacity over the next few years.

Malaysia’s existing and planned liquefaction terminals
Project name Owners Peak output (Bcf/y) Target start year
Existing LNG terminals
Petronas LNG (Satu) Petronas 389; 3 trains1 Operational
Petronas LNG (Dua) Petronas 432; 3 trains Operational
Petronas LNG (Tiga) Petronas 326; 3 trains Operational
Projects under construction
Petronas LNG Train 9 Petronas 173 Q4 2015
Petronas LNG Mini Expansion Petronas 32 Q4 2014
Petronas Floating LNG2 Petronas 58; 1 train Q4 2015
Rotan LNG Petronas 50%, MISC 25%, Murphy Oil 25% 72; 1 train 2018
1A train is an independent unit for liquefaction and purification.
2A floating terminal is at the site of an offshore gas field that produces, liquefies, stores, and transfers natural gas.
Sources: IHS Global Insight, FACTS Global Energy, International Energy Agency, company websites

 

Malaysia’s existing and planned regasification terminals
Project name Owners Peak output (Bcf/y) Target start year
Existing LNG terminals
Lekas LNG/ Malacca Petronas 184 2013
Planned projects
Pengerang LNG Petronas 184 2016
Pengerang LNG Dialogue Group (Malaysia) 46%, Royal Vopak (Netherlands) 44%, Johor state government 10% Not determined 2016
Lumut LNG Petronas Not determined Not determined
Lahad Datu LNG Petronas 39 Delayed from 2015
Pahang LNG Performance Management & Delivery Unit of Malaysia Not determined Not determined
Sources: IHS Global Insight, FACTS Global Energy, International Energy Agency, company websites

 

Although Malaysia is one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, the country currently experiences a geographic disparity of natural gas supply and demand among its regions. The Western Peninsular Malaysia demands more natural gas to fuel the power and industrial sectors, while the eastern states of Sarawak and Sabah, located on Borneo Island, produce natural gas and currently lack the local demand for it. To meet pressing gas needs in Peninsular Malaysia, Petronas is developing various regasification terminals to secure supply from the global gas market.

Petronas is the leading developer of several regasification projects slated to start operations by 2017. Malaysia’s first regasification terminal, located near Malacca with a capacity of 184 Bcf/y, began operating in May 2013. In 2013, Malaysia imported 76 Bcf of LNG from Lekas LNG. In addition, Petronas Gas has plans to construct two regasification terminals in Lahad Datu in Sabah and one in Johor in Peninsular Malaysia over the next four years. Lahad Datu is the only project located in the eastern region of Sabah. It is a smaller terminal designed to primarily serve the proposed 300 megawatt (MW) power generator at Lahad Datu and replace some of the diesel that is heavily used for power in the Sabah state. Petronas’ terminal in Johor is part of the NOC’s RAPID project that will include regasification and LNG storage and serve as a strategic oil and gas trading hub for the Asian region. A consortium composed of Royal Vopak, Dialogue Group, and the State Government of Johor proposed a second terminal in Johor with a similar concept – to be the first independent LNG trading facility in Asia, allowing users to store and trade gas.

Petronas signed several agreements to supply its planned regasification capacity for the next decade. The NOC has a combination of long-term agreements with Qatargas and Gladstone LNG (Australia) and short-term agreements with Pluto LNG (Australia), Snohvit LNG (Norway), and GDF Suez for its global portfolio. Shell also holds a contract with Brunei LNG to deliver LNG to Malaysia. Petronas plans to source some of the gas from its new liquefaction projects coming online in Sarawak. The NOC could also direct natural gas supply from its stakes in liquefaction facilities in Australia and Canada to the proposed regasification facilities, according to PFC Energy. Although, Petronas has not signed any purchase contracts for the supply from its proposed liquefaction projects.

Electricity

Malaysia’s electricity demand, mostly met by natural gas and to a lesser extent coal, continues to expand rapidly. This growth coupled with insufficient natural gas supply in high demand centers is driving the country to diversify power generation fuel mix and add electricity capacity to avoid future power shortages.

Malaysia’s economic development and population growth have resulted in substantially higher electricity generation over the past decade. The country’s electricity generation doubled in the past decade, landing at 134 billion kilowatthours in 2012, according to MEIH data. The Malaysian states anticipate that electricity demand will grow by more than 3% at least through 2020. The high demand centers, particularly in Peninsular Malaysia, are facing fuel shortages in natural gas and are experiencing a need for greater generation capacity. Malaysia is seeking to diversify its portfolio of power generation fuels and reduce the use of more expensive fuel sources.

According to the Energy Commission of Malaysia, the industrial sector is the primary source of power demand and accounted for about 45% of the total in 2012. Commercial and residential demand was 33% and 21%, respectively. Transportation and agriculture made up less than 1%.

Sector organization

Each of Malaysia’s three states has a key state utility that holds a monopoly in the transmission and distribution sectors. These companies are the largest stakeholders in power generation, although there is a sizeable private ownership through independent power producers (IPPs) that generate about half of the country’s electricity. Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) located in Peninsular Malaysia, held a 42% market share of electric generation in the state in 2011, while Petronas Gas and IPPs held the remaining shares. Syarikat SESCO Berhad, (a subsidiary of Sarawak Energy) is responsible for the generation, transmission, and distribution of power in Sarawak and sells all of Sarawak’s power generation through a government joint venture. Sabah Electricity Sdn Berhad (SESB) is 80% owned by TNB and 20% by the Sabah government. IPPs generate more than 50% of the electricity in Sabah.

The country has three electric transmission grids located in Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, and Sabah. The grid in Peninsular Malaysia, the largest of the three, connects with electricity systems in Thailand and Singapore. TNB plans to reduce transmission losses and increase electric supply reliability in Peninsular Malaysia over the next two decades. Sarawak Energy and Indonesia are constructing a transmission line from Sarawak to West Kalimantan, Indonesia (also located on Borneo Island). Sarawak Energy plans to export up to 230 MW to Indonesia starting in 2015.

One of Malaysia’s energy policies in recent years is to reduce government energy subsidies by raising overall electricity and natural gas tariffs and pass fuel costs to electricity end users. Malaysia raised electricity tariffs on average by 7.1% in June 2011 to help reduce the subsidy the government provides on behalf of electricity companies. The country’s domestic natural gas prices are also fixed by the government at prices much lower than those of imported LNG. The government raised the price of natural gas to power consumers in June 2011. The government also planned to pass fluctuations in fuel prices and raise natural gas prices paid by electric power generators every six months starting in late 2011. However, natural gas prices remained at these rates for more than two years until January 2014, when the government reduced the natural gas subsidy for power generation and in essence raised the natural gas price for power production by about 11%. The subsidy for coal-fired power was also reduced, and prices for power production in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah increased by 15% and 17% on average, respectively.

Electricity generation and capacity

Most of Malaysia’s electricity generation capacity is natural gas-fired, although gas shortages in Peninsular Malaysia and growing electricity demand in recent years have spurred the use of other fuels such as coal, diesel, and renewable sources.

Total installed generation capacity at the end of 2012 was 29.1 gigawatts (GW), located mostly in Peninsular Malaysia, according to Malaysia’s government. To meet the country’s projected electricity demand, the government anticipates an additional 6 GW of new generation will come online between 2015 and 2020. The government’s efforts are centered on meeting increasing electricity demand through a more balanced portfolio of electric generation using coal, renewable sources, and to a lesser extent natural gas, in the next decade. Malaysia’s policy to reduce power consumption also entails reforming electricity prices to be more reflective of market values and promoting demand-side conservation measures.

Fossil fuels, primarily coal and natural gas, made up about 86% of Malaysia’s installed electric generation capacity and 92% of the country’s electricity output in 2012. Natural gas accounted for about 53% of the country’s total installed capacity and about 46% of the electricity generation in 2012, according to MEIH. Many of these gas plants are located in Peninsular Malaysia, and some have dual-fuel capabilities allowing for greater flexibility in fuel type. Tightness of natural gas supply in Peninsular Malaysia in recent years, particularly in 2011, caused by the state’s production declines has resulted in power outages and has increased use of coal-fired generation and more expensive fuel oil and diesel-fired generation. Peninsular Malaysia intends to import LNG as well as diversify its power generation portfolio with other fuels such as coal and hydroelectricity to alleviate power constraints.

TNB is constructing a 1,071 MW combined-cycle gas turbine plant in Penang, Peninsular Malaysia to be completed at the end of 2015. Also, Sabah is building two 300 MW gas-fired plants including the Kimanis Power Plant, which will purchase gas from the Sabah oil and gas terminal in 2015. The Lahad Datu power plant is being developed to use gas from the adjacent regasification terminal project.

Although petroleum products currently account for a small portion of the capacity and generation and have been replaced by natural gas and coal inputs, they have played a critical role as an alternative fuel in the past few years to alleviate power shortages when other fuels are in short supply. Also, diesel is the main fuel used in the Sabah state. Diesel and petroleum products accounted for 5% of Malaysia’s electricity generation in 2012.

Coal, which accounted for 26% of total installed capacity and 41% of electricity generation in 2012, has become much more competitive with natural gas-fired power in terms of fuel price and has gained a larger share of power generation in Peninsula Malaysia in the past few years. There are plans to increase coal-fired capacity in Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak by 2020. Malaysia signed construction contracts for the country’s first use of ultra-supercritical coal technology for two power plants located at Manjung 4 and Tanjung Bin on Peninsular Malaysia. The plants are scheduled to add 2 GW of coal-fired capacity by 2016. A joint venture consisting of Mitsui of Japan and a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance is constructing a 2 GW coal-fired plant, Jimah East Power, to commence electricity generation by 2018.

As part of the government’s Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) program designed to use Sarawak’s vast energy resources to serve the power needs of several proposed energy-intensive manufacturing projects, the state intends to increase generation capacity from domestic hydroelectricity, coal, and other renewable sources by a total of 28 GW over the next two decades. Sarawak plans to use the country’s limited coal production, located on Borneo Island, for the Balingian project. The 600 MW plant is under construction and is scheduled to commence operations in 2018. The SCORE program includes expanding the state’s coal-fired capacity by 5 GW.

Malaysia produced only 3.4 million short tons of coal in 2012, about 12% of its coal consumption, and is limited in domestic coal reserves. Malaysia’s coal imports, mainly from Indonesia, have doubled in the past five years to about 24 million short tons to fuel expanding coal-fired generation.

Hydroelectricity, which accounted for 11% of total electric capacity and 7% of electricity generation in 2012 in Malaysia, is undergoing significant expansion. Most of the hydroelectric facilities are small or medium in size and are located in Peninsular Malaysia. However, the Sarawak state has the most potential for substantial hydroelectric growth considering its rainfall and geography.

As part of the SCORE program, Sarawak intends to harness the state’s abundant hydro potential. Sarawak is in the process of constructing several sizeable dams. In 2012, hydroelectricity was about 35% of Sarawak’s power generation and is anticipated to expand to 80% by 2020, replacing much of the natural gas-fired capacity with the addition of several hydroelectric dams, according to the government. Sarawak Hidro, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Finance, developed the massive 2,400 MW Bakun Hydroelectric plant in Sarawak. The first 300 MW unit came online in mid-2011, and the other seven turbines were brought online a year later. The 944 MW Murum Dam is nearly complete and is expected to be operational by 2015. The Sarawak government plans to construct another nine hydro dams with a total generation capacity of 4 GW by 2025. According to the Sarawak government, total potential hydroelectric capacity in the state is 20 GW.

As part of its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 40% by 2020, compared to its 2005 level, and to diversify its electricity fuel mix, Malaysia encourages investment in other types of renewable energy projects. Besides hydroelectricity from large dams, another key renewable fuel used to generate electricity is biomass based from palm oil, sugarcane bagasse, and manure, among others. The government’s goal is that renewable sources, excluding large hydroelectric plants, will account for 5.5% of electricity capacity by 2015 compared to 3% in 2012. As part of this endeavor, Malaysia enacted feed-in tariffs for solar, biomass, biogas, and mini-hydro projects. Malaysia envisions electricity capacity from non-hydro renewables will grow from a reported 834 MW in 2012 to 2,080 MW in 2020.

Malaysia has also discussed building two nuclear power facilities by 2021, although this project has encountered delays resulting from industry reluctance following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Notes

Data presented in the text are the most recent available as of September 29, 2014.
Data are EIA estimates unless otherwise noted.

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Why The Economy Is Still Failing Most Americans – OpEd

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I was in Seattle, Washington, recently, to congratulate union and community organizers who helped Seattle enact the first $15 per hour minimum wage in the country.

Other cities and states should follow Seattle’s example.

Contrary to the dire predictions of opponents, the hike won’t cost Seattle jobs. In fact, it will put more money into the hands of low-wage workers who are likely to spend almost all of it in the vicinity. That will create jobs.

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they’re wrong. It’s just the opposite.

The real job creators are not CEOs or corporations or wealthy investors. The job creators are members of America’s vast middle class and the poor, whose purchases cause businesses to expand and invest.

America’s wealthy are richer than they’ve ever been. Big corporations are sitting on more cash they know what to do with. Corporate profits are at record levels. CEO pay continues to soar.

But the wealthy aren’t investing in new companies. Between 1980 and 2014, the rate of new business formation in the United States dropped by half, according to a Brookings study released in May.

Corporations aren’t expanding production or investing in research and development. Instead, they’re using their money to buy back their shares of stock.

There’s no reason for them to expand or invest if customers aren’t buying.

Consumer spending has grown more slowly in this recovery than in any previous one because consumers don’t have enough money to buy.

All the economic gains have been going to the top.

The Commerce Department reported last Friday that the economy grew at a 4.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter of the year.

So what? The median household’s income continues to drop.

Median household income is now 8 percent below what it was in 2007, adjusted for inflation. It’s 11 percent below its level in 2000.

It used to be that economic expansions improved the incomes of the bottom 90 percent more than the top 10 percent.

But starting with the “Reagan” recovery of 1982 to 1990, the benefits of economic growth during expansions have gone mostly to the top 10 percent.

Since the current recovery began in 2009, all economic gains have gone to the top 10 percent. The bottom 90 percent has lost ground.

We’re in the first economic upturn on record in which 90 percent of Americans have become worse off.

Why did the playing field start to tilt against the middle class in the Reagan recovery, and why has it tilted further ever since?

Don’t blame globalization. Other advanced nations facing the same global competition have managed to preserve middle class wages. Germany’s median wage is now higher than America’s.

One factor here has been a sharp decline in union membership. In the mid 1970s, 25 percent of the private-sector workforce was unionized.

Then came the Reagan revolution. By the end of the 1980s, only 17 percent of the private workforce was unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent of the nation’s private-sector workers belong to a union.

This means most workers no longer have the bargaining power to get a share of the gains from growth.

Another structural change is the drop in the minimum wage. In 1979, it was $9.67 an hour (in 2013 dollars). By 1990, it had declined to $6.84. Today it’s $7.25, well below where it was in 1979.

Given that workers are far more productive now – computers have even increased the output of retail and fast food workers — the minimum wage should be even higher.

By setting a floor on wages, a higher minimum helps push up other wages. It undergirds higher median household incomes.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

It also requires better schools for the children of the bottom 90 percent, better access to higher education, and a more progressive tax system.

GDP growth is less and less relevant to the wellbeing of most Americans. We should be paying less attention to growth and more to median household income.

If the median household’s income is is heading upward, the economy is in good shape. If it’s heading downward, as it’s been for this entire recovery, we’re all in deep trouble.

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Legal Basis For US War In Iraq And Syria Is Thin – OpEd

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U.S. government officials recently began hyping the threat from a very small and little-known terrorist group called Khorasan and then striking it in Syria. Several of President Obama’s aides told the media that airstrikes were launched to foil an “imminent” terrorist attack, possibly using hidden explosives to blow up aircraft. Yet other government officials seemed to pour cold water on that assessment. According to the New York Times, one anonymous senior official described the Khorasan plot as only “aspirational” and said that the group had not seemed to have established a concrete plan. Other officials, at least one of who was a senior counterterrorism official, said that the plot was far from mature and that no sign existed that the group had decided on the method of attack or the time and target of it.

These divergent stories should alert us to the possibility that the old saying–the first casualty of war is truth–is operating again (remember all the falsehoods surrounding then-President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq?). The Times then cited some experts as explaining this divergence by saying that the Obama administration may have developed specific intelligence about the location of the group’s leader, Muhsin al-Fadhli, and was trying to take advantage of it to kill him.

While this explanation may or may not be true, targeting the group also conveniently provides a rather lame excuse under international law and the U.S. Constitution for launching airstrikes Syria without congressional approval. The administration had a marginally better legal excuse for striking targets of the Islamic State (IS) group, its main adversary, in Iraq than it did in Syria. The legal reasoning for attacking in Syria has been thin indeed. Under international law, several reasons can exist for legally taking military action within another country’s borders–a United Nations Security Council resolution approving an attack on the country, a request for help by that country, or self defense on the attacking country’s part.

No U.N. Security Council resolution approving the war exists, but the Iraqi government has requested help in beating back the IS group. Syria, although secretly loving that the powerful United States attacking its armed opposition, doesn’t get along with the United States and has not formally requested that its territory be attacked.

One convoluted line of reasoning used by the administration is not accepted my many international legal scholars–that the United States is responding to a request to defend Iraq and that Syria is “unable or unwilling” to stanch the threat of fighters flowing into Iraq, thus allowing U.S. air strikes against Syria.

That’s where the third excuse comes in. The United States needs to find some self-defense rationale to attack Syria. Yet no one is alleging that IS is about ready to attack the United States. In fact, many experts note that IS, despite its clever anti-U.S. bluster to lure the United States into attacking it, is more of a threat to the Middle East and neighboring countries than it is to U.S. territory. IS is focused primarily on establishing an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria rather than attacking the United States. That’s where Khorasan comes in. The very small group, like the much larger IS, is an offshoot of al Qaeda, but seems to be more interested in attacking U.S. targets.

However, a self-defense justification would require an imminent threat to justify a pre-emptive attack to thwart any such strike. If no imminent threat existed, any U.S. attack would be “preventive”; preventive war can be abused (for example, Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq) and is frowned on by the international community.

Many conservatives, who purport to defend the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution (but often abandon that ship when “patriotic” military action is afoot), might correctly say that international law is less important than following America’s governing document. However, even here an imminent threat is also needed for the president to attack Syria. Although President Obama has cited the congressionally passed Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 to attack the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and the congressionally approved authorization to use military force against Iraq in 2002 as justifications for its current attacks on IS in Iraq and Syria, this argument at best could justify strikes in Iraq, but not Syria.

As it is, even those justifications are thin indeed. Contrary to what is rather casually reported in the American media, the AUMF of 2001 does not authorize military action against al Qaeda affiliates or former affiliates, such as Khorasan and IS, respectively. The resolution authorizes military attacks only on the perpetrators, enablers, and hosts of the executors of the 9/11 attacks–that is, the main al Qaeda group and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Most al Qaeda affiliates originated long after 9/11 and had nothing to do with those attacks. Administration officials have alleged that Khorasan leader Muhsin al-Fadhli was a confident of Osama bin Laden and probably knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. Thus, the administration could claim that it was trying to assassinate an enabler of the 9/11 attacks, but attacking the entire Khorasan and IS groups under that rationale is highly suspect. And the administration has said that its revised policy on targeted assassinations, which allows such killings only if a person poses a “continuing and imminent threat” of attacks on Americans, does not apply to the conflict in Iraq and Syria.

As for attacks on IS in Iraq, using the long outdated congressional authorization to attack Saddam Hussein’s government (passed in 2002) to again attack Iraq for entirely different purposes 12 years later is very questionable. The Constitution’s framers would have frowned on the use of one congressional vote to endorse perpetual war.

The debates at the American Constitutional convention in 1787 seem to indicate only one exception to the requirement for congressional approval of any presidential military action–large or small: an imminent attack on the United States that the president must counter immediately. Even then, the intention was that when it was possible for Congress to convene, they should approve continued military action by the president. Thus, the U. S. government has little legal justification to attack Syria (and really Iraq too) without fresh congressional authorization, unless an imminent threat is afoot. In Iraq, Obama might have been justified in very limited air strikes to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities (technically they are U.S. soil), but those American attacks have gone way beyond that and need congressional approval.

Thus, we see the administration’s need to find an imminent threat in Syria to bolster the thin legal case for attacking that country. However, according to the framers’ original intent, as indicated by the proceedings at the Constitutional Convention, even after the alleged imminent threat–al-Fadhli and Khorasan–was neutralized, Congress would need to authorize further strikes in Syria.

But one cannot blame the legal and constitutional shenanigans of Obama–just the latest in a long line of presidents since Harry Truman to usurp Congress’s constitutional war power–for the entire problem. Instead of doing their constitutional duty and going on record with a dangerous vote on the latest war before an election, the cowardly Congress left town to campaign. This atrocious behavior on the most important function that the nation’s founders gave Congress–taking the nation to war–is typical and is an indication that Congress’s war power has been severely eroded by abdication as well as by presidential usurpation. At a bare minimum, Congress needs vote on this war after the election–and hopefully stop what is an internationally illegal and counterproductive war, which just fires more Islamic radicalism and causes that movement to put the United States needlessly in its crosshairs.

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Asian Leaders Show A Way Out Of The ‘Hell’ Let Loose – OpEd

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By Kalinga Seneviratne

In 2003 when U.S. President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were contemplating invading Iraq based on the now discredited claims of Iraqi President Saddam Hussien possessing “weapons of mass destruction”, the then Arab League chief Amr Moussa warned that such an action would “open the gates of hell” in the Middle East.

Today, not only Iraq, but also many of its neighbours such as Syria, Palestine and Libya have descended into the “hell” Moussa predicted. Yet, the West seems blind to it and is repeating the same mistakes again, lacking the wisdom to understand that the threat the West argues needs to be neutralized, is coming from the “hell” they themselves created.

Six months after invading Iraq, in September 2003, President Bush addressing the UN General Assembly (UNGA) said that the U.S. and its allies were fighting “a global movement of violent extremists” and in September 2014 President Barack Obama used almost identical words when he said that the U.S. will work with a broad coalition to “dismantle this network of death”.

It was Iranian President Hasan Rouhani who tried to introduce some wisdom into those coalition builders that are increasingly looking like the blind leading the blind. Describing his country as an “anchor of stability in an otherwise ocean of regional instabilities”, he noted that a “few actors still tend to rely on archaic and deeply ineffective ways and means to preserve their old superiority and domination.”

“Militarism and the recourse to violent and military means to subjugate others are failed examples of the perpetuation of old ways in new circumstances,” warned President Rouhani. “Ignoring differences between societies and globalizing Western values as universal ones represent another manifestation of this conceptual mindset,” he added.

The Iranian President argued that this mindset is a danger to world peace. “The strategic violence, which is manifested in the efforts to deprive regional players from their natural domain of action, containment policies, regime change from outside, and the efforts towards redrawing of political borders and frontiers, is extremely dangerous and provocative,” he added.

Another Muslim leader, Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono relayed a similar note of wisdom in his UNGA speech on September 24. Recalling the 1960s when the Southeast Asian region was poor, divided and insecure and threatened by a war raging in the neighbourhood (that was fuelled by the U.S. and its allies’ desire to fight communism), he pointed out that the establishment of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) developed the “habits of dialogue and consultation and (they) learned to trust one another”.

“Today, those once-divided countries belong to ASEAN and were all drivers of regional affairs. They had peacefully resolved a number of sensitive inter-State and intra-State conflicts, while others were being addressed through dialogue and negotiation,” he pointed out to the members of UN.

President Yudhoyono, who described the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) ideology as “antidote to poison” offered some wisdom from the East where Indonesia has shown that democracy, Islam, modernity and human rights can go together. He hoped that the “pioneering spirit”, which had allowed Indonesia to open a new chapter of non-violent relations with Timor-Leste and peacefully resolve its overlapping maritime borders with Viet Nam, the Philippines and Singapore, among others, would be the same pioneering spirit “that could aid the international community in conquering poverty and social injustice, and in creating a culture of peace among all faiths”.

President Obama, who spent much of his childhood in Indonesia, acknowledged in his UNGA speech the contribution the two Muslim countries in South East Asia could make to resolving some of the problems in the Middle East. He pointed out, that, in Malaysia, “vibrant entrepreneurship is propelling a former colony into the ranks of advanced economies” while in neighbouring Indonesia, “what began as a violent transition has evolved into a genuine democracy”.

Learning from the East

So why are the U.S. and its western allies unable or unwilling to learn from the East?

Perhaps, President Rouhani has the answer. “The discourse assigning the North the center stage and relegating the South to the periphery has led to the establishment of a monologue at the level of international relations,” he told the UNGA, adding that it is reflected in the persistence of Cold War mentality and bi-polar division of the world into “superior us” and “inferior others”.

Lebanon’s President Tammam Salam said his country was facing a “terrorist onslaught” from “criminal groups” let loose by the region’s descent into hell. In addition, the Syrian war had displaced 1.5 million Syrians into Lebanon, equivalent to one third of its total population. Lebanon’s national economic growth had dropped to zero, causing the country a loss of $7.5 billion. He said that it was a national disaster and “the burden of Syrian refugees could not be borne by any one country, but must be shared”.

helpIn August, the UN Refugee agency said that for the first time, they were sending food aid to Libya, to help tens of thousands of people displaced by weeks of fighting in Tripoli. The city is facing severe fuel and power shortages and this has disrupted the distribution of basic goods and supplies. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, at least 2 million people may be at risk of food shortages if the fighting continues in Libya.

Until western intervention for regime change under the dubious Right to Protect (R2P) formula, both Syria and Libya were stable, well governed countries, though ruled by authoritarian leaders not any different to those in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, who are close U.S. allies in its war against ISIS today.

An articulate Iraqi blogger, known as ‘Baghdad Burning’ who moved to Syria after the 2003 U.S. invasion of his country and now lives in another Arab city, was recently quoted by London’s Guardian newspaper thus: “We learned that you can be floating on a sea of oil, but your people can be destitute. Your city can be an open sewer; your women and children can be eating out of trash dumps and begging for money in foreign lands.”

Isn’t this what hell is supposed to be? Now that the Gods from the West have been instrumental in creating this hell on earth, would it be time that we listened to some wisdom from the East?

“In the past, the international community had launched wars against it without planning for peace. It had attacked one evil only to see a greater evil emerge,” observed Malaysian Prime Minister Najob Razak in his address to UNGA.

“Malaysia”, he said, “had marginalized extremism, maintaining a multi-religious country, where different faiths coexisted and prospered, and showed that Islam could not only succeed, but drive progress and development in a pluralistic society.”

Well it may be time for the West to learn from the experiences in Asia in creating socially harmonious societies, rather than dismissing these as authoritarian states.

*Kalinga Seneviratne is IDN Special Correspondent for Asia-Pacific. He teaches international communications in Singapore.

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The European Union’s Role In Fight Against ISIS – Analysis

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By Félix Arteaga

The United States has launched an international coalition to counter an armed offensive of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham), which threatened the sovereignty of Iraq and the lives of the Kurd, Syrian, Shiite, Turkmen and Yazidi populations in the area. As some European countries have already decided to join the coalition, it seems necessary to reflect on how the EU could contribute to the fight against ISIS. This comment focuses such reflection on European interests, strategy and means.

Before formulating any response to the ISIS challenge, the EU must carefully assess the nature of the risk to European security interests. The first step is to evaluate whether ISIS represents a direct and imminent threat to the EU, or just a potential risk for the future. If the European assessment is, just as the US intelligence believes, that ISIS is not a direct threat, then the EU can apply to ISIS the same catalogue of responses that it is already applying to similar terrorist groups. Such analysis of risk is important because many Jihadist groups have neither the will nor the capacity to threaten European interests, especially when they are involved in an armed struggle away from European borders.

Even without the threat of imminent attacks, European and Western countries are still concerned about their nationals taking part in the Middle Eastern jihad and coming back to their home countries. Thus, the EU must multiply the effectiveness of the ongoing cooperation between European intelligence, police, judicial and financial agencies, taking advantage of UN Security Council Resolution 2170 which called on all UN Member States to suppress the flow of foreign fighters, financial and other support to Islamist extremist groups in Iraq and Syria. In this regard, the Persian Gulf countries would contribute more to the fight against terrorism by controlling money transfers from their citizens and organizations than by bombarding the recipients in Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State has developed a military capability in Syria that it uses in its quest to establish an Islamic state (caliphate). Such capability does not pose a direct threat to the sovereignty of EU member states, although any terrorist sanctuary created close to our borders may encourage terrorist activities in Europe. Still, the EU as such does not have the required military capabilities to fight the insurgency on the battlefield. Only some of its member states have the firepower, and even among those, only a few are willing to use it in Iraq (but not in Syria). Inside the EU, there are also strong divergences among the national strategic cultures with regard to the use of force. Both facts are worrying not only in the context of the ISIS crisis, but also due to the probability of facing similar situations south of Europe in the future. Without proper European counter-insurgency tools, EU Members will have to rely on ad hoc coalitions to counter fresh attempts of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shabaab and Boko-Haram to create emirates or caliphates along the southern border.

Finding an answer to ISIS requires formulating a strategy. The President of the United States has designed the coalition plan to weaken and destroy ISIS, though he does not clearly identify the desired end state, the strategic objectives and the required means. The strategy just lists several lines of military action: air strikes in Iraq and Syria, military assistance, and training of the local forces opposing ISIS (with no combat boots on the ground). European countries have already taken part in US-led operations in the past, so they know well the risks that such open-ended interventions pose, including unilateral U.S. changes of strategy based on re-evaluation of US security interests. As the EU has experienced in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, interventions require comprehensive strategies. The EU should begin to think about one, given the proliferation of ISIS-like groups in its periphery. Jihadist franchises are competing among themselves to become even more spectacular, violent and fanatical in order to get the bulk of the attention, and thus the Islamist funds and militants they need. Therefore any smart EU approach to global terrorism would dedicate more time preparing for the advent of the next terrorist group, instead of focusing only on the existing ones like ISIS or past ones like al-Qaida.

Any smart EU strategy against the wider ISIS-like challenge would prioritize the fight against the radicalization of EU citizens by designing a communication plan to counter the influence of the Jihadist groups in internet and social networking sites. The EU should also deepen and widen its anti-terrorist cooperation network both within European borders and outside them, including with as many Arab and Muslim partners as possible. Finally, the EU should prevent creation of terrorist sanctuaries on its periphery, by developing capacity building plans to help Arab countries in North Africa and Middle East to take charge of their own security. Although the EU Common Security and Defence Policy, in its current stage of development, is not prepared to offer substantial support for its member states, the EU should be able to give those European countries leading the fight against transnational Jihadists some kind of collective support (something that NATO should consider as well).

Summing up, the EU is not expected to have a prominent role in the ongoing struggle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but it should be prepared to take the lead in the next round of the fight against terrorism. Because when a new threat occurs in the EU’s periphery, the United States may decide to lead from behind rather than take the initiative.

Félix Artega is Senior Analyst for Security and Defence at the Elcano Royal Institute | @rielcano

(*)This article was originally published in the European Leadership Network on 30 September 2014.

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The Distance Between Spain’s Image And The Country’s Reality – Analysis

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Even before Spain’s crisis and despite some notable political, economic and social achievements, the country’s image abroad and within Spain was out of sync with reality. This situation worsened during the recession, which is now over but the gap persists.

The old stereotypes about Spain as a country of little more than flamenco, bullfights, fiestas and siestas persist. A study by the Elcano Royal Institute compares data on the reality of Spain with that corresponding to how it is perceived abroad. The results show that in some areas there is a significant gap between the image and the reality.

By William Chislett

Background

The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, promised during his trip to China last month to shorten the time it takes to approve visas for Chinese tourists. Epitomising the stereotypes that have long characterised Spain, the English-language China Daily illustrated its article on the visas with a bull being fought by a ‘flamenco dancer’, which it confused with a matador.[1]

In 2012, when Spain was in recession and threatening the continued existence of the euro zone, Richard Boucher, the deputy secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) told a conference: ‘Nobody wants to be like Spain today’, because ‘It is only good for flamenco and red wine’.

José Manuel García-Margallo, Spain’s Foreign Minister, complained about Boucher’s ‘intolerable’ words, and got an apology.

These two examples illustrate the extent to which Spain is plagued by stereotypes.

The crisis has dented the country’s image. Nevertheless, its fall from grace is exaggerated. The image is out of sync with reality, yet the perception, for many, is the reality.

The massive rise in the unemployment rate to 24.5% over the past six years, largely as a result of the collapse of the real estate and construction sectors, which generated a disproportionate share of GDP, hogs the headlines and obscures the achievements since the transition to democracy, most of which have not been eroded.

These achievements include multinationals with leading positions in the global economy (the stock of Spanish investment abroad is higher than Italy’s), the world’s ninth largest stock of inward foreign direct investment, the successful absorbing of some 6 million immigrants over the past 20 years (some of them are returning) and the longest life expectancy in the EU (testament to the creation of a welfare system and the generally healthier diet).

Yet, the old stereotypes of a country seemingly in permanent fiesta and siesta, which form part of Spain’s nation brand, have not gone way and been replaced by images more in accordance with the reality of ‘modern’ Spain.[2]

Spain, unlike countries such as Belgium or Paraguay, has a very strong, striking and old image. It dates back to the 16th century when the Spanish Empire was the world’s largest and the Inquisition was a force to be reckoned with. Other countries, such as Korea, have a much newer image.

Flamenco, bullfighting and fiestas –the predominant images that mark Spain– are fine for the tourism industry as it plays a vital role in the economy (generating around 12% of GDP and employing roughly one in every 10 people), particularly at a time of high unemployment.[3] Close to 30% of Japanese respondents in a survey spontaneously associated the word ‘Spain’ with bulls and almost 20% with flamenco. This year will be another record one for tourists; their number is forecast to exceed 63 million.

Yet Spain also needs a more ‘serious’ image in order to boost exports and make the country known for other achievements and not just as a fun playground.

An image out of sync with reality

A report published last month by the Spain Image Observatory of the Elcano Royal Institute, based on surveys in the form of questions by the Reputation Institute in 57 countries, compares data on the reality of Spain with that corresponding to how it is perceived abroad. The results show that in some areas there is a significant gap between the image and the reality.[4]

For example, Spain’s participation in peace missions is ranked 18th in the perception ranking and 11th according to data produced by the International Institute for Strategic Studies –a gap of seven places (see Figure 1)–. In foreign direct investment (FDI), the distance is nine places as Spain is placed 20th and 11th in the respective rankings. By far the largest gap (19 places) is in the sphere of happiness (emotional wellbeing): Spain is ranked 11th by the Reputation Institute and 30th according to the UN’s World Happiness Report which attempts to measure this state with ‘objective’ data.

X.1 (A) Image abroad (B) Reality Distance (A) – (B)
Education system 18th 19th (1) -1
Economic and social wellbeing 15th 16th (2) -1
Development aid 18th 20th (3) -2
Economic environment 21st 23rd (4) -2
Tourists received 5th 4th (5) 1
Contribution to global culture 10th 9th (6) 1
Sporting success 10th 10th (7) 0
Happiness (emotional wellbeing) 11th 30th (8) -19
Effectiveness of government 18th 24th (9) -6
Juridical security 18th 21st (10) -3
Security 15th 6th (11) 9
Foreign direct investment received 20th 11th (12) 9
Investment freedom 20th 15th (13) 5
Attractiveness for foreign students 18th 15th (14) 3
Exports 19th 12th (15) 7
Recognised brands 19th 10th (16) 9
Technological innovation 23rd 18th (17) 5
Country recommendable to work in 18th 8th (18) 10
Country recommendable to live in 11th 8th (19) 3
Audiovisual production 10th 5th (20) 5
Participation in peace missions 18th 11th (21) 7
Multilateral treaties 18th 11th (22) 7
Natural environment 11th 8th (23) 3

 

The big distance in the degree of happiness in Spain as perceived by foreigners and the reality as confirmed by Spaniards reflects the sorry state of the Spanish economy, particularly unemployment, but also the tendency of Spaniards to be much more pessimistic about their country than foreigners (and also much more optimistic when the going is good, see Figure 2). Furthermore, while the view of Spain abroad has improved over the last two years, which is reflected in the sharp drop in the risk premium on 10-year government bonds, in Spain it has worsened.

X.1 (A) Spanish perception of the external image (B) The real external image Difference (A) – (B)
Economy 2.8 5.6 -2.8
Culture 4.3 7.7 -3.3
Politics 2.4 5.8 -3.4
The country in general 4.3 6.9 -2.6

 

The Elcano report identifies various areas where Spain’s public and private sectors need to concentrate their efforts in order for Spain to be better appreciated abroad. In all of them the reality is much better than the image abroad and so there is room to improve the perception of Spain. These areas include culture, personal security (Spain is the sixth safest country in the world), foreign direct investment, attractiveness for foreign students, exports and recognised brands.

In only two areas, government effectiveness and lifestyle, is Spain’s image better than the reality.

The concern for the Spain brand and the country’s image abroad began during the Socialist government of Felipe González (1982-96). As a project coordinated between the public and private sectors it failed to materialise, as it should have done, during the conservative Popular Party (PP) government of José María Aznar (1996-2004), though there were various initiatives to manage and improve Spain’s image and brand. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist Prime Minister between 2008 and 2012, publicly announced his desire to create a public diplomacy commission, along the lines of other countries that successfully rebranded such as the UK and Germany, but it was never constituted. Soon after taking office at the end of 2011, the government of PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy established the High Commission Office for the Marca España within the Foreign Ministry.

One problem is that Spain needs to speak with one voice. However, its 17 autonomous regions pull in different directions –one of them, Catalonia, is pushing ahead with holding an unconstitutional non-binding referendum on independence on 9 November– and create confusion abroad.

Conclusion

helpIt is not easy for Spain to change its image and improve the perception of the nation brand. The country is viewed in surveys as ‘hot’ (creative, passionate and not very serious), as opposed to ‘cold’ (efficient, rigorous and serious) like Germany and the UK. The ‘hot’ image benefits the flourishing tourism industry, but not many other parts of the economy, and the way the country is perceived abroad.

Chile was so determined to impress upon the world its ‘coldness’ that it shipped a 60-tonne iceberg to Seville in 1992, and made it the centrepiece of its World’s Fair pavilion.

Spain does not have to go to such extremes but it needs to be more proactive.

Improving a country’s image so that it better reflects the reality on the ground is a long-term and never-ending task involving the government of the day, the opposition parties, companies and institutions. It can be compared to looking after a garden, which needs constant attention, as opposed to building something that then ends.

About the author:
William Chislett
Associate Analyst of the Elcano Royal Institute and author of ‘Spain: What Everyone Needs to Know’ (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.

[1] See Spain to shorten visa approval.

[2] For a much fuller account of Spain’s image and reality see my Working Paper published by the Real Instituto Elcano in 2008 at Image and Reality: Contemporary Spain.

[3] According to the Anholt Nation Brand Index, tourism is ‘often the most visibly promoted aspect of a nation’s brand, and tourism assets have a disproportionate effect on a people’s perceptions of the country as a whole’.

[4] The report by Carmen González Enríquez and José Pablo Martínez Romera is available at: Sistema de Indicadores de la Distancia entre Imagen y Realidad (SIDIR). Análisis del caso español. Primera edición 2014. Other reports on the subject and presented at a meeting on 24 September, 2014 are available at España: imagen y marca. ¿Cómo nos ven y cómo somos?.

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Obama’s Global War On Terror – OpEd

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There is much about Obama’s leadership or lack thereof that I remain critical of; by no means am I a fan. In fact, in my eyes he has thus far failed the test of leadership, feeling more like an erudite college professor and less like leader of the Western world.

Given his predecessor’s shoot from the hip mentality and the unmitigated disasters that followed, it was clear when Obama took office that America’s moral high ground, diplomatic clout and financial muscle were all in shreds. It was not so much that America was no longer a global superpower, but that the world had changed dramatically while America seemed to have moved backwards. America seemed to have lost its way with two messy long wars and the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. She felt rudderless, leaderless and isolated on the world stage. By this time it was also clear that the overthrow of Saddam had no relevance in fighting the war on terrorism and had made the world a less safe place. However, one thing Bush was right about is that there was a global war on terrorism; and every nation needed to get involved. But Bush was incapable of leading the world and bringing them on board to fight this common threat, instead choosing to distract and further divide the world with an unnecessary war and with his ‘my way or the highway’ attitude.

Obama has been called an apologist because after he was elected he chose to show a softer and more cerebral side of American foreign policy. Being the only President who has actually lived abroad, perhaps he uniquely understood that the need of the hour was to apologize for America’s many misguided foreign policy endeavors, especially in the Muslim world. However, what he did not seem to grasp is that apologies alone would not rid us of the real evil we are facing.

In trying to contrast his legacy from his war-mongering predecessor, Obama also went too far in the other direction, choosing to lead from the back. He failed to understand that America still needs to lead, and that pushing allies to take the lead is not the same thing. It has taken him a while to understand that you cannot right the wrongs of the past; you can only chart a course for the future that avoids the same failed policies and pitfalls. So instead of a wiser, nobler and morally stronger America he has until now offered an awkward, embarrassed and trepidatious America. Syria is a case in point where, while right to not intervene at the outset and not unilaterally, he should have acted once Assad crossed his own “red line.” America setting an ultimatum and then failing to act sets a very dangerous precedent.

It is the rapid rise of ISIL that has finally woken Obama up to the fact that war, while still a last resort, is going to be necessary. I believe he will not make the same mistakes that Bush did in America’s last global war on terror.

Obama understands two things that his predecessor was unable to grasp. First, in the 21st century America is no longer the unequivocal superpower with the economic might it once had, to go it alone, and expect the rest of the world to fall in line based on diplomatic pressure or threats to cut US aid. Today there are many nations who can play benefactor and use their own cheque books to help countries resist US will. Second, he understands that no country can bestow democracy upon another, and especially not through a military invasion. The people of that country must be willing to fight and die for their freedom, much like they did in India, South Africa and will in Tunisia and Egypt in the years to come. All American military intervention can achieve, like it did in Iraq, is to put a temporary Band-Aid on a dangerous power vacuum that it leaves behind. To this end, he is aware that almost all the countries in the Middle East are run by dictators (many supported, armed and propped up by America). These countries have no civil institutions, public infrastructure or independent judiciaries that are the necessary bedrocks of democracy and take generations to build.

Even today Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the largest financiers (some state funded but mostly by private individuals and religious institutions) and potent breeding ground for terrorists. The fact is that all these countries have brutal and oppressive regimes with no press, religious or personal freedoms. In all three countries, successive US administrations have supported dictators, giving them carte blanche and billions in military aid. So it is not hard to imagine why the average person on the street does not feel thankful to the American people for their generosity – and is it any wonder that they produce the largest number of terrorist recruits?

Obama is acutely aware that this type of US intervention, particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, has failed miserably. So instead of choosing to apply the definition of insanity, he decided to stay on the sidelines in Egypt, Syria and most of the other North African internal conflicts. If Obama attacked Syria with the aim of removing Assad (not the same as punishing him for crossing the red line) we would likely have ended up with a messier Iraq, with the same sectarian strife, or at best an American puppet administration which would have been more hated than Assad.

Obama’s strategy to use US military support as a bargaining tool to get rid of Nouri Al-Maliki, and replace him with a unity government in Iraq, was absolutely correct. Whether this new government will succeed or not is hard to say, but it certainly has a much greater chance based purely on the proportional representation it now has from all three sects. More importantly, by doing this Obama took away the most potent recruiting tool ISIS had – discontent Iraqi Sunnis. Al-Maliki had been systematically removing Sunni’s and replacing them with incompetent cronies in an effort to create a Shiite dominated Iraq. Now, with US air and military support, the new unity government has actually re-enlisted the same disillusioned army men who ran at the first sign of trouble from Sunni dominated Mosul, and a strong Kurd army is fighting to save a unified Iraq and not just defending Kurdish territory.

helpSo while there is no doubt Obama badly fumbled and delayed in leading this fight, now that he is in it, he has also shown a shrewd understanding of the region by getting support of the most important allies he needs to fight this war. The US-led coalition launched with active participation from the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE and Bahrain, as well as publicly stated support from the governments in Oman, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon and Qatar. So far the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Belgium have also contributed fighter jets and other allies are lining up to offer everything from training to equipment. In contrast, when Bush and Cheney rushed into Iraq there was a sum total of four countries in their collation that had active military involvement. The US with 148,000 and the UK with 45,000 troops provided the lion’s share. Australia contributed 2,000 and Poland 194 soldiers (Source: Wikipedia). Not a single Arab nation sent troops and no other major European or Asian power was involved. In fact, America’s oldest allies like France, Germany, and New Zealand were strongly opposed to the Iraq invasion.

This is the fundamental difference in Obama’s global war on terror. Obama understands that while America must lead this fight, unless America can get the Arab and Muslim world to recognise the threat posed by this cancer and actively participate in it, we cannot win this war.

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EU And Its Partners On Development: How Strategic On Ground? – Analysis

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By Clare Castillejo and Christine Hackenesch

The strategic partnerships of the European Union (EU) with Brazil, China, India, South Africa and South Korea include discussion of development issues, and in some cases commitments to collaboration. However, little is known about whether this high-level, bilateral dialogue influences the EU’s engagement with these strategic partners on the ground in developing countries. This paper examines how the EU engages with these emerging powers in aid recipient countries, and identifies challenges and opportunities for strengthening engagement. It draws on field research in Mozambique and Nepal.

Nepal and Mozambique both receive substantial development assistance from the EU and its member states, while emerging powers have also recently become important partners for these countries. Nepal and Mozambique offer contrasting examples of development contexts and of the type of interests at play for the EU and emerging powers. Nepal is a conflict-affected Asian country where geostrategic and security interests are a priority for neighbouring powers and peacebuilding is the context for EU engagement. Meanwhile, Mozambique is a resource-rich African country where economic interests are paramount for emerging powers and shape the scope for EU engagement with its strategic partners. Interesting common themes emerge from these cases.

These suggest ways forward for the EU to strengthen its engagement on development with its strategic partners in third countries.

Nepal

Nepal emerged from conflict in 2006 but remains fragile, with progress on peacebuilding largely stalled. It currently ranks 157 out of 187 on the Human Development Index. The EU is a major donor to Nepal. Under its 2014-2020 Country Strategy Plan, the EU will treble its aid to the country, to reach €360 million. EU assistance focuses on sustainable rural development, education and democracy. The UK, Germany, Denmark and Finland also provide aid to Nepal, with the UK playing a particularly prominent role. With little economic engagement in Nepal, the main interest of European actors is to avoid instability.

Strategic partners in Nepal

India and China are the strategic partners that provide most development assistance to Nepal. As neighbours, both have complex political, economic and security interests in the country. Their development cooperation is informed by these interests, as well as growing rivalry between them for influence. Korea is also a donor, although its assistance is modest compared to that of China, India or the EU1.

India has historically dominated Nepal’s political and economic life. Since Nepal’s conflict ended in 2006, India’s engagement with the country has been shaped by insecurity over its loss of influence, both because of the rise of anti-Indian political forces and because of China’s growing presence. India provides assistance across multiple sectors, with a particularly strong focus on health, education and infrastructure. New Delhi does not attach conditions to its aid, although its assistance is generally tied.2 India shares limited information about its assistance with other international actors.

China has dramatically increased its assistance, investment and political engagement in Nepal since 2006. Its commitment is shaped by its interests in maintaining a secure Tibetan border and opening Nepal for Chinese business. China has become Nepal’s biggest investor and controls key industries such as telecoms and tourism. In 2014, China and Nepal signed a new cooperation agreement that commits China to increase further its assistance. Most Chinese assistance takes the form of concessional loans for infrastructure projects, which include roads, hospitals, airports and a dry port on the Sino-Nepal border, although it also provides grants. Chinese aid is always tied. China does not share information about its activities with other international actors and stresses that it is ‘a neighbour not a donor’.

Korea provides grant assistance to Nepal focused on the health, education, agriculture and energy sectors. This generally takes the form of projects, although there is ambition to provide sectoral level budget support.

EU engagement with strategic partners

European actors have different levels of engagement with strategic partners in Nepal. There is no significant dialogue between the EU delegation and Chinese officials and little discussion of China’s role in EU coordination meetings with member states. Apart from China’s reluctance to engage in dialogue, divergent positions on human rights and Tibetan refugees also hinder collaboration. European actors know very little about Chinese development cooperation and effectively operate in parallel to China – frequently in the same sectors – without much understanding of Chinese activities. The EU delegation accepts that this situation is problematic.

Despite China’s unwillingness to engage with Western donors, the UK has had some success in establishing cooperation. Under the umbrella of the UK’s strategic partnership with China, the Department for International Development (DfID) established technical level collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to support Nepal’s earthquake preparedness.3 This cooperation was politically possible because it focused on a technical and apolitical area and involved the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a ‘neutral’ partner.
EU engagement with India is limited, but improving. In the years immediately following Nepal’s conflict India was largely hostile to European actors in Nepal because of their engagement with the anti-Indian Maoist forces.4 However, as Nepal’s Maoists have become less of a threat to Indian interests and China’s growing influence becomes a greater concern, India is seeking to improve relations with European donors. Moreover, the EU delegation has deliberately reached out to the Indian embassy in recent years.

There is now regular dialogue between the EU and Indian Ambassadors, as well as frequent meetings between the EU Ambassador to Nepal and officials in New Delhi. However, this improved political relationship has not translated into greater engagement on development cooperation.

South Korea takes a very different approach to that of India and China. As a member of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and with no significant interests at play in Nepal, South Korea shares information on its activities and participates in all donor coordination initiatives. Moreover, in 2013 it signed a joint cooperation agreement with the German agency GIZ to collaborate in the health sector. However, some European actors report that South Korea’s approach – for example its emphasis on projects or reluctance to address governance issues – presents a barrier to deeper engagement.

Convergence, divergence and opportunities for greater engagement

Despite limited engagement so far, there are some areas of convergence between the EU and China and India in Nepal, which could potentially provide entry points for greater interaction. At critical moments in the peace process the interests of these actors have aligned, resulting in greater cooperation. For example, during the 2013 elections there was unprecedented coordination among international partners to support smooth elections. Officials from India, China and South Korea all participated in an EU-chaired technical working group on the elections, while their Ambassadors participated in a high-level working group chaired by the UN.

Moreover, at such crucial moments India has sometimes actively sought collaboration with the EU, recognising the value of its perceived neutrality. For example, when the dissolution of the first constituent assembly in 2012 created a dangerous power vacuum, India sought the EU delegation’s assistance in encouraging Nepal’s political actors to support the interim government.

Stability and peace-building are therefore undoubtedly a shared concern for the EU, India, China and South Korea. However, their very different visions for the Nepali state limit scope for collaboration outside of crisis moments. China’s interest in the repression of all political activity related to Tibet and India’s interest in preserving its influence over the country are both very different to the EU’s stated vision of an inclusive and democratic Nepali state. Moreover, all three strategic partners diverge from the EU in their reluctance to discuss human rights.

China, India and the EU frequently work in the same sectors, such as health and infrastructure, and – despite different approaches – their engagement is in some cases complementary. For example, the EU supports basic rural infrastructure while China focuses on economic infrastructure, such as major transport facilities, both of which are required for inclusive growth. Moreover, in some politically sensitive sectors, such as hydropower, it could serve Chinese and Indian interests if the more neutral EU took a greater role.5

A central barrier to greater EU engagement with China or India is lack of information about their activities. While China and India are generally reluctant to share information, it is clear that existing mechanisms for donor coordination are also entirely unsuited to their participation. The main donor forum involves a broad membership, rather than the discrete bilateral engagement that these powers prefer, and mixes both technical and sensitive political issues.6 European actors are aware of the need to find an engagement format that is more acceptable to China and India.

Another obstacle to deeper engagement is the fact that Chinese, Indian, Korean and European development cooperation institutions are all structured differently and there is little understanding of how each other operate. Chinese and Indian decision-making is centralised at capital level, so there is limited traction to be gained from seeking engagement in Kathmandu alone. Moreover, the depth of Chinese and Indian historical links and strategic interests in Nepal means that they operate within a much longer timeframe than the EU, which is focused on programming cycles.

Mozambique

Mozambique is one of the largest recipients of EU development aid, with €747.6 million allocated under the European Development Fund (EDF) for the period 2008-2013.7 European donors8 work in a range of sectors, including infrastructure development, rural development, health and education, and provide a significant proportion of aid through direct budget support. However, it is reported that some member states have begun to direct their aid towards the gas and coal sectors in support of their own economic interests.

helpMozambique continues to languish at the bottom of the Human Development Index.9 However, with discoveries of substantial gas and coal deposits, extensive fertile and underused arable land, and significant potential for tourism, external actors’ interests in the country are changing. Indeed, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea have all significantly increased their engagement in Mozambique in recent years. For both traditional donors and emerging powers, economic interests – particularly in the energy sector – are increasingly shaping relations with Mozambique.

Strategic partners in Mozambique

Among the EU’s strategic partners in Mozambique, China is by far the most important due to the size of its loans. China has supported a number of large infrastructure projects and Chinese companies have begun investing in the country’s gas sector. Mozambique receives Chinese assistance through the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).10

Brazil has a significant presence in Mozambique, largely due to close socio-cultural ties between the two countries. Brazil supports Mozambique with technical assistance and large investments in agriculture and mining. For example, the Brazilian company Vale invests in one of the biggest coal mines in the country’s north, while the Brazilian cooperation agency (ABC) and Japan’s international cooperation agency (JICA) are developing Pro Savanna, a large and highly controversial agriculture development zone.11

Mozambique is the third-largest recipient of Indian lines of credit (LoC) in Africa, after Ethiopia and Sudan. The India EXIM bank has provided US$ 500 million in LoC for a variety of projects from sanitation to transmission lines. Indian companies have invested in the gas and coal sectors. India also provides training through its Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme.

The intensity of South Africa’s engagement with Mozambique is shaped by its proximity and development cooperation is a minor element of bilateral relations. South Africa’s official assistance to Mozambique covers a wide range of sectors, including education, health and security. South African companies have sizable investments in almost all sectors including tourism, banking, manufacturing and retail, although they have yet to make a significant inroad into the mining sector.

Finally, South Korea has only recently begun providing assistance to Mozambique, for example in the energy sector. South Korean companies have increased their investments in areas such as infrastructure and mining.

EU engagement with strategic partners

The EU’s engagement with its strategic partners in Mozambique has been limited.

The EU delegation has not pursued a regular dialogue with these partners. The existing donor coordination fora offer little room for engagement with strategic partners. The most important forum for donor-government engagement on macro-economic or political issues is the budget support dialogue, in which strategic partners do not participate as they do not provide budget support. Meanwhile the Development Partners’ Group (DPG) brings together all of Mozambique’s donors, but is mainly used for sharing information on bilateral assistance programmes rather than discussing more strategic issues. India and Brazil occasionally join these meetings. Interestingly,Brazil,China,India and South Africa have established an informal dialogue mechanism to exchange information on their activities in Mozambique.

Plans for trilateral cooperation between the EU, Brazil and Mozambique, which emerged from the EU-Brazil strategic partnership dialogue, have not led to any tangible results. EU member states have been more successful in this regard and Germany, Italy and the UK have all established trilateral cooperation projects with Brazil in Mozambique. Discussions between the EU and South Africa regarding collaboration are ongoing, but China and India remain extremely resistant to such initiatives.

Where trilateral cooperation does happen, it is often driven by pressure from European capitals rather than a genuine convergence of interests and approaches with strategic partners on the ground.

Moreover, some of the trilateral cooperation projects in Mozambique – such as the Pro Savanna initiative – appear to be related not just to development goals, but also to the economic interests of emerging powers and traditional donors.

Convergence, divergence and opportunities for greater engagement

Mozambique clearly needs investment from both traditional donors and emerging powers for its development. However, European actors are concerned with the way in which some of their strategic partners – notably China – engage with the country.

Debt sustainability has become an issue of concern for European and other donors. Although revenues from the gas and coal sectors will only start flowing after 2020, the Mozambican government has begun borrowing against future returns, particularly from China.12

Meanwhile, large Chinese infrastructure projects, such as the bridge over Maputo Bay or the ring road around the capital, are questioned as not being the best value for money.

In response to the new context created by the growing engagement of emerging powers in Mozambique, the EU announced that it would use blending of grants and loans, rather than just grants, for future support to transport infrastructure. However, such changes in EU policy appear to be based on ad hoc decisions rather than a clear strategy.

Investments by private companies from both emerging powers and traditional donor countries in the energy and agriculture sectors have raised concerns regarding their social and environmental consequences. Likewise, Mozambican civil society has accused some Chinese actors of illegal practices, including illegal logging and illegal fishing.13 Following strong criticism, there has been some progress in strengthening Chinese companies’ compliance with local laws.

However, weak domestic legal frame- works and the convergence of the interests of Chinese and other external private sector actors with those of local Mozambican elites continue to facilitate illegal exploitation of natural resources.

Few mechanisms currently exist for the EU to address these issues with Chinese officials within Mozambique. However the EU’s strategic partnership with China could potentially provide a forum to discuss such issues in relation to Mozambique and other African countries.

The way forward for engagement

While there are many differences between the Mozambique and Nepal contexts, some common themes emerge.

As the administrative structures of strategic partners are highly centralised, decisions over whether to engage in dialogue, share information, participate in coordination processes, or engage in cooperation are taken at capital level. The EU must therefore prioritise dialogue at capital level to explore possibilities for information sharing, coordination and collaboration on the ground in third countries.

Strategic partners are reluctant to engage through traditional donor coordination mechanisms and the EU needs to find other entry points for establishing engagement at country level. These will obviously vary according to context. In some cases, a technical entry point might be best; while in others, political level contact could prove more fruitful.

In seeking engagement with its strategic partners, the EU must be mindful of how such engagement may affect the interests of powerful local actors and of how local power holders may promote or block such engagement. European actors must analyse what factors may encourage strategic partners to engage in greater dialogue with them. Demands by local governments for greater cooperation between donors could be one such incentive, while threats to investments from instability could be another. Moreover, the EU also needs to understand how the dynamics between emerging powers – whether characterised by collaboration or competition – shape incentives for them to engage with traditional donors.

Even where possibilities for engagement are severely limited, it is important that EU delegations understand and adapt to the changing context that is created by the presence of strategic partners. This requires both sufficient analytical capacity within the EU delegation and support from Brussels. The challenges that emerge from the rise of emerging powers differ quite substantially between recipient countries and therefore guidance from Brussels would need to be tailored towards the specific context. It also requires thinking outside the programming cycle, given that strategic partners’ engagement in developing countries generally has longer-term horizons.

Coordination among member states and the EU delegation in third countries is frequently a challenge, and this is true in relation to engagement with strategic partners. While member states inevitably pursue their own relationships with strategic partners, more coordination between the EU delegation and member states would be useful, as would a stronger role for the EU delegation. In some cases the EU may also be able to learn from member states’ experience of collaboration with strategic partners.

The strategic partnership framework could potentially facilitate greater engagement on development between the EU and its partners on the ground. However, linking up these high-level bilateral frameworks and dialogues with country level practices will require greater coordination between Brussels and EU delegations. Brussels must support and incentivise EU delegations to understand the strategic partnership framework and use it to seek engagement with emerging powers. Indeed, there may be something to learn from the UK’s experience of strategic partner- ship with China, which – although limited – involves actionable regional level programmes for collaboration, as well as encouragement of staff on the ground to implement these.

Finally, delegations can provide valuable feedback to Brussels regarding strategic partners’ practices on the ground and potential opportunities for engagement that Brussels could explore. They can also identify issues of concern (such as debt sustainability or corporate social responsibility) for the EU to raise with its strategic partners. Critically, better communication between Brussels and EU delegations on strategic partnerships could help overcome the current disconnect between high-level bilateral commitments and the reality of lack of engagement on the ground.

About the authors:
Clare Castillejo is senior researcher at FRIDE and Christine Hackenesch is researcher at DIE.

Source:
This article was published by FRIDE as part of the European Strategic Partnership Observatory (ESPO), as Policy Brief 14, October, 2014, and may be found here (PDF).

The ESPO project on Development and EU Strategic Partnerships is kindly supported by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

Endnotes:
1. According to the OECD, Korea’s total aid to Nepal in 2012 was US$20.77 million.
2. Tied aid is foreign aid that must be spent on purchasing goods or services from the country providing the aid.
3. Specifically in the area of urban search and rescue. Given the relatively large numbers of Chinese and British nationals in Nepal, the UK and China have a mutual interest in strengthening such capacities.
4. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) formed the rebel movement during the ten-year civil war and went on to win most
votes in the 2008 constituent assembly elections. A central element of their agenda was to reduce Indian influence in Nepal. However, this position has mellowed in recent years and the Maoists lost control of the government in the 2013 elections.
5. Nepal’s hydropower sector has great potential, but requires significant investment. Because of India and China’s proximity and potential to benefit from Nepalese hydropower, major investment by either neighbour would be politically controversial.
6. This forum is the International Development Partners Group (IDPG), which includes all of Nepal’s traditional bilateral and multilateral donors. China and India are regularly invited to this forum. Chinese officials do not attend. India sometimes sends representatives to IDPG meetings.
7. EDF funding focuses on two sectors: transport infrastructure and regional economic integration, and secondly agriculture and rural development.
8. As well as the EU, almost all major European bilateral donors are present in Mozambique, with the most aid being provided by the UK and Portugal.
9. In 2013 Mozambique ranked 185 out of 187 in the Human Development Index.
10. The FOCAC is a platform established for Chinese engagement with African countries for dialogue and cooperation activities. Under this framework, China supports an agriculture demonstration centre and training for Mozambican officials.
11. While this project was established by the Brazilian and Japanese official development agencies, close collaboration is planned with the Brazilian and Japanese private sectors.
12. In light of this, the International Monetary Fund has urged that debt sustainability must be observed and public investments carefully managed.
13. These criticisms have been primarily directed at Chinese private companies.

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The Dawn Of Freedom Brigades: Analysis And Interview

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By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi for Syria Comment

One of the more noted recent trends in rebel dynamics in Syria is the weakening of the Islamic Front, widely noted last year as the most powerful rebel alliance in terms of manpower and fighting capabilities. However, the coalition was always weaker than it seemed at first sight, with one of the most pertinent questions being why the constituent groups never abandoned their own individual names and banners if they were really so united.

This year, the Islamic Front has seen its constituents- particularly Ahrar al-Sham- hit by defections to the Islamic State (IS), assassinations of leaders, and fracturing on account of tensions between and within the coalition’s factions. The group Liwa al-Tawheed — previously considered one of the most powerful Aleppo factions — has suffered from internal fragmentation and manpower loss, with many of its local eastern Aleppo province affiliates having become defunct but now re-emerging as break-off groups, lacking any distinct ideological program equivalent to the Islamic Front’s “Project of the Ummah” that aimed for a clear assertion of the Islamic Front as a serious Islamist political force to be reckoned with.

Logo of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades. Credit Syria Comment.

Logo of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades. Credit Syria Comment.

The new rebel coalition Tajammu’ Alwiya Fajr al-Hurriya (‘Grouping of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades’) is a case-in-point. For example, one of the constituents of this coalition is Kata’ib Shams al-Shamal (‘Sun of the North Battalions’), whose official Facebook page ‘likes’ a page set up for the Manbij Martyrs’ Battalion, a one-time Liwa al-Tawheed affiliate in the town of Manbij that has since January of this year fallen under the exclusive control of the IS, having previously been a place where IS was merely one of a number of groups in the town including local Islamic Front groups’ affiliates. This points to the link between the Kata’ib Shams al-Shamal formation and the now defunct Liwa al-Tawheed affiliates it has come to supersede in the northeast of Aleppo province.

The Dawn of Freedom Brigades coalition is of importance at the moment because it is a participant in the fight against IS in the Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) area (e.g. see this video, said to be in the countryside just to the south of the main town) that is one of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) self-declared autonomous cantons. The coalition is thus cooperating with the PYD’s armed wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG). This cooperation, as will be seen below, is something openly admitted: compare with this video* announcing the “Euphrates Volcano” joint operations room including Kata’ib Shams al-Shamal and the YPG for eastern Aleppo countryside to fight IS.

This pointedly contrasts with last year’s dynamics that saw the parent organization Liwa al-Tawheed work with IS against the YPG in Aleppo province, in part contributing to severe losses for the YPG in that area. Such coordination with IS- following on from the YPG’s expulsion of IS and Jabhat al-Nusra from Ras al-Ayn town in Hasakah province in mid-July- was also undertaken by other major rebel groups like Ahrar al-Sham. It was justified by many rebels at the time as necessary against a perceived ‘regime agent’ but was also rooted in wider Syrian Arab suspicion of Kurdish autonomy or separatist agendas. Undoubtedly the cooperation between IS and these rebel groups against the YPG allowed IS to grow.

To be sure, relations somewhat shifted at the start of this year as infighting broke out between IS and rebel groups across northern and eastern Syria: limited cooperation, for instance, was in evidence between Liwa al-Tawheed and Jabhat al-Akrad- a front-group for the YPG- in the Azaz countryside, but there was nothing on a par with rebels helping the YPG to defend a stronghold under PYD control. The current Dawn of Freedom Brigades-YPG effort in Kobani needs to be tied to a broader trend of some FSA-banner figures coming to terms with past mistakes vis-a-vis relatons with the YPG: foremost embodied in one-time Aleppo FSA Military Council head Col. Oqaidi’s visit to the YPG in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Aleppo province in late August, reflecting a 180 degree turn from his defences of IS and anti-YPG stance in summer 2013, even as he goes on about the need for unity against the niẓam (‘regime’).

In my view, however, this cooperation is too little, too late to lead to substantial setbacks for IS, hindered as it is also by Turkey’s hostility towards the PYD on account of links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Western regard for such concerns. In the long-run too, there is a problem of differing agendas: the PYD has too little interest or resources to attempt to take the fight all the way to Raqqa city, for example, being more concerned with its own proto-state project in the territory it already controls.

Below is an interview I conducted with Abu al-Layth, one of the leaders of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades (see here for the Dawn of Freedom Brigades’ organizational structure).

Q: What are the factions in the Dawn of Freedom Brigades? Is it true that the factions used to be in Liwa al-Tawheed?

A: The majority of the military factions were sidelined from Liwa al-Tawheed and others beside it previously; and we do not fight with any side that has no firm decision-making on the ground.**

Q: What are your aims? Do you want a democratic state or a state in which Shari’a is the sole source of legislation?

A: We are not planning on anything for when Assad falls. We hope that there will be protection for all the peoples [of Syria] and that we will co-exist- all of the Syrian people. And it [the Syrian people] is the one that decides what it wants. We are with the Syrian people.***

Q: With protection for all sects?

A: The people decides and we came out because of the racism of Bashar al-Assad.

Q: Is there cooperation with the YPG in the Ayn al-Arab area against the IS organization?

A: Yes. We of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades- when IS launched the assault on Ayn al-Arab- sent 250 fighters to Ayn al-Arab to protect the Kurdish and Arab people in this area. And we have tried to protect the Suleyman Shah tomb**** but we will not be able to do so because of the paucity of our heavy equipment.

Q: In your opinion are the American airstrikes helping the effort against IS?

A: This is in God’s hands. We are against the coalition’s airstrikes because they do not target the regime which is greatly criminal. The two states [i.e. IS and the regime] compete as to who can destroy civilian life more.

Q: And is it a problem also that the strikes are targeting Jabhat al-Nusra that fights the regime?

A: No. Jabhat al-Nusra fights on all sides, but has also yielded on more than one of the fronts between it and the regime.***** Examples: the battle of Kassab; it and Ahrar al-Sham of the battle of Hama recently; it and the Islamic Front in the battle of the Industrial Area in Aleppo. I mean they have many bad things about them as well. And we as a Syrian people don’t accept any organization that is neutral or against our people.

Q: So the Islamic Front also withdrew from the Industrial Area in Aleppo?

A: The reason being the weakness of the two fronts [Nusra & the Islamic Front], so the regime seized the Industrial Area. Weakness and not withdrawal: I mean retreat.

Notes

*- Others mentioned in the video include brigades that have been working with the YPG for several months now following IS’ takeover of all major urban areas in Raqqa province, such as Liwa Thuwar Raqqa (ex-Nusra affiliate) and Liwa al-Jihad fi Sabeel Allah (tied to the Western-backed SMC). The cooperation originates from the fact that many members of these groups sought refuge with the YPG west of Tel Abyad. The YPG would then help these groups to reclaim some villages from IS in return for power-sharing in those localities.

**- Referring to the lack of real unity and direction with the Islamic Front.

***- The mark of a non-ideological program, also contrasting with the “Project of the Ummah” of the Islamic Front from which the Dawn of Freedom Brigades coalition has emerged.

****- The site has been under the protection of Turkish troops and IS allegedly threatened an attack in March this year if they did not withdraw within 3 days, though even if the threat had been real, it was never acted on.

*****- cf. Aron Lund’s article on Jabhat al-Nusra, which notes also the consolidation of control of towns and territory in Idlib province that have followed on from at least some withdrawals.

Source: Syria Comment

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US Unemployment Rate Falls To 5.9 Percent

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The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a six-year low of 5.9 percent in September.

Friday’s closely-watched report from the Labor Department also says the economy had a net gain of 248,000 jobs.

Both figures were stronger than most economists had predicted.

Some experts say the data may encourage the U.S. central bank to raise interest rates by the middle of next year.

The Federal Reserve had cut interest rates to record lows in an effort to stimulate the economy and cut unemployment.

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Jeb Bush ‘Wants To Be President’ – George W. Bush

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The chorus calling for ex-president George W. Bush’s brother Jeb to run for head of state in 2016 continues to get louder – and it appears the former Florida governor may be willing to throw his hat in the ring.

Former US President George W. Bush said on Thursday that he thinks his brother “wants to be president,” in an interview withFox News.

“I think he’d be a great president,” Bush told Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade. “He understands what it’s like to be president…he’s seen his dad, he’s seen his brother. He’s a very thoughtful man and he’s weighing his options.”

Bush added he is encouraging younger brother Jeb to enter the presidential race.

“I, of course, was pushing him to run for president,” the 43rd president said. “He, of course, was saying, ‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ and I truly don’t think he has.”

“Plus, I don’t think he liked it that his older brother was pushing him,” he added.

This is not the first time Jeb Bush has been told to run for office by a family member. Earlier this year, sibling Neil Bush explained that his father – 41st President George H.W. Bush – wants Jeb to run despite the fact that former First Lady Barbara Bush said there have been “enough Bushes” in the White House.

“We’re sitting in the waiting room of the hotel waiting to go to the Bush library event, and mom said that, we were all watching Jeb standing over in the corner nervously, just, like, what’s your response to that?” Neil said at the time to CNN. “But it’s not going to affect Jeb’s decision. If you ask dad, if you ask dad the same question, should Jeb run? He’d say yes.”

Meanwhile, Jeb Bush himself furthered speculation in April when he confirmed he is “thinking about running for president.”

In addition to talking up his brother, George W. Bush also talked about current President Barack Obama, who recently renewed American military action in Iraq. Bush said that while he supported leaving a contingent of troops behind in Iraq, he would not criticize Obama for withdrawing US combat forces.

“The president has to make the choices he thinks are important. I’m not going to second guess our president. I understand how tough the job is,” he said. “To have a former president bloviating and second-guessing, I don’t think is good for the presidency or the country. He and his team will make the best informed decisions they can make.”

Bush also expressed support for what he believes is the correct long-term strategy in the Middle East, which is to promote democracy while directly combating terrorism.

“Americans have got to understand that the lesson of 9/11 is still important today as it was right after 9/11,” he said, “and that is the human condition elsewhere matters to our national security.”

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Australia Sends Fighter Jets To Battle Islamic State In Iraq

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By Lizzie Dearden

Australian fighter jets will bomb Isis targets in northern Iraq within days after the Government approved air strikes as part of the U.S.-led military coalition.

Six F/A-18F Super Hornet jets add to the country’s contribution of air force planes for surveillance, communication and refuelling.

Tony Abbott’s announcement of military involvement on Friday had been widely anticipated since the Super Hornets were deployed to a base in the United Arab Emirates two weeks ago.

It followed Barack Obama’s request for support in the fight against the extremist militants who are waging a bloody war in Iraq and Syria to establish a hardline Islamic caliphate.

Mr Abbott, the Australian Prime Minister, warned that action in Iraq could be “quite lengthy” and certainly in “months rather than weeks”.

“Yes, it is a combat deployment, but it is an essentially humanitarian mission to protect the people of Iraq and ultimately the people of Australia from the murderous rage of the Isil [Isis] death cult,” he added.

“Isil must be disrupted and degraded at home and abroad, so it is absolutely in Australia’s national interests that this mission goes ahead.”

Despite his rhetoric, echoing President Obama’s vow to “degrade and destroy” the terrorists, he admitted total victory over Isis would be difficult to achieve.

“If we could degrade them to the point where they no longer existed, that would be obviously the best possible result,” he said. “It is very difficult to eliminate an idea.”

A poll of almost 7,000 people by the Sydney Morning Heraldfound a narrow margin of support for the intervention among Australians.

About 49 per cent of voters backed air strikes, while 42 per cent were against it and the remainder were unsure.

The news came hours after David Cameron announced that two more British Tornadoes will be deployed in Cyprus to join missions against Isis in Iraq, bringing the total to eight.

The Prime Minister said the additional fighter jets would “keep up the tempo” of air strikes and save lives in Iraq.

Australia’s Air Chief Marshal, Mark Binskin, said the air strikes would start “over the coming days” but did not give specifics.

The intervention was approved by Australia’s National Security Committee following an official request from the Iraqi Government overnight.

Two Australian Air Force planes – an E-7A Wedgetail surveillance and communications jet and a KC-30A refuelling plane – joined operations over Iraq from the al-Minhad Air Base outside Dubai for the first time on Wednesday to support strikes by other nations.

The number of Super Hornets could soon be increased to eight, joining a 200-strong ground force, including special forces, and 400 Air Force personnel from Australia.

Mr Abbott has restricted combat operations and has ruled out Australian troops fighting on the ground.

Australia is one of dozens of countries from Europe, the Middle East and North America that joined the US-led military coalition fighting Isis.

Original article

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Protesters In Hong Kong Clash With ‘Fierce’ Anti-Occupy Group

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Pro-democracy protesters in downtown Hong Kong clashed with groups opposing the mass Occupy movement on Friday, while the government stepped up its rhetoric against protesters who blocked government headquarters.

The Occupy crowds shrank sharply after talks between organizers and the government on constitutional reform were announced late on Thursday, and only around 200 demonstrators were left to face a much larger group of anti-protesters in the Kowloon shopping district of Mong Kok.

The anti-protesters, some of whom complained to local media that their livelihoods have been affected by the mass occupations which have lasted since Sunday, had started to dismantle barricades protecting the crowd.

Some comments suggested the anti-demonstration was ultimately backed by pro-Beijing forces, while others said they were just local people angered by the continuing disruption to daily life.

An eyewitness surnamed Choi said the anti-protesters were apparently trying to get the road open to traffic again.

“I saw a student get dragged away by a bunch of people, and a blue tent toppled over,” Choi said. “The student just lay there and offered no resistance.”

“I thought they were horrible people. I don’t know who they are, but they were very fierce,” she said.

She said one group shouted “Clear the area!” while the Occupy group responded with a chant of “Stay calm!”

The clashes led to a rapid swelling of the Occupy crowd, as more supporters arrived at the busy intersection, where crowds have blocked traffic for nearly a week.

Widespread support

But a bystander in Mong Kok surnamed Wong told RFA that the Occupy movement still enjoys widespread public support.

“They are working for freedom and democracy for Hong Kong, so most ordinary people would support them,” Wong said. “This is definitely a good thing [they are doing].”

He said the week-long movement has already made a huge impact, and that ordinary Hong Kong citizens would likely turn out again in huge numbers if they thought the Occupy protesters were in danger of police violence.

“I think they would, because people always support the underdog,” Wong said. “Students are at the core of this movement, and their slogan is the peaceful occupation of Central.”

“They don’t want to use force: [on Sunday] they would just stick both hands in the air.”

Pro-democracy protest leaders issued a statement saying they would call off planned talks with the government unless “organized attacks” on its supporters stop.

“If the government does not immediately prevent the organized attacks on supporters of the Occupy movement, the students will call off dialogue on political reform with the government,” the statement, signed by Occupy Central, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and the academic activism group Scholarism, said.

Pan-democratic politicians also issued a statement calling on protesters to remain calm, so as to avoid police action to clear the area.

And Civic Party leader Alan Leong called on the government to use constructive dialogue to resolve the impasse with protesters, instead of trying to discredit the movement.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Central group said via its Twitter account that its website and email account had been attacked by unknown hackers.

“OCLPHK official website hacked by Anonymous Asia & email account for donations attacked, ‘about to be blocked,'” the group tweeted on Friday.

The website of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) also appeared to have been attacked by the same group, the South China Morning Post reported.

‘Blocking access’

On Hong Kong island, hundreds campaigners blocked access to key government buildings and street outside central government offices, preventing thousands of civil servants from reporting for duty normally, the government said in a statement.

“Some 3,000 … staff cannot return to their workplaces as usual,” the government said in a statement on its website. “All activities for visitors and other external activities have been postponed or cancelled.”

It hit out at protesters for “blocking access” to the east wing of the government headquarters in the Central business district.

“Blocking access roads to the [offices] is a serious offence and will affect the staff working [there],” a government spokesman said in a statement.

“The Government condemns the protesters for setting up obstacles at the entrance to the second floor of the East Wing at the CGO this morning, leaving government staff unable to return to their workplace.”

Police on Sunday fired tear-gas and pepper spray on crowds who had occupied major highways in downtown Hong Kong, sparking widespread public criticism and calls for chief executive C.Y. Leung to resign.

Late on Thursday, Leung refused to step down ahead of a student-imposed deadline, but agreed to student proposals for talks with his second-in-command Carrie Lam.

In Hong Kong Island’s Causeway Bay shopping area, crowds had dwindled from tens of thousands to a few dozen on Friday, while police had already removed barricades from major highways in other key protest areas, local media reported.

Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA’s Cantonese Service, and by Qiao Long for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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Kyrgyzstan Hosts 2014 World Nomad Games

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By Maksat Osmonaliyev

The first-ever World Nomad Games brought together athletes celebrating the sporting legacy of their nomadic ancestors.

President Almazbek Atambayev in 2011 during an official visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Kyrgyzstan suggested hosting the games. The Co-operation Council of Turkic Speaking States supported Atambayev’s proposal.

The event was meant to promote regional integration, unify the Turkic peoples and develop a workable ideology based on the traditions of their ancestors and on nomadic culture shared around the world.

“The Games unite different nations, no matter how far apart they are geographically or how their political systems differ,” Kyrgyz author Beksultan Jakiyev said.

A unique array of sports

Nineteen countries sent 22 teams including more than 430 athletes for the September 9-14 competition. Kyrgyzstan sent three teams to the event.

Athletes competed in 10 nomadic sports in what some fans called “the alternative Olympics.” The sports included buzkashi or kok-boru (a variant of polo in which the teams vie for a goat carcass or a stuffed goatskin), traditional wrestling including er enish (also odarysh, wrestling on horseback similar to mediaeval jousting in Europe), alaman baige (long-distance horse races) and toguz korgool (a board game also known as shepherd’s chess).

The tournament had an unforgiving instant-elimination format like most Olympic sports – no consolation bracket existed for teams or participants who lost a match.

Competitors included Nurlan Moldokulov, a Kyrgyz master of odarysh with 20 years’ experience. The goal of that sport is to drag an opponent off horseback. Moldokulov defeated rivals from Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan but lost to an opponent from Kazakhstan.

“The Games promote unity among peoples and raise interest in sports,” he said. “These Games elevated our [traditional] sports to a new level, and I can prove it by saying we were invited to compete in Mongolia.”

Kyrgyzstan topped the medal tally winning 55 medals: 16 gold, 20 silver and 19 bronze. Kazakhstan placed second with 28 medals (10 gold, 9 silver and 9 bronze), while Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Mongolia finished third through fifth.

The nomadic culture

Non-athletes found other entertainment, such as a crafts fair and master classes on traditional crafts like weaving, painting on glass and pottery, held September 13.

Organisers also staged an ethnic town on the Kyrchyn pasture nearby, where spectators could watch demonstrations of Kyrgyz nomadic traditions like kyz uzatuu (giving the bride away from her parents’ house) and beshik boloo (putting a baby in a cradle). They also could enjoy traditional nomadic food.

Gulkair Moldokulova, a 40-year-old woman from Bishkek, came to Issyk-Kul to watch the Games.

“I want to thank the organisers for making this affordable,” she said, noting that entry to the event was free. “It seemed that the nomadic era passed before [us spectators'] eyes. We felt the unity linking different times and peoples.”

The closing ceremony rang down the curtain on the Games in Cholpon-Ata September 14. Kyrgyzstan 1, the victorious team in the buzkashi competition, received special awards from Atambayev, and pop stars from various countries including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea and Turkey performed a concert.

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South Africa: After The End Of Our Innocence – OpEd

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By Richard Pithouse

From our increasingly riotous streets to our ever more fractious parliament, it is undeniably clear that South Africa is not a country at ease with itself. And, as the language of those who come out to defend Jacob Zuma and what has become of the ANC grows more hysterical and sets itself against imagined ‘agents’, ‘criminals’, ‘Satanists’ and ‘Nazis’, the weakness and panic at the heart of the Zuma project becomes increasingly evident. What were once, for most people, hairline cracks between the reality of the ANC and the idea of the nation are rapidly widening and deepening into real fissures.

More than one commentator, realising that the idea of an enlightened state that steadily moves us forward is now an ideology rather than a reality, and gripped by an increasingly ominous sense that attempts to resolve the growing social and political crisis may summon forces opposed to the social contract on which the new order was founded, has turned to William Butler Yeats’ 1919 poem, The Second Coming with its famous line, “Things falls apart; the centre cannot hold”.

Our own ‘blood-dimmed tide’ is nothing like the horror, described by Isaac Rosenberg as ‘shrieking iron and flame’ that tore through Europe leaving millions maimed and dead in the years before Yeats wrote his poem. But when Nelson Mandela said ‘never again’ in 1994 we had every right to assume that this included a permanent proscription on murder as a tool of political containment. But, first breaking onto television with the murder of Andries Tatane and then crashing back with the massacre at Marikana, the reality of its return has confronted us all. Murder at the hands of the police and, as organisations like NUMSA and Abahlali baseMjondolo know all too well, more shadowy assassins, is now a fact of our political life.

Our ‘ceremony of innocence’ has been drowned in murder, corruption, lies, the failure to build an economy and institutions that can redeem the promise of democratic citizenship and all the everyday brutalities and degradations that mark the lives of millions. For some it seems that in the midst of this rot ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity’. For some there is a sense that new forces are stirring, that some ‘rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born’. But our divisions are such that every candidate for our Second Coming, a replacement of the social contract established by Mandela, is imagined by some as monstrous and others as redemptive.

The name most frequently invoked in these terms is that of Julius Malema. For some Malema is the name of a future in which a corrupt and authoritarian elite, scornful of liberal democracy but cloaked in the undeniable urgency and legitimacy of national aspirations, seizes control of the economy for its own narrow purposes. But while this vision takes the form of ruination for some, there are others who imagine a moment in which the promise of the long struggle against apartheid and colonialism is finally redeemed and the lives of those now consigned to waste can, at last, begin to flourish.

There are other candidates haunting the imagination of those who fear the emergence of the ominous force that Yeats imagined waking from its long sleep in the desert. One of these is Zuma himself. Zuma’s brazen subordination of the state to his own interests has led some to conclude that he has no politics beyond his own self-interest. This is mistaken. Zuma-ism carries no plan for a progressive resolution of our crisis – no one in their right mind can claim that we are building a developmental state or are on the cusp of our own Lula Moment. But there is an imagined future, sometimes implicit but nonetheless clear enough in Zuma’s politics. It takes the form of crony capitalism buttressed with the support of authoritarian states in the South, notably Russia and China, and a new authoritarianism, organised in the name of tradition and patriotism, and mediated through a substantive shift in power to the police, intelligence and traditional authority.

For others the prospect that the next President may carry the name Ramaphosa has come to stand in for a future in which our society is fully and finally subordinated to the most predatory currents in international capital in a manner in which even the pretence that there is some possibility of alternatives is abandoned.

And for others, including Malema, if his recent comments at the Cape Town Press Club offer a genuine insight into his thinking, the real monster skulking towards Bethlehem is the people themselves and the spectre of an ‘an unled revolution’, that, in his estimation, ‘is anarchy’.

Many of the strategies that are often offered as ways of defending the current order by redeeming some of its promise are largely fantastical. For a start any attempt to reform the party will face all kinds of internal resistance. This is also true at the local level where, in some places, the party has been so firmly captured from below by predatory forces that even the most well-meaning new broom would find it exceptionally difficult to sweep clean from above.

There is considerable investment in the idea that the courts, via the mediation of enlightened donors and progressive lawyers, are the route to attaining an effective and responsible government. The courts are at times important sites of contestation. But they are not, in the full sense of the term, democratic institutions. Moreover, we are increasingly confronting a state that acts in routine disregard of the law and, at times, the courts. On their own the courts guarantee nothing.

There is also a view that civil society, often taken to mean NGOs, organisations that frequently have very little claim to represent any constituency other than their donors, has both a legitimate claim to represent the people as a whole and the power to counter the excesses of the state and capital. It is not uncommon for the first part of this equation to take the form of an anti-democratic fantasy. In these cases serious questions are raised about the legitimacy of the power that it does exercise and the credibility of the assumption that it is animated by an automatic ethical superiority.

Another idea that has had some recent purchase is that all that is required to redeem our current social arrangements is something called good leadership – explicitly said to be efficient and incorruptible and often implicitly assumed to conform to the orthodoxies of the partisans of the idea, always socially corrosive, that society should be subordinated to the market. It attracts the naïve enthusiasm of some donors and the odd columnist, but it lacks any political vehicle to realise its ambitions. The attempt, personalised by Mamphele Ramphele, to change this ended in farce.

For much of the left the hope is that a vanguard, be it the EFF or NUMSA, will be able to capture the escalating popular ferment, use it to secure state power and reorganise society on a new basis. In some cases little thought is given to the debilitating dogmatism, sectarianism and authoritarianism, sometimes descending into outright thuggery and slander, that has long crippled the left in and out of the ANC and, in some instances, rendered it a force more toxic than redemptive. It is also not unusual for insufficient thought to have been given to the sometimes ruthless hostility that the various factions of the official left have often shown to popular organisation outside of their control. This does not only raise questions about the potential effectiveness of the left as a political actor. It also raises questions about the prospects of a left that could be willing to embrace forms of political action that build real popular power on a progressive basis outside of a vanguard party and outside of the state with the result that there could be at least some diffusion of power and, in the unlikely event that such a party could win state power, some subordination of the state to society.

It is a telling mark of the systemic elitism of our society that very few of the attempts to think through our crisis from within ‘the widening gyre’ consider the people as a whole as potential political protagonists in their own right, and as potential agents of social change, rather than as a vehicle for the election or authorisation of one faction of the elite against the others. If there is a monster stirring, be it out in the wastelands imagined in Yeats’ poem or in the citadels of power, it draws its power from our collective elitism, an elitism that unites everyone from Malema to Zuma and Zille, as well as business, and much of civil society and the official left, against the sort of resolution of our crisis that would take the power of the demos, of the people, seriously.

Dr. Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This article was first published by the South African Centre for Civil Society Information Service.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

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US Unemployment Rate Falls To 5.9 Percent In September, As Economy Adds 248,000 Jobs – Analysis

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The unemployment rate in September fell by 0.2 percentage points to 5.9 percent. This is the first time it has been below 6.0 percent since July of 2008. It has fallen by 1.3 percentage points over the last year. While employment is up by 2,330,000 over the last year, much of the decline in the unemployment rate is due to people leaving the labor force. The labor force participation rate is down 0.5 percentage points from its year-ago level. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) has risen by just 0.4 percentage points over the last year and has remained fixed at 59.0 percent over the last four months, more than 4.0 percentage points below its pre-recession level.

The data in the establishment survey also showed a strengthening labor market. The economy added 248,000 jobs in September. This growth, along with upward revisions to the prior two month’s data, brings the 3-month average to 224,000. The gains were broadly based, but the biggest gainers were retail (35,300), employment services (33,600), health care (22,600), professional and technical services (21,100), and restaurants (20,400). None of these figures are in any obvious way anomalous, although a jump of 19,500 in jobs in food stores, compared to a gain of 49,500 over the prior year, is not likely to be repeated. There was an increase in employment in state government education of 21,500 in September. This is likely a seasonal adjustment issue since employment reportedly fell by 8,400 over the prior two months.

Construction added 16,000 jobs in September, roughly even with its 19,000 average over the last year. Jobs in the sector are still down by more than 1.6 million from pre-recession peaks. There was no clear trend in manufacturing as the sector gained 4,000 jobs, reversing the 4,000 jobs lost in August. Employment is up by 161,000 from year-ago levels, but there is little clear momentum in the sector.

On the household side, the sharpest drops in unemployment were a 1.0 percentage point drop for black women, from 10.6 percent to 9.6 percent and 0.5 percentage points for white men, from 4.9 percent to 4.4 percent. The unemployment rate for black teens fell by 2.3 percentage points from 32.8 percent to 30.5 percent, although this number is highly erratic. The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell by 0.6 percentage points to 6.9 percent, the same as in the early months of the recession.

By education level, workers with less education have been the biggest gainers. The unemployment rate for workers with just a high school degree fell by 0.9 percentage points in September to 5.3 percent. It is now 2.2 percentage points below its year-ago level. The unemployment rate for workers without high school degrees fell by 0.7 percentage points to 8.4 percent, two full percentage points below its year-ago level. By comparison, the unemployment rate for college grads is 0.8 percentage points below its year-ago level at 2.9 percent, almost 50 percent higher than its pre-recession level. While the EPOPs for high school grads and those without degrees both rose over the last year, the EPOP for college grads is down by 0.1 percentage points.

The number of people choosing to work part time rose slightly and now stands 642,000 above its year-ago level. This presumably is the result of people taking advantage of the Affordable Care Act and getting insurance through the exchanges or expanded Medicaid rather than their employers.

While the number of people involuntarily working part-time fell by 174,000 in September, it is still extraordinarily high given the unemployment rate. As a percent of the labor force it is still far above the level at any point in the last recession or even at the start of 1994 when the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent. (The question was changed in January of 1994, so older data are not consistent.)

Slow wage growth also suggests labor market slack. Wages have grown at a 2.0 percent annual rate over the last three months, the same as their rate of increase over the last year. In addition, the share of unemployment due to quits is just 8.9 percent, compared to a rate of 11-12 percent before the recession and 13-14 percent in the late 1990s. In short, while the labor market is improving, it still has a long way to go before reaching full employment.

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New Settlements Plan Threatens Ties With Israel, EU Says

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(EurActiv) — Plans for new settlements in East Jerusalem pose a threat to peace and Israel’s relations with the European Union, the 28-member bloc said on Friday, joining the United States in its criticism of the decision.

The strong language from the European Union, the biggest aid donor to the Palestinians, who seek statehood in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, echoes criticism from Germany, France and Washington.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the decision to build 2,610 homes in Givat Hamatos would be the first new settlement in the East Jerusalem area for 15 years.

“This represents a further highly detrimental step that undermines prospects for a two-state solution and calls into question Israel’s commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians,” the European Union’s External Action Service said in a statement.

“We stress that the future development of relations between the EU and Israel will depend on the latter’s engagement towards a lasting peace based on a two-state solution,” the EEAS said, referring to an independent and democratic Palestinian state that would exist alongside Israel.

It did not say whether any action would be taken over its criticism. Israel is eligible for 14 million euros ($17.6 million) in EU funding over the next seven years, while the EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner.

Palestinians want a state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but has continued expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The latest round of US-brokered peace talks foundered in April over Israeli objections to a Palestinian political unity pact including the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls Gaza and seeks Israel’s destruction, and Palestinian objections to unremitting Israeli settlement growth.

The US State Department said on Wednesday that reports that Israel had moved forward with settlement plans would call into question the Jewish state’s commitment to a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

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Concerns Over Nuclear Power In India – OpEd

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By Tooba Mansoor*

India is enhancing its economic and industrial capacity amid rapid increase in population and energy demands. Uninterrupted access to energy is the key and nuclear energy is one of the top alternative sources to expensive fossil fuel based sources. Nuclear energy sector demands investment in nuclear fuel facilities, human resource, access to high-end and dual use technology and that does not happen sans active international cooperation.

India’s nuclear energy and weapons program dates back to 1940s once Homi Bhaba – the father of country’s nuclear program – return from UK after schooling from prominent physicist Rutherford. Nuclear energy ranks fourth amongst Indian electricity production sources. Thermal, hydro and renewable resources are still the major sources of energy. India has 19 nuclear power plants that can generate 4,560 MWe, and four plants are in pipeline with installed capacity of generating around 2,720 MWe power. Reportedly, population exceeding millions is residing around these nuclear facilities and is unsatisfied with nuclear power, protesting and demonstrating against nuclearization of India.

Despite of nuclear accidents at Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island, nuclear power is still believed to be one of the safest source of power generation. It only requires safe construction and maintenance. But for India; nuclear technology has its vices, its failure to tackle with power plants and to operate them safely is a question itself. The popular public sentiment and concerns about safety of nuclear power plants cannot be ignored. The principle risk or fear associated with nuclear power comes from radiation.

A recent Times of India report claimed that 70% deaths in last 20 years occurred from cancer caused from exposure to radiations from poorly managed nuclear power plants. It can be safely assumed that poor safety standards will only increase the risk of cancer and bigger accidents as the number of power plants grow in India. Reportedly, cancer cases in India multiply every five times a year. Department of Atomic Energy had seen 16% increase in death rate in last four years.

The increasing percentage of cancer disease and death toll due to radiation exposures at or around nuclear facilities should be an eye opener for the government of India and rest of the international community. In the race for doing profitable businesses associated to nuclear energy, the involved parties should not lose sight of safety lest the disastrous consequences increase and beyond redemption.
Most of the Indian nuclear power plants are located at the seismic zones and nobody can guarantee that an Indian nuclear plant would survive catastrophic one-two punch of an earthquake.

The government has unconvincingly tried to allay growing public concerns to little avail and only media’s silence has drowned such protests in India. The 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima was a wake-up call for India that does not have the money, discipline, political will and expertise to handle such issues. If a technologically advanced country like Japan saw Fukushima, India is a small fry.
Indian National Disaster Management Authority in 2009 submitted an analysis report to the Home Minister, claiming that there were 12 critical vulnerabilities that simply clarified the tardiness in India’s response to a disaster. For a country, planning to work on mega and technically sensitive projects must ensure the safety and also make its management department effective in response to a disaster. Otherwise, local people and workers would be the only entities suffering from loss and damage.

India seems to become more and more obsessed with its nuclear credentials with the passage of time. Since the Modi sarkar came into power, people have been forced to evacuate their ancestral hometowns or living places for the sake of making government’s stampede to become nuclear goal and mission accomplished.
Nuclear power in India is a source of serious concern for the locals and also for international non-proliferation regime. Rising death toll at or around nuclear facilities, diagnosis of certain health issues like cancer, physical or mental deformities, paralysis, deafness, blindness are just a few concerns. The government of India seems to be paying no heed towards people’s plea and genuine concerns. The issue is that a nuclear accident would not only be disastrous for one of the most populous counties in the world but no one can guarantee if the harmful effects would not have a regional fallout.

*The author is a student at Quaid-i-Azam University and can be accessed at tooba.mansoor@yahoo.com

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Palestinian-US Relations Head For Stormy Times – OpEd

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Washington’s response to the speech that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered at the UN General Assembly last September 26 confirms that the bilateral Palestinian-U.S. relations are heading for stormy times.

The U.S., which opposed Abbas’ plan to seek a UN Security Council resolution to end the Israeli occupation within a defined timeframe, not only cautioned him against proceeding with any such plan but also issued an official statement condemning the language he used to express the Palestinian people’s opposition to the continued occupation and the ongoing war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in the territories it occupied in 1967.

“Abbas’ speech today included offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject,” U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement on last September 27, which criticised Abbas’ speech as “provocative,” “counterproductive” and undermines “efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust between the parties.”

Clearly, Abbas bent before the onslaught of the winds of American rejection. He “submitted” his plan to the General Assembly but he did not ask to bring it to a vote in order to secure an international resolution that would strengthen his hand when he submitted it to the Security Council. It is also noteworthy that while he called for a deadline to end the occupation he omitted the three-year timeframe that he had previously stipulated.

There is no serious Palestinian opposition to Abbas’ plan to internationalise the search for a political solution to the Palestinian struggle to end the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. It would be extremely difficult to come up with a Palestinian who would argue against replacing US sponsorship with UN sponsorship of the process of reaching a negotiated settlement with the Israeli occupying power. Indeed, this direction is supported by a near unanimity of Palestinian opinion, including among resistance factions that have given Abbas a chance to put his strategy to a last test without obstructing his manoeuvrability.

But Abbas’ plan signifies that he has thrown in the towel on his reliance on U.S. sponsorship, which in turn means confrontation with Washington. Clearly, he will not succeed in neutralising the U.S. by merely bowing before its opposition to his plan or by asking for U.S. approval. Certainly, he should not hold out any hope that Washington will not use its veto to defeat his proposed resolution in the UN Security Council. Nor will he placate the U.S. by deferring Palestinian applications to join international treaties and organisations, such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

All the indications are that the U.S. will campaign against the Abbas plan and continue to insist on brokering a solution that it has been unable to produce during the more than two decades in which it monopolised the sponsoring the negotiating process with the Israeli occupying power.

On September 23, 88 US senators signed a letter urging U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to take prevent “negative developments at the UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights Council, and the International Criminal Court that could derail any prospects for the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Senator Rand Paul refused to sign this letter. He wants Washington to cut off “all aid to the Palestinian Authority until the conditions in Senator Paul’s Stand with Israel Act are met,” according to his e-mail statement to The Washington Post that day.

Warning Abbas “that America’s willingness to cooperate with him will continue to depend on his willingness to return to the negotiating table with the Government of Israel and avoid unilateral measures,” the senators were keen to sustain the usual U.S. “carrot-and-stick” policy, in this case by “enabling the Palestinian Authority to move toward becoming the Palestinian governing authority in Gaza.” This was their bribe to him.

But any policy of confrontation with the U.S. means that Abbas must reject all U.S. bribes, which would inevitably come at the cost of sacrificing the Palestinian resistance.

In addition, in a confrontation of that sort, Abbas would risk losing Arab support in view of the Arab consensus to ally with — or at least not oppose — the U.S. in the war it has declared against ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). Therefore, the resistance and Palestinian national unity will be the only foundation on which President Abbas can rely in the confrontation.

In this context, the Arab League’s declared support for the Abbas’ plan lacks credibility and cannot be relied on when it comes to confronting the U.S. In fact, in the event of a confrontation, the likelihood is that this support would dwindle and fade and turn into an American tool to pressure the PA presidency into bowing to U.S. conditions.

This confrontation is foreshadowed by preliminary chapters of the same, especially since 2011 when the U.S. defeated the Palestinian drive to obtain UN recognition of Palestine as a member state. The following year, the U.S. was not able to prevent the UN from recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state. But Palestinian memory has not forgotten how the U.S. undermined Palestinian accomplishments, such as the International Court of Justice recommendation regarding the separating wall designed to annex another chunk of the West Bank, and the Goldstein Report. The Palestinians remember very well how the U.S. obstructed dozens of international resolutions in support of Palestinian rights and how it continuously prevented the international community from sponsoring any just negotiating process that might end Washington’s own monopoly over what it fraudulently calls the “peace process,” in which the U.S. has never been an honest broker.

The US-Palestinian confrontation was inevitable, even if much delayed. Palestinian leaders from both the resistance and the negotiating factions always tried to avert it. The Palestinians never chose confrontation; successive US administrations however were constantly bent on forcing it on the Palestinian people.

If President Abbas, who for decades placed his faith in U.S. good will, has finally reached the conclusion that it is futile to continue to depend on the U.S. and that now is the time to stand up to Washington and turn to the international community to sponsor his negotiating strategy. His decision will receive the unanimous support of the Palestinian people. However, if he backs down, he will undergo the most important test of his political career, as he will come face-to-face with the people’s judgment of the credibility of his strategic choices, which have never obtained a national or popular consensus.

The choice of confrontation also entails the need to press forward in creating and setting into motion the mechanisms for implementing the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, as well as the need to respond quickly to the overwhelming Palestinian demand to apply for the membership of international treaties and organisations.

But above all, it requires safeguarding the resistance in all its forms and developing it in quantity and quality until its scope is expanded to embrace all the Palestinian people, wherever they may be. Confrontation means refusing to allow Ezz Al-Din Al-Qassam to be assassinated twice!

Even if the inconceivable occurred and the U.S. acknowledged the will of the international community in support of Palestinian rights, refrained from using its influence to stop Abbas’ plan and even refrained from wielding its veto in the UN Security Council, there remains the perpetual risk that the UN resolution would amount to no more than a paper victory to add to the pile of Palestinian paper victories, since any such political victory requires a national force to translate it into a reality on the ground in the occupied territories.

If the Palestinian presidency does not respond to these needs and demands, which receive the full support of the Palestinian people, he will find himself once again singing outside the his national flock.

Regardless of whether or not there is a confrontation with the U.S., these needs and demands are national requirements that must be promoted, enhanced and developed, because they are indispensable if Palestinian popular will is to succeed in liberating its land and translating “paper” victories into real victories on the ground.

The Palestinians have learned an important lesson from their enemy. The Palestinian national movement has dozens of international resolutions in its favour. This is something the Zionist movement never possessed throughout its history, apart from that one non-binding partition resolution, 181, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1947. But this one resolution the Zionists had translated into reality on the ground and then expanded on it through the exercise of overwhelming military force. This is the power that Palestinians are being prevented from possessing today, just as has been the case in the past.

May God bless late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser who always said that what has been taken away by force can only be regained by force. History has proven him right and events have shown that the course the Arabs and Palestinians took after he died — which headed in the opposite direction to his — was gravely wrong, indeed sinful.

This article was first published and translated from Arabic by Al-Ahram Weekly on October 3, 2014.

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How China’s Media Has Reported The Hong Kong Protests – OpEd

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By Michele Penna

It was hardly a good National Holiday to begin with: Beijing was soaked in rain, a gray sky looming low on a wet capital. It was made even worse for Chinese policymakers by Hong Kong’s present to the motherland: the biggest protest to challenge the central government since the days of Tiananmen.

Not many people would know about it though: little information has been allowed to filter through the ‘great firewall,’ as China’s online censorship system is called. As usual, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were down, but for the occasion Instagram was blocked, too. Photographs of protesters holding banners and being tear-gassed in downtown Hong Kong would have ruined the patriotic mood – or they might have stirred sympathy, which is likely why the photo-sharing platform was shut down.

Chinese social media have faced a sharp hike in controls. According to Weiboscope, a project which monitors censorship and is supported by the University of Hong Kong, the number of Weibo posts which were deleted increased five-fold over last weekend. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted Dr. Fu King-wa, the professor responsible for the project, as saying that “you can see that the keywords [in censored posts] such as ‘police’, ‘justice’, they are all linked to protest in Hong Kong.”

A timeline provided by the South China Morning Post shows that last Saturday the number of inaccessible posts tripled to 98 and the following day about 152 posts per 10,000 messages were deleted, or “about five times the preceding week’s average.” The paper also reported that the access to posts with the hashtag ‘Hong Kong’ was blocked on Monday and “later removed from its [Weibo’s] rankings.”

Meanwhile, official papers have kept an eerie silence. By simply looking at the front pages, you would hardly guess what is going on. As of October 2, the People’s Daily’s Chinese version – which on the previous day had published an editorial about the topic – did not report the trouble brewing in the former colony. The city was only mentioned in one article referring to the customary flag raising ceremony on October 1: “the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region held a flag raising ceremony at the Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai this morning,” wrote the Party’s mouthpiece, adding that “many Hong Kong citizens made special trips to go there to see the flag-raising, (they) believe that Hong Kong’s tomorrow will be better.”

The English version of the paper, too, steered clear of sensitive subjects. It touched on Hong Kong, but just to report the city’s current – and embattled – Chief, C Y Leung, as saying that “Hong Kong  must  capitalize  on  the  combined advantages of ‘One Country’ and ‘Two Systems’” formula.

China Daily did report that protests were taking place, but just to quote Mr. Leung, who urged protesters to “to end the protest immediately.”

On the Global Times’ English website, top news included “Suicide blast hits Afghan army bus in Kabul, killing 4,” “Deadly blasts rock Syria amid military showdown,” “Beijing receives record number of tourists on National Day” and “UN chief slams deadly bombing attacks in Syria,” among others. No trace of Hong Kong. Only the editorial page showed two articles criticizing the Occupy Central movement because ‘it adds merely noise’ and because the ‘street movement ruins Hong Kong image.’

The tightening of the news flow into and inside the motherland certainly underscores the authorities’ desire to keep the protests in Hong Kong firmly contained there. Reports of the crisis could also imply a loss of face for the government: the answer one often gets when talking about former leader Deng Xiaoping is that one of the great things he did – along with making China richer and improving education – is that he took Hong Kong and Macau back from the British and the Portuguese, respectively. But what would people make of the images coming out of Hong Kong now, as the people protest against the same institution that has welcomed them back to the mainland?

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