Last May, the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years in prison, 190,000 Euro fine and 1,000 lashes. The latter should be enforced, spread across 20 Fridays, that is: Every Friday 50 lashes over a period of almost five months. 2008, Badawi founded the website “Free Saudi liberals”.

Badawi has been convicted for alleged blasphemy and “insult of Islam”. According to Amnesty International , Badawi did nothing wrong “than to have dared to create a public forum for debate”. In Spring 2014, Raif Badawi’s lawyer was also put in jail. According to Human Rights Watch, Walid Abu Kheir was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a heavy fine. In the Press Freedom Index of “Reporter Without Borders” Saudi Arabia ranked number 164 of the 180 listed countries. Last year, Badawi’s wife and the three children left Saudi Arabia for Canada.

The Badawi case is a cruel message to the people of Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi Salafist dictatorship fears for its existence. There is unrest in the Saudi Kingdom, which takes place behind closed doors. On 5 January, jihadist fighters from Iraq entered Saudi Arabia and killed three border guards. The rebellion in Yemen also represents a major threat to the country. The future of the Saudi dictatorship looks grim. An “Islamic State” without the control over the holy places of Islam doesn’t make much sense. The Saudi leadership is ailing and calcified. But real hope for reform is not in sight because the line of succession takes place in camera. A successor can only be a Wahhabi fundamentalist from the house of Saud.

Saudi Arabia is considered one of the closest allies of the US Empire. Saudi Arabia ranks just behind Israel. The first because of its oil and its support for financing Islamist fundamentalism all over the globe, against which the US can wage a never ending war, the latter for its role as a bulwark against Islamic “terrorism”. “Islamic terrorism” has one financial root: Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Emirates that US vice president Joe Biden once mention, before he had to apologize for his gaffe.

It hasn’t been reported that either the US or other Western countries have called for the release of Raif Badawi. The most sickening hypocrisy represented the participation of the Saudi ambassador in the protest march against the killing of 17 Frenchmen in Paris. At the same time, Badawi received 50 slashes publically. One female protester confronted the ambassador with a sign “Je suis Raif Badawi”. However, the participation of the ambassador should not surprise anyone, as long freedom of speech takes place in the West. and since some of the perpetrators of terror marched in the front row. Former French president Nikolas Sarkozy, who together with David Cameron from Great Britain order the attack against Libya, even forged ahead from the third row to the first in order to walk besides Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who according to Israeli media was not even invited to the event.

As US President Obama has not participated in the separate protest march of the heads of states in Paris, he should at least publicly call for the release of Raif Badawi.

The post Freedom For Saudi Blogger Badawi – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

An Ohio man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly plotting to attack the US Capitol and kill government officials.

According to the US Justice Department, Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, Ohio, was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Cornell was taken into custody Wednesday by a FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

The Justice Department said that a criminal complaint was filed Wednesday before a U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge. “The public is reminded that criminal complaints contain only allegations of criminal misconduct and that defendants are presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law,” the Justice Department said.

According to various US news reports, Cornell was arrested after he purchased two semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition. According to news reports, Cornell is alleged to have plotted to detonate pipe bombs and then shoot and kill those who were fleeing the attack.

It is being reported that Cornell is a convert to Islam and had been using the alias of Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, which he used on social networks claiming to be a member of the Islamic State.

The post FBI Arrests Ohio Man For Alleged Plot To Attack US Capital appeared first on Eurasia Review.

US Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Co-Chairs of the Kurdish American Caucus, released a letter on Wednesday to US Secretary of State Kerry urging him to grant the travel visa request of Salih Muslim Mohammed, Co-Chairman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syria.

“As the U.S. continues its campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), we believe that the PYD is one of the most effective partners the U.S. has on the ground in Syria,” they wrote. “We urge you to permit Salih Muslim to come to Washington in January to meet with non-governmental members of the American foreign policy community and others to discuss directly what we can do together to defeat ISIL and advance the cause of a secular, democratic Syria.”

The full text of the letter is below:

December 18, 2014

The Honorable John F. Kerry
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Secretary Kerry:

As Co-Chairs of the Kurdish American Congressional Caucus we are writing to request that you grant the visa request of Salih Muslim Mohammed, Co-Chairman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syria, to travel to the United States to attend a conference in Washington DC in January 2015.

As the U.S. continues its campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), we believe that the PYD is one of the most effective partners the U.S. has on the ground in Syria. Earlier this year PYD fighters helped to end the ISIL siege around Mount Sinjar thus allowing thousands of Iraqi Yazidis to escape death at the hands of ISIL. Since then they have also been fighting valiantly to prevent the expansion of ISIL in northern Syria, most prominently in the border town of Kobani. While we welcome the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIL targets and the dropping of arms supplies which have helped the PYD forces defending Kobani, we think it is important to expand our contacts with this critical Syrian partner in the war against the IS and other salafist jihadists active in the country.

As we understand it, the reluctance to issue a visa to Salih Muslim is partly due to Turkey’s concerns about the PYD and its links with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). However, the Turkish government has itself been negotiating directly with the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. It has also engaged on a number of occasions in conversations with Salih Muslim in Ankara, including at the level of the Under Secretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The PYD has made it clear that they seek good relations with the Government of Turkey. Last but not least, the PYD unlike the PKK, is not on the United States Foreign Terrorist Organizations List. In fact, the PYD is a distinct organization with distinct goals and objectives to protect the Kurdish minority in Syria from the on-going violence in that war-torn country and to participate in an eventual national reconciliation agreement that will provide guarantees and protection for Syria’s many minority groups, including the Kurds.

We urge you to permit Salih Muslim to come to Washington in January to meet with non-governmental members of the American foreign policy community and others to discuss directly what we can do together to defeat ISIL and advance the cause of a secular, democratic Syria.

We appreciate your urgent consideration of this matter.

Sincerely,

Chris Van Hollen
Co-Chair
Kurdistan American Caucus

Marsha Blackburn
Co-Chair
Kurdistan American Caucus

The post US State Department Urged To Grant Travel Visa To Co-Chairman Of Democratic Union Party Of Syria – Statement appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Alex Shams

Christmas is a time for holiday cheer in Bethlehem, as thousands from across Palestine and around the world converge to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in the hilltop West Bank city.

Onlookers at the Orthodox Christmas parade on Jan. 6 this year, however, were surprised to find protesters awaiting the traditional visit of the Patriarch to Nativity Church, and six youths were even arrested after chanting slogans against him in Manger Square.

For those participating in the rally, it was the visit of Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilos III — not their protests — that had ruined Christmas.

“I came here to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in my way as an Arab Orthodox (Christian),” Jalal Barham, a member of the Follow-up Committee of the Arab Orthodox High Council in Beit Sahour told Ma’an at a protest greeting the church leader at Bethlehem’s Catholic Action Circle.

“My celebration would not be complete if it did not include expressing my opposition to the illegitimate (Patriarch).”

The protest was part of a growing campaign in Palestine and Jordan loosely organized under the slogan: “Gheyr Mostaheq/Anaksios,” meaning “illegitimate” in Arabic and Greek respectively.

Supporters of the campaign accuse the Patriarchate — reportedly the second-largest landowner in Jerusalem — of selling off large amounts of land to Israeli authorities through long-term leases.

They have brought forth documents purporting to show that parts of Jewish-only settlements in the Jerusalem area have been built atop these lands, and in the past few years a number of scandals have erupted as details emerged of sales in West Jerusalem neighborhoods as well.

Angered at what they say is the Orthodox Church’s increasing collaboration with the Israeli occupation, dozens have joined the grassroots movement aimed at creating change by disrupting the Patriarch’s public appearances.

“He is illegitimate in entering the Nativity Church, where Jesus was born and from which the message of Christ emerged,” Barham told Ma’an. “We announce in all truthfulness that Theophilos is illegitimate unless he returns to the teachings of Jesus in defending this Holy Land and not selling it off to the Israelis.”

The campaign has stirred strong emotions among the 200,000-strong Orthodox faithful in the Holy Land — including Palestine and Jordan, which are both part of the Patriarch’s realm — raising larger questions of identity and resistance for a community struggling to survive in the face of an occupation stretching back nearly 70 years.

Movement 500 years in the making

The Gheyr Mostaheq campaign traces its roots back at least a decade, with a major victory for those opposed to Orthodox land sales to Israel coming in 2005. In that year, former Patriarch Irenaeus was ousted from his seat as part of a backlash against land sales he reportedly made to Jewish settler groups in the Old City.

Activists say that while Patriarch Theophilos initially resisted pressures to continue such transactions, within a few years he began offering long-term leases in a number of areas for settlement construction.

These included parts of Har Homa, a mountain previously part of Bethlehem but now host to hundreds of white towers housing Jews exclusively, as well as the area of Givat Ha-Matos, where Israeli authorities plan to build another Jewish-only area settlement that would irrevocably sever the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem’s Old City and make a contiguous Palestinian state housing both an impossibility.

Protests against the Patriarch have been growing for years, but activists hope that the launching of a new, focused campaign will strengthen the movement.

Majd Salsa, a Beit Sahour native and supporter of the Gheyr Mostaheq movement, argues that these land sales are not only unethical and betrayals of the Palestinian cause, they are also a direct affront to the Greek Orthodox faithful who transferred the lands into Church hands for protection.

“During the Ottoman times our ancestors gave their lands to the Patriarch so they wouldn’t have to pay extra taxes, in full trust that the Patriarch would later return the lands. They believed he would protect the lands and keep them as a Christian waqf,” using the Arabic term for religious endowment.

But for Salsa, the land issue is only one part of a struggle that he says began 500 centuries ago, when Ottoman authorities handed custodianship of the Jerusalem Patriarch to a religious committee composed exclusively of Greeks, the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher.

This Brotherhood controls Orthodox holy places across the Holy Land and chooses the Patriarch, but is run almost entirely without local Palestinian or Jordanian input.

“The Greek authorities completely ignore all of the demands of the (Arab) Orthodox, and they refuse to discuss the topic with anyone, instead acting with racism and condescension toward us as if they were speaking to people below them,” Salsa told Ma’an. “But it is the Arab Christians whose land this originally is. It is their church and they are the ones who started it 2,000 years ago.”

“We don’t need spiritual leadership above us from abroad,” he continued. “Prior to the Ottomans we had Arab patriarchs ruling over us, including the one who welcomed (Muslim conqueror) Omar ibn al-Khattab,” he said, noting that other Greek Orthodox churches in the Middle East were also ruled over by local leadership.

The office of the Greek Patriarchate, however, has so far shown no signs of giving ground on Arabization of church leadership, and denies any wrongdoing over land sales.

‘An agenda developed by outsiders’

Issa Musleh, the Patriarch’s spokesman and a Beit Sahour native as well, dismissed the movement against the Church as “chaos and problems” that had begun only a few months before over a controversy that erupted over the changing of a priest’s responsibilities in Jordan to one in Palestine.

He accused Archimandrite Christophoros, previously the head of a monastery in Dibeen in northern Jordan, of “slandering” the Church in the media and making dishonest statements, after which he was dismissed.

Musleh told Ma’an that after the dismissal, activists came to Palestine to stir up problems in the holiday season, adding: “Both Christian and Muslim holidays are national holidays and no one is allowed to do anything to tarnish the positive image that befits our precious nation of Palestine and especially the city of Bethlehem.”

Musleh also slammed accusations that the Church discriminated against Arabs in leadership positions, stressing that both Greeks and Arab were Orthodox and that there should be no distinctions between them.

He did however highlight that there were not enough Arab priests ready to lead the church at the current time, adding that in his opinion in Arab culture there was an emphasis on having children and getting married that made it difficult for locals to ascend to the position of Patriarch, which requires celibacy.

“Unfortunately from time to time some people try to call for Arab leadership and to Arabize the church. They should first respect the church laws and sacrifice for the church. And as you know we do not have a state to choose an Arab Patriarch,” he added, pointing to Palestine’s continued occupation by Israel.

Musleh also flatly denied accusations of collaboration with or land sale to the Israeli government.

“Find me a piece of paper that proves that the Patriarchate or the Holy Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher sold or leased land to the Israeli occupation,” Musleh told Ma’an. He pointed to the Church’s close relationship with Jordanian and Palestinian authorities, as well as Islamic religious leaders in Palestine, to highlight the Church’s pro-Palestinian stance.

“The Patriarchs and the heads of the churches are the ones who preserve the Christian existence in the Holy Land in light of the immigration (of local Christians) because of the economic and political situation, the separation wall, and the Israeli checkpoints. We have become less than 1 percent (of the population) in this country. The number of Christians in Jerusalem is between 10,000-11,000.”

“Unfortunately, some people want to use the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate’s properties and there is a specific agenda developed by outsiders who are playing this game. But we will confront them and stop them because we will not allow such a situation,” he told Ma’an.

“If they come to the Patriarchate, as church members to discuss this issue — and I say this as the spokesman of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate — then the doors of the Patriarchate are open for church members especially and for all Palestinian and Jordanian people in general.”

“We Christians and Muslims should be united to fight for and free our land and establish an independent Palestinian State, and we should support the Palestinian and Jordanian governments’ efforts for our just cause,” he added.

“But there are some outsiders who want to destroy the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. We tell them that the Church has a Lord who sacrificed his life on the cross and said that evil will not defeat us. We will remain despite the difficulties we are passing through these days.”

A ‘political game’

Majd Salsa, the campaign supporter, told Ma’an that he was not convinced by the arguments made by church officials.

He said that he had tried repeatedly to gain an audience with the Patriarch to no avail, and it was this experience — and that of others like him, including Arab priests inside the Church — that had forced the group to take the protests to the streets during Christmas.

Although Salsa was hopeful about the prospects for change and “renaissance” within the Church, he also expressed fears that the movement was caught in a political game between Palestinian and Jordanian authorities on one side and the Greek state on the other.

“The biggest problem is the collusion of Palestinian and Jordanian authorities on this issue. They consider any attack on the Patriarch unwelcome because they don’t want problems with Greece, which generally has a supportive position toward the Palestinian state. They don’t want to hurt those ties.”

“The Greek state supports the Patriarch, and the fact that they have control over the Jerusalem Patriarchate … this is a source of power for them.”

“If the (civil authorities) stand with the people they belong to, with the church membership in Jordan and Palestine, we can achieve our demands easily,” he told Ma’an. “But if they stand as police or an army against our movement, we cannot.”

Authorities have not yet signaled any clear position on the movement, which organizers have thus far taken as a sign of their support for the Patriarchate.

The arrests of six activists during the protest on Orthodox Christmas — as well as an incident this reporter witnessed where a man who appeared to belong to the Palestinian secret services threatened a protester and confined him to a nearby building under police guard — suggest that they may be right.

For Salsa, the incidents suggest a worrying future for the campaign.

“If the Patriarch is a patriarch for the mother of all churches in Jerusalem, and he asks for the violent protection of the police and intelligence services and army from his own people — the people of his own church, the people who own the lands that he is selling — what kind of Patriarch is this?”

The post Calls For Orthodox Church Reform Over Alleged Israel Land Sales appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Germany’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a plan to allow authorities to withdraw identity cards from Islamic extremists and prevent them from traveling to Iraq, Syria or other crisis areas to join terrorist groups, the Associated Press reported.

The plan has been in the works since October and still requires parliamentary approval. It would allow authorities to withdraw plastic national identity cards for up to three years. Those affected will get a replacement temporary identity card stating in several languages that it doesn’t entitle the holder to leave Germany.

It is already possible to withdraw passports, but officials until now have lacked the authority to withhold the identity cards that Germans use to travel to many countries in and beyond the European Union — among them Turkey, through which the vast majority of extremists who went from Germany to Syria and Iraq are believed to have traveled.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that around 600 suspected extremists from Germany are now believed to have left the country — up from the 550 that officials previously said had traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups.

“There is no panacea against terror, but we have an obligation to do everything in our power to reduce the danger of terrorist attacks and of Germans participating in them at home and abroad,” de Maiziere said. He said he couldn’t predict how many people the new rules might affect.

The post Germany: Plan Approved To Withdraw Identity Cards From Islamic Extremists appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By George Sochan

Slavery, as a word, is generally understood, but its specific history, even in a narrow sense, is usually unknown by the wider public. For many North Americans, slavery means the institution that existed during the Antebellum Period, often designated as encompassing the period of 1820-1860. The Civil War (1861-1865), which erupted in 1861, closes the Antebellum Period, and for contemporary Americans this means the eradication of slavery. Many persons in the United States connect the institution of slavery in nineteenth century USA with the centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They are also aware that the country’s involvement in the international slave trade legally ended in 1808 when Congress, acting on a provision in the Constitution, prohibited the trade. These two episodes—Congress’s banning of the slave trade and the slaves’ emancipation at the end of the Civil War—are only a small part of the entire story of slavery and anti-slavery in world history. While a total picture of slavery’s history and the efforts to remove slavery from humanity is difficult to gain from any one orientation, a British perspective on this history may offer a more comprehensive view than an American one. Whether one looks at slavery from the shores of the United Kingdom or from that of the United States, a few persons in both countries recognize that slavery still exists in the world of the twentieth-first century, including, in certain forms, in both of the aforementioned countries.[1] An organization that is dedicated to combating slavery is Anti-Slavery International, which was founded in early nineteenth century Britain as the Anti-Slavery Society. This organization links the slavery and the anti-slavery of the past with the outcropping of new forms of slavery in the world today. Some of that connection will be given in this essay.

Scholars who write on slavery in the Western Hemisphere and especially on the abolishment of slavery in this part of the world provide an overview, and sometimes even more than that, of Britain’s role in abolition. In his book on slavery and human trafficking, Joel Quirk devotes three chapters to Britain’s role in campaigning against slavery and the British effort to internationalize anti-slavery as a concerted worldwide effort. The three chapters highlight certain key events, like Britain’s abolition of the British slave trade in 1808, the emancipation of the slaves in the British Caribbean colonies, and the British campaign against the slave trade throughout much of the world, especially the trans-Atlantic region, as well as Britons’ efforts to cultivate anti-slavery sentiments throughout the world. Much of the content in these three chapters is based on the work of historians, like Seymour Drescher and David Bryon Davis, who have successfully argued that the force within British abolitionism was a moral sentiment that proffered individual liberty as a universal norm and slavery as a peculiar institution that should be abolished.[2] In his book, Quirk proposes an “Anti-Slavery Project” that will establish an analytical framework that distinguishes between legal abolition and effective emancipation, that spells out the various forms of bondage, and that provides for analytical categories of bondage which are distinct from merely being an “evocative expression.”[3] Knowing the history of this topic from the middle of the eighteenth century up to the present is crucial to understanding the varieties of enslavement and the means used to combat them.

Regarding the history of slavery, the role of Britain in the nineteenth century is very significant. Today, since the mid twentieth century, the notion of human rights and a recognition of certain acts as crimes against humanity are commonly accepted and understood. For example, during the 1990s there was considerable interest in bringing Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic before an international court of justice for crimes against humanity. The justification for such tribunals is the so-called universal principle that allows international jurisdiction “of certain offenses considered particularly heinous or harmful to humankind, such as genocide, war crimes, slavery, piracy, and the like.”[4] Many persons consider the Nuremburg Trials of Germans after the Second World War to constitute the origins of international courts of justice, but the origins of international human rights laws and the courts to enforce such laws occurred with the British campaign against the slave trade during the nineteenth century. Before the nineteenth century, European legal theorists had established that those who practiced piracy were hostis humani generis, or enemies of mankind; the Royal Navy had been hanging pirates as such enemies throughout the eighteenth century. In 1824, Parliament equated slave trading with piracy and at the same time began to badger other countries to sign treaties with Britain against allowing the trade. Britain used its navy to stop slaving ships on the high seas, and even in coastal waters, and then to bring the captain and crew to mixed courts of commission (the origin of international tribunals) which would adjudicate their fate. During the decades of Britain’s anti-slave trade campaign in the trans-Atlantic region, the navy and the courts released about 80,000 persons from enslavement.[5]

It should be noted that it was the navy as well as the courts that helped to establish international jurisdiction over slave trading. The navy was the force behind the black-robed, bewigged men who sat in judgment over those who trafficked in human beings. Sometimes this force was violent as when British sailors fought slavers off the coast of West Africa, near present-day Nigeria, in 1822.[6] Further examples of Britain using force against the slavers occurred in Brazil’s coastal waters in 1850[7] and against Zanzibar in 1890.[8] In closing the evidence at this point, it should be noted that the ending of the movie, Amistad, is factually accurate in showing the British navy with its marines destroying the slavers’ stronghold. At that time, there were those in Britain, like Royal Naval Captain John Denman who believed that “[the slavers] are the greatest scoundrels on the face of the earth. They are accustomed, in their daily course of life, to commit murder, and to regard human life as of no more consequence than the lives of pigs or dogs.”[9] Today there are those who regard contemporary slavers, now known as human traffickers, with very much the same antipathy. In Not For Sale, author David Batstone discusses the trafficking of young women and even girls across Southeastern Europe into Italy by a group he denotes as the Russian Mafia who sells these victims into the sex trade. This criminal enterprise, he asserts, “has a reputation for the ruthless use of violence when it feels threatened or betrayed.” The account centers on a Romanian girl, called Nadia in the book, who was forced into numerous sex acts per night with multiple men as she made a harrowing passage across Southeastern Europe.[10] Nadia’s ordeal, as related in the book, would certainly solicit sympathy of even the casual reader, and many would consider what happened to her to be evil. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, abolitionists have successfully reoriented the perspective on slavery so that it is taken from that of the slave and not that of the slaver. This means that slavery is presented as a morally flawed enterprise that is seen to exploit persons and is rarely presented as a system that can be economically justified as it once had been.[11] In effect, Nadia’s story today as recounted by a narrator and received by an audience is like that of the fictional characters, Eliza Harris and Uncle Tom, in the nineteenth century novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While evocations of revulsion against the traffickers and strong sympathy for Nadia can be readily understood, it is also important that slavery be analytically understood. “Slavery [has been] traditionally defined using a combination of individual ownership, property rights, and extreme exploitation.”[12] Since the late twentieth century, theorists, using models from the nineteenth century, have been redefining slavery and slave trading (now trafficking). In Nadia’s case, she seems to have been an “innocent victim” caught up in the sex trade and forced into prostitution, but Joel Quirk asserts that not all situations are like hers. For one thing, some persons seem to engage in prostitution willingly, or at least to have accommodated themselves to a life on the streets, and should not be considered slaves, even if they undergo rough treatment from a pimp. In some countries, persons engaged in prostitution are not even called prostitutes but are considered sex workers.[13]

A significant part of the history of modern slavery, especially in regard to anti-slavery, is the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). One of the most important of these has been and still is Anti-Slavery International. Beginning as the Anti-Slavery Society in Britain in the early nineteenth century, this organization has been an integral part of the so-called anti-slavery project since Britain’s campaign against the slave trade and slavery. Some of the force compelling Britain to take more and more measures against slavery came from this organization. Shortly after Parliament had banned the British slave trade, abolitionists in Britain mobilized to end slavery in the empire, especially in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. The Anti-Slavery Society was started in this epoch, during the 1820s and the 1830s, with 1839 usually given as the date of origin, as an NGO that mobilized the population and pressured the government of the day to suppress the slave trade and slavery, first, in the trans-Atlantic world and then elsewhere as British influence expanded throughout the world.[14] By the late nineteenth century British influence had extended to much of Africa: it was at this time that Britain, along with many European countries, scrambled to grab much of the continent. The European takeover of the continent of Africa was justified as bringing civilization there by removing slavery, but European governments tackled slavery slowly and “it was only pressure by the metropolitan governments and international organizations that compelled colonial administrations to suppress the slave trade and to promote freedom, even if only limited freedom, for Africans.”[15] Anti-Slavery International, called the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society during the time of Britain’s colonial rule, played a consequential role as an NGO during the early years of the twentieth century. Today the horrors of the so-called Congo Free States are relatively well known, thanks to Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, but it was the work of a few persons, primarily Roger Casement, Edmund Dene Morel, and John Alice Harris, who exposed the brutal exploitation of a new form of slavery in Leopold’s Congo so that persons like Hochschild could write books about this. In a subsection of her book, entitled “The Power of Humanitarian Agitation,” Suzanne Miers discusses how these persons mobilized many others, both within Britain and elsewhere, to force King Leopold to stop some of the abuses. Eventually, this humanitarian campaign even forced the king to relinquish his personal control over the Congo. For many years the Harrises served as joint secretaries of Anti-Slavery International.[16]

Through the course of the twentieth century, as Miers has shown in Slavery in the Twentieth Century, Anti-Slavery International provided many services in combating slavery throughout the world. Despite the difficulties, one of those ways was in furnishing information on slavery of good quality for anti-slavery commissions.[17] Referencing a statement in Scientific American, Kevin Bales provides this criticism of many reports of slavery: “We worry that the study of contemporary slavery is more of a proto-science than a science. Its data are uncorroborated, its methodology unsystematic. Few researchers work in the area, so the field lacks the give and take that would filter out subjectivity.”[18] Since NGOs have a vested interest in ending human trafficking, their reports may be conveying too much outrage (evocative expressions) and too little factually based analysis. Bales believes that Anti-Slavery International is a leader in providing factually accurate reports. He also refers to the organization’s “well organized and well cared for” archives in London. On its website Anti-Slavery International provides information on slavery and human trafficking in the various regions of the world. For instance, on December 12, 2014, there were six reports on the “contemporary forms of slavery” in six South American countries.[19] The report on Brazil consisted of twenty-two pages that covered the following areas: forced labor in the Amazon, trafficking, and child domestic work.[20] Bhavna Sharma’s assessment of forced labor in Brazil is similar to case studies provided by Kevin Bales and Joel Quirk in their books. Beginning in the late twentieth century, agri-businesses have been pushing their operations further and further into the tropical rain forest. As these operations deforested the region and displaced indigenous groups who live a traditional life style there, the companies brought in tens of thousands of laborers to produce rubber and charcoal for the global market. Most of the workers are persons living in poverty who receive money from company representatives to travel to the forest for agricultural work. In effect, they fall into debt bondage from which it is very difficult for them to escape. Debt bondage is probably the most prevalent form of slavery in the contemporary world; just in India, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the estimate for indebted slaves was eighteen to twenty-two million.[21] Sharma’s report shows that Brazil’s government is attempting an innovative way to end slavery while at the same time providing something beneficial for those who have been enslaved. A February 2004 proposal in Brazil’s congress would allow the government to expropriate land, without compensation, from companies that have exploited their laborers in slave-like conditions. The expropriated land would then become part of the government’s reform program so that the emancipated laborers would have access to land as freed persons in order that they do not fall again into bonded labor.[22] According to an article in The China Post, dated June 10, 2014, Brazil’s constitution was recently amended so that property anywhere in the country “where slave labor was exploited, as described by law, will be expropriated and destined to agrarian reform and popular housing projects, without any compensation to the owner and without prejudice of other lawful sanctions.”[23] This constitutional change should mean that land once owned by slave owners would become that of the ex-slaves. While it is too soon to tell what will ultimately happen, the article’s author pessimistically predicts only augmented governmental regulation in the life of Brazilians with little benefit for ex-slaves.

So, what can be concluded at the end of this brief essay on a complex topic? First, slavery and the trading of humans still exist in the world. This is true, despite the fact that nearly every state in the world has denounced this institution and has passed laws to proscribe it. Quite simply, there is a difference between the legal abolition of slavery and its effective emancipation. Today criminals operate the human trafficking whereas three hundred years ago men who postured as businessmen enslaved persons whom they sold to other men who had the support of governments to use slave labor. In some ways, the enslavement of persons in the twenty-first century has become confusingly complex. “Where slavery is legally recognized one can tell who is a slave, but how does one describe the situation of people who seem to be exactly like slaves but who, in the eyes of the law, cannot be so because the law says nobody can be legally enslaved.”[24] For one thing, to deal with contemporary slavery, one must set aside certain images of the past that have rows of black slaves toiling in the southern cotton fields of the United States and legally carrying Africans across the Atlantic Ocean during the eighteenth century. However, the past cannot be completely abandoned because some of these memories can be useful for confronting slavery in its contemporary forms. That human trafficking is now primarily operated by criminals is not too different a situation from what it was in the nineteenth century, certainly not from a British perspective. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Britain began to criminalize slave trading activities in more and more parts of the world. The British equated slaving with piracy and used its navy to suppress both activities. Britain’s campaign against slavery, as well as the activities of northern American abolitionists, advanced notions of human rights while imposing the perception of slavery as something peculiarly evil. While the means of combating slavery need not always be through force from a national state, as shown by Britain’s navy in the nineteenth century, a determined stance against this evil is necessary. Sometimes one person, without using too much violence, can achieve much good. An iconic hero from the past is Granville Sharp who made a citizen’s arrest of a slave captain on the London docks so that he could not return Jonathan Strong to slavery in the Americas. A few years later Sharp initiated a case in England’s highest court that won the freedom of James Somerset and eventually laid the foundation of freedom for all the enslaved in England.[25] There are persons today who live their lives like a Granville Sharp. Former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard has set up an organization called Operation Underground Railroad that rescues children caught in the sex trade. In October 2014, he helped Colombian authorities to set up a sting operation that rescued fifty-four children and caught five traffickers. Ballard characterized his work as horrifying because in order to set up such stings, he has “to smile in the face of evil.”[26] Finally, the propagation of factually accurate information is as important now as it was in the past. People in the western countries, who seemingly live far away from any kind of slavery, need to be enlightened to the repellant reality that there is a modern form of slavery operating even in their own country. In the area of supplying information, Anti-Slavery International has performed significant service. This NGO now has a sister organization in the United States, which is Free the Slaves and is headquartered in Washington, DC. Just recently, in December 2014, students at Bowie State University initiated a chapter of Anti-Slavery International on their own campus. At this time they are in the process of attaining formal recognition from the university. They wish to join the campaign “to eliminate all forms of slavery around the world.”[27]

* George Sochan, Senior Analyst at the Council On Hemispheric Affairs, and Professor and President of Humanities & Technology Association, Department of History and Government at Bowie State University

References

[1]Kevin Bales, Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 183-186.

[2]Among the many studies the interpret British abolitionism as a moral force to transform societies, see:

Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolitionism (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 1977).

Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Slavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1984).

Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.)

Donald A. Yerza, ed., British Abolitionism and the Question of Moral Progress in History, (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2012).

[3]Joel Quirk, The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade Through Human Trafficking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 6-14.

[4]Adam Isaac Hasson, “Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and Sovereign Immunity on Trial: Noriega, Pinochet, and Milosevic—Trends in Political Accountability and Transnational Criminal Law,” January 7, 2015. http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/law/lawreviews/journals/bciclr/25_1/05_TXT.htm.

[5]Jenny S. Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 67-76 and 114-116.

[6]Martinez, 7-12.

[7] Herbert S. Klein, “The End of the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The Social Dimension of Western Civilization Volume 2: Readings from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, ed. Richard Golden (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 306-308.

[8]George Sochan, “The Afro-Arab Slave Trade in Nineteenth Century East Africa,” Journal of African Social Sciences and Humanities Studies, (Winter 2006): 20.

[9]Martinez, 129-130.

[10]David Batsone, Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It, (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 155-170.

[11]Bales, 27-32.

[12]Quirk, 138.

[13]Quirk, 234-240.

[14]Quirk, 51-53.

[15]Sochan, 21.

[16]Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003), 51-53.

Bales, 73-75.

[17]Miers, 373-376.

[18]Bales, 87.

[19]“Slavery in Latin America Reports” December 9, 2014.

http://www.antislavery.org/english/resources/reports/general_slavery_reports.aspx

[20]Bhavna Sharma, “Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Brazil,” December 9, 2014. http://www.antislavery.org/includes/documents/cm_docs/2009/c/contemporary_forms_of_slavery_in_brazil.pdf

[21]Bales, 184.

[22]Sharma, 4-5.

[23]Valdenor Junior, “Land expropriation in Brazil serving only the gov’t, not the people,” The China Post, January 9, 2015. http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/letters/2014/06/10/409769/Land-expropriation.htm

[24]Quirk, 1.

[25]Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 43-50.

[26]Elaine Quijano, “One man’s mission to rescue child sex-trafficking victims,” CBS News, January 9, 2015. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-mans-mission-to-rescue-child-sex-trafficking-victims/

[27]“What We Do,” Anti-Slavery: today’s fight for tomorrow’s freedom,” January 9, 2015. http://www.antislavery.org/english/what_we_do/default.aspx

The post Slavery, Anti-Slavery And Anti-Slavery International – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

There are problems with terms used to discuss religiously justified violence, like Islamism, Radical Islam, Jihadism, etc. They may provide legitimacy to terrorists, increase Islamophobia, and distort or misrepresent the actions and ideologies they seek to describe.

By Paul Hedges*

Violence in the name of religion, especially Islam, is a global concern: the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks, and the ongoing ISIS conflict being two prominent examples. The language used to discuss this is, however, deeply problematic, with terms used by the media, politicians, and academics often distorting or oversimplifying the issues.

The focus, here, on Islam is because it is the most discussed example, although I do not believe Islam is inherently violent or more violent than any other religion. Indeed, no clear evidence suggests religion is more likely to incite violence than other ideologies or worldviews; nevertheless, in the current geopolitical environment it often provides a claimed motivation or seeming explanation – both for actors and commentators.

Naming religious violence

The language used seeks to distinguish what is termed “moderate Islam” from the actions and ideologies of terrorists and militants; politicians like George Bush and Tony Blair wished to distinguish their “War on Terror” from a war against Islam. The terms used include: Islamism, Radical/Extremist Islam, Fundamentalist Islam, Jihadism. However, none of these is really adequate.

Islamism often denotes a political form of Islam, which sees “religious” aspects being extended into areas of statecraft, law, and the public sphere. In some respects, this misunderstands what “religion” and “Islam” are. Developing from a modern Western/Christian worldview, contemporary understandings of “religion” and the “secular” divide the world into a private sphere of personal religious belief and a public sphere of law, politics, economics, etc.

Such a division comes from the specific European and North American context of the last couple of hundred years, but is adopted now more globally. Prior to this, Christianity was involved in almost every aspect of life, law, politics, morality, and economics. Countries where Islam predominates tend to uphold a (more traditional) worldview where the “religious sphere” naturally encompasses law, public morality, and politics.

Further, while Christianity stresses beliefs and creeds (personal belief), Islam has emphasised duties, embodied in Shariah Law (public actions). Therefore, to speak of “Islamism” as a militant political form of Islam makes no sense: all Islam, traditionally speaking, is political and legal. Indeed, when Tony Blair said that his Christian beliefs guided aspects of his governmental policy, including the war in Iraq, no one accused him of “Christianism”. “Islamism”, as a term, is therefore unhelpful to analyse contemporary militant/terrorist actions.

Problems with terms like “Radical Islam” or “moderate” Islam

Radical Islam names a counterpart to “moderate” Islam. However, it is not very useful. What is “radical” ? In everyday language, radical suggests something new, dramatically different, or unusual. In this sense liberal Muslim reformers are “radicals”. Unhelpfully, it may also suggest those only “moderately” Islamic are the peaceful ones, while those who take their religion more seriously (are “radical” about it) turn to violence: young people especially want to be radicals.

Likewise, use of “Extremist Islam” may suggest those who take Islam to its extremes; this implies that, taken seriously, Islam leads to violence. Contrarily many deeply committed Muslims understand Islam as a religion of peace, while many of the terrorists/militants demonstrate only limited commitment to or understanding of it: this is seemingly true of both the Hebdo attackers and the ISIS leadership.

Fundamentalism originated in the United States in the early 20th century, used by Christians who adhered to what they saw as fundamental beliefs. These varied but often included the infallibility of scripture, belief in the virgin birth, etc. It has been debated whether we can accurately use “fundamentalist” outside of this original context, but if we do what does it mean?

In common usage it refers to violent and extremist ends of any group. If we take it more precisely, however, we apply it to those who follow (what they believe are) the fundamentals of their religion; as with the terms “extremist” and “radical” this may play into the hands of those who wish to argue for terrorism and militancy by implying that the most “fundamental” Islam is that which endorses this.

Most Muslims who adhere to the “fundamentals” of Islam see this as including principles like peace, tolerance, and respect. In this latter sense, many of the nicest Muslims I have met are “fundamentalists”.

Consequences of names

“Jihadist” is often used of terrorists/militants engaged in what they want to be seen as global jihad. Jihad is a complicated term in Islam, nevertheless, we may mention a commonly used distinction between the “lesser jihad”, warfare, and the “greater jihad”, spiritual and moral cultivation. The regular use of jihad as warfare/violence therefore misses out on the primary element of it for many Muslims; meanwhile, potentially legitimating terrorists and militants.

Notably, Shariah has historically regulated “just war” practices within combative jihad in principles like not attacking non-combatants (including women, children, priests, and rabbis), and not destroying people’s means of livelihood. The violence of ISIS or Al Qaeda- inspired terrorists/militants is clearly not practised according to Islamic principles, and so for many Muslims they put themselves outside of Islam.

All these terms highlight “Islam” in association with terrorists/militants. Analysis suggests that this results in a popular perception leading to Islamophobia and distrust of Muslims in general. Given the implications, for example that Islam has “fundamentals” that supposedly involve violence, the problem can clearly be seen.

These terms also hide the primarily political motivations around much of the religiously named violence. Moreover, it unifies often very different agendas and motivations. We cannot avoid religion’s power to motivate and legitimate violence (it can also motivate and sustain irenic and pacifist agendas), nor the fact that some involved may well believe they are acting in defence of their religion, or on “pure spiritual” motivations. But the terms currently employed are unhelpful, even counterproductive, for description and analysis.

While not ignoring the religious dimension, we should not use headline names for these militants and terrorists using any claimed religious motivation. While studying religion and ideology plays an important part in the analysis, the currently used terms give pseudo-legitimacy, hide the complexity of factors (land, identity, oppression, etc.) behind events, and help fuel Islamophobia.

* Paul Hedges is Associate Professor in Interreligious Studies for the Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He maintains a blog on Interreligious Studies and related issues at: www.logosdao.wordpress.com.

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By Ajey Lele*

Over the years, Mars has been the centre of attraction for science fiction writers, Hollywood movie makers, astrologers, astronomers and the scientific community. For scientists and technologists, Mars continues to be an enigma. This is essentially because even tough humans have dreamt for long about human colonisation of Mars. Still, in reality humans are nowhere near to realising such a dream.

During the last five decades, more than fifty percent of human efforts to send an unmanned spacecraft to hover in the vicinity of Mars or to land on the Martian surface have failed. Interestingly, during September 2014 a developing state like India succeeded in placing its own satellite in the Martian orbit and that too in its first attempt when no other state was able to achieve such distinction in all these years. India’s success has won significant international acclaim and has significantly raised expectations about its overall space programme. This paper attempts to understand the rationale behind India’s Mars agenda and its implications and discusses its progress towards success.

From the beginning, developments in space science and technology have witnessed the dominance of major powers. Today, when India’s strategic vision for outer space is being appreciated globally, a query is raised on these lines: ‘How a state like India, operating in a complex regional environment and fighting various internal socioeconomic-development- related challenges, was able to afford an unwavering politico-economic commitment towards sustaining its space agenda for more than four decades?’ There is also curiosity to know why India wants to reach Mars. There is also an interest to know about the involvement of foreign powers behind India’s overall success in the space sector. This paper has four major sections. The first section puts in context India’s Mars agenda in the backdrop of its overall investments in the space arena. The second section describes the Mars mission in totality. The third section debates the budgetary aspects, and the last section dwells on the politico- economic advantages of this mission.

A Fragment of India’s Space Agenda

Indian space programme had a very humble beginning during the early 1960s. India launched its first satellite in 1975 with assistance from the erstwhile USSR. India achieved the status of space-faring nation2 by 1980, and by the end of 2014 has launched around 75 satellites. India’s vision for a space programme was articulated by Vikram Sarabhai during late 1960s. He had said that India’s space programme would be a civilian programme with focus on application of space technology as a tool for socioeconomic development of the country.3 The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the agency responsible for evolving and implementing India’s overall space agenda, was established on 15 August 1969. Appreciating the importance of the space domain, it was placed under direct supervision of the prime minister. An exclusive Department of Space (DOS) and the Space Commission were set up in 1972. Satish Dhawan as Chairman of ISRO (1972-1984) during its formative years was instrumental in developing scientific temperament, professionalism and work culture in the organisation.

Indian investments in satellite technologies have mostly been in the field of meteorology, remote sensing and communications. Presently, India’s Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite network with eleven operational satellites is the largest civilian remote sensing satellite constellation in the world. The data inputs from these satellites are used for several applications covering agriculture, drought and flood forecasting, management of water and ocean resources, urban development, mineral prospecting, forestry, and disaster management.4 India is also developing its own navigational network called Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). This seven-satellite system is expected to be fully operational by 2015-16 and would provide a better than 20 m position accuracy.

For many years, the main pivot for Indian space programme has been its most successful satellite launching system called Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) which could launch satellites weighing less than two tonnes in polar orbit, and approximately one-tonne-satellite into the geosynchronous transfer orbit. Till October 2014, there had been 27 successive and successful flights of PSLV; and this system has also been used commercially to launch satellites for the client states. However, the basic limitation of Indian space programme is the lack of ability to put heavier payloads (say four tonnes and more) into the geostationary orbits. Due to this, India has to rely on hiring launching services for heavy satellites, say from agencies like the French company called Arianespace.

For all these years, ISRO has ensured that the lack of heavy-lift launcher would not stall the growth of the space programme; where possible ISRO has devised innovative approaches to overcome the lack of indigenous heavy-lift capabilities. Since 2005, ISRO appears to have started following a two-pronged strategy: concentrating on developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle (GSLV-Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle) and simultaneously addressing new areas in space research. During November 2006, Indian space scientists and technologists held a brainstorming session where ideas like the Moon- and Mars-missions and human space missions were discussed. This session was held on the recommendation of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.5 Subsequently, during October 2008 India launched its first mission to the Moon called Chandrayaan-1 satellite—to revolve around the Moon with 11 scientific instruments on board. This mission marked a major success, with Indian scientists along with their US counterparts discovering the presence of water on the Moon. ISRO realised that the infrastructure created for the Moon mission could also be used/modified for undertaking other similar Deep-space missions.6

After the successful completion of the first mission to the Moon, ISRO’s interest in Mars should be seen as a continuation of its Deep-space agenda. A brief glance at various missions undertaken by ISRO since 2010 indicates that they have many programmes under simultaneous development. Various activities have taken place during the last four to five years in the development and launch of meteorological, remote sensing and communications satellites. Indigenously-developed cryogenic engine was successfully tested during this period. Also, India’s satellite navigational system is in the making. A few commercial missions were undertaken and India’s first military satellite GSAT-7 was developed and launched during the same time. The Mission to Mars is one element of this comprehensive space agenda.

Mars Orbital Mission

India’s Mission to Mars was launched on 5 November 2013. The official announcement in regard to India’s plans to launch this mission was made by Manmohan Singh during his Independence Day speech on 15 August 2012. Officially, the Indian mission, called the Mars Orbital Mission (MOM).7 The spacecraft successfully entered the Martian orbit on 24 September 2014 after 298 days of travel. The correct entry into the Martian orbit has been a challenge for various states that have reached Mars or have attempted to reach Mars.8 Presently, India is the only state that has succeeded in reaching the Martian orbit in the first attempt.

This is India’s first interplanetary mission. It needs to be highlighted that the expanse of this mission is rather limited in comparison with the missions executed by the US or the European Space Agency (ESA). India’s mission is an indigenous effort and has been designed with a limited mandate. The basic limitation for ISRO while designing this mission arose from the non-availability of a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Presently, India’s launching capability is restricted because the GSLV is not yet fully operational. Naturally, to undertake a mission to Mars, India was compelled to design a mission with a very limited payload, because using the PSLV was the only option. The limitation was that the PSLV could place a satellite only in geocentric and low-Earth orbit. It may be noted that during same period, NASA had launched its mission to Mars called MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission) and this satellite had left the Earth’s atmosphere immediately after the launch, so MOM had to wait for its exit for 25 days. ISRO scientists had worked over this limitation of PSLV by an innovative mechanism where seven altitude-raising orbital manoeuvres were designed and executed with precision, and on 30 November 2013, MOM left the Earth’s orbit.9 During the fourth manoeuvre, ISRO faced difficulty and was not able to achieve the required altitude.

However, within 24 hours a ‘correction’ was carried out by undertaking an additional manoeuvre.10 Subsequently, MOM was put in the heliocentric orbit and travelled for nine months to reach Mars. During this period, there was much concern about the danger of solar radiation impacting the satellite. However, the ‘skin’ of MOM was able to withstand such radiation and made perfect progress towards Mars. It was expected that during such a long- duration and lengthy travel, MOM might deviate from the programmed path. To correct any such deviation, a series of trajectory correction manoeuvres was planned. Four such operations were planned. However, only three were carried out because the spacecraft was mostly travelling along the programmed path.

The most crucial aspect of the entire mission was a precise entry into the Martian orbit. There was a major concern about the performance of liquid apogee motor (LAM). This was because the LAM was to remain non-operational during MOM’s travel in the heliocentric orbit and was expected to restart after a gap of almost 300 days. To enter the Martian orbit, the velocity of MOM was required to be reduced significantly. Hence there was a requirement to restart the engine by operating LAM after a gap of almost 300 days. To guard against any failure towards restarting the engine, ISRO had provided a set of parallel circuits for the propellants’ flow-lines and redundancy in the form of a latch-valve. ISRO had a plan “B” in place. In the event LAM failed to fire, ISRO would attempt a Mars orbit insertion using the eight 22N thrusters’.11 The mission progressed as planned. MOM made a perfect entry in the Martian orbit and started taking observations. ISRO has established a telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) for overall monitoring of the mission. For the purposes of the Moon mission, the Indian Deep Space Network was established during 2007/08. It is a key centre for Mars mission too. ISRO also obtained position data from NASA’s Deep Space Network stations located in Canberra, Madrid and Goldstone on the US West Coast.12

Various payloads were designed and developed by ISRO scientists for this mission. However, only five13 payloads could be accommodated on MOM. The weight of these five payloads is around 15kg. As explained by ISRO, the main purpose of the mission is to learn how to reach Mars. However, they do have well-articulated scientific objectives as well. The MOM was designed to last for six months. There is a possibility that this mission could last longer. These sensors are designed basically for two main purposes: one, to find out more about the Martian atmosphere (lack of it), and two, to know about the possibility of detecting the presence of methane on Mars and its origin (is it biological?). Not only India but the entire world is keen to know about the possibility of life on Mars. The methane sensor on board MOM could play a major role towards obtaining this knowledge. Any presence of methane on Mars could provide some clue about the possibility of microbial life out there. The atmospheric sensors are expected to help in the understanding about how the planet lost the bulk of its atmosphere billions of years ago. Also, there is a sensor to identify the nature of minerals available on the Martian surface.

A Budget Mission

Since India announced its Mars mission, there has been much debate both internationally and domestically, primarily on following issues:

• What was need for a developing country like India to ‘waste’ money on such a mission particularly when the state faces various challenges like poverty, shortage of clean drinking water, lack of sanitation facilities etc.?
• How could India manage such a low-cost mission?
• How is it possible to put the mission in place in such a short time?

Normally, it is believed that India began the preparations for the mission from the time it was announced officially (announcement on 15 August 2012 and the mission took off on 5 November 2013). However, it needs to be appreciated that no country would officially announce the mission unless its scientific community gives the political leadership an assurance that it has already done the groundwork for such a mission and is confident of the wherewithal to undertake such a mission. Also, normally, the leadership of any state waits for an opportune moment to make such major proclamations. India’s Prime Minister made the official announcement on the country’s Independence Day. It is important to note that in just over a month’s time, on 21 September 2012, the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), India’s public-sector aerospace organisation, handed over the satellite structure for the Mars Orbiter Mission to ISRO.14 This clearly indicates that work on the mission had begun before the official announcement of the mission.

India’s “Mars strategy” was briefly articulated in 2007 by the-then Chairman of ISRO, G Madhavan Nair. He had announced that ISRO was studying a proposal on a mission to Mars and was confident of undertaking a trip to the Red Planet within five years of the government giving the required permission.15 India was expected to launch its second mission to the Moon in collaboration with the Russians around 2012. However, this mission was significantly delayed and is now likely to happen around 2016/17 as a standalone Indian mission without any help from the Russians. Probably, this delay allowed ISRO to divert some of its resources to study Mars. It was also important to put a mission in place quickly because the launch window was available around end-2013 considering the longer travel time of nine months to Mars. The distance of Mars from the Earth varies significantly owing to the nature of orbits of motions of these planets, and only after every 26 months Mars comes closest to the Earth. Such an opportunity was available around September 2014.16 It is difficult to pinpoint the exact date of start of India’s mission to Mars. However, it could be safely concluded that ISRO would have had a maximum of two-to-two-and-a-half years to plan and execute the mission.

Based on the yearly Budget figure announced by the Government of India, it becomes obvious that the provision of money for this mission began in 2012. There was no expenditure on this mission as of March 2012. At the beginning of the project, the total estimated cost was Rs450 crores (approximately US$75 million; one crore is ten million). The budgeted money for the 2012-2013 cycle was Rs125.00 crores; and for the cycle 2013- 2014, it was Rs167.50 crores.17 For the year 2014-15, Rs.65.93 crores have been allotted. Overall the money demanded and allocated to ISRO so far for this mission is approximately Rs360 crores. This indicates that the entire cost of the mission could be lesser than the projected cost.

There has been much debate about how ISRO has achieved the feat of keeping the cost of this mission so low. To put the issue in perspective, it is important to have some comparison with other global missions. Approximately, ISRO’s total budget is US$1.2 billion per year, while that of NASA is about US$17.5 billion. With regard to the mission to Mars, NASA’s mission called MAVEN, could be broadly considered to be in the same generic category (it is understandable that it is a heavier satellite and has more payloads etc) than MOM,18 However, the cost differential is very high.

MAVEN’s cost is US$671 million against the MOM’s cost of US$75 million. The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter has a price tag of approximately US$386 million. The Team NASA was working on the MAVEN for a minimum of five years while the making of MOM probably took about two years.19 It is obvious that if India was to undertake a mission similar to MAVEN, then it would have definitely cost far less.

ISRO scientists have succeeded in keeping the costs down by using “novel” approaches. Over the years, Indian space programme, as far as possible, has followed the path of indigenisation owing various reasons including necessity. This is essentially due to India’s nuclear policies. India has conducted nuclear tests. For many decades, there was a significant absence of international collaboration owing to India’s nuclear policies and the tests it had undertaken in 1974 and 1998. In response to these tests, the rest of the world had put India under technology sanctions regime, limiting India’s access to sophisticated technology. Naturally, India had no option but to develop technologies on its own. Also, being a developing state, the Indian scientific community had limited budget available to undertake research and development. All these have taught the Indian scientific community to develop technologies in a cost-effective manner and to try to ‘manage’ within the available resources.

The low cost of MOM is a combined result of various factors. Chiefly, ISRO had a number of constraints owing to the lack of availability of a heavy launcher system. Interestingly, the absence of such a launcher has actually helped to cut costs. Fewer scientific sensors were put on board MOM due to weight limitations. MAVEN had a powerful rocket booster which allowed the spacecraft to be placed in a higher orbit while MOM was launched using PSLV at a much lower altitude. Subsequently, MOM went around the Earth, and the spacecraft’s orbit was raised by using a propulsion system. Agencies like NASA or ESA normally make three physical models of the systems which are to be launched. ISRO depended more on ‘virtual’ models, essentially software-developed tools, than making actual working models. Also, there are differences in testing procedures. All these directly or indirectly contributed towards the cost reduction.

The key factor for effective cost-savings on ISRO’s various programmes its policy of continuity with its launch vehicle ISRO attempts to use its proven technology as the base for future development. ISRO has mainly followed a modular approach,20 like developing variants of PSLV depending on the requirement of a specific mission. In fact, ISRO’s next- generation vehicle in the making, the GSLV, is also an expansion of the PSLV, with a cryogenic engine juxtaposed on it. The ground infrastructure for Mars mission is also an expansion of the ground segment that was designed and developed for the 2008 Moon mission.

The work culture in ISRO allows for aggressive scheduling. For the Mars mission, ISRO first made the entire blueprint based on available resources, and no attempts were made on research for new techniques/technologies, particularly like designing and building a completely new rocket specifically for this mission. A small but dedicated team of ISRO scientists worked on this mission (they even work 18 to 20 hours a day depending on requirements while major space agencies normally follow a 35-hour work-week cycle). Also, it is important to note that comparatively low salaries in India do contribute towards the overall cost reduction. India’s rocket-scientists get paid on par with various other government officials. The scientific manpower available in India comes at a much reasonable cost than in other parts of the world. ISRO pays its mid-level scientists around US$ 1,500 to 2,000 per month while the monthly salary of NASA’s scientists is about US$6,000 and its top rocket- scientists get more than US$10,000 per month.21

Essentially, ISRO has practised frugal innovation – approach that consumes minimal resources, yet yielding the desired results. Over the years, ISRO has been designing inexpensive products and manufacturing them with little capital. The cycle from concept-to- proof of an idea is quick22 and MOM is just a continuation of this process.

It is crucial to appreciate that the chief mandate for ISRO since its inception has been indigenous technology development. Hence, Mars mission’s use of indigenously developed technologies. In the beginning, ISRO started the process of indigenisation by developing and establishing an earth station during the 1970s. The biggest challenge for ISRO was to develop the launcher technology. ISRO experienced some failures in this field but finally succeeded in 1980 by injecting Rohini satellite using the SLV-3 rocket. With this, India had joined the select group of five countries in the world to possess its own launch vehicle capability. This helped ISRO to derive major technological benefits in multiple areas, from development of high-energy solid propellants to the development of carbon composites, precision fabrication and thermal protection etc.23 This process of indigenous technology development continues till date, and over the years ISRO has succeeded in developing a range of technologies from remote-sensing satellite systems to cryogenic engines. For Mars mission, the main focus of ISRO has been to use the existing technology base innovatively and carry out improvisation where necessary. Only a few specific technologies were required to be developed for this mission. Particularly, for LAM to restart after a gap of 300 days, new pressure-regulator projection and isolation mechanisms were specifically developed.24 Also, various sensors on board MOM have been specifically designed and developed for this mission.

From the announcement of the Mars mission to its successful completion, there has always been an undercurrent of scepticism, both domestically and globally, about how a state like India, dogged by issues related to poverty, could indulge in ‘unwarranted (?)’ expenses like those on a Mars mission. Probably, this notion emerges from the supposition that space- faring is a game for the rich and powerful states. Historically, it has been observed that since the beginning of the space era (1957, launch of the first satellite Sputnik by the erstwhile USSR) and particularly during the Cold War period, space has been viewed as a medium of competition amongst the superpowers. However, it is important to realise that India joined the space club because of the realisation that space has tremendous utility for the socioeconomic development of a state and even today, India considers space as a medium for social development.

Broadly, Indian investments in the Deep Space arena consumes around 2% to 5% of ISRO’s yearly budget, and the cost of the Mars mission is about 0.01% of the country’s overall annual budget.25 The people opposing India’s Mars programme argue that the same money would be better spent on healthcare, drinking water and better sanitation – without realising that India has the biggest remote-sensing programme in the world which is used for land- water resources planning, and India’s communication satellites assist the medical fraternity to effectively implement the telemedicine programme. The entire cost of India’s mission to Mars is almost the same as buying one medium-size passenger aircraft or figuratively lesser than any Hollywood blockbuster movie. For example, the cost of the movie Gravity was around US$100 million against the MOM cost of US$75 million. Presently, India is the world’s third biggest economy in terms of purchasing power parity.26 Against this backdrop it could be immature to criticise India for investing in science and technology with a long-term vision.

Assessment

India’s space programme has a history of over five decades and its major investments in this sector have been towards the development of telecommunications infrastructure, improvement of environmental monitoring and the use of various satellites to assist agriculture, resources-management, education, medicine and scientific discovery. Appreciating India’s requirements in the 21st century, ISRO is presently undertaking a few additional programmes like the development of regional space navigation system etc. India has already made forays in the commercial satellite launch market, and is also selling satellite-derived data, and proposes to significantly increase space commerce. Deep Space is one area where India is investing more for scientific pursuits, and the mission to Mars should be viewed as one aspect of such a quest,
India’s Mars mission demonstrates that ‘big ideas’ are not the prerogative of the developed states alone. ISRO’s general philosophy of cost-effectiveness, using short development- cycles, using existing resources judiciously, and leveraging on the existing technology-base have helped go as far as Mars. However, this is just a beginning, and India needs to undertake more missions to unfold the mystery of Mars.

India’s investments in programmes like its mission to Mars could be assessed at various levels – from the scientific to commercial to the strategic to geopolitical.

From the scientific point of view, such missions allow long-term building of capacity and capability. MOM is likely to contribute to enhancing the existing knowledge about Mars. This mission has come at a time when two other missions namely NASA’s MAVEN and ESA’s Mars Express are also observing Mars in almost similar fashion. The data generated by these three missions could jointly help validate or test the earlier understanding of Mars. This should be useful for future missions. Also, the success of this mission would have an impact in attracting young talent to study space science in India. For the last few decades, it was observed that the information technology (IT) revolution in India was encouraging the younger generation to study mostly IT-related subjects, because of the job opportunities there. There is a need to attract the younger generation to study space sciences, aeronautics, aerospace engineering etc.

ISRO-industry relationship has a long history. Since the 1970s, the private industry is a key factor in the growth of India’s space programme. Over the years, the Department of Space has nurtured a strong partnership with Indian industries. More than 500 small, medium and large-scale Industries assist ISRO in hardware development and supply, software and other services. Almost 60% of a launch vehicle’s cost flows to Indian Industries. Private players play a major role towards the development of the ground segment too.27 Major industry contributors in the space area are Larsen and Toubro (L & T), Godrej, Tata, Walchandnagar etc. Likewise, public sector organisations like Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), Bharat Electronics etc. are involved in various fabrication-related activities.28 More than 250 industries have contributed towards assisting ISRO in its maiden Mars mission. The success with missions like Mars helps to attract global attention and is expected to bring more business to ISRO. The basic mandate of ISRO is research and development. The increasing expanse of India’s space agenda calls for more private investment. Also, there is a need to transfer the technology developed by ISRO to the private industry. Over the years, ISRO has transferred various technologies to the private industry (250 technologies by the year 200029). Probably many of these technologies were meant for the small and medium sector. In order to bring about a “revolution” in the space industry and to allow ISRO to concentrate on research, it is vital to develop the satellite-manufacture-and-launch sector as a private-sector activity.30

It is important to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in the space sector. Indian government has allowed 49% of FDI in the defence sector. In the near future, it would be of interest to know the level of interest that the foreign investors evince in the aerospace sector which obviously is ‘the’ most important constituent of defence industry. However, there should be greater clarity on foreign investments in India’s space sector which is essentially a ‘civilian’ sector. .

India’s successful Mars mission marks a great leap in science and technology, innovation and project management. At present it is difficult to ascertain whether such Deep Space missions would bring any direct benefit to India’s military. It could be argued that a state learns much with regard to robotics, materials, communication and sensor technologies while undertaking such missions; this knowledge can be utilised for military purposes. However, such inferences are ‘derivative’; the knowledge of technologies like robotics, communications etc. could be garnered by simpler means, and no mission to Mars is required for such purpose! In the absence of military significance, it should be easier to involve the private industry; India should encourage and assist the private sector to play a major role in future missions to Mars.

There may not be any explicit strategic benefit to India from its ‘Martian triumph’. However the subtle strategic impact cannot be belittled. China was ‘silent’ about Mars after its first attempt had failed in 2010. However, now after the successful Indian mission, some indications are emerging from the Chinese media that China would like to have a mission in 2020 which could be ‘better’ than the Indian mission. Has India inadvertently (or otherwise) forced China to start a ‘race’? It could be premature to talk of a ‘race’ at this juncture.  However, it is important to note that this success had helped India to change the global perceptions about it from being a state of snake charmers to a technological power for tomorrow. In the coming years, India could do ‘business’ with the rest of the world not as ‘some third world country’ but as a state with proven technological credentials.

India is a pragmatic power and does not view space technologies as a tool to undertake symbolic activities and raise the sense of nationalism amongst the population. Indian investments in the Mars mission have a sound technological and scientific logic. The success of this mission – being the first state in the world to enter the Martian orbit with precision in the first attempt, and so far the only Asian state to succeed in this fashion – has definitely raised India’s stature globally. These benefits are incidental but important. The benefits from this Mars mission to ISRO and to India should be viewed under ‘different prisms’. For the Indian scientific community, this success is more about evaluating indigenous capabilities and about planning accordingly for future missions. On the other hand, India can present itself as a technology-power and as a ‘competitor’ in the realm of space commerce. It enhances India’s prestige and discredits the ‘tag’ associated with India for a long time: that of a ‘developing state’. Overall, MOM shows India’s potential to emerge as a ‘great power’ in the 21st century.

About the author:
* Dr Ajey Lele is Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi (India). He can be contacted at ajey.lele@gmail.com. Opinions expressed in this paper, based on research by the author, do not necessarily reflect the views of ISAS. The author thanks Dr K Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation until recently, and other scientists associated with India’s Mars Mission for useful discussions.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Working Paper No. 200 – 15 January 2015 (PDF).

Notes:
2. A nation with an indigenous capability to design, develop and launch artificial satellites as well capabilities to monitor and control their activities with appropriate ground infrastructure.
3. Sankar U, The Economics of India’s Space Programme, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp.1-2.
4. www.isro.org/satellites/earthobservationsatellites.aspx.
5. K. S. Jayaraman, “India’s Space Agency Proposes Manned Spaceflight Program”, Nov 10, 2006, www.space.com/3098-indias-space-agency-proposes-manned-spaceflight-program.html, accessed on 28 October 2014.
6. There is no structured definition of deep space. However it, at times, gets discussed as a region outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Also, some view this as a region covering the distance of one million-two million km from the Earth’s surface.
7. It may be noted that informally this mission is popularly mentioned by the name Mangalyaan which in ancient Indian language called Sanskrit means a craft to Mars. Probably, since India’s Moon mission was officially called Chandrayaan (craft to the Moon) the mission to Mars has been called Mangalyaan.
8. Before MOM and MAVEN, of the 22 Mars orbital missions attempted by different countries, only nine were successful.
9. The altitude was raised from an initial apogee of 23,500 km on 5 November 2013, in several phases, to 1,92,874 km on 15 November, and subsequently heliocentric insertion was carried out on 30 November 2013.
10. The fourth manoeuvre on 10 November 2013 was expected to raise the apogee to more than 1,00,000 km. However, an additional manoeuvre was required on 11 November to raise the apogee to 118,642 km as planned.
11. http://isp.justthe80.com/planetary-exploration/mars-obiter#TOC-Mid-Course-Trajectory-Corrections- accessed on 2 November 2014.
12. “India to enter Mars orbit on September 24”, The Hindu, 22 September 2014.
13. The payloads on board MOM are Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Thermal Infrared spectrometer, Lyman-alpha photometer, Methane Sensor and Colour Camera.
14. The satellite structure is an assembly of composite and metallic honeycomb sandwich panels with a central composite cylinder. Also, as per HAL they had also delivered seven types of riveted structural assemblies and four types of welded propellant tankages for the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25). “HAL’s ‘hand’ in Mars mission”, The Hindu, November 6, 2013.
15. ‘ISRO studying proposal on mission to Mars’, Times of India, April 11, 2007, available on http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ISRO-studying-proposal-on-mission-to- Mars/articleshow/1894649.cms, accessed on 30 October 30, 2014.
16. The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 56 million km and the farthest distance could be about 400 million km. In 2014, Mars came as close as around 92 million km to Earth. In 2016, it is likely to come as close as about 75 million km and in 2018 it would be around 58 million km.
17. www.isro.org/pdf/Outcome%20budget2013-14.pdf, accessed on 23 August 2014.
18. MAVEN is on a one-year mission while MOM has mission span of six months. MAVEN is observing Mars from a much nearer distance than MOM and has more payloads. MAVEN has a wet mass of 2,550 kg and a dry mass of 717kg while MOM has a wet mass of 1,350 kg and a dry mass of 500 kg.
19. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/science-technology/why-isros-mars-mission-is-the-cheapest/isros-mars-mission-the-cheapest/slideshow/24982329.cms, accessed on 14 October 2014.
20. Saritha Rai “How India Launched Its Mars Mission At Cut-Rate Costs”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2014/10/19/fifty-years-after-the-bullet-train-japan-approves-plan-to- build-super-speed-maglev-train-line/, November 05, 2013, accessed on 20 December 2013.
21. http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/default.htm, accessed on 2 November 2014, and Scott Neuman, “Why India’s Mars Mission Is So Much Cheaper Than NASA’s”, November 5, 2013, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/11/04/243082266/why-indias-mars-mission-is-so-much-cheaper-than-nasas, accessed on 22 February 2014.
22. Arun Sahay, “India’s Mars Orbiter Mission: The frugal innovation”, October24, 2014, The Financial Express.
23. U R Rao, India’s Rise as a Space Power, Foundation: Delhi, 2014, pp. 12-13, 76-78, 130.
24. Ajey Lele, Mission Mars: India’s Quest for the Red Planet, Springer: New Delhi, 2014, p.117-118
25. Laxman S, Mars beckons India, New Delhi: Vigyan Prasar, 2013, p.5.
26. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD/countries/order%3Dwbapi_data_value_2013%20
wbapi_data_value%20wbapi_data_value- last?order=wbapi_data_value_2012%20wbapi_data_value%20wbapi_data_value- last&sort=desc&display=default, accessed on 6 November 2014.
27. www.isro.org/pdf/Outcome%20budget2013-14.pdf, accessed on 23 August 2014.
28 .U R Rao, India’s Rise as a Space Power, Foundation: Delhi, 2014, pp. 187-188.
29. U R Rao, India’s Rise as a Space Power, Foundation: Delhi, 2014, p. 187.
30. There is already a proposal to this effect, and ISRO is planning to transfer the PSLV technology to industry and allow the development of satellite-launching facilities in the private sector. This information is based on the informal conversation by the author with a few scientists.

The post India’s Mars Mission: Multidimensional View – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Back in 2011, South Sudan broke away from Sudan and declared itself as an independent state. Western media verticals, as well as many pro-secession pundits claimed that statehood will usher in a new era of prosperity and growth for South Sudan, and eventually, even Sudan will have to acknowledge the superiority of the South Sudanese state.

Apparently, those dreams are yet to come true, and with things going the way they currently are, prospects do not seem promising for South Sudan.

In fact, I have written about South Sudan multiple times: back in 2013 itself, I termed South Sudan to be a failed state — I am yet to be proven wrong. In 2014, troubled by the loss of life and property in South Sudan, I questioned the logic of secession, and even thought of ways to fix the blunder named South Sudan.

However, all said and done, South Sudan continues to justify itself as a failed state.

Never-Ending Violence

The South Sudanese government and the rebels continue to blame each other for the ongoing destruction. Thousands of people have so far been massacred, and infrastructure is in ruins. Hospitals, churches, and especially masjids — everything is falling prey to the civil war in South Sudan.

According to United Nations, over 50,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict. Furthermore, over 1.9 million people have been displaced (since December 2013), and nearly 103,000 civilians have sought refuge in UN bases all around the country.

Sure, peace talks are also on the way. Yet, with each failed agreement, the condition worsens and both the parties, be it the government or the rebels, indulge in a new bout of fighting. Humanitarian issues seem to be of secondary importance in South Sudan.

International Response

United Nations peacekeepers are already active in the country, whereas the African Union too has launched a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the atrocities committed against civilians in South Sudan.

International aid did manage to combat the imminent famine in 2014, but due to continued fighting, displaced populace and a possibly dry season, food security still remains a challenge in South Sudan.

As such, diplomatic meetings, negotiations and arms embargo — everything is being used, but the crisis in South Sudan keeps getting from bad to worse.

The Final Comment

Amidst such hostilities, humanitarian crisis and never-ending warfare, it has become obvious that South Sudan is, by all means, a country that should not exist in the first place.

When South Sudan seceded from Sudan, most of its supporters claimed that Sudan will prove to be the weaker one, and South Sudan, riding on the shoulders of Western imperialism, will develop at an impressive rate. However, none of these claims have materialized.

Today, Sudan, in spite of having issues of its own, is managing to run a tight ship. Agreed, there are many things that Sudan needs to improve, but it is still somehow holding on, and despite poverty, the Sudanese civilians are not regularly consuming bullets and bombs for dinner.

South Sudan, on the other hand, can at best be called a mistake. It is one country that should never have been created — the southern part of Sudan was just incapable of governing itself back in 2011, and even today, the condition has not changed at all.

Foreign intervention, fake propaganda, and militant secessionism of a handful of South Sudanese rebels together led to the balkanization of Africa’s largest country. But the new state of South Sudan has repeatedly failed to get its act together, and having emerged as one of the biggest errors in the history of nation-building, there is nowhere left for South Sudan to go. The only viable and sane option will be to acknowledge the fallacy of secession and re-join Sudan — but neither the international community nor the South Sudanese leaders or rebels are strong-willed enough to swallow that.

As a result, the devastation in South Sudan continues at a rapid pace, with the average civilians paying the ultimate price, simply because they are residing in a country that does not deserve to be called a country.

The post South Sudan: From Bad To Worse – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The biggest threat to the stability of the world in the next 10 years comes from the risk of international conflict, according to the 10th edition of the Global Risks report, which was published Thursday.

The report, published by the World Economic Forum, which every year features an assessment by experts on the top global risks in terms of likelihood and potential impact over the coming 10 years, finds interstate conflict with regional consequences as the number one global risk in terms of likelihood, and the fourth most serious risk in terms of impact. In terms of likelihood, as a risk it exceeds extreme weather events (2), failure of national governance systems (3), state collapse or crisis (4) and high structural unemployment or underemployment (5).

In looking at global risks in terms of their potential impact, the nearly 900 experts that took part in the Global Risk Perception Survey rated water crises as the greatest risk facing the world. Other top risks alongside that and interstate conflict in terms of impact are: rapid and massive spread of infectious diseases (2), weapons of mass destruction (3) and failure of climate change adaptation (5).

With the 28 global risks that were assessed in 2015 grouped into five categories – economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological – 2015 stands out as a year when geopolitical risks, having been largely absent from the landscape of leading risks for the past half-decade, returns to the fore. With geopolitics increasingly influencing the global economy, these risks account for three of the five most likely, and two of the most potentially impactful, risks in 2015. Also in this category, three risks stand out as having intensified the most since 2014 in terms of likelihood and impact. These are interstate conflict with regional consequences, weapons of mass destruction and terrorist attacks.

The risk landscape in 2015 also shows that there remains concern over the world’s ability to solve its most pressing societal issues, as societies are under threat from economic, environmental and geopolitical risks. Indeed, the societal risk accounts for the top two potentially impactful risks.

Also noteworthy is the presence of more environmental risks among the top risks than economic ones. This comes as a result of a marked increase in experts’ negative assessment of existing preparations to cope with challenges such as extreme weather and climate change, rather than owing to a diminution of fears over chronic economic risks such as unemployment and underemployment or fiscal crises, which have remained relatively stable from 2014.

“Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world again faces the risk of major conflict between states,” said Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, Lead Economist, World Economic Forum. “However, today the means to wage such conflict, whether through cyberattack, competition for resources or sanctions and other economic tools, is broader than ever. Addressing all these possible triggers and seeking to return the world to a path of partnership, rather than competition, should be a priority for leaders as we enter 2015.”

In addition to assessing the likelihood and potential impact of these 28 global risks, Global Risks 2015 examines the interconnections between risks, as well as how they interplay with trends shaping the short- to medium-term risk landscape. It also offers analysis of three specific cases which emerge from the interconnections maps: the interplay between geopolitics and economics, the risks related to rapid and unplanned urbanization in developing countries and one on emerging technologies.

On urbanization, the report considers how best to build sufficient resilience to mitigate the challenges associated with managing the world’s rapid and historical transition from predominantly rural to urban living.

“Without doubt, urbanization has increased social well-being. But when cities develop too rapidly, their vulnerability increases: pandemics; breakdowns of or attacks on power, water or transport systems; and the effects of climate change are all major threats,” said Axel P. Lehmann, Chief Risk Officer at Zurich Insurance Group.

The rapid pace of innovation in emerging technologies, from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence, also has far-reaching societal, economic and ethical implications. Developing regulatory environments that are adaptive enough to safeguard their rapid development and allow their benefits to be reaped, while preventing their misuse and any unforeseen negative consequences is a critical challenge for leaders.

John Drzik, President of Global Risk and Specialties at Marsh, said: “Innovation is critical to global prosperity, but also creates new risks. We must anticipate the issues that will arise from emerging technologies, and develop the safeguards and governance to prevent avoidable disasters.”

The post International Conflict Tops List Of Global Risks In 2015 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

As the US Secretary of State meets his Iranian counterpart in a bid to revive stalled talks over Iran’s nuclear programme, human rights experts are keen that issues of freedom of religion are not overlooked.

This week, the UK Foreign Office has said that it’s raised its concern with the Iranian government over the arrest and detention – in Iran’s notorious Evin prison – of the former leader of the Assyrian Pentecostal Church in Tehran, as well as two others, whose whereabouts remains unknown.

The 60-year-old pastor Victor Beth Tarmez and the two Christian converts who were his guests were arrested when Iranian state security agents raided Tarmez’s home during a Christmas celebration he was hosting on the evening of December 26; the gathering was considered to be “unauthorized and illegal.”

Mansour Borji, from the Article18 committee of the Hamgaam (‘taking steps together’ in Dari) Council of Iranian churches told World Watch Monitor that Tarmez’ family is concerned for his health as he’s a diabetic. Borji also said details of the actual charge on which Tarmez is detained are still unclear.

Borji told WWM that Tarmez was forced to speak Farsi with his family on a very brief phone call from prison, instead of using their shared native language Assyrian, so that guards could monitor what was said.

The British Foreign Office has written: “The UK government is deeply　concerned　by the Iranian regime’s ongoing persecution of religious minorities – including Christians. … The UK and the international community expect Iran to live up to the right to freedom of religion and belief as set out in the Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

During the raid

According to Mohabat News, an Iranian Christian news site, the agents temporarily arrested all 14 in the house at the time. Then they filmed all the detainees, forcing them to “introduce themselves to the camera and say why they were there and why they thought they were being arrested” and then asked them to “fill out an eight-page form printed on papers with the logo of the Ministry of Intelligence”. Among those arrested were Christian converts with a Zoroastrian [ancient Iranian religion] background, who refused to fill out the forms arguing that this was a written interrogation and could result in a criminal record for them. They said they had not broken any law and should not be subject to interrogation.”

The agents also confiscated the pastor’s belongings including his computer and Bibles. They also searched the guests, seizing their identification cards and mobile phones.

Pastor Tarmez repeatedly intimidated since 2009

Tamarz is an Assyrian pastor officially recognized by the Iranian government; until 2009, he also worked as General Superintendent in Shahr-Ara Assyrian Pentecostal Church.

He had been holding Farsi-speaking services for years at Shahr-Ara. Then, as reported on this website, in March 2009, the Assyrian Member of the Iranian Parliament Yonathan Betkolia announced that, by order of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, the church would be closed because it offered a Farsi-language service attended by converts from Islam.
While the church was temporarily closed after Tarmez refused to stop Farsi-language services, it was later re-opened (after he had been demoted from leadership) with a new church leader, and services continued in Assyrian only.

The number of Assyrian Christians in the country is estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000.

Since 2009 Tarmez has continued his religious activities.

Borji told WWM that 2009 was the start of government pressure against churches which hold Farsi-language services. (Most recently, we reported on the closure in May 2013 of the Assemblies of God church in Tehran).

Borji explained to WWM: “Over the past five years, we have witnessed arrests of several Christians and Christian converts during Christmas holidays: the government is very sensitive about these days… Also in the last 5 years, seven churches that offered worship services in Farsi language were closed down or forced to cease their Farsi services.

More Christmas arrests of Iranian Christians

Borji also confirmed to WWM that eight other Christians were arrested on Christmas Day at a house church in Tehran province and have since been transferred to an unknown location.

They are Mehdi Kian, Ali Sadraddin, Mohammad Kazemi, Azin Faroudi, Mohammad Hossein Moridian, Maryam Narimani, Alireza Nasiri and Brother Matin.

Another organisation, Middle East Concern, reported that over the Christmas period a total of 24 arrests of Christians were recorded, although it added that, separately, five other Christians have recently been released from prison, some on bail and with conditions. One, Amin Khaki, had been held since March 2014.

Iran No. 7 on World Watch List

Iran ranks No. 7 on the 2015 World Watch List, two positions higher than the previous year.

The list ranks the 50 countries where living as a Christian is most difficult, and is created annually by Open Doors International, a worldwide ministry to Christians who live under pressure because of their faith

Open Doors said the ranking changed because of an increased deteriorating situation for Christians in Iran. It says “According to the Iranian state, only Armenians and Assyrians can be Christian. Ethnic Persians are by definition Muslim, and, therefore, ethnic Persian Christians are considered apostates. This makes almost all Christian activity illegal, especially when it occurs in Persian (Farsi) languages – from evangelism to Bible training, to publishing Scripture and Christian books, or preaching in Farsi”.

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Al Qaeda has announced the formation of a new branch in the Indian Subcontinent, a part of the world where it already has well-established operations. Sunil Dasgupta worries that the move may be part of a new strategy to enlist India’s large and disaffected Muslim underclass in the service of global jihad.

By Sunil Dasgupta*

In September 2014, al-Qaeda announced that it was launching a branch in the Indian subcontinent. The move was widely seen as an effort by al-Qaeda as an organization to remain relevant in a world where the Islamic State (IS) was taking over the mantle it had held for more than a decade. CNN’s terrorism expert, Peter Bergen, described the issue this way, “It’s al-Zawahiri’s obvious way of getting some of the limelight back.”

Despite the nonchalance and occasional derision that greeted Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘boring’ 55-minute video announcing the formation of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (or AQIS, as it has become known in the terrorism literature), this is more than simply inside-the-jihad competition. Why should a terrorist group, which has long maintained a substantial presence in the region, feel the need to announce a formal structure dedicated to its activities there? The answer may be an alarming one. The move may be part of a broader strategy to enlist elements of India’s disenchanted Muslim underclass in the service of the group’s global agenda.

Pakistan: From home-grown to global terrorism

Pakistan has been described as part of the epicenter of terrorism in the world. It is where U.S. Navy Seals found and killed Osama bin Laden, and it is where al-Zawahiri is believed to be hiding. In recent years, the country has seen a significant increase in religious extremist violence from a mélange of terrorist groups. The Taliban movement it had supported in Afghanistan in the 1990s has now come home in the form of the Pakistani Taliban that is ravaging parts of the country.

What makes the emergence of AQIS significant, however, is that it is the first time a global jihadi organization has explicitly targeted the governments and the people in the region. The entire Indian subcontinent has seen an extraordinary amount of terrorism in the last 35 years, but most of it was home-grown.

Pakistan, for example, has had a history of hosting foreign fighters, but globally focused terrorist groups have not acted directly against the Pakistani state even after al-Qaeda and others condemned it for joining the American coalition in 2001. Pakistani militants and Pakistani groups have led and conducted the insurgency against Islamabad. The Pakistani government has itself distinguished between terrorist groups focused outward, such as the Haqqani Network fighting U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, and the groups fighting the Pakistani state such as the Pakistani Taliban. Now, as the line between the two evaporates, the willingness and ability of the Pakistani state itself to abandon this distinction, which has been the source of much acrimony with Washington and New Delhi, may determine the future of the country.

India: From a cross-border to a domestic threat

The rise of AQIS takes on still greater significance in India, which has also suffered a great deal of terrorism in the last three decades. In India, Islamist violence has been mostly Pakistani in origin and generally focused on India itself rather than the world order. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, which conducted the Mumbai attack in 2008, emerged as an anti-India movement, and Pakistan has long supported an insurgency in Indian Kashmir. AQIS, however, represents an alliance between local and global terrorism. Wherever it has occurred, this combination has proven to be deadly: locally disaffected young men working together with global terrorist networks have carried out most of the terrorist attacks in Western nations since the September 11 attacks.

For India, this is a potent and perhaps its preeminent security threat. India has over 170 million Muslims and while Indian democracy brings many Muslim leaders, interests, and groups into the fold, a large number of Muslims continue to live as a veritable underclass—inside ghettos, without modern education, and unable to access the emerging ‘Indian Dream’. Worse, those Muslims who are able to overcome these circumstances are often faced with discrimination and experience feelings of guilt and helplessness. Now armed with modern technologies, they could become ripe for global jihad. This is why it is not surprising that one of the most popular pro-ISIS Twitter handles belonged to a young Muslim engineer, Mehdi Masroor Biswas, in the Indian city of Bengaluru, formerly Bangalore.

Indian security officials are wary of the terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, perhaps too much so. After the Mumbai attacks in 2008, when the terrorists came into the city by sea, the Indian government redoubled and reorganized its intelligence apparatus, which has made the Indian security agencies more confident of anticipating threats coming from outside the country, especially if they are large enough to involve satellite or cellular communications. In the last few months, India has responded with significant force to any signs from Pakistan that it considers provocative.

This has resulted in increased shelling on the India-Pakistan border by the armed forces of both countries. On the last day of 2014, the explosion of a Pakistani fishing vessel in the Arabian Sea, off the Indian coast, was a further demonstration of India’s new resolve. Newspaper reports indicate that India’s National Technical Research Organization picked up satellite telephone communication between the 25-foot fishing boat and handlers in Karachi, leading the Indian Coast Guard to conduct aerial surveillance that resulted in a coast guard ship trying to intercept and board the vessel. According to the Indian version, the four-member crew perished after setting the boat on fire rather than allowing it to be boarded. Pakistani officials have said that the boat may have been involved in drug smuggling but reject any connection to terrorism.

However, the possibility of domestic terrorism has been growing in India at the same time that the Indian government seems to be hardening its resolve to deal forcefully with external threats. The roots of the domestic threat are deeply social, economic, and psychological. They are embedded in a Muslim underclass that presents complex problems for unity and progress in the country. But the driver of the growing domestic threat has been political. The rise of Narendra Modi, a Hindu chauvinist politician, to the office of Prime Minister in a landslide election victory has aggrieved and unsettled many Muslims. Despite acquittal by the courts and official investigators, many Indians still believe that Modi had a hand in the Gujarat riots that killed over 700 Muslims in 2002 when he was Chief Minister of the state. Meanwhile, Modi’s rise has been accompanied by a degree of Hindu triumphalism and a push toward majoritarian nationalism.

AQIS: Aligning domestic grievances with global aims?

In these conditions, AQIS offers a link between local disaffection and global terrorism that seeks to remake the world order itself. It gives educated young Muslims like Biswas a way to connect to a broader and a global community. In police interviews after his arrest, he called Indian Muslims “sarkari”—a term close to “Uncle Tom” for blacks in the United States—and incapable of fighting against the government. It also gives young uneducated Muslim men, who might otherwise have joined a criminal gang, a religious-political platform.

Since the release of al-Zawahiri’s video in September, AQIS has claimed responsibility for two major terrorist attacks, both of them inside Pakistan. The first incident was the assassination of a Pakistani army brigadier and the second was an attack on a Pakistani navy frigate docked in the Port of Karachi. AQIS has not yet claimed credit for an attack on India, but the political and social conditions are in place. The formation of AQIS may very well be intramural competition with IS, but it also seeks to gather local Muslim disaffection, especially in India, toward its larger project of changing the world order.

* Sunil Dasgupta is the director of University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Political Science Program at the Universities at Shady Grove. His research and teaching focuses on security and foreign policy. He is currently working on research examining changing military organization and Indian and Chinese pursuit of great power status.”

The post Al Qaeda In India: Why We Should Pay Attention – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A cease-fire entered in force Thursday in Homs, third city of Syria torn for two years by fighting between rebels and government forces, reports MISNA

The truce regards mainly the area of Al Waer, the only under government control. According to Al Jazeera, the accord foresees a ten day cease-fire starting today.

The Pan-Arab news agency was also the first to report the release in Syria of the two Italian aid workers Vanessa Marzullo and Greta Ramelli, confirmed this evening by Italy’s government. The two women were abducted by a group linked to the al Nusra Islamists and held for five months.

The post Syria: Truce In Homs As Italian Aid Workers Freed appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jemal Oumar

Just one week after the terrorist attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo, the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility.

“We, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the messenger of Allah,” Nasser al-Ansi, one of AQAP’s chiefs, said in a video posted online Wednesday (January 14th).

AQAP used two brothers of Maghreb origin, Said and Chérif Kouachi, who co-operated with accomplices Hayat Boumeddiene of Algeria and Amedy Coulibaly of Senegal to carry out the attacks, which were condemned worldwide.

“The leadership [of al-Qaeda] was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan… It was following orders by our general chief Ayman al-Zawahiri,” al-Ansi said.

Various media outlets reported this week that one of the Kouachi brothers visited Yemen in 2011 to receive military training at the hands of jihadi groups.

But Coulibaly claimed the attacks were carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS).

In his own online video, the jihadist who attacked a Paris supermarket said he co-ordinated his assault with the Kouachi brothers.

He also pledged his allegiance to self-declared Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Observers say that global jihadi organisations’ exploitation of Maghreb youths to hit targets far beyond their areas of operations is a new turning point in the activities of the parent al-Qaeda, which now feels a strong rivalry from ISIS.

“Al-Qaeda in Yemen is the most active among al-Qaeda’s branches all over the world,” Mauritanian analyst Mohamed Yanjah said. “The fact that it managed to recruit Maghreb youths to carry out terrorist operations in France is a proof of its desire to demonstrate its ability to go beyond its geographical sphere.”

He added: “The group also wants to confirm its global nature, and to show that it no longer depends on what its branches, like al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), do. That was why it used Maghreb and African young people.”

In his turn, researcher Cheikh Ould Vall said there was another important aspect to this operation, namely the current rivalry between al-Qaeda and ISIS.

“This operation has saved the face of al-Qaeda supporters around the world vis-à-vis ISIS, especially al-Qaeda members in the Maghreb,” he said. “Al-Qaeda’s Maghreb branch has been losing its elements for the growing influence of ISIS in southern and south-eastern Libya, and even in Algeria itself.”

Analyst Zain Al-Abidin Ould Mohamed said that al-Qaeda in Yemen was one of the strongest al-Qaeda branches in the world, and therefore it wasn’t strange for the group to plan and co-ordinate the operation.

“Secondly, the Maghreb branch of al-Qaeda can no longer plan big operations because of its weakness due to the successive blows that have been dealt to it and the tight monitoring of its activities by local and western security agencies. As to Yemen, the area where al-Qaeda is operating is almost open due to the weakness of state and its social unrest,” he added.

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2015 is the marker year for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) to be realised. Whilst the focus will invariably be on the AEC, the formulation of a post-2015 ASEAN vision requires equal care and attention. It should be more inclusive and grass-roots driven.

By Dylan Loh Ming Hui and Don Rodney Ong Junio*

One of the cornerstones of the ASEAN Community building project is its “people-centred” approach to regional integration as opposed to the elite-driven and state-centric approach that ASEAN has been generally associated with.

As ASEAN enters 2015 – a watershed year with the realisation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) – it is timely to examine how successful has ASEAN become in ensuring that voices from below are included in its various efforts to institutionalise a sense of regional community in Southeast Asia, especially in the context of formulating a post-2015 ASEAN vision.

The ASEAN Way as the Elite Way?

Well-established norms such as the ASEAN Way have limited the space for non-state actors to engage ASEAN. This is true for regional cross-cutting issues such as migration, human rights, and environmental protection that are being championed by civil society groups. However, this does not mean that there are no direct channels of engagement between civil society and ASEAN.

For example, one of the well-established regional fora held in parallel with the ASEAN Summit is the ASEAN Civil Society Conference / ASEAN Peoples’ Forum which was initiated in 2005 and has been held every year since then except in 2008. The forum brings together Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) across the region to discuss various issues affecting Southeast Asia.

The outcome of the forum is an official statement that is presented to an “interface meeting” where government representatives from ASEAN member-countries are present. Whether recommendations submitted by civil society groups are taken up by ASEAN is a different issue. There are also various issues associated with the ASEAN Civil Society Conference such as alleged intimidation and restrictions imposed by host governments during these meetings.

This brings into question the commitment of ASEAN in engaging civil society groups and its willingness to accept views coming from other stakeholders. Nonetheless, for some civil society groups, having this direct channel of engagement to ASEAN government officials, albeit weak, is counted as a small victory.

Even in the lead up to the AEC 2015, there were mutters of confusion from businesses, both small and large, on the impact and benefits that the AEC would bring. While governments in ASEAN are certain of the economic benefits arising from the AEC, the ‘lay stakeholders’ – general ASEAN citizens and businesses – are left to wonder what the fuss is all about.

ASEAN is 48 years old this year. However, the general awareness of ASEAN amongst the populace is worryingly low. In a 2007 survey conducted by the ASEAN Foundation, 60% of ASEAN respondents agreed (and strongly agreed) that if ASEAN were to disappear, it would make no difference to their lives.

An inclusive and grassroots-driven process

Moving forward, ASEAN should recognise that it does not have the monopoly of promoting the interest of ASEAN and its peoples. A people-centred approach to regional community building embraces and accepts the diversity of views from within ASEAN. To that end, ASEAN in constructing its post-2015 vision should embrace an inclusive and grassroots-driven modality in its community building efforts.

Firstly, more spaces should be opened for collaboration between ASEAN together with its instrumentalities and civil society groups. In this regard, increased interface between civil society and ASEAN and the institutionalisation of such interface are crucial steps in the right direction. However, this is not enough to shed ASEAN’s perceived elite-driven approach to regional integration.

The growing number of attendance in the ASEAN Civil Society Conference over the years indicates the willingness of civil society members to take ownership of the ASEAN project and help shape the future of the region. ASEAN should capitalise on these knowledge and sentiments developed from the ground. Doing so can help ASEAN enhance its input legitimacy and help establish ASEAN as a truly people-centred community.

Secondly, ASEAN’s profile and awareness should be raised among ASEAN citizens. It is not that nothing has been done in that regard, it is just that it has not been given strong weight in the lists of priorities currently undertaken by ASEAN. Both the style and substance of how ASEAN is promulgated should change.

For instance, most people discover about ASEAN through official government and news outlets. But such dissemination of information about ASEAN – mostly through official accounts – only serve to re-inforce the motif that ASEAN is an abstract entity reserved only for governments and political leaders and not for ‘people like us’ to understand.

Governments could initiate an ASEAN-wide team of volunteers or activists to solicit views on what the ASEAN peoples would like to see in a post-2015 vision. Through this process of solicitation, people can come to better understand what ASEAN is about and raise issues that an elite-driven process might not see.

Not just for eminent people, experts and leaders

Thirdly, it is critical to engage the views of youths in ASEAN because it is the youths that will be affected most from the post-2015 ASEAN initiatives. A ‘whole-of-ASEAN’ approach to educate and communicate ‘ASEAN’ to the young people of ASEAN is needed. It is a tall order, no doubt, but not an impossible feat.

One way to start this is through ASEAN classrooms. Instead of studying the glorious Chinese and Indian empires, why not calibrate and explain the history of ASEAN and its importance in the region?

There are signs that key stakeholders recognise that need for greater inclusion in ASEAN activities. Malaysia, as the ASEAN Chair in 2015, has indicated that one of its main priorities would be to engage ASEAN citizens and to promote greater understanding of ASEAN initiatives and projects. Indeed, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak noted that: “We also hope to steer ASEAN closer to the people of Southeast Asia: to make this institution part of people’s daily lives, by creating a truly people-centred ASEAN”.

If ASEAN is to genuinely aspire to be a ‘people-centred’ community, it would be prudent to ensure that the construction of a post-2015 ASEAN vision is an inclusive, open process that engages ASEAN citizens – not a closed process solely in the domain of eminent people, experts and political leaders.

* Dylan Loh Ming Hui is a Research Analyst and Don Rodney Ong Junio is Associate Research Fellow of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

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There could be at least two unknown planets hidden well beyond Pluto, whose gravitational influence determines the orbits and strange distribution of objects observed beyond Neptune. This has been revealed by numerical calculations made by researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge. If confirmed, this hypothesis would revolutionise solar system models.

Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the solar system. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).

The most accepted theory establishes that the orbits of these objects, which travel beyond Neptune, should be distributed randomly, and by an observational bias, their paths must fulfil a series of characteristics: have a semi-major axis with a value close to 150 AU (astronomical units or times the distance between the Earth and the Sun), an inclination of almost 0° and an argument or angle of perihelion (closest point of the orbit to our Sun) also close to 0° or 180°.

Yet what is observed in a dozen of these bodies is quite different: the values of the semi-major axis are very disperse (between 150 AU and 525 AU), the average inclination of their orbit is around 20° and argument of Perihelion -31°, without appearing in any case close to 180°.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” explains Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, scientist at the UCM and co-author of the study.

“The exact number is uncertain, given that the data that we have is limited, but our calculations suggest that there are at least two planets, and probably more, within the confines of our solar system,” adds the astrophysicist.

To carry out the study, which is published as two articles in the journal ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters’, the researchers have analysed the effects of the so-called ‘Kozai mechanism’, related to the gravitational perturbation that a large body exerts on the orbit of another much smaller and further away object. As a reference they have considered how this mechanism works in the case of comet 96P/Machholz1 under the influence of Jupiter.

Two problems to solve

Despite their surprising results, the authors recognise that their data comes up against two problems. On the one hand, their proposal goes against the predictions of current models on the formation of the solar system, which state that there are no other planets moving in circular orbits beyond Neptune.

However, the recent discovery by the ALMA radio telescope of a planet-forming disk more than 100 astronomical units from the star HL Tauri, which is younger than the Sun and more massive, suggests that planets can form several hundred astronomical units away from the centre of the system.

On the other hand, the team recognises that the analysis is based on a sample with few objects (specifically 13), but they point out that in the coming months more results are going to be published, making the sample larger. “If it is confirmed, our results may be truly revolutionary for astronomy,” says de la Fuente Marcos.

Last year two researchers from the United States discovered a dwarf planet called 2012 VP113 in the Oort cloud, just beyond our solar system. The discoverers consider that its orbit is influenced by the possible presence of a dark and icy super-Earth, up to ten times larger than our planet.

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Climate change, the loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, and altered biogeochemical cycles like phosphorus and nitrogen runoff have all passed beyond levels that put humanity in a “safe operating space,” according to an international team of researchers.

Civilization has crossed four of nine so-called planetary boundaries as the result of human activity, according to a report published today in Science by the 18-member research team. Among them is Steve Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology and the only U.S.-based researcher on the study.

The report, an update to previous studies, is titled “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet,” and will be discussed next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It should be a wake-up call to policymakers that “we’re running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist,” said Carpenter.

For the last 11,700 years until roughly 100 years ago, Earth had been in a “remarkably stable state,” said Carpenter. During this time, known as the Holocene epoch, “everything important to civilization” has occurred. From the development of agriculture, to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, to the Industrial Revolution, the Holocene has been a good time for human endeavors.

But over the last century, some of the parameters that made the Holocene so hospitable have changed.

While the study focuses on several of these, including climate change and a troubling loss of biodiversity, Carpenter led the examination of biogeochemical cycle changes. Specifically, Carpenter looked at two elements essential to life as we know it, phosphorus and nitrogen.

Both are widely used to fertilize crops, and the rise of large-scale, industrial agriculture has led to an immense increase in the amount of the chemicals entering our ecosystems.

“We’ve changed nitrogen and phosphorus cycles vastly more than any other element,” Carpenter said. “(The increase) is on the order of 200 to 300 percent. In contrast, carbon has only been increased 10 to 20 percent and look at all the uproar that has caused in the climate.”

The increase in phosphorus and nitrogen has been especially detrimental to water quality. Phosphorus loading is the leading cause of both harmful algal blooms and the oxygen-starved “dead zone” in Lake Erie. Likewise, nitrogen flowing down the Mississippi River is the main culprit behind the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

While nitrogen and phosphorus levels overall are well beyond the Holocene boundaries, Carpenter said the chemical load isn’t spread evenly over the planet.

“There are places that are really, really overloaded with nutrient pollution,” he said. “Wisconsin and the entire Great Lakes region are some of those. But there are other places where billions of people live that are undersupplied with nitrogen and phosphorus.”

For instance, much of Africa is largely lacking these two essential elements, Carpenter said. “We’ve got certain parts of the world that are overpolluted with nitrogen and phosphorus, and others where people don’t even have enough to grow the food they need.”

It’s a “distribution problem,” Carpenter said, and suggests places like the Midwestern U.S. could vastly reduce its use of fertilizers and still maintain productive crops while nutrient-poor regions of the globe increase their use — all while keeping the global levels safely within the study’s prescribed “planetary boundary.”

“It might be possible for human civilization to live outside Holocene conditions, but it’s never been tried before,” Carpenter said. “We know civilization can make it in Holocene conditions, so it seems wise to try to maintain them.”

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Tibet, the highest region on Earth and one of the most remote, is associated with vivid blue skies and the crystal clear air of the Himalayas. During the long cold season, however, the traditional nomadic people spend much of their time in snug dwellings where they cook and stay warm by burning yak dung. Their indoor air can be filled with dangerous levels of fine particulate matter, including black carbon, a new study finds.

The journal Atmospheric Environment published the research, led by Eri Saikawa, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University and in the Department of Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health.

“Indoor air pollution is a huge human health problem throughout the developing world,” Saikawa said. “In a cold region like Tibet, the impact on individuals could be even greater because they spend so much time indoors and try to keep their homes as air tight as possible.”

Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 4.3 million people died prematurely in 2012 due to indoor air pollution from traditional stoves, fueled by coal, wood, dung or crop waste. In comparison, WHO estimated that outdoor air pollution was linked to 3.7 million deaths that year.

Tibet is situated on a plateau northeast of the Himalayas in China. For centuries, nomadic people there have herded yaks, large, long-haired relatives of cattle. Yaks work as pack animals and supply meat, milk, and fiber for fabrics. They also generate heating fuel in the form of dung.

Previous studies had looked at indoor air quality in Tibet during the summer season. Saikawa and her team wanted to investigate indoor emissions during the colder months.

In March of 2013, Qingyang Xiao, a graduate student in Rollins School of Public Health, traveled to the Tibetan region of Nam Co (which means “heavenly lake”) to gather the data. About 4,500 residents live in the region, at an altitude of 4,730 meters.

Xiao used battery powered aerosol monitors to measure indoor concentrations of fine particulate matter, or particles 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller, which consists mainly of black carbon and organic carbon. She recorded the measurements in six households with different living conditions and stove types. Yak dung was the main fuel for cooking and the only fuel for heating.

The results showed that the average concentrations for black carbon and fine particulate matter were nearly double those reported by some similar studies of households in areas of lower altitude and warmer climates, such as India and Mexico.

The Tibetan homes included four traditional tents and two simple stone houses. Both the tents and the houses had only one room where all of the family members slept, ate and cooked.

Three of the families used traditional open stoves without chimneys, and three had added chimneys to their stoves. A simple house with a chimney had the lowest indoor concentrations. This household lived on tourism and used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking.

However, a stone house with a chimney had the highest black carbon concentrations.

“That was surprising,” Saikawa said. “It shows that it is misleading to think that having a chimney will always improve the situation, unless you can be sure that the home is ventilated correctly and that you have proper air flow within a dwelling.”

Xiao also surveyed members of 23 households on energy use and awareness of indoor air pollution. The families said they spent an average of 16 hours a day indoors during the colder months of the year.

Seventy percent of those surveyed said that they were aware of the health problems associated with indoor air pollution, and some of them did not have the economic means to purchase a chimney. (The average annual income per household is less than $900 a year, and a chimney costs around $60.)

The moisture content of the yak dung is another key factor in the emission levels, Saikawa said. After a rain or snowfall, the piles of uncovered dung are moist, leading to incomplete combustion and more emissions of fine particulate matter due to increased organic carbon by smoldering.

“It’s a complicated issue,” Saikawa said. “It’s much more than just a science problem. You have to understand how people live if you want to help find solutions to improve their lives.”

The Emory research team, including students from environmental sciences and the Rollins School of Public Health, is expanding on the small sample of households in this initial study. They are investigating indoor emissions in other areas of Tibet and plan to link these measurements to a biomarker study based on blood samples of people living in the households.

Saikawa, a specialist in atmospheric chemistry, is also studying levels of black carbon emissions in the outdoor environment generated by the burning of biomass fuels like yak dung.

Black carbon absorbs heat in the atmosphere and reduces the ability to reflect sunlight when deposited on snow and ice. Its impact is greatest at high altitudes. “Black carbon emissions from burning biofuel such as yak dung have not been quantified before in the atmosphere of the Himalayas,” Saikawa said. “We know that many Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly, and our work suggests that more black carbon is getting deposited on them than previously thought.”

She hopes to eventually work with Georgia Tech engineer Jonathan Colton to develop gasifier cook stoves that would burn yak dung in a more efficient matter, producing fewer emissions. The stove would need to be portable, to suit the nomadic way of life, affordable for the Tibetans and simple to maintain.

“We want to use our data to make the world a better place,” Saikawa said. “The ultimate goal is to reduce pollution from biomass fuels in ways that benefit human health and reduce the climate impact.”

The post Tibet: Yak Dung Burning Pollutes Indoor Air Of Households appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The quest for the elixir of life, the fountain of youth, the immortal pool of nectar has tormented alchemists and scientists throughout the ages. Can we live forever? The tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are on a mission to find out.

The Guardian reports this week on hedge fund manager Joon Yun’s Palo Alto Longevity Prize which sets the epic task of ‘hacking the code of life and curing aging’.

So far, 15 scientific teams have entered the EUR 850 000 ($1 million) life science competition prize. Next Big Future reports that a EUR 425 000 ($500 000) Homeostatic Capacity Prize will be awarded to the first team to demonstrate that it can restore homeostatic capacity (using heart rate variability as the surrogate measure) of an aging reference mammal to that of a young adult.

Another EUR 425 000 ($500 000) Longevity Demonstration Prize will be awarded to the first team that can extend the lifespan of its reference mammal by 50 % of acceptable published norms. Demonstration must use an approach that restores homeostatic capacity to increase lifespan.

According to Next Big Future, in addition to the $1 million cash prize, the Palo Alto Prize is also working with a number of angel investors, venture capital firms, corporate venture arms, institutions and private foundations to provide access to additional capital to the teams during the competition.

The Guardian notes that Yun, who is spearheading the initiative, names it as a moral rather than personal quest, and that the prize is being supported by an impressive list of nearly 50 advisers, including scientists from some of America’s top universities. Yun’s prize is not alone in its quest to capture the secret of immortality. The organisers name it as ‘one of a growing number of initiatives around the world pursuing this goal’. They add, ‘Through an incentive prize, our specific aim is to nurture innovations that end aging by restoring the body’s homeostatic capacity and promoting the extension of a sustained and healthy lifespan’.

Also in the race to extend our time on Earth is Google’s Calico company (the California Life Company). Its mission is to reverse engineer the biology that controls lifespan. According to the Guardian, in April 2014 Calico recruited Cynthia Kenyon, ‘a scientist acclaimed for work that included genetically engineering roundworms to live up to six times longer than normal, and who has spoken of dreaming of applying her discoveries to people’.

The Guardian also reports on the Human Longevity Inc (HLI) which says it is building the world’s most comprehensive database on human genotypes and phenotypes to tackle the diseases associated with aging-related human biological decline. According to HLI, it will use its ‘core areas of expertise’ – genomics, informatics, and stem cell therapies – to change the way medicine is practiced by furthering the shift to a preventive, genomic-based medicine model.

We probably all want to ensure healthier and more comfortable lives into our old age. But do we want to ‘cure aging’ and live forever, and is it really possible? Time will tell all.

Source: CORDIS

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By Igor Jovanovic

Zagreb wants Serbia to prosecute individuals indicted for war crimes in Croatia in the 1990s, an issue that could turn into a key point for Belgrade’s further European integration. Officials and experts say that calming tensions over the issue is in the vital interests of both nations.

Croatian Minister of Justice Orsat Miljenic told SETimes that Serbia must try senior army officers if it wants to “face the problem of war crimes.”

A large number of former commanders and leaders of Serbian origin are imprisoned or standing trial in The Hague for war crimes, but many of the accused are still in captivity.

“Croatia will apply, only and exclusively, the absolute same criteria to Serbia that were applied to [us] when joining the European Union,” Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic said. “Nothing more, but also nothing less.”

Croatia-Serbia relations took a downturn following the release of Serbian politician Vojislav Seselj, who was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for serious war crimes. The Hague released Seselj in mid-November, after which Seselj resumed his hate speech in Belgrade, with Serbia’s top officials failing to distance themselves from his warmongering rhetoric.

Pusic said the Seselj case must not be the reason for the two countries to take their relations backward.

“Whenever tension for whatever reason rises, we should not give it wind but should let the air out of the balloon and set in on the ground. It’s our duty to make life easier for our people and not harder — in communications, work, co-operation in the economic field, where Serbia and Croatia have a lot of common interests and opportunities,” she added.

Serbian officials said they are ready to prosecute war criminals, but pointed out that Croatia had no right to lecture Belgrade.

Serbian Minister in charge of European Integration Jadranka Joksimovic said Croatia is “stuck in the past.”

“Obviously there is no will and capacity in Croatia for all of us to turn to the future and to better co-operation in the region. But if they don’t want to do that, it shows that they are stuck in the past, about which we would have something to say as well,” Joksimovic said.

After a series of back-and-forth statements, Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic emphasised that regional co-operation would be the focus of the Serbian presidency of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) this year.

“I believe that our region is on the right track and I expect our presidency to give additional impetus to regional co-operation,” Dacic told reporters in Belgrade.

Predrag Simic, a professor at Belgrade’s Faculty of Political Sciences, said the worsening of relations between Belgrade and Zagreb is bad for the region, but that Serbia’s European integration would be halted only if the Croatian position is backed by the most important EU members and the US.

“The dispute between Belgrade and Zagreb is not good because they are important countries of the region,” Simic said in a statement to SETimes.

Since 2004, the Serbian Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor raised indictments in 44 cases, 35 of which have been concluded.

Deputy Prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said although an insufficient number of senior army officers were currently being prosecuted, work was still being done on the matter.

“I can accept that the level or rank of the individuals on certain posts have not been sufficiently processed in war crimes cases, but all this time we have been a service of The Hague tribunal. And as a service we have been helping them reach certain verdicts,” Vekaric said.

Correspondent Kruno Kartus in Osjek contributed to this report.

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