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Oregon Experienced Second Warmest Year On Record In 2014

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The year 2014 was the hottest on Earth in 134 years of record-keeping, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported on Friday, continuing a pattern of global warming that is attributed primarily to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

Oregon was not exempt from the warming and logged the second hottest year since records were kept beginning in 1895, according to researchers with the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.

“We had a warm summer, and now a warm winter and that’s where we got our warm year,” said Kathie Dello, deputy director of the center. “We are looking at our future right now – warm winters and low snowpacks.”

The average statewide temperature in Oregon in 2014 was 49.5 degrees, which is 3.0 degrees above the average for the 20th century. The only hotter year on record was 1934 – when the United States suffered through the Dust Bowl. The average temperature in Oregon that year was 49.9.

Low snowpacks are of particular concern later in the year when less water is available, Dello pointed out.

“Drought continues to be a concern in southern and eastern Oregon, as well as in California,” she said. “The temperature outlook for the next three months is pointing toward continued warm temperatures for the western United States.”

According to NOAA, the average 2014 temperature across both land and ocean surfaces globally was 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average. This was the highest among all years on record dating back to 1880, the agency noted.

Regions that were considered the warmest last year, according to NOAA, included eastern Russia, the western United States, portions of Australia, much of the northeastern Pacific Ocean, segments of the equatorial Pacific, large swaths of the Atlantic Ocean, most of the Norwegian Sea, and parts of the central to southern Indian Ocean.

Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, said the subtlety of rising temperatures on a global scale can be hard to comprehend, since people tend to view climate based on their personal experiences.

“Most of us relate to climate through what we remember and the week-long spell of near-record cold, snow and ice last February may seem more pertinent or convincing than global mean temperature,” Mote said. “But from a physics perspective, global mean temperature represents lots of interesting processes – rising greenhouse gases among them.

“Setting a record like this means those processes lined up this year,” Mote added. “On average, greenhouse gas increases make each year roughly .04 degrees warmer than the last – which may not sound like much, but really adds up over time.”

At that rate, the temperature would increase one degree every 25 years, and four degrees each century – an alarming rate of increase, scientists say. “And unless emissions of greenhouse gases are curbed,” Mote said, “the warming is likely to be faster than that in the future.”

Although globally the planet experienced its hottest year, it was only the 34th warmest year on record for the United States overall, Dello said. The western U.S. as a whole had its hottest year on record, as did the states of California, Nevada and Arizona, but the eastern part of the country experienced a severe winter.

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Islamic State Resorting To ‘Desperate’ Tactics In Iraq, Syria

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By Waleed Abu al-Khair

From firing live scorpions into civilian gatherings to using hobbyist planes as reconnaissance tools, “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) elements are resorting to desperate tactics in spreading terror, analysts told Al-Shorfa.

These methods are at times a bid to spread fear among residents and at others desperate attempts to recoup losses the group has suffered in recent weeks, they said.

“The ISIL terrorist group is resorting to all available primitive capabilities in the wars it is waging in Iraq and Syria to stop the losses it is sustaining as a result of military blows, which are forcing it to withdraw from many areas,” said military analyst Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Ahmed, who is retired from the Egyptian army.

In Iraq, the group recently fired a barrage of poisonous live scorpions towards assemblies of Iraqi soldiers and citizen gatherings, he told Al-Shorfa.

“The poisonous scorpions are loaded into canisters in the shape of artillery shells that are launched either with cannons or catapults and open up upon impact with the ground, after which [the scorpions] spread quickly,” he said.

Live animals have also been rigged with explosives and released towards areas that are hostile to ISIL, while animal cadavers have been set to explode upon attempts to move them aside or remove them because of their stench, Ahmed added.

These actions “reveal the group’s need to resort to all available means to cover and mitigate its losses”, he said.

Such methods also indicate that ISIL is attempting to wage psychological warfare to weaken the morale of the army and the populations in the areas of which it seeks to take control, he said.

ISIL wanted to project itself as a “giant stone colossus”, but it has instead turned out to be a “cardboard monster easy to destroy”, Ahmed said.

‘Large amounts of Cocaine’

In the embattled Syrian city of Kobani, ISIL has also used a battery of peculiar tactics.

“There is nothing ISIL has not used in its battle inside Kobani,” said Abdul Fattah Nasreddine, a Free Syrian Army soldier fighting in Kobani alongside the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and Iraqi Kurdish fighters. “It has even used small remote-controlled reconnaissance planes.”

In more than one of its videos, the group has included several segments of aerial footage of the city captured by such planes, he said.

“Combat troops found a number of these planes left behind by ISIL fighters who fled their positions as resistance fighters advanced in the city,” Nasreddine said.

In addition to the planes, fighters found large amounts of cocaine, he said, some of which was portioned out and placed along with narcotic pills into packets that were discovered in the pockets of ISIL fighters’ corpses.

“The amount of weapons, ammunition, explosives and improvised explosive devices the group left behind indicates that it did not expect to withdraw,” Nasreddine said. “It clearly was surprised by the size of the resistance that repelled it .”

Media professional Mustafa Abdi, a field journalist from the city of Kobani who follows the daily progress of the battles between the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces and ISIL, said ISIL has increasingly relied on suicide bombers and car bombs in the recent period, especially after battles intensified and Kurdish forces began to advance inside the city.

Kurdish forces blew up more than 45 explosives-rigged vehicles from a distance before they reached their goal, he said.

“ISIL’s failed plans also include tunnels, a large number of which were discovered in the south-east and east of Kobani,” Abdi told Al-Shorfa. “ISIL was digging them to gain control of the city and reach the positions of Kurdish forces.”

However, the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces advanced so swiftly in the city that they foiled this plan, he added, as “tunnelling requires a great deal of effort and time, meaning these gangs wasted many hours of work”.

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Gaza: Radical Islamists Try To Storm French Cultural Center

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Islamic extremists attempted to storm the French Cultural Center in Gaza, according to AFP. The incident happened at a rally of Salafi jihadists protesting against Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Around 200 radical Islamists tried to enter the building and appeared to be shouting slogans threatening the lives of staff over the publication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons that depict the prophet, according to an AFP photographer.

The latest edition of the magazine showed the Prophet Mohammad on its front cover and was published a week after an attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in France that left ten of its staff dead.

“Today, we are telling France and world countries that while Islam orders us to respect all religions, it also orders us to punish and kill those who assault and offend Islam’s Prophet Mohammad,” protester Abu Abdallah al-Makdissi told Reuters.

Many of the protesters wore uniforms similar to those worn by Daesh militants and carried black flags.

Hamas had granted permission for the rally to go ahead, in what was seen as a rare move by the organization. Dozens of police were deployed to the rally and outside of the French Cultural Center.

Muslims across the world have been angered at the publication of cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammad in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Islam does not allow pictures of the prophet.

17 people were killed in three days of terrorism in France nearly two weeks ago.

Original article

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Saudi Arabia: Some Call For Boycott Of French Products

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By Ibrahim Nafee

Some Saudis and expatriates have called for a campaign to boycott French products because of the offending cartoons published by the Charlie Hebdo magazine last week.

“It is necessary to boycott French food products and perfumes and hit the French economy because they are ignoring the feelings of Muslims by publishing blasphemous cartoons. It is the best solution to defend Islam and our Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him),” said a message posted by one user on various social networking sites.

The messages on several websites include the names of popular French products available on local shelves that citizens and expatriate consumers should boycott.

Adel Hassan, a Saudi, said he plans to participate in the boycott. “Yes, I will stop buying French products because of the ongoing blasphemous cartoons against Islam.”

He said the French have “forgotten” that they have many companies exporting products to Saudi Arabia. He said customers must ensure these products are “dumped into the garbage” by not buying them.

Meanwhile, Jordanian social media users have launched a campaign calling for the boycott of French products, entitled “Boycott France.”

Activists are urging action against French investments in the country including Total-affiliated gas stations and Carrefour markets, according to a report published Sunday.

Organizers of the initiative, which has reportedly attracted more than 4,000 people on Facebook, said the campaign seeks to place pressure on France to put an end to the publication of “offensive cartoons.”

Emad Kareem, a public relations practitioner at a local agency, told Arab News that some French companies have hired public relations companies to deal with the backlash from Muslim consumers.

He said several French companies have launched campaigns to improve their image so that they can reduce the impact on their sales from a boycott.

“There are some French companies, especially in Arab Gulf countries that import French food products, that are saying they condemn abuse of religions and Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous cartoons,” said Kareem.

“If there is a widespread a boycott of French products, companies will have to deal with public relations agencies to manage this crisis.” He said there is no evidence yet that there has been any effect on sales of French products in Saudi Arabia.

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Bush Versus Clinton Again? – OpEd

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By Linda S. Heard

In the US, a western democracy with a population of 316 million, it’s astonishing that whenever there’s a presidential election in the offing, the same old familiar names are trotted out time and time again. And when one of them has a dynastic ring about it, the American public hardly blinks. Can it be mere happenstance of fate that candidates have been plucked from a handful of mega-wealthy establishment families more often than not?

What happened to the “American Dream” concept? Where are the approved candidates who battled their way up life’s ladder with little or no help from mama or papa? Are we to assume that only those with a president or vice-president dangling from their family tree are the most qualified to be America’s Commander-in-Chief and the de facto leader of the Free World?

Obama was, indeed, a fresh face on the scene, the exception proving the rule in recent times. He exploded into the public’s consciousness, promising change and vowing to put right the wrongs of the previous administration. One word that could sum-up his presidency would have to be “disappointment.” In the event, most of the items on his laundry list of good intentions were filed away years ago and are unlikely to be taken out and dusted when there’s a Republican-dominated Congress out to thwart the Democrat president at every turn.

Obama’s inability to achieve his pledges he argued fiercely were dear to his heart, prior to his inauguration, begs the question of just how much power does an American president really have? That thought crossed my mind following the contentious, closely-run Bush vs. Gore contest in 2000. Gore won the nation’s popular vote by over half-a-million yet he was content to quietly walk off into the sunset and maintain a relatively low profile, rather than contest the results. But that’s a topic for another day.

Let’s look at some of the names expected to throw their hats in the ring. The first that springs to mind is, of course, Hillary Clinton. She’s been quite coy on the subject until last week when she reportedly hired a chief strategist and media adviser to facilitate a possible 2016 bid. The husband has had a go at the job, the wife might well get the chance, so dare we suppose that the daughter, Chelsea, will be hot to trot to the White House in 2020? Ridiculous!

Well, maybe not. Don’t forget, it’s been home to Bush, the father, Bush the son and now it appears that Bush, the younger has his eye on the Oval Office. Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida, is potentially gearing up to race and has formed a Political Action Committee (PAC) in that regard.

Billionaire Mitt Romney has just announced that he’ll give it another go in order to focus on “poverty;” he must be hoping third time lucky. If he’s waiting for frenzied applause from his party’s rank and file, he’s wasting his time. Sen. Rand Paul’s sentiments reflect what many are thinking — if he runs again, hoping for a different result, that is “the definition of insanity.” “It’s time for some fresh blood,” Paul added. He may be right, but as of now, there’s not much of that around.

Names being mulled of those who have expressed some interest include: Rand Paul himself, who must be deluded if he thinks his own blood’s still fresh; former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, a rabid neoconservative; Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. John McCain’s trusty sidekick; the property magnate with the peculiar haircut, Donald Trump; and former presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Joe Biden. The Islamophobic pastor from Florida, Terry Jones, says he’ll run as an independent. The actor, George Clooney, has hinted that he might try his luck. Sounds like a circus packed with clowns, weirdoes and has-beens. But when push comes to shove, the old guard will be the ones to receive party tickets and if I was forced to hazard a guess the final battle will be Clinton vs. Bush. They carry the name; they’ll pull in the money.

But why is it that Americans tolerate such a nepotistic political system operating openly throughout their beloved Land of the Free?

Author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, Russ Baker believes he has the answer. “It’s different for different strata of society,” he told the Guardian. “We are extremely jealous of the British and their Royal family, and although we have the idea of being able to rise from nothing, we are hung up on status. We crave the fantasy of royalty; we think it’s ennobling. We like the Kennedys and the Bushes and the Clintons.”

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Greece: The Great Leap Rightward – Analysis

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By Kostas Kallergis*

Below the green slopes of Mount Parnassus in central Greece, the small town of Distomo is unusually full of people. The visitors have come to mark the 70th anniversary of the Distomo massacre, one of the worst Nazi atrocities in the country in which more than 200 civilians were executed.

On a hill where a memorial to the victims stands, Greek and German high school students present the “Children of War”, a theatrical ode to peace. Photographs of Nazi troops on the Athens Acropolis and recent images of dead children in Syria are projected onto the backdrop. The audience watches in devout silence.

In the town’s cafés, the atmosphere is normally louder and more politicised. Sooner or later, Maria Sideri-Tsami’s name is mentioned.

Three members of Sideri-Tsami’s family were killed in the Distomo massacre. Yet the 23-year-old was a candidate in regional elections in May last year for Golden Dawn, the party widely described as neo-Nazi that has risen to prominence in Greece in recent years.

Sideri-Tsami has blamed communist resistance fighters for the massacre, saying they provoked the Nazis by staging an ambush. “They knew the Germans would come back to the village to kill the people if they were attacked,” she said in an interview with a local blogger filmed at the memorial.

Sideri-Tsami’s embrace of the far right may seem extraordinary. But even people with ancestors killed by the Nazis or a family tradition of leftism forged in World War Two have joined Golden Dawn, which has tapped into anger at Greece’s deep economic crisis and disillusionment with traditional political parties.

In the run-up to the May elections, Golden Dawn proudly displayed the video of Sideri-Tsami’s interview on its website. But her declaration met with less enthusiasm locally.

“It’s shameful,” says 84-year-old Maria Sechremeli, a distant relative of Sideri-Tsami.

Sechremeli survived the massacre by hiding under the body of an executed neighbour.

“The communists didn’t kill Distomo, the communists were out to kill the enemy,” she says.

The scar of a stray bullet from the massacre still marks Sechremeli’s leg. Every year, she starts to feel unwell two days before the commemoration. On this anniversary, she has taken two aspirins by noon to tame her blood pressure.

Sitting at the table in her living room, Sechremeli says she never used to talk about the massacre with her grandchildren, not wanting to upset them or perpetuate the hatred from that era. But she changed her mind after becoming alarmed at the rise of Golden Dawn.

“Do they want the best for Greece? By killing people? Doing all these ugly things and swearing on TV?” she says of the party. “You can tell what kind of people they are.”

After decades on the political fringe, Golden Dawn came to much broader attention in 2010 with a nationalist, anti-immigration and frequently violent agenda. Media and academics have labelled the party neo-Nazi or fascist but its members deny any links to National Socialism.

The party’s rise coincided with an unprecedented increase in racist attacks against immigrants.

This violence went largely unpunished for years until a man with close links to Golden Dawn murdered antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in an Athens suburb in September 2013. The killer was arrested and the government launched a crackdown on the party.

Today, six high-ranking party members, including leader Nikos Michaloliakos, are in jail awaiting trial on charges of operating a criminal organisation. The trial, which the party sees as political persecution, is expected to begin later this year.

Despite the imminent trial, Greece’s political scene has been in such flux that Sechremeli says she is afraid Golden Dawn could seize power and trigger a new civil war.

In the recent elections she voted for a leftist party, as always.

Her late husband joined the wartime guerrilla resistance to free Greece from German occupation. He espoused communism at that time and remained faithful to it for the rest of his life.

The family’s story is typical of many in Greece – political traditions were established in World War Two and upheld for generations afterwards.

Ideological faultlines over old scars

Germany invaded Greece in April 1941. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks lost their lives over the next three years as a result of fighting, deportation to concentration camps, German reprisals and famine.

Resistance was organised by various groups but the communists were the most prominent, quickly establishing themselves in almost all parts of Greece. On the other side, as in the rest of occupied Europe, many Greeks collaborated with the Germans, including Nazi sympathisers and nationalists.

After the war, leftists and rightists started jostling for power. The political tussle soon led to a bloody civil war that ended in 1949 with the leftists’ defeat.

Dimitris Psarras, an investigative journalist who has been researching the Greek far right since the 1980s, has found many cases where the anti-communist ideology of collaborators was passed on to their children and grandchildren.

Some of these people were among the leaders of the military junta that ruled from 1967 to 1974 and some are on the political stage now with Golden Dawn. Party leader Michaloliakos comes from a family of collaborators.

But a small minority of Golden Dawn members and voters have a quite different family background.

The pioneer

Giorgos Germenis has very fond memories of his maternal grandfather, Panayotis Griziotis. He remembers him as a “modern grandpa” who was always close to the younger generations.

During the war Griziotis was a communist guerrilla leader in western Greece. When his daughter was 10 years old, he would send her to fetch the then illegal newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

She too became a communist when she grew up. She gave birth to Germenis and used to carry her infant son in her arms while putting up posters with party comrades for the annual May Day rally in Athens.

Her son is now one of Golden Dawn’s most prominent members of parliament and the first party executive to publicly acknowledge, in 2012, that his grandfather was a communist guerrilla.

His revelation came as a huge shock to leftists, who could not comprehend how someone with such family traditions could end up on the far right.

Germenis is currently in prison awaiting trial with the rest of the party leadership. For this article, he gave written answers to questions passed on by his wife when she visited him in the maximum-security Korydallos jail in Athens.

“The Communist Party has turned into a bourgeois party. After so many years in the political arena they have become professional revolutionaries,” he says.

According to Germenis, people who were once communists or socialists are among the most zealous Golden Dawn supporters.

“They feel that the parties they were following all these years betrayed them!” he declares.

Germenis joined the ranks of Golden Dawn in the early 1990s, when the ghost of nationalism was haunting the Balkan Peninsula. His parents found out about his ideological departure much later. (Read the interview with Giorgos Germenis here.)

He says no one in his family tried to change his mind, nor did he try to change theirs. According to Germenis, his mother now believes that Golden Dawn is a truly revolutionary party.

“In our rallies she didn’t see the usual party henchmen and the politically appointed executives but people from next door, workers, breadwinners and that impressed her,” he says.

A double paradox

Such ordinary people and their struggles have made a deep impact on Tasos Papaioannou. He says he has been shocked by a rise in suicides linked to the economic crisis in his home region of Corinth.

Papaioannou, who is in his early 40s, does not like to be called a taxi driver, unless he is driving Greek clients. For most of his day, he is a chauffeur taking wealthy foreign tourists to Ancient Corinth, about 80 km west of Athens.

His parents emigrated to Australia when he was two years old and he still remembers how difficult it was to be a foreigner there. Twenty years later he came back to Greece for a holiday and ended up staying.

Papaioannou now votes for Golden Dawn. His decision to vote for a strongly anti-immigrant party despite his experience of discrimination in Australia is not the only paradox.

His grandfather, Giorgos, was a communist guerrilla in the greater Corinth region during the civil war.

“I never met him. I wish I had, even though my views are entirely different,” he says in a taverna next to the archaeological site at Ancient Corinth.

When the Greek economic crisis started, Papaioannou thought: “Boom! Nationalism! Let’s change things. There has to be a civil war.”

His enemies? Immigrants, corrupt politicians who embezzled the people’s wealth, the International Monetary Fund, even those who have the same leftist beliefs as his late grandfather.

He says some extreme rightists in villages have boxes of Kalashnikovs stored in their houses. Just in case.

Further south, Nikos Kourakos is a senior official at the Golden Dawn office in the city of Kalamata.

His grandfather fought the Germans in the communist resistance and was executed by a member of the notorious Security Battalions formed by Greece’s collaborationist government.

Kourakos casts his grandfather’s decision to join the communists as a patriotic rather than a leftist act.

“The Germans were occupiers,” he says. “The reasonable thing to do was to go and fight.”

He does not feel his decision to join Golden Dawn more than 10 years ago offends the memory of his grandfather.

“For me, it’s wrong to take an ideological stance because of what happened in the past,” he says.

A family drama

For some families, however, a child’s decision to break with long-held values and support the far right is a source of great anguish.

Giorgos Triantafyllou, a pensioner whose name has been changed here at his request, lives in a small community where the Nazis executed almost half the population, including one of his relatives, during World War Two.

His family has a long history of leftists, including resistance fighters during the German occupation, communist guerrillas during the civil war and victims of political persecution during the rule of the military junta.

Triantafyllou himself was a staunch leftist but became disenchanted with Marxism in the 1970s and turned to religion. After a meticulous study of the holy books of several religions, he became a Jehovah’s Witness.

He and his childhood sweetheart raised two children according to their values. They taught them to love, to be peaceful and tolerant.

But after turning 18, their older child denounced the family’s religious beliefs and eventually joined Golden Dawn, standing as a candidate for the party in last year’s regional elections.

Triantafyllou discovered the shocking news while surfing the internet. He was utterly devastated and he has not spoken to his firstborn since.

He says he can’t bear to hear the statements that come out of the mouth of his own offspring.

“I grew up in a place full of war widows and orphans,” he says.

His distress is heightened by the fact the Nazis persecuted and imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Golden Dawn over red strongholds

Triantafyllou keeps wondering how his own child could repudiate the family’s history and join Golden Dawn. Likewise pollsters, political analysts and sociologists ponder why Golden Dawn has proved to be so popular in areas formerly dominated by the Communist Party.

Perama and Nikea, two districts of Athens long considered “red strongholds”, have seen a sharp rise in support for Golden Dawn in recent years.

Vassiliki Georgiadou, an associate professor of political science at Athens’ Panteion University who has been carrying out extensive research in these districts, says the impoverishment of the working class and local long-term unemployment – which hovers around 70 percent – have created fertile territory for Golden Dawn.

The party has blamed the local trade union’s political activity for the decreasing competitiveness of local shipyards and subsequent loss of jobs. Golden Dawn set up its own trade union and promised work. Some workers signed up.

By being active on the ground in these neighbourhoods, Golden Dawn managed to “become visible and achieved a certain degree of influence, especially over young people growing up without any prospects”, Georgiadou says.

Politicised youths have used graffiti to turn the neighbourhoods’ walls into a battleground of ideologies.

“Our grandfathers were refugees, our fathers were immigrants and we are racists!” one leftist slogan proclaims.

“Free all jailed Golden Dawn members!” says another, not far from Korydallos prison where the party’s leadership is incarcerated.

In another part of Athens, an artistic piece of stencil graffiti offers an ironic commentary on the twists of history. An old man smoking a cigarette observes: “I fought the fascists so that my grandchildren could bring them back.”

The Battle of Lenin Square

The seemingly never-ending struggle between left and right has echoes even outside Greece – in a Hungarian village 1,000 km away from Athens.

Beloiannisz in central Hungary was founded by Greek communist guerrillas who fled the civil war in the late 1940s. They named their community after Nikos Beloyannis, a Greek communist hero.

Zisis Vlachopoulos, a former mayor of the village, was born in Greece in 1942 and brought to Beloiannisz by his parents when he was four years old. Since the collapse of communism, he says, there have been numerous attempts to erase the village’s history.

The village had to change the name of its central square, which had been named after Lenin. Crosses have replaced red stars on gravestones in the cemetery.

“And what are they going to do with the red star on Heineken bottles?” Vlachopoulos jokes in fluent Greek.

Now Krisztian Bene, 31, a member of the local council from the far right Jobbik party, wants to move a memorial plaque in the square that honours the Soviet soldiers who liberated Hungary from the Nazis. Bene proposes replacing it with another plaque commemorating the anti-Soviet Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

In the square, Bene and his friend Szotirisz Kariofilisz chat to a visitor. Kariofilisz was born in the village 32 years ago to Greek parents. His grandparents were communist guerrillas.

He is unemployed, uncertain about his future prospects and votes for Jobbik. He insists the party is not as extreme as Golden Dawn in Greece.

“Jobbik doesn’t want to kill the Roma and the Jews, it only wants to assimilate them,” he says.

But former mayor Vlachopoulos is dismissive when local Jobbik members blame foreigners for problems in Hungary.

“Today the problem is the gypsies, tomorrow it’s going to be the Albanians and after that it will be the turn of the Greeks,” he says. “I won’t be fooled!”

He is interrupted by a call on his mobile phone. The ringtone melody sounds familiar. The song plays until the lyrics of the Greek communist guerrillas’ anthem can be heard: “With my rifle on my shoulder, in the plains, in cities and in villages, I pave the road to freedom…”

The Loving Father

Back in Greece, Giorgos Triantafyllou lives a quiet life. He takes good care of his garden and occasionally logs on the internet to read the news.

He and his wife are thinking of going offline to avoid coming across articles about their firstborn, who rejected the family’s values and joined Golden Dawn. They want to turn off what Triantafyllou calls “the switch of sadness”.

But his anger softens just before the end of the interview. A reconciliation may still be possible, he says, if his offspring repents fully and returns to a virtuous life.

He recites the Parable of the Prodigal Son, also known as the Parable of the Loving Father.

“The son left to seek vain riches and live a sinful life, he suffered hardships but his father waited for him. And when the son returned, the father hugged him. That’s what I would do too,” he says.

*Kostas Kallergis is a freelance journalist and television producer based in Athens. This article was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, supported by the ERSTE Foundation and Open Society Foundations, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

Source: Balkan Insight

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Afghanistan’s New Cabinet: Concerns And Expectations – OpEd

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By Saeed Rahi*

Afghanistan’s so-called National Unity Government — after over three months of negotiations, evaluations and interviews —  has announced the final list of new cabinet nominees. Apparently, the leaders of Unity Government made their decisions based on a number of reasons, among them being the education levels, ethnic consideration and the qualification of the cabinet nominees.

The nominees are a mix of Afghanistan’s past and current power-brokers, including some former communists, warlords’ representatives and technocrats. The 25 cabinet nominees include three women.

Afghanistan public citizens and political analysts have expressed mixed feelings about the new cabinet candidates. The majority of Afghans consider the National Unity Government announcement as a significant progress and a step forward in representing Ghani’s endeavor to create a modern Afghanistan, but at the same time, they are concerned about seeing the names of some human rights abusers and unqualified nominees in the list.

That said, many Afghans do believe that current cabinet nominees have the merits and qualifications to be appointed as future ministers, arguing that they have good reputations, knowledge, education, as well as local and international recognition.

“I think we will have a good cabinet minister. There are candidates in the list with qualifications, good knowledge and capacity to serve the people and change the country’s future”, said Fazul, a resident of Kabul Province.

On the other hand, many others are critical about the current cabinet nominees, arguing that among nominees there are individuals who either were part of the former communist regime with a tainted history and human rights abuses, or individuals with a low level of local and international reputation.

Many others have criticized the leaders of the National Unity Government for choosing nominees based on their language and ethnic affiliations, which it is argued may lead to the loyalty of the leaders to be questioned and ethnic division in the country.

Whoever the critics are, considering level of widespread fraud in the country, economic vulnerability and deteriorating security and political uncertainty it is very ambitious to believe that the new cabinet ministers will be able to bring phenomenal changes in Afghanistan and deliver ideal services to the public citizens.

It is highly expected that the candidates should properly explain their agendas, programs and policies to the citizens on how they can bring peace and security, fix the country’s economy, eliminate corruption and deal with other major local and regional issues.

About the author:
*Saeed Rahi is an Afghanistan rule of law and anti-corruption expert. He formerly worked as a rule of law advisor with USAID-Afghanistan and as a democracy outreach advisor with the Office of the State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs.

The post Afghanistan’s New Cabinet: Concerns And Expectations – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Why Should The Americans Care? – OpEd

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By Muhammad Umar*

President Obama’s expected visit to India is causing hysteria in Indian media. Pundits left and right are already busy making too much out of nothing.

Over the past month, media organizations have speculated that during Obama’s visit, a plan will be announced to finally implement the nuclear cooperation deal.

Although at the moment there is a nuclear cooperation deal between the two countries, it has not been executed due to India’s strict liability law, which makes suppliers liable in case of an accident.

The nuclear suppliers are held to unlimited liability both in time and costs, which discourages American suppliers from taking part in the nuclear cooperation deal.

During his visit to the United States late last year, Prime Minister Modi made a commitment to President Obama to amend the liability act, with the aim of reducing the burden on nuclear suppliers. Modi failed to change the act.

The government has now proposed to sell insurance to those companies willing to supply nuclear materials, in an effort to work around the liability law. This proposal has been a direct result of Modi’s botched attempt at amending the law.

Modi hopes that by offering insurance, he will be able to attract American suppliers. But the question remains, why should the American companies be forced to buy insurance, and will the insurance ensure zero liability or will the American companies have to share financial responsibilities?

The insurance available for sale will be offered through a State owned and operated insurance company, which means that the State will be liable in case of a nuclear accident.

We already know that the State will most likely fail to compensate, (like they did after the Bhopal tragedy?), and that they do not have the money to offer unlimited protection from the liability law; the suppliers will have to share some of the financial responsibility, bringing them back to square one, to precisely the same reason why they are not willing to supply India in the first place.

The possibility of a nuclear accident in India is a very real one, making this debate an important one to have.

Three decades ago, the worst ever industrial accident in recent history happened in Bhopal city, where an American run pesticide manufacturing plant sprung a gas leak that resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 people. To this day, the victims have not been properly compensated.

After the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, the reality of something like that happening in India became very real. It was in 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit India’s southern coast, and the Kalpakkam nuclear plant had to be shutdown because water had overcome the cooling intakes, similar to what happened at Fukishima.

India has now built two new reactors on the same coast, at Kudankulam, without appropriately calculating the risk of an accident as a result of a natural disaster. Clearly showing the Indian government’s neglectful attitude towards such issues.

The Indian government under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership has set some very grand and seemingly unrealistic goals of increasing their electricity production through nuclear power.

The thing that the Indian people need to realize, as well as Obama, and those American companies looking to supply India, is that no matter how advanced the technology gets, an accident is always possible.

If India wants American companies like General Electric, and Westinghouse to supply them with nuclear reactors, they will have to amend the liability law to relieve them of all liability, because as mentioned above, even if the companies were to buy insurance from the State, they would still have to share some of the financial responsibility in the case of an accident. And for this reason, G.E., Westinghouse, and other American companies are not willing to supply India.

If Modi somehow succeeds in finding a way around the liability law, or amending it, then the Indian people have to be wary of the outcomes. It would mean in case of an accident, it would be unclear to what extent the government is liable, because clearly the suppliers will not be, and most likely, that would mean that the victims will not receive sufficient compensation, which we have seen happen in the aftermath of the Bhopal
tragedy.

Therefore, President Obama, while trying to ensure zero liability for American suppliers, should also ensure that in case of an accident the victims are properly compensated.

This is a huge task for both leaders, and that is why I discourage the media from creating hype. This is a very serious issue, and it should be dealt with patiently. Both parties should look at all the facts, and must weigh the implications of their decisions.

*The writer is an assistant professor at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad, he tweets @umarwrites.

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China’s Draft Counterterrorism Law Is A Recipe For Abuses, Says HRW

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The Chinese government should radically revise its proposed legislation on counterterrorism to make it consistent with international law and the protection of human rights, according to Human Rights Watch. The draft law was made public for consultation in November 2014 and is expected to be adopted in 2015 after minimal revisions.

As currently drafted, the law would legitimate ongoing human rights violations and facilitate future abuses, especially in an environment lacking basic legal protections for criminal suspects and a history of gross human rights abuses committed in the name of counterterrorism. Such violations are evident across the country and particularly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the region that has been most affected by acts of terrorism and political violence in recent years.

“China has seen appalling attacks on people, and the government has a duty to respond and protect the population,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “But in its present form this law is little more than a license to commit human rights abuses. The draft needs to be completely overhauled and brought in line with international legal standards.”

The Chinese government claims that its proposed counterterrorism legislation responds to and conforms with United Nations Security Council resolutions urging countries to take measures to combat and strengthen their cooperation against terrorism. Yet such resolutions have also stressed that countries need to “ensure that any measure taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law … in particular international human rights, refugee, and humanitarian law” (Security Council Resolution 1456 (2003))—something that China’s proposed legislation clearly does not do.

The draft counterterrorism law states that “counterterrorism work shall be conducted in accordance with the law” and that “human rights shall be respected and guaranteed” (art. 6). But the 106-article draft makes clear the government’s intent to establish a counterterrorism structure with enormous discretionary powers, define terrorism and terrorist activities so broadly as to easily include peaceful dissent or criticism of the government or the Communist Party’s ethnic and religious policies, and set up a total digital surveillance architecture subject to no legal or legislative control. (See below: China’s Draft Counterterrorism Law: Key Areas of Concern)

In recent years China has experienced a number of deadly and apparently politically motivated attacks directed against the general population. Since 2009 several hundred people have died in Xinjiang in attacks on police stations, train stations, and public markets. Some attacks have also taken place outside of Xinjiang. On March 1, 2014, in one of the most serious incident to date, 8 knife-wielding men and women attacked a crowd at Kunming train station, in Yunnan province, killing 29 and injuring 143, according to official accounts.

At the same time, the Chinese government has long manipulated the threat of terrorism to justify its crackdown on the 10 million ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Human rights violations documented by Human Rights Watch in recent years include broad denial of political, cultural and religious rights, torture and enforced disappearances, extensive censorship, and pervasive socio-economic discrimination.

“While terrorism poses grave threats to society, overbroad and abusive counterterrorism measures can also inflict grave harm and exacerbate conflict,” Richardson said. “Harsh measures that conflate political or religious dissent with crime discourage ordinary people from trusting or cooperating with law enforcement agencies.”

Over the past three years hundreds of people have been killed by law enforcement personnel in what the authorities claimed were counterterrorism operations, raising serious concerns about regular disproportionate use of force, especially since China systematically prevents independent monitoring of the region. This situation makes it impossible to assess the veracity of general and specific claims by the Chinese government of terrorist incidents or threats.

To reduce the risk of militancy and politically motivated violence, Human Rights Watch said, the Chinese government should immediately remove curbs on the rights to freedom of expression, religion and association, strengthen the independence of the judiciary, end torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects, and strengthen effective human rights protections.

“Targeting people for attack is never justified, but committing human rights violations is no way to stop such horrific violence,” said Richardson. “The Chinese government needs to respect rights, not build a new architecture of surveillance.”

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China Wields New Weapon In Pollution War But How Far Will It Go? – Analysis

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By Michael Lelyveld

As China implements its first reform of environmental law in 25 years, the government faces questions about how far the enforcement will go.

On Jan. 1, tougher pollution rules and stiffer penalties came into force under revisions to China’s Environmental Protection Law enacted last April in the first overhaul of the statute since 1989.

“The new amendments to China’s bedrock environmental law put powerful new tools into the hands of environmental officials and the public,” said Barbara Finamore, Asia director at the U.S.-based National Resources Defense Council, in a blog posting when the measure was enacted last year.

The law’s passage by the National People’s Congress (NPC) fulfilled part of Premier Li Keqiang’s promise in March to launch a “war against pollution” after months of smothering smog in China’s cities raised an outcry against environmental neglect.

Among the extensive provisions, the new law lifts a previous cap on environmental fines by imposing daily penalties for continued non-compliance.

Violators can face detention for up to 15 days, and officials can be fired for cover-ups and falsified reports.

Polluting equipment can be confiscated, and in severe cases, enterprises can be suspended from operating.

Environmental impact assessments for new construction projects must be made public for scrutiny and comment.

The law also requires operators of “key pollutant- discharging units” to disclose their emissions by type, concentration and volume, potentially forcing thousands of factories to clean up their acts.

NGOs empowered

And in a breakthrough for the public interest, qualified nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been empowered to file suits for environmental damage, as long as they do not seek compensation for themselves.

The amendments were designed to deliver “a blow … to our country’s harsh environmental realities,” said Xin Chunying, deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC’s Standing Committee, as quoted by Reuters last April.

The changes have raised hopes among activists, in part because three earlier draft revisions failed to win passage, reportedly because they were “too vague” and not tough enough.

In comments to The South China Morning Post, advocates voiced a mix of optimism and pressure to do more.

“Investors do not care about pollution problems unless the prospects of returns are threatened. The new penalty mechanism is a starting point for change,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based NGO.

But Song Guojun, a Renmin University professor of environmental economics, said the law should go further by confiscating the “illegal gains” of companies made from their polluting operations.

The demand raises the question of how far China will go, and how quickly it can afford to go, in punishing pollution that has been tolerated for decades.

Record fine

In an early sign that the government means business, a court in eastern Jiangsu province upheld a lower court ruling against six companies for dumping chemicals into two rivers, imposing a record fine of 160 million-yuan (U.S. $26 million), state media reported on Dec. 30.

The case against the companies in Taizhou City was brought by a recently formed NGO with 60 local members, according to The New York Times, although the finding predates the effective date of the new law by two days. Qualified NGOs are also required under the law to have been active for five years.

Under the 1989 law, one-time fines were generally capped at 1 million yuan (U.S. $161,000), giving polluters little incentive to comply.

But the consequences of the tougher new fines and penalties could be staggering if they are imposed across the board.

On Dec. 23, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said it had issued the lesser penalties under the old law to some 190,000 enterprises for violations over the past two years, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The potential impact of revisiting such an enormous volume of cases under the new law makes it unclear whether the war against pollution will be pursued with the same intensity as the ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

‘Name and shame’

So far, the revised law is seen as giving citizens and NGOs more leverage and government support to “name and shame”
polluters, said Daniel Gardner, a China scholar and history professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, who writes frequently on environmental affairs.

“At the moment, the Environmental Protection Law is a very promising document,” Gardner said. “When you take all of these incremental steps and put them together, you conclude that they are really quite serious about enforcing the new pollution law.”

But if the Jiangsu penalties turn out to be the opening salvo in a campaign as broad as the government’s crackdown on corruption, the social, economic and political impacts could be unsettling.

“We don’t know how this is all going to play out,” said Gardner. “How many campaigns can China withstand?”

Communist Party members are already reeling from President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which handed out punishments to 71,748 officials last year, according to the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspections (CCDI) at a Beijing press conference earlier this month.

Last week, Xi told a CCDI plenary session that the war on corruption was “far from over,” calling it “a matter of life- or-death for the Party and the nation,” according to Xinhua.

“We will also continue to hold the sharp sword of counter- corruption high,” said Xi.

Uncertainties

Although few doubt the need for anti-graft measures, many officials have either fled China or hedged their bets by investing in overseas property, driven by uncertainties about possible political motivations and how far enforcement will go, Gardner said.

Questions about the extent of liabilities and environmental enforcement under the new law will only add to officials’ anxieties.

Gardner argues that the pollution and corruption crackdowns are already linked.

“There’s a real tie between the anti-corruption campaign and the anti-pollution campaign. I don’t think they should be disentangled entirely,” he said.

“After all, who is responsible for pollution? There are polluting companies, but then there are officials who turn a blind eye to pollution because they want the income and the taxes from those companies,” Gardner said.

Official figures released last year give a hint of the massive scope of pollution problems.

A report by the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) in April said that 59.6 percent of underground water resources in China’s cities tested as “very poor” or “relatively poor” in 2013.

The 15.7 percent rated as “very poor” cannot be used for drinking, even after treatment, under government standards, official media said.

Another report in April by the MEP and the MLR found that 16.1 percent of China’s land and 19.4 of its farmland is polluted, based on surveys conducted from 2005 through 2013.

Other reports have sparked fears that contamination could be far worse.

‘State secret’

Despite public pressure in 2013, the MEP repeatedly refused to release results of a soil study from 2006 to 2010 on the grounds that the findings were a “state secret.”

The new amendments require “environmental protection administrations of the people’s governments at various levels … (to) disclose environmental information pursuant to the law.”

But it is too soon to say whether the government will pursue the war against pollution on its own or as an extension of the anti-corruption campaign.

One major obstacle to stricter enforcement is extreme understaffing of the MEP, Gardner said.

According to a joint study by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council, or cabinet, the MEP has some 400 personnel in Beijing, another 2,000 in “affiliated institutions,” and 500 in five regional offices.

That compares with over 17,000 staffers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the study said.

MEP inspectors at lower levels are subject to pressures from local officials and governments that frequently frustrate disclosure and enforcement, said Gardner.

The new amendments that allow NGOs to take polluters to court may bolster the MEP and make it harder to avoid fines.

On Jan. 6, China’s Supreme Judicial Court issued an interpretation of the new law that may further strengthen NGOs by cutting court costs for environmental suits and making defendants pay the charges if the plaintiffs prevail, state media said.

Harsher penalties?

But numerous reports in recent weeks suggest that polluters have not been deterred by environmental laws, and that the press and public will demand harsher penalties.

On Dec. 25, 14 people from six mining companies were put on trial in central Hubei province for discharging arsenic that poisoned 49 villagers over a five-year period, Xinhua reported.

Five environmental protection officials were among seven people sentenced to jail terms, the news agency said.

Another 12 people were arrested in eastern Zhejiang province for dumping heavy metals into the Oujiang River from a recycling company in Wenzhou City, Xinhua said on Dec. 18.

On the same day, the environmental group Greenpeace reported that Shanghai’s largest coal-fired power plant has been routinely exceeding emissions standards for nitrogen oxides (NOx), a key smog component, since new limits came into force last July.

And in another case that inflamed public anger on Jan. 4, state media published photos of an outfall pipe in southwestern Chongqing Municipality as it dumped raw sewage into the Yangtze River near a pumping station for the city’s drinking water supply.

“Why does such a practice still exist despite the threat of punishments?” Xinhua asked in a report.

The coming months may answer questions of how aggressively the government will wage its war against pollution and how much effect the new law will have.

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Balkans Combat Human Trafficking, Source Of Islamic State Funding

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By Miki Trajkovski

Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative illegal businesses of terrorist organisations like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and they practice it in the Balkans to finance their activities, experts said.

The illicit trade brings in more money than the drug trade or the weapons trade, according Ivan Babanovski, professor at the Security Faculty in Skopje.

“This way, Islamic extremists finance their activities in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and in other hotspots. In the Balkans, money from human trafficking is used to propagate radical Islam and to recruit and train fighters in addition to other funding that their local activists obtain,” Babanovski told SETimes.

Babanovski said authorities should view the illegal immigrants that pass through the Balkans as potential victims of trafficking by terrorist organisations.

“To come to Europe, the traffickers must past the Turkey-Greece-Macedonia route which so far is the most developed one. They belong to ISIL or the 150 other terrorist organisations formed in Iraq and Syria. Under the veil of being migrants, they infiltrate as jihad fighters throughout the EU and get tasks to carry out terrorist or supporting activities,” Babanovski said.

Balkan countries are becoming an important part of the Islamic militants’ human trafficking efforts, said Vasko Nikoloski, professor at MIT University in Skopje.

“It is one of the main sources of financing for ISIL. However, sometimes trafficked women or young girls end up in the ISIL camps where they are trained and used as suicide terrorists for ISIL’s needs,” Nikoloski told SETimes.

An estimated 4 million people are victims of trafficking annually, of which 1.2 million are children.

NATO and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe are helping the Balkans confront all forms of human trafficking, said Trpe Stojanovski, director of the Skopke-based Migration, Asylum, Refugees Regional Initiative (MARRI), which fights human trafficking.

“We talked several times at NATO headquarters in Brussels about co-operation regarding countering human trafficking. It is important that NATO wants to recognise our activities in its reports and plans. NATO’s interest is to foster regional co-operation, and we expect the Alliance increasingly to recognise the region in its projections,” Stojanovski told SETimes.

Stojanovski said MARRI has already organised workshops to develop regional co-operation, exchange of information and study new approaches to counter trafficking together with the US and Switzerland, the region’s main partners.

“By exchanging specific experiences and good practices, we are trying to achieve progress. The forms of human trafficking change, but also open new aspects for our activities which may not be specified in the law yet,” he said.

Regional co-operation on confronting human trafficking is developing at a good pace, according to OSCE officials.

“Our work focuses on four main points: prosecution, protection, prevention and partnership. The key is that we visit the countries and establish contact with the human trafficking victims,” said Ruth Pojman, co-ordinator for combating trafficking in human beings at the OSCE in Vienna.

Pojman added that the office works with the regional governments to explain the new forms of trafficking, but also works with civil society and other partners.

The approach must be regional because the threat is global and no country can deal with it by itself, said Branimir Mandic, director of the Centre for Security Co-operation in Southeast Europe in Bestovje, Croatia.

“It is important to acknowledge that human traffickers adapt very well to existing laws and seek loopholes. That is why our answer should be to find methods through joint co-operation to timely identify such trends,” Mandic told SETimes.

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Gaza: Islamism Os Netanyahu’s Best Asset – OpEd

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By Sébastien Ponsford*

Israel has continuously justified its war on the Palestinians on the basis of the right to defend itself. As early as the 1930s, when anti-colonial voices in the West were gaining resonance, the Zionist narrative swiftly shifted from an openly colonial discourse to justify its claims to Palestine, to a diametrically opposed anti-colonial rhetoric. Zionism successfully adapted to the winds of change and started defining itself as a national force struggling to free itself from British imperialism and Palestinian presence in the ‘eternal homeland of the Jewish People’. Security and self-defence became the central rhetorical devices on which Israel consistently pursued its policies of home demolitions, expulsions, mass incarceration and continuous harassment of the Palestinians, while escaping widespread international condemnation.

The latest massacre of Palestinians in the open-air Gaza prison has made it increasingly difficult for the Likud right-wing coalition to uphold the credibility of the “security” card. Although absurdly claiming to be the most moral army in the world, the Israeli military has launched more than 6000 air and artillery strikes in the densely populated and walled-off Gaza strip, killing more than 2000 Palestinians of which 75 per cent were civilian “collateral damage”. The 2014 Operation Protective Edge was not a surgical, precise and neatly planned operation to uproot Hamas but rather an imprecise and disproportionate bombardment that, in the words of professor Efraim Inbar, Director of Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, was part of the Likud’s attrition strategy to “mow the lawn” in the strip. However, the Netanyahu government has successfully framed the war as one exclusively targeting Hamas, and on a broader spectrum, Islamism.

The emergence of the Islamic State and the obsession in Western media to present the movements as a manifestation of the potential barbaric “nature” of Islam and Muslims – has in fact been a blessing for Netanyahu and his increasingly right-wing coalition. In his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2014, the prime minister stated that “Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.” Netanyahu’s conflation of these Islamic movements serves several purposes. It first works in undermining Hamas’ Palestinian nationalist component. By equating Hamas to ISIS, Netanyahu is attempting to sideline in the Western mass-media discourse the fact that Hamas emerged at the end of the 1980’s as a resistance movement to the prolonged Israeli occupation in the territories. Unlike ISIS that blossomed and operates in a stateless arena – and challenges the nation-state unit – Hamas’ military and political activities have continuously worked along the lines of Palestinian nationalism and lay their territorial claims to no more than Historical Palestine.

Describing ISIS and Hamas as “branches of the same poisonous tree” also legitimizes Israel’s attack on Gaza by framing the war as an effort to resist Islamism – both at home, in Europe and in the US. No longer fully able to present itself as an endless victim of Palestinian aggression, Israel’s prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu is benefiting from a new powerful source of legitimization to justify the occupation and violence against Palestinians. Adding to the “self-defence” discourse, Netanyahu and the Likud are surfing the growing wave of Islamophobia in Europe and the United States to gain support for its military action. Blowing on the embers of Western paranoia around ‘Islamic extremism’, Netanyahu is no longer limiting the justification for his attacks on Gaza to Israel’s security. Rather, Israel’s prime minister is reframing Israel’s military operations as part of a benevolent and necessary action to protect Europe and the United States from the looming “cancer” that in his view is about to reach the West.

In an interview he gave to journalist Greta Van Susteren following his talk at the UN, Netanyahu marketed Israel as an effective rampart to protect the West from the geographical “expansion” of modern Islamist movements in an effort to uphold Israel’s dwindling support after the worldwide waves of pro-Palestinian rallies in support to Gaza this summer. The Likud’s strategy to legitimize the silent cleansing of Palestinians is increasingly emphasizing Israel’s position in the Middle East as an outpost of Western Civilization ready to invest all its energy in the protection of Western values. According to this strand of Zionist discourse, Israel does not wage war against Palestinian civilians, nor does it merely bomb Gaza for the sake of its own safety. Its military action is framed as a part of global struggle to contain radical Islam and uphold the beacon of democracy and human rights. In Netanyahu’s own scaremongering words “Militant Islam is trying to […] take over the world. Its number one target is the United States. […] They want to destroy us so they can get to you.”

Similar to far right-wing movements in Europe that benefit from Islamic fundamentalism to alienate their Muslim communities from an exclusivist idea of national identity, the Netanyahu government is co-opting and galvanizing the anxiety towards Islamism in the United States in order to ensure the continuing support and commitment– both political and economic – of US public opinion. As Zionism is loosing the battle for legitimacy in Europe, Israel has never been as dependent on the 4 billion dollar aid package annually disbursed to the Israel for the funding of its military apparatus.

By linking Hamas to ISIS, and arguing that the war on Gaza is part of a pre-emptive strategy to limit the spread of Islamism to the core of the “free world” –Netanyahu is strategically taking advantage of recent events in the Islamic world and Europe to preserve the international support the Jewish State is so desperately craving. By branding Israel as a Western enclave in the Middle East, committed to the protection of its main Western allies – the Likud is creating a smokescreen meant to divert its continuous violation of International Law and its war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The war on Gaza has been labelled a war against Hamas and Islamism in order to align Israeli military action with Western calls for intervention in the Middle East against ISIS. The violence committed this summer in Gaza is however part of the endless Israel’s effort to crush the Palestinians’ daily struggle and effort to resist an on-going occupation. A state possessing such precise military technology as Israel, does not simply demolish entire neighbourhoods, schools, universities and civilian families trapped within ghetto walls it has built to contain them. And even if Israel’s claim to exclusively target Hamas were true – the fact that it proceeded in the killing of 2191 civilian as part of the inevitable “collateral damage” raises serious questions on the value of Palestinian lives Israel so vehemently claims to respect.

Netanyahu’s strategy is to foment fear, uphold the dwindling legitimacy that his government enjoys in the West and conceal the obvious reality of Israel’s present objective: the collective punishment of Palestinians for their effort to resist occupation – whether through guerrilla warfare or through their strength in refusing to give up, continuing to live, work, study and rebuild the ruins of their desolated ghetto.

* Sébastien Ponsford is a student of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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Encyclopedias: The Truths Du Jour – Analysis

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Encyclopedias tend to shrink the past, revealing a society’s limited understanding of the world.

By Immanuel Wallerstein*

The concept of an encyclopedia was invented to offer a comprehensive, yet relatively compact collection of truths that scholars could offer about the world in which the authors and readers live. With some regularity, new compilers create new encyclopedias. In effect, they offer an update or, more accurately, a revision, since old truths often seem to disappear in newer encyclopedias.

Encyclopedias are in fact historical documents of the era in which they were compiled. We can learn much about the evolution of the world’s institutions and modes of thinking by using encyclopedias as an historical tool. Not only containers of different truths, they enable systematic comparison among diverse eras and language communities.

The latest twist on encyclopedias is Wikipedia – which permits, indeed invites, immediate, constant revision by readers, turning truths into a truly ephemeral reality. Furthermore, there are multiple Wikipedias in different languages.

The pace of change in our world has become extreme. Debate about what is happening, the explanation of why, and the expected outcomes over the coming decades is intense. In this intellectual turmoil, there’s quarrel about descriptive names. In fact, such names do matter since these frame the discussion, pushing us to see some truths and miss others.

There was a time not so long ago when, in our discussions about world affairs, we spoke about “development.” It’s almost forgotten now that the United Nations designated the 1970s as the “decade of development.” Later, we began to speak instead about “globalization,” something supposed to be new, good and inescapable.

Then many people began to contest whether globalization was new or good or inescapable. Some called for “alterglobalization,” that is, alternative paths to achieving the good society. In 2008 there was a noticeable major happening, collapse of the US housing market in the United States, causing a “recession” that spread across the world. The search began for an explanation and remedy. There was also a search for a descriptive category to analyze what was happening.

A clear winner in the last five years has been “global studies.” In 2012, Sage published a four-volume, 2,072-page Encyclopedia of Global Studies. In their introduction, the editors say the encyclopedia “has been created to be the standard reference work for the emerging field of global studies … [to] analyze all aspects of the global and globalizing world.” Although some argue, the editors say, that global studies are new, most think these have a long history. The list of categories that the editors selected, informed by workshops with scholars and advisory committees, resulted in more than 300 entries, many related.

In perusing these items, one comes across unexpected topics. Some topics, associated with a particular scholar, written by that scholar, offer a useful short summary of the author’s work and material well known to scholars in the field that may serve as introductions for undergraduates.

In asserting the encyclopedia’s “new ground,” the editors argue that it covers topics “in a systematic and comprehensive fashion from the specifically global perspective.” The advantage of the term “global studies” is that it is inclusive and comprehensive. However, at the same time, the term lacks clear direction. This can be measured by comparing this encyclopedia both to one published in 1968 and a 2012 “handbook.”

In 1968 a 15-volume International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences was published to great acclaim. Its editor asserted that “the major aims of this encyclopedia are to reflect the rapid development of the social sciences throughout the world.”

An immediate striking difference is that the 1968 encyclopedia is “international,” not “global.” More important, in its coverage, the 1968 encyclopedia was about the changing social sciences, as informed and affected by changing world realities. The 2012 encyclopedia is about changing world realities, as informed and affected by changing social science. In 1968, social science was riding the crest of its influence and legitimacy, and the editor takes efforts to show the ways in which this was so. He could not know that, fortuitously, the world-revolution of 1968 would soon diminish and constrain this role.

The 1968 encyclopedia was itself successor to another 15-volume Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, published in 1930-1935. Alvin Johnson, in 1968 the nonagenarian surviving associate editor of the earlier encyclopedia and honorary editor of the 1968 one, said: “I have always held that an encyclopedia, particularly one of the social sciences, should remain a historical document of its time and that each generation should have an encyclopedia – new from the ground up.”

This wisdom might suggest that had the two encyclopedias been written in the same spirit, the historical moments were still different. Just one example, the 2012 encyclopedia has entries for “American revolution” and “French revolution” but none for the Russian or Chinese revolutions. One cannot imagine a 1968 encyclopedia of global studies making such a choice.

Other entries would not have been made earlier: animal rights, offshore banking, gay and lesbian movement, internet, Tobin Tax. When another encyclopedia is issued in 2040, how many present entries will disappear? Some of these definitive entries may seem invalid in another year or two.

Claiming to be the standard reference work is a risky game. Yet this 2012 encyclopedia does serve as a document that will be treasured by future historians looking back at this moment.

Could today’s issues be framed differently right now? To answer that, I turn a handbook and not an encyclopedia. Handbooks are usually single volumes and contain articles, not categories. But this handbook – Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis – is equally about the contemporary world in the light of the historical past. The editors claim it’s different in that it was compiled from the bottom up. They appealed to “the community of world-systems scholars” to offer papers and chose 80.

They claim, as do the editors of the 2012 encyclopedia, to be broadly inclusive and without “a single body of theory.” Other claims: that “world-systems analysts interpret human worlds as whole systems … [doing this] with a sense of historical depth”; that there is a “close link between world-systems analysis and social and political activism”; and that the entries share certain qualities in that “They are globally aware and are particularly sensitive to global hierarchies…. They read and cite the scholars from multiple disciplines. They take history seriously…. In this collective space we study the world in order to improve it.”

In many ways the handbook is closer to the 1968 encyclopedia in being an analysis of social science, as informed by the changing world rather than the other way around. It differs from the others in asserting outright its links with activism.

So how different in the end are the encyclopedia and the handbook? The two editors of the handbook are contributors to the encyclopedia. The encyclopedia includes various entries on world-systems analysis. The typical essay in the handbook is longer than those in the encyclopedia as are the typical essays in the 1968 and the 1930-1935 encyclopedias. The articles in the handbook each present analysis and point of view of the authors.

Libraries may contain all of these works, and indeed the original 18th-century encyclopedia of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Little seems to be “definitive,” but much can be learned by using these documents, provided scholars approach each with skepticism about what the editors promise.

*Immanuel Wallerstein is senior research scientist in sociology at Yale University. He is the former president of the International Sociological Association. He writes in three domains of world-systems analysis: the historical development of the modern world-system; the contemporary crisis of the capitalist world-economy; the structures of knowledge. Books include, respectively, The Modern World-System (4 vols.); Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century; and Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms.

Encyclopedia of Global Studies, 4 Volumes, Helmut K. Anheier and Mark Jurgensmeyer, eds. Sage Reference, 2012.

Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, E.R.A. Seligman, ed. Macmillan, 1930-1935.

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, D.L. Sills, ed. Macmillan Co & Free Press, 1968.

Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis, Salvatore J. Babones and Christopher Chase-Dunn, eds. New York: Routledge, 2012.

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Croatia Freezes Swiss Franc Exchange Rate

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By Sven Milekic

Worried by the plight of tens of thousands of borrowers with loans in Swiss francs, Croatia has decided to fix the exchange rate to the kuna at last week’s value for a year.

Croatia has stepped in to help borrowers with increasingly expensive loans in Swiss francs by freezing the exchange rate for a year.

Since last Thursday, the exchange rate of the franc to Croatian kuna has risen by about 20 per cent.

The hike occurred after the Swiss National Bank abolished the cap that had prevented the frank from rising against the euro beyond a particular point.

A similar rise in the franc early in 2009 left many Croat borrowers unable to keep up their monthly payments on loans for cars and houses taken out in francs.

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic on Monday evening said the franc would be pegged to level it had before Thursday’s sudden rise – 6.39 Croatian kuna to one franc.

“The cost of the burden will go on financial institutions,” Milanovic commented, referring to the banks.

“Within the next year we can have discussions on converting loans connected to the franc into kuna loans, but this will require the approval of the Croatian National Bank,” Milanovic added.

The centre-left government reached its decision after a meeting with representatives of business banks and the national bank, HNB.

The president of the Croatian banking association, Zoran Bohacek, said the banks were willing to assume the financial burden of pegging the exchange rate for a few months, pending a longer-term solution.

“If the banks themselves consider that this is not in accordance with legal norms, they will decide for themselves whether to take legal action,” Duhacek noted.

The value of the Swiss currency has meanwhile risen further to 7.66 kuna to one franc.

Franak, an NGO established in 2009 to help Croats struggling with loans in francs, estimates that around 60,000 Croat loans are connected to the franc, so the recent rise in its value could potentially affect between 200,000 and 300,000 people in Croatia overall.

According to the HNB, the value of all loans connected to franc in Croatia is around 3.1 billion euro. About 2.7 billion are private housing loans. Mortgages connected to francs represent 36.5 per cent of all housing loans in the country.

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Free Speech Case On Right To Boycott Goes Before Washington Supreme Court

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The constitutionality of a Washington State law protecting citizens from meritless lawsuits that undermine free speech rights was defended today in oral arguments before the Washington Supreme Court.

The lawsuit at issue had challenged the Olympia Food Co-op board’s decision to boycott goods from Israel in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. The law protects against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, which are filed against defendants because of their speech or public participation on a matter of public concern. SLAPPs are brought to silence the defendants by burdening them with the costs and stress of a lawsuit, irrespective of the ultimate merit and outcome of the case. The case was filed by five co-op members against 16 current and former board members. A lower court swiftly dismissed the case as a SLAPP and held that participation in the boycott is protected by the First Amendment, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeals.

“This case is part of a nationwide orchestrated effort to silence speech critical of Israel and supportive of Palestinian human rights,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Staff Attorney Maria LaHood. “It is also a prime example of the importance of Anti-SLAPP laws: three years after this meritless SLAPP was filed,
concerned citizens who were once volunteer co-op board members―and no longer even serve on the board―remain embroiled in a lawsuit over speech protected by the First Amendment. It’s long past time for this harassment-by-lawsuit to be stopped.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights said it has fought myriad forms of repression against people who speak out on behalf of Palestinian rights in the United States. These silencing efforts have included attempts to curb student activism; to pass legislation that limits the right to boycott; and to punish university faculty for their speech critical of Israel, as in the case of Professor Steven Salaita, whom CCR also represents.

“We believe that Washington law appropriately protects the rights of ordinary citizens to take a stand on the Israeli-Palestinian controversy without fear of a retaliatory lawsuit designed, in the words of our Legislature, to cause ‘great expense, harassment, and interruption of their productive activities,’” said Bruce E.H. Johnson of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, who argued the case before the Washington Supreme Court today.

Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals previously rejected the challenge to the constitutionality of the Anti-SLAPP statute. Both courts also awarded and affirmed, respectively, $10,000 in statutory damages for each of the sixteen defendants, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs.

“We’re entering our fourth year of dealing with this frivolous lawsuit,” defendant Grace Cox said. “Plaintiffs are suing us with the express intent to force the Co-op to end its boycott. Using the legal system to attempt to bully the Co-op out of supporting the people of Palestine is unacceptable. This is exactly why Washington State citizens need this anti-SLAPP law.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is counsel in Davis, et al., v. Cox, et al with CCR cooperating counsel Barbara Harvey from Detroit, Michigan, and Steven Goldberg from Portland, Oregon, along with Seattle attorneys Bruce E.H. Johnson, Ambika Doran, and Angela Galloway of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

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1,700 Private Jets Fly To Davos To Discuss Global Warming

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A squadron of 1,700 private jets are rumbling into Davos, Switzerland, this week to discuss global warming and other issues as the annual World Economic Forum gets underway.

The influx of private jets is so great, the Swiss Armed Forces has been forced to open up a military air base for the first time ever to absorb all the super rich flying their private jets into the event, reports Newsweek.

“Decision-makers meeting in Davos must focus on ways to reduce climate risk while building more efficient, cleaner, and lower-carbon economies,” former Mexican president Felipe Calderon told USA Today.

Davos, which has become a playground of sorts for the global elite, is expected to feature at least 40 heads of state and 2,500 top business executives. Former Vice President-turned-carbon billionaire Al Gore and rapper Pharrell Williams will be there as well; each plans to discuss global warming and recycling respectively.

Another big theme of the mega-rich confab will be combating “income inequality” and how the world’s rich can pay their fair share to reduce the gap between top earners and the lower class. Admission price for Davos: roughly $40,000 a ticket.

The World Economic Forum will also feature discussions on gender equality and opportunities for women. According to the World Economic Forum’s own statistics, just 17% of all 2015 participants are women.

The 45th World Economic Forum meeting begins on Wednesday and runs through Saturday.

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Iran World Trade Center Organizing Trade Trips To US

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By Dalga Khatinoglu*

President of Iran World Trade Center Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour has said that the center is making arrangements to send trade delegations to the United States and Europe.

After several years of suspending the travel of Iranian economic delegations to the United States and Europe, several Iranian delegations have been scheduled to have a series of trips to the U.S. to spur bilateral economic ties.

An Iranian-American source told Trend Jan. 16 that the travel plans were “coordinated and organized by the Iran World Trade Center”.

The source said that the delegations will be dispatched to the U.S. after March 21.

Sabzalipour told Trend Agency that “mutual visits of Iranian and U.S. entrepreneurs are on the agenda of the Iran World Trade Center now, but not for the coming days. However, such visits will be organized when convenient.”

“World trade centers have the potentiality to make arrangement for exchanging trade delegations between member states around the world. Organizing trade delegations to countries which have political relations with Iran is possible in the shortest possible time. But, the U.S. is the only country which has limited its economic relations with Iran due to imposing unilateral sanctions against Iran. The unilateral sanctions have restricted economic ties between the two countries. However, paving the way for resuming economic relations with the country is not impossible. A thaw in relations is necessary. We have used the same method for progressing economic ties with the United states.”

According to him, powerful figures in the two countries advocate exchanging trade delegations, but neither the government nor any government company are directly involved in dispatching trade delegations to the U.S. and Europe.

However, a senior U.S. government official told Trend Jan. 16 that “the U.S. government has nothing to do with any visit of any Iranian trade delegation and does not encourage it or welcome it at the current time”.

Sabzalipour added that a number of renowned European and U.S. companies in the fields of investment, real estate and construction, oil, car, electronics, telecommunications, and service sectors have been negotiation with Iran World Trade Center in order to be present in the Iranian market. “It is hoped that the companies would start activity in Iran if the nuclear talks are fruitful.”

The last Iranian trade delegation was sent to the U.S. three years ago. The head of Iran World Trade Center said “Lack of government support and some restrictions, which should not be publicized by media outlets, have interrupted sending other delegations. If the government resumes support, Iran World Trade Center will expedite implementing such programs.”

According to Iran Custom Administration, over 90 percent of Iran’s exports are destined to eastern countries and over 75 percent of Iran’s imports are originated from eastern countries.

Sabzalipour noted that Iran has had a tendency toward the West during history, so that its industrial units, including Iran’s aviation industry have been established and manufactured by western countries, especially by the U.S., but since the sanctions against Iran have been escalated, China and Russia have held greater shares of the Iranian market.

“It should be noted that China and Russia should be regarded as alternatives just in the short term. For the time being, the two countries gains huge economic benefits in Iran.”

*Dalga Khatinoglu is an expert on Iran’s energy sector, head of Trend Agency’s Iran news service

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Oil Price Collapse Hurting Some More Than Others – Analysis

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By Nick Cunningham

US oil and gas rig counts dropped to their lowest level in over four years, falling by an additional 74 units for the week ending on January 16. The lower count provides fresh evidence that low oil prices are forcing drillers to pare back operations and slash spending.

While that may soon begin to cut into actual production figures, a new Wood Mackenzie report finds a lot of nuance in the oil patch, painting a complex picture of what to expect in 2015. The report identifies several trends beyond the simple narrative that low prices will force a cutback in drilling.

First, Wood Mackenzie estimates that at $40 per barrel, many producing Wells could be shut in. In fact, about 1.5 million barrels per day of production would be “cash negative” – meaning it wouldn’t even make sense to continue pumping at the most marginal wells, which tend to have extremely low-output. These “stripper wells,” which only produce 15 barrels of oil per day or less, have high costs given their level of production.

Wells producing such a tiny flow of oil may seem like a nonissue, but with hundreds of thousands of them dotting the country, they collectively account for about one-tenth of the nation’s production. As these wells become unprofitable, production should start declining.

Elsewhere, larger projects face a complicating set of factors that could slow drilling, but not as fast as some think. That’s because slowing activity is also pushing down the rental rates that drillers pay for rigs. With weak demand, drillers can negotiate down rig prices. This leads to lower costs, helping drillers stay in the game.

Another interesting twist occurring from lower oil prices is the fact that the economics of natural gas production have been relatively enhanced. To be sure, natural gas prices are also low, but over the last several years, the revenues generated from a barrel of oil were so much greater than the equivalent form of energy in natural gas. That pushed companies to focus on wet gas and oil.

For the equivalent amount of energy, natural gas priced at $3 per MMBtu is equal to about $17 to $20 per barrel of oil. That is still significantly lower than the $50 oil is trading for now, but the disparity is not nearly as severe as when oil was trading for $100.

With that said, the fact is that oil and gas are often produced in tandem, so a drilling cutback could hurt the gas patch as well. Nevertheless, the composition of drilling could change in favor of more gas-rich areas relative to before.

Another intriguing trend forecasted by Wood Mackenzie is the resilience of offshore oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore wells are much more expensive, but have much longer production lives. They also have long lead times, making cutbacks less feasible in the short run. And unlike shale wells, production is steady and can last decades, so the current period of low oil prices won’t worry corporate executives who take a long-term view. As a result, while rigs start vanishing from shale regions, they should remain steady in the Gulf.

Still, it is not as if American shale will suddenly go into decline. Oil production across the U.S. continues to rise. In the first full week of January, oil production ticked up by an additional 60,000 barrels per day to 9.19 million barrels per day, according to the latest EIA data. Wood Mackenzie predicts that the industry will continue to consolidate and focus on the most profitable areas while finishing up projects still in the pipeline. That means the Eagle Ford in South Texas first and foremost, which remains one of the lowest cost shale basins in the country.

The thousands of oil wells across the United States are not uniform. The collapse in oil prices is hurting pretty much everyone, but some areas – core shale regions, and the Gulf of Mexico – will weather the storm better than others.

Source:http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Oil-Price-Collapse-Hurting-Some-More-Than-Others.html

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Swiss Currency Shock Spoils Signor Draghi’s Party – Analysis

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By Brendan Brown*

In Switzerland, dramatic gestures of political defiance are often times a complicated business, simultaneously reflecting both a deep tradition of nationalist romanticism and an equally deep and hard-eyed realism. When General Henri Guisan delivered his famous Rütli meadow Réduit National address to the entire Swiss officer corps in July 1940—promising perpetual resistance to any future German invasion—the political elite in Zurich were already negotiating an economic treaty with Berlin in order to align Swiss interests with a likely Nazi-dominated Europe.

And a similar dualism is now apparent in the monetary policy announcements that have just produced Switzerland’s currency shock.

First, there is the romanticism. Switzerland has dramatically exited the global 2 percent inflation standard, smashing the previous floor on the franc’s exchange rate against the euro, and doing so with no advance notice to International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde—and barely a week before European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s anticipated rollout of a major ECB quantitative easing (QE) plan on January 22. In effect, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Zurich’s political leadership decided that even a near-term period of falling prices and associated market disruptions would be preferable to continued Swiss shadow membership in a euro-zone being inexorably dragged by Draghi and his allies into a likely monetary Dark Age of chronic financial crisis and recession. For a precedent, financial historians can look back to the early 1970s, when Switzerland (joined by West Germany) declined to follow the Richard Nixon/Arthur Burns-era Federal Reserve Bank off the diving board into deep-end inflation, repudiated the Bretton Woods system, introduced monetarist regimes, and allowed their currencies to float upwards.

And then there is the realism. For quite some time now, and long before last week, Zurich—and every other interested observer—has been aware that the ECB is planning to launch a significant QE program for the euro on January 22. That expectation was already fuelling a huge flow of funds into Switzerland—on the assumption that the SNB would not engage in further QE itself and that the Swiss franc might therefore jump in value, especially if the exchange-rate floor were actually suspended. In order to maintain that floor, the SNB would have been required to make further, massive purchases of foreign currencies including the euro. But its last such adventure (during 2010-12) resulted in painful financial losses, a ferocious domestic political backlash led by Switzerland’s rightist People’s Party, and a national referendum in the fall of 2014 which, though ultimately unsuccessful, would have seriously restricted SNB’s future authority and latitude.

Much of Switzerland’s foreign exchange reserves are now apparently invested in non-euro currencies, including (especially) the U.S. dollar. So, given the recent appreciation and relative strength of the dollar, the Swiss might now float the franc—even were it to settle near parity against the euro—at considerably reduced risk of further domestic political embarrassment or exchange-rate loss or general economic pain. Just to make sure, the SNB has resolved to outdo the ECB in driving money-market rates into sub-zero territory (towards minus-1-percent per annum). Who knows? Maybe in a few years the combined package will again be producing inflation consistent with a global 1-2 percent per annum target! And maybe everyone in Washington and Brussels can be mollified in the meantime if Switzerland continues to cooperate with the EU and G-20 in the dismantling of its own bank-secrecy regulations!

Readers of this article are free to choose whichever interpretation of these events they prefer. My own preference—because I believe it better fits the facts—is for the realist version. But I would not dismiss the romantic alternative as entirely irrelevant. Romanticism is not infrequently a powerful political dynamic.

In any case, and either way, “Swiss defiance” and the “free franc” are certain to tarnish Mario Draghi’s January 22 ECB QE announcement, giving it a sordid allure. And in Germany, where Draghi’s plans are widely feared and loathed among ordinary citizens, Switzerland’s gesture will seem like a ray of light and hopeful model in an otherwise sombre picture. German romantics may even begin fantasizing about their own future exit from European Monetary Union and global currency-policy madness—and a return to the glory years of the Emminger Bundesbank and the hard Deutsche mark. There is already an anti-euro party (Alternative für Deutschland or “AfD”) in Germany poised to take advantage of such sentiment (and populist anti-immigration fervor to boot). Euro-hostile elements exist even within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing CDU party, and disgruntlement with the Bundesbank and the German establishment generally—for their failure to insulate the country from the hangover effects of the continent’s extended monetary bender—crosses all partisan boundaries.

The United States may have launched the global 2 percent inflation standard (in July 1996, when a now-infamous Federal Open Market Committee meeting endorsed Janet Yellen’s call for low inflation—rather than price stability—as the long-run goal of Federal Reserve Bank policy). But it was a paragon of the German establishment, ex-Bundesbank board member Otmar Issing, who did more than anyone else—while serving as ECB chief economist from 1998-2006—to shackle Europe with the same chains. It could not have come at a worse time. Accelerating productivity growth (resulting from epiphenomena like the information-technology revolution and globalization) were putting downward pressure on prices and wages across many sectors of the European economy. But that was not a problem demanding a solution. It was perfectly benign.

Advocates of artificially low central-bank interest rates—proponents of higher inflation, in effect—commonly warn than any decline in prices presents a “deflationary danger.” Not so. In a world of ideal monetary stability prices would remain more-or-less constant over the very long-run, but there would be a natural rhythm of prices over short- and medium-term periods determined by the variable pace of productivity growth, the business cycle, the evolving nature of technological change, and any number of other factors. Sometimes prices go up. Sometimes prices go down. They tend to go down—along with wages—during recessionary episodes. And there is a not-unreasonable expectation, among both consumers and producers, that they will tend to rise again in the subsequent economic upturn. It is precisely this anticipated pro-cyclical pattern of prices that causes businesses and households to bring spending forward during a recession—which is how the market’s invisible hand stabilized economies for generations under the gold standard, for example.

Attempts by the Fed and ECB to over-ride this natural rhythm have involved heavy manipulation of interest rates, below their natural levels, a strategy that paradoxically all but guarantees exactly the kind of chaotic market volatility its designers are hoping to avoid. At very low interest rates, attractive returns on “ordinary” and “safe” investments become next to impossible, and borrowing for dangerously leveraged speculative investments in this year’s “hot” market sector becomes next to irresistible. In the late 1990s, high productivity growth in the midst of the IT revolution should have brought prices gradually down. Instead, under the easy-money and “low-inflation” policies of the Greenspan Fed, we got the IT bubble—and its catastrophic, predictable bust. The same thing happened in Europe during the early-mid 2000s when an ECB battle against “threatened deflation” —once again, ultra-easy monetary policy in pursuit of the 2 percent inflation Holy Grail—produced the great sovereign-debt and real-estate market bubble and bust from which Europe is still struggling (unsuccessfully) to recover. And the same thing is happening right now (as I have argued elsewhere) in oil and other commodity markets.

Yes, the previous and current Bundesbank chiefs (Axel Weber and Jens Weidmann respectively) have both objected to the ECB’s growing transformation into a transfer agency: taking surplus funds from financially strong countries, principally Germany, and lending them into weaker countries to prop up tottering banks and national treasuries, complete with an implicit default guarantee courtesy of the German taxpayer. Yet the Bundesbank chiefs have allowed themselves to get fixated on these profit-and-loss-account questions, the “trees,” rather than remaining focused on the much more important and consequential “forest”-level issue of monetary stability—and the degree to which ECB policies have worked to erode it.

The great pity of European Monetary Union is that it has been characterized by serious monetary instability since its very inception. The euro has not become a continent-wide Deutsche mark, as German citizens were originally promised. Instead, almost from the start, the ECB has finely copied every mistake of the Federal Reserve. And it is now proposing to copy another one: this week, by all accounts, the ECB will join the Fed’s “war against deflation” using a wide-range of similarly non-conventional tools and hope-for-the-best experimentation. Bundesbank officials may privately grumble. But there is little indication that they will take serious steps to reverse their slow and steady retreat on essential principles of monetary stability. Inflation targets should be met gradually, they say; certain unconventional policies may be temporarily acceptable so long as German taxpayers aren’t left solely on the hook. This is all too tame and misses the big picture.

That picture now includes a wide range of global asset markets already deeply infected by price inflation. What are the implications of the Swiss shock for the near and medium course of this disease?

A first point is that the shock inflicted huge financial loss on carry traders in the franc. The fantastic initial rise of the franc after the SNB announcement revealed the extent to which carry traders had been funding themselves (in the apparently super-low long-term Swiss interest-rate markets) on the assumption that Switzerland’s exchange-rate floor was sacrosanct. That floor disappeared, those traders then made a mad scramble for the exits, and currency-market chaos predictably ensued. Is there a lesson here for all those carry trades built on super-low Japanese interest-rate loans? Could the Japanese political and monetary elite also at some point decide that enough is enough—that they too might better exit the global 2 percent inflation standard, rather than continuing to follow Washington and Frankfurt in their financially destabilizing fantasy fight against deflation? True, no such prospect seems imminent. But who can be sure—especially about anything involving Japan’s famously non-transparent and unbalanced political system? Yen depreciation and inflation are widely and deeply unpopular in Japan. A year from now, if the Japanese economy has entered a fairly strong recovery but inflation remains below 1 percent, will the Bank of Japan have the political support necessary for another round of quantitative easing?

A second point is the knock-on effects of continental Europe’s sub-zero rates, now most deeply negative in Switzerland. Surely in the face of this new reality—0 percent on 10-year Swiss government bonds, 0.45 percent on 10-year German government bonds, significantly negative rates on euro and Swiss money-market deposits, and U.S. economic growth threatened by weakness as the oil boom turns to bust—the attractions of the yellow metal increase. Maybe the next big U.S. monetary move will be … more QE! Yes, the floating franc could provide some defensive properties for investors. But how reliable will that defence prove to be if the SNB itself is engaged in unprecedented experimentation with sub-zero rates, and if the franc begins to demand a significant safe-haven premium against other currencies?

Finally, Zurich’s smashed floor on the franc/euro exchange rate could prove to be a wake-up call to those many global investors who have been happily sunning themselves in a wide range of overheated market sectors where prices have been inflated by debt-leveraged, better-than-Fed-rate-hungry buyers. Maybe they will be jolted from their reveries and recover some long-repressed memory of the hard Swiss franc era. And maybe that memory will get them started thinking whether they, too, a whole world full of investors, should follow Zurich for the exits before the crowded trades and asset-bubble markets fall apart for good.

About the author:
*Brendan Brown is a monetary economist whose areas of special expertise include monetarism in theory and practice, Austrian School monetary tradition, European monetary integration, Japanese monetary issues, the global flow of capital, and international financial history.

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SEC Examinations Of Private Equity Uncover Widespread Violations Of Law Or Material Weaknesses

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Last week, the private equity industry scored its first victory in its campaign to roll back the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory oversight of private equity fund advisers. Under the guise of a simple ‘technical correction’, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act. Title IV of that Act will likely exempt some advisers to large private equity firms from registering with the SEC as broker-dealers and eliminate the investor protections such registration provides.

The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the financial crisis, subjects the private equity industry to broad regulatory oversight for the first time in its history. SEC examinations have found that in half the cases it reviewed PE fund advisers had evaded their fiduciary responsibility to investors or violated securities law requiring registration as a broker-dealer. An exemption from registering as broker-dealers in connection with the merger and acquisition activities of their portfolio companies – a legal requirement that predates Dodd-Frank and has mostly been ignored by PE firms and fund advisers – is high on the industry’s wish list. H.R. 37 provides partial relief from this requirement. The industry hopes that this will set the stage for further roll backs in regulatory oversight. Ultimately, the PE industry wants to do away with the Dodd-Frank requirement that general partners of larger PE funds must register with the SEC.

A new report by Senior Economist Eileen Appelbaum of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) looks at recent SEC investigations of private equity funds and demonstrates why it remains important to continue to regulate the industry. The report, “Private Equity and the SEC after Dodd-Frank,” reviews the widespread practices in the industry, uncovered by the SEC, that have unfairly enriched some private equity firms at the expense of pension funds and other investors in their funds.

“For over 30 years, advisers to large PE funds enjoyed an exemption from the long-standing requirement that investment advisers must register with the SEC,” said Appelbaum. “This allowed them to avoid regulatory oversight and the enforcement of securities law. Dodd-Frank changed this by requiring advisers to private equity funds to register with the SEC.”

The new reporting requirements have enabled the SEC to identify serious abuses by some fund advisers. Appelbaum discusses the implications of these misdeeds for the limited partners who are the investors in these funds. Improper behavior by general partners includes manipulating the value of companies in their funds’ portfolios, waiving their fiduciary responsibility to investors (including pension funds), misallocating PE firm expenses and inappropriately charging them to investors, failing to share income from monitoring fees charged to portfolio companies with their limited partners, and acting as broker-dealers and collecting transactions fees from portfolio companies without registering as broker-dealers as required by law.

As the report shows, enforcement to date has been weak. The SEC’s revelations have caused a small number of PE firms to voluntarily rein in their funds’ most egregious practices, but most firms have not attempted to make amends for past violations or stop such practices in the new funds they sponsor. The industry would like to water down the regulatory and oversight powers of the SEC and wants to avoid prosecution for past violations of securities law. Dodd- Frank has just begun to expose the billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains for the partners or top executives at these PE firms.

The overly broad wording in Title IV of H.R. 37 is widely seen as a victory for the private equity industry. But, according to this report, it is a step in the wrong direction for the American public.

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