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Delhi Poll: Major Parties Playing Around – Analysis

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By Niranjan Sahoo and Shubh Soni*

Delhi has been in the limbo for the past 13 months with different governments being in-charge — an AAP government which never got out of dharna-mode, an outgoing UPA-2 caught up in scams and scandals, and the BJP government tasked with reviving economic growth in the country. This situation is unfamiliar to Delhi as it, prior to 2013 elections, had a stable government for 15 years, under Congress Chief Minister Sheila Dixit. However, since then three governments in 13 months meant that only limited attention has been paid to the issues plaguing the national capital. And in some ways, this has made the ongoing election campaign interesting.

Key issues

One of the main issues of the 2013 election was corruption. Arvind Kejriwal had promised to enact Jan Lokpal (Ombudsman) within 15 days of coming to power and bring all public servants come under its purview. This time round, he has not set any deadline for passing the Bill, although it is still the first point in their 70-point action plan. To counter AAP’s anti-corruption crusade, the BJP has declared Kiran Bedi as their chief ministerial candidate as it would put the party in serious contention on the issue of corruption and clean governance. It believes her stature as a tough, honest cop during her IPS days, along with her stint in the Anna Hazare led India Against Corruption movement, will put her and the party in good stead with the voters.

Direct democracy (through decentralisation and participatory governance) that the AAP used last time with great flourish has found top place this time too. It promises Swarajya through mohalla sabhas (to ensure citizen participation and engagement in the decision making progress). Other parties have also jumped in to the fray with their versions of direct democracy. However, there is much to be sceptical about. First is the structure of institutions. However, none of the parties provide clear cut answer on modalities, scale and operational aspects of such entities. Who will the mohalla sabhas comprise of? Who will chair their meetings? Second is the question of accountability. Who do the people heading such institutions report to? How can it be ensured that they can descend into mob-rule? Third, is there even a need for creating such new institutions? Wouldn’t be it wiser to strengthen already existing empowering tools such as much talked about Bhagidari, and recently enacted service guarantee act?

Another issue that has taken considerable traction in the ongoing election campaign is water and issues surrounding it. To do a quick recheck on water availability and state of water supply, 81.30 percent of Delhi households receive water supply through a piped source, according to the economic survey of Delhi in 2012-13. This means out of an estimated 33.41 lakh households in Delhi (as per the 2011 census), 27.16 lakh have access to piped water supply system. While these numbers seem encouraging, the problem is the supply of water is erratic and the water supplied is not always safe to drink. This fits in well with the political strategy of AAP, and that of the Congress, of providing water subsidies. The BJP has decided to take a more fiscally prudent approach by promising improvements in distribution infrastructure to ensure smooth and uninterrupted supply. The electoral outcome would tell whether such fiscally prudent promise would go well with average voters.

For the right reason, electricity issue (tariff and access) has taken the centre stage of campaign. During the run-up to the 2013 election too, electricity prices were a major policy plank for the AAP and the BJP. The AAP repeatedly claimed that the then Sheila Dixit government was responsible for the high prices as it was done in collusion with Discom (distribution companies) operators. Their solution was, and still is, to audit the accounts of the Discoms), and reduce prices by 50%. There is an implied assumption that the Discoms have indulged in malpractices which have caused a tariff hike of at least 50%. BJP, which too had promised 30 percent reduction in tariff, has now outlined a new strategy — increasing competition among service providers and providing consumers the right to choose their utility provider. The Congress has taken a cue from both the BJP and the AAP, promising increased competition and cheaper electricity by “reigning in the private companies”.

Law and order issue also remains one of the top agendas in the campaigns. The law and order situation, particularly with regard to violence against women, has reached an alarming state. The brutal rape and murder of Nirbhaya in 2012, and more recently the rape of a woman travelling in the Uber cab, have left the people in Delhi shaken and angry. Last year saw the situation worsen with a 18.3% rise in crime against women and 31.6% rise in cases of rape (according to Delhi police figures). To combat this malice, the political parties have come out with innovative ideas. The AAP claims it will form a Citizens’ Security Force with a branch in each ward, to provide security to anyone in distress, but with a special focus on women, children, and senior citizens. While this may sound good, there is fear that such initiative may take ugly turn (will mete out vigilante justice). Kiran Bedi of the BJP has declared a 25-point blueprint for women’s safety. A comprehensive document based on “6Ps” — People, Police, Prosecution, Politicians, Press and Prison — the former cop has detailed out preventive measures, corrective actions, and promised regular reviews of security measures. The Congress, which was at the receiving end of public protest during the Nirbahya incident, has vowed to ensure better policing and setting up of CCTV cameras, special training of police force with respect to women, and gender training of the entire Government work force. It is important to note that none of the political parties have yet analysed the issue of liability of radio-cabs. While these services might be fairly recent, their popularity is soaring and political foresight is needed to ensure safety of citizens and accountability of service providers. Any political party that takes the rein of Delhi and looks to implement law and order reforms faces the herculean task of bringing the Delhi Police under its jurisdiction.

The issue of full Statehood to Delhi is also becoming an interesting agenda. On numerous occasions, the state government is left handicapped in implementing reforms as municipal corporations and multitudes of urban bodies (over 80 local agencies, authorities and boards) do not come under its ambit. What makes the situation worse is that these civic bodies often have overlapping projects, and at times competing interests, which leads to severe governance crises. To resolve this issue, the Congress and the AAP, in their manifestos, have categorically backed the idea for full statehood, though neither of them has laid out a roadmap how this could be achieved. The BJP, which was on the forefront of the campaign for statehood during the Congress rule (even in 2013 manifesto, it was for full statehood), has now taken a u-turn and wants broad based deliberation on this “sensitive” issue.

Urban poor

Another issue, like in 2013, is urban poor. Each party is promising moon on issues involving the poorest or slum dwellers. According to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, there are 643 slums in Delhi, housing four lakh households and about 20 lakh people. The numbers of the homeless people are even more worrying. According to the 2011 census, Delhi’s homeless population stood at 46,724. In the same year, the Supreme Court Commissioner’s Office (SCCO), DUSIB, Mother NGO (MNGO), Homeless Resource Centre (HRCs) (including the Indo-Global Social Service Society) undertook an independent estimation of the homeless population in Delhi. According to this estimate, the figure reached 2,46,800. These figures are a reflection of the extremely grim situation of the Delhi housing sector and the urban poor. The AAP have claimed that over 200 acres of land is currently lying vacant with the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, and this will be used for building affordable homes. The BJP have gone with the slogan ‘Jahan Jhuggi Wahan Makan’ (wherever there is a jhuggi (slum), there will be a house). This again does not seem feasible because it overlooks the space constraints. The Congress too has provided no concrete solution and have simply claimed that ownership rights of land will be transferred free of cost to the people of slum clusters in resettlement colonies.

Issues overlooked

While several key issues have been raised by major political players, there are equally important issues that have not created much interest among the candidates. A serious concern which has been overlooked by almost all is the quality of air in Delhi. This issue was vividly captured by the media during the recent visit of the American President. A study conducted by the WHO in 2014 certified Delhi as the most polluted city in the world. The study went on to report that the national capital has the highest concentration of PM2.5 — particulate matters less than 2.5 microns. This form of air pollution is considered very serious. It can cause serious health concerns. What is more worrying is the lack of political discourse on this issue. No political party has outlined a policy whereby emissions, particularly from the ever increasing number of vehicles, will be reduced.

A number of other problems too plague the city. Take for instance the traffic chaos that citizens find themselves everyday. Lack of public transport (despite the metro transport), poor road planning, an increase in number of vehicles, are all contributing factors. Chaos regarding nursery admissions has now become a yearly phenomenon with ever changing rules, regulations and guidelines. This has become a major worry for the parents and children. Yet, none of the parties in the fray has any clear answer. Similarly, rapid migration and problems associated with it has not received adequate attention from parties and candidates. There are only passing references to this problem that is critical to Delhi. Issues of critical importance such as cleanness and sanitation remain on the margins of the agenda of political parties.

Overall, the campaign trends indicate that parties are playing around the issues having popular appeal rather than the hard questions of governance, statehood or even air pollution. In varying degrees, populist ideas such as free houses, free water and free electricity remain the core poll promises for all political parties. In short, the election is about “competitive populism” than the big ticket reforms that new entities like AAP had promised last time around.

*The writers are with Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

The post Delhi Poll: Major Parties Playing Around – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Hamas Says Gaza Blockade Will Force It To Take Action

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Hamas said Thursday that the continuation of Israel’s eight-year blockade will force the political movement to take action, according to a spokesman for the group.

“The continuation of the blockade will push Hamas to carry out actions which could be described as crazy. We will not give in to the blockade,” Sami Abu Zuhri told a crowd in Rafah.

Demonstrators had gathered in the southern city to protest against Egypt’s closure of the border crossing and the decision to label Hamas’ military wing as a “terrorist” group.

Abu Zuhri called for an immediate end to the siege on Gaza and stressed that the Al-Qassam Brigades have the right to respond.

He called on Egypt to review the decision to label the group as terrorists, but said it will not affect the military wing, adding that “Hamas was never a side in the Egyptian crisis.”

He added: “The (Egyptian) decision is irrelevant to us, and Hamas is stronger than to be affected by these impotent decisions which aim to externalize the crisis.”

“We are proud of the Al-Qassam Brigades, which forced Netanyahu to withdraw his army from the Gaza border.”

He referred to the Egyptian judge who passed the decision as a “criminal.”

Last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest service provider in the Gaza Strip, announced that it was forced to stop a cash assistance program for tens of thousands of Palestinians to make repairs to damaged and destroyed homes due to a lack of donor funding.

Over 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, which also killed over 2,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians.

The post Hamas Says Gaza Blockade Will Force It To Take Action appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Jordan And Islamic State – Analysis

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By Tally Helfont*

Jordan’s fight with the Islamic State, to employ an apt colloquialism, just got real. On February 4, a gruesome video was released by the Islamic State (IS) showing Jordanian pilot Lt. Muadh al-Kasasbeh (26), who had been held by IS since December 24th after his F-16 crashed in Syria, being burned alive in a cage. Ripples have been felt throughout the region since his capture, only to grow into waves of discontent following the release of this disturbing video.

At the highest echelons of the Kingdom, King Abdullah II called al-Kasasbeh’s murder “cowardly” and signaled during his meeting with U.S. senators that the gloves were off and retaliation was imminent. For the King, it was not just about al-Kasasbeh. He said, “We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and human principles and our war for their sake will be relentless and will hit them in their own ground.” Army spokesman General Mamduh al-Amiri struck a similar cord, saying “The blood of the martyr will not have been shed in vain and… vengeance will be proportional to this catastrophe that has struck all Jordanians.” Likewise, government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said “We are talking about a collaborative effort between coalition members to intensify efforts to stop extremism and terrorism to undermine, degrade and eventually finish Daesh,” using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

At the popular level, the slogan “We are all Muadh” and its corresponding hashtags #WeareallMuadh, #IamMuath, #كلنا_معاذ among other calls for revenge were also prolific. This murder seems to have galvanized Jordanian society as well, even softening some of those who criticized the King for embroiling the Kingdom in the U.S.-led war that would provoke such a backlash. Muadh’s father was one such critic. “Jordan shouldn’t be going on the offensive and attacking fellow Muslims,” he once argued, but his tone has changed in the wake of his son’s murder. “Now he says the coalition must eradicate ISIS.” Jawdat Kasasbeh, Muadh’s brother, argued that this act would sour would-be supporters of ISIS in Jordan. He explained in an interview:

A large number of Jordanians used to sympathise with them because they claimed to follow the principles of Islam. But thankfully, what happened to my brother has proven to the world, and especially to the Jordanian people, that [ISIS] is nothing but a terrorist, criminal organisation — and it should be stopped. This terrorist organisation tried to incite hatred in Jordan and within the people. But we, Muath’s family, will not allow them to ruin our country. We will stand strong, all Jordanians will stick together, we are one family, and hopefully this group will be [destroyed].

Jordan’s King Abdullah in uniform, taken from the Royal Hashemite Court’s Facebook account on February 3 after he vowed to intensify Jordan’s strikes against ISIS.

Jordan’s King Abdullah in uniform, taken from the Royal Hashemite Court’s Facebook account on February 3 after he vowed to intensify Jordan’s strikes against ISIS.

For its part, Jordan initiated its “retaliation” less than 24 hours after the murder of its pilot by hanging two Iraqi jihadists in its custody, one of whom – a woman named Sajida al-Rishawi – the Islamic State had previously demanded in exchange for the Japanese hostage, whom it later beheaded. Jordan vowed to step its sorties against ISIS to unprecedented levels, reportedly already killing 55 ISIS militants on Thursday, including a senior commander known as the “Prince of Nineveh,” by means of Jordanian airstrikes. Rumors that King Abdullah himself would fly some of these sorties were soon proven to be just that, but the King’s Hashemite Royal Court Facebook page did feature this photograph (above) of the monarch in military garb to demonstrate his personal commitment to smash ISIS.

Jordanians are the not the only ones to respond. Muslim clerics across the Middle East also expressed disgust, saying such a form of killing was considered despicable by Islam. Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s most prestigious center of learning located in Egypt, went as far as to call for the “killing and crucifixion of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” while expressing its outrage over the murder of the Jordanian pilot.

While statements of solidarity have been made across the region, in Europe, and elsewhere, the United States is supporting Jordan in more tangible ways as well.

The United States has been invested in Jordan’s stability for quite some time. The Kingdom’s geographic location, wedged between both American allies and adversaries, necessitated the formation of strong ties early on. The characters of the monarchs that have ruled Jordan during this time – King Hussein and later King Abdullah II to be precise – facilitated the cultivation of these ties. For its part, resource-poor Jordan has always needed a patron, making the relationship as much as an imperative for survival as a prudent strategic alliance. As such, America’s investment in Jordan has therefore translated into sustained political support and strategic cooperation on the one hand, and economic and military aid on the other (since 1951 and 1957, respectively).

Arguments have been made repeatedly over the past decades that supporting Jordanian stability is crucial now more than ever. Whether this was true each time it was uttered is a matter of opinion but the fact that the Obama Administration believes this to be the case now, in February 2015, can clearly be seen. Though the United States and Jordan are not linked by a formal treaty, they have signed a series of Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) that have underpinned their regional and international cooperation. Most recently, the U.S. and Jordan had reached such an agreement in 2008, in which the United States provided $660 million in annual foreign assistance to Jordan over a five-year period. This agreement expired as of FY2014.

However, following King Abdullah’s visit to Washington in December 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh signed a new MOU on February 3, 2015 aimed at increasing U.S. assistance to the Government Jordan to $1 billion per year for the FY2015-FY2017 period. According to the U.S. State Department’s press release, this sum “which reflects our strategic partnership and the United States’ firm commitment to Jordan’s stability … is designed to address Jordan’s short-term, extraordinary needs, including those related to regional instability and rising energy costs.”

These loose references, when dissected, refer to an effort on the part of the United States a) to buttress the Jordanian state in light of ongoing unrest and political upheaval in several other countries in the region, b) to further Jordan’s economic development, and c) to help “the efforts Jordan is undertaking at the forefront of the fight against ISIL and other extremist ideology and terrorism, the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq, the disruption of foreign energy supplies, and other unprecedented strains.”

Jordan is one of four Arab partner countries – the others include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – tapped by the U.S. to engage in anti-ISIS attacks since they began last September. However, Jordan is also the Arab partner who is most directly endangered by ISIS, which is ostensibly operating on its borders and preying on some of its towns. Jordan’s intention to step up its efforts against the Islamic State will therefore be bankrolled to some extent by this new MOU.

Acts by ISIS, like the brutal murder of Lt. Muadh al-Kasasbeh, will not only turn many would-be sympathizers away from the group in a manner reminiscent of the Iraqi Sahwa or Awakening in 2007-8 in which al-Qaeda’s brutality soured the locals support for the group, but will also serve as a call to arms for regional powers to step up their efforts against the its growing power and influence. Though such acts should and have been condemned in every corner of the globe, they may serve as the catalysts to turn collectively turn the tide against the vicious threat that is ISIS.

About the author:
*Tally Helfont is the Director of FPRI’s Program on the Middle East. Her current research focuses on the regional balance of power, the Levant and the GCC, and U.S. policy therein. She is also a Contributing Analyst for Wikistrat’s Middle East Desk, a crowd-sourcing consultancy. Ms. Helfont has instructed training courses in Civil Information Management to U.S. Military Civil Affairs Units and Human Terrain Teams assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the author of the FPRI monograph, The Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s U.S. Cell [1988-95]: The Ideological Foundations of Its Propaganda Strategy. Her writings have appeared in Orbis, INSS Insight, and al Majalla, as well as in FPRI’s E-Notes and Geopoliticus blog.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

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Chomsky & Kissinger Agree: Avoid Historic Tragedy Of Ukraine – OpEd

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The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering sending more weapons to Ukraine — $3 billion worth. The Times reports: “Secretary of State John Kerry, who plans to visit Kiev on Thursday [Feb. 5], is open to new discussions about providing lethal assistance, as is Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officials said.”

This follows Defense News reporting that this spring the United States will be sending troops to train the Ukrainian National Guard and commence the shipping of U.S.-funded armored vehicles. The funding for this is coming from the congressionally-authorized Global Security Contingency Fund, which was requested by the Obama administration in the fiscal year 2015 budget to help train and equip the armed forces of allies around the globe.

Meanwhile, January footage from Ukrainian television shows U.S. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, handing out medals to wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

The slippery slope of U.S. involvement in what is developing into a civil war is based on a great deal of propagandistic statements and inaccurate corporate media coverage, and it calls to mind so many wars started for false reasons.

The views of Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky on this conflict are quite similar, though it’s difficult to find two more polar opposites regarding U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, Chomsky has been a long-time critic of Kissinger for the bombings in Southeast Asia and the various coups against democratic leaders that occurred during his tenure. Chomsky has said that in a just world, Kissinger certainly would have been prosecuted for these actions. (These were the war crimes that CODEPINK recently protested before the Senate Finance Committee.)

Yet when it comes to Ukraine, Chomsky and Kissinger essentially agree with each other. They disagree with the more hawkish Obama administration and the even more extreme Sen. John McCain — who are both escalating the conflict in their own ways.

“A threatening situation” 

Chomsky has described Ukraine as a “crisis [that] is serious and threatening,” further noting that some people compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. In discussing Russia and Crimea he reminds readers that, “Crimea is historically Russian; it has Russia’s only warm-water port, the home of Russia’s fleet; and has enormous strategic significance.”

Kissinger agrees. In an interview with Spiegel, published in November, Kissinger says, “Ukraine has always had a special significance for Russia. It was a mistake not to realize that.”

He continues:

“Crimea is a special case. Ukraine was part of Russia for a long time. You can’t accept the principle that any country can just change the borders and take a province of another country. But if the West is honest with itself, it has to admit that there were mistakes on its side. The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia.”

When Kissinger says that Crimea is not akin to Hitler and a desire for global conquest by Russia, he is going to the heart of the arguments made by those seeking escalation. Asked whether he believes the West has “at least a kind of responsibility for” the escalation in Ukraine, Kissinger says:

“Europe and America did not understand the impact of these events, starting with the negotiations about Ukraine’s economic relations with the European Union and culminating in the demonstrations in Kiev. All these, and their impact, should have been the subject of a dialogue with Russia.”

In other words, Kissinger blames the U.S. and Europe for the current catastrophe in Ukraine. Kissinger does not begin at the point where there is military conflict. He recognizes that the problems in Ukraine began with Europe and the U.S. seeking to lure Ukraine into an alliance with Western powers with promises of economic aid. This led to the demonstrations in Kiev. And, as we learned from Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the U.S. spent $5 billion in building opposition to the government in Ukraine.

In an October interview on U.S. foreign policy with the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research, when asked about Ukraine, Chomsky says:

“It is an extremely dangerous development, which has been brewing ever since Washington violated its verbal promises to Gorbachev and began expanding NATO to the East, right to Russia’s borders, and threatening to incorporate Ukraine, which is of great strategic significance to Russia and of course has close historical and cultural links. There is a sensible analysis of the situation in the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, by international relations specialist John Mearsheimer, entitled “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.” The Russian autocracy is far from blameless, but we are now back to earlier comments: we have come perilously close to disaster before, and are toying with catastrophe again. It is not that possible peaceful solutions are lacking.”

Kissinger, too, warns of Ukraine as a dangerous situation, describing the potential of a new Cold War and urging the countries involved to do all they can to avoid “a historic tragedy.” He tells Spiegel:

“There clearly is this danger, and we must not ignore it. I think a resumption of the Cold War would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it.”

Chomsky agrees that the Ukraine conflict is high risk but goes further. Speaking to Russia Today (RT), he mentions a risk of World War III and nuclear war, saying the world has “come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close.” He then describes the current situation in Ukraine: “And now, especially in the crisis over Ukraine, and so-called missile-defense systems near the borders of Russia, it’s a threatening situation.”

Kissinger is also critical of the economic sanctions against Russia. He takes issue with targeting individuals because he does not see how that ends. Indeed, the criticism of the sanctions also applies to U.S. military involvement in Ukraine. Kissinger tells Spiegel: “I think one should always, when one starts something, think what one wants to achieve and how it should end. How does it end?”

The virtual takeover of Ukrainian government

The U.S. has loaded the Ukraine government and key businesses with Americans or U.S. allies. Nuland was caught on a telephone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, picking the next leader of Ukraine. The call is more famous for her closing line — “Fuck the EU” — but in the call she also says that the next leader of Ukraine should be the former banker Arseniy Yatseniuk, who she calls by a nickname “Yats.” Indeed, he has since become the prime minister of the post-coup Ukrainian government.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is identified in State Department documents as an informant for the U.S. since 2006. The documents describe him as “[o]ur Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko.” The State Department documents also report that Poroshenko is “tainted by credible corruption allegations.”

The most recent top official to join the Ukrainian government is Natalia A. Jaresko, a long-time State Department official, who went to Ukraine after the U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution. Jaresko was made a Ukrainian citizen by the president on the same day he appointed her finance minister. William Boardman reports further on Jaresko:

Natalie Jaresko, is an American citizen who managed a Ukrainian-based, U.S.-created hedge fund that was charged with illegal insider trading. She also managed a CIA fund that supported ‘pro-democracy’ movements and laundered much of the $5 billion the U.S. spent supporting the Maidan protests that led to the Kiev coup in February 2014. Jaresko is a big fan of austerity for people in troubled economies.”

Then, there is also one of the most important business sectors in Ukraine: the energy industry. After the U.S.-supported coup, Vice President Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter Biden, and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry, Devon Archer, the college roommate of the secretary of state’s stepson, have joined the board of Ukrainian gas producer Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest independent gas producer by volume. Archer also served as an adviser to Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and co-chaired his National Finance Committee. He also serves as a trustee of the Heinz Family Office, which manages the family business.

This virtual takeover of the Ukrainian government is the opposite of what Kissinger would have liked to have seen. He wrote last March, “If Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” Unfortunately, it looks like it has been taken over by the U.S., creating conflict rather than a bridge between Russia and the U.S.

The man who was involved in multiple coups of democratically-elected governments now says the U.S. cannot impose its views on other nations:

“SPIEGEL: In your book, you write that international order “must be cultivated, not imposed.” What do you mean by that?

“Kissinger: What it means is we that we Americans will be a major factor by virtue of our strengths and values. You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.”

Chomsky has often described how superpowers seek to organize the world according to their interests through military and economic power. Throughout his career he has been an advocate for national self-determination, not domination by super-powers.

Though Kissinger and Chomsky might be offended at being associated with the political views of the other, as the U.S. rushes headlong into a military conflict between the coup government in Kiev and the Eastern Ukrainian governments seeking their own self-determination, it is notable that both agree this rush to war is a mistake — and one of potentially historic proportions.

Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance and active with the antiwar group, Come Home America.

This article was originally published in MintPress News.

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Maritime Security Of Passenger Ships: What Can Be Done? – Analysis

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2014 saw its fair share of tragedies with cruise liners and passenger ferries highlighting the problem of ensuring the safety and security of these vessels. What can be done?

By Sam Bateman

Singapore has a major stake in ensuring the safety and security of passenger ships. It has become an important hub port for cruise liners. A new cruise terminal opened in 2012, and the world’s biggest cruise liners now visit the port. Singapore has also accepted a large responsibility for search and rescue in the region, and would be heavily involved in rescue operations in the event of a major passenger ship accident in regional waters.

More cruise liners with large numbers of passengers now sail in regional waters, while passenger ferries operate extensively in the region, particularly in the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos and across the Malacca and Singapore Straits. Human error is a major cause of shipping accidents, including faulty operation of equipment leading to a fire. Apart from the risks of a fire or other accident, passenger ships are potentially an attractive target for terrorists. Terrorist bomb attacks have occurred in the past to ferries in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Assessing the risk

Every year sees tragedies around the world involving passenger ships with hundreds losing their lives at sea. The past year was no exception. In December 2014 alone, three people died in a fire on a cruise liner in the Caribbean, and a fire on a Greek passenger ferry in the Mediterranean killed at least 11 people with others still missing. In September, eight people died after a ferry in the Philippines capsized and sank while Bangladesh experienced two major ferry disasters during the year with over one hundred people drowning on each occasion.

The worst disaster during the year involving a passenger ship occurred in April when the ferry Sewol capsized off the South Korean coast, killing 304 people, many of them secondary school students. Subsequent investigations revealed a litany of problems, including poor seamanship, illegal modifications to the ship affecting her seaworthiness, overloading, lack of proper evacuation procedures, and a delayed search for survivors.

This series of tragic accidents highlights the importance of ensuring the safety and security of passenger ships. Piracy is well appreciated as a maritime security threat but less attention is given to the risks to passenger ships despite the loss of life often involved when these ships have an accident.

Ensuring their safety and security is not easy. There are two main difficulties: first, to make sure all on board know what to do in the case of an emergency; and secondly, to evacuate large numbers of people safely from a ship in the event of an accident, particularly a fire which may lead to smoke-filled passages cutting off normal exit routes.

New requirements

The largest cruise liners can now accommodate over 5000 passengers. They are over 350m long and nearly as high above the water line as a twenty storey building. While passengers in a large liner will normally use lifts, these will be unavailable in the event of a fire or other emergency. Past accidents have shown that when a fire occurs on a passenger ship, it is not so much the fire itself that causes deaths but panic, as people try to escape or are trapped below.

Effectively a cruise liner or passenger ferry is a steel box containing a large crowd of people many of whom have no good idea about how to get out. In the event of an accident, passengers will try to escape through crowded and restricted passages that may already be blocked by fire or flood. Or the vessel might be listing with decks becoming walls and vice versa. Many will not know safe exit routes and become totally disoriented.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has been active in recent years in developing new requirements for the safety and security of passenger ships. These efforts were spurred on by the grounding and loss of the large cruise liner Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy in January 2012 with the loss of 32 lives.

New IMO requirements for musters of newly embarked passengers prior to or immediately upon departure came into force on 1 January 2015. These include the requirement to ensure that passengers undergo safety drills, including mustering at the lifeboat stations, before the ship departs or immediately on departure.

What can be done

Previously, the requirement was for the muster of passengers to take place within 24 hours of their embarkation. The IMO Secretary-General has also called for every avenue to be explored so that the loss of life in domestic ferry accidents around the world, is minimized. The IMO has initiated a number of capacity building and technical cooperation programmes to address this need.

The most basic requirements are at the individual ship level. Everyone onboard must know what to do in the event of a fire or other emergency. Passengers must be properly briefed and individually aware of alternative exit routes from their cabins that may be well away from the upper deck. Every crew member must know his or her duty – past accidents have shown this is not always the case. Fire drills and evacuation procedures should be regularly exercised.

At a national level, appropriate regulations are required to ensure the safety and security of passenger ships. Spot checks should be carried out on ships to ensure they are complying with regulations.

At a regional level, cooperative contingency arrangements are required for managing a major disaster involving a cruise liner or ferry, including a terrorist attack. An incident involving a passenger ship would be extremely demanding for local authorities and would require close cooperation between regional countries. The multi-agency Maritime Incident Response Groups (MIRG) adopted in Europe to provide specialized fire and rescue services for dealing with incidents at sea, are a possible model for Singapore and the region generally.

*Sam Bateman is an adviser to the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is a former Australian naval commodore.

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US Midwest Propane Market Much Better Balanced Than Year Ago – Analysis

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Higher inventories, milder weather, and falling crude oil and natural gas prices have resulted in a Midwest propane market that so far this winter has not experienced the challenges faced last winter, when the combination of depleted inventories and high winter demand pushed propane prices to record highs prompting emergency measures to address propane supply shortfalls. This winter, Midwest propane markets are well-supplied; however, the changes prompted by the events of last winter continue to influence the market.

As of January 30, Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD) 2 (Midwest) propane inventories are 11.8 million barrels above the same time last year and 6.3 million barrels more than the five-year average. Propane inventories in the Midwest began building in the summer and by October 31 were 6.3 million barrels higher than the same time in 2013 and 0.7 million barrels higher than the five-year average. Inventories have remained high since then (Figure 1) because of lower demand during a less-severe winter, with Midwest heating degree days so far this winter (October–January) 8.5% below the comparable year–ago period.twip150204fig1-lg

The preseason inventory builds were supported by higher prices this past summer at the Midwest propane storage hub in Conway, Kansas, compared with prices at the Mont Belvieu, Texas, storage hub. Higher Conway prices kept Midwest propane production in the Midwest rather than being sent to other regions increasing inventories.

The higher inventories, less-severe winter weather, and falling crude oil and natural gas prices have caused spot propane prices to fall. Spot prices reflect feedstock costs, processing costs, and overall market conditions, including demand and inventory levels. In 2013, 59.3% of propane produced in the United States came from the processing of natural gas, while 40.7% was from refinery crude oil processing. Because propane is produced from both natural gas and crude oil, the price of propane is related to the prices of both commodities. Since 2012, propane prices have tracked between crude oil and natural gas prices on an energy-equivalent basis. Recent falling crude oil prices have significantly narrowed the spread between crude oil and natural gas, and have pushed propane prices lower (Figure 2).twip150204fig2-lg

Spot propane prices at Conway and Mont Belvieu averaged $0.97 per gallon and $0.94 per gallon, respectively, in October 2014, $0.14 per gallon and $0.20 per gallon less than at the same time in 2013. As crude oil prices began to fall and propane inventories continued to build in both the Midwest and the Gulf Coast (PADD 3), spot propane prices at both hubs fell. By December, Conway and Mont Belvieu propane spot prices averaged $0.53 per gallon and $0.56 per gallon, respectively. For the week ending January 30, prices at Conway averaged $0.45 per gallon, $2.06 per gallon lower than the same week last year, when supply shortages were most acute (Figure 3).twip150204fig3-lg

Although Midwest propane inventories are still quite high, last winter’s propane supply shortages, as well as changes in infrastructure and supply patterns, continue to affect Midwest wholesale and retail propane markets. Before January 2014, the spread between Midwest retail and wholesale prices averaged $0.65 per gallon, reflecting traditional propane supply and distribution patterns from supply sources to the wholesaler and then to the propane retailer. However, as propane markets tightened last winter (2013-14) this spread rapidly increased as costs for moving supplies through the supply chain increased. Although propane markets this winter are not experiencing problems, the retail-wholesale price spread has not returned to historical levels.

Changes in infrastructure, including the repurposing of the Cochin pipeline, have changed logistical networks for propane markets in the region. Propane supply networks now increasingly rely on relatively more expensive rail and long-range truck shipments. Propane wholesalers and retailers have also made changes to secure supplies well in advance of winter and have increased the amount of propane they hold in inventory. Wholesalers and retailers that opted to purchase propane well in advance of this winter likely did so when prices were about $0.50 per gallon higher than current prices. Propane retailers also encouraged customers to switch from will-call to firm contracts with automatic delivery, which provides greater security of supply but less flexibility on price. These changes in the supply chain have caused the retail-wholesale propane price spread in the Midwest to widen. The spread, which averaged $0.86 per gallon for October, an increase of $0.22 per gallon from 2013, was $1.32 per gallon as of February 2 (Figure 4).twip150204fig4-lg

U.S. average gasoline price increases, diesel fuel prices continue to fall

The U.S. average price for retail gasoline rose last week for the first time since September, increasing two cents to $2.07 per gallon as of February 2, 2015, $1.22 per gallon less than the same time last year. Only Midwest and Gulf Coast prices increased, by nine cents and one cent, respectively, to $2.03 per gallon and $1.86 per gallon. The East Coast price was down two cents to $2.09 per gallon, while the Rocky Mountain price fell one cent to $1.87 per gallon. The West Coast price lost less than a penny to remain at $2.33 per gallon.

The U.S. average price for diesel fuel decreased four cents to $2.83 per gallon, down $1.12 per gallon from the same time last year. The West Coast price fell six cents to $2.89 per gallon. Midwest and East Coast prices both decreased four cents, to $2.77 per gallon and $2.93 per gallon, respectively. The Rocky Mountain price was down three cents to $2.78 per gallon, while the Gulf Coast price decreased two cents to $2.77 per gallon.

Propane inventories fall

U.S. propane stocks decreased by 2.1 million barrels last week to 67.2 million barrels as of January 30, 2015, 36.4 million barrels (118.0%) higher than a year ago. Midwest inventories decreased by 1.1 million barrels and East Coast inventories decreased by 0.5 million barrels. Gulf Coast inventories decreased by 0.4 million barrels and Rocky Mountain/West Coast inventories decreased by 0.1 million barrels. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 6.1% of total propane inventories.

Residential heating fuel prices decrease

As of February 2, 2015, residential heating oil prices averaged less than $2.80 per gallon, almost 2 cents per gallon lower than last week, and $1.44 per gallon less than last year’s price for the same week. Wholesale heating oil prices averaged $1.83 per gallon, 7 cents per gallon higher than last week and $1.61 per gallon lower when compared to the same time last year. Residential propane prices averaged less than $2.37 per gallon, about 1 cent per gallon lower than last week, and $1.52 per gallon less than the price at the same time last year. The average wholesale propane price decreased by nearly 2 cents per gallon this week to 61 cents per gallon, $2.09 per gallon lower than the February 3, 2014 price.

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Socialists And Democrats ‘Crisis Meeting’ With Macedonia Sister Party Over ‘Coup’ Charges Against Leader

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The S&D Group convened a crisis meeting in the European Parliament on Thursday with the Deputy Leader of the SDSM opposition party from Skopje, after its leader had his passport confiscated and was told he would face espionage charges for an attempted “coup d’etat.”

S & D Foreign Affairs Coordinator and Shadow Rapporteur for the country Richard Howitt MEP told Mrs. Radmila Shekerinska, the Vice-Chairman of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, that inconsistencies in claims made by the country’s government need to be answered and that current assurances were insufficient to give confidence that the case was being dealt with impartially.

The pair discussed documents allegedly incriminating Government Ministers which SDSM claim have been leaked to them, as well as a video from the country’s Prime Minister’s private office in which the opposition leader, Zoran Zaev, is seen to tell him the leak comes from a foreign intelligence service. Announcements that Mr Zaev is facing espionage charges for what was described as an attempted “coup d’état” were made personally by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski at the weekend.

Following the meeting Richard Howitt MEP said, “It is difficult to have confidence that the case is being impartially handled when the announcement of charges was made by the Prime Minister rather than by judicial authorities, and could have prejudged the outcome of the investigation even before charges have been lodged.”

Howitt added: “I received explanation from Mrs Sekerinska that suggested the reference to a foreign government was simply an attempt to protect internal whistle blowers, and that the leaked documents indicate serious criminality by Government figures.”

According to Howitt, “It is not for us to prejudge the issues ourselves, but my Group expressed deep concern that the presumption of innocence may not have been respected, and that attempts to restrict reporting of the case could be interpreted as an attempt at a cover-up.”

Howitt said that the best outcome is for all allegations to be published in full, without delay.

“In any case the language of “coup d’état,” alongside the fact that the opposition leader faces charges carrying a jail sentence of up to four years, simply adds to the deep damage being done to the country’s reputation,” Howitt said, adding, “I insisted our sister party in Skopje carries the solidarity of our Group, but had its own questions to answer.”

Nevertheless the Government should answer for serious inconsistencies, including why the announcement of charges was made by the Prime Minister personally, how a video of a private conversation in his own office could have been filmed and why the case papers from the Ministry of Interior appear to suggest charges have not actually been made and that the espionage claim is also not made against Mr Zaev personally, Howitt said.

Howitt said that “From Brussels, we will do anything we can to provide any constructive influence to assist the situation, and it is to be hoped the investigation can be completed quickly as well as fairly, so that uncertainties about whether the prosecutor will decide charges are not prolonged.”

“The S & D Group reiterates our call for an independent investigation with full respect of the rights of the defendants in accordance with the law and international standards, including the principle of presumption of innocence,” Howitt said.

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Pope Francis: ‘Scourge’ Of Minor Sex Abuse Must Stop

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By Elise Harris

Pope Francis has sent a letter to religious superiors and presidents of episcopal conferences, asking for their full cooperation in ending the sexual abuse of minors, and making the Church a safe haven.

“Everything possible must be done to rid the Church of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors and to open pathways of reconciliation and healing for those who were abused,” the Pope said in his Feb. 2 letter.

Addressed to the Presidents of Episcopal Conferences and Superiors of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the letter was a plea asking for their complete cooperation with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

First announced in December 2013, the commission was officially established by Pope Francis last March in order to explore various proposals and initiatives geared toward the improvement of norms and procedures for protecting children and vulnerable adults.

The commission, the Pope said, is “a new, important and effective means” of ensuring the protection at every level of the Church, including episcopal conferences, dioceses, institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life among others.

“Families need to know that the Church is making every effort to protect their children. They should also know that they have every right to turn to the Church with full confidence, for it is a safe and secure home,” he said.

Because of this, priority “must not be given to any other kind of concern, whatever its nature, such as the desire to avoid scandal, since there is absolutely no place in ministry for those who abuse minors.”

Pope Francis also pointed to the Circular Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying that every effort must be made to ensure that the letter’s provisions are put into practice.

Published in May 2011, the letter lays out general guidelines and suggested procedures for handling cases of sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by clerics.

The Roman Pontiff also encouraged episcopal conferences to develop “practical means” of having periodic reviews of their norms and ensuring that they are being followed.

“It is the responsibility of Diocesan Bishops and Major Superiors to ascertain that the safety of minors and vulnerable adults is assured in parishes and other Church institutions,” he said, and urged recipients to respond to the needs of minors and vulnerable adults “with fairness and mercy.”

As a means of communicating the Lord’s compassion to victims of abuse and their families, the Pope encouraged dioceses, institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life to identify and offer programs for pastoral care which include both psychological and spiritual assistance.

“Pastors and those in charge of religious communities should be available to meet with victims and their loved ones,” he said.

These meetings, the pontiff noted, provide “valuable opportunities for listening to those have greatly suffered and for asking their forgiveness.”

The Bishop of Rome then asked presidents of episcopal conferences and superiors of institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life for their “close and complete cooperation” with the commission for minors.

Having met with victims of sexual abuse by priests last July, the Pope closed his letter by praying that Mary would help the Church to “humbly acknowledge and repair past injustices and to remain ever faithful in the work of protecting those closest to the heart of Jesus.”

Headed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is composed of 17 members from all over the world, including American priest Mons. Robert W. Oliver.

Mons. Oliver worked extensively with Cardinal O’Malley in handling cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests during the 2002 abuse crisis in the Boston archdiocese.

Several professors and experts in psychology, law, and aid offered to those victimized by sexual abuse are among those working on the commission.

With eight new members added last December, the complete commission will meet for the first time Feb. 6-8 in Rome, where it is expected that they will approve the draft of their statues.

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Obama Insults Christians – OpEd

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In an attempt to deflect guilt from Muslim madmen, President Obama said at the National Prayer Breakfast, “Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Obama’s ignorance is astounding and his comparison is pernicious.

The Crusades were a defensive Christian reaction against Muslim madmen of the Middle Ages. Here is how Princeton scholar and Islamic expert Bernard Lewis puts it: “At the present time, the Crusades are often depicted as an early expansionist imperialism—a prefigurement of the modern European countries. To people of the time, both Muslim and Christian, they were no such thing.” So what were they? “The Crusade was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war—to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”

Regarding the other fable, the Inquisition, the Catholic Church had almost nothing to do with it. The Church saw heretics as lost sheep who needed to be brought back into the fold. By contrast, secular authorities saw heresy as treason; anyone who questioned royal authority, or who challenged the idea that kingship was God-given, was guilty of a capital offense. It was they—not the Church—who burned the heretics. Indeed, secular authorities blasted the Church for its weak role in the Inquisition.

According to St. Louis University and Crusade scholar Thomas Madden, “All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars.” How many ISIS atrocities, Mr. President, have met the criteria of just wars? The ones where they buried people alive, stoned children, raped women, and crucified men? Moreover, according to Henry Kamen, the leading authority on the Inquisition, a total of 1,394 people were killed during the Inquisition. Today, Muslim madmen kill more than that in a few months.

The President should apologize for his insulting comparison.

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Nepal: Picking Up The Pieces As Speaker Finally Wakes Up – Analysis

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By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

Once the target date was missed, the media is full of criticism of all political leaders for their failure to produce a draft of the constitution within the self-imposed target date of 22nd January 2015.

Many of the analysts in Nepal have described the failure as a “collective one” which perhaps is true. But to me, the failure should be placed squarely at the door of the Speaker of the Assembly who had sat through all these five years without taking any initiative, particularly in the last one year of the new Assembly where he could have pursued a more active policy. Instead of discussing the contentious issues that were not many in the assembly itself, he franchised the issues to various committees for “consensus.” He thought that his job had been done when everyone knew that consensus would not lead them anywhere.Too late in the day, he seems to have suddenly woken up. On 24th January despite being surrounded by noisy opposition members mainly the Maoists and the Madhesis, he made a “declaration” that he would take it upon himself the job of constitution draft making and take it to its logical conclusion. He should have done this in the beginning itself soon after the elections.

He also expressed his sadness over the top leaders’ failure to produce the first draft of the new statute by the dead line of 22nd January. He promised to make a statement on the 25th on the next steps to be taken -which he did by announcing the formation of a “Proposal Preparation Committee” consisting of 73 members.

While the alliance of the ruling political parties, gave the names of 49 members, the Maoist led opposition has not submitted any names. They have instead declared that they would continue the agitation which we expect to be both inside and outside the Parliament, as if the five days of hooliganism displayed by them inside the Parliament were not enough!

The Ruling parties were apologetic. R.C. Paudel, the Dy. Leader of the Nepali Congress while apologising to the public for their failure to produce a new constitution blamed the opposition for “conspiring against expediting the constitution making process.”

K.P.Oli, the leader of the UML who from the government side should take the blame for the failure, condemned the vandalism of the Maoists inside the Parliament which he said was unpardonable and unacceptable. He was right when he said that the Maoists have debased and belittled themselves, but hasn’t he also proved to be the major stumbling block in not giving both the Madhesis and the Janajathis their due in the new constitutional set up?

It serves no purpose in going into the past and look for the reasons for the failure of the new interim constitutional assembly in promulgating the new constitution. Some perturbing questions arise and these have all been highlighted in the Press. The points were–

1. Why were the efforts for consensus making delayed and postponed to the last two months preceding the deadline? Why did it not start soon after the elections a year ago?

2. Why was the issue of “state restructuring” delayed till the last and finally just a month before, the ruling alliance brought out a definitive recommendation?

3. What was the Speaker doing for the last one year when he had all along behaved like a spectator? Why did he not pursue and monitor the most important committee CPDCC led by Bhattarai which neither forwarded nor recommended the final definitive proposal of the ruling party till the end? There appears no point in his coming out with the truth that the problem was one of power and not of consensus!

Now the international community and India are being blamed for the log jam in the draft preparation.

Both the UML and the Nepali Congress are to be blamed for closing their eyes on the main issue of ethnic identity. By maintaining a rigid stand, they have thrown both the Madhesis (many of whom were once ardent followers of the Nepali Congress) and the Janajathi onto the lap of the Maoists.

Prof. Lok Raj Baral has recently pointed out that the parties should not ignore the identity issue in federalism. One should look at the experience in India where many thought that linguistic division of India would lead to disunity and break up. This has not happened.

It is therefore not too late for the two major mainstream parties the NC and the UML to reconsider their stand on the ethnic identity and by recognising it, will only strengthen the country in the long run and not the other way.

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Four Years After, Tunisia Remains the Arab Spring’s Lone Success Story – Analysis

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Tunisia succeeded where Libya, Egypt, Syria failed – with compromise, avoidance of sectarian politics, and no external meddling.

By Chris Miller*

February 11 marks the fourth anniversary of the overthrow of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and in the wave of protests that swept across the Middle East in early 2011, the demise of Egypt’s crony-capitalist dictator promised a new era in the region’s politics. Egypt had long been a bellwether of broader trends in the Arab world, and protesters’ success seemed to hail an era of revolt, Islamist politics and, most of all, of rapid change.

But promises can be broken. How ironic that four years later – after Mubarak’s overthrow, the election victory of candidates with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement and a military coup – a period promising enormous change has ended with the return of an authoritarian regime and old ways in Egypt. The country is governed by a military-backed regime, which has ruled since former military intelligence officer and Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood–linked president in 2013. In Egypt, “stability” is the watchword and political innovation is seen as an untenable risk.

At first glance, it might seem that all the revolutionary impulses of the Arab Spring have been squashed. All of the revolts of 2011, except for Tunisia’s, have ended in tragedy. The uprisings were quickly sullied by a region-wide clash between the Muslim Brotherhood and autocratic governments. The Brotherhood, an Islamist group with deep roots across much of the Arab world, had gained influence in recent decades in part because it provided a valuable network of social services to its members, many part of a rising middle class. A second, perhaps more compelling reason for the organization’s rise, was that in a region dominated by military autocracies and absolute monarchies, the Brotherhood was the main credible locus for opposition politics.

After the Arab Spring protests toppled established elites, the Muslim Brotherhood was the main beneficiary. In Egypt, Morsi, backed by the Brotherhood, was elected president. The Ennahda movement, linked to the Brotherhood, also took power in Tunisia. In Syria and Libya, too, groups tied to the Brotherhood made a claim on power.

In each instance, the Brotherhood faced resistance not only from domestic elites and representatives of the old regimes. The movement’s rise took on a regional dimension too, as status-quo powers such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, fearing that the Brotherhood might one day threaten their own hold on power, mobilized to oppose it.

In their war against the Brotherhood, the Gulf monarchies have funneled billions of dollars to military-backed governments in Egypt. Saudi Arabia and its allies hope that squashing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere will keep the lid on opposition politics across the region. To this end, the UAE has intervened militarily in Libya’s civil war, sending its air force to bomb Islamist positions near Tripoli. Meanwhile Qatar, an outlier among the Gulf monarchies, has backed Brotherhood-linked parties across the region, funneling them money and broadcasting news sympathetic to the Brotherhood on its Al-Jazeera TV channel.

The Gulf monarchies’ decision to intervene financially or militarily across the Middle East has undermined chances for peaceful transitions from autocracy to consensus-based democracy. Domestic clashes have become international ones. In Libya, Syria, and across the region, disputes are settled with increasingly heavy firepower. The influx of foreign funds and arms from the Gulf, but also from other outside powers has exacerbated existing disagreements and empowered extremists.

Puzzle: Demograhic data show no pattens as to why Arab Spring succeeded in Tunisa, but not other lands, other than leaders and outside forces exacerbating tensions to hold on to power (Data from CIA World Factbook)

Puzzle: Demograhic data show no pattens as to why Arab Spring succeeded in Tunisa, but not other lands, other than leaders and outside forces exacerbating tensions to hold on to power (Data from CIA World Factbook)

This dynamic not only makes less likely the types of political settlements needed to restore stability, it has also degraded many of the institutions that have held together divided states. Libya and Syria in particular highlight the risk that political struggles lead to civil war and state collapse.

It is far easier to tear down old institutions than to build new ones, as many leaders of the Arab uprisings have learned to their dismay. In Libya, for example, a revolt toppled long-ruling strongman Muammar Gaddafi, but in the process upset a delicate regional balance among the country’s regions. Once the Gaddafi-era state had ceased to exist, Libyans could not immediately replace those controls with a state that accommodated clans from each of the country’s regions. Outsiders from the Gulf pumped money and arms to their favored group, drastically increasing firepower while decreasing the chances for a peaceful resolution.

Libya instead has fractured along regional lines, with religious groups allying with some regional clans, and secularists linked with the old regime aiding others. The sources of the dissatisfaction that led to protests against Gaddafi – unemployment, corruption and bad governance – were shared across Libya’s regions. But the country’s warlords think little of addressing those concerns and focus instead on seizing territory from their opponents. The longer the conflict lasts, the less likely Libya is to be brought together as a functioning country.

If Libya showcases the risk of regional divides and state collapse, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria highlight the risk of sectarian politics. In Yemen, for example, the Sunni-Shia split has been an important political force as the largely Shia Houthi movement has risen to power in Sana’a. Yet Syria provides the clearest example of the dangers of exploiting sectarian divides. The territory of present-day Syria has long been home to a variety of religious groups, from Sunni Arabs – who make up the majority of the population – to Christians, Druze and Alawites. The current government of Bashar al-Assad is drawn mainly from the latter group, though before the revolution it had supporters from all of Syria’s main religious sects.

When protests began in Syria in early 2011, the government in Damascus adopted a strategy of exacerbating sectarian tension to bolster its grip on power. The theory was simple: No longer able to count on the passive consent of the majority of the population, the government needed the active support of a minority. By sowing tensions among religious groups, including by targeting military operations in a way that reduced trust between Sunnis and Alawites, the government hoped to bolster support from al-Assad’s fellow Alawites.

The regime’s strategy was based on a kernel of truth: Many of the earliest anti-government protests in Syria were backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization mistrusted by Alawites and Christians alike. Yet the government actively worked to turn mistrust into fear – fear that a rebel victory would drastically reshape the balance of power in the country, even fear that a Sunni-backed government might threaten Alawites’ safety. By all accounts, the regime managed to consolidate support among Alawites. Yet the country is now sharply divided on sectarian lines, and the conflict has spawned extremist groups, including the notorious Islamic State. Worse, the war has caused one of the world’s largest refugee crises in a generation. The dictator al-Assad still holds power, but over a fraction of the people he governed four years ago.

Only Tunisia appears to have ended the Arab Spring no worse than it started. The Sunni Muslim nation of 11 million avoided civil war and managed to produce democratic institutions that have so far mediated among the competing factions and ideologies. Both the Muslim Brotherhood–linked Ennahda movement and the party tied to the old regime have compromised. The recipes of Tunisia’s relative success seem straightforward: limit outsiders’ meddling, avoid sectarian politics and encourage all sides to compromise. Sadly, across the Middle East, as the Arab Spring approaches its fourth anniversary, these elements seem in short supply.


*Chris Miller is a PhD candidate at Yale University and a research associate at the Hoover Institution. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on Russian-Chinese relations.

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El Salvador: Multimillion Dollar Plan To Curb Violence

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By Edgardo Ayala

The government of El Salvador is beginning to seek financing to cover the costs of an ambitious US$2 billion plan to reduce the high delinquency rate in the country, especially that caused by gangs, a principal headache for authorities.

But obtaining financing to put this plan into action is a big challenge for this country of 6.2 million inhabitants since in the past similar projects to combat crime, like that of 2007, was not implemented due to lack of funds.

“We have tried similar efforts, but the problem is that the money was not obtained,” said José María Tojeira, former rector of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (UCA) and member of the National Council of Security and Coexistence (CNSCC).

On January 15, the CNSCC submitted to President Salvador Sánchez Cerén a report with 124 priority measures that the government should initiate to reduce crime in the country. The CNSCC was started in September 2014 by Sánchez Cerén’s government, run by the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), to tackle the problem of insecurity considered by the citizenry as the country’s biggest problem, according to various opinion polls.

Sánchez Cerén is a former guerrilla commander who assumed the presidency on June 1, 2014, initiating his party, the FMLN, a second five-year term in power.

The CNSCC is formed by government officials, representatives of civil society and international organizations. The technical coordination is under the guidance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The failure of the “hard line”

For more than two decades since the country saw the end of the bloody civil war (1980-1992) that left more than 70,000 deaths, the Salvadorans have suffered the unrelenting strife of unbridled crime, similar to that of its neighbors, Guatemala and Honduras.

This criminality was not halted by the hard line, or “mano dura”, policies imposed on the country by the post-war, right-wing governments.

El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world. The country ended 2014 with 3,912 assassinations, a 57% increase from the previous year, reaching the level of 63 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the UN Global Study on Homicide 2013, published in April, 2014. In Latin America, the average rate is 29 per 100,000.

The estimated cost of implementing the security plan is $2 billion during a period of five years, an average of $400 million annually. This estimated amount equals 1.7% of the Gross Domestic Product of the country, and it is anticipated that 74% of the plan’s resources will be dedicated to crime prevention.

Financing is expected to come from the General Budget of the Nation, international loans in the process of being approved by Congress, with private contributions and international cooperation.

Roberto Valent, the resident representative of UNDP in El Salvador, stated to the local press that the contribution from international cooperation could be approximately $70 million annually, while the government confirmed that it is in negotiations with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for a loan of $200 million to launch the program.

Among the principal measures, the government is expected to intervene in the fifty most violent towns with educational, health and employment projects. The project planners intend to invest $500 million to create 250,000 jobs for youth. Another $250 million will be allocated to build sports, cultural and recreational facilities necessary to remove young people from the cycle of violence.

Also, concrete proposals have been developed to approve new laws to reduce crime, such as prohibiting telephone companies from keeping accounts active on cell phones that have been stolen since most of the extortion crimes — one of the most common crimes in the country — are done with stolen cell phones.

New truce among gangs

“I continue hoping for a strategy that gives better results than those we got with the truce process between gangs. If it isn’t that, then is like the mountain that roared and gave birth a little mouse [despite high expectations created, a meager result would be obtained],” told Latinamerica Press Raúl Mijango, who mediated a truce between the two principal gangs of the country, MS-13 and Barrio 18 in March 2012.

This pact, which lasted a little more than a year, dramatically reduced homicides in El Salvador from an average of 70 per 100,000 inhabitants to 40 per 100,000 inhabitants.

But the agreement between these two criminal groups to not attack each other was harshly criticized by a good part of society that witnesses on a daily basis how the gangs assassinate and extort citizens.

It is calculated that some 60,000 young people are members of Salvadoran gangs, also known as “maras,” whose origin can be traced back to Central American immigrants who settled in the United States fleeing the armed conflicts that devastated the region in the 1980s. Upon being deported back to their countries of origin, some brought with them the gang culture that they developed in the United States.

This Jan. 17, leaders of the biggest gangs circulated an announcement that again they were agreeing to not commit acts of aggression, agreeing to a truce, and although homicides decreased substantially in the days after the announcement, in the following weeks crimes increased once again.

“We are promoting on the national level a unilateral gesture of good will that seeks to contribute to the reduction of violence,” the agreement stated which was signed by MS-13 and Barrio 18 as well as by the Mao-Mao, La Máquina and La Mirada Locos gangs.

On the other hand, the government and the CNSCC have closed ranks in their position of not negotiating with gangs, with the argument that gangs are criminal organizations that should be prosecuted by the state.

“It is positive that they do not commit crimes [under the truce], but legal prosecution should continue,” told to Latinamerica Press the prosecuting attorney for the Defense of Human Rights, David Morales. “We cannot be trusting agreements made by criminal organizations among themselves.”

However, at the end of January, a slightly more open position on this matter emerged after various members of the CNSCC pointed out that although negotiations with gangs were not an option, dialogue was. Shortly after, representatives of the Lutheran Church met with imprisoned gang leaders taking the first steps to some kind of rapprochement, confirmed the local press.

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Japan Should Urge End To Military Rule In Thailand, Says HRW

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Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should press Thailand’s junta leader to improve human rights and restore democratic civilian rule, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, who chairs the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) junta that staged a military coup in May 2014, is scheduled to travel to Japan from February 8 to 10, 2015. According to his office, Prayuth will meet Abe to seek to boost Japanese investment in Thailand.

“Prime Minister Abe should emphasize Japan’s deep concerns with military rule in Thailand,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Thai junta leader should be told there will be no return to business as usual until Thailand returns to democratically elected civilian rule, and respect for human rights is restored.”

In his meetings with Prayuth, Abe should put into practice his 2013 vision of “diplomacy based on the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law,” Human Rights Watch said. Abe failed to translate that aspiration into reality when he met Prayuth last October. Abe should transform Japan’s traditional “quiet” diplomacy on human rights into a more strategic policy of public engagement and constructive criticism. Close diplomatic, political, economic, and socio-cultural ties provide Japan with significant leverage to be frank and forthright in raising human rights issues with Thailand.

Japanese officials should urge Thailand’s government to immediately address a range of pressing human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said. In the eight months since the military coup, the junta has made no genuine progress toward restoring democratic rule. As both junta leader and prime minister, General Prayuth wields broad powers without any judicial or other oversight. The interim constitution and the draconian Martial Law of 1914 provide immunity to junta members to commit human rights violations. Key constitutional bodies set up by the NCPO, such as the National Legislative Assembly, the National Reform Council, and the Constitution Drafting Committee are all stacked with military personnel and other junta loyalists.

The NCPO has severely repressed fundamental rights and freedoms that are essential for the restoration of democratic rule. The NCPO has enforced censorship and ordered media not to criticize the military. More than 200 websites – including Human Rights Watch’s Thailand page – have been blocked by the junta as threats to national security. The NCPO has banned public gatherings of more than five people and prohibits anti-coup activities. Protesters who have expressed disagreement with the junta have been arrested and sent to military courts, where they face being sentenced to prison with no right to appeal. Deeming political discussions and diverse political opinions as a threat to stability and national security, the NCPO has extended its grip into universities and banned discussions about human rights, democracy, and the performance of the Prayuth administration.

“Thailand is in the choking grip of military rulers, a nationwide enforcement of martial law, and an unrelenting crackdown on freedom of expression, association, and assembly,” Adams said. “Pressure from a key business partner like Japan is crucial to bringing a speedy return to democratic rule in Thailand.”

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Islamic State Raises Flag On Turkmen-Afghan Border

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By Dzhumaguly Annayev

Units of the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) reportedly have begun massing on the Afghan border with Turkmenistan, but Turkmen officials and troops are ready for them.

ISIL forces were moving northward from southern Afghanistan, media reported in late January, quoting the Afghan National Directorate for Security (NDS). They recently appeared in Almar District, Faryab Province, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Turkmen service reported January 22.

“Natives of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have been observed among them,” Afghan Senator Gulmuhammad Rasuli, who represents Faryab Province, said.

Information from NDS authorities and from Faryab Province residents indicates that the appearance of ISIL could worsen the situation on the border, Rasuli said.

“The ‘jihadists’ are trying to create a centre for themselves in Faryab,” he said, citing the opening of a militant training camp in the village of Shah.

Observers see reason for concern

If militants try to expand their sphere of influence into Central Asia, they bear watching, analysts said.

Turkmenistan would be the first target if ISIL militants in Afghanistan are looking north, analyst Semen Bagdasarov said.

“In [Turkmenistan] many natural resources exist,” he said. “The Islamists-‘jihadists’ will ignore Turkmenistan’s neutrality.”

Turkmen authorities have reason to keep an eye on any militant build-up along their border, given how in 2014 the Afghan Taliban killed several Turkmen border guards in a number of ambushes.

But Turkmen army Lt. Col. Soltan N. has confidence in the ability of his country to ward off any militant ambitions.

They won’t dare “infiltrate Turkmenistan, because they know they’d bite off more than they can chew,” he said.

“They might be strong … in their own mountains, but on the Turkmen plains, they’d be defeated,” he said, citing the Turkmen military’s acquisition of modern weapons in recent years.

The border troops will react fiercely if Afghan militants try anything this year, he said, citing better discipline and new weapons and equipment after President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov reprimanded their force last June.

Situation under control

Turkmen military officers and government officials say they’re constantly watching the militants in northern Afghanistan and have acquired some encouraging information.

The militants lack either order or a unified command, Soltan N. said, citing intelligence gathered by Afghanistan. The militant units have rival goals and differ greatly, he said. For example, ISIL and the Taliban appear to be more competitors than allies, media have reported.

“The ethnic Turkmens along the Afghan frontier reject the Islamists who have appeared there,” he said. “Turkmen tribal elders [in Afghanistan] dissuade their youth from joining the Islamists, explaining that [Turkmenistan] is their historic motherland.”

Even if the militants somehow poured into Turkmenistan, they wouldn’t find enough Turkmens willing to support their idea of a “caliphate,” Ashgabat political scientist Aidan Arazbayev said.

They’d find only “a few isolated individuals,” he said.
By joint efforts

On the assumption that prosperity can help defeat militancy, Berdymukhamedov and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January discussed a number of joint infrastructure projects during Ghani’s visit to Turkmenistan.

They expressed support for building the long-discussed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural-gas pipeline, the Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Turkmenistan railway and the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey transit and transport corridor.

Ghani expressed gratitude for Turkmenistan’s various aid projects serving Afghanistan, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan reported.

Further plans for Turkmen assistance include construction of a 20-bed maternity ward in Turgundi and a 300-bed children’s home in Sheberghan.

“This assistance is free of charge,” Arazbayev said. “It’s being done … exclusively to achieve peace and stability in long-suffering Afghanistan.”

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Spain And France Increase Bilateral Cooperation In Fight Against Drug Trafficking

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The Spanish Ministry of Justice hosted the Spanish-French meeting of the Anti-drug Liaison Group (Spanish acronym: GEAD) on Thursday morning at which representatives of the two countries analyzed and debated how to improve mechanisms for requesting letters rogatory and on the seizure of goods from drug traffickers.

The Spanish delegation has been headed up by the Director-General for International Legal Cooperation, Javier Herrera García-Canturri and the French delegation by the Director for Criminal Affairs and Pardons, Robert Gelli.

The group of high level experts analyzed ways to improve letters rogatory both in terms of their handling and in relation to the content of the requests therefor and tackled issues relating to the operation of joint investigation teams, among other issues.

As regards the seizure and confiscation of goods, the experts from the two countries debated the issue of removing obtained illicitly goods from offenders as an additional measure to complement punitive actions. This issue is the object of a new regulation in the reform of the Criminal Code that will give rise to the creation of an Asset Recovery Office within our legal-administrative system.

The Anti-drug Liaison Group was set up in 2008 to jointly and more effectively tackle the fight against organized crime in relation to drug trafficking between Spain and France. Over the last seven years, the Spanish-French cooperation model has become an example for our peer countries and, in particular, in the European Judicial Space where the absence of borders requires joint action based on transnational cooperation and operations.

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Using Nano-Hydrogels To Attack Cancer Cells

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Hydrogels are materials that are commonly used in everyday objects such as contact lenses or diapers, to control humidity. However, chemical engineers at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), in Mexico, developed a new technology based on thermosensitive nanoparticles (nano-hydrogels) to use these materials in the field of biomedicine, as an alternative to achieve controlled release of anticancer drugs.

Eduardo Mendizábal Mijares, professor at the Department of Chemistry, in the University of Guadalajara, said “we used nano-hydrogels loaded with drugs and injected them into the patient. With the characteristic that while passing through the bloodstream the drug is not detected nor attacked by the immune system, this due to their physical and chemical properties which make them compatible with the body”.

The idea is that the drug, being within the nano-hydrogels, is transported directly to cancer cells where it can be released without damaging other parts of the body, because hydrogels offer the possibility of dosing a myriad of active substances on the site desired and can be administered as dry or swollen hydrogels by different routes: oral, nasal, buccal, rectal, transdermal, vaginal, ocular and parental. Drug release may come by a volume increase, changes in pH, or temperature.

The development also adds magnetic particles to the hydrogels nanopolymer with the aim of producing a force field to raise the temperature, which necessary to destroy cancer cells.

The research, focused on developing thermosensitive nano-hydrogels which ,through a polymerization technique, mixes substances with different chemical and physical characteristics, achieving a chemical reaction and forming a set of small spheres called polymers.

The nano-hydrogels have shown very good characteristics of biocompatibility with the human organism, due to their physical properties, which make them resemble living tissues, especially by its high water content, its soft and elastic consistency, and its low interfacial tension which prevents them from absorbing proteins from body fluids.

By developing these materials absorbing large amounts of water without losing its shape was achieved, as well as the ability to retain heat at a temperature between 37 and 42 degrees Celcius. By combining emulsion polymerization and microemulsion the were able to synthesize structured hydrogels which present degrees of swelling and have better mechanical properties than conventional hydrogels, said the researcher.

These materials are used primarily in the biomedical area as diagnostic tools in membranes, coatings, microcapsules, implants for applications of short or long-range and systems of controlled drug release. Also the nano-hydrogels are used to regenerate tissue or mend fractures, serving as substrates for cell growth.

While molecular target drugs are already used against cancer, the novelty of the work is that materials such as nano-hydrogels can attack the cancer cells or tissues without damaging healthy body parts.

Source: Agencia ID

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Developed Prototype Of Robotic System With Emotion And Memory

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Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire have developed a prototype of a social robot which supports independent living for the elderly, working in partnership with their relatives or care-carers.

The robot uses a state of the art service platform called Care-O-bot® 3 and works within a smart-home environment.

Dr Farshid Amirabdollahian, a senior lecturer in Adaptive Systems at the University, led a team of nine partner institutions from across five European countries as part of the €4,825,492 project called ACCOMPANY (Acceptable Robotics Companions for Ageing Years).

Over the past three years the project team successfully carried out a wide range of studies in the University’s Robot House which included, detecting the activity and status of people in a smart-home environment as well as focusing on robots’ ability to remember and recall.

Developments culminated into three interaction scenarios, which were subsequently evaluated by involving elderly people and their formal/informal carers across France, the Netherlands and the UK.

ACCOMPANY’s results demonstrated that a social robot can potentially help to prevent isolation and loneliness, offering stimulating activities whilst respecting autonomy and independence. The project received “excellent results” from its final review in Brussels.

Dr Amirabdollahian said, “This project proved the feasibility of having companion technology, while also highlighting different important aspects such as empathy, emotion, social intelligence as well as ethics and its norm surrounding technology for independent living”

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Another Reason To Drink Wine: It Could Help Burn Fat

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Drinking red grape juice or wine – in moderation – could improve the health of overweight people by helping them burn fat better, according to a new study coauthored by an Oregon State University researcher.

The findings suggest that consuming dark-colored grapes, whether eating them or drinking juice or wine, might help people better manage obesity and related metabolic disorders such as fatty liver.

Neil Shay, a biochemist and molecular biologist in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, was part of a study team that exposed human liver and fat cells grown in the lab to extracts of four natural chemicals found in Muscadine grapes, a dark-red variety native to the southeastern United States.

One of the chemicals, ellagic acid, proved particularly potent: It dramatically slowed the growth of existing fat cells and formation of new ones, and it boosted metabolism of fatty acids in liver cells.

These plant chemicals are not a weight-loss miracle, cautions Shay. “We didn’t find, and we didn’t expect to, that these compounds would improve body weight,” he said. But by boosting the burning of fat, especially in the liver, they may improve liver function in overweight people.

“If we could develop a dietary strategy for reducing the harmful accumulation of fat in the liver, using common foods like grapes,” Shay said, “that would be good news.”

The study, which Shay conducted with colleagues at the University of Florida and University of Nebraska, complements work with mice he leads at his OSU laboratory. In one 2013 trial, he and his graduate students supplemented the diets of overweight mice with extracts from Pinot noir grapes harvested from Corvallis-area vineyards.

Some of the mice were fed a normal diet of “mouse chow,” as Shay calls it, containing 10 percent fat. The rest were fed a diet of 60 percent fat – the sort of unhealthy diet that would pile excess pounds on a human frame.

“Our mice like that high-fat diet,” said Shay, “and they overconsume it. So they’re a good model for the sedentary person who eats too much snack food and doesn’t get enough exercise.”

The grape extracts, scaled down to a mouse’s nutritional needs, were about the equivalent of one and a half cups of grapes a day for a person. “The portions are reasonable,” said Shay, “which makes our results more applicable to the human diet.”

Over a 10-week trial, the high-fat-fed mice developed fatty liver and diabetic symptoms – “the same metabolic consequences we see in many overweight, sedentary people,” Shay said.

But the chubby mice that got the extracts accumulated less fat in their livers, and they had lower blood sugar, than those that consumed the high-fat diet alone. Ellagic acid proved to be a powerhouse in this experiment, too, lowering the high-fat-fed mice’s blood sugar to nearly the levels of the lean, normally fed mice.

When Shay and his colleagues analyzed the tissues of the fat mice that ate the supplements, they noted higher activity levels of PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma, two proteins that work within cells to metabolize fat and sugar.

Shay hypothesizes that the ellagic acid and other chemicals bind to these PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma nuclear hormone receptors, causing them to switch on the genes that trigger the metabolism of dietary fat and glucose. Commonly prescribed drugs for lowering blood sugar and triglycerides act in this way, Shay said.

The goal of his work, he added, is not to replace needed medications but to guide people in choosing common, widely available foods that have particular health benefits, including boosting metabolic function.

“We are trying to validate the specific contributions of certain foods for health benefits,” he said. “If you’re out food shopping, and if you know a certain kind of fruit is good for a health condition you have, wouldn’t you want to buy that fruit?”

The research was supported by the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science at the University of Florida and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

Shay’s research with mice was supported by the Blue Mountain Horticultural Society, the Erath Family Foundation, and the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

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Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections And The Euro Leper Colony – OpEd

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Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that the new party of the Left, Syriza, won the recent parliamentary elections in Greece.

Syriza won on the promise that it will cure Greece of leprosy.

Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony.  That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.

The problem is, austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness.  The underlying disease is the euro itself.

For the last five years, Greeks have been told that, if you cure your disease—that is, if you dump the euro—the sky will fall.  I guess Greeks haven’t noticed, the sky has fallen already.  With unemployment at 25%, with doctors and teachers eating out of garbage cans, there is no further to fall.

In 2010, when unemployment was a terrible 10%, a year into the crisis, the “Troika” (the European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund) told the Greeks that brutal austerity measures would restore their economy by 2012.

Ask yourself, Was the Troika right?

There is a saying in America:  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

Can Greece survive without the euro?  Greece is already dead, but the Germans won’t even bother to bury the corpse.  Greeks are told that if they leave the euro and renounce its debts, the nation will not be able to access world capital markets.  The reality is, Greece can’t access world markets now:  no one lends to a corpse.

There’s a way back across the River Styx.  But it’s not by paddling on a euro.

There’s Life after Euro

Many nations do quite well without the euro.  Sweden, Denmark and India do just fine without the euro—and so does Turkey, which had the luck to be excluded from the euro-zone.  As long as Turks stick to the lira, even Turkey’s brain-damaged Islamo-fascist President Tayyip Erdoğan cannot destroy their economy.

Can Greece just dump the euro?  They have happy precedents to follow.  Argentina was once pegged to the US dollar much as Greece is tied to the euro today.  In 2000, Argentines, hungry and angry, revolted.  Argentina ultimately overthrew the dollar dictatorship, the IMF diktats and the threats of creditors, and defaulted on its dollar bonds.  Free at last!  In the decade since, the Argentine economy soared.  Yes, today, Argentina is under attack by financial vultures, but that is only because the nation became so temptingly wealthy.

I was in Brazil when its President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the IMF to go to hell—and rejected privatization of the state banks and the state oil company, rejected cutting pensions and thumbed his nose at the rest of the austerity nonsense. Instead, Lula created the bolsa familia, a massive pay-out to the nation’s poor.  The result: Brazil not only survived but thrived during the 2008-10  world financial crisis.  Despite pressure, Brazil never ceded control of its currency. (It is a sad irony that Brazil is only now faltering.  That’s the fault entirely of Lula’s successor, President Dilma Rousseff,  who is beginning to dance the austerity samba.)

Austerity:  Religion, Not Economics

The euro is simply the deutschmark with little stars on it.  Greece cannot adopt Germany’s currency without adopting Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, as its own.

And Schäuble has determined that Greece must be punished.  As my homey Paul Krugman points out, there is no credible economic theory that says that austerity—that is, cutting government spending, cutting wages, cutting consumer demand—can in any way help a nation in recession, in deflation.  That’s why, in 2009, Obama ordered up stimulus, not a sleeping pill.

But austerity has nothing to do with economics.  It is religion:  the belief by the stern Lutheran Germans that Greeks have had too much fun, spent too much money, and spent too much lazy time in the sun—and now Greeks must pay a price for their sins.

Oddly, I hear this self-flagellating nonsense from Greeks themselves:  we are lazy.  We deserve our punishment.  Nonsense.  The average Greek works more hours in a year than any other worker in the 34 nations of the OECD; Germans the least.

Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, would like to pretend that austerity and the euro are two different things, that you can marry the pretty girl but not invite her ugly sister to the wedding. Apparently, the Syriza chief is blissfully ignorant of the history of the euro.  The horror of austerity is not the consequence of Greek profligacy:  it was designed into the euro’s plan from the beginning.

This was explained to me by the father of the euro himself, economist Robert Mundell of Columbia University.  (I studied economics with Mundell’s buddy, Milton Friedman.)  Mundell not only invented the euro, he also fathered the misery-making policies of Thatcher and Reagan, known as “supply-side economics” – or, as George Bush Sr. called it, “voodoo economics.”  Supply-side voodoo is the long-discredited belief that if a nation demolishes the power of unions, cuts business taxes, eliminates government regulation and public ownership of utilities, economic prosperity will follow.

The euro is simply the other side of the supply-side coin.  As Mundell explained it, the euro is the way in which congresses and parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy.  Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system.  “Without fiscal policy,” Mundell told me, “the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.”

Greece, to survive in a euro economy, can only revive employment by reducing wages.  Indeed, the recent tiny reduction in unemployment is the sign that Greeks are slowly accepting a permanent future of low wages serving piña coladas to Germans on holiday cruises.

It is argued that Greece owes Germany, the IMF and the European Central Bank for bail-out-billions.  Nonsense.  None of the billions in bail-out funds went into Greek pockets.  It all went to bail out Deutsche Bank and other foreign creditors.  The EU treasuries swallowed 90% of its private bankers’ bonds.  Germany bailed out Germany, not Greece.

Nevertheless, Greece must pay Germany back, Mr. Tsipras, if you want to continue to use Germany’s currency, that is.

Greece:  Goldman Sacked

Greece’s ruin began with secret, fraudulent currency swaps, designed a decade ago by Goldman Sachs, to conceal Greek deficits that exceeded the euro zone’s 3%-of-GDP limit.  In 2009, when the truth came out, Greek debt holders realized they had been cheated.  These debt buyers then demanded usurious levels of interest (or, if you prefer, a high “spread”) to insure themselves against future fraud.  The compounding of this interest premium brought the Greek nation to its knees.  In other words, the crimes committed to join and stay in the euro, not Greek profligacy, caused the crisis.

The USA, Brazil and China escaped from depression by increasing their money supply and government spending and taking control of currency exchange rates—crucial tools Greece gave up in return for the euro.

Worse, once the Trojan hearse of the euro entered Athens, tourism, Greece’s main industry, drained to Turkey where hotels and souvenirs are priced in cheap lira.  This allowed Dr. Mundell’s remorseless wage-lowering machine, the euro, to do its work, to force Greece to strip all its workers of pensions and power.

Greece fell to its knees, with no choice but to beg Germany for mercy.

But there is no mercy.  As Germany’s Schäuble insists, democracy, this week’s vote, means nothing.  “New elections change nothing in the accords struck with the Greek government,” he says.  “[Greeks] have no alternative.”

Ah, but they do, Mr. Schäuble.  They can tell you to take your euro and shove it up your Merkel.

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The Burning Of Muaz Kasasbah: How Will Islamic State Explain This One? – OpEd

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By Moazzam Begg*

It’s not often that Fox News broadcasts material that exercises the grey matter, but in the case of downed Jordanian pilot Lietenant Muaz Kasasbeh who was horrifically burned alive by Islamic State (IS) this week, Rupert Murdoch’s notorious channel, more synonymous with embarrassing #FoxNewsFacts, has now outdone itself.

In publishing the slickly and sickly IS-produced video on its website, Fox News simultaneously becomes an important vehicle in helping to explain the IS narrative alongside evidence of the latter’s predilection to unrivalled inhumanity.

In the video, the signature Islamic State “A message to …” format followed by kneeling captives aside masked executioners is absent. In fact, there is no title to start off. All we have is Fox’s own ominous: “WARNING, EXTREMELY GRAPHIC VIDEO: ISIS burns hostage alive”.

The film begins with a clip of King Abdullah of Jordan explaining how out of the Jordanian pilots who were asked to volunteer to bomb IS targets as part of the US-led coalition, “every single pilot raised his hands and stepped forward”. Whether the hapless Kasasbeh was present or not, henceforth events were set in motion that sealed his fate at the hands of IS.

Fox News has not translated the video from Arabic, but the narrative is predictable, to a point: Jordan, an apostate monarchy, has sided time and again with the crusader states of the west in Iraq and Afghanistan with its military forces and intelligence cooperation with the US and its own secret prisons. The story then changes to the shooting down of the Jordanian fighter-jet in Raqqa, Syria and the capture of Kasasbeh. This time a title materialises: ‘Healing the believers’ chests’. This is undoubtedly in reference to the Quranic verse about fighting an enemy who Allah “will punish (them) by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.” [Quran 9:14]

This title suggests that IS is hurting from the effects of the sustained aerial bombing campaign it has been facing and, judging by the Dresdenesque destruction of Kobane largely carried out by the coalition, it is no surprise. However, considering what happened to innocent journalists or aid workers like James Foley and Peter Kassig who had come to Syria to help those more associated with the rebels – most of whom were in some way Islamic – and had even been declared ‘protected citizens’ and ‘innocent’ by IS’ own leaders, as in the case of British aid worker Alan Henning, it is no surprise either that IS would unleash its warped form of vengeance on its enemies. (NB: ISIS was imprisoning torturing, beheading and crucifying both Islamic and secular opponents in Syria well before it declared a caliphate).

I expect that the part most overlooked in this video will be the very reason why IS justifies such barbarity and whilst most people cannot stomach the idea of what IS does in the name of Islam it is important to understand its viewpoint. Dressed in Guantanamo orange, Kasasbeh explains candidly who he is and what he does. More disturbingly for Arab states involved in the bombing of IS he describes exactly what types of fighter-jets and missile they employ and identifies each country and the various airbases used as airstrike launchpads. He names Jordan, the Gulf States and Morocco as participants. He also names a Jordanian airbase used by US and French air forces. He goes on to explain the coordination between the various countries and the designation of sectors, which are surveyed using spy planes and satellites.

Kasasbeh then directs a message to the people of Jordan. “Our government is an agent of the Zionists…If we say we want to defend Islam then why do we not send our planes to [attack] the Nusayri (a pejorative term for Alawites), Bashar al-Asad forces who have killed countless Muslims, and the Jews who are closer to us…to defend al-Aqsa and Muslim land in Palestine.” Finally, he tells Jordan to stop sending its sons to fight IS or they will end up like him. The video then cuts to images of coalition airstrikes, incendiary rockets and charred bodies of children. Lt. Kasabeh is then seen walking, unshackled, unescorted, observing, perhaps even contemplating the effects of the devastation caused by airstrikes which he may even have carried out, as masked gunmen look on.

What happens next is unbelievable. Just as with previous executions there is a sense of surreal foreboding, that they wont really do it. But being burned by fire is so much worse, so horrific that Muslims have been taught the fear of entering naari jahannam (the fire of hell) since the birth of Islam. IS has justified execution by fire based on the Islamic law of qisas (retribution). The fact that there are clear prohibitions on burning by fire, viewed as solely a Divine right, as a form of capital punishment has been overridden by IS simply because of how hard they have been hit. Established Islamic principles have little to do with it.

IS could release details of its court proceedings so that that the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world – who IS undoubtedly would want to invite to Islam – can decipher for itself the nature of its procedures, advocacy and sources of law.

IS has stated that it has returned the Caliphate to the Muslim world, “on the methodology of the rightly-guided caliphs”. If that’s true, the caliph is absent. Even despots in the Arab world regularly appear in public and on social media to explain their policies, answer their critics or even to heap praise on supporters. In contrast hardly anything has been heard from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi since he took up the title of caliph.

IS supporters should know that the second and most historically influential of the rightly guided caliphs of Islam, Omar ibn al-Khattab, regularly held open court and was, on varying occasions, accounted and chastised in public. Once, a woman corrected him in the mosque regarding his mistaken view on marriage dowries; another time the Caliph, known for his frugal lifestyle and patchy clothes, had to explain why he had more cloth than everyone else (Omar’s son had donated his share to his father as the latter was a tall man and the share allocated to him didn’t suffice). The Caliph, on another occasion, was even told he’d lose the people’s oath of allegiance – bayah – and be straightened by the sword if he went astray. Omar did not imprison, torture or behead the man who openly said this; rather, he thanked Allah that such courageous people resided in his caliphate. IS has imprisoned and executed numerous people for refusing bayah. Their brutality will probably get worse.

The Islamic authority of al-Azhar in Egypt has called for killing, crucifixions and amputations against IS while Jordan has executed two failed al-Qaeda bombers, who were not part of IS, and has vowed an “earth shattering” response. IS has had ample opportunity to negotiate prisoner exchanges. But more often than not it either demands money, or simply kills its prisoners. If there is no room for negotiating even prisoner exchange the alternative is more airstrikes, more war.

In contrast, last year there was an unprecedented Afghan Taliban/US prisoner exchange. The Taliban too had been bombed by coalition forces and had lost many more people than IS. Yet the Taliban were not only able to secure their prisoners’ release from Guantanamo in exchange for US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, they even managed handshakes in the process. Bergdahl had been their captive for five years. The Taliban’s parting statement to him was simply, “don’t come back to Afghanistan”.

* Moazzam Begg is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and currently the director of outreach for UK-based campaigning organisation CAGE. (This article was first published in Middle East Eye.)

The post The Burning Of Muaz Kasasbah: How Will Islamic State Explain This One? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

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