In the wake of Obergefell, the outrageous Supreme Court decision finding that the traditional definition of marriage violates “due process,” Americans need to turn their attention to the dangers of overly broad state public accommodation laws. Christian business owners are especially burdened when individuals seeking to exercise a new “right” are deemed “suspect classes” and are thus entitled to heightened legal protection that appears to trump the First Amendment.

For example, Breitbart reports that Christian bakery owners in Oregon have just been hit with a gag order prohibiting them publishing any material indicating a refusal to bake cakes for homosexual weddings. Their speech is silenced contrary to the Bill of Rights. The bakers were also ordered to pay a gay couple $135,000 for mental anguish caused by the refusal to bake the cake. The Daily Caller has this article on the judge’s ruling.

Oregon law is a good example of the dangers to First Amendment freedoms posed by state public accommodations laws.

Under Oregon’s statute “all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation, without any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status or age if the individual is 18 years of age or older.”

The statute broadly defines a place of public accommodation as “Any place or service offering to the public accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges whether in the nature of goods, services, lodgings, amusements, transportation or otherwise.”

These statutes, rather than promoting freedom, serve to burden Christians and go far beyond the common law. Under the common law, the concept of public accommodation was circumscribed. The common law imposed a duty to serve all comers on businesses providing essential goods and services to travelers. This rule developed in light of circumstances where travel posed myriad dangers. A traveler denied access to an inn would be at the mercy of the elements, robbers, and hunger. Inns were havens, and usually the only available haven, where someone on a journey could obtain refreshment and shelter. Similarly, common carriers such as railroad companies usually enjoyed a monopoly on transportation services. If the carrier refused to sell a ticket to a traveler, then the wayfarer would be stranded and subject to many of the same indignities as a person denied access to the inn. Consequently, common carriers were cloaked with the public interest and were prohibited from discriminating.

The common law’s constraints on inn keepers and common carriers made sense. Travelers had nowhere else to turn for safety or passage. Hence, these few businesses cloaked with the public interest had to provide services to all. Early state a federal accommodation laws expanded the idea of the public’s interest, and specifically addressed the situation of the freedmen. In 1964, Title II of the federal Civil Rights Act did not stray far from its forerunners in the 1860s and 70s, and much like the old common law focused on businesses relating to interstate travel and restaurants.

But today under the law of many states, there is no limitation on what is a public accommodation. Every business finds itself in the position of the inn keeper of yesteryear. Moreover, the list of suspect classifications continues to expand. While the legislators were probably well meaning in enacting these broad statutes, the Oregon ruling and its statute should cause us to rethink the wisdom of labeling every business as a public accommodation. Actually, the First Amendment and common sense require that we do rethink these laws.

This article was published by the Independent Institute.

The post Oregon Judge Attacks Free Speech In Wake Of Obergefell – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Greece’s debt is 180% of GDP, which seems to make it insolvent without large primary surpluses. This column argues that since restructuring lowered the interest burden to just 2% of GDP, Greece is solvent – or would be with nominal GDP growth of just 2%. The ECB’s misdiagnosis has caused an unnecessary banking crisis. The solution is to accept that Greek debt is sustainable, so the austerity programme can be relaxed and liquidity support provided to the Greek banking sector.

By Paul De Grauwe*

The issue of restructuring of the Greek debt is at the centre of the negotiations about how to resolve the Greek crisis. Since the start of that crisis the Greek sovereign debt has been subjected to several restructuring efforts.

• First, there was an explicit restructuring in 2012 forcing private holders of the debt to accept deep haircuts.

This explicit restructuring had the effect of lowering the Greek sovereign debt by approximately 30% of GDP.

• Second, there were a series of implicit restructurings involving both a lengthening of the maturities and a lowering of the effective interest burden on the Greek sovereign debt.

As a result of these implicit restructurings, the average maturity of the Greek sovereign debt is now approximately 16 years, which is considerably longer than the maturities of the government bonds of the other Eurozone countries.

Resulting reduction of interest rate burden

These implicit restructurings have also reduced the interest burden on the Greek debt, as can be seen from Figure 1, where we compare the effective interest payments of Eurozone governments as a percent of their GDP.

• We observe that since 2011 the interest burden of the Greek government has been cut by almost half to reach 4% of GDP in 2014,¹ while the interest burden of the other periphery countries (Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal) increased.

Since during this period the debt to GDP ratio of Greece increased significantly, this implies that the effective interest burden as a percent of the Greek government debt declined even more. We show this in Figure 2.

• Since the peak year of 2011 the interest payments as a percent of the Greek government debt declined from more than 6% to 2.2% in 2014.²

As a result of these implicit restructurings the headline debt burden of 180% of GDP in 2015 vastly overstates the effective debt burden. Various estimates based on the net present value of future interest payments and debt repayments suggest that this effective debt burden of the Greek government is less than half of the headline debt burden of 180%.

Figure 1. Interest payments (% of GDP)
Source: Eurostat.

Figure 2. Interest payments as % outstanding debt (Greek government)
Source: Eurostat.

Greece’s debt situation is better than it looks

From the preceding it follows that the effective debt burden of the Greek government is lower than the debt burden faced by not only the other periphery countries of the Eurozone but also by countries like Belgium and France.

• This leads to the conclusion that the Greek government debt is most probably sustainable provided Greece can start growing again.

Put differently, provided Greece can grow, its government is solvent.

The latter point is important. We show this in Table 1. It presents the effective interest rate on the government debt and the nominal growth rate of GDP. The last column presents the difference between the two. It is well-known that if this difference is positive there is a dynamics that leads to an ever increasing debt to GDP ratio.³

What is striking is that Greece has the lowest effective interest (r) burden on its debt but also the lowest nominal growth of GDP (g). As a result the difference (r – g) achieves the highest value in Greece, producing an unstable dynamics. Thus, more than in the other countries the key to stopping this dynamics is to stimulate nominal growth.

• If Greece can return to a nominal growth (inflation + real growth) of only 2% it can stabilise its (relatively low) effective debt burden.

Austerity is certainly not the way to do it. Greece has been the champion of austerity with a cumulative increase of the discretionary primary surplus of 18% of GDP since 2009 (based on Eurostat). This has been instrumental in producing a cumulative decline of GDP of 25%.⁴

Table 1. Interest rate and nominal growth (2015)
Source: Eurostat and European Commission, Spring Forecast, 2015.

The logic of the previous analysis is that Greece is solvent provided it can return to relatively low nominal growth rates. Today Greece has no access to the capital markets except if it is willing to pay prohibitive interest rates that would call into question its solvency. As a result, it cannot rollover its debt despite the fact that the debt is sustainable.⁵ Thus I conclude:

• The Greek government is most likely solvent but has become illiquid.

What are the policy implications of this surprising finding?

• The first one is that creditors must stop imposing austerity programs that assume the debt is still 180% of GDP.

While it may make sense to impose gradually increasing primary budget surpluses of 1% to 3%, when the debt to GDP ratio is 180%, it does not make sense to impose such austerity when the effective debt to GDP ratio is only half that number. When the debt to GDP ratio is 180% a country has to generate primary surpluses for a long time so as to reduce the debt to GDP ratio. When the debt to GDP ratio is only half, the need to reduce it is considerably weakened. As a result, austerity can be relaxed.

Put differently, given the relatively low effective Greek debt burden, all what is needed is a programme that would allow to keep the primary budget balance at its present level (which is close to zero).

Such a programme is likely to generate a higher nominal growth rate of GDP. As we have seen, a nominal growth rate of 2% would be sufficient to stabilise the government debt burden.

• A second implication of the fact that the effective Greek debt burden is sustainable has to do with the European Central Bank.

The ECB follows the Bagehot-principle, which states that the central bank may lend money only to those institutions that are solvent but illiquid. The ECB assumes that the Greek government with a headline government debt of 180% of GDP is not solvent. Therefore it is not willing to involve the Greek government bonds into its OMT- and QE-programmes.

In contrast, the ECB is ready to buy government bonds of other countries in the Eurozone, which have a higher effective debt burden than Greece, both in the context of its OMT- and QE-programmes. The refusal by the ECB to treat Greece the same way as the other member-countries of the Eurozone is erroneous and is based on a misdiagnosis of the nature of the Greek debt.

The misdiagnosis by the ECB matters: An unnecessary banking crisis

This misdiagnosis by the ECB now has dramatic effects on the Greek banking system, and thus on the Greek economy as a whole. The ECB takes the view that the Greek banks which hold Greek sovereign debt are now becoming insolvent themselves, and therefore cannot profit from lender of last resort activities.

• Since the (restructured) Greek government debt is most likely sustainable, the Greek banks should be allowed to use their Greek government bonds as collateral to obtain additional liquidity support.

By refusing this, the ECB has caused an unnecessary banking crisis.

This crisis will deepen the recession, increase unemployment and dramatically deteriorate the Greek government budget, transforming a liquidity crisis into a renewed solvency crisis. In doing so the ECB helps keeping Greece in a bad equilibrium. This may force Greece out of the Eurozone. The ECB would bear a huge responsibility for this outcome.

There is a relatively simple solution to the Greek problem

Accepting that the (restructured) Greek debt is sustainable opens the door to both a softening of the austerity programme and to liquidity support of the Greek banking sector. This solution assumes that creditors accept reality. They must acknowledge that their claims on the Greek government have a significantly lower value than their face value. They should make clear to their citizens that the losses were incurred in the past. Admission of this reality must be the first step to solve the problem of the Greek debt.

I am aware that this solution creates political problems.

• First, politicians prefer to live in a fictional world allowing them to pretend no losses have been made so that they can hide the truth to their own taxpayers.

The solution proposed here demands that these governments come out with the truth.

• Second, in order for this solution to be applied the insatiable desire of some creditor countries to punish the Greek for their misbehaviour must be overcome.

This moral hazard idea looms large over the negotiations. Given that the Greek population has suffered so much and has paid a very high price for past mistakes, it is time to repress these desires to go on punishing a whole nation.

About the author:
* Paul De Grauwe, Professor of international economics, London School of Economics, and former member of the Belgian parliament.

References:
Blanchard, O and D Leigh (2013), “Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers”, IMF Working Paper, January.

Darvas, Z (2015), “Greek Choices after the elections”, Blog Comment, Bruegel, 23 January.

De Grauwe, P (2011), “Managing a fragile Eurozone”, VoxEU.org, 10 May.

De Grauwe, P and Y Ji (2013), “Panic-driven Austerity in the Eurozone and its Implications“, VoxEU.org.

Watt, A (2015), “Is Greek Debt Really Unustainable?”, Occasional Paper, Social Europe, January.

Footnotes:
1 According to Zsolt Darvas of Bruegel the effective interest burden of the Greek government is even lower than 4%; Darvas has estimated this to be a mere 2.6% of GDP. See Darvas(2015). This is significantly lower than the interest burden of countries such as Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

2 According to Watt (2015) the effective interest burden as a percent of the debt is now lower in Greece than in Germany

3 The formula is:  where D_t is the debt to GDP ratio and B_t is the primary budget balance.

4 See Blanchard and Leigh( 2013) and De Grauwe and Ji (2013).

5 There is something circular here. The expectation that the Greek government will be faced with a liquidity problem is self-fulfilling. The Greek government cannot find the liquidity because markets believe it cannot find liquidity. The Greek government is trapped in a bad equilibrium. See De Grauwe (2011).

The post Greece Is Solvent But Illiquid: Policy Implications – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa PourMohammadi says the legislation regarding the Islamic tenet of “Enforcing Good Behaviour and Forbidding Bad” is breaking rules about the branches of government and their jurisdictions.

The Fars News Agency reports that on Wednesday July 2, PourMohammadi said President Rohani has written to Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, calling for estoppel of the legislation.

The legislation in support of volunteers being dispatched around the city by mosques in order to enforce hijab and moral behaviour was recently approved in Parliament and given the go-ahead by the Guardian Council.

PourMohammadi said the president’s letter described the tensions that could rise out of the legislation. Ayatollah Khamenei has accordingly forwarded the issue to the Dispute Resolution Committee of the branches of the government.

The committee is a body that was established three years ago by Iran’s leader to maintain harmony among the branches of the government. Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the former head of the judiciary, sits at the helm of this committee.

The post Iran: Law To Let Volunteers Enforce Morality Worries Administration appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Abayomi Azikiwe*

A racist attack on the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was a planned and premediated assault on the legacy of struggle waged by the African American people for two centuries in South Carolina.

Corporate media reports on the shooting seek to minimize its significance, featuring politicians and moderate elements within the community who express shock that such an incident would occur in a church in the state of South Carolina. The governor has said that South Carolina was a “loving community” and that the attack resulting in the assassination of State Senator Clementa Pinckney and eight other African American church members who were workers playing a leading role in community affairs, was somehow at variance with the social culture of the area.

Nonetheless, South Carolina has a long history of slavery, Jim Crow, racial capitalism and terrorist violence against African Americans. The former British colony and slave state reaped massive profits through the exploitation of Africans during the colonial antebellum period.

However, Africans have resisted their enslavement since the 18th century from West Africa all the way to the Carolinas in the southeast region of what became known as the United States.

According to an article published in the South Carolina Gazette on July 7, 1759:

“A Sloop commanded by a brother of…Captain Ingledieu, slaving up the River Gambia, was attacked by a number of the natives, about the 27th of February last, and made a good defense; but the Captain finding himself desperately wounded, and likely to be overcome, rather than fall into the hands of merciless wretches, when about 80 Negroes had boarded the vessel, discharged a pistol into his magazine and blew her up; himself and every soul on board perished.”

There was much at stake for the slavocracy in South Carolina. In a posting by the South Carolina Information Highway it notes of the history of the state that, “The slave traders discovered that Carolina planters had very specific ideas concerning the ethnicity of the slaves they sought. No less a merchant than Henry Laurens wrote: ‘The Slaves from the River Gambia are preferred to all others with us [here in Carolina] save the Gold Coast…. next to Them the Windward Coast are preferred to Angola’.” (http://www.sciway.net/hist/chicora/slavery18-2.html )

The site goes on saying, “In other words, slaves from the region of Senegambia and present-day Ghana were preferred. At the other end of the scale were the “Calabar” or Ibo or “Bite” slaves from the Niger Delta, who Carolina planters would purchase only if no others were available. In the middle were those from the Windward Coast and Angola.”

Dylann Storm Roof mugshot.

This same source continues stressing that “Carolina planters developed a vision of the ‘ideal’ slave – tall, healthy, male, between the ages of 14 and 18, ‘free of blemishes,’ and as dark as possible. For these ideal slaves Carolina planters in the eighteenth century paid, on average, between 100 and 200 sterling – in today’s money that is between $11,630 and $23,200! Many of these slaves were almost immediately put to work in South Carolina’s rice fields. Writers of the period remarked that there was no harder, or more unhealthy work possible: [N]egroes, ankle and even mid-leg deep in water which floats in mud, and exposed all the while to a burning sun which makes the very air they breathe hotter than the human blood; these poor wretches are then in a furnace of stinking putrid effluvia: a more horrible employment can hardly be imagined’.”

It is quite obvious from the web and social media posting about suspect Dylann Storm Roof that he was well aware of the long tradition of African people fighting their oppressors, targeting the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) which was founded in the movement against slavery and for self-determination as early as 1818. Efforts by the federal and state officials have sought to ignore any possible links by Roof to white supremacist organizations which are in existence in South Carolina and neighboring North Carolina where he was captured.

ATTACKS ON AME CALCULATED AND IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN

The perpetrator was an ideological racist who championed the system of settler-colonialism in Southern Africa and the United States. In a posting on the web, Roof wore a jacket with the insignia of the former apartheid regime in South Africa and the overthrown settler-colony of Rhodesia, founded in the attempted genocide, forced displacement and virtual enslavement of the people of Zimbabwe during the 19th century, which won its independence in 1980.

The fact that this church with such a valiant history of resistance to slavery was targeted illustrated that this was an attempt to intimidate the African American nation as a whole and its institutions. Despite the legacy of slavery and segregation, the people of South Carolina have engaged in political activity since antebellum and Reconstruction period.

HISTORY OF AME CHURCH ROOTED IN REBELLION

Emanuel grew out of the resistance to slavery during the early 19th century. A co-founder of the church was Telemaque, better known as Denmark Vesey. His plans for a major slave revolt in Charleston in 1822 sent shockwaves throughout the antebellum South and other slaveholding areas of the U.S. Vesey and his comrades were hanged after a secret trial while the church was destroyed by the slave masters. The church operated underground for decades only to resurface after the Civil War.

Vesey was first enslaved in the Danish colony of St. Thomas in the Caribbean in the late 18th century. He was reportedly taken to Haiti during the same period where a revolution against French colonialism and slavery was carried out during 1791-1803, becoming the first successful slave revolution against chattel bondage in history, establishing an African republic in 1804.

He and his master re-located to South Carolina during the latter years of the 18th century. South Carolina was a profitable state for the slave system where due to the intensity of agricultural production, Africans far outnumbered whites in the 19th century.

It is reported that the Africans organized by Vesey had planned to burn down plantations and kill slave owners liberating the enslaved and taking people to Haiti to join the independent Black government there in 1822. The plot was revealed to the ruling slavocracy, resulting in the arrest of Vesey and dozens of others who were tried in secret hearings leading to the initial execution of 35 people and many others later.

The Emmanuel Church grew out of the movement for independent self-rule among Africans as represented by the Free Africa Society that created the conditions for the formal founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Philadelphia during the period of 1787 and 1816. The founders of the Church included Richard Allen and Sara Allen along with Absalom Jones. Emanuel is reported to have been the third AME Church founded in the U.S. being the earliest of such institutions in the South during slavery and its aftermath.

This act of terrorism on June 17, just one day after the 193rd anniversary of the Denmark Vesey plot being revealed to the ruling class, represents a profound provocation to African Americans and progressive forces in general. The confederate flag which still flies on the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia must be taken down as demonstrators called for on Saturday June 20.

A ruthless campaign against racism and racist organizations must be waged by the African American people and their allies across the country. Until racism and national oppression is overthrown there can be no real transformation of U.S. society from capitalism to socialism.

* Abayomi Azikiwe is Editor, Pan-African News Wire.

The post Charleston Massacre And The Legacy Of Denmark Vesey – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

To hear Saudi leaders tell it, the primary threat to the kingdom’s stability is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Worried over Washington and Tehran’s slowly improving relationship, Riyadh has projected an increasingly militarized and sectarian foreign policy aimed at countering Iran’s alleged hegemonic aims in the Middle East.

Yet tension with Iran is only one element of an increasingly complicated mosaic of threats to Saudi Arabia. In fact, the gravest dangers to the kingdom come from within.

Saudi Arabia is a classic rentier state. In exchange for the absolute acquiescence of its 29 million subjects, the ruling al-Saud family provides services such as housing, health care, education, and a variety of subsidies — all funded by the country’s substantial oil wealth. Combined with intolerance for dissent, control over these resources has historically served as the ruling family’s hedge against instability of all varieties.

In 2011, for example, the Saudi leadership responded to the Arab Spring revolts across the region by injecting $130 billion in the form of salary increases, public-sector job creation, and housing subsidies to minimize the potential for an uprising. Meanwhile, the kingdom’s appalling human rights record has deteriorated. Over the past four years, beheadings have skyrocketed and torture has flourished.

However, this authoritarian rentier state model is unsustainable. Oil revenues are down, local unrest is simmering, and extremists are taking aim at the kingdom from without and within. The roots of all these problems come not from Iran but from inside Saudi Arabia itself.

Feeling the Pinch

The global slide in oil prices has taken a toll on Saudi Arabia’s fossil-fueled economy. Foreign reserves dropped by $36 billion this spring, and are projected to fall another $300 billion within two years. The kingdom’s 2015 budget deficit — the first in seven years — is projected to reach $40 billion. With the kingdom waging a costly military campaign in Yemen, and the recently installed King Salman granting salary bonuses to public employees and military families, Saudi Arabia’s coffers are being drained at a rapid pace.

Demographic realities exacerbate these fiscal pressures. Unlike many Arab states that have declining or stable birth rates, Saudi Arabia’s population is growing. More half of the kingdom’s population is under the age of 25 and two-thirds are under 29. With a high youth unemployment rate and an estimated 25 percent of Saudis living in poverty, the economic grievances that drove Arabs in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria to revolt could spark similar forms of resistance among Saudi Arabians, constituting a major worry for the royal family.

The kingdom’s educational system is in dire need of reform. While many young Saudis are well-versed in the Koran as a result of their religious education, they often lack skills that are more practical and applicable to the global economy. The human capital of the country’s women is especially underdeveloped. Sixty percent of Saudis enrolled in higher education are women, yet the country’s female unemployment rate is 32.5 percent.

King Salman’s predecessor, King Abdullah, pursued progressive reforms (by Saudi Arabian standards) on gender issues, but the kingdom’s conservative elements prevented much progress. The reality is that Saudi law still recognizes women as property of their male relatives. In Saudi Arabia, which remains the only country that bans female drivers, if a woman falls in public it’s even illegal for an ambulance to pick her up.

Militant Jihadism

Since the 18^th century, the Saudi ruling family has relied on an alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Yet Saudi Arabia’s leadership has increasingly found this arrangement problematic, with several Wahhabi militant groups accusing the ruling al-Saud family of corruption and dedicating themselves to overthrowing it.

Scores of jihadist terrorist attacks in the kingdom, which peaked during the al-Qaeda insurgency of the mid-2000s, highlight the failure of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to maintain the loyalty of certain Wahhabi hardliners. Even as Saudi Arabia contributes to the U.S.-led military campaign against Daesh — another name for the self-styled “Islamic State” — thousands of Saudis have fled the kingdom to join Daesh’s ranks on the Iraqi and Syrian battlefields. Meanwhile, its supporters have launched a spate of “lone wolf” attacks against foreigners and Shiites in the kingdom.

The caliphate’s leaders have openly targeted Saudi Arabia’s leadership. In a statement last November, Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced his intention to expand Daesh to the “lands of al-Haramein” — a reference to Mecca and Medina. He referred to the ruling family as “the serpent’s head” and the “stronghold of the disease,” likening them to the pre-Islamic pagan rulers of Mecca and calling on supporters in the kingdom to rise up against them.

A few months later, when King Abdullah died, the group’s supporters took to social media to celebrate the death of the “thief of the two holy mosques,” further demonstrating Daesh’s vitriol for the monarchy.

Although Riyadh has made combatting Daesh a lower priority than fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the kingdom is extremely vulnerable to the group and its quest to foment chaos in the Gulf region. Given Daesh’s rapid rise to power in large portions of Iraq and Syria, and the mushrooming of its affiliated groups from Libya to Pakistan, Riyadh has every reason to be concerned about implications for the kingdom’s security.

Rising Sectarian Temperatures

Ever since the Wahhabi conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, the Shiites of modern-day Saudi Arabia — roughly 15 percent of the total population — have endured state-sponsored discrimination, social marginalization, and campaigns of violence waged by anti-Shiite hardliners.

Particularly since the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province — home to virtually the entire Shiite minority and all of the kingdom’s oil reserves — has experienced growing sectarian unrest and heightened political tension. In response to increasingly vocal demands for political, economic, and social reforms from their Shiite subjects, Saudi authorities have waged a harsh crackdown in the Eastern Province, maintaining that Shiite dissent is a product of Iranian meddling.

Saudi Arabia’s actions in neighboring countries have further raised sectarian temperatures. Riyadh’s decision in 2011 to deploy security forces to neighboring Bahrain to help the Sunni rulers in Manama suppress a democratic revolt from Bahraini Shiites intensified tensions between Saudi Arabia’s Sunni rulers and their own Shiite subjects. Furthermore, while Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious establishment has called Riyadh’s military campaign in Yemen a “holy war,” Shiites in the Eastern Province have vocally condemned the kingdom’s war against the Houthis. In early April, clashes erupted in Awamiyah between security forces and Shiite protestors demanding an end to Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen.

Last year, Sheik Nimr al-Nimr — a revered Shiite cleric in the Eastern Province — was sentenced to death for allegedly inciting violence against the kingdom. Saudi Arabian Shiites see his sentence as a political maneuver aimed at quelling dissent in the Eastern Province. If Nimr is actually executed, sectarian tensions in the kingdom, as well as in other Middle Eastern countries, can only rise. Documented attacks against security forces by armed Shiite factions in the Eastern Province represent a growing potential for militancy and violent unrest.

Some hardline Wahhabis complain that Saudi authorities are too soft on Shiite dissent. Daesh has exploited this tension by demanding that Gulf Arab backers of the group carry out violence directed at all Shiites of the Arabian Peninsula. Daesh claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings targeting Shiite mosques in the Eastern Province this May, following a shooting of Shiites in the district of al-Ahsa on November 3, which marked the Shiite holy day of Ashura.

The threat of more Daesh-orchestrated and inspired terrorism in the Eastern Province poses a difficult dilemma for Saudi Arabia’s leadership. Following May’s violence, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud immediately visited the Eastern Province in an effort to convince locals that their rulers are committed to the security of all Saudi Arabians. However, many Shiites hold the kingdom’s religious establishment responsible for the attacks and maintain that officials in Riyadh turn a blind eye to Daesh’s sectarian agenda in the kingdom.

Ultimately, it will be difficult for Riyadh to maintain a lid on Shiite dissent while Daesh openly inflames sectarian tensions. Daesh’s recent suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City, which killed 27 and injured 227, along with its calls for violence against Bahrain’s Shiites, underscores its commitment to exploiting the Gulf’s sectarian tensions as a means of spreading its violent campaign to the region’s monarchies — with Saudi Arabia being the group’s top prize.

This balancing act is further complicated by Saudi Arabia’s efforts to topple the Iranian-backed regime in Syria and the kingdom’s ongoing war against the Zaydi Shiite Houthis in Yemen, which will continue to fuel tension between Saudi Arabia’s Sunni leadership and Shiite subjects.

While the Saudi government relies on its petro-wealth to buy loyalty and crush all dissent, a plethora of domestic and regional developments make the need for genuine and serious reforms in the kingdom increasingly urgent. Failure to implement them can only result in the deepening of these grievances.

The prospects for political and social stability in the kingdom will depend on the new leadership’s ability to address these internal issues in a truly meaningful way. Changes in Saudi Arabia’s reactionary society and political system cannot be expected in a short period of time. But they won’t get underway at all until Saudi leaders stop blaming Iran for their problems and start looking within.

*Giorgio Cafiero is the Founder of Gulf State Analytics. Daniel Wagner is the CEO of Country Risk Solutions.

This article was published at FPIF

The post Saudi Arabia Faces Simmering Tensions At Home While Waging War Abroad – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Matt Hadro

As bishops warn of current threats to religious liberty in the United States, Catholics can take heart that such challenges have faced them before, and they have persevered, one Church historian says.

“It’s okay to realize that other people have gone on this same journey, a journey that’s involved persecution, a journey that’s involved a Catholic minority and a non-Catholic majority, and sometimes friction with governments,” said Fr. David Endres, assistant professor of Church history and historical theology at The Athenaeum of Ohio, in an interview with CNA.

“I think it’s important to remember the history, if nothing more than to realize that this is ground that has already been tread by our forefathers,” he added.

“Now is the time to take heart and realize that the compass of the Scriptures and Tradition now need to be emphasized more than ever as our guide; that we cannot look to politicians, we can’t look to the government, we certainly cannot look to pop culture and the media as our guide for morality.”

Fr. Endres spoke with CNA during the Fortnight for Freedom, a two-week campaign by the U.S. bishops to educate Catholics about religious freedom and the current threats to the public practice of religion in the nation.

Among the threats the bishops have warned of in recent years are the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and Catholic adoption agencies being forced out of business because they will not place children with same-sex couples as mandated by state anti-discrimination laws.

The bishops recently voiced grave concerns over the Supreme Court’s recent marriage decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which established same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Although the majority opinion “makes a nod” toward religious freedom, it does not mention the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion and this is very troubling, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore told reporters on a conference call after the decision. Archbishop Lori chairs the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty.

“The free exercise of religion means that we have a right not only to debate it openly in the public square, but to operate our ministries and to live our lives in accordance to the truth about marriage without violence, or being penalized, or losing our tax exemption, or losing our ability to serve the common good through our social services and through education,” he said in the June 26 conference call.

The omission of “free exercise” in the Court’s majority opinion thus “could give rise to a lot of legal controversies,” Archbishop Lori warned. Without guarantees of the free exercise of religion, religiously-affiliated organizations which oppose same-sex marriage and businesses who cannot serve same-sex weddings could face legal challenges.

The current threats to religious liberty – state and federal laws regulating the free exercise of religion of charitable institutions – are eerily similar to a Supreme Court case from nearly a century ago, and Catholics should take note, Fr. Endres explained.

In 1922, Oregon passed a law forcing all children between the ages of eight and sixteen in parochial and private schools into public schools. The law, the Compulsory Education Act of 1922, was supported by the Ku Klux Klan as a measure to push for standard American education and to prevent what they saw as a foreign influence – the Catholic Church – from educating immigrant children.

The Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, along with a military private school, fought the law in court. Three years later, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court resoundingly struck down the law in a unanimous decision, ruling that it violated the freedom of parents to send their children to parochial schools.

In the history of the U.S., this was perhaps the event that bears the closest resemblance to the present-day struggle between Catholic institutions maintaining their religious freedom, and state and federal laws looking to regulate their consciences, Fr. Endres said.

However, the law is also but one incident in a U.S. history that is checkered with anti-Catholic bigotry and violence. In “Sticks, Stones, and Broken Bones: the History of anti-Catholic Violence in the U.S.”, a 2014 article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Fr. Endres detailed just how rocky has been Catholicism’s relationship with mainstream American culture.

Colonial-era laws forbade Catholics from becoming lawyers and teachers. In Maryland, Catholic parents could be fined for sending their children to Europe to receive a Catholic education. Distribution of anti-Catholic pamphlets and literature was commonplace.

Once European emigration to the U.S. increased in the 1840s and 50s, this established a largely Catholic minority of Irish and Germans.

Anti-Catholicism was mingled with xenophobia as the mainstream individualist culture was quite suspicious of Catholicism. Consequently, some U.S. residents tried to ensure that immigrants would not gain positions of power. A political party surfaced that at its root was anti-Catholic, the “Know-Nothing Party.”

Convents and churches were victim to mob violence in multiple cases. Two Philadelphia parishes were burned in 1844 after rumors circulated that Catholics were trying to oust Protestant bibles from public schools.

The visit of a papal ambassador from Bl. Pius IX to report on the state of the Church in the U.S. resulted in violent unrest in multiple cities, including the burning of the ambassador’s effigy.

Anti-Catholic violence waxed and waned through the years, but Catholics had never felt they fully “made it” in American society until the election of John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, to the presidency. Afterward, many devout Catholics thought they would be accepted as a permanent part of the American mainstream culture.

“We felt like we had kind of come of age in this country,” Fr Endres told CNA. “And that in general, we were not on the fringes.”

The recent threats to religious liberty are proving more and more that this Catholic peace was a reprieve and not a permanent acceptance of Catholicism in the U.S., he added.

Why has there been so much anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States? The overall conflict between the Church and American culture has centered on freedom and authority, and the fault line still exists today, Fr. Endres explained.

“I would say part of it is the role of individuals vis a vis community and the Church has always upheld quite a communal emphasis,” he said. Historically, the mainstream American culture promoted individualism, and looked down on Catholics who followed the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

This conflict also extends to the debate of the role of community versus the freedom of the individual, he added.

“We have this strange idea that’s developed in this country that freedom means absolute autonomy of persons. And the Church has never believed that true freedom consisted of absolute autonomy, but instead, basically a relationship with God and with one another. We kind of have this path set before us that yes, we are responsible to other people. We are responsible to God in a special way, and absolute autonomy has no place in that kind of worldview.”

Historically, this played out in the Protestant individualistic culture of the U.S. against the Catholic view of community and authority.

This push for absolute autonomy has played out in the push for acceptance of same-sex marriage and of the transgender movement.

On the other side is a Christian anthropology, he said: “how we view our being made in the image and likeness of God, how we view marriage and family life, gender, sexuality, all those kinds of things.”

The question then becomes, “do I have an obligation to anyone but myself?” Fr. Endres asked rhetorically.

“The modern notion would be ‘it’s just you,’” whereas a Christian recognizes that he has an obligation to obey and love God and the Church, and to love his neighbor.

And Catholics are once again being moved to the margins, with laws prohibiting them from publicly practicing their religion and remaining true to Church teaching on sexuality.

However, “it’s important for us to realize then that to be on the margins of society is not always a bad thing,” he added.

The present hostility to Catholic teaching on sexuality might actually be a “call instead to remain faithful on the margins,” he said, because the Catholic faith is counter-cultural.

“We are speaking a truth that is not always popular, but which we believe very strongly comes from Christ and more broadly from the revelation of God to man. And if you really believe that, you can’t accommodate.”

Throughout U.S. history, some Catholics have remained faithful to the Church, while others accommodated to the culture. For example, some German Catholic immigrants and priests in the 19th century left the Church to become Protestant because they couldn’t endure the anti-Catholic hostility.

“Americanists,” the subjects of the 1899 encyclical Testem benevelentiae nostrae of Leo XIII, were American Catholics who had been so affected by the American culture that they were no longer authentically Catholic. This problem exists today.

“Americanism shows that more or less constant feature of American Catholic history, where Catholics have to make that choice of whether they are going to identify primarily as American, and then Catholic secondarily, or Catholic as a primary identity and American as a second,” Fr. Endres said.

“So what’s going to be the noun, and what’s going to be the adjective?”

The post US Anti-Catholic History Shows Church Has Survived And Will Continue – Historian appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

It is time President Yameen, in the long term interest of Maldives and its survival as a democratic county releases former President Nasheed unconditionally.

It is also time he gives up his oft repeated statement that he would consider the issue only after all the judicial precesses regarding Nasheed’s trial and conviction are gone through. He can and he should. The Judiciary which is under his total control is not going to object even if it is technically illegal.

It is possible that Yameen being in full control of the military, the Police, the Judiciary and the Majlis may feel supremely confident of his position and power and may not find it necessary to be conciliatory either towards Nasheed or to the biggest party – the MDP in Maldives.

He has allowed the judiciary to run riot. Executive orders on how to conduct the Presidential Election were issued and the poor and straightforward Election Commissioner and his Deputy were sacked without due process of investigation. The guide lines issued to the Human Rights Commission by the Supreme Court virtually gags the commission and is yet another example of the “power grab.”

The removal of the Chief Justice of Supreme Court with another Judge is also an example of the arbitrary and unjustified acts of the President. The Auditor General was summarily dismissed in the same manner.

Soon, the Vice President who did not toe the line of the President will be “impeached” for his disloyalty and “incompetence.” No investigation was made and no chance was being given to the Vice President Jameel. Enough signatures have been obtained to start the motion of impeachment for removal.

Vice President Jameel had left for Sri Lanka with permission and moved onto London without permission. The charges against him are flimsy and laughable. He is supposed to have built an independent power base. He failed to support the government on May day and is said to have failed to show progress in health and education sectors!

But to me- Jameel deserved this humiliation. The other persons in the initial drama (remember the scurrilous pamphlet against Nasheed) which triggered the demonstrations against Nasheed and his ultimate resignation include Dr. Hassan Saeed who is said to have given up politics as also Gasim Ibrahim who is now begging to be allowed to come back to Maldives and save his business.

But nothing could be deemed permanent in Maldives. The Army and the Police may not continue to be loyal to Yameen. The Majlis may split and the Judiciary having tasted power with its “over reach” may one day turn against him.

Already a twitter war has started between Pharees Maumoon, Gayoom’s son who had just been elected to the Majlis and the newly soon to be anointed Vice President ( Vice dictator?) Ahmed Adeeb.

There is an ominous silence from former President Gayoom over the amendment to the constitution to enable Adeeb to be elected. The age limit for the President and the Vice President has been fixed after the amendment to be between 30 to 65 years. This will eliminate Gasim from contesting ( He has already thrown in the towel) and also enable Adeeb to be elected as Vice President.

The MDP has already shown its readiness for a dialogue with the government. It even accepted the government’s position that Nasheed will not be allowed to take part in the talks. With over 400 of its cadres facing criminal charges all for protesting against the regime, the party which is facing a hostile parliament, judiciary and the security forces- wants to find a way out. It has not even placed any precondition of Nasheed’s release- as one would have expected.

The MDP’s road map is reasonable and doable from the humanitarian point of view. Besides transferring jailed opposition leaders to house arrest from the prison, other steps include

• Talks among political parties.
• Dropping charges against opposition supporters arrested for protests.
• Reinstating opposition protestors fired for attending protests.
• Reviewing disciplinary action against opposition councillors.

In another note on the subject of reforming the judiciary- the points put up for discussion include the composition of the Judicial Service Commission, restraining the powers of the Supreme Court, setting a university degree as a must to qualify for the post of judgeship etc.

Above all, the MDP wants to change the Presidential system which gives undue powers to the President who tends to get autocratic to one of prime ministerial system which has more checks and balances.

As someone has said- power does not corrupt but amplifies the person’s mind set that tends to grab power and get more and more powerful. Maldives is one good example. Adeeb and Yameen appear to be birds of the same feather. Adeeb was accused of massive corruption and illicit connections with the gangs in the media. The current home Minister made similar charges against Yameen during the elections within the PPM.

What is at stake is democracy in Maldives. It should be remembered that nearly fifty percent of the people voted for Nasheed. Reconciliation in national interest is possible and should be attempted.

The post Maldives: President Yameen Should Release Nasheed Unconditionally – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In this week’s address, the President wished everyone a happy Fourth of July. He honored the individuals who, throughout the history of America, have struggled and sacrificed to make this country a better place, from our Founding Fathers, to the men and women in uniform serving at home and overseas. The President asked that on this most American of holidays we remember the words of our founders, when they declared our independence and that all are created equal, and that we continue to protect that creed and make sure it applies to every single American. And finally, he wished good luck to the U.S. Women’s National Team competing in the World Cup Final this weekend.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
July 4, 2015

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Like many of you, Michelle, Sasha, Malia, and I are going to spend the day outdoors, grilling burgers and dogs, and watching the fireworks with our family and friends. It’s also Malia’s birthday, which always makes the Fourth extra fun for us.

As always, we’ve invited some very special guests to our backyard barbecue – several hundred members of our military and their families. On this most American of holidays, we remember that all who serve here at home and overseas, represent what today is all about. And we remember that their families serve, too. We are so grateful for their service and for their sacrifice.

We remember as well that this is the day when, 239 years ago, our founding patriots declared our independence, proclaiming that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A couple of centuries later, we have made ourselves into a big, bold, dynamic, and diverse country. We are of all races, we come from all places, we practice all faiths, and believe in all sorts of different ideas. But our allegiance to this declaration – this idea – is the creed that binds us together. It’s what, out of many, makes us one.

And it’s been the work of each successive generation to keep this founding creed safe by making sure its words apply to every single American. Folks have fought, marched, protested, even died for that endeavor, proving that as Americans, our destiny is not written for us, but by us.

We honor those heroes today. We honor everyone who continually strives to make this country a better, stronger, more inclusive, and more hopeful place. We, the people, pledge to make their task our own – to secure the promise of our founding words for our own children, and our children’s children.

And finally, what better weekend than this to cheer on Team USA – good luck to the U.S. Women’s National Team in the World Cup Final!

Thanks, everybody. From my family to yours, have a safe and happy Fourth of July.

The post Obama: Have A Safe And Happy Fourth Of July – Transcript appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Islamic State released on Saturday a video showing several dozen Syrian government soldiers being executed in the Roman theater of Syria’s ancient Palmyra, AFP reported.

The soldiers, donning green and brown uniforms, are shown being shot dead by children and teenagers.

A thin crowd of men and some children also appears around the ancient seats of the theater to watch the public execution.

According to the video, the execution took place soon after May 21, when the extremist group seized the historic city.

Daesh militants are said to have carried out over 200 executions in and around ancient Palmyra after capturing the city, according to British-based watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The fearsome symbolism of holding executions at the Roman theater worried Syria’s antiquities director Mamoun Abdelkarim, who told AFP the murders could mean the beginning of “the group’s barbarism and savagery against the ancient monuments of Palmyra.”

“Using the Roman theater to execute people proves that these people are against humanity,” the director told AFP reporters.

Daesh militants overtook Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in May after days of fierce clashes with Syrian government forces, prompting international concerns for the fate of the city’s priceless artifacts.

Daesh has not claimed so far to have destroyed any structural ruins, but according to a video, the group plans on destroying ancient “idols” once used for worship.

The post Syria: Islamic State Holds Mass Public Execution In Palmyra appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Bhartendu Kumar Singh*

China’s defence expenditure has been quite controversial. Conservative figures by Beijing in the past had little takers. Washington has traditionally alleged that China’s actual defence expenditure is at least three times its official figures. Think tanks like SIPRI adopted a moderate assessment. However, the Pentagon’s recent report on China’s military preparedness shows an excess of only US$30 billion over China’s official defence expenditure. Concurrently, China’s latest white paper on defence simply does not trumpet defence expenditure figures as was the practice in past white papers. Does this sound an end to the long reigning debate on China’s defence expenditure? It seems so.

Several factors could have led to this new development. First, while the accounting and budgetary administration of China’s defence expenditure is still opaque and confusing, Beijing has taken some steps in the last couple of years for better transparency. It has adhered to the UN Register since 2008 and provides budgetary information in a simplified, abridged version. Past white papers also highlighted budgetary allocation to many segments of the PLA. Beijing though still does not reveal many segments of its defence expenditure since there is no internationally agreed definition of defence expenditure or its components.

Second, while Beijing was initially coy about the actual amount; there has been a sustained double-digit growth in its defence expenditure. This has narrowed the gap between Western estimates and Chinese official figures. Today, China’s official defence budget is US$145 billion, making it the second largest spender after the US. The teleology behind China’s exaggerated defence expenditure vis-à-vis its other Asian neighbours seems to be lost since China is much further ahead than all of them. A comparative assessment simply serves no purpose.

Third, China has substantially reduced its arms imports, both on a gross level as well as from Russia, its leading exporter. Gradually, the West has lost a major tool of monitoring a key area of expenditure by China. Instead, China has increasingly consolidated and expanded its domestic military industrial complex. The amount of hidden subsidy and fiscal protection being provided to these companies is not known.

Fourth, there is increasing consensus that monetary figures of defence expenditures do not convey the correct military balance since the purchasing power of dollars differ from country to country, and further, local circumstances may create internal imbalances in budget allocation. For example, many Asian countries including China still spend a substantial portion of their defence budget on the revenue side. This is quite in contrast to the US where capital budgeting consumes as much as 60 per cent of the defence budget.

From the US perspective, Chinese defence expenditure, which has grown more than six times in the last two decades, has been threatening its supremacy in the Asia-Pacific region. A liberal dose of money allowed Beijing to invest in men, materials, and weaponry, and narrow the gap with the US. Washington perhaps harped on high defence expenditure in the past to slow down the pace of China’s military modernisation. It could also have been a part of its cost-effective posture in the Asia-Pacific region since its own defence expenditure has undergone cuts. Apart from its official publications, Washington used all bilateral and multilateral dialogue platforms to highlight the lack of transparency in Chinese defence expenditure. Concurrently, it also encouraged universities and think-tanks to publish on Chinese defence expenditure and probe its lack of transparency. However, after two decades of this failed campaign, Washington has perhaps realised the futility of further fuelling China’s defence expenditure debate. It now prefers to hypothesise that “China has the fiscal strength and political will to support continued defence spending increases, which will support PLA modernisation towards a more professional force.” This is also true of Japan, Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries that were once quite alarmed over the ‘actual’ figures. Contemporary criticism is no more than a ritual as was evident in their response to the Chinese defence budget in March this year.

With defence expenditure losing salience in evaluating force modernisation, will the US stop talking of Chinese military modernisation? Perhaps not. Washington is picking up physical outcomes (like new generation fighters, aircraft carriers etc) and strategic posture as key areas of scrutiny in Chinese military preparedness. For example, Washington has been harping for decades that Taiwan is the main driving force behind China’s military modernisation. Pentagon’s 2015 report on China has again ‘reemphasised’ this hypothesis. This could be true, but perhaps China is already confident about handling Taiwan and is looking beyond to a larger geopolitical platform to expand its military influence. It also shows that Washington is losing this debate, as with the one on defence expenditure, and is being proved wrong on other counts too.

China certainly spends more than it shows as is evident from its infrastructure upgradation near its peripheries, force modernisation, and shifting its aggressive strategic posture from continental to marine platforms. It is unlikely that it will take rapid steps to ameliorate external concerns on its hidden aspects of defence expenditure and induce complete transparency in its defence accounting. Still, the acrimonious debate about its actual expenditure on defence is unlikely to be an issue in future. Instead, we may see China competing with the US in the same manner as the former Soviet Union did during the Cold War days, where relative asymmetries in their defence budget was inconsequential.

Views are expressed are author’s own.

*Bhartendu Kumar Singh
Indian Defence Accounts Service

The post China’s Defence Expenditure: Has The Debate Ended? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ramadan is a spiritually significant month for Muslims the world over. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to God and self-control. It is a time when Muslims repent, ask for forgiveness for sins and spend their time in intense worship. Muslims think of it as a kind of tune-up for their spiritual lives. We are to make peace with those who have wronged us, strengthen ties with family and friends and do away with bad habits and bad feelings. Fasting, reading the Quran, increasing charitable deeds, cleansing one’s behaviour and doing good are some of the ways Muslims use to draw themselves closer to God. This is what true Muslims believe in and do.

On June 26, an explosion rocked a mosque in Kuwait that killed 27 and wounded 227 worshippers. Worshippers had gathered for Friday prayers at the Al Imam Al Sadeq mosque in Kuwait City when a powerful bomb ripped through the courtyard of the heavily-congested mosque, causing much death and damage. The timing of the blast was significant as Friday noon prayers are generally the most crowded of the week and attendance increases multifold during Ramadan.

Investigations later revealed that the perpetrator was a Saudi male who, along with some Kuwaiti sympathisers, intended to stir up Sunni-Shiite divisions with his murderous act. This bearded individual from a village in Saudi Arabia had actually flown into Kuwait from Riyadh on the day of the bombings and left a trail of death and destruction among the faithful. He had stayed at a house owned by an extremist who subscribed to “extremist and deviant ideology” and was then driven to the mosque by an illegal resident to carry out this macabre plan.

Immediate credit

On the same day, there were terror attacks in two different continents conducted by supposed sympathisers of the extreme doctrine followed by the Saudi suicide bomber. In Tunisia, a gunman wandered on to a popular beach at a seaside resort and gunned down guests with an automatic rifle. The death count was 38, while 36 people were wounded, according to Tunisian authorities. In France, a man with suspicious ties to violent groups blew up a factory, injuring two people. A decapitated body and the severed head was found nearby. Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) took immediate credit for these gruesome acts.

As a consolation, it was somewhat refreshing to note that leading Islamic institutions immediately denounced such dastardly acts. The leading Sunni institution based in Egypt, Al Azhar, released a statement saying that “the heinous shooting at a Tunisian coastal resort that killed 38 people, mostly Europeans, was a violation of all religious and humanitarian norms”. It also condemned the suicide bombing at the Kuwaiti Shiite mosque and the suspected militant attack in France. In a publicised statement, in reference to Daesh, Al Azhar called on “the international community to defeat this terrorist group through all available means”.

Delivering a message

In Kuwait, the ruling Emir, the government, parliamentary and political groups and clerics all said last Friday’s attack on the Shiite mosque was meant to stir up sectarian strife in the emirate. Terming the attack bluntly as one of “black terror” a statement said that “the objectives of the criminal act have failed. We want to deliver a message to Daesh that we are united brothers, the Sunnis and Shiites, and they cannot divide us”.

I am angry. As a Muslim, it maddens me when criminals use my religion to screen their immoral and murderous intentions.

It infuriates me that I have to justify my religion and myself to the non-Muslim world in the wake of such barbarity by individuals with no obvious morals. It angers me that a terrorist like the Saudi who flew into Kuwait tarnishes my religion and my nationality with his vicious actions.

It angers me to see how a peaceful religion has been manipulated by some to be a tool of terror against their perceived adversaries. It angers me that such people follow “extreme and deviant ideology” and yet call themselves Muslims.

It angers me to know that some clerics with their hardline views continue to promote sectarian divisions from both sides. It angers me to know that they are still being heard.

I am not a Sunni or a Shiite or an Ahmadi or a Khawani. I am a Muslim! I am not a Salafist or a Sufi, a Ja’afari or a Batini. I am a Muslim! I was raised by the Islamic tenets of peace and kindness … And by God, I am angry that people in the name of Islam defile my religion.

*Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This article appeared at Gulf News, and was submitted by the author.

The post I Am A Muslim And I Am Angry – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The latest reports from Vienna indicate that the negotiators from Iran and the “5 +1″ nations, i.e., UN Security Council’s Permanent Powers plus Germany, have reached a tentative deal and are only inches away from turning it into the final agreement.

According to a source close to the Iran negotiation team, as of July 4th, there were still some residual issues regarding the sanctions, the Additional Protocol, and what is referred to as the “Possible Military Dimension (PMD),” but none of these at this stage is going to “break the deal” and are expected to be resolved in the next few days.

One of the reasons for the rapid progress of the Vienna talks has to do with the important Tehran visit of the head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was reportedly successful in closing the gaps between Iran and the agency, which has repeatedly confirmed the absence of any evidence of diversion of nuclear material in Iran and, yet, insisted that it is unable to verify the complete peacefulness of Iran’s civilian program in light of the PMD issues.

From Iran’s vantage point, however, the PMD has been exploited as a license to access Iran’s military secrets, which is why it was important for Mr. Amano to meet with Iranian leaders last week and reach a new understanding on the future scope of IAEA’s inspection access. Certainly, the U.S.’s unreasonable demand for inspections “anytime, anywhere,” is unacceptable and by now the Americans have realized it and retreated from what could have been a deal-breaker.

On the issue of sanctions, Iran has rightly insisted on the concept of simultaneity, so that the other side will not have the luxury of playing with delays after Iran’s fulfillment of its obligations. With respect to the timeline for the removal of sanctions, there would be a UN Security Council resolution that would render moot the existing sanctions resolutions on Iran.

By all indications, this is a tremendous diplomatic victory for Iran, thus short cutting a potentially arduous and lengthy process.

Henceforth, with the imminent announcement of a final agreement in Vienna, the stage is set for a tremendous breakthrough in a nuclear stalemate that has blocked normal relations between Iran and the West. In addition to releasing the potential for rapid growth in market relations between the two sides, the final nuclear agreement also carries the seed of “linkage” to anti-terrorism, deemed as a “common threat” by Iran’s lead negotiator, foreign minister Javad Zarif, who has exhorted the West to wrap up the nuclear talks so that both sides can focus on a hitherto missing comprehensive strategy to defeat the growing menace of terrorism, reflected in the on-going barbaric atrocities of the self-declared Islamic State (Daesh).

In terms of the reaction by the conservative Arab bloc led by Saudi Arabia, the final nuclear deal ought to bring a new sense of realism to Riyadh, which has been led astray by a senseless, even genocidal, unilateral war on Yemen, which must be brought to an end for the sake of millions of suffering people in Yemen as well as regional stability. Some of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council states such as UAE are eyeing to rip huge economic benefits from the lifting of Iran sanctions and, therefore, it is futile for Saudi Arabia to continue with its futile anti-deal approach that is bound to put it at odds with some PGCC member states.

Israel, on the other hand, is expected to continue with its current negative campaign against the deal, hoping that the U.S. Congress would ruin it, yet even the Republican opponents of the deal have recently conceded that they lack the votes to override a presidential veto. Hopefully, the nuclear deal will spawn a new era of attention on Israel-Palestinian issue, which has been quietly festering and requires serious global focus, which has to some extent been deflected so far due to the Iran nuclear crisis.

While it remains to be seen how a final nuclear agreement would look like in the technical details, it is a sure bet that it will be complex, multi-layered, and fully dependent on the faithful implementation by both sides, which is why a special dispute resolution commission will be handling the issues of potential non-compliance. A similar panel set up by the 2013 Geneva Agreement was highly successful in this regard and has thus set a positive precedent. One of Iran’s informal complaints during the timeline of the Geneva agreement has been, however, that the U.S. had officially agreed to certain provisions, such as the lifting of restrictions on shipping insurance, and yet would send envoys to Europe to discourage the Europeans from entering into new contracts with Iran. Such “double dealings” with Iran must stop after a final deal is signed, which will sound the death knell for the unjust sanctions regime on Iran.

The post Nuclear Deal-Making In Vienna And Tehran – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(RFE/RL) — Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has accused international creditors of “terrorism” one day before a national vote in Greece that could decide if the country stays in the eurozone.

Varoufakis said the creditors, which includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had “forced” Greece to close its banks “to instill fear in the people” and that this phenomenon is called “terrorism.”

But he said he believes that “fear will not win.”

Campaigning was halted in Greece on July 4 ahead of the closely watched referendum — with voters in a dead heat over whether to defy European leaders and push for better loan terms or seek new leadership in Athens to find a compromise.

Political rallies and new opinion polls are banned 24 hours before the July 5 referendum called by left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has promised to ease austerity after six years of recession.

Rival rallies took place a kilometer apart in central Athens, while Tsipras made his final pitch on a stage set up for a rock concert outside parliament.

“This is not a protest. It is a celebration to overcome fear and blackmail,” he told a crowd of 30,000 supporters as they roared “No! No!” to the bailout deal proposed by European leaders.

The 40-year-old Tsipras is gambling the future of his government on the hastily called referendum, insisting a “no” vote will strengthen his hand to negotiate a third bailout with European leaders despite their warnings to the contrary.

If he loses, Tsipras has vowed he would step aside and allow a new government to carry out the tough spending cuts and tax increases the European Union is demanding in exchange for new loans and a writedown of Greece’s $300 billion in debt.

Greece defaulted on its loans from the IMF this week and had to close its banks to prevent them from collapsing amidst a gathering run on deposits.

Elsewhere in town, police said about 22,000 people gathered outside the Panathenian Stadium for the “yes” rally, waving Greek and EU flags and chanting “Greece, Europe, Democracy.”

Evgenia Bouzala, a Greek born in Germany, said she was considering shutting down her olive oil export business because of the financial turmoil.

“I don’t think we can keep going. Look at what happened in the last three days. Imagine if that lasts another six months,” she said, referring to the closure of banks, limits on cash withdrawals, shutdown of credit lines, and other financial obstacles Greeks faced during the week.

“A ‘yes’ vote would bring a caretaker government and that would probably be better…We have to start over,” Bouzala said.

Rallies for both campaigns were also held in 10 other Greek cities, and the drama remained high in the final hours of campaigning.

The country’s top court stayed in session till the late afternoon before rejecting a petition to declare the referendum illegal. Political party leaders, personalities, and even church elders weighed in with impassioned pleas to vote “no” or “yes” on the airwaves and social media.

A series of polls published at the end of a frantic weeklong campaign showed the two sides in a dead heat, with an incremental lead for the “yes” vote, well within the margin of error.

They also showed an overwhelming majority of people — about 75 percent — want Greece to remain in the euro currency zone. That sentiment lends support for the “yes” side of the ballot since European leaders have warned that a “no” vote is a vote to exit the eurozone.

But many voters confessed they are confused, and the nation’s nearly 10 million voters won’t get any help from the complicated question posed on the ballot. It asks them to approve or reject a two-part plan “submitted by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to the Eurogroup on 25 June.”

“People don’t even understand the question,” Athens Mayor George Kaminis told supporters at the “yes” rally.

“We have been dragged into a pointless referendum that is dividing the people and hurting the country.”

The post Greeks Closely Divided Over Bailout Deal appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By C. Raja Mohan*

Reports that the docking of a Chinese submarine at Karachi last month has surprised New Delhi are distressing. One would have thought Delhi would have anticipated the development after it sighted Chinese submarines in Sri Lanka’s waters last year. Despite the growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean in China’s maritime strategy, Delhi’s defence bureaucracy seems to continue to wring its hands rather than act.

The Chinese navy first showed its flag in the Indian Ocean nearly three decades ago, when it began to make ship visits to Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Since then, the frequency and intensity of Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean has grown. The Chinese navy’s continuous anti-piracy operations in the Arabian Sea since the end of 2008 have showcased Beijing’s growing naval capabilities as well as the political will to operate in waters far from its shores. Defending China’s growing overseas interests has become a major priority for the PLA.

China has also begun to debate the challenges of acquiring military and naval bases in other countries, especially in the Indian Ocean. As part of its “going out” strategy, the PLA navy has begun to build strategic partnerships in the Indian Ocean, cultivate access arrangements with critically located countries, export ships and submarines, and intensify its defence diplomacy in the littoral.

Alarmists, Apologists

The idea of a Chinese network of naval facilities and bases in the Indian Ocean, or a “string of pearls”, is often invoked by those in Delhi who fear Beijing’s hostile intentions. Others taking a more benign view of China’s policies ridicule the idea.

Ignoring the alarmists and apologists, Delhi must take a more realistic view of China’s long-term role in the Indian Ocean. China has ambitions to become a great maritime power. It is building the capabilities and devising policies to become one. A rising China is bound to establish a sustainable naval presence in the Indian Ocean. The question is not whether, but when and how.

There is nothing illegal about China’s aspirations. Beijing is following the footsteps of all previous great powers — Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Britain and the US — that established a naval presence in the Indian Ocean over the last five centuries. One factor, however, constrains Chinese military presence in the Indian Ocean. It is the tyranny of geography. Long distances from China’s eastern seaboard make an effective presence in the Indian Ocean difficult for China without strong local partners. Although China is exploring special maritime relationships with many nations across the Indian Ocean, Pakistan remains the most likely place where its navy may drop anchor for the long term. The stable all-weather partnership built up over the last many decades, Pakistan’s critical location in the Arabian Sea next to the Gulf, and Islamabad’s growing economic reliance on China, appear to have set the stage for an expansive naval partnership.

Delhi’s ambivalence

India paid a high price for failing to anticipate the Sino-Pak nuclear nexus in the 1970s and 1980s. It is erring again by neglecting the potential for a maritime alliance between China and Pakistan that could severely constrain India’s freedom of action in the Indian Ocean. The problem is not China’s naval ambition, but the ministry of defence’s reluctance to craft a vigorous response. For his part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has underlined the importance of working with other powers in strengthening India’s critical role in the Indian Ocean. But the defence ministry seems unable or unwilling to translate that vision into policy. Consider, for example, its hesitation to hold trilateral and quadrilateral naval exercises in the Indian Ocean with its maritime partners — the US, Japan and Australia. While Beijing pays no heed to India’s concerns in pursuing its maritime interests, the MoD cites Chinese sensitivities to limit India’s naval engagement with America and Japan. One would think diplomacy is the MEA’s business and that the MoD’s is to strengthen Delhi’s naval partnerships, probe China’s maritime vulnerabilities and build on India’s geographic advantages in the littoral. The NDA may have replaced the UPA in South Block, but strategic paralysis — the legacy of A.K. Antony’s eight long years as defence minister — seems to endure.

*The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and a Contributing Editor for ’The Indian Express’

Courtesy: The Indian Express, June 30, 2015

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Egyptian forces on Saturday discovered and destroyed a 1.5 kilometer smuggling tunnel beneath the Gazan border, the Egyptian army said.

Egyptian security sources told Ma’an that the tunnel was found by Egyptian border guards in the Dayniya area south of Rafah.

They said that eight sacks of explosive TNT material and a half-ton of C-4 — another explosive material — had been found inside the tunnel.

Both the tunnel and the explosive material were destroyed by the army.

Smuggling tunnels have served as a lifeline to the outside world for Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal enclave in 2007, which is supported by Egypt.

While the tunnels are used by Hamas as a source of tax revenue and inflow of weapons, they also supply highly-demanded necessities for Gazans including food, medicine, as well as infrastructure materials including concrete and fuel.

Egypt has sought to destroy the tunnels as part of an ongoing security campaign in the northern Sinai against anti-regime militants launching attacks on Egyptian police and military personnel.

At least 70 people, mostly soldiers, were killed in attacks on Wednesday, which many attributed to Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a militant group that changed its name to “Sinai Province” after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.

In the past, Egypt has accused Hamas of supporting militant groups in the Sinai, although Hamas strongly denies the allegations.

Hamas on Friday also dismissed Israeli accusations they had backed Wednesday’s attacks, with a spokesman saying: “We are intent on (preserving) Egypt’s security.”

In the last year, Hamas itself has been challenged in Gaza by a number of small militant groups, which have made no secret of their disdain for Hamas’ observance of a tacit ceasefire with Israel.

“Hamas is finding it difficult to control Islamic Jihad and other elements,” an Israeli official said in June, referring to Hamas’ ability to maintain quiet in the coastal enclave.

Hamas has suffered poor relations with the Egyptian government ever since the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood, with whom they were closely allied, was thrown out of power in July 2013.

The Egyptian army has destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels since then, though new ones continue to be found.

The post Egypt Destroys 1.5 Km Smuggling Tunnel Near Rafah appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Climate change models predict that sea temperatures will rise significantly, including in the tropics. In these areas, rainfall is also predicted to increase, reducing the salt concentration of the surface layer of the sea. Together, these changes would dramatically affect the microscopic communities of bacteria and plankton that inhabit the oceans, impacting species higher up the food chain. Worryingly, future conditions may favor disease-causing bacteria and plankton species which produce toxins, such as the lethal PST (paralytic shellfish toxin). These can accumulate in shellfish such as mussels and oysters, putting human consumers at risk.

Recently, researchers investigated how climate change was likely to affect the fledgling Green Mussel industry in South-West India. Working on the Mangalore coast, the scientists raised mussels under high temperature/low salt conditions whilst simultaneously exposing them to toxic plankton and bacteria species.

As lead investigator Dr Lucy Turner explained, “If the changes in the environment put the mussels’ bodies under higher stress levels than usual, and we then challenge them with these microorganisms, the immune system may become compromised”.

The results showed that the combination of both a warmer temperature and reduced salinity had a significant effect on the health of the mussels.

According to Dr Turner, this could threaten the rapidly-growing tropical shellfish industry, already under pressure from India’s increasingly urbanized population.

“The demand for marine products is growing at an unprecedented rate…there is also a drive to move from small scale fishing methods to larger scale commercial operations,” Dr Turner said.

Meanwhile, global warming is thought to have already begun to affect these regions.

“We know that climate change is causing a change in the timing and duration of the monsoon which can significantly lower the seawater salinity…this is likely to increase the chance of outbreaks of toxic plankton blooms and make farming bivalves such as mussels increasingly challenging,” Dr Turner said.

Dr Turner hopes that the results will prompt governments to set up long-term monitoring programs.

“The Indian government needs to be vigilant about monitoring coastal water quality, particularly as the shellfish industry continues to grow”.

The researchers now plan to determine whether similar results are observed for oysters and clams, whilst a sister project is investigating how climate change may affect prawn farms.

The post Concerns Climate Change Could Remove Mussels, Oysters Off Menu appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Col R Hariharan*

Former Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that he would accept his loyal supporters demand to contest the forthcoming parliamentary election to be held on August 17.

According to media reports, thousands of supporters who had gathered at his home ground in Medamulana cheered him when he said “I am not ready to reject the appeal you are all making.” He indicated that he would be rallying his supporters across all parties “for the sake of the country, for the sake of mother land, we must contest the upcoming parliamentary election.

Earlier President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved the parliament and set the date for the election. The announcements of both the incumbent and former president were not unexpected. Time was running out for President Sirisena after he failed to hammer out consensus within the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) on rejecting the loyalists demand for nominating Rajapaksa as the party candidate for prime minister. According to Sri Lanka columnists, President Sirisena’s secret talks with the former president also failed to persuade Rajapaksa not to contest the election to avoid split in the party.

There were other compulsions for President Sirisena to dissolve the parliament. Already, Rajapaksa loyalists’s within the UPFA parliamentary party ranks had swelled to 80 plus. Any further delay could have not only eroded President Sirisena’s support within the party while enlarging Rajapaksa’s support base. It would also help his detractors to push through the no confidence motion against Sirisena’s political ally and ruling alliance partner Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pending before the parliament. who leads the United National Party (UNP) traditional opponents of SLFP. With Rajapaksa loyalists bent upon splitting the SLFP votes, President Sirisena needs the UNP as an electoral ally to prevent Mahinda Rajapaksa coming back to power.

Though Sirisena-Wickremesinghe combine was able to fulfil some of the important poll promises it still has an unfinished poll agenda that could neutralize all the good things done so far. However, none can deny the national alliance had succeeded in creating a freer political atmosphere without the intelligence and security guys disrupting the activities of opposition parties, media and the NGOs pampered by stoking the paranoia of foreign conspiracies against the country.

The combine also succeeded with the 19th Constitutional Amendment as promised in pruning the sweeping powers the executive president enjoyed and increasing the powers of prime minister and parliament to prevent the meddling with the national institutions like the judiciary, election commission and police. Through the 19th Amendment to the constitution, restoring media freedom and attending to some of the long standing grievances of the minority Tamils, though much remains to be done.

A notable failure of the Sirisena government was to get the 20th Constitutional Amendment (20A) for reforming the electoral system acceptable to all parties passed in parliament. There were fundamental differences between the SLFP and the UNP on the form and structure of the proposed system. Despite Sirisena’s best efforts the differences could not be reconciled. So Sri Lankans will now be electing a new parliament on August 17, a year before it was due based on the present system. It is a mix of first past the post and proportional representation systems in which the SLFP has been doing better than its rival UNP.

The chances of Sirisena and Wickremesinghe creating the anti-Mahtinda wave among the voters that helped them defeat Rajapaksa once again for the parliamentary election appear bleak. It seems to have lost vigour on two counts: so far investigations into allegations of corruption against the Rajapaksas have failed to unearth actionable evidence and the National Alliance government has accumulated its own baggage of corruption allegations.

In addition to this the massive minority votes – notably Tamil votes – that helped President Sirisena to win by three percent plus margin may not be forthcoming as the leading Tamil political combine Tamil National Alliance (TNA) had been unhappy with the Sirisena government’s slow progress on Tamil issues.

The state owned Daily News quoted SLFP sources to say the talks between Sirisena and “the SLFP stalwarts” over accommodating former President Rajapaksa in the SLFP nomination list for the next election ended inconclusively on June 29. Though the UPFA General Secretary Premajayantha and SLFP General Secretary Priyadarshana Yapa had insisted on Rajapaksa’s nomination as Prime Ministerial candidate of the party, the UPFA Opposition Leader in parliament Nimal de Silva indicated that he was willing to “sway with the wind.” This actually reflects the shades of differences within the UPFA and SLFP.

With barely six weeks to go for the election, political arrays are yet to emerge clearly. Sirisena will have a tough job firstly to mend the SLFP split to enable the SLFP to form a government on its own steam. With sections of SLFP and the minor partners of UPFA backing Rajapaksa, Sirisena will find the job of finalising a list of candidates acceptable to all factions a challenging job.

Comparatively the UNP is in a better position as the party has delegated the job of candidate selection to Ranil Wickremesinghe. But UNP’s problem is attracting smaller parties to form a winning coalition. Smaller parties like the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) who are opposed to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s return will be watching the coalition contretemps to find a face saving way to handle election uncertainties.

Political horse trading has been developed into a fine art in Sri Lanka and politicians’ loyalties are as tradable as scrips in the stock market. Presumably, the next ten days some clarity will emerge in the political scene when electoral alliances are firmed in.

India would prefer Sirisena-Wickremesinghe to win and form the government as it has established better rapport and understanding with the Sirisena government. It has responded positively to India’s sensitivities about China’s increasing influence in Sri Lanka. It has visibly taken action to be equitable in handling its relations with China and India. Even if Rajapaksa comes back to power, India may not lose all that it has gained so far. Rajapaksa as a shrewd politician probably understands the dynamics of Indian government has undergone a makeover under Prime Minister Modi. So he is likely to factor it in his dealings with India, though he would probably prefer to deal with China as he has a better equation with it.

*Col R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence. He is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group. E-Mail: colhari@yahoo.com Blog: http://col.hariharan.info

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One of the ocean’s oddest little creatures, the seahorse, is providing inspiration for robotics researchers as they learn from nature how to build robots that have capabilities sometimes at odds with one another — flexible, but also tough and strong.

Their findings, published today in the journal Science, outline the virtues of the seahorse’s unusual skeletal structure, including a tail in which a vertebral column is surrounded by square bony plates.

These systems may soon help create technology that offers new approaches to surgery, search and rescue missions or industrial applications.

Although technically a fish, the seahorse has a tail that through millions of years of evolution has largely lost the ability to assist the animal in swimming. Instead, it provides a strong, energy-efficient grasping mechanism to cling to things such as seaweed or coral reefs, waiting for food to float by that it can suck into its mouth.

At the same time, the square structure of its tail provides adequate flexibility, can bend and twist, and naturally returns to its former shape better than animals with cylindrical tails. This helps the seahorse hide, easily bide its time while food floats to it, and it provides excellent crushing resistance — making the animal difficult for predators to eat.

“Human engineers tend to build things that are stiff so they can be controlled easily,” said Ross Hatton, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, and a co-author on the study. “But nature makes things just strong enough not to break, and then flexible enough to do a wide range of tasks. That’s why we can learn a lot from animals that will inspire the next generations of robotics.”

Biological systems, Hatton said, can combine both control and flexibility, and researchers gravitated to the seahorse simply because it was so unusual. They theorized that the square structure of its tail, so rare in nature, must serve a purpose.

“We found that this square architecture provides adequate dexterity and a tough resistance to predators, but also that it tends to snap naturally back into place once it’s been twisted and deformed,” Hatton said. “This could be very useful for robotics applications that need to be strong, but also energy efficient and able to bend and twist in tight spaces.”

Such applications, he said, might include laparoscopic surgery, in which a robotic device could offer enhanced control and flexibility as it enters a body, moves around organs and bones, and then has the strength to accomplish a surgical task. It could find uses in industrial system, search and rescue robots, or anything that needs to be both resilient and flexible.

The researchers were able to study the comparative merits of cylindrical and square structures by using computer models and three dimensional printed prototypes. They found that when a seahorse tail is crushed, the bony plates tend to slide past one another, act as an energy absorbing mechanism, and resist fracture of the vertebral column. They can then snap back to their normal position with little use of energy.

The square system also proved to be stiffer, stronger and more resilient than circular ones.

“Understanding the role of mechanics in these biologically inspired designs may help engineers to develop seahorse-inspired technologies for a wide variety of applications in robotics, defense systems or biomedicine,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

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There are 329,397 fewer unemployed than 12 months ago, with a year-on-year decrease of 7.4%. Unemployment fell in all autonomous regions. There are now 302,055 fewer registered unemployed than in December 2011, with permanent full-time employment growing by over 18% so far this year.

The number of unemployed registered with the Public Employment Services fell by 94,727 in June. This is the fifth consecutive month in which this figure has fallen. In the last seven years, recorded unemployment in June has fallen by an average of 74,000.

In the last 12 months, recorded unemployment has fallen by 329,397, with a 7.4% year-on-year rate of reduction.

Following this fall, the total figure of unemployed stands at 4,120,304, the lowest figure since August 2011. There are now 302,055 fewer registered unemployed than in December 2011.

Recorded unemployment has fallen in almost all sectors where the unemployed are registered. Unemployment among those who most recently worked in the service sector fell by 61,887 (-2.25%). The same trend was seen among those coming from the construction sector (-11,706 or -2.44%) and the industrial sector (-14,139 or -3.41%). Unemployment among first-time job-seekers fell by 4,623 (-1.21%), while it rose by 7,027 (3.6%) among those coming from the agriculture sector.

Recorded unemployment fell in all 17 autonomous regions, led by Catalonia (-20,952), Madrid (-14,090) and Castile-Leon (-8,255).

Permanent full-time employment up by 18.2%

A total of 1,726,117 new employment contracts were signed in June. This is the highest reported number of contracts in one month since October 2007. This is an increase of 13.7% on the same month in 2014.

In turn, permanent employment grew by 15% on the same figure posted 12 months ago, while permanent full-time employment grew by 17.3%.

In the first six months of the year, permanent employment grew by 15.4% on the same period last year, while permanent full-time employment grew by 18.2%.

The State Secretary for Employment, Juan Pablo Riesgo, stressed that the data published on Thursday show that the employment market maintained an upward trend in June.

“This data should continue to encourage us to work hard for all those who are seeking an opportunity but cannot find one”, he stressed.

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A call by some Duma members for the Russian government to review and declare illegal the Soviet government’s recognition of Baltic independence in September 1991 has attracted widespread attention and concern as an indication of Moscow’s intentions but ultimately ridicule as otherwise meaningless grandstanding.

But there are other straws in the wind which suggest some in the Russian government are laying the groundwork for a more aggressive stance against the Baltic states, and two of them which have appeared this week, while they have received little notice internationally, may ultimately be a more important signal of the Kremlin’s plans.

That is because they reflect the longstanding Russian tactic of “divide-and-rule,” which in this case means the playing up of differences or even the creation of differences where they do not exist among the three Baltic countries in order to make it more difficult for these three NATO members to cooperate with each other and with the Western alliance as well.

The first involves a Latvian activist of the Association Against Nazism, a group that has often followed Moscow’s line. Janis Kruzinis has launched a petition campaign on the manabalss.lv portal to seek “’the return of the territory of Palanga” from Lithuania (ru.delfi.lt/news/live/latviec-sobiraet-podpisi-za-vozvraschenie-palangi-latvii.d?id=68404500).

Kruzinis says that such a return would resolve “a historical dispute about the sea border between Latvia and Lithuania and return Palanga kray which historically was the territory of Latvia.” Latvia would benefit, he continues, because there are supposedly oil deposits in the region and because of new jobs for Latvians in the restored Latvian region.

He wants the Latvian parliament seek the help of the EU to review the agreement about the borders between Latvia and Lithuania. According to him, Latvia handed over Palanga kray to Lithuania in 1921 because “Lithuania did not have an outlet to the Baltic Sea.” But in 1923, Lithuania obtained Klaipeda kray which gave it one but did not return Palanga to Riga’s control.

In a little over two weeks, slightly more than 10,000 people have signed Kruzinis’ petition, although it is unclear what this will lead to except for the possibility of sparking tensions between Latvians and Lithuanians, something Moscow would be certain to exploit in the event of a crisis.

The second case is more curious but equally disturbing. It comes from the pen of Dimitry Klensky, notorious for his pro-Russian and anti-Estonian writings and activism. In “an appeal compatriots,” the activist notes that five pro-Russian activists were arrested in Riga at the end of June but that Russians in Estonia have failed to react (iarex.ru/articles/51867.html).

“The Union of Organizations of Russian Compatriots of Estonia and the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of Estonia have remained silent. Social and cultural organizations and rights activists have as well, including the Russian School in Estonia, the Pushkin Institute, the Russian Academic Society of Estonia, the Assembly of National Minorities of Estonia, the local Russian press and intelligentsia,” Klensky says.

Moreover, he continues, “Russian-speaking and Russian social-political activists, representatives of political parties which consider themselves to be on the left, the Social Democrats and the Centrists have said nothing as well.” And the major Russian websites in Estonia have ignored what is going on in Riga.

“This creates the impression,” he continues, “that in Estonia, the local Security Police has already successfully dealt with the suppression of any dissent” much as their predecessors did in pre-war Estonia, albeit with more modern methods, including “easily falsified electronic elections” and buying off ethnic Russians with grants and high pay.

“Silence in such conditions,” Klensky says, “means approval of the existing situation when democratic institutions have become decorations in the form of democracy. The silence of the Russian and Russian-language population, almost a third of the population of the country, speaks to its moral-ethnic repression” by “an ethnocratic state.”

Klensky, of course, is not open to the possibility that the Baltic countries have treated the ethnic Russians sufficiently well that the overwhelming majority of them are loyal citizens even if they identify with Russian culture. But unfortunately, he is not the only one of whom that is true, and Moscow seems set to launch a new effort on the basis of its own misconception.

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