The Commerce Department reported the economy grew at a 2.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter, a substantial improvement from the 0.6 percent rate in the first quarter. The latter number was an upward revision from a previously reported decline of -0.2 percent. The biggest factors were a turnaround in the trade balance and an uptick in the rate of consumption growth.

In the first quarter, exports fell at a 6.3 percent annual rate. This was partly the result of the rise in the value of the dollar in 2014, but also partly the result of slowdowns at West Coast ports due to a labor dispute. With the labor dispute now settled, exports rose at a 5.3 percent rate in the second quarter, still leaving them below their level from the fourth quarter of 2014. The improvement in the trade balance contributed 0.13 percentage points to growth after subtracting 1.92 percentage points in the first quarter.

Consumption grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the second quarter, up from a weather-depressed 1.1 percent rate in the first quarter. The biggest change was in durable goods. People who put off buying cars in the harsh winter weather instead bought in the second quarter, leading to a 7.3 percent rate of increase in durable good sales compared to a 2.0 percent rate in the first quarter. Consumption contributed 1.99 percentage points to growth in the second quarter compared to 1.19 percentage points in the first quarter.

The personal saving rate was 4.8 percent for the quarter, the same as the average of 2014. This should end speculation about why people are not spending their dividend from lower gas prices, since the data indicate they are. Consumption is at near-record highs as a share of GDP, which makes the frequent fretting over cautious consumers seem more than a bit peculiar.

Investment was very weak in the quarter, shrinking at a 0.6 percent annual rate. Equipment spending fell at a 4.1 percent rate, and spending on structures fell at a 1.6 percent rate after dropping at a 7.4 percent rate in Q1. It is likely that overbuilding in some areas will lead to further weakening of structure investment in future quarters. Residential construction grew at a 6.6 percent rate, down from a 10.1 percent rate in the first quarter. Government spending rose at a 0.8 percent rate as a 2.0 percent rise in state and local spending more than offset a drop of 1.1 percent at the federal level.

The revisions show the recovery to have been weaker than previously reported. Growth for the years 2012–14 averaged just 2.0 percent, down from a previously reported 2.3 percent. This means the economy was growing less rapidly than most estimates of potential GDP growth, implying the economy was falling further below its potential level of output during this period instead of making up the ground lost during the recession.

The revised data also show a somewhat smaller profit share in the last two years. Before-tax profits were revised down by $69.5 billion (3.3 percent) in 2013 and $16.9 billion (0.8 percent) in 2014. With these revisions, the profit share of corporate income peaked in 2012 and has been drifting downward for the last two years.

The data on health care spending continue to look very good. Spending on health care services, which accounts for the vast majority of health care spending, rose at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the quarter, virtually the same as the rate over the last three years. Spending on drugs has been rising considerably more rapidly. Inflation continues to be very much under control. Over the last year, the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) has risen by 1.3 percent, well below the Fed’s 2.0 percent target.

On the whole, this report suggests that the economy is likely to continue to grow at a very modest pace. Consumption growth will likely be slower in the second half of the year, with investment likely to be somewhat stronger. The net is likely to lead to a growth rate of close to 2.0 percent. If it had not been for extraordinarily weak productivity growth, this would imply a very slow rate of job creation.

By Richard Falk*

The Vienna Agreement [formally labeled by diplospeak as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)] reached by the P5 + 1 on July 14, 2015 has been aptly hailed as a political breakthrough, not only because it calms regional worries about Iran’s nuclear program, but more so because it has the potential to remove an ugly dimension of conflict from the regional turmoil in the Middle East. Such a diplomatic success, after so many years of frustration, chaos, and strife, should be an occasion for hope and celebration, and in many venues it is, although not in Israel or Saudi Arabia or among the neo-con kingpins in Washington think tanks and their numerous Republican allies in the U.S. Congress.

Which side will prevail in this dysfunctional encounter is presently obscure, which itself is an indication of the dismal conditions of political life in America. Many unanswered and unanswerable questions bedevil the process: Will this agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program be approved, and then implemented, or will it be blocked or unacceptably revised before coming into operation, or later on? Will Iran become associated more openly with Western attempts to defeat ISIS and in the desperate need to bring peace and humane governance to Syria where the people of the country have endured such severe suffering since 2011? Will these developments allow Iran to be treated as a normal state within regional and global political settings, and if this reduced atmosphere of external tension occurs will it also have moderating impacts on the internal governing process in Iran? Or will Israel and its allies succeed in keeping Iran in ‘a terrorist cage’ reserved for pariah states, and continue to insist upon a military option to wage war against Iran? Will Israel receive ‘compensation’ in the form of enhanced military assistance from the United States to demonstrate Washington’s unwavering commitment to the alliance? Will Israel’s secretly acquired nuclear weapons capability be called into question in an effort to achieve denuclearization, which is more consistent with peace and morality than calling into question Iran’s threat of nuclear proliferation? Further afield, will this gap between the American/European and Israeli/Gulf approach lead over time to new geopolitical alignments that broaden beyond policy toward Iran’s nuclear program?

At the core these many concerns, is the nature and health of the United States/Israel relationship, and more broadly the appalling balance of forces that controls political life from the governmental hub in Washington. The alliance bonding between the two countries have been called ‘unconditional’ and even ‘eternal’ by Obama, words echoed by every American public figure with any credible mainstream political ambitions, currently including even the supposed radical presidential aspirant, Bernie Sanders. And yet that is not nearly good enough for AIPAC and the Adelson-led legions pro-Israeli fanatics, which periodically lambaste this strongly pro-Israeli president for alleged betrayals of Israel’s most vital security interests, and generally take derisive issue with the slightest sign of accommodationist diplomacy in the region.

The most illuminating discussion of these issues from Tel Aviv’s perspective is undoubtedly the recently published memoir of Israel’s American born ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, who served in this key role during the period 2009-2013. Oren was elected to the Knesset earlier this year representing, Kulanu, a small centrist Israeli party focused on economic and social reform. Oren’s bestselling book, Ally: Managing the America/Israel Divide (Random House, 2015) succeeds in combining an intelligent insider’s account of the strained relations between the Netanyahu government and the Obama presidency with frequent vain and self-aggrandizing autobiographical reflections in the spirit of ‘Look Ma, I am dancing with the Queen,’ reinforced by analysis that justifies every aspect of Israel’s extreme right-wing and militarist approaches to security policy and diplomacy. To understand better the Israeli worldview that mixes genuine fears of its enemies with arrogant behavior toward its friends there is no more instructive book.

An American–born Jew, Oren conceived of himself both as a product of and an emissary to the Jewish diaspora in the United States, diplomat discharging his conventional government-to-government diplomatic role. Above all, Oren during his tenure in office (2009-2013) apparently did his best to keep political tensions between these two countries and their personally uncongenial leaders below the surface while unreservedly supporting the public claim that this special alliance relationship serves the interests and values of both countries. Oren ends his book with a dramatic assertion of this overlap: “Two countries, one dream.” Perhaps even more disturbing than the rationalization of all that is Zionist and Israeli throughout the book is the seeming sincerity of Oren’s sustained advocacy. A bit of cynicism here and there might have made Oren less of a self-anointed Manchurian candidate.

Given this posture of dedicated advocate, it is hardly surprising that Oren is a harsh opponent of those liberal groups that question AIPAC’s constructive influence on American policy debates or that he views initiatives critical of Israel, such as the Goldstone Report or the BDS campaign, as dangerous, disreputable, and damaging threats to Israel’s security and wellbeing. Even J-Street, harmless as it has turned out to be, was viewed as an anathema to Oren who turned down its invitations and regarded it as somehow exhibiting a leftist posture toward Israel. Only later when it became domesticated by denouncing the Goldstone Report and generally supportive of Israel’s use of force against Gaza did Oren feel it had joined what he calls ‘the mainstream’ of Beltway politics, which in his slanted vision is where he situates AIPAC and the U.S. Congress. Quite incredibly, even Martin Indyk, early in his career an AIPAC researcher and more recently the American ambassador to Israel, was viewed as a poor appointment as Special Envoy to the Kerry peace talks of 2013-2014 because he did not have a cordial enough relationship with Netanyahu. From my perspective, it was also a poor appointment, but for opposite reasons–an in-your-face display of pro-Israeli partisanship that undermined any credibility the United States claimed as a responsible intermediary at the resumed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Central to Oren’s presentation of Israeli behavior is the one-way street that he treats as embedded in the word ‘ally,’ which for Oren expresses the peculiar and generally unacknowledged character of this ‘special relationship.’ It is well illustrated by Oren’s support for Israel’s effort led with undisguised bluntness by Netanyahu to undermine Obama capacity to negotiate a nuclear arrangement with Iran despite JCPOA being strongly endorsed as in the national interest of the United States, but also of France, United Kingdom, China, Russia, and Germany. The agreement also seems beneficial for the Middle East as a whole and indeed for the world. Such an encompassing consensus endorsing the elaborate arrangement negotiated was exhibited in a resolution of support adopted by the UN Security Council [SC Resolution 2231, 20 July 2015] by an unusual unanimous vote. Oren still complains bitterly that Israel’s rejectionist views toward an agreement with Iran were in the end circumvented, at least so far. At one point Oren even suggests that Israel was better off when the inflammatory Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was Iran’s president rather than the more measured Hassan Rouhani. In his view, Iran remains just as aggressively disposed toward Israel despite the more moderate language of the present leadership, but that the West has been falsely reassured to the point of being willing to ease gradually the sanctions previously imposed in this latest diplomatic initiative, thereby raising the level of threat faced by Israel and accounting for Netanyahu’s frantic opposition to the agreement.

In the end, despite siding with Israel at every turn with respect to tension with the U.S. Government, Oren recognizes that Obama has been on balance been a faithful ally. Although indicting the Obama presidency the United States for being a disloyal ‘ally’ when the Iran chips were on the diplomatic table. It is not presently clear whether Netanyahu’s insistence that the nuclear deal (JCPOA) is ‘a historic mistake’ will overcome rationality and self-interest in the American setting either in the immediate future of approving the (non-treaty) agreement, or over a longer period should the United States have the misfortune of electing a Republican president in 2016 who are presently stumbling over one another in their competition to denounce more decisively.

More generally, Oren outrageously proposes that this alliance between Israel and the United States, to live up to its potential, should have three dimensions that would make it unlike all others: ‘no daylight’ on common concerns, that is, no policy differences; ‘no suprises,’ that is, advance notification to the other government of any international policy initiatives bearing on the Middle East; and never a public display of disagreements when policy differences between the two governments emerge as happened with Iran. The justifications given by Oren emphasize the usual litany of two states sharing commitments to political democracy, anti-terrorism, and having common regional strategic and security goals.

What seems superficially astounding is that the world’s number one state seems frightened to step on the smallest Israeli toe, while Israel is ready to do whatever it needs to do to get its way on policy issues in the event of a dispute with its supposedly more powerful partner. After negotiating a far tougher deal (on enriched uranium and intrusive inspections) with Iran than the realities warrant, at least partly out of deference to Israeli concerns, Washington still feels it appropriate and apparently necessary to indicate a readiness to provide ‘compensation,’ that is, enlarged contributions beyond the current $3.1 billion, offers of weapons systems designed to bolster further Israel QME (Qualitative Military Edge) in the Middle East. The White House additionally sends its recently appointed Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, to Israel with hat in hand, evidently to reassure the Israeli leadership that nothing about the agreement is inconsistent with continuing support of Israel’s right to defend itself as it sees fit, which appears to be a writ of permission in violation of the UN Charter and international law by granting Israel assurance in advance of U.S. support should it at some future point launch an attack on Iran. It should be noted that no state in the world enjoys such inappropriate benefits from an alliance with the United States. The whole dubious logic of QME implies a continuing willingness to put Israeli security permanently on an unlawful pedestal in the region that places other states in a subordinate position that makes them susceptible to Israeli military threats and hegemonic demands. It is tantamount to providing Israel with assured capabilities to win any war, whatever the pretext, that should emerge in the future, and also means that Israel is the only state in the Middle East not deterred by concerns about retaliation by an adversary. For years Israel has been threatening Iran with a military attack in flagrant violation of Article 2(4) that unconditionally prohibits “any threat or use of force” except in situations of self-defense as strictly limited by Article 51.

Oren, of course, sees things much differently. He repeats without pausing to entertain the slightest doubt, that Israeli is the only democracy in the Middle East and joined at the hip to American foreign policy as a result of these shared interests and values. He insists that the UN is biased against Israel, and is thankful for American blanket opposition to all hostile initiatives, whether justified or not, that arise within the Organization. For Oren UN bias is clearly evident in the greater attention given to Israel’s alleged wrongs than those of much bloodier international situations and worse violators. He also faults Obama, as compared to George W. Bush, for being a weak ally, too ready to please the Palestinians and indeed the entire Islamic world, and supposedly causing an unspecified ‘tectonic shift’ in the alliance with Israel during his presidency. In this regard, the Iran Agreement is the last straw for Oren, and the most damaging example of a departure from the alleged alliance code of no daylight and no surprises (epitomized by recourse to secret diplomacy between Washington and Tehran that left Tel Aviv out of the loop for several months leading up to the agreement). Of course, Oren is unapologetic about Israel’s obstructionist behavior. He treats Netanyahu’s conception of Israel’s security as essentially correct, if at times unnecessarily confrontational. He believes that in this instance Israel’s worries are sufficiently vital and well-founded as to deserve putting aside diplomatic niceties. This was the case when the Israeli leader was invited by the Republican leadership in Congress to speak on Iran at a special joint session convened for this purpose in early 2015 without even informing the White House in advance of the invitation, a violation of political protocol.

Deconstructing the Oren view of alliance politics makes it clear that its operational code would be better observed if the Congress and not the President represented the United States in matters of foreign policy. Netanyahu and a majority of the U.S. Congress do seem to see eye to eye, including of course on whether the Iran Nuclear Agreement, as negotiated, should be approved. Across the board of foreign policy in the Middle East, Netanyahu and Congress are bellicose, inclined toward military solutions despite the dismal record of failure, and inclined to decide about friends and enemies on the basis of geopolitical alignment and religious orientation without the slightest concern about whether or not supportive of democracy, human rights, and decency.

Should a Republican with these views be elected president in 2016, then Oren’s dream of the alliance as based on ‘no daylight, no surprises, and no public discord’ would likely come true, illustrating the proposition that one person’s dream is another person’s nightmare. More carefully considered, it would seem probable that if Hilary Clinton gets the keys to the White House her approach to Israel will be closer to that of Congress than that of Obama even recalling that Obama backed away quickly from his early demand that Israel freeze settlement expansion and has significantly increased military assistance for Israel without exhibiting much concern about peace and justice in the region, or with regard to the Palestinian ordeal. U.S. response to the Sisi coup in Egypt is indicative of a strategic convergence of approach by the Obama White House and Netanyahu’s Likud led government.

Two realities are present as surfacing in response to the Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA):

–-the presidency is on one side (along with Clinton) and Congress/Israel is on the other side;

–yet more broadly conceived, the alliance remains as unconditional and bipartisan as ever, defiant toward the UN and the constraints of international law whenever expedient.

A final point. JCPOA imposes more restrictions on Iranian enrichment capabilities and stockpiles, and on inspection and monitoring of compliance, than has been imposed on any country in the course of the entire nuclear era. Its regional justifications, aside from Israeli security, emphasize the avoidance of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. And left out of consideration altogether was the nuclear weapons arsenal of Israel acquired with Western complicity and by covert means, as well as through operations outside the Nonproliferation Treaty regime, which is used to tie Iran’s hands and feet. Such are the maneuvers of geopolitics, that underpin the alliance so strongly celebrated by Michael Oren.

*Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies. He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. Visit his blog.

As established by the Constitution, as of August 3 all state workers will need to speak one native language in addition to Spanish.

The Under-secretary of Decolonization, Félix Cárdenas, stressed in a news conference that it will be a condition to access public employment or maintain it. The three-year period given to learn one of the nation’s 36 native languages – all with official language status – in fact expires on August 2. The most spoken are Quechua, Aymara (both by around 1 million), Guaraní, Chimán, Guarayu and Weenhayek.

Cárdenas indicated that the second mandatory language must be that spoken prevalently in the area where the state employee works, such as Aymara in the case of La Paz or Quechua for Cochabamba. However, he specified that the language doesn’t need to be known perfectly, rather sufficiently to communicate directly with the people.

The Russian statistics agency reported yesterday that the birthrate in the Russian Federation had fallen to 12.6 children per 1000 population, lower than it has been at any point in the last three years and, according to experts, a reflection of both underlying demographic trends and current uncertainties about the future among Russians.

After Rosstat reported this figure and noted that it was country wide, with the number of births falling in 66 of the 85 federal subjects, with the greatest declines almost certainly being in the predominantly ethnic Russian ones (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55B9DA3BC69E6 and gks.ru/bgd/free/B04_03/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d06/ind-zen23.htm).

“Izvestiya” spoke with two experts about this development. Mikhail Denisenko, deputy director of the Institute of Demography at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, said that the decline in the number of births was occurring “because of the sharp reduction in the number of potential mothers” (izvestia.ru/news/589299).

Fewer people were born in the 1990s than during perestroika, and consequently, the number of women entering prime child-bearing years is down. But he “does not exclude” the possibility that the explanation for this year’s decline over last reflects the impact of the economic crisis in Russia.

Leontiy Byzov, a scholar at the Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Complex Social Research, agreed and said, in the words of Kasparov.ru’s report that “general uncertainty about tomorrow is influencing demographic processes.” If that is the case, such feelings will further depress Russian population growth and increase Moscow’s dependence on immigrant workers.

By Cheryl Pellerin

The U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement limits Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb but puts no limits on the Defense Department or the United States, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a Senate panel on earlier this week.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action reached in Vienna this month must receive congressional approval before it is implemented.

Carter and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. interests and the military balance in the Middle East.

When implemented, Carter said, the agreement will effectively cut off Iran’s pathways to fissile material for a nuclear bomb, but it places no limitations on the Defense Department.

No U.S. Limitations

“It places no limits on our forces, our partnerships and alliances, our intensive and ongoing security cooperation, or on our development and fielding of new military capabilities — capabilities we will continue to advance,” he told the panel.

The department will continue to maintain a strong military posture to deter aggression, bolster the security of Israel and other allies and friends in the region, ensure freedom of navigation in the Gulf, check Iran’s malign influence, and degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Carter added.

“We’re also continuing to advance our military capabilities that provide all options, as [President Barack Obama] has directed, should Iran walk away from its commitments under this deal,” he said.

Carter called the Iran agreement is an important step that keeps Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in a comprehensive and verifiable way.

“Once implemented,” he added, the agreement “will … remove a critical element of risk and uncertainty from the region.”

Other Areas of Concern

In his remarks, Dempsey said that, if followed, the Iran deal “addresses one critical and the most dangerous point of friction with the Iranian regime. But … there are at least five other malign activities which give us and our regional partners concern.”

These, he said, include ballistic missile technology, weapons trafficking, the use of surrogates and proxies to naval mines and undersea activity, and malicious activity in cyberspace.

“The negotiating deal does not alleviate our concerns in those five areas,” he said, “[or] change the military options at our disposal. And in our efforts to counter the Iranian regime’s malign activities, we will continue to engage our partners in the region to reassure them and to address these areas.”

The agreement’s successful negotiation is one part of the broader U.S. foreign and defense policy, Carter said, noting the Middle East remains important to U.S. national interests.

“As a result,” the secretary said, “the Department of Defense is committed to confronting the region’s two principal security challenges: Iran and ISIL.”

Describing his recent trip to the Middle East, Carter said he spoke with some of the men and women in uniform who are carrying out the Middle East strategy to let them know that the department is continuing full speed ahead, standing with its friends, standing up to ISIL, and standing against Iran’s malign activities.

“On ISIL … we have the right strategy in place, built on nine synchronized lines of effort to achieve ISIL’s lasting defeat. But we continue to strengthen execution,” Carter said.

Working with Partners

In Iraq and elsewhere, the department is working with partners on the ground and in a global coalition to enable capable and motivated ground forces to win back Iraq’s sovereignty and peace in its own territory, he added.

“I saw several parts of this effort last week and spoke with some of our partners on the ground. We’re headed in the right direction in this counter-ISIL effort: we’ve made some progress but we need to make more,” he told the panel.

“If Iran were to commit aggression, our robust force posture ensures we can rapidly surge an overwhelming array of forces into the region,” the secretary added, “leveraging our most advanced capabilities, married with sophisticated munitions that put no target out of reach.”

Iran and its proxies still present security challenges, Carter said, noting Iran’s support of Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, its contribution to disorder in Yemen and its hostility and violence toward Israel.

The secretary said he made it clear last week in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq that the department will continue to meet its commitments to friends and allies in the region, especially Israel, and continue to build on and enhance such cooperation.

“I also made clear that we will continue to maintain our robust regional force posture ashore and afloat, which includes tens of thousands of American personnel and our most sophisticated ground, maritime, air and ballistic-missile defense assets,” he said.

“Our friends understand, despite our differences with some of them about the merits of this deal,” Carter added, “that we have an enduring commitment to deterrence and to regional security.”

Over 15,000 Islamic State members have been killed by US-led coalition airstrikes since the campaign began nearly a year ago, as the militant Islamist group displays a dichotomy of weakened resilience.

The US-led coalition conducted more than 30 airstrikes on the Islamic State within 24 hours, destroying more than five IS vehicles, six tactical units and a tunnel near Mosul, Iraq, that the militant group used to move members to fight against opposing Iraqi military and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, officials announced Wednesday.

More than 5,500 airstrikes have been carried out by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since Aug. 8, 2014. The CIA estimated the militant group’s membership last year to be in a range between 20,000 and 31,500

The membership estimates remain about the same this year, according to USA Today — meaning the Islamic State has been able to successfully replace its fallen fighters.

Due to the airstrikes, the Islamic State has been forced to disperse into smaller groups, making them less likely to seize large territories. The US military has previously warned that casualty numbers do not accurately measure progress in the conflict against the militant group.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said in Iraq earlier this month that combating the Islamic State militarily and ideologically will last for years.

By Andrew V. Pestano

Original article

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s capital city has launched one of its biggest development projects in modern history with a decision to build a second administrative center on the outskirts of Beijing.

The move of municipal functions to the Tongzhou district, some 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city center, was announced at a Communist Party meeting of the city government on July 11 after months of rumors, state media reported.

The sweeping shift is aimed at easing the “urban ills” of congestion and pollution in the capital, while keeping Beijing’s population below 23 million by 2020 in the midst of the national urbanization drive, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Various reports left unclear whether the plan calls only for setting up a “subsidiary,” or secondary, administrative center in the Tongzhou suburb or whether the move will eventually encompass the entire municipal government, leaving central Beijing as the seat of national and party power.

The Tongzhou project is said to be part of a larger plan to integrate Beijing’s development with outlying areas, adjoining Hebei province and the port of Tianjin.

Municipal and provincial authorities have been working since last year to coordinate regional infrastructure and environmental efforts to help meet national goals.

On July 14, the three governments took a further step toward consolidation by agreeing to consult one another when writing new laws “in an attempt to stamp out local protectionism and hasten the full coordination of regional development,” Xinhua said.

The entire integrated area would include over 100 million residents, The New York Times reported.

Plans include moving key support services like hospital facilities from Beijing’s city center to surrounding communities and relocating 1,200 polluting businesses out of town, it said.

Unsnarling gridlock

The program also calls for reducing residency in the city center by 15 percent, according to Xinhua.

The aim is to unsnarl pollution-causing gridlock in the capital, where the population has already hit 21.5 million after the national urbanization rate topped 54.7 percent last year.

The population would be limited to 21.77 million by the end of this year, Xinhua said in a separate report.

Additional reports gave conflicting accounts of how many businesses in the city have already been affected.

According to one, Beijing closed or relocated 185 firms in the first half of the year. Another said the city had shut down 865 factories in the same period.

Wholesale markets and other businesses are also being moved out.

State media has yet to put an estimate on the cost of the entire effort or the impacts on those affected.

Over 80 “industrial programs” have already been pushed from the central city to Hebei province at a cost of 120 billion yuan ($19.3 billion), said Lu Yan, director of Beijing’s Development and Reform Commission, the official English-language China Daily reported.

Beijing’s wholesale clothes market alone provides 30,000 jobs and attracts up to 100,000 visitors per day, Xinhua said.

Authorities are also trying to limit traffic to centrally located hospitals, which account for over 200 million visits per year.

“Those markets and medical institutions convey typical non-capital functions and cause congestion,” Lu said at a press conference on July 16.

The program is a response to demands for better air quality and living conditions in Beijing, but improvements may depend on whether the plan for the region simply leads to expansion over a larger area.

“They are trying to manage a steady influx of people from across China who are in search of some of the social services they can only get in Beijing or a major city,” said Pete Ogden, senior fellow for international climate policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

“I’m sure they’re thinking about ways to create other focal points so that all of that migration doesn’t come into one location and overwhelm itself,” Ogden said.

Under China’s “national new-type urbanization plan,” announced last year, the government would move some 100 million rural dwellers by 2020 from the countryside, channeling them primarily into towns, smaller cities and medium-sized municipalities “in an orderly manner,” while “strictly” limiting growth of “megacities” like Beijing and Shanghai.

Last week, Lu said Beijing would introduce a new residential permit system this year. But it was not immediately clear how it would affect population growth or the granting of “hukou,” the permanent resident status for access to urban benefits and services, state media said.

Plans for the Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin region may suggest some flexibility for the population cap in the capital city and surrounding areas.

“The question is how many days, months or years does it take for the city to grow by that amount again?” Ogden said. “What happens to the next wave of people who come in, unless they’re going to try to take other measures to restrict that growth further?”

Strain on Tongzhou

There are also signs that Tongzhou, with a population of 1.3 million, is already feeling some of the strains.

Rumors of the municipal plan, which was initially denied, have been driving a surge in Tongzhou real estate prices for weeks.

Traffic between the city and the suburb is already an issue.

Although one Xinhua report described Tongzhou as “about 40 minutes drive from the city center,” a second report quoted a resident as saying that the commute “normally takes around two hours.”

Whether development in Tongzhou will improve air quality is open to question. The district has been repeatedly cited in state media for hazardous and extreme pollution since 2012.

In February 2014, a Tongzhou resident told Radio Free Asia that the smog outside his home was “like living in the middle of poison gas” and “not fit for human habitation.”

Beijing’s Municipal Commission of Transport has announced plans to build a 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) suburban rail network as part of a plan to keep development from making traffic worse.

In 2013, Beijing issued a five-year “action plan” to cut smog with a 25-percent reduction in the smallest soot particles known as PM2.5 by 2017.

The city has made major efforts to shut down coal-fired power plants and boilers with mixed results.

On July 7, the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said that average PM2.5 readings were down 15.2 percent in the first half of 2015 from the year-earlier period, but they were still more than double the national standard, Xinhua reported.

Beijing’s air quality was “subpar” for nearly 60 percent of the days in June with an 11-percent rise in PM2.5 readings, Reuters said.

The latest reports highlight the problem of spreading smog beyond city borders, noting that seven of China’s 10 worst cities for air quality were in industrialized Hebei province last month.

The environmental benefits of the Tongzhou plan may prove illusive if it adds to urban sprawl or eases congestion in the city center by shifting it somewhere else.

A major joint study last year by the Development Research Center of the State Council, or cabinet, and the World Bank stressed the importance of limiting sprawl as a source of energy waste and pollution.

Greater urban density “would reduce the energy intensity and car use in cities, thus improving environmental sustainability,” the study said.

In practice, the recommendation may be hard to follow in the megacities, where traffic, pollution and population pressures are already intense.

The near-term environmental effects of construction for a new city administrative center and suburban development are also likely to be negative, raising questions about mixed motives behind the development plan.

Since April, Premier Li Keqiang has been trying to spur local infrastructure projects in an effort to support sagging growth, despite concerns that much of China’s pollution can be traced to its building boom and the economic stimulus plan of 2008-09.

Ogden said that new development in Tongzhou is bound to have an environmental effect.

“The actual impacts of construction are going to be real,” he said.

But there could be longer-term gains if new buildings are constructed with better efficiency standards, urban planning and transport services.

“It will be interesting to see what other lessons they apply and to what extent they just recreate the models that they’ve used in the past,” Ogden said.

By Vikram Sood*

It does not take long or very much for peace to be disturbed in Jammu and Kashmir. Till mid-summer, the feeling was one of peace with tourism in full swing, hotels fully booked and flights packed with tourists. Suddenly it began to change. In June, ISIS and Pakistani flags made an appearance once again. The last time when ISIS flags appeared in Srinagar was in June last year.

Recent incidents following the burning of the ISIS flag by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal activists in Rajouri are a case in point. The Rajouri incident has led to a chain of protests by Muslim youth and events that have threatened to get out of control.

The Army has been called out to carry out flag marches. Angered youth were protesting against the burning of the ISIS flag saying they were offended because the flag has the Kalimah Tayyiba (or the Shahada) scribed on the flag. Their contention was that this flag was made out of ordinary paper with the inscription done with a chalk. This was enough cause for tension and the burning of the flag on Eid was further aggravation.

The demand in Rajouri is that the matter be investigated and the accused apprehended by Monday, otherwise there will be a bandh in the entire district. In anticipation, youth have been assembling and raising road blocks by burning tyres. The VHP has asserted that there was no intention to hurt Muslim sentiments.

Pakistani flags along with those of Lashkar-e Tayyaba and ISIS had appeared in different parts of the Kashmir valley earlier this month after Eid prayers. This phenomenon by itself is not new and many take it in their stride. However, the ISIS phenomenon is relatively new. Kashmiri youth had unfurled the ISIS flag even last year, but what makes it more ominous is the beliefs of ISIS, its leadership, its rapid successes and its tactics.

ISIS can be traced back to its original form in 2002 when the Jordanian ex-Al Qaeda associate, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had formed his group Tawhid wal-jihad. Later it transformed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Daesh, (aka Dawah al-Islamiyah fi I ‘il Iraq was sa-Shams) led by the mercurial Abu Bakr el-Baghdadi who dramatically announced the formation of the Caliphate of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014.

This marked a break with Al Qaeda too. The ISIS hold is marked by unimaginable brutalities towards non-believers and other Muslims seen to have wavered from the puritanical interpretations and of the ISIS ideologues. The ISIS has been responsible for extreme violence throughout the month of Ramzan. ISIS now holds territory, holds oil wells and their revenue and considerable weaponry snatched from Iraqi and Syrian armies. It was reported to have received assistance from the Saudi Arabians and the Emirates and Qatar.

The ISIS now constitutes a grave threat not only to its neighbourhood but also beyond as far as Algeria in the West, into Africa up to Nigeria and up to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ISIS is fast becoming the major and immediate threat to those it considers its opponents. Such organisations like the ISIS operating outside their own territories need local support.

It is believed that ISIS may have local support in southern Afghanistan and in Balochistan. The Baloch, however, allege that groups have been sent by the Pakistani state to counter rising nationalist sentiment. The US now believes that Pakistani assistance would again be required to tackle ISIS in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan, with its innumerable terrorist organisations, some of them now working on their own, would provide enough fertile ground for organisations like ISIS to thrive within and spread outwards from here. It must be remembered that Al Qaeda leadership is still based in the FATA of Pakistan from where it continues to give directions.

The ISIS flag has the same banner as the flag of Boko Haram, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – Shahada or Kalimah Tayyiba. This has alarming implications. Any inadvertent taking down of the flag would be deemed as an affront. The display of the ISIS flag in Srinagar in the past would be a cause for some concern in the Indian security establishment.

At one end, it may be seen as an attempt to seek attention by a group of angry and disgruntled youth but no security establishment will assume that to be the final truth. There may never be any direct evidence of ISIS involvement but sympathy to the cause, a desire to express anger against New Delhi and the tendency of Pakistan to fish in troubled waters will always be factors. The goals seeking vague solutions or demands like sovereignty or independence, can easily be mixed with demands for a caliphate as the Kashmiri youth tends towards radical beliefs.

Many Kashmiris, however, point out that Kashmir and Jammu have been witness to atrocities of the ISIS kind in the past. It all started in the winter of 1989 with gruesome killings of the Hindus in the Kashmir Valley, including brutalities like the Lalru bus murders, and the acts of Bitta Karate, Noor Khan, Mushtaq Lutrum, and Yasin Malik still remembered with horror. Hizbul Mujahedeen terrorists pumped scores of bullets into Lassa Koul of Doordarshan and left him to die on the streets of Srinagar. Mohammed Shaban Vakil had to pay with his life for his views.

ISIS flags and slogans may be useful to attract attention but they are not good news for those very people who want to use these slogans. Kashmiris need to see what has been happening to the Syrians, Yezidis, Kurds, and Shias because they follow a different Islam. The ISIS may not have arrived but possibly the thought has begun to flicker. The security agencies would be concerned.

The writer is an Advisor to Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and a former Secretary of R & AW, Government of India

Courtesy: www.mid-day.com, July 28, 2015

The decision by the US to upgrade Malaysia’s ranking on its list of illegal human trafficking centres would ease the establishment of the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) trade pact. It shows the primacy of larger strategic imperatives over human rights issues in US-Malaysia relations.

By David Han Guo Xiong*

The recent decision by the US to upgrade Malaysia’s ranking on its list of illegal human trafficking centres would ease the establishment of the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP), a mega free trade pact involving twelve countries, including Malaysia and the US. It shows that larger strategic imperatives could matter more than human rights issues in US-Malaysia relations.

American foreign policy towards other countries, including Malaysia, frequently incorporates human rights issues. Nevertheless, human rights issues often are secondary to the shared pragmatism and larger strategic concerns of both the US and Malaysia.

Why Malaysia’s ranking was upgraded

Last year, the US State department downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3, the lowest ranking in its “Trafficking in Persons” report. The major reason for this classification was Malaysia’s poor efforts at improving its illegal human trafficking problems.

This poor ranking has prevented the US and Malaysia to conclude the TPP free trade pact, because last month the US Congress passed a trade bill with a provision which stipulated that fast-tracked trade deals cannot be established with countries that have the worst ranking on the US State Department’s list of human trafficking record. In order to overcome this obstacle, Malaysia was upgraded to a Tier 2 ranking which recognizes Malaysia’s efforts at improving its measures to tackle illegal human trafficking. These efforts include the clamping down on illegal camp sites at Malaysia’s northern border with Thailand earlier this year. Nevertheless, this upgrading has drawn sharp criticism from domestic political and public voices in the US and Malaysia as a compromise on the fight against human rights abuses.

Illegal human trafficking is but one of the human rights bones of contentions between Malaysia and the US. In March 2015, Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the Malaysian opposition coalition, was jailed for the second time on charges of sodomy. The White House criticized the jailing of Anwar as a blow to democratic progress. Further back in 1998, then US Vice-President Al-Gore openly hailed the Reformasi movement during his speech at an APEC Business Summit meeting in Malaysia. This triggered a furore from the Mahathir administration and the Malaysian public.

The Primacy of Strategic and National Imperatives

Despite the issues of human rights between Malaysia and the US, these issues do not seriously undermine the strategic imperatives shared by both countries. It is true that the US has occasionally directed strong criticisms against Malaysia’s human rights record, but these statements tend to be cosmetic and rhetorical in nature.

Dr. Mahathir himself skilfully operated on a dual track approach in his foreign policy towards the US and the West at large. For instance, since the late 1980s through the 1990s, while he was overtly very critical of US-led, Western policy of discrimination against Islamic states, he quietly promoted closer economic and military cooperation with the US. Subsequently, ties between both countries improved significantly under then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, followed by Premier Najib Razak. Engaging the US would ensure that the world’s only superpower stays engaged in Southeast Asia, thereby preserving a stable security environment in the region.

The US has always seen Malaysia as a modern and moderate Islamic state even during the premiership of Dr. Mahathir, who was also a strong ally of the US in the War against Terror. Indeed, Malaysia is a bridge for the US to the Islamic world. And the US considers Malaysia as a helpful partner in its counter-terrorism efforts against extremist groups such as ISIS.

Under the Obama administration, the US has been building stronger economic and security ties with Malaysia as part of its “Asia-pivot” strategy to shore up waning US influence in the Asia-Pacific against the challenge of a rising China. More importantly, as ASEAN chair in 2015, it is in Malaysia’s strategic interests to leverage on this position to foster stronger ties with the US to further anchor US presence in Southeast Asia.

In April 2014, President Obama became the second top US leader to visit Malaysia since Lyndon Johnson’s visit to the country in 1966. Both President Obama and Prime Minister Najib Razak agreed to upgrade their ties into a Comprehensive Partnership. Prime Minister Najib Razak has been eagerly supporting this strategic pact as it would be beneficial to Malaysia’s economic growth. In May 2015, both US naval and Malaysian armed forces participated in a joint-training exercise in Malaysia, a sign of the improved relations between the two countries.

Implications

At least three implications could be inferred from the above developments. First, pragmatic, strategic concerns tend to have primacy over human rights consideration in US-Malaysia relations. This is not an isolated event. The US has also been building closer economic and security ties with Vietnam, which is also involved in the TPP trade pact. Human rights issues in Vietnam have not seriously undermined the country’s improving relations with the US.

Although an advocate of human rights in his foreign policy, President Obama is also a pragmatic leader when it comes to larger strategic concerns. These strategic concerns have pressed President Obama to strengthen relations with allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific region, even if at the expense of issues of human rights concerns.

Second, the issue of human rights is usually a foreign policy tool that serves as a means to an end, which is to optimize national interest. Indeed, US criticism of Malaysia’s poor record in tackling the flow of human trafficking and the low ranking had pressurized Malaysian authorities to tackle the problem of illegal human trafficking. Malaysia has made significant efforts in this aspect. While such efforts may not be fully adequate, they are grounds for the US to justify the upgrading of Malaysia’s ranking to smooth the process for both countries to seal the TPP trade pact.

Third, such an episode could embolden other countries with serious problems of human rights abuses to find ways to manoeuver around human rights issues in their relations with the US. These countries could seek to cultivate stronger ties with the US by focusing primarily on common strategic concerns while downplaying human rights issues.

To conclude, the human rights concerns will continue to give rise to occasional contentions between Malaysian and the US. But such issues have been subject to larger strategic and national interests that carry greater weight in the calculations of both countries. Currently, realpolitik is the key determinant in guiding the bilateral ties of both countries.

*David Han Guo Xiong is a Research Analyst with the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Felix K. Chang*

Last week Japan released its annual defense review.  For the first time, it revealed photographs of Chinese offshore drilling rigs operating in the East China Sea.  The images reminded many of the international controversy that China stirred up in May 2014 when it sent the Hai Yang Shi You 981 offshore drilling rig (pictured above) into waters claimed by Vietnam.  The photographs reinforce the narrative that China is intent on pursuing its own interests, regardless of the consequences for its neighbors.  That, along with its island-building activities in the South China Sea, has made it increasingly difficult for Asian countries, like Indonesia and Malaysia, to set aside their concerns over Chinese actions in the region.

China’s foreign ministry quickly denounced the Japanese disclosure of the photographs.  It decried them as inflammatory and declared that Japan’s use of the photographs “provokes confrontation between the two countries, and is not constructive at all to the management of the East China Sea situation and the improvement of bilateral relations.”[1]

China maintains that the offshore drilling rigs that it has erected in the East China Sea are on its side of the median line through the two countries’ claims.  Thus, China has every right to develop the energy resources there.  Unfortunately, man-made demarcations cannot so neatly divide the East China Sea’s oil and natural gas deposits.  Rather, they tend to migrate towards areas of lower pressure.  Those occur whenever wells are drilled nearby.  Hence, Japan fears that Chinese wells will siphon off the oil and natural gas deposits under its claim from across the median line.

That prospect was thought to have been put to rest in 2008, when China and Japan agreed to jointly develop energy resources in the disputed waters of the East China Sea.  Neither side would unilaterally drill for oil or natural gas there.  But those were different times.  Since then, China has become not only more powerful, but also more willing to openly assert its power in the region.  Japan (whether consciously or not) antagonized China when Japan’s central government bought the disputed Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyu in China) from private Japanese owners in 2012.  That prompted a sharp rise in the number of clashes between Chinese fishing boats and the Japanese coast guard around the islands, and China to establish an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the disputed waters in November 2013.  At the same time, China did begin to unilaterally explore for oil and natural gas in those waters, as Japan’s photographs attest.

Even so, China may be correct to discern a political rationale for Japan’s photographic disclosure, though perhaps not the one that its foreign ministry seemed to intimate.  The main reason behind Japan’s disclosure may not have been to embarrass China, but rather to support Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s effort to pass security legislation that will enable Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to participate in collective self-defense—or in other words, to fight alongside an ally when either it or Japan is threatened.  Indeed, the photographic disclosure was made only a week before the upper house of the Japanese Diet starts debate on Abe’s new security bills.

The photographs surely boost the argument of Abe’s party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), that there is a clear and present danger to Japan’s national interests and more must be done to protect them.  But a chorus of Japanese politicians of different political stripes has joined in opposition to Abe’s effort to push through the security legislation without a thorough debate.  Many, including some within the LDP, are concerned about passing the security bills without a clear understanding of the circumstances in which Japanese military forces could be used.  The ultimate vote could be a close one, given that the LDP holds a slim majority in the upper house.  Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but Abe may hope that they are worth a few votes too.

About the author:
*Felix K. Chang is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also the Chief Strategy Officer of DecisionQ, a predictive analytics company in the national security and healthcare industries. He has worked with a number of digital, consumer services, and renewable energy entrepreneurs for years. He was previously a consultant in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy and Organization practice; among his clients were the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and other agencies. Earlier, he served as a senior planner and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Department of Defense and a business advisor at Mobil Oil Corporation, where he dealt with strategic planning for upstream and midstream investments throughout Asia and Africa.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang’s Remarks on Japan’s Disclosure of China’s Oil and Gas Exploration in the East China Sea,” China Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release, July 23, 2015, .

By Seifudein Adem*

In his recent book ‘The Lion of Judah in the New World’, American political scientist Theodore M. Vestal, has argued: “The images of Africa and of Africans that the American people developed during Haileselassie’s prominence will no doubt be referred to by historians, psychologists, and sociologist – as well as the media – as having played a part in the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.” Even if Vestal may be exaggerating to some extent, his observation is nevertheless intriguing without a doubt.

In any event, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Ethiopia when he arrived in Addis Ababa this week, after his pilgrimage to his father’s homeland, Kenya. Regardless of whether or not Emperor Haileselassie’s charm offensive had influenced the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the US, it is important to note that Obama’s visit to Ethiopia would take place in the shadow of a long tradition of diplomatic interactions between the two countries.

It is significant that Ethiopia was perhaps the only country outside the United States to issue a stamp in commemoration of the anniversary of the death of an American president, as it did under Haileselassie in 1947, two years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. During the Eisenhower administration, Ethiopia was also the only African nation and non-NATO country to send its troops to fight alongside Americans in the Korean War (1950-53).

But Haileselassie’s aspiration to project Ethiopia’s soft power was not limited to North America. For instance, he was the only Head of State to address the League of Nations and the first to visit postwar Japan. He was also the first foreign leader to visit Germany after World War II, arriving there with loads of blankets that were made in Ethiopia, “for the immediate distribution for the war-ravaged Germans”. Perhaps, Vestal’s more concrete contribution, therefore, lay in the wealth of factual information he packed in his book about the superstardom of the Ethiopian monarch, internationally, and in North America, in particular.

The evidence shows that many Americans were indeed fascinated by Emperor Haileselassie. The New York Times wrote in 1954 that the Emperor was “a man of courage, intelligence and great humanity,” and carried the full text of his speech to the joint session of the US Congress, on the occasion of his first state visit to the country.

Previously, within a span of less than ten years, Haileselassie was named, twice, Time’s man of the year. American presidents who had known Haileselassie, too, and many of them had indeed known him or about him, were unreserved in their praise for the African monarch.

In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower described the Emperor as “a defender of freedom and a supporter of progress.” It was a measure of Haileselassie’s weight in the eyes of America’s leaders that he was the only African leader to be invited to attend the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson told the Emperor that he looked to him for advice and counsel. President Nixon honored the Emperor by inviting him to the US as the first foreign leader to visit the White House after he was elected president.

With regard to the attitudes of America’s presidents toward Haileselassie and his attitudes toward them, I think we can safely draw the following sets of generalizations. Franklin Roosevelt barely knew Emperor Haileselassie, even though the two had met aboard USS Quincy off the coast of Egypt in February 1945 when Roosevelt was returning from his meeting at Yalta with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. Dwight Eisenhower respected Haileselassie and was appreciative of his decision to send Ethiopian troops to fight alongside Americans in Korea.

Harry Truman mostly ignored Haileselassie perhaps because the relationship between the two countries was stable at the time. Furthermore, Truman’s major concern, as the first Cold War president of the US, was the emerging challenge from the Soviet Union.

John F. Kennedy was intrigued by Haileselassie so much so that he once said: “There is no comparable figure in the world today who held high responsibilities in the 1930s, who occupied and held the attention and the imagination of really almost all free countries in the mid-1930s, and still could, in the summer of 1963, in his own capital dominate the affairs of his continent.” It is also a matter of historical record that President Kennedy accepted in principle the Emperor’s invitation to visit Ethiopia.

We would therefore never know if President Kennedy, rather than President Obama, would have become the first sitting president of the United States to visit Ethiopia had he not been assassinated.

In any case, could we attribute Kennedy’s special fascination with Emperor Haileselassie, at least in part, to the monarch’s political longevity?

This is a defensible proposition for, after all, Kennedy was not even born when Haileselassie emerged as a ruler in the Ethiopian political scene in 1916.

Lyndon Johnson who had known Ethiopia’s Emperor since his years in the US Congress cared less about him, preoccupied, perhaps, as he was with Vietnam and domestic political issues. It appears that Richard Nixon was another US leader with a very favorable attitude toward Haileselassie; and this had perhaps to do at least in part with the royal reception he was accorded when he visited Ethiopia first as the Vice President of the US and, later, as a private citizen.

At a state dinner in honor of Emperor Haileselassie in 1969, Nixon reportedly said: “I had the great privilege, which some in this room had enjoyed, of visiting his country in 1957. My wife and I were received as royal guests at that time and treated royally. I returned again to his country in 1967, holding no office, having no portfolio whatsoever. I was received again as a royal guest and treated royally. This is a man with an understanding heart.”

As far as Emperor Haileselassie’s own attitudes toward America’s presidents were concerned, it appears he was deferential toward Eisenhower, indifferent toward Truman (whom he met possibly only once at the funeral ceremony for John F. Kennedy in November 1963), affectionate toward Kennedy, puzzled by Johnson and disillusioned with Nixon. The attitudes of US administrations towards Ethiopia under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush seemed either less eventful or alternated between what a distinguished Kenyan political scientist had called the diplomacy of hostility, charity, benign neglect and co-optation, reflecting the periodic convergence and divergence between what were regarded as the vital interests of the two countries.

We do not know if Obama’s visit to Ethiopia (and Kenya) in 2015 would have wider consequences for the relationship between Africa and the US in general. But we can be sure about the enormity of the symbolic significance of the first visit to Ethiopia by the first African American president of the US.

If so, could Ethiopia inspire a sentiment in Obama which is akin to what Nelson Mandela felt after he was released from jail? Mandela wrote: “Ethiopia always has a special place in my imagination and the prospect of visiting Ethiopia attracted me more strongly than a trip to France, England, and America combined. I felt I would be visiting my own genesis.”

Such an emotional attachment in the case of Barack Obama would probably have to be the exclusive preserve of Kenya which is Obama’s own genesis – almost literally. But that does not diminish the fact that Ethiopia is also a stimulator of pan-African imagination and a beacon of hope for Global Africa.

After all, as Ali Mazrui, a contemporary and compatriot of President Barack Obama’s father once put it: “[f]or a long time Ethiopia was in reality the one Black country which could demonstrate to Europeans that it had a recorded history of many centuries, that it had a heritage of written as well as oral poetry, that it had centuries of demonstrated feats of science and engineering in its monuments.” Barack Obama, Sr. and Ali Mazrui shared friends, they did not meet each other.

* Seifudein Adem, Ph.D. is Associate Research Professor of Political Science & Associate Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, New York.

The killing of a lion, named Cecil, has spawned widespread outrage. Curiously, those who are protesting the loudest seem to have no problem with a doctor who kills little Cecilia in her mother’s womb.

Mia Farrow took to Twitter to register her disgust. In 2002, she spoke at a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, and in 2008 she addressed another pro-abortion crowd at a Personal PAC awards event.

Jimmy Kimmel almost choked describing his angst over the lion. In 2012, he had to be persuaded by reporter Jake Tapper not to tell a crude abortion joke at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

Former Spice Girl star Geri Halliwell was highly judgmental over Cecil’s death, but when asked at a news conference about abortion, she replied, “I believe in pro-choice and non-judgment.”

Ricky Gervais exploded over the death of Cecil, but when asked about abortion and euthanasia, he said last year, “I’m pro-choice in everything.”

Newsday and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are both solidly in the pro-abortion camp, and they railed in an editorial today against Cecil’s death.

The head of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, argued that the dentist who killed the lion should be “hanged.” She has never raised an objection to abortion in her entire life, and presides over an organization that kills 95 percent of the pets in its care.

The Animal Rights Coalition is furious over Cecil’s fate. It has never protested killing babies, but it is against killing flies. “When mosquitoes land on you,” it says, “instead of slapping and killing them, simply blow on them and they’ll fly away.”

I wish to God I could get rid of these people that simply.

Defense officials of Sri Lanka and Iran discussed bilateral cooperation in defense issues relevant to the two countries on Wednesday, according to the Sri Lanka government.

Discussions took place when the Military Attaché of the Embassy of Iran in Colombo Colonel Ebrahim Rohani called on the Sri Lanka Navy Commander, Vice Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne at the Naval Headquarters in Colombo .

They held cordial discussions on a range of issues of mutual interest and bilateral importance, the Sri Lanka Navy said.

Colonel Rohani also conveyed his best wishes to Vice Admiral Wijegunaratne on his taking over of command of the Sri Lanka Navy.

In his April 2014 meeting with the visiting Laotian Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted the need for China and Laos to intensify their comprehensive strategic partnership to achieve their national development goals. In particular, President Xi noted that Sino-Lao cooperation should focus on strategic industries like energy and resource extraction, green tourism, and infrastructure construction. In return, Prime Minister Thammavong confirmed Laos’ commitment to participating in China’s “Belt and Road” megaprojects.1

Laos’ key national development goal is to bring its population out of poverty, and in so doing, graduate from the United Nations’ group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Even though Laos currently enjoys GDP growth of almost 7%, this growth is in low-employment sectors like hydropower. The Laotian government hence aims to achieve poverty alleviation through employment generated by industrialization, and the government recognizes that the modernization of the country’s infrastructure will be instrumental to the success of the industrialization effort. With 90,000 Laotians entering the job market each year, the industrialization and modernization efforts are critical. The Laotian government hence welcomes China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure megaprojects, which are expected to help Laos fulfill these tasks.2

The Opening of Laos

China’s “Belt and Road” transportation and energy infrastructure megaprojects in Laos will build on earlier transportation and energy infrastructure projects initiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the 1990s under its Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) program, which sought to transform the economies of the Mekong nations (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) and the southern Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan into an integrated market. Indeed, China’s “Belt and Road” megaprojects in Laos should be recognized as being built on the foundation of the ADB’s earlier Laotian projects. As the ADB is an international financial institution (IFI) that is under US and Japanese control, China’s current economic influence in Laos and the region has, as we shall see, raised Japanese anxieties over what they perceive to be the loss of their influence.3

A good example is the ADB’s work with the GMS region is the North-South Economic Corridor (NSEC) project that connects Yunnan with Thailand through Laos. The NSEC has facilitated a boom in trade between China and the GMS economies, with Laos functioning as the key transshipment node. This boom in trade has been accompanied with an increased Chinese economic presence in Laos, which is expected to intensify following new Chinese investments under the “Belt and Road” framework. In historical perspective, China’s economic relations with Laos date from the precolonial Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, which gained wealth from exchange with the Chinese Muslim caravan trade. The current migration and settlement of Chinese entrepreneurs and traders in Laos following the establishment of the NSEC echoes the migration of Chinese settlers into Laos during the subsequent French colonial period.4

Laos had joined the ADB’s GMS initiative over two decades ago in 1992, following the Laotian government’s implementation of the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) in 1986, through which Laos began its transition from a socialist planned economy to a capitalist market economy. Under the NEM, Laos not only joined the GMS, but also ASEAN (1997) and the WTO (2013); this gradual opening of the Laotian economy to foreign trade and investment contributed to its two decades of annual GDP growth of 6.7%—including 7.6-7.8% growth during the global financial crisis years of 2009-2010—and an increase in per capita GDP from 329 to 1069 USD between 2001 and 2010. Laos’ strategic asset is its geographical position as a land bridge between China and the mainland Southeast Asian states of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This has been deployed in the GMS’ NSEC project as well as the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) project which connects Myanmar and Thailand with Vietnam through Laos. Laos’ involvement with China’s planned Southeast Asian rail network can be viewed an extension of the Laotian government’s strategic drive to transform Laos from a land-locked to a “land-linked” country. However, the current state of Laos’ transportation infrastructure remains poor, and big improvements are necessary before the country can fully leverage its geographical location to become the logistics hub for the region.5

The Pan-Asian Railway

China sees the Mekong nations—Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam—as key to the success of the “Belt and Road.” Economically, this region offers tremendous potential for growth, as these nations represent a market of over 320 million people, and whose regional trade with China amounted to over 150 billion USD in 2013. These nations will be involved in the proposed Pan-Asian Railway that is one of the key Silk Road Economic Belt infrastructure megaprojects. This railway will connect the southern Chinese city of Kunming with Singapore. From Singapore the railway will travel up the Malay Peninsula through Malaysia and into Thailand. At Bangkok the railway will split into three lines that will separately terminate at Kunming. One line will go through Laos; another through Myanmar; and the third through Cambodia and Vietnam. Laos regards its section of the Pan-Asian Railway as key to its development, and has flagged the construction project as a major priority in the nation’s 8th Five Year Plan.6

This rail connection between Kunming and Vientiane will be an infrastructure megaproject in its own right. The Laotian portion of Kunming-Vientiane line is a high-speed rail line that will involve the construction of 154 bridges, 76 tunnels, and 31 train stations. The project will cost an estimated 7 billion USD, which will be paid for by the Laotian government with concessionary loans from China, with Laos’ mineral wealth as collateral. Experts from the ADB and the World Bank feel that this will put Laos at an unreasonable level of debt, as the loans will amount to almost 90% of the country’s annual GDP, transforming Laos into one of the world’s most indebted countries. While the Laotian government sees this debt burden as a short-term sacrifice that will benefit the country in the long run, Laos’ growing indebtedness puts it at high risk of a Greek-style external debt crisis.7

To facilitate the implementation of China’s projects in Laos, various financial instruments have been established, including a Sino-Lao joint venture between Yunnan’s Fudian Bank and Laos’ Foreign Trade Bank. China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), of which Laos is a founding member, is expected to offer additional lines of financing for “Belt and Road” projects once it starts operations at the end of 2015. In the case of the Kunming-Vientiane high-speed rail line, the Laotian and Chinese governments have set up a joint company which will implement the megaproject. China Railway Group has expressed confidence that it will win the construction contract given the heavy Chinese financing.8

“Turning Land into Capital”

Laos’ strategic geographical position has made it one of the key destinations for Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI). China was Laos’ top investor in 2014, with over 5 billion USD invested in the country. China has also become Laos’ largest export market, and Sino-Lao bilateral trade reached 3.6 billion USD in 2014, a 32% increase from the previous year. This is poised to increase with the involvement of Laos in the “Belt and Road.” The Chinese conglomerate CITIC, for example, will invest over 700 billion RMB in China’s “Belt and Road” projects, including projects in Laos. Chinese FDI in sectors like agriculture, hydropower, mining, timber, and tourism (including casinos) fits with the Laotian government’s development strategy dating from the 1990s of “turning land into capital,” through which land is monetized through leases and resource extraction. The arrival of Chinese investment and know-how was welcomed by the Laotian government as the economy was expected to benefit not just from the increased revenue but also from the human capital development that would come from the transfer of knowledge and skills from Chinese experts, especially with regard to the best methods for the optimal exploitation of Laos’ natural resources. The rubber boom of the 2000s offers a good example of Sino-Lao cooperation, as these joint ventures between Lao state firms and Chinese enterprises replaced indigenous opium fields with commercial rubber plantations. Not only did the Laotian economy benefit from the revenue from the cash crop, the local labour force enjoyed regular wages and increased their agricultural expertise.9

China is also one of Laos’ top donors of overseas development aid (ODA). Chinese ODA generally consists of grants and low- or no-interest loans. Approximately half of China’s ODA to Laos is spent on the development of transportation infrastructure, for example the 33 million USD construction of the 70 km section of Road 3 which runs from Luang Namtha and Borkeo provinces to the Chinese border. A recent study of the socio-economic impact of China’s Road 3 project confirms the beneficial effect of poverty alleviation arising from increased trade and investment leading to employment and income generation opportunities for the local population. Mirroring the pattern of Sino-Cambodian relations, the increased economic assistance provided by China to Laos will be matched with military assistance and security cooperation.10

In the energy sector, Laos is estimated to have the potential to generate 26,500 MW of hydropower, of which 18,000 MW is technically exploitable. To unlock this hydropower potential and transform Laos into the “battery of Southeast Asia,” the Laotian government has ambitious plans to build 70 dams along the tributaries of the Mekong River. Many of these are being or will be constructed by Chinese hydropower firms. Laos is already exporting electricity generated from its hydropower dams to Thailand, and the revenue generated from hydropower could go far to help Laos achieve its goal of leaving the ranks of the world’s LDCs. At present, Laos is moving ahead with the construction of the controversial Don Sahong hydropower dam. While the developer is Malaysia’s Mega First Corporation, Mega First is negotiating with China’s Sinohydro Corporation over the construction. Not only have experts warned that Don Sahong could drive the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin into extinction, the potential threat the dam poses to downstream fisheries could trigger a diplomatic crisis with Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.11

The Reassertion of Japanese Influence

The increased Chinese economic presence in Laos and the Mekong nations has triggered concerns among the Japanese of the perceived threat to their traditional influence in the region. This has prompted the Japanese government to offer an additional 6.17 billion USD in ODA to the five Mekong nations. The Japanese government had earlier infused the ADB with an additional 110 billion USD in funds, in response to the coming challenge posed by China’s AIIB. The Japanese government has sought to differentiate ADB-funded projects from the AIIB’s with the rhetoric of “quality,” even though there is no evidence that the AIIB, which has yet to select its projects, will ignore quality in its selection process. As the receipt of ODA and FDI is not a zero-sum game, the likely result of this competition between China and Japan will be a welcome increase in funding options for Laos and the other beneficiary nations. As Indonesian Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro has pointed out, Asia’s infrastructure needs are too great for the world’s existing IFIs to fully fund, and new IFIs like the AIIB will be needed to fill the funding gap. Laos offers a good example. Even though Japan is Laos’ largest ODA donor, the Japanese government and the ADB have no interest in funding the Kunming-Vientiane high-speed rail project, thereby opening a funding gap which, as we have seen, China has filled.12

References:

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Lim, Alvin Cheng-Hin. “Sino-Cambodian Relations: Recent Economic and Military Cooperation.” Eurasia Review, June 30, 2015. Accessed July 28, 2015. http://www.eurasiareview.com/30062015-sino-cambodian-relations-recent-economic-and-military-cooperation-analysis/.

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Townsend-Gault, Ian. “The China-Laos Boundary: Lan Xang Meets the Middle Kingdom.” In Beijing’s Power and China’s Borders: Twenty Neighbors in Asia, edited by Bruce A. Elleman, Stephen Kotkin, and Clive Schofield: 142-153. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2013.

Trandem, Ame. “Dam diplomacy on the Mekong.” Phnom Penh Post, January 26, 2015. Accessed July 27, 2015. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/analysis-and-op-ed/dam-diplomacy-mekong.

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Wright, Tom. “With Development Bank, China Challenges Japan’s Role in Asia.” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015. Accessed July 30, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-development-bank-china-challenges-japans-role-in-asia-1427197698.

“Xi Jinping Meets with Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong of Laos.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, April 11, 2014. Accessed July 27, 2015. http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1147255.shtml.

“Yunnan to function as transport, finance channel of Belt-Road initiative.” CCTV, May 28, 2015. Accessed July 27, 2015. http://newscontent.cctv.com/NewJsp/news.jsp?fileId=298093.

Notes:
1.“Xi Jinping Meets with Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong of Laos,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, April 11, 2014, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1147255.shtml.

2 Nguyen Thi Thuy Anh and Rong Zhongxia, “Interview: Official says China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative inspires development in Laos,” Xinhua, June 23, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/23/c_134348469.htm. Mong Palatio, “Laos’ Economic Agenda,” The Diplomat, May 12, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/laos-economic-agenda/. Ron Corben, “Laos Looks to Balance China’s Growing Economic Influence,” VOA, April 23, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.voanews.com/content/laos-looks-to-balance-china-growing-economic-influence/2731417.html.

3 Danielle Tan, “The ‘Casino Strategy’ in Laos and Cambodia: a Risky Bet on the Future,” GIS Asie, July 1, 2015, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.reseau-asie.com/article-en/months-articles-archive/reseau-asie-s-editorial/casino-strategy-laos-cambodia-risky-bet-on-future-danielle-tan/. Tom Wright, “With Development Bank, China Challenges Japan’s Role in Asia,” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015, accessed July 30, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-development-bank-china-challenges-japans-role-in-asia-1427197698.

4 Danielle Tan, “China in Laos: Is There Cause For Worry?” Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, May 16, 2014, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.iseas.edu.sg/documents/publication/ISEAS%20Perspective%202014_31%20-%20China%20in%20Laos%20-%20Is%20There%20Cause%20for%20Worry.pdf. Danielle Tan, “Chinese Engagement in Laos: Past, Present, and Uncertain Future,” Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.iseas.edu.sg/documents/publication/TRS7_15.pdf.

5 Bounthavy Sisouphanthong, “Integration of Greater Mekong Subregion Corridors within Lao Planning, on National and Regional Scales: A New Challenge,” in Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors, ed. Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh Khonthapane, and Christian Taillard (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014): 175-187. Ian Townsend-Gault, “The China-Laos Boundary: Lan Xang Meets the Middle Kingdom,” in Beijing’s Power and China’s Borders: Twenty Neighbors in Asia, ed. Bruce A. Elleman, Stephen Kotkin, and Clive Schofield (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2013): 143. Stephen P. Groff, “New economic corridors catalyst for connectivity,” China Daily, June 11, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2015-06/11/content_20973378.htm. “‘Belt and Road’ initiatives energize China’s neighborhood diplomacy,” Xinhua, July 27, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/27/c_134450899.htm. Tamaki Kyozuka, “Laos at the center of Mekong action,” Nikkei Asian Review, March 12, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20150312-ASEAN-Linked-lands-meshed-markets/On-the-Cover/Laos-at-the-center-of-Mekong-action.

6 Manny Salvacion, “China to Enhance Cooperation with 5 Lancang-Mekong River Nations for One Belt, One Road Project,” Yibada, April 7, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://en.yibada.com/articles/24987/20150407/china-lancang-mekong-river-nations-one-belt-one-road-project.htm. “Construction of Pan-Asian railway in SE Asia restarts due to China’s Silk Road initiative,” China Daily Mail, April 28, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://chinadailymail.com/2015/04/28/construction-of-pan-asian-railway-in-se-asia-restarts-due-to-chinas-silk-road-initiative/.

7 Tan, “China in Laos.” Corben, “Laos Looks to.” David Eimer, “China’s 120mph railway arriving in Laos,” The Telegraph, January 14, 2014, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/laos/10572583/Chinas-120mph-railway-arriving-in-Laos.html. Heather Stewart, “Beyond Greece, the world is filled with debt crises,” The Observer, July 11, 2015, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/11/beyond-greece-world-filled-debt-crises.

8 Corben, “Laos Looks to.” “Yunnan to function as transport, finance channel of Belt-Road initiative,” CCTV, May 28, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://newscontent.cctv.com/NewJsp/news.jsp?fileId=298093. “China: 57 Countries to be Founding Members of AIIB,” Reuters, April 15, 2015, accessed July 30, 2015, http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-china-says-57-countries-to-be-founding-members-of-aiib/2719726.html. “Laos and China to Set Up Joint Company for High-Speed Railway,” RFA, June 5, 2015, accessed July 30, 2015, http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/laos-and-china-to-set-up-joint-company-for-major-high-speed-railway-06042015172519.html. Toh Han Shih, “China Railway Group sees One Belt, One Road boosting overseas revenue,” South China Morning Post, April 9, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1762591/china-railway-group-sees-one-belt-one-road-boosting-overseas.

9 Tan, “Chinese Engagement in.” “China sees more exports, investment along Belt and Road,” Xinhua, July 7, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2015-07/07/content_21202417.htm. “China’s CITIC to invest $113 billion for ‘Silk Road’ investments,” Reuters, June 24, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/24/china-citic-investments-idUSL3N0ZA3AH20150624. “Vientiane Holds the 7th Meeting of China-Laos Trade and Economic Joint Commission,” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, June 1, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/article/newsrelease/significantnews/201506/20150601005747.shtml.

10 Leeber Leebuapao and Saykham Voladet, “Impacts of China on Poverty Reduction in Laos,” in Assessing China’s Impact on Poverty in the Greater Mekong Subregion, ed. Hossein Jalilian (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013): 414-422. “China, Laos pledge closer military ties,” Xinhua, July 8, 2015, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/931055.shtml. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “Sino-Cambodian Relations: Recent Economic and Military Cooperation,” Eurasia Review, June 30, 2015, accessed July 28, 2-15, http://www.eurasiareview.com/30062015-sino-cambodian-relations-recent-economic-and-military-cooperation-analysis/.

11 Tan, “China in Laos.” Corben, “Laos Looks to.” Ame Trandem, “Dam diplomacy on the Mekong,” Phnom Penh Post, January 26, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/analysis-and-op-ed/dam-diplomacy-mekong. JeeRung, Silence of the dammed, Mekong Commons, July 12, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.mekongcommons.org/silence-of-the-dammed/. Phak Seangly, “Work picking up at Don Sahong dam site,” Phnom Penh Post, June 30, 2015, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/work-picking-don-sahong-dam-site. Milton Osborne, The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2006): 268-271. Luke Hunt, “The New ‘Battery of Asia?’” The Diplomat, November 1, 2012, accessed July 27, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/laos-is-damning-the-mekong-river/. Guy Delauney, “Laos hydropower a ‘battery’ for power-hungry region,” BBC, December 10, 2010, accessed July 27, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/11962210. Kim Geheb, Niki West, and Nathanial Matthews, “The Invisible Dam: Hydropower and its Narration in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic,” in Hydropower Development in the Mekong Region: Political, Socio-economic and Environmental Perspectives, ed. Nathanial Matthews and Kim Geheb (New York: Routledge, 2015): 101.

12 Wright, “With Development Bank.” Julian Ryall, “Japan pledges billions to Mekong states to counter China,” Deutsche Welle, July 8, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.dw.com/en/japan-pledges-billions-to-mekong-states-to-counter-china/a-18570364. Prashanth Parameswaran, “The Real Importance of Japan’s New Strategy for the Mekong,” The Diplomat, July 7, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/the-real-importance-of-japans-new-strategy-for-the-mekong/. Bruce Einhorn, “In Its Fight for Allies, Japan Writes Big Checks,” Bloomberg, July 17, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-16/japan-china-expand-aid-to-asia-in-fight-for-influence. “Japan pledges $6.1B to Mekong nations,” Nikkei Asian Review, July 4, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Japan-pledges-6.1B-to-Mekong-nations. “Faced with AIIB, Japan to pump S$147b into ADB,” Today, May 22, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/faced-aiib-japan-pump-s147b-adb. Ben Otto, “China-Led Bank to Focus on Big-Ticket Projects, Indonesia Says,” Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-led-aiib-to-focus-on-big-ticket-projects-indonesia-says-1428647276. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “The US, China and the AIIB: From Zero-Sum Competition to Win-Win Cooperation?” Eurasia Review, April 19, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.eurasiareview.com/19042015-the-us-china-and-the-aiib-from-zero-sum-competition-to-win-win-cooperation-analysis/. “Laotian deputy premier aims to firm up $7B project by June,” Nikkei Asian Review, March 4, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015, http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Laos?page=2.

A total of 145,248 Spanish taxpayers signed up to the extraordinary open scheme between January and June this year to regularize their pensions from overseas without being subject to any penalty, surcharge or interest payment.

In these six months, both returning Spanish pensioners and foreigners in Spain have regularized a total of 309 million euros in Personal Income Tax quotas for the periods 2010-2013, which is a similar figure, for example, to the cost of the recent reduction in withholdings to 15% for the self-employed in 2015, according to the Spanish government.

Under the scheme, taxpayers filed more than 392,000 self-assessment returns which, taking into account the total amount paid in under the regularisation, means that the average sum paid in per financial year stands at 891 euros.

The extraordinary regularization period went hand-in-hand with a special scheme to waive penalties, surcharges and interest imposed by the Spanish Tax Agency for other regularization schemes prior to the open scheme between January and June. Applications for this tax relief recorded a sum total of 32,414 and the agency has agreed to return more than 13 million euros to date.

During the course of the regularzsation and debt relief process, the Spanish Tax Agency offered face-to-face assistance to more than 74,000 taxpayers and, on a prior basis, sent out more than 651,000 informative letters on the details of the scheme to potential beneficiaries.

The Kurdish militias (YPG, PKK) have been Washington’s most effective weapon in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But the Obama administration has sold out the Kurds in order to strengthen ties with Turkey and gain access to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. The agreement to switch sides was made in phone call between President Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan less than 48 hours after a terrorist incident in the Turkish town of Suruc killed 32 people and wounded more than 100 others.

The bombing provided Obama with the cover he needed to throw the Kurds under the bus, cave in to Turkey’s demands, and look the other way while Turkish bombers and tanks pounded Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. The media has characterized this shocking reversal of US policy as a “game-changer” that will improve US prospects for victory over ISIS. But what the about-face really shows is Washington’s inability to conduct a principled foreign policy as well as Obama’s eagerness to betray a trusted friend and ally if he sees some advantage in doing so.

Turkish President Erdogan has launched a war against the Kurds; that is what’s really happening in Syria at present. The media’s view of events–that Turkey has joined the fight against ISIS–is mostly spin and propaganda. The fact that the Kurds had been gaining ground against ISIS in areas along the Turkish border, worried political leaders in Ankara that an independent Kurdish state could be emerging. Determined to stop that possibility,  they decided to use the bombing in Suruc as an excuse to round up more than 1,000 of Erdogans political enemies (only a small percentage of who are connected to ISIS) while bombing the holy hell out of Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. All the while, the media has been portraying this ruthless assault on a de facto US ally, as a war on ISIS. It is not a war on ISIS. It is the manipulation of a terrorist attack to advance the belligerent geopolitical agenda of Turkish and US elites. Just take a look at these two tweets from CNN Turkey on Saturday and you’ll see what’s going on under the radar:

@CNNTURK_ENG:
#BREAKING Sources tell CNN Türk last night Turkish jets made 159 sorties against #PKK camps in N.Iraq&hit 400 targetspic.twitter.com/oGVJmKsGbs

@CNNTURK_ENG:
#BREAKING Sources tell CNN Türk last night there was no air strike against #ISIS, targets were hit by tank fire near #Kilis.
(The tweets first appeared at Moon of Alabama)

Repeat: 159 air attacks on Kurdish positions and ZERO on ISIS targets. And the media wants us to believe that Turkey has joined Obama’s war on ISIS?

The Turks know who they’re bombing. They are bombing their 30-year long enemy, the Kurds.  Here’s more on the topic from Telesur:

“A decades-old conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish PKK has been reignited. Turkey vowed Saturday to continue attacks against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), along with strikes against the Islamic State group.

“The operations will continue for as long as threats against Turkey continue,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

Ankara also confirmed it carried out airstrikes against PKK sites in Iraq. While Davutoglu said any organizations that “threaten” Turkey would be targeted in a crackdown on militants, on Friday President Tayyip Erdogan said the PKK would be the main focus of attacks.”  (“Turkey Says More Anti-PKK Strikes to Come“, Telesur)

Repeat: “Erdogan said the PKK would be the main focus of attacks.”

For Washington, it’s all a question of priorities. While the Kurds have been good friends and steadfast allies,  they don’t have a spanking-new air base for launching attacks on Syria. Turkey, on the other hand, has a great base (Incirlik ) that’s much closer to the frontlines and just perfect for launching multiple sorties, drone attacks or routine surveillance fly-overs.  The only glitch, of course, is that Washington will have to bite its tongue while a former ally is beaten to a pulp. That’s a price that Obama is more than willing to pay provided he can use the airfield to prosecute his war.

It’s worth noting, that Turkey’s relationship with jihadi groups in Syria is a matter of great concern, mainly because Turkey appears to be the terrorists biggest benefactor.  Check this out from Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News:

“Naturally, one has to ask who fathered, breastfed and nourished these Islamist terrorists in hopes and aspirations of creating a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Khalifat state? Even when Kobane and many Turkish cities were on fire, did not the Turkish prime minister talk in his interview with CNN about his readiness to order land troops into the Syrian quagmire if Washington agreed to also target al-Assad?
This is a dirty game….” (Editorial, “Kobane and Turkey are Burning“, Hurriyet Daily News)

And here’s more from author Nafeez Ahmed:

“With their command and control centre based in Istanbul, Turkey, military supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular were transported by Turkish intelligence to the border for rebel acquisition. CIA operatives along with Israeli and Jordanian commandos were also training FSA rebels on the Jordanian-Syrian border with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. In addition, other reports show that British and French military were also involved in these secret training programmes. It appears that the same FSA rebels receiving this elite training went straight into ISIS – last month one ISIS commander, Abu Yusaf, said, “Many of the FSA people who the west has trained are actually joining us.”  (“How the West Created the Islamic State“, Nafeez Ahmed, CounterPunch)

Then there’s this from USA Today:

“Militants have funneled weapons and fighters through Turkey into Syria. The Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, have networks in Turkey….

Turkish security and intelligence services may have ties to Islamic State militants. The group released 46 Turkish diplomats it had abducted the day before the United States launched airstrikes against it. Turkey, a NATO member, may have known the airstrikes were about to begin and pressured its contacts in the Islamic State to release its diplomats.

“This implies Turkey has more influence or stronger ties to ISIS than people would think,” Tanir said.” (“5 reasons Turkey isn’t attacking Islamic State in Syria”, USA Today)

The media would like people to believe that the bombing in Suruc changed everything; that Erdogan and his fellows suddenly saw the light and decided that, well, maybe we shouldn’t be supporting these ISIS thugs after all. But that’s just baloney. The only one who’s changed his mind about anything is Obama who seems to have realized that his takfiri proxy-warriors aren’t ruthless enough to remove Assad, so he’s decided to team up with Sultan Erdogan instead.  That means Erdogan gets a green light to butcher as many Kurds as he wants in exchange for boots on the ground to topple Assad. That’s the deal, although, at present, the politicians are denying it. Now check out this blurb from Foreign Policy “Situation Report”:

“The nominee to be the next commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, didn’t really get off to a great start in his relationship with Senate Armed Services Committee chief Sen. John McCain. The general drew the ire of the Arizona lawmaker by telling the panel on Thursday that the Islamic State is essentially fighting to a draw in Iraq and Syria. McCain took the opportunity and ran with it, telling the Iraq vet that “I’m very disappointed in a number of your answers,” on the Islamic State, promising to send along more questions to push the general on his views. It was an unexpected ending to what had been a hum-drum confirmation hearing, and if McCain wants to press the issue, it could hold up a vote on Neller’s confirmation until after the August congressional recess.” (Situation Report“, ForeignPolicy.com)

The point is, the Big Brass is telling US policymakers that ISIS  is not going to win the war, which means that Assad is going to stay in power.  That’s why Obama has moved on to Plan B and thrown his lot with Erdogan, because the Pentagon bigshots finally realize they’re going to need boots on the ground if they want regime change in Syria. But “whose boots”, that’s the question?

Not U.S. boots, that’s for sure. Americans have had it up to here with war and are not likely to support another bloody fiasco in the Middle East. That’s where Erdogan comes into the picture. Washington wants Turkey to do the heavy lifting while the US provides logistical support and air cover. That’s the basic gameplan. Naturally, the media can’t explain what’s really going on or it would blow Obama’s cover. But who doesn’t know that this whole campaign is aimed at removing Assad? You’d have to be living in a cave for the last three years not to know that.

The bottom line is that Erdogan has three demands. He wants a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border to protect Turkey from ISIS and Kurdish attacks.  He wants a no-fly zone over all or parts of Syria. And he wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed from power.  That’s what he wants and that’s what Obama has agreed to (as part of the Incirlik deal ) although the media is refuting the claim.   To help explain what’s going on, take a look at this article in  Reuters that was written back in October, 2014. Here’s an excerpt:

“Turkey will fight against Islamic State and other “terrorist” groups in the region but will stick to its aim of seeing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed from power, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday…

“We will (also) continue to prioritise our aim to remove the Syrian regime, to help protect the territorial integrity of Syria and to encourage a constitutional, parliamentary government system which embraces all (of its) citizens.”…

But it (Turkey) fears that U.S.-led air strikes, if not accompanied by a broader political strategy, could strengthen Assad and bolster Kurdish militants allied to Kurds in Turkey who have fought for three decades for greater autonomy.

“Tons of air bombs will only delay the threat and danger,” Erdogan said…..

We are open and ready for any cooperation in the fight against terrorism. However, it should be understood by everybody that Turkey is not a country in pursuit of temporary solutions nor will Turkey allow others to take advantage of it.” (“Turkey will fight Islamic State, wants Assad gone: President Erdogan“, Reuters)

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?  Either the US helps Turkey get rid of Assad or there’s no deal. The Turkish president’s right-hand man, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, said the same thing  in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in February, 2015. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Turkey would be willing to put its troops on the ground in Syria “if others do their part,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Monday.

“We are ready to do everything if there is a clear strategy that after ISIS, we can be sure that our border will be protected. We don’t want the regime anymore on our border pushing people against — towards Turkey. We don’t want other terrorist organizations to be active there.”…

He said that American airstrikes in Syria were necessary but not enough for a victory.
“If ISIS goes, another radical organization may come in,” he said. “So our approach should be comprehensive, inclusive, strategic and combined …  to eliminate all brutal crimes against humanity committed by the regime.”

“We want to have a no-fly zone. We want to have a safe haven on our border. Otherwise, all these burdens will continue to go on the shoulder of Turkey and other neighboring countries.”…

Turkey is trying to dispel the idea that the United States can become involved in Syria by going after ISIS but not al-Assad.” (“Turkey willing to put troops in Syria ‘if others do their part,’ Prime Minister says“, CNN)

Repeat: “Turkey would be willing to put its troops on the ground in Syria”, but Assad’s got to go. That’s the trade-off. Davutoglu has since backed off on this demand, but the basic deal hasn’t changed.  Leaders in the US and Turkey have just decided to be more discreet about what they tell the press. But the plan is moving forward.  For example, officials from the Obama administration have denied that they will provide a no-fly zone over Syria.  According to the New York Times, however, the US has agreed to create an “Islamic State-free zone” or “safe zone… controlled by relatively moderate Syrian insurgents.”   (“Turkey and U.S. Plan to Create Syria ‘Safe Zone’ Free of ISIS“, New York Times)

So the question is: Will the US provide air cover over this “Islamic State-free zone”?

Yes, it will.

Will Assad send his warplanes into this zone?

No, he won’t. He’d be crazy to do so.

Okay. Then what the US has created is a no-fly zone, right?  And this actually applies to all of Syria as well, now that US warplanes and drones are less than 500 miles from Damascus. The Incirlik deal means that the US will control the skies over Syria. Period. Here’s more from the Times trying to occlude the obvious details:

“American officials say that this plan is not directed against Mr. Assad. They also say that while a de facto safe zone could indeed be a byproduct of the plan, a formal no-fly zone is not part of the deal. They said it was not included in the surprise agreement reached last week to let American warplanes take off from Turkish air bases to attack Islamic State fighters in Syria, even though Turkey had long said it would give that permission only in exchange for a no-fly zone…..” (“Turkey and U.S. Plan to Create Syria ‘Safe Zone’ Free of ISIS”, New York Times)

What does this gibberish mean in English?  It means that, yes, the US has created a no-fly zone over Syria, but, no,  the administration’s public relations doesn’t want to talk about it because then they’d have to admit that Obama caved in to Turkish demands. Got that?

And just to show that the NYT hasn’t lost its sense of humor, here’s more in the same vein:

“American officials in recent months have argued to Turkish counterparts that a formal no-fly zone is not necessary, noting that during hundreds of American-led strike missions against Islamic State in Syria, forces loyal to Mr. Assad have steered clear of areas under concerted allied attack….” (NYT)

In other words, “American officials” are telling Erdogan that  ‘We don’t need to call this a no-fly zone, because once the F-16s start circling the skies over Damascus, Assad will get the message pretty quick.’

Can you believe that they would publish such circular palavering in the nation’s top newspaper?

And the same is true with the massive expropriation of Syrian sovereign territory, which the US and Turkey breezily refer to as  an “Islamic State-free zone”.  This just proves that Obama caved in to another one of Erdogan’s three demands, the demand for a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border. Not surprisingly, this blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty hasn’t even raised an eyebrow at the United Nations where delegates have gotten so used to Washington’s erratic behavior that they don’t even pay attention anymore.

By the way, this issue of setting up buffer zones, shouldn’t be taken lightly. As State Department spokesman Mark Toner opined just weeks ago, “We’d essentially be opening the door to the dissolution of the Syrian nation-state.”

Indeed, isn’t that the point? Aside from the fact, that these “protected areas” will be used as launching grounds for attacks on the central government, they’ll also become autonomous regions consistent with the US strategy to redraw the map of the Middle East by breaking Iraq and Syria into smaller, tribal-governed cantons incapable of challenging regional hegemon, Israel, or global superpower, the US.  Author Thomas Gaist provides a little background on this phenom in a post at the World Socialist Web Site:

“In a brief published Tuesday, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war,” the Brookings Institution detailed the application of this neocolonial strategy in Syria….The Brookings report argued that a “comprehensive, national-level solution” is no longer possible, and called for the carving out of “autonomous zones.”

“The only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria,” the report argued. The US and its allies should seek “to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria.”

This “confederal Syria” would be composed of “highly autonomous zones,” the report said, and would be supported militarily by the deployment of US-NATO forces into the newly carved-out occupation areas, including deployment of “multilateral support teams, grounded in special forces detachments and air-defense capabilities.”

“Past collaboration with extremist elements of the insurgency would not itself be viewed as a scarlet letter,” the Brookings report argued, making clear the extremist militant groups which have served as US proxy forces against the Assad government will not be excluded from the new partition of Syria.” (“Turkey, Jordan discuss moves to seize territory in Syria“, Thomas Gaist, World Socialist Web Site)

Isn’t this precisely the strategy that is unfolding in Syria and Iraq today?

Of course, it is. Everything you’ve been reading about “Islamic State-free zones”, “safety zones”, or “no-fly zones”  is lies. I won’t even dignify it by calling it propaganda. It’s not. It’s 100 percent, unalloyed bullshit. Just like the idea that this new buffer zone (carved out of Syrian territory) is going to be administered by “relatively moderate Syrian insurgents”. (which is the NYT’s new innocuous-sounding sobriquet for al-Qaida terrorists.)  That’s another lie that’s intended to divert attention from the real plan, which is the Turkish occupation of Syrian territory consistent with Erdogan’s and Davutoglu’s commitment to put boots on the ground if the US agrees to their demands. Which Obama has, although the media denies it.

The US is not going to entrust this captured territory to “relatively moderate Syrian insurgents”, because as Gen. Robert Neller already admitted to McCain, the jihadis aren’t winning.  In other words, the jihadi plan is a flop. That’s what this whole Turkey-US alliance-thing is all about. It is a major shift in the fundamental policy. There’s going to be a ground invasion, and the Turks are going to supply the troops. It’s only a matter of time. Here’s how analyst Gaist sums it up:

“Having failed to remove Assad using proxy militia forces alone, Washington is now contemplating the direct invasion of Syria by outside military forces for the purpose of carving out a large area of the country to be subsequently occupied by US and NATO troops. Plans for a new imperialist division of Syria and the broader Middle East have been brewing within the US ruling elite for decades.”  (“Turkey, Jordan discuss moves to seize territory in Syria“, Thomas Gaist, World Socialist Web Site)

Naturally, Obama’s not going to tell the media what he’s up to. But that’s the plan.

While Hillary Clinton served as the Obama administration’s Secretary of State, Planned Parenthood, which is now in the midst of a gruesome scandal, had gone to Mrs. Clinton with their hats in their hand requesting and receiving millions and millions of taxpayer dollars from foreign policy agencies over the past few years, according to a news reports on Thursday.

As the nation’s top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton attacked government policies that ban federal funding of abortion overseas. As a result, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a major bureau within the State Department, funneled upwards of $100 million to Planned Parenthood and its international affiliates between 2010 and 2012, according to the Government Accountability Office. Pro-abortion organizations received up to 20 percent of the half-billion dollars received from taxpayers unbeknownst to the 52 percent of Americans who claim they are pro-life.

“Mrs. Clinton knew darn well that federal funding of abortions is prohibited even under Obamacare which was passed in 2010. Yet, here we see money from the State Department — hardly a healthcare agency — channeling money to the liberal-left’s greatest achievement which is the killing of unborn and defenseless babies,” said former police officer and corruption investigator Iris Aquino.

Hillary Clinton has reportedly received close to $70,000 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood and its employees. Clinton has spoken to Planned Parenthood on a number of occasions. In 2014, Clinton was honored with the organization’s Margaret Sanger award. One of the biggest cover ups in U.S. history is the racism of Sanger and her ideology some compared to 1930’s European fascism.

Also, arguably one of the most liberal courts in the nation which is in the city of Los Angeles gave Stem Express — which has been identified as a company that procures body parts of aborted infants from Planned Parenthood — a temporary injunction forbidding the release of more videos obtained by undercover journalists from the Center for Medical Progress. CMP had recorded conversations with Stem Express officials at a meeting in a public restaurant during which the unborn babies’ body parts were discussed.

CMP is the organization behind the series of four videos released that are exposing the alleged harvesting and sale of body parts from aborted babies by Planned Parenthood which then sell them to Stem Express allegedly for medical research. “The entire transaction appears to violate the Hippocratic Oath, but because of the liberal-left control of language — such as the Associated Press Stylebook and government lockstep language requirements — euphemisms are used to mask the most disgusting and vile behavior with a veneer of respectability,” notes political strategist Mike Baker.

When Planned Parenthood released its 2013-2014 annual report on Wednesday, the group showed exactly which services are provided and the sources of its funding. For example, PP admitted that its more than 700 Planned Parenthood facilities and clinics in the U.S. alone conducted 327,653 abortions in the previous fiscal year.

In that same fiscal year $528.4 million of the group’s budget comes from the government. Current law — including Obamacare law — prohibits the federal government from paying directly for abortions. Yet, critics of Planned Parenthood argue that millions in taxpayer cash pays for clinics and operations expenses, and it’s impossible to separate their operating costs. Therefore, taxpayers are probably indirectly funding the abortion business; while advocates claim abortions make up only 3 percent of medical services provided by Planned Parenthood.

Has America gone from protecting the weakest members of its society to “[offering the] largest variety of raw material [baby parts] in the industry, as well as fresh (non-frozen) and cryopreserved human primary cells” as stated on their website? Yesterday it was discovered that Planned Parenthood suddenly shut its website down claiming they were the victim of a another cyberattack. “We deeply regret that in order to more fully protect our websites from these extremist attacks, our full online content will be temporarily unavailable to people looking for good, accurate health information,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood’s political division.

By Jim Stafford

Canada has given oil sands a dirty reputation, but a breakthrough, commercially viable technology has caught the eye of a former Exxon Mobil president who is putting it to use to clean up Utah’s billions of barrels of oil sands.

Imagine extracting high-quality oil out of the estimated 32 billion barrels buried in Utah’s oil sands, without creating the toxic wastelands that have resulted from oil sands projects in Western Canada. And imagine doing it at a cost that can still turn a profit in today’s oil price slump.

That would be highly enticing to some of the large operators in the Uinta Basin, Utah’s emerging tight oil play. As shale production has soared across the country, operators have moved to Utah to try to coax oil and gas from shale rock in ways that have been done on such a large scale elsewhere. Major players such as Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO), EP Energy Corporation (NYSE:EPE) and Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX) have significant exposure in Utah.

But Utah’s oil sands are suddenly attracting a lot more attention because of their vast potential. The poor environmental reputation and high cost has kept companies away up until now, but armed with a new, clean oil sands technology, there is even talk that Utah could shift its focus away from expensive shale.

Protecting the environment and still profiting from oil has long been a major challenge, particularly when it comes to dirty oil sands, but that could all change if a new technology designed specifically to extract these oil sands in the most environmentally friendly way possible proves successful.

For five decades, companies have been trying to replicate Alberta’s oil sands success in Utah, but without turning the state into a toxic wasteland. A former Exxon president of Arabian Gulf operations, Dr. R Gerald Bailey, is one of several to take up the challenge, where today he is CEO of a small oil services technology company called MCW Energy Group (MCWEF:OTCQB).

“It is really simple,” Dr. Bailey told Oilprice.com. “In the same way that soap washes grease from plates, with the grease adhering to the soap and pulling it off, so new technology in the form of an innovative solvent can pull the oil out of oil sands.” Oil sands are typically black and dirty looking. However, once washed with the solvent, the sand comes out 99.9 percent clean before it is returned to the Earth, according to Dr. Bailey. “If we throw it back on the Earth, it is no longer contaminated with oil and you can grow plants on it.”

This is not just about making oil, Dr. Bailey opines. It’s about remediation. “After the tragic Deepwater Horizon disaster, we could have gone over there and cleaned that beach up with this new technology.” The company is focusing on Utah, but sees future potential abroad in places like Russia, China, Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic, Namibia, Jordan and Trinidad.

Other companies are working on similar technologies as environmental groups and governments turn increasingly hostile to dirty oil sands. Marathon Oil is developing a proprietary solvent technology, in which wet tailings are dried and deposited back into a mine site as back-fill. Imperial Oil (TSE: IMO), a Canadian oil company, is doing something similar.

The focus of any new oil extraction technology must be on the environment—both Canada’s toxic wastelands and the fallout from hydraulic fracturing have ensured that new technologies can no longer push full speed ahead towards profit while ignoring the longer-term consequences.

While shale producers are taking a nose-dive in this market, experts estimate that production using new solvent technologies in Utah can be more profitable than shale oil currently being produced, and more profitable than any other oil sands project in North America.

It costs about $55 per barrel to produce oil sands in Alberta. But independent research has shown that MCW Energy Group can produce oil from Utah oil sands at approximately $30 for clean oil sands.

From an environmental standpoint, it would seem that the goals are also being achieved. The process employed does not use any water, which is a significant selling point in the dry state of Utah, and produces no waste or pollutants, including no more tailing ponds.

Can it apply Canada’s oil sands as well?

According to Dr. Bailey of MCW Energy, the Utah sands differ as they are oil-wet and not water-wet, and because they can simply be scooped up with a front loader and then processed with the solvent. The oil separates out and the clean sand is returned to the ground. In Canada, however, the sand must be mined because it is several hundred feet underground and requires extraction with steam and subsequent hot water, which becomes highly contaminated. “The huge acres of tailing ponds can be seen from space.”

But while it may seem a daunting task, the new technology can tackle even Alberta’s oil sands waste problem—after the process, according to Dr. Bailey, without using any water. “We would just use a de-watering process and then treat the raw sludge with our solvent.”

The much-maligned oil sands may yet have a viable future in a world increasingly concerned about the environment.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Former-Exxon-President-On-Mission-To-Clean-Up-Oil-Sands.html

By Nina Owcharenko*

Medicaid, enacted along with Medicare in 1965, was created to provide health care for certain categories of low-income Americans.[1] Over the past 50 years, the program has changed significantly. Not only has Medicaid eligibility expanded, so also has the scope of its care and services. Mounting fiscal, demographic, and structural challenges continue to strain the federal–state partnership on which Medicaid is based. These weaken the future of the program and those it was intended to serve.

Congress and the states must address these central problems. Congressional failure will come at the expense of both enrollees and the taxpayers. Looking ahead, Congress should seriously consider restructuring the program by injecting patient choice and genuine market competition into the program. These changes would better serve the poor and ensure that both federal and state taxpayers are also protected.

Fiscal Challenges

• Ballooning costs. Federal and state spending on Medicaid is skyrocketing. According to the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), combined federal and state Medicaid spending has increased from $206.2 billion in 2000 to $529 billion projected for 2015.[2] By 2023, total spending will reach $835 billion, of which the federal share will be $497.4 billion, and the state share will be $337.5 billion.[3]
• Growing state dependence. The average federal matching rate for Medicaid is expected to increase as a result of additional federal funding put forth in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare). The average federal share will increase to 60 percent, up from 57 percent historically. While Medicaid is the largest budget item in state budgets, these federal funds account for a significant share of Medicaid state spending. For example, in fiscal year 2013, Medicaid was 24.5 percent of total state expenditures, yet the federal share represented 56.6 percent, whereas state general funds represented only 31.6 percent.[4] Thus, as Medicaid budgets grow, so do the federal dollars that come into the states.
• Fraud, waste, and abuse. Medicaid has a long history of fraud, waste, and abuse scandals. The CMS estimated $17.5 billion in improper payments in Medicaid for 2014.[5] The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a recent report of four select states, “found thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries and hundreds of providers involved in potential improper or fraudulent payments during fiscal year 2011.”[6]

Demographic Challenges

• Shifting from children to adults. Medicaid has a diverse population base. Historically, Medicaid was a targeted program for certain categories of low-income individuals—children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the disabled. However, over time, policymakers in Washington and the state capitols have expanded eligibility by income and category. The most recent—and most dramatic—change came as a result of the ACA. Under the ACA, states have the option to expand coverage to more low-income, and able-bodied, individuals. As Chart 2 shows, this new expansion shifts Medicaid from a program that has predominately covered children, to a program that covers nearly as many able-bodied adults.

• An aging population. With the baby-boomer generation nearing retirement, and few of them financially prepared to assume the long-term care costs that are not paid for by Medicare, many of the elderly ultimately end up on Medicaid to cover their long-term-care needs, especially nursing home care. This shift has resulted in Medicaid becoming the default long-term-care option for America’s vast middle class. In 2013, this group, combined with the disabled, represented less than one-third of the program’s enrollment, but over 64 percent of Medicaid spending.[7]

Structural Challenges

• Less access to providers. Due in part to the time-consuming and burdensome reimbursement process, as well as the low reimbursement levels, many physicians—general and specialist—refuse to accept Medicaid patients. On average, Medicaid pays physicians about 66 percent of what Medicare pays.[8] A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control found only 68.9 percent of physicians would accept a new Medicaid patient.[9]

• Lower quality of care. Medicaid also has a record of providing patients with worse outcomes than those of privately insured patients. A recent and fairly comprehensive literature review found that, in addition to having less access to specialists, Medicaid patients had longer hospital stays and higher mortality rates in certain instances.[10]
• Slow to change. Medicaid is a joint federal–state program. The federal government imposes certain rules and regulations governing the administration of Medicaid, but beyond that, states have some latitude. For example, the federal government distinguishes between mandatory and optional populations and services that a state either must or could provide. Within that regulatory context, many states have pursued waiver options within the program, which must be negotiated with the Secretary of Health and Human Services for approval. Such waivers are, however, a sluggish way of changing the underlying health policy. This time-consuming process is cumbersome and leads to further tensions between the states and federal government over the administration of the program.

Looking Ahead

After 50 years, Medicaid needs an overhaul. By enacting the ACA, Congress bypassed any real reform to Medicaid and simply adds new enrollees to this already overburdened program.

Congress needs to reform Medicaid—but Medicaid reform should not be another excuse to create a lifetime of dependence, but to support independence. Reform should assist those who are able to shift to a competitive private health insurance market, where coverage is more affordable and thus the need for assistance diminishes.[11] For the disabled and elderly, reform should be more accountable to the patients by giving them greater choice and allowing for more patient-centered options, including private-sector options, especially in accessing long-term care. Finally, Medicaid must be put on a real budget, like other federal programs, to rein in spending and protect taxpayers from runaway spending. These reforms will help to ensure that Medicaid does not drift further from its core mission, and remains committed to preserving a safety net, and protecting taxpayers as well.

About the author:
*Nina Owcharenko is Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies and Preston A. Wells, Jr., Fellow, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation.

Source:
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation.

Notes:
[1] Medicaid and Medicare are distinct programs. Medicare is a federal program that provides health care services to seniors and certain categories of people who have disabilities. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides health care for certain categories of low-income Americans and operates through a structure providing for federal funding and state administration.

[2] Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, 2014 Actuarial Report on the Financial Outlook for Medicaid, 2014, p. 24, http://medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/by-topics/financing-and-reimbursement/downloads/medicaid-actuarial-report-2014.pdf (accessed July 27, 2015).

[3] Ibid.

[4] National Association of State Budget Officers, “State Expenditure Report (Fiscal 2012–2014 Data),” 2014, p. 47, https://www.nasbo.org/publications-data/state-expenditure-report/state-expenditure-report-fiscal-2012-2014-data (accessed July 27, 2015).

[5] Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “2015 Summary of Plan for Improvement in the GAO High Risk Area,” p. 10, http://www.cms.gov/apps/files/2014_CMS_GAO_High_Risk_Program_Report.pdf (accessed July 27, 2015).

[6] Government Accountability Office, “Medicaid: Additional Actions Needed to Help Improve Provider and Beneficiary Fraud Controls,” GAO–15–33, May 14, 2015, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-313 (accessed July 27, 2015).

[7] Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2014 Actuarial Report on the Financial Outlook for Medicaid, p. 18.

[8] Excludes Medicaid managed care. See Kaiser Family Foundation, “Medicaid-to-Medicare Fee Index,” http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-to-medicare-fee-index/ (accessed July 27, 2015).

[9] Esther Hing, Sandra L. Decker, and Eric Jamoom, “Acceptance of New Patients with Public and Private Insurance by Office-Based Physicians: United States, 2013,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief No. 195, March 2015, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db195.pdf (accessed July 27, 2015).

[10] For a discussion of the literature, see Kevin Dayaratna, “Studies Show Medicaid Patients Have Worse Access and Outcomes than the Privately Insured,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2740, November 7, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/11/studies-show-medicaid-patients-have-worse-access-and-outcomes-than-the-privately-insured .

[11] The ACA exchanges fall short of a true free market for health care. See Robert E. Moffit and Edmund F. Haislmaier, “Obamacare Insurance Exchanges: ‘Private Coverage’ in Name Only,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2846, September 26, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/09/obamacares-insurance-exchanges-private-coverage-in-name-only .