By Paulo Gorjão*

Following a long-awaited return to democratic normality, after the April 2014 electoral processes, Guinea- Bissau is once again experiencing a political and institutional crisis that threatens to undermine the positive developments of the last 15 months.

This umpteenth crisis — which fortunately did not spread to the Armed Forces, at least for now — was not surprising at all. The deterioration in political ties between the President and the Prime-Minister has long been a public secret, both inside and outside of Guinea-Bissau. Even so, the international community — Africa Union, CPLP, ECOWAS, European Union and the UN — wrongly thought that President José Mário Vaz and Prime-Minister Domingos Simões Pereira would be capable of avoiding an institutional crisis. It isn’t clear what will be the end result of this new crisis. Following the sacking of Domingos Simões Pereira, José Mário Vaz appointed Baciro Djá as Prime-Minister, but without the consent of the PAIGC, the political party with the largest parliamentary representation. In response, Parliament recommended Baciro Djá’s dismissal and called on the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) to assess the constitutional validity of his appointment.

In the event that the SCJ declares Djá’s appointment as unconstitutional, the political and institutional crisis will be further aggravated, placing the President in an almost unsustainable position. On the other hand, if deemed constitutionally valid it won’t necessarily represent the end of the dispute. The crisis may return to the political stage and the government’s destiny — which is of presidential initiative — will be in the hands of Domingos Simões Pereira, the PAIGC and the Parliament.

The inescapable lesson is that, in the absence of dialogue and without one of the parties ceding ground, the political crisis may be far from reaching its epilogue. The last thing Guinea-Bissau needs is a political and institutional stalemate with no end in sight that would be capable of placing the international community’s financial support in jeopardy. In March this year, the international donor conference — co-organized by Domingos Simões Pereira’s government, the EU and UNDP — resulted in the promise of more than €1 billion to Guinea-Bissau.

This donation aims at financing several projects of the country’s operational and strategic plan over the next 10 years. Naturally, these crucial funds won’t make their way without the international community being first assured that institutional and governance stability are dully guaranteed in the country. This is why the political stalemate has to be overcome as soon as possible. Indeed, if he so wishes, Miguel Trovoada, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Guinea-Bissau, can be the mediator between both parties.

However, let there be no illusions: it is the Bissauan political actors who, through dialogue and negotiation, have to find a solution that respects the Constitution. Otherwise, peace and stability, good democratic governance and socioeconomic progress will once again turnout to be the collateral damage in the struggle for access to power and control.

António Patriota, the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations and chair of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, has remarked that the United Nations stood for “better delineating the spheres of competence of the President and the Prime Minister, so as to avoid it from becoming a source of instability and fragility in an otherwise promising environment”.1 In a way, Patriota hit the nail on the head in identifying the origin of the problem, but then limiting himself to recommend only an aspirin. In other words, Patriota recognized there is a problem of constitutional nature, yet he failed to take the logical step of recognizing that the semi-presidential system is a structural hotbed of instability in Guinea-Bissau. There are certainly many reasons behind the failure to settle political differences through dialogue, namely of cultural and sociological nature.

However, from the moment a semi-presidential system establishes two democratically legitimized power centers in an adverse context such as in Guinea-Bissau, it gives free rein for political conflict to be potentiated and exacerbated. In the absence of a consolidated democratic regime, political conflict between the President and the Prime-Minister — arising from the power struggle for access and control of State resources — is virtually inevitable.2

Sadly, the logical conclusion we can draw from the currently unfolding institutional and political crisis is that it won’t be the last.

About the author:
*Paulo Gorjão, research at Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security (IPRIS)

Source:
This article was published by IPRIS as IPRIS Viewpoints 179 (PDF)

By Uma Purushothaman*

As the world is debating the migration crisis in Europe, immigration is likely to be one of the leading issues in the forthcoming US elections too, if the first Republican presidential debate held in August is any pointer.

There are two aspects to the debate over immigration in the US. The first is how to stop illegal immigrants from entering the US. The second is about what to do about the 11.4 million (according to Department of Homeland Security figures from 2013) illegal immigrants currently living in the US. While many Americans oppose immigration because of fear of losing jobs, there is also the fact that the healthcare industry, restaurants and hotels industries are dependent on low skilled workers who are willing to work for lower wages for longer hours. President Obama has tried in both his terms to have immigration reform laws passed but has failed because of partisanship on the Hill.

Democrats and the Republicans have vastly different positions on the issue. The Democrats broadly favour policies which would stop illegal immigration while allowing some categories of illegal immigrants some paths to citizenship. Republicans, on the other hand, support stronger border security and oppose amnesty for illegal aliens. Of course, within both parties, candidates might have liberal or conservative views depending on which wing of the party they belong to.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has adopted an aggressive pro-immigration stance. As Senator, in 2006 she had voted in support of the Secure Fence Act to build a fence along the US-Mexico border. But now she supports President Obama’s attempt to reform immigration and has even indicated support for giving drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. She supports a path to citizenship and has promised to fight for immigration reform, to defend and expand on executive actions if Republicans continue to block a permanent legislative solution and also to revisit the Obama Administration’s controversial family detention practices.

While Bernie Sanders advocates immigration reform, he is against temporary guest worker programmes, which are part of comprehensive immigration reform. His concern about the guest worker programme is that at a time when unemployment is high in the US and Americans are working longer for lower wages, it does not make sense to have a programme which will allow corporations to import workers from abroad at lower wages as this will only depress wages in the country.

Martin O’Malley also supports immigration reform. As Governor of Maryland, he brought a law which created a temporary system for undocumented residents of the state to obtain licenses. Another law he passed has been described as Maryland’s version of the DREAM Act as it allows children of illegal immigrants to get in-state tuitions. During the child migrant refugee crisis in 2014, O’Malley spoke out against their deportation and asked lawyers to represent these children. This led to a rift between him and the White House. He favours a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and is also against the detention of undocumented migrants. He has promised to push for immigration reform within the first hundred days of his Presidency.

Lincoln Chafee supports comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship. He voted against the Secure Fence Act in 2006. He was one of the fourteen governors who in 2013 wrote to John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi requesting them to create a bipartisan immigration solution.

Donald Trump, the surprise Republican frontrunner, has already grabbed eyeballs with his statements against illegal immigrants. During his announcement speech, Trump said that “immigrants from Mexico are “people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists”. He wants to build a border wall, “detain undocumented immigrants and only release them to their country of origin, defund sanctuary cities, enhance penalties for overstaying a visa, end birthright citizenship, require companies to hire American workers first and apply stricter standards for refugee status”. He has spoken out against paths to citizenship, even saying that children born in the US to undocumented mothers (the so-called “anchor babies”) should not be automatically given citizenship. He has mocked Jeb Bush about his wife, who is of Mexican origin.

Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker, who represents the mainstream Republican Party, has spoken out against ending birthright citizenship saying it is a constitutionally protected right. However, he says that if the provision is abused and if there is “birth tourism”, there should be greater enforcement. Bush wants more forward-operating bases closer to the border, advanced counter-surveillance technology and improved border infrastructure with road construction and maintenance to deal with border security issues. For interior enforcement, Bush wants electronic verification of employment eligibility, adequate tracking and deportation of immigrants overstaying their visas, and withholding federal funding for sanctuary cities. He has also supported a path to legal status for those who are already illegally in the country.

Ben Carson wants to revoke birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. He controversially has even supported using drones to secure the border. He believes that deporting immigrants and building a wall would be unrealistic and expensive. For immigrants who are already in the US, he wants a guest worker programme. But they would have to pay back tax penalty, taxes moving forward and go through the process of getting citizenship like everyone else.

Marco Rubio, who is himself of Hispanic origin, has supported a path to citizenship. He wants to secure the border as well as to reform immigration, which he incidentally supported in the Senate. He feels that the US needs to reform immigration to attract the best talent from abroad.

Scott Walker is also against birthright citizenship and considers border security to be a matter of national security. He has spoken out against amnesty for immigrants.

Thus, politicians from both sides are appealing to their constituencies through their positions on Immigration. Immigration is an emotive and divisive issue among voters. 39% of Americans want lower immigration, while only 7% want higher immigration, according to a recent Gallup survey. While the Democrats are courting the Hispanic votes, the largest ethnic minority in the country constituting 17 percent of the population, most of the Republicans are trying to court the traditional Republican voters who do not welcome immigrants as they feel that they take away their jobs and decrease wages. However, some like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are trying to appeal to a wider constituency, including Hispanics.

Hispanics incidentally have traditionally voted for Democrats and played a huge role in President Obama’s two victories. But even now, polls show Hillary Clinton as being more popular among Hispanics than both Bush and Rubio. So, irrespective of where they stand on immigration, it seems that winning Hispanic votes is a lost cause for the Republicans. In any case, given how divisive the issue has become, it is unlikely that even during the next Presidency, immigration reform will be passed.

*Uma Purushothaman is a Research Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

Courtesy: ORF US Monitor

The Labor Department reported that the economy added 173,000 jobs in August, somewhat less than most predictions. However, the prior two months’ numbers were revised upward by 44,000, bringing the average gain over the last three months to 221,000. The story on the household side was mixed. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.1 percent, as employment increased by 196,000. However the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) was little changed at 59.4 percent, a number that is still three percentage points below the pre-recession peak.

Health care was the biggest job gainer in August, adding 40,500 jobs. Job growth in health care has increased substantially since the ACA took effect. Average job gains over the last five months have been 43,700 compared to growth of just 18,300 per month in the three years from December 2010 to December 2013. Restaurants added 26,100 jobs, roughly in line with their recent pattern. One of the aspects of the recovery that has been striking is that restaurant employment continues to account for a large share of employment growth. In the late 1990s, the share of employment growth in restaurants fell as the labor market tightened and workers were able to get better paying jobs.

The other sector reporting big gains was state and local government education which added 31,600 jobs. This reflects a timing issue with many schools starting earlier than normal. These jobs will likely disappear in next month’s report.

Construction added just 3,000 jobs. Average growth in the sector over the last three months has been just 3,700 jobs. This is surprisingly weak given relatively strong data on housing starts and construction more generally. On the other hand, the growth earlier in the year was surprisingly strong given relatively weak construction data. Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs, more than reversing a gain of 12,000 in July. With the rise in the dollar and weak growth elsewhere in the world, the general trend is likely to be downward.

Retail added just 11,200, less than half the 27,700 average monthly rate for the last year. This might just be the result of unusually rapid growth in the prior three months. The temp sector added 10,700, barely offsetting a loss of 9,200 jobs in July. The extent to which the temp sector provides a harbinger of future job growth is exaggerated, but this growth is not a strong point.

Overall, private sector job growth of 140,000 was the weakest since a weather-reduced 117,000 reported for March. Prior to that, it would be necessary to go back to December, 2013 to find weaker numbers.

Wage growth remains weak. The average hourly wage rose by 8 cents in August. It has risen at a 1.9 percent annual rate in the last three months compared with the prior three months, down slightly from its 2.2 percent rate over the last year.

Apart from the drop in the unemployment rate, other news in the household survey was mixed. The percentage of unemployment due to people voluntarily quitting their jobs fell slightly from 10.2 percent to 9.8 percent. This measure of confidence in the labor market is extraordinarily low given the 5.1 percent unemployment rate. When unemployment fell to 5.1 percent in May of 2005, voluntary quits accounted for 12.2 percent of unemployment.

All the duration measures of unemployment increased in August, with the share of long-term unemployed rising from 26.9 percent to 27.7 percent, the second consecutive increase. The declines reported in black and black teen unemployment in July were reversed in August, standing at 9.5 percent and 31.3 percent, respectively. Younger workers are accounting for a larger share of job growth in the post ACA era, with employment of workers over age 55 actually falling by 213,000 (all men) in this report. People between the ages of 20–24 have accounted for 16.7 percent of the job growth over the last year.

While the drop in unemployment in the August report is encouraging, the overall report is not especially positive. There is no evidence that wage growth is accelerating and there is a real risk that employment growth is slowing. The big question is whether the 140,000 private sector job growth in August is the new trend or whether it was weakened by the strong growth in prior months.

Following is the transcript released by the White House of statements made before Friday’s meeting between Saudia Arabia’s King Salman bin Abd alAziz and US President Barack Obama in Washington D.C.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it’s a great pleasure to welcome His Majesty, King Salman, to the Oval Office. This is the latest of several meetings that I’ve had with His Majesty. And the fact that he has chosen to take this first visit to the United States is indicative of the longstanding friendship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

This is obviously a challenging time in world affairs, particularly in the Middle East, and so we expect this to be a substantive conversation across a wide range of issues. We share a concern about Yemen and the need to restore a functioning government that is inclusive and that can relieve the humanitarian situation there.

We share concerns about the crisis in Syria, and we’ll have the opportunity to discuss how we can arrive at a political transition process within Syria that can finally end the horrific conflict there.

We continue to cooperate extremely closely in countering terrorist activity in the region and around the world, including our battle against ISIL. And we’ll discuss the importance of effectively implementing the deal to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, while counteracting its destabilizing activities in the region.

We’ll also have an opportunity to discuss the world economy and energy issues. And I look forward to continuing to deepen our cooperation on issues like education and clean energy and science and climate change because His Majesty is interested, obviously, ultimately in making sure that his people, particularly young people, have prosperity and opportunity into the future. And we share those hopes and those dreams for those young people, and I look forward to hearing his ideas on how we can be helpful.

So, Your Majesty, welcome, and let me once again reaffirm not only our personal friendship but the deep and abiding friendship between our two peoples.

HIS MAJESTY KING SALMAN: (As interpreted.) Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for allowing us to enjoy your hospitality. I intended to make my first official visit to the United States as a symbol of the deep and strong relationship that we have with the United States that’s indeed historical relations that go back to the day when King Abd alAziz met with President Roosevelt in 1945.

Our relationship is beneficial not only to our two countries, but to the entire world and to our region. And this is significant, and we must always affirm that and deepen such relations. We always emphasize that we want to deepen our relations and further our cooperation in all fields.

As you know, Mr. President, our economy is a free economy, and therefore we must allow opportunities for businesspeople to exchange opportunities, because if people see that there are common interests, they will further themselves the relations between them. And our relationship must be beneficial to both of us, not only on the economic field but on the political and military and defense field, as well.

Once again, Mr. President, I’m happy to come to a friendly country to meet a friend. And we want to work together for world peace. Our region must achieve stability, which is essential for the prosperity of its people. And in our country, thank God we are prosperous, but we want prosperity for the entire region. And we are willing to cooperate with you in order to achieve that.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your hospitality. And I look forward to seeing you in Riyadh and seeing American officials coming to see us in Riyadh, and also Saudi officials coming to the United States.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much, everybody.

Ukraine struggles with separatists, protests, reforms – and an IMF debt deal on shaky ground.

By David R. Cameron*

Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian separatists in its easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, started soon after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, has cost more than 6,000 lives and displaced more than a million. The war also damaged or destroyed much of the housing stock, infrastructure and productive capacity in its industrial heartland and sent the economy into a freefall. The gross domestic product dropped by 7 percent last year and is projected to drop another 9 percent this year. Facing a projected balance of payments deficit of $10 billion this year, the country entered 2015 on the verge of bankruptcy and desperately needing assistance.

In March, the International Monetary Fund approved Ukraine’s request for $17.5 billion over four years through its Extended Fund Facility – which allows a longer payment period for structural reforms – something it had refused to do in 2013. That refusal led then-President Viktor Yanukovych to seek and obtain financial assistance from Russia, in turn prompting violent protests in Kiev. The parliament removed Yanukovych, and Russia, declaring his removal a coup d’état, took control of and annexed Crimea.

While the IMF agreed to provide $17.5 billion, it also estimated that Ukraine faces a larger external financing gap of $40 billion. The IMF called for a “debt operation” – a restructuring of the debt held by private sector creditors that would provide $15.3 billion toward covering that gap.

Thursday last week, after five months of stalemated negotiations, Ukraine announced it had reached an agreement with an ad hoc committee representing its largest external private-sector creditors to restructure their holdings. Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko announced the committee had agreed to a 20 percent “haircut” in the $18 billion of bonds held by the private creditors, a deferral of four years in redemptions and a reduction of the coupon on all debt to 7.75 percent. Together, those measures are expected to provide the $15.3 billion called for by the IMF.

The Ukrainian government, the IMF and the US government, which supported Ukraine in the negotiations, celebrated the completion of the “debt operation.” If not celebrating, the more farsighted creditors could at least console themselves that the “haircut” was only 20 percent rather than the 40 percent Ukraine had insisted upon throughout the negotiations. And they could also find consolation that the deal already increased the value of their holdings, providing a possibility of recapturing some of their losses if Ukraine’s GDP grows above an annual rate of 4 percent after 2020.

Agreement may have been reached but that should not mask the fact that, like much of the IMF program, the “debt operation” is misguided, a short-term fix that will prove to be costly over the longer term. The deal looks good for now; without it, Ukraine would have had to declare a debt moratorium that would have triggered a default. But with an economy in freefall and in need of substantial investment, Ukraine cannot afford to scare off potential investors.

Moreover, Ukraine does not in fact face a $40 billion external financing gap over the next four years. The cumulative balance of payments deficit over the four years is projected to be $12.3 billion. That will be covered, with $5 billion to spare, by the Extended Fund Facility. The remaining $27.7 billion of the projected gap consists of a buildup of official reserves to bring them up to the IMF’s metric standard for reserve adequacy. That’s a laudable objective. But rather than giving the country’s external private creditors a substantial “haircut,” the IMF should have encouraged Ukraine to do that through its economic and trade policies. The “debt operation” will inevitably reduce if not eliminate any incentive for the government to undertake those policies.

That is not the only disincentive created by the IMF program. Because of the magnitude of this year’s projected payments deficit, the EFF is heavily front-loaded: Ukraine will receive $10 billion this year and $2.5 billion in each of the next three years. As a result, it will receive a substantial portion of the assistance before it implements the many much-needed financial, fiscal, structural, administrative and governance reforms required as conditions for the assistance. While understandable given the projected payments deficit, the front-loading will inevitably reduce the incentive to implement those reforms.

At the end of 2014, the ratio of Ukraine’s public and publicly-guaranteed debt to its gross domestic product was 73 percent – less than the ratios in France, the UK, Germany and many other European countries. Largely because of a steep depreciation of the currency in February, which dramatically increased the amount in hryvnia of the public debt, two-thirds of which is denominated in foreign currencies, the ratio is expected to increase to 94 percent this year. That would still be sustainable if, as the IMF predicted, the economy grows by 2 percent next year, 3.5 percent in 2017, and 4 percent a year in 2018-20.

Such estimates are illusory. Ukraine won’t attain those rates of growth. The program commits it to reducing its overall budget deficit from 10.3 percent of GDP last year to 7.4 percent this year, 3.9 percent next year, and less than 3 percent in 2018-20. The economy will not grow at 3.5 to 4 percent a year in 2017-20 if fiscal policy is contractionary this year and during each of the next five years. The IMF may have learned little from its experience with Greece; prolonged fiscal contraction inevitably, without exception, causes prolonged economic contraction.

Six consecutive years of fiscal contraction will cause the economy to continue to contract, causing the deficit to exceed the target figures and require additional financial assistance. Before long – probably by late next year or in 2017 – it will become apparent, just as it became apparent in Greece only a year after its 2010 bailout, that it needs a second bailout – one that will no doubt be accompanied by another round of “haircuts” for the private creditors. As in Greece, Ukraine may well need a third bailout sometime thereafter.

US Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew, Treasury Under-Secretary for International Affairs Nathan Sheets, and other US and European officials supported Ukraine in its negotiations with the creditors and loudly applauded last week’s deal. Yet what is most striking is how little the United States and the European Union have actually done to support Ukraine financially. The EU has committed $1.8 billion this year and $700 million next year through its Macro-Financial Assistance program. Compare that with the hundreds of billions it has poured into Greece. The US has committed even less – only $2 billion in loan guarantees this year and nothing thereafter.

For all their rhetorical support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and its surrogates last year and in the recent debt negotiations, that support appears to have been, quite literally, nothing but cheap talk. It is as if the European and American governments have forgotten that they have a long-term economic and geopolitical interest in Ukraine.

*David R. Cameron is a professor of political science at Yale University and the director of Yale’s Program in European Union Studies.

David Cameron’s biggest problem is how little UK citizens know about the EU. Britain’s EU partners best bet would be to speed up the debate on greater economic competitiveness in the hope that Brits will vote to stay, writes Graham Watson.

By Sir Graham Watson*

(EurActiv) — Britain’s premier has never really understood Europe. An Atlanticist by predisposition, like his predecessor Gordon Brown, he recognises the importance for Britain of EU membership; yet he is stumbling towards the door marked ‘Exit’ with a dangerous lack of balance. His gamble – that given an all-or-nothing choice, his compatriots will vote to stay in the EU – is beginning to look very risky indeed.

Detailed opinion research by pollster Populus shows that one third of eligible voters are likely to vote to stay and one third to leave and that the outcome will be determined by the 33% (34% to be precise) in the middle. So far, so good, it might seem. This situation prevailed at the time of the UK’s last referendum on Europe (on whether to remain in the EU on the terms renegotiated by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson) in 1975. The difference between then and now is that while opinion for or against membership has hardened among those in the Yes and No camps, it has also hardened among the Don’t Knows.

Of those to be won over, 15% of the population are described by the pollsters as the ‘Hearts versus Heads’ category. Their hearts tell them to leave, because they associate words like ‘future’, ‘power’ and ‘ambition’ more with leaving EU than with staying, but their heads might be persuaded it is too risky.

And 19% of the population are described as the ‘young apathetic middle’. They don’t associate with Europe or believe EU affects their lives in any way. While less likely to cast a vote at all, it cannot be excluded that they will be moved to make the journey to the polling booths.

This undecided 34% will almost certainly determine the outcome of the poll. Among both its components, politicians are listened to by fewer than 5% and pro-Europeans like me as seen as fanatics. Unlike in 1975, most don’t read newspapers or get their news from the BBC. They learn of the world from social media and TV news headlines from a variety of broadcasters. Yet while the Get Out campaign appeals to them with emotional arguments, the Stay campaign has thus far reiterated only the rather tired rational arguments for membership. It will need to be more imaginative, building a compelling emotional narrative to remain.

The big difference in the forty years from the 1974 referendum to today is that the one-third who need to be convinced are less open minded and less prone to persuasion. Therefore, advise the Conservative Party’s pollsters, they can be persuaded to vote Yes only by a massive campaign about the danger of leaving. Yet similar tactics were employed last year in Scotland during the referendum on staying in the UK; and not only did they very nearly backfire on the Yes campaigners, but the aftermath showed that although the vote was narrowly won, the argument was massively lost.

Cameron has a big problem with his own Party. If, when he returns from December’s European Council meeting with an agreement on new terms of EU membership, his Conservative colleagues (led, perhaps, by increasingly desperate leadership contender Boris Johnson?) decide his deal is not good enough, the referendum is lost before the campaign starts.

He will have a problem too convincing voters that a vote to leave the EU will be the end of the matter. According to one recent poll a rapidly growing number believe a No vote would be followed by a second ‘Are you sure?’ referendum. Precedents in Ireland are not helpful to the UK Prime Minister.

But his biggest problem is with the lack of knowledge of UK citizens about the EU. As Eurostat surveys have revealed, Brits are among the worst informed of EU citizens about how the EU works, about what it does, and about the relationship between EU government and national governments.

Unless and until the UK political class is prepared to inform and persuade, no lasting settlement can be achieved. And the basis for such an information campaign lies in a major and profound study carried out by the last UK government called the Balance of Competences Review. Unsurprisingly, it concludes that the balance of competences between UK and EU government is fair and reasonable and works well for Britain. The prime minister needs to persuade the Tories to read, learn and inwardly digest it.

Until he does, he will struggle to till productively the earth scorched over three or four decades by media moguls Lord Rothermere, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. Their newspapers and broadcasting stations have portrayed membership of the EU as rule by foreigners, and incompetent rule too. And even the BBC’s reporters are often lamentably ill-informed about the details of the UK-EU relationship.

David Cameron will not be helped by the balance of resources of both sides of the argument. While in 1975 the Yes campaign outspent the No campaign by a factor of twelve to one, new laws restricting the ability of public limited companies to fund election campaigns will hit the coffers of the Yes campaigners. Moreover, electoral rules now cap at an equal level the amount either side can legally spend once the campaign starts. With backing from many of the hedge funds in the City of London (who wish to be regulated by nobody, but least of all by Brussels), the No campaign will be well financed.

Nor will Cameron be helped by the likely situation on the continent. If Greece is still teetering on the brink, Germany struggling to hold back Pegida and would-be immigrants still massing at Calais, many in the UK people may be tempted to pull the blankets over their heads and wish the world would go away.

The best continental reaction in this situation would be for Britain’s EU partners to speed up the debate on greater economic competitiveness, to express hope that Brits will vote to stay, but to stress that continental partners will respect the democratic choice of the UK electorate; and for the Norwegians and the Swiss to say loud and clear why being outside is a bad idea.

*Sir Graham Watson has been President of the ALDE Party since 2011. He is a British Liberal Democrat, who served as a Member of the European Parliament for South West England from 1994 until 2014 and was the first leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe from 2004–2009.

Today’s lesson in how propaganda works: The rumor mill turns a trickle of a story early this week about “thousands” of Russian soldiers deploying to Syria any day — a wholly unsourced story originating on an Israeli website — into a torrent of hyperventilating about the “Russian invasion” of Syria.

Today neocon convicted felon Eliot Abrams took to the Council on Foreign Relations website to amplify the Israeli article (again with no sources or evidence) to a whole new and more dramatic article ominously titled “Putin in Syria.” Abrams adds “reporting” by Michael Weiss, who has long been on the payroll of viscerally anti-Putin oligarch Michael Khodorkovsky, without revealing the obvious bias in the source. Never mind, all Weiss adds to Abrams’ argument is that the Pentagon is “cagey” about discussing Russian involvement in Syria before again referencing the original (unsourced) Israeli article.

See how this works? Multiple media outlets report based on the same totally unsourced article and suddenly all the world’s writing about the Russian invasion of Syria.

Now the White House has gotten into the game. According to an article by Agence France Press, the White House is “monitoring reports” that the Russians are active in Syria.

What reports? The article does not say nor does the White House. Presumably the White House is referring back to the original (unsourced) Israeli article.

But in the category of never let a good “crisis” go to waste, the White House, which began bombing Syria last August in violation of both international and US law, has declared that any Russian involvement in the Syria crisis would be “destabilizing and counterproductive.”

Apparently a year of US bombs is not “destabilizing.”

This is where the hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The US is illegally bombing Syria, illegally violating Syrian sovereignty, illegally training and equipping foreign fighters to overthrow the Syrian government, and has backed radical jihadists through covert and overt programs.

ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria were solely the products of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq under false pretenses — the lies of the neocons — and after a year of US bombing ISIS seems as strong as ever while scores of civilians are killed by US attacks.

All of this is perfectly fine and should never be questioned. But even the hint that the Russians, who have had to contend with their fair share of radical Islam and are much closer to Syria than the US, may have an interest in joining the fight against ISIS is met with hysterical reproaches by a White House that admits it has no evidence.

What is the White House afraid of? While the stated goal of the Obama Administration is to defeat ISIS, the real, long-term goal is to overthrow Assad. The Russians disagree with the US insistence that Assad’s departure must be the starting point of any political settlement of the crisis. The Russians have long ago come to understand that Assad may be key to saving Syria from the kind of jihadist chaos that has engulfed Libya after its “liberation” by the US and its allies.

That is why the US government is flirting with the (unsourced Israeli) rumors of a massive Russian invasion of Syria. Regurgitated cries that the Russians are coming may serve to divert attention from another failed US intervention in the region.

One might think that if the US was serious about defeating ISIS it would welcome involvement from Russia and Iran, both of which would like nothing more than to see the back of the Islamic State. One might think if the US was serious about defeating ISIS it would rethink its “Assad must go” policy and allow the one force that has the most incentive to defeat ISIS — the Syrian Arab Army.

Yet the US will only work with the same states that have trained, funded, and turned a blind eye to the radical Islamic fighters as they have poured into Syria over the past four years — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, etc.

Conspiracy-minded people must be wondering why the US is so reluctant to accept assistance from forces that so earnestly and with such military capacity seek the end of ISIS while partnering with those forces that have done so much to create ISIS.

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

At the invitation of President Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abd alAziz Al-Saud visited the United States and met with President Obama at the White House on Friday.

According to the White House, the two leaders had a positive and fruitful discussion in which they reviewed the enduring relationship between their countries. The relationship has grown deeper and stronger over the past seven decades in the political, economic, military, security, cultural and other spheres of mutual interest. The two leaders stressed the importance of continuing to bolster their strategic relationship for the benefit of the two governments and peoples. President Obama noted the Kingdom’s leadership role in the Arab and Islamic world.

The two parties affirmed the need to continue efforts to maintain security, prosperity and stability in the region and in particular to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities, the White House said.

In this regard, King Salman expressed his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5 + 1 countries, which once fully implemented will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and thereby enhance security in the region.

The two leaders expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the Camp David Summit among the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and President Obama last May, which aimed at strengthening the U.S.-GCC partnership and fostering closer defense and security cooperation, and both leaders expressed their commitment to implement all the understandings reached at Camp David.

The two leaders noted the on-going military cooperation between the two countries in confronting ISIL/DAESH, in working to protect the sea-lanes and in confronting piracy. They discussed fast-tracking the provision of certain military equipment to the Kingdom, as well as heightened cooperation on counter-terrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity, and ballistic missile defense.

The White House said the two leaders underscored the importance of confronting terrorism and violent extremism. They expressed their continued commitment to the security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States, including joint efforts to counter al-Qaeda and ISIL/DAESH. They noted the importance of their cooperation to stem the flow of foreign fighters, to counter ISIL’s hateful propaganda, and to cut off terrorist financing streams. Both leaders stressed the need for a long-term, multi-year counterterrorism effort against both al-Qaeda and ISIL, requiring sustained cooperation from partner nations across the globe.

On Yemen, the two parties stressed the urgent need to implement relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, including UNSCR 2216, to facilitate a political solution based on the GCC Initiative and the outcomes of the National Dialogue. Both leaders expressed concern for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

King Salman conveyed Saudi Arabia’s commitment to continue to assist the Yemeni people; to work with coalition and international partners to allow for unfettered access to assistance vetted by the UN and its partners, including fuel, to the impacted people of Yemen; and, to that end, to work toward opening Red Sea ports to be operated under UN supervision. Both leaders agreed to support and enable the UN-led humanitarian relief efforts.

Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the two leaders underscored the enduring importance of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and underlined the necessity of reaching a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement to the conflict based on two states living side-by-side in peace and security. They also encouraged both parties to take steps to preserve and advance the two-state solution.

Both leaders stressed the importance of reaching a lasting solution to the Syrian conflict based on the principles of Geneva 1 to end the suffering of the Syrian people, maintain continuity of civilian and military government institutions, preserve the unity and territorial integrity of Syria, and ensure the emergence of a peaceful, pluralistic and democratic state free of discrimination or sectarianism. The two leaders reiterated that any meaningful political transition would have to include the departure of Bashar al Asad who has lost legitimacy to lead Syria.

The two sides expressed their support for Prime Minister Abadi’s efforts to defeat ISIL/DAESH and encouraged the full implementation of reforms agreed to last summer and those agreed to by Parliament recently. Implementation of these reforms will support security and stability in Iraq and preserve its national unity and territorial integrity, as well as unify the internal front to fight terrorism, which threatens all Iraqis.

The two leaders emphasized their continued strong support for Lebanon and its sovereignty, security and stability, and for the Lebanese Armed Forces as they secure Lebanon and its borders and resist extremist threats. The two leaders also affirmed the critical importance of Lebanon’s parliament expeditiously electing a new President in accordance with the Constitution of Lebanon.

The two leaders discussed the challenge of global climate change and agreed to work together to achieve a successful outcome at the Paris negotiations in December.

Finally, the two leaders discussed a new strategic partnership for the 21st century and how to significantly elevate the relationship between the two countries. His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman briefed the President on the Kingdom’s views regarding the strategic partnership. The President and King Salman directed officials in their respective governments to explore appropriate ways to move forward in the coming months.

By Gunnar Westberg*

The Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons had as members former leading politicians or military officers, among others a British Field Marshal, an American General, an American Secretary of Defence and a French Prime Minister.

The commission unanimously agreed in its report in 1996 that “the proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never be used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

So that’s it: Nuclear weapons will be used if they are allowed to remain with us. And even a “small” nuclear war, using one percent or less of the world’s nuclear weapons, might cause a worldwide famine leading to the death of a billion humans or more.

Lt Colonel Bruce Blair was for several years in the 1970s commander of U.S. crews with the duty to launch intercontinental nuclear missiles. “I knew how to fire the missiles, I needed no permission,” he states. In the 1990s he was charged with making a review for the U.S. Senate on the question: “Is unauthorised firing of U.S. nuclear weapons a real possibility?”

Blair’s answer was “Yes”, and the risk is not insignificant.

On Hiroshima Day, Aug. 6, this year, a major newspaper in Sweden, Aftonbladet, carried an interview with Colonel Blair, now head of the Global Zero movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The reporter asked: “Mr Blair, do you think that nuclear weapons will be used again?” Mr Blair was silent for a while and then responded: “I am afraid it cannot be avoided. A data code shorter than a Twitter message could be enough.”

Blair reminds us of the story of the ‘Permissive Action Link’, a security device for nuclear weapons, the purpose of which is to prevent their unauthorised arming or detonation.

When Robert McNamara was U.S. Secretary of Defence in the mid-1960s, he issued an order that to be able to fire missiles from submarines, the commanding officer must have received a code which permitted the launch.

However, the navy did not want to be prevented from firing on its own initiative, such as in the case that contact with headquarters was interrupted. The initial code of 00000000 was for this reason retained for many years and was generally known. McNamara, however, did not know this until many years after he left the government.

A Soviet admiral once told me that as late as around 1980 he could fire the missiles from a submarine without a code.

When systems of control of the launch systems are discussed, we often learn – as a kind of post scriptum – that there is a Plan B: If all communication with HQ is dead and the commanders believe the war is on, missiles can be fired. We are never told how this works. But there is a plan B.

What is the situation today? Can an unauthorised launch of nuclear weapons occur? Colonel Blair says “Yes”. Mistakes, misunderstandings, hacker encroachments, human mistakes – there are always risks.

After the end of the Cold War, we have learnt about several “close calls”. There was the Cuban missile crisis and especially the “Soviet submarine left behind”. There was the Petrov Incident in September 1983. There was the possibly worst crisis – worst but little known – of the NATO exercise ‘Able Archer’ in November 1983 when the Soviet leaders expected a NATO attack any moment – and NATO had no insight into the Soviet paranoia.

There are numerous other dangerous incidents about which we have less information.

Martin Hellman, a mathematician and expert in risk analysis, guesses that the risk of a major nuclear war may have been as high as one percent per year during the 40 Cold War years. That sums up to 40 percent. Mankind thus had a slightly better than even chance of not being exterminated. We were lucky.

Maybe the risk is smaller today. But with the risk of proliferation, with new funds allocated to nuclear weapons research and with the increasing tension in international relations, the risk may be increasing again.

As long as nuclear weapons exist the risk exists. The risk of global omnicide, of Assured Destruction.

It is nuclear weapons or us. We cannot co-exist. One of us will have to go.

A prohibition against nuclear weapons is necessary. And it is possible.

*Gunnar Westberg, Professor of Medicine in Göteborg, Sweden, and Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) from 2004 to 2008, describes himself as “generally concerned about with what little wisdom our world is governed”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

This article was originally published by the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF)

Here’s an experiment to try this holiday weekend. Quiz your friends, family and acquaintances on the meaning of Labor Day. You might be surprised by the answers you hear. To many, the true meaning of Labor Day has been unfortunately lost―it’s merely a three-day vacation weekend, unless you work in retail, in which case it is, ironically, a day of work and “special” sales.

Commercialists have transformed Labor Day into a reason for shopping. The fact that Labor Day was conceived as an occasion dedicated to America’s workers and what they have endured is sadly under-acknowledged and unappreciated. (In many other countries, the event is known as “International Workers’ Day” and is celebrated on May 1st.)

Labor Day is a time to celebrate America’s tradespeople―the plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, tailors, retail clerks and home health assistants. Celebrate the meat and poultry inspectors, building code inspectors, OSHA and Customs inspectors, sanitation inspectors of supermarkets and restaurants, nuclear, chemical and aircraft inspectors, inspectors of laboratories, hospitals and clinics. Celebrate the bus drivers, miners, and nurses. Celebrate the janitors who often thanklessly clean our office buildings, schools, airports, and more. The list goes on.

In addition, Labor Day should be used to reflect on the historic victories of American workers such as establishing the minimum wage and overtime pay, the five-day work week and banning of the use of child labor. Many in the U.S. would find it difficult to imagine living in a country where these things weren’t a given.

Labor Day is also a time to promote the future of labor and push our elected officials on the critical needs of workers, such as improved health and safety measures and increased economic benefits for tens of millions in need. It is a time to discuss repealing The Taft Hartley Act of 1947―one of the great blows to American democracy―which makes it exceptionally difficult for employees to organize unions. Taft-Hartley impeded employees’ right to join together in labor unions, undermined the power of unions to represent workers’ interests effectively, and authorized many anti-union activities by employers. Unions should no longer concede this usurpation of worker rights. Workers should use Labor Day as a yearly opportunity to push the repeal of Taft-Hartley.

Labor Day is a time to acknowledge how big U.S. corporations have shown a lack of patriotism by abandoning American workers and shipping jobs to communist and fascist regimes abroad. These countries often pay serf-level salaries and abuse their workers with dangerous working conditions―these are the conditions that the labor movement in the United States fought against and made substantial gains.
Perhaps the best example of how apathy has affected the hard fought victories of the labor movement is how the federal minimum wage has languished. The gap between worker and CEO compensation ever widens, even as worker productivity rises. According to the Economic Policy Institute: “The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978, grew to 122.6-to-1 in 1995, peaked at 383.4-to-1 in 2000, and was 295.9-to-1 in 2013…”

Since 1968, the minimum wage has lost over one-third of its purchasing power. If it had kept up with inflation, it would be $10.93 an hour today. Raising the minimum wage to $15 would give a pay raise to over fifty-one million Americans.

Where are the presidential candidates on this vital matter? Democrats Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have come out in favor of a $15 minimum wage, with Sanders introducing the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act last July, which would raise the wage to $15 an hour by 2020. Hillary Clinton belatedly supports raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour and gave a tepid endorsement to fast food workers fighting for $15.
On the Republican side, only Rick Santorum, Ben Carson and John Kasich have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage, but none favor raising it to a livable amount.

What many fail to understand is that the minimum wage has served as a way to improve the lives of many and their families. A 2013 study by the Center for American Progress showed that even raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would reduce the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollees by 6 percent, saving taxpayers $46 billion over the next decade.
Where is the passion for elevating the wellbeing of American workers? Where are the advocates for American workers? Advocates and prominent labor leaders should be front and center on the Sunday political shows just before Labor Day discussing matters like the minimum wage, income equality, job safety, pull-down trade treaties and more. Labor unions such as the AFL-CIO should host events around the country to highlight worker issues like the oppressive Taft-Hartley Act and boost the morale of hard-working people who are unrecognized and hastily slipping behind in a casino capitalism culture.

Labor Day is the time to speak out, march in Labor Day parades, and push for long-overdue action. It’s a moment for the nation to shine a light upon the rights and plights of the nation’s workers and recognize the need to strengthen labor laws. Let us gather, contemplate and celebrate a more just treatment of all those who toil.

See TimeForARaise.org for more information.

It is, we are told, an age of bitter austerity, where belts are being tightened with dedication, and services cut with thrifty diligence. There are, however, always exceptions to the rule. The surveillance state needs succour; the intelligence services need their daily bread from the bakers in Downing Street. The dogs of war similarly need to be fed. And then, there is Julian Assange.

Assange would be pleased to know that he is an exception to the rules of austerity. He figures in a singular category in the book keeping of Her Majesty’s Government. The British security establishment continue monitoring him with eagle-eyes. There are three Scotland Yard officers on the task at any one time. One is stationed at the steps to the Ecuadorean embassy, just to make sure no daredevilry is entertained. As they do so, the bill mounts.

The site govwaste.co.uk lists the costs in live time – as at this writing, the amount is 12,173,575 million pounds.[1] Those costs, following accounts from the Metropolitan Police, can be broken down into direct costs – those incurred in the course of normal duties; and opportunity costs, a smaller portion resulting from overtime for being stationed at the Ecuadorean embassy.

The site also lists what the equivalent amount might have funded: 60,868 vaccinations for children; 47,740 hospital beds for one night; the salaries for 558 teachers for a full year. As for food, the figure comes to over 10 million meals for the needy. If one is to lose a sense of priorities, join government.

This state of affairs invariably finds its way into occasional public comment. It doesn’t happen as much as it should, but it does. In July 2013 before the Home Affairs Committee, Mayor Boris Johnson blew his top off at the bill for the Metropolitan police as it then stood: 4m pounds. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, that money should be spent on frontline policing. It’s completely wasted.”[2]

Calls have been made to withdraw the officers. In the first month of this year, The Daily Mail got onto the job covering the cost of the bill mounting at Knightsbridge. Standing then at 9m pounds, the paper stated that it was “a vigil costing 11,000 pounds a day.”[3] (That daily amount seems to fluctuate, depending on what source one consults.)

Baroness Jenny Jones, deputy chair of the Police and Crime Committee at the London Assembly, told the paper that, “The policing bill for keeping one man holed up in an embassy has reached yet more ridiculous proportions. The Government has yet to explain why taxpayers have to pay this. It’s time to end the stalemate and stand down the officers.”

Those who question the siege bill also do so from another perspective: Assange is being lionised as a cyber criminal par excellence, being unduly privileged by his celebrity status. Andy Silvester of the Tax Payers Alliance, having little time for legal niceties, suggests that, despite Assange’s “legion of celebrity fans [he] should be treated like any other accused criminal… The police have better things to do than a Knightsbridge vigil.”

Former Scotland Yard royalty protection chief Dai Davies never had much time for the rising account associated with the Assange case. Having visions of Assange on the run, his statement made in February 2013 went to lifting the police cordon, and shining the green light of temptation. “The time has come for the Met to review its strategy on Assange, and withdraw the officers currently guarding the Ecuadorean embassy. If he went on the run, he could be hunted down like any common fugitive.”[4]

The perversions of bureaucracy, dedicated to the protection of the state, allows for some latitude in lunacy. Everything should point to a normalisation of the abnormal circumstances – questioning of Assange by Swedish officials in the embassy itself on unplaced sexual charges, a carrot dangled then withdrawn at the last moment; the application of current laws that acknowledge the invidious nature of the European Arrest Warrant, yet are deemed inapplicable for not being retrospective. Then there is the Australian consulate, like many a satrap, a permanent, even redundant absentee.

In reflecting on the cost of the detention, Assange does keep company, in being confined to not so luxurious surroundings, with a still new breed of cyber-publishing activist. There are the exiles, there are the whistleblowers. There are those exposing the Stratfor military complex and the privatised security state. Chelsea Manning remains the most fundamental sufferer here. The issue, as ever, remains the role of information, and where that fits into broader issues of state accountability and transparency.

There a strange irony at work here as well. The London Met have formed what effectively amounts to a ring, not so much of steel, as bizarre protection. But what on earth is it against? It is true that Assange, should he step out, will be nabbed – that’s one voice of the law speaking. It is equally true that others can’t get in, be there, friend or foe, to bag and nab. No funny business allowed, thank you.

The strange business of walls, with their double meaning – whether they keep people in, or make sure people stay out – is at play. History tends to be, not merely a register of folly and blood, but a register of inane projects. Assange, despite his health, has little desire to leave. Ecuador, in turn, has given him indefinite residency at the embassy. And the age of austerity continues with its exceptions.

Notes:
[1] http://govwaste.co.uk/

[2] http://www.london24.com/news/politics/mayor_s_office_may_launch_ethics_committee_to_deal_with_police_complaints_1_2271509

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2894224/Taxpayers-bill-policing-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange-s-two-year-stay-Ecuadorian-embassy-soars-9MILLION.html

[4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279488/Julian-Assange-Fury-cost-fugitives-embassy-stand-soars.html

The refugees in the park in Belgrade seem to be part of a fracture zone that is becoming increasingly easy to trace; across Greece, Macedonia and Serbia and on through Europe, to the camps at Calais and beyond. And while this fracture zone is long it is also deep, underpinned as it is by a shadowy network of exploitation and corruption at one level, and political maneuvering on another.

By Bridget Storrie*

In the park by Belgrade’s bus station Imal, a refugee from Syria, is sitting on a blanket with his family. Imal is an English teacher and his wife is a musician. Their two boys are four and six. The family fled Syria some months ago and the six year old has vomited every night since the boat they were on sank and he was submerged in seawater.

Now Imal is worried that his sons are learning not to trust him. ‘They ask me how much further they have to walk and I tell them it’s just another half an hour’ he says. ‘But they know it’s not true.’

Imal and his family are among the thousands of refugees that have arrived in Belgrade this summer to spend a night or two sleeping in the park on their way north.

According to the UNHCR, since January over 80,000 people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have registered with the Serbian authorities in order to obtain the paperwork needed to pass through the country. The flow has been rising throughout the year, with the average monthly number of applicants doubling in August alone. Now hundreds of people, many of them families with young children, are sleeping rough in the park each night or sheltering in a nearby double-storey car park. Most of them are professionals – teachers, doctors and engineers – with enough money for travel and food (in some cases) but not enough for a room in a hotel.

Now that the intense heat of summer has finally broken the park is muddy and the floor of the garage is dirty and wet. Some people have pitched their tents but most are sitting in groups on damp blankets and bits of carpet. There are young babies, and elderly ladies wearing worn out shoes. There are young men sleeping the sleep of the dead among the noise and the chaos. As the UNHCR notes, the people arriving in Serbia now include more children, more pregnant women, and more people that are injured and exhausted. NGO volunteers are being asked for blankets, shoes, baby clothes, warm jackets, aspirin for headaches and advice on blisters, sunburn and mosquito bites.

In An Anthropology of War Carolyn Nordstrom describes what she calls ‘fracture zones’ – lines of instability radiating out from a specific focus of crisis. She writes, ‘fracture lines run internationally and follow power abuses, pathological profiteering, institutionalized inequalities, and human rights violations – actions that fill the pockets and secure the dominance of some while damaging the lives of others.’ For Nordstrom, the danger of fracture zones is that they institutionalise crisis and therefore make it enduring.

The refugees in the park in Belgrade seem to be part of a fracture zone that is becoming increasingly easy to trace; across Greece, Macedonia and Serbia and on through Europe, to the camps at Calais and beyond. And while this fracture zone is long it is also deep, underpinned as it is by a shadowy network of exploitation and corruption at one level, and political manoeuvring on another.

Moving along this line is problematic for obvious reasons; one of these is that as people pass through ostensibly ‘safe’ countries like Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia they are inadvertently challenging the traditional notion of a refugee. Are they seeking safety or economic security? It is as if refugees on the move slip down some sort of moral hierarchy; the further they travel from the source of their trauma, the less deserving they appear to be. In The Guardian, Ben Doherty refers to a ‘false dichotomy of the “good” refugee – who waits patiently in a camp for the resettlement that might never come – and the “bad” refugee, who takes her chances on a boat’.

The issue is further muddied by the fact that this line of fracture is a conduit not just for refugees but also for a smaller number of people who are not fleeing conflict and who (arguably) have a choice that the refugees do not. Refugees and non-refugees have become fellow travellers and this makes it difficult to describe them as a collective. The most widely used term – ‘migrant’ is also the least useful, implying as it does a degree of agency most of these people do not enjoy. As Barry Malone writes for Al Jazeera ‘the word migrant has become a largely inaccurate umbrella term for this complex story.’ It is also one that seems to invite the public and policymakers to take an emotional step back. For Nordstrom, values as well as people and commodities are traded along fracture lines.

In the end, it is hard to imagine why anyone would make this journey unless they were desperate. In the park, Imal’s most pressing concern is an infection deep in his foot. He can’t bear weight on it easily but he needs to walk to find food for his family. When I ask him how I can help he looks around at the litter-strewn grass, the overflowing bins, the portable toilets, and the old sofa that someone has donated. ‘We’ve spoilt your park,’ he says. ‘We all try to keep it clean but it’s difficult. Will you apologise to the people of Belgrade for us?’

The next day he is gone, hurrying his fragile family north as best he can to cross the border into Hungary before the fence of razor wire designed to keep him out is completed. He’s hoping to join his sister who lives in Germany and he has a difficult and potentially impossible journey ahead of him. Imal, his family and the thousands like him have fled one trauma to find themselves caught up in another. Migrant or refugee, the fact that there is no easy way for them to find a safe life and some future prospects is a tragedy.

*Bridget Storrie is a conflict specialist, based in Belgrade, Serbia. She trained as a mediator with the Justice Institute of British Columbia, is completing a Masters degree in peace-building and reconciliation and has worked as a broadcast journalist in Russia, Bosnia and the UK.

A team of Caltech researchers that has spent years searching for the earliest objects in the universe now reports the detection of what may be the most distant galaxy ever found.

In an article published August 28, 2015 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Adi Zitrin, a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Scholar in Astronomy, and Richard Ellis–who recently retired after 15 years on the Caltech faculty and is now a professor of astrophysics at University College, London–describe evidence for a galaxy called EGS8p7 that is more than 13.2 billion years old. The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old.

Earlier this year, EGS8p7 had been identified as a candidate for further investigation based on data gathered by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Using the multi-object spectrometer for infrared exploration (MOSFIRE) at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the researchers performed a spectrographic analysis of the galaxy to determine its redshift. Redshift results from the Doppler effect, the same phenomenon that causes the siren on a fire truck to drop in pitch as the truck passes. With celestial objects, however, it is light that is being “stretched” rather than sound; instead of an audible drop in tone, there is a shift from the actual color to redder wavelengths.

Redshift is traditionally used to measure distance to galaxies, but is difficult to determine when looking at the universe’s most distant–and thus earliest–objects. Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was a soup of charged particles–electrons and protons–and light (photons). Because these photons were scattered by free electrons, the early universe could not transmit light. By 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled enough for free electrons and protons to combine into neutral hydrogen atoms that filled the universe, allowing light to travel through the cosmos. Then, when the universe was just a half-billion to a billion years old, the first galaxies turned on and reionized the neutral gas. The universe remains ionized today.

Prior to reionization, however, clouds of neutral hydrogen atoms would have absorbed certain radiation emitted by young, newly forming galaxies–including the so-called Lyman-alpha line, the spectral signature of hot hydrogen gas that has been heated by ultraviolet emission from new stars, and a commonly used indicator of star formation.

Because of this absorption, it should not, in theory, have been possible to observe a Lyman-alpha line from EGS8p7.

“If you look at the galaxies in the early universe, there is a lot of neutral hydrogen that is not transparent to this emission,” said Zitrin. “We expect that most of the radiation from this galaxy would be absorbed by the hydrogen in the intervening space. Yet still we see Lyman-alpha from this galaxy.”

They detected it using the MOSFIRE spectrometer, which captures the chemical signatures of everything from stars to the distant galaxies at near-infrared wavelengths (0.97-2.45 microns, or millionths of a meter).

“The surprising aspect about the present discovery is that we have detected this Lyman-alpha line in an apparently faint galaxy at a redshift of 8.68, corresponding to a time when the universe should be full of absorbing hydrogen clouds,” Ellis said. Prior to their discovery, the farthest detected galaxy had a redshift of 7.73.

One possible reason the object may be visible despite the hydrogen-absorbing clouds, the researchers say, is that hydrogen reionization did not occur in a uniform manner. “Evidence from several observations indicate that the reionization process probably is patchy,” Zitrin said. “Some objects are so bright that they form a bubble of ionized hydrogen. But the process is not coherent in all directions.”

“The galaxy we have observed, EGS8p7, which is unusually luminous, may be powered by a population of unusually hot stars, and it may have special properties that enabled it to create a large bubble of ionized hydrogen much earlier than is possible for more typical galaxies at these times,” said Sirio Belli, a Caltech graduate student who worked on the project.

“We are currently calculating more thoroughly the exact chances of finding this galaxy and seeing this emission from it, and to understand whether we need to revise the timeline of the reionization, which is one of the major key questions to answer in our understanding of the evolution of the universe,” Zitrin said.

The European Union and its 28 member states should act immediately to address the human rights crisis resulting from years of mismanaging migration and asylum, Human Rights Watch said Friday. With a humanitarian crisis on the Greek islands, a dysfunctional asylum system in Hungary, thousands of new arrivals in need of protection, and many deaths at EU borders, bold steps are needed at an EU summit on September 14, 2105.

“Europe is showing a staggering lack of political will and humanity to grapple with this refugee and migrant crisis,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director. “EU leaders should be guided by the imperative to protect lives and ensure humane treatment.”

Human Rights Watch calls on all EU decision-makers at a minimum to support:

• More safe and legal channels for people to seek asylum or find refuge in the EU without resorting to dangerous routes and unscrupulous smugglers. This includes significantly increasing refugee resettlement from other regions of the world and greater avenues for family reunification. Current EU resettlement pledges of 22,000 are insufficient. Expanding the use of humanitarian visas to allow people to travel to the EU for a temporary period or to apply for asylum could help.

• Fixing the EU’s broken asylum system. Despite common rules and standards, wide disparities exist among EU member states with respect to reception conditions, recognition rates, and integration measures. The European Commission should step up efforts to monitor and enforce standards, including through infringement proceedings. The European Asylum Support Office, the European Refugee Fund, and others should assist underperforming member states and states currently receiving the vast majority of new arrivals, to ensure proper reception conditions, correct, speedy, and transparent processing, and that the rights of asylum seekers and migrants are fully respected.
• Robust search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Stepped up efforts since May 2015 have made a difference – these efforts should be sustained over the long-term.
• A permanent relocation scheme to share asylum seekers across member states. This would help address fundamental distortions created by the Dublin Regulations that place the onus for processing asylum claims on the first EU country of entry. This puts an unfair burden on countries at the EU’s external borders, such as Greece, where the current influx and poor management have created a humanitarian crisis. Dublin reform is vital so that responsibility is based on capacity and other relevant criteria rather than location, and takes into account the asylum seeker’s individual circumstances.
• Develop a list of “unsafe” countries whose nationals are presumed to need international protection. Applications could then be processed under streamlined procedures, which could help reduce growing backlogs in asylum systems, and harmonize EU governments’ approach to national groups at risk. At present the EU is focused on agreeing a common list of “safe” countries, with a presumption to deny asylum applications by their nationals.

EU interior ministers will gather in Brussels on September 14 for an extraordinary meeting focused primarily on returns policy, countering smuggling networks, and international cooperation. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to highlight proposals from the commission in his September 9 state of the union address.

Media reports suggest the commission will propose that EU countries pledge to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece, and Hungary to alleviate the pressures at external borders. This is triple the number discussed in July, when the proposal referred only to Italy and Greece. At that time, EU countries pledged to take only 32,256, well below the target goal of 40,000. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said as many 200,000 might need relocation.

The commission is also expected to propose a permanent mechanism for distributing asylum seekers among EU countries in emergency situations.

If swiftly implemented, these measures could help improve the situation for thousands of asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 350,000 people have reached the EU via the Mediterranean this year. More than 2,000 have died trying. It is unknown how many died at EU land borders in 2015.

“The EU has wasted too much time over internal squabbles,” Sunderland said. “It’s time for each EU government to take stock of its responsibilities to hundreds of thousands of people in need of protection, and get on the right side of history.”

An economy depends fundamentally on public morality; some shared standards about what sorts of activities are impermissible because they so fundamentally violate trust that they threaten to undermine the social fabric.

It is ironic that at a time the Republican presidential candidates and state legislators are furiously focusing on private morality – what people do in their bedrooms, contraception, abortion, gay marriage – we are experiencing a far more significant crisis in public morality.

We’ve witnessed over the last two decades in the United States a steady decline in the willingness of people in leading positions in the private sector – on Wall Street and in large corporations especially – to maintain minimum standards of public morality. They seek the highest profits and highest compensation for themselves regardless of social consequences.

CEOs of large corporations now earn 300 times the wages of average workers. Wall Street moguls take home hundreds of millions, or more. Both groups have rigged the economic game to their benefit while pushing downward the wages of average working people.

By contrast, in the first three decades after World War II – partly because America went through that terrible war and, before that, the Great Depression – there was a sense in the business community and on Wall Street of some degree of accountability to the nation.

It wasn’t talked about as social responsibility, because it was assumed to be a bedrock of how people with great economic power should behave.

CEOs did not earn more than 40 times what the typical worker earned. Profitable firms did not lay off large numbers of workers. Consumers, workers, and the community were all considered stakeholders of almost equal entitlement. The marginal income tax on the highest income earners in the 1950s was 91%. Even the effective rate, after all deductions and tax credits, was still well above 50%.

Around about the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of this changed dramatically. The change began on Wall Street. Wall Street convinced the Reagan administration, and subsequent administrations and congresses, to repeal regulations that were put in place after the crash of 1929 – particularly during the Roosevelt administration – to prevent a repeat of the excesses of the 1920s.

As a result of that move towards deregulation, we saw a steady decline in standards – a race to the bottom – on Wall Street and then in executive suites. In the 1980s we had junk bond scandals combined with insider trading. In the 1990s we had the beginnings of a speculative binge culminating in the dotcom bubble. Sad to say, under the Clinton administration the Glass-Steagall Act – that had been part of the banking act of 1933, separating investment banking from commercial banking – was repealed.

In 2001 and 2002 we had Enron and the corporate looting scandals. Not only did this reveal the dark side of executive behaviour among some of the most admired companies in America – Enron had been listed among the nation’s most respected companies before that time – but also the complicity of Wall Street. Wall Street traders were actively involved in the Enron travesty. And then, of course, we had all of the excesses leading up to the crash of 2008.

Where has the moral center of American capitalism disappeared? Wall Street is back to its same old tricks. Greg Smith, a vice-president of Goldman Sachs, has accused the firm of putting profits before clients. Almost every other Wall Street firm is doing precisely the same thing and they’ve been doing it for years.

The Dodd-Frank bill was an attempt to rein in Wall Street, but Wall Street lobbyists have almost eviscerated that act and have been mercilessly attacking the regulations issued. Republicans have not even appropriated sufficient money to enforce the shards of the act that remain.

The Glass-Steagall Act must be resurrected. There has to be a limit on the size of big banks. The current big banks have to be broken up using anti-trust laws, as we broke up the oil cartels in the early years of the 20th century.

We’ve got to put limits on executive pay and have a much more progressive income tax so that people who are earning tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year are paying at a rate that they paid before 1981, which is at least 70% at the highest marginal level.

We also need to get big money out of politics.

These changes can’t come about unless we have campaign finance reform that provides public financing in general elections and a constitutional amendment that reverses the grotesque decision of the Supreme Court at the start of 2010, in a case called “Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission.”

None of this is possible without an upsurge in the public at large – a movement that rescues our democracy and takes back our economy. One can’t be done without the other. Our economy and democracy are intertwined. Much the same challenge exists in Europe and Japan and elsewhere around the world, where systems profess to combine capitalism and democracy.

Massive inequality is incompatible with robust democracy. Today, in the United States, the top 1% is taking home more than 20% of total income and owns at least 38% of total wealth. The richest 400 people in America have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together.

As we’ve already seen in this Republican primary election, a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people can virtually control the election result – not entirely, but have a huge impact. That’s not a democracy. As the great American jurist and Supreme Court associate justice Louis Brandeis once said: “We can have huge wealth in the hands of a relatively few people or we can have a democracy. But we can’t have both.”

By Alireza Aghaei*

Europe is currently grappling with the biggest wave of immigration it has faced since the end of the World War II. In all websites and news networks, the main headlines consist of photos, videos and reports related to immigrants who are storming Europe. Women, men, and children who have no land, accept many risks due to their fear of myriad nightmares that have a firm chokehold on territories which are apparently not destined to see peace, in order to reach the apparently civilized Europe. These people have been driven out of their homes and are now stuck behind the borders of the European countries. The people, who up to a few years ago had a life in their own country, are now in need of a morsel of bread charitably given to them out of pity by well-nourished Europeans.

I don’t know how many European people had traveled to Syria before it was plagued with the cancerous tumor of ISIS. I don’t know how many of them had toured the Syrian cities of Aleppo or Damascus; the cities that were known as brides of the Middle East, or at least one of the brides of the Middle East. How many of these condescending European people who look down on these immigrants with humiliation had already seen and sensed the grandeur of these cities up-close? A short while ago and before this catastrophe, Aleppo, Damascus and many other cities, which have been reduced to ruins, were more beautiful, more advanced, more cultured, and more pleasant places than many cities in such countries as Hungary and Poland. Now, the people who built these historical civilizations must tolerate the worst treatment behind the borders of apparently civilized European countries in the hope of regaining the peace that murderers have stolen from them.

Today, few, if any, people are not aware that Europe is faced with a crisis of immigrants. However, the most prominent issue that is receiving the least attention is the human rights crisis in a continent that has big claims to being an advocate of human rights. The coffins containing the bodies of 71 passengers, seventy one women, men and children, whose dead bodies were found at the back of a truck, are still at the morgue. Will Vienna and its starry nights and it sound of music experience ease of mind again after this incident? There is also Hungary, which is considered among second-hand European countries in the continent, but is guarding its borders so tight against a bunch of homeless people that an unknowing observer might think what an amazing territory is hidden behind these high border barriers and barbed-wire fences.

It would be helpful for this country to revisit its contemporary history following the World War II and remind its people that in a not-so-far past they lived in a situation similar to current predicament of these homeless and immigrant people. Anyway, the immigration crisis has once more flaunted the basic voids and flaws of the global human rights law in the face of European and global politicians; the voids for which these homeless people are atoning with their lives. When the apparently civilized world would wake up from its slumber?

Source: Arman Daily
http://armandaily.ir/
Translated By: Iran Review.Org

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has so far refused Moscow’s demand for the establishment of a Russian military base in Belarus, two senior Belarusian analysts say, noting that in addition to promises of aid, Moscow is currently preparing to destabilize its Western neighbor and even create the conditions for a Russian military intervention.

Arseniy Sivitsky, the director of the Belarusian Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Research, and his colleague Yury Tsarik shared their concerns about the situation with Kseniya Kirillova of Novy Region-2 (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Ksenija_Kirillova/Belarus-gotovitsya-k-voyne-105311.html).

Sivitsky says that Moscow has been talking about having a base in Belarus since the end of 2013 as a response to the Ukrainian crisis with the view to using it to pressure Kyiv, on the one hand, and put NATO in a difficult position with regard to the defense of the Baltic countries, on the other.

Tsarik notes that “the Russian leadership has more than once confirmed verbally that it doesn’t intend to fight with NATO,” and consequently, Russia has to take into consideration several “political” results of the opening of such a base there.

First of all, he says, a Russian base in Belarus would cost Mensk of its status as a neutral negotiating space as far as Ukraine is concerned. That might work against Russia’s interests. But second, it would mean the loss by Kyiv of an important ally who guarantees the security of its northern border.

And third, even if it had not direct military consequences, Tsarik says, a Russian military base in Belarus would exacerbate tensions in Poland and the Baltic countries and could lead them to take additional steps and perhaps gain additional support from the West to defend against what they would certainly view as a new Russian threat.

But however that may be, Sivitsky says, Moscow is “exerting colossal pressure on the Belarusian leadership to secure Mensk’s agreement.” Some of this consists of carrots like the promise of additional financial aid if Belarus agrees. But there are also sticks, including likely moves by Russia to destabilize Belarus if Mensk refuses.

While some may think that Moscow would never choose a Ukrainian scenario to deal with a country that is its only real ally in the region, Tsarik points out that “as the Ukrainian crisis has shown, conflict is a useful means of controlling the international situation and maintaining control over territory.”

“If one examines the chronology of the last two years,” he continues, “we see processes of the normalization of relations of Belarus and the West as well as a process of the deep integration of Belarus in the Chinese project of the New Silk Road, independent of Mensk’s position on the Ukrainian crisis.”

Tsarik suggests that “all this is the natural response of Belarus to the economic collapse in Russia and the need to find new markets and new partners to ensure further development of its own economy.” And it is important to note that Belarus is doing this even as it does not oppose being part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.”

But that is not how the Russian media perceive what is going on, Tsarik says. They view Lukashenka’s moves as “’a turn to the West’” and “’the betrayal of an ally.’” From that perspective, they see “the destabilization of Belarus and regime change in Mensk as a response to ‘Belarus’s departure for the West’” and thus “completely legitimate.”

Moreover, many in Moscow believe, Tsarik says, that in the event of regime change in Mensk, Moscow could control Belarus “totally” and for much less money than it has been spending up to now.

Sivitsky says that “unfortunately,” Moscow has many ways to destabilize the situation in Belarus. It has “colossal influence on the special services of Belarus,” so much so that people in Moscow say that Moscow not Mensk is running them. And the Russian government has significant influence on other parts of the government and on the information sector.

In addition, Tsarik says, “it is important to point out that from the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the West has sharply reduced the financing of opposition and non-governmental structures in Belarus.” That has given Moscow an opening, and “a significant part of the opposition in Belarus, from the completely respectable to the extreme radicals is also under the influence of the Russian Federation.”

He adds that he and his colleagues have developed several scenarios Moscow might use. If Lukashenka agreed to a Russian base, “the so-called [Belarusian] nationalists under slogans of the impermissibility of the occupation of the country by foreign forces” could start demonstrations against the government.

“The word ‘nationalists’ must be put in quotes because a significant part of radical nationalists structures” in Belarus as in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries “acts in alliance with their Russian nationalist colleagues and not without the involvement of the Russian special services.”

If Lukashenka continues to refuse to give permission for a Russian military base, the more likely course of developments, Sinitsky says, then Moscow will pursue the destabilization of Belarus via two means. It will seek to delegitimize the Belarusian presidential elections; and it will prepare “radical elements for protests and attacks on government facilities.”

That would create “the illusion of ‘a Maidan’” and under the pretext of defending the constitutional order in Belarus, Moscow could introduce forces “’to restore order.’” In fact, the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty recently practiced doing exactly than in exercizes in Tajikistan.

Moscow has been preparing its own population for such actions by putting out the line at home that “the West intends to organize ‘a Maidan’ in Belarus and thus organize a coup with the help of ‘Belarusian nationalists who are raising their heads,’” Tsarik says. But of course, the West doesn’t want that but instead prefers stability and Belarusian neutrality.

According to Tsarik, official Mensk well understands this threat and is “actively preparing to block any without exception scenario for the destabilization of the situation in Belarus.”

By William Camacaro and Mark Cameron*

Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina has finally resigned from office and sits in custody as a flight risk, awaiting prosecution on charges of corruption. Molina has reportedly had two hearings on corruption charges since his resignation and arrest.

Deputies of the Guatemalan Congress voted unanimously on September 1 to remove Molina’s political immunity, facing mounting pressure from those who have traditionally been closed out of the political system: the Guatemalan people. The vociferous mobilization by social movements, students, indigenous groups and union organizations has played a significant role in Molina’s resignation and arrest, signifying the left’s first major inroads in Guatemala since the CIA backed coup against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Though the oligarchic state has lost its democratic legitimacy in Guatemala, these forces are still at the helm of economic power and still retain their control of the instruments of repression. Nevertheless, progressive forces have taken a giant step forward by breaking the pattern of impunity that has plagued Guatemalan institutions for decades.

One of the main protagonists of the effort to bring former President Molina to trial has been Congressman Amilcar Pop. A member of the WINAQ party in Guatemala, Pop was one of the first to speak out as a leading figure in the fight against corruption. Pop faced serious opposition including death threats as he campaigned for President Molina’s immunity to be terminated. At this same time President Molina was continuing to receive support from the US ambassador to Guatemala, Todd Robinson. A week prior to the congressional vote to strip Molina of his immunity Robinson publicly voiced his support for the president and this in turn incited the ongoing social protests to add anti-imperialist elements to their demands. Director of the Guatemala based news source Nomada, Martín Rodriguez, has suggested that a number of powerful forces within the country, including the US Embassy and the Chamber of Industry, were deeply involved in attempting to halt the actions against Molina. With the North’s waning ability to control it’s southern neighbors, the country’s congress defied Washington’s apparent preferences and stood in support of the tens of thousands of Guatemalans who had mobilized in the streets. Unfortunately, the powerful nature of these protests has been overshadowed by the mainstream press’ praise of the CICIG and the United States in this issue.

There is concern that the CICIG may allow itself to be a Trojan horse within Latin American. The role of the CICIG has indeed been critical to the investigation and subsequent exposure of corruption that provided the empirical basis for judicial and legislative efforts to remove Molina’s immunity. Some analysts, however, have raised questions about the agenda of the organization given its funding sources (the United States and European Union) and its supranational status.

In direct response to a COHA inquiry, the US State Department has stated that it supports the democratic process in Guatemala, including the elections scheduled for September 6. Martín Rodriguez also reports, however, that it is not clear if the elections will actually be held as scheduled due to concerns about the current power vacuum within the state. In the absence of a president, the vice president of the country is authorized to take over the office under Guatemalan law. Former Vice President Alejandro Maldonado was sworn into office just hours after Molina’s resignation and will sit as interim president for the time being. Maldonado filled the vice-presidency after former vice president Roxana Baldetti was also accused of complicity in the criminal operation known as “The Line” and was forced to resign. She was arrested on August 21. Maldonado was one of three judges on the constitutional court to rule in favor of having the guilty verdict against the former President Rios Montt, of crimes against humanity and genocide, overturned.

*William Camacaro, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and Mark Cameron, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, who is on a historic visit to the US, met American President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington on Friday, with talks focusing on reining in Iran and tackling trouble spots in the Middle East.

Obama made the rare move of greeting King Salman at the doors of the White House, as he hailed the longstanding friendship between the two countries. This is King Salman’s first visit to the United States after assuming the throne in January this year.

In his welcome comments, Obama said: “It is a great pleasure to welcome His Majesty King Salman to the Oval Office. This is the latest of several meetings that I have had with King Salman. And the fact that he has chosen to take this first visit to the United States is indicative of the longstanding friendship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.”

He added: “We will discuss the importance of effectively implementing the (nuclear) deal to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, while counteracting its destabilizing activities in the region.”

Obama said this is a challenging time in world affairs, particularly in the Middle East, “and so we expect this to be a substantive conversation across a wide range of issues. We share a concern about Yemen and the need to restore a functioning government that is inclusive and that can relieve the humanitarian situation there.

“We share concerns about the crisis in Syria, and we will have the opportunity to discuss how we can arrive at a political transition process within Syria that can finally end the horrific conflict there.

“We continue to cooperate extremely closely in countering terrorist activity in the region and around the world, including our battle against ISIL (Daesh). We’ll also have an opportunity to discuss the world economy and energy issues.

‘I’m happy to come to a friendly country’

“Your Majesty, welcome, and let me once again reaffirm not only our personal friendship but the deep and abiding friendship between our two peoples,” said Obama.

King Salman thanked Obama for the warm welcome. “I wanted to make my first official visit to the United States as a symbol of the deep and strong relationship that we have with the United States, with historic relations that go back to the day in 1945 when King Abdul Aziz met President Franklin Roosevelt,” said King Salman in Arabic.

“Our relationship is beneficial not only to our two countries, but to the entire world and our region. This is significant, and we must always affirm and deepen these relations and further our cooperation in all fields,” said King Salman.

“Mr. President, our economy is a free economy and, therefore, we must allow opportunities for business people to exchange opportunities, because if people see that there are common interests, they will themselves further the relations between them. Our relationship must be beneficial for both of us, not only economically but also on the political, military and defense fronts.”

“I’m happy to come to a friendly country to meet a friend. We want to work together for world peace. Our region must achieve stability, which is essential for the prosperity of its people. In our country, thank God, we are prosperous, but we want prosperity for the entire region. We are willing to cooperate with you to achieve that.”

Also in the Oval Office with King Salman and Obama were Vice-President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry.

King Salman is accompanied by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, royal adviser Prince Abdul-Illah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Prince Khalid bin Fahd bin Khaled, and Minister of State Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban.

Minister of Finance Ibrahim Al-Assaf, Minister of Commerce and Industry Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, Minister of Culture and Information Adel Al-Toraifi, Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir and General Intelligence President Khaled bin Ali Al-Humaidan are all part of the Saudi delegation.

The king arrived in the United States on Thursday. He was received by Kerry at Joint Base Andrews located outside Washington. Later, the king met with Kerry at his residence in Washington. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations and discussed several issues of common interest. The meeting was attended by several members of the Saudi delegation.

Hong Kong’s cardinals appear to be at odds over upcoming talks between the Holy See and China over establishing diplomatic ties.

Cardinal John Tong Hon sees “an improvement and better atmosphere” in China and Vatican relations ahead of the negotiations but stopped short of saying whether this will be enough for progress to be made.

Retired Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a strong critic of China, believes Beijing’s authoritarian attitude means ties are nowhere near strong enough for talks to succeed.

China and the Holy See resumed long-stalled negotiations in June 2014 and are now preparing to sit down for further talks in which they are expected to seek a resolution to a major rift over who should appoint bishops.

“The second round of talks is expected to take place in the next few months,” an anonymous Church source close to the Vatican told ucanews.com.

Speaking to ucanews.com ahead of the talks, Cardinal Tong said he has seen some good signals coming from both sides in the past few months.

“There are always ups and downs” on China-Vatican relations but “recently, the atmosphere has been quite good,” the cardinal said.

One example was the installation of Vatican-approved Bishop Martin Wu Qinjing in June, the cardinal said.

The bishop of Zhouzhi’s movements and activities were restricted after he was secretly ordained in 2005. But the government now recognizes him following his installation, he added.

Then, there was the episcopal ordination of Joseph Zhang Yinlin in Anyang diocese in early August, which was the first in three years.

These events show “there is an improvement and a better atmosphere” with regard to ties, Cardinal Tong said.

This perceived recent thaw in relations between China and the Vatican followed a major spat after China ordained three illicit bishops without papal mandate in 2011 and 2012.

The Holy See took the unusual step of clearly voicing its opposition to the ordinations and announcing the excommunication of the illicit bishops.

Relations were strained further in 2012 when the bishops’ conference in Beijing, which is not recognized by the Holy See, revoked the coadjutor bishop title of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin of Shanghai after he announced he was quitting the government-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association during his episcopal ordination.

He is currently confined in a seminary in Shanghai.