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New Supercomputer JURECA Goes Into Operation

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“Eureka!” is what Archimedes is supposed to have exclaimed after having made his extraordinary discovery in the bath tub. In reference to this event, the new supercomputer developed by Forschungszentrum Jülich together with the Russian manufacturer T-Platforms and the HPC software and support company ParTec is called JURECA. With its enormous computing power of 2.2 quadrillion operations per second, it is hoped to provide researchers from all over Germany with numerous ‘Eureka’ moments by permitting the investigation of complex issues in a multitude of fields.

Forschungszentrum Jülich put the supercomputer of the highest performance class currently available, the petaflop class, into operation in early November. Its name, JURECA, is short for Jülich Research on Exascale Cluster Architectures. The system is a real all-rounder: its fields of application include life sciences, earth system sciences, information technology, materials research, as well as medicine, in which the computer will be used for developing and testing new active substances. One major task will be the analysis of large volumes of data for brain research as well as many other research fields in which big data will play an ever increasing role.

“JURECA is no off-the-peg computer. What is special about it is that our experts from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) designed the system together with T-Platforms from Moscow and ParTec from Munich in a co-design process. They were thus able to tailor it specifically to the needs of science,” said JSC director Prof. Thomas Lippert. “The other worldwide unique feature is that together with the two companies, we will continue to develop the system during ongoing operation and thus establish the basis for the next generation of supercomputers of the exascale class – we call this our phoenix principle.”

“In comparison with its predecessor JUROPA, JURECA requires one third less electricity while simultaneously its computing power is ten times higher,” explained Dr. Dorian Krause, who is responsible for the installation at JSC. This means that the computer is currently at number 49 on the TOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world.

“But breaking records was not as important to us as the opportunity for users to quickly and productively run their programme codes and by further optimizations make use of larger parts of the machine,” said Krause.

As a “Cluster computer”, JURECA consists of approximately 1900 individual computers connected to each other via a Mellanox InfiniBand high-speed network. The hardware is accommodated in 34 water-cooled racks in JSC’s computer room. For particularly memory- and compute-intensive simulation calculations, there is additional equipment available: for example, specialized nodes which are equipped with NVIDIA’s K80 accelerator card to increase computing speed.

“We are very proud that only two weeks after concluding the installation, we were able to put JURECA into general operation,” said Vsevolod Opanasenko, CEO of T-Platforms. The company won the open selection procedure for constructing JURECA. According to Opanasenko, “JURECA shows that T-Platforms is right there among the top companies constructing the most powerful supercomputers worldwide.”

JURECA also owes its success to the cooperation with the Munich experts from ParTec. “Our software ParaStation is JURECA’s soul, so to speak,” said Hugo Falter, COO of ParTec. “By means of the built-in monitoring software HealthChecker, it ensures stable operation.”

Use of JURECA is basically open to all qualified scientists. Applications for computation time are evaluated by an independent panel of international experts who comply with the standards of the German Research Foundation. The allocation procedure is supervised by the John von Neumann Institute for Computing and the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), a cooperation between Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University as part of the German Excellence Initiative.


First Study To Map Earth’s Hidden Groundwater

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Groundwater is one of the planet’s most exploited, most precious natural resources. It ranges in age from months to millions of years old. Around the world, there’s increasing demand to know how much we have and how long before it’s tapped out.

For the first time since a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the global volume of groundwater was attempted in the 1970s, an international group of hydrologists has produced the first data-driven estimate of the Earth’s total supply of groundwater. The study, led by Dr. Tom Gleeson of the University of Victoria with co-authors at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Calgary and the University of Göttingen, was published today in Nature Geoscience.

The bigger part of the study is the “modern” groundwater story. The report shows that less than six per cent of groundwater in the upper two kilometres of the Earth’s landmass is renewable within a human lifetime.

“This has never been known before,” said Gleeson. “We already know that water levels in lots of aquifers are dropping. We’re using our groundwater resources too fast–faster than they’re being renewed.”

With the growing global demand for water–especially in light of climate change–this study provides important information to water managers and policy developers as well as scientists from fields such as hydrology, atmospheric science, geochemistry and oceanography to better manage groundwater resources in a sustainable way, he said.

Using multiple datasets (including data from close to a million watersheds), and more than 40,000 groundwater models, the study estimates a total volume of nearly 23 million cubic kilometres of total groundwater of which 0.35 million cubic kilometres is younger than 50 years old.

Why is it important to differentiate old from modern groundwater? Young and old groundwater are fundamentally different in how they interact with the rest of the water and climate cycles. Old groundwater is found deeper and is often used as a water resource for agriculture and industry. Sometimes it contains arsenic or uranium and is often more salty than ocean water. In some areas, the briny water is so old, isolated and stagnant it should be thought of as non-renewable, says Gleeson.

The volume of modern groundwater dwarfs all other components of the active water cycle and is a more renewable resource but, because it’s closer to surface water and is faster-moving than old groundwater, it’s also more vulnerable to climate change and contamination by human activities.

The study’s maps show most modern groundwater in tropical and mountain regions. Some of the largest deposits are in the Amazon Basin, the Congo, Indonesia, and in North and Central America running along the Rockies and the western cordillera to the tip of South America. High northern latitudes are excluded from the data because satellite data doesn’t accurately cover these latitudes. Regardless, this area is largely under permafrost with little groundwater. The least amount of modern groundwater is not surprisingly in more arid regions such as the Sahara.

“Intuitively, we expect drier areas to have less young groundwater and more humid areas to have more, but before this study, all we had was intuition. Now, we have a quantitative estimate that we compared to geochemical observations,” said Dr. Kevin Befus, who conducted the groundwater simulations as part of his doctoral research at the University of Texas and is now a post-doctoral fellow at the United States Geological Survey.

The next step in painting a full picture of how quickly we’re depleting both old and modern groundwater is to analyze volumes of groundwater in relation to how much is being used and depleted.

In a previous study that ultimately led to the investigation of modern groundwater, Gleeson’s 2012 groundwater footprint report in Nature mapped global hot spots of groundwater stress, charting rates of precipitation compared to the rates of use through pumping, mostly for agriculture. Some of these hot spots are northern India and Pakistan, northern China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and parts of the US and Mexico.

“Since we now know how much groundwater is being depleted and how much there is, we will be able to estimate how long until we run out,” said Gleeson. To do this, he will be leading a further study using a global scale model.

China’s Smokestack Industries Seek Support – Analysis

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By Michael Lelyveld

China is facing a conflict between economic and environmental policies as lower energy prices spur demands for more industrial support.

Regulators have been under pressure to cut power prices this month, giving a boost to struggling industries like aluminum that are weighed down with overcapacity and weakening demand.

On-grid power tariffs, the prices paid to generators, were expected to drop in some regions by 0.03 yuan (U.S. 0.5 cents) per kilowatt hour, according to Bloomberg News.

The reduction seems small, but it would save aluminum smelters 375 yuan (U.S. $59) per metric ton, since power represents more than 40 percent of their production costs, Shenzhen-based Essence Securities Co. said.

Regulators are likely to have plenty of room to cut power prices, since benchmark coal rates have plunged by double- digits from a year earlier to about 400 yuan (U.S. $63) per ton.

The move could keep some hard-pressed aluminum producers from going out of business.

Local authorities in northwest Gansu province have already lowered power prices for state-owned Chinalco’s high-cost Liancheng smelter to keep the plant open, according to a Reuters column, citing consultancy AZ China last month.

The problem is that production overcapacity is so severe that companies will try to survive by passing their savings on to buyers and dragging aluminum prices down further, said analysts at Australia-based Argonaut Securities Asia and Shanghai Cifco Futures Co.

The discounts would shave another U.S. $60 (380 yuan) off slumping international prices for aluminum, driving them down to a six-year low of U.S. $1,400 (8,870 yuan) per ton, Bloomberg said.

Aside from the effects on the glutted metals market, the break for China’s aluminum makers would boost electricity use, fueled primarily by high-polluting coal.

“This is a classic example of the tension between economic/industrial policy and energy/environmental policy,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at National University of Singapore.

“On the one hand, it can be argued that lower feedstock prices (notably coal) should result in lower end-use power prices. However, one might have hoped that the government would keep the tariffs for the energy-intensive industries at their earlier levels,” Andrews-Speed said in an email message.

Energy-hungry industries

Aluminum is one of the high energy-consuming industries targeted for conservation measures over the past decade.

China’s government ordered differentiated power pricing to discourage further expansion in industries including aluminum, steel and cement as far back as 2004.

The controls did little to discourage excessive investment in construction-related industries during China’s building boom that lasted until the property market stalled in 2014.

In the aftermath of China’s 4-trillion yuan (U.S. $631-billion) stimulus program launched in 2009, the energy-hungry industries have been left with massive overcapacity.

Around 90 percent of China’s aluminum smelters are operating at a loss, AZ China said.

Despite slack demand, China’s output of aluminum products increased 8.5 percent through October from the year-earlier period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Crude steel production is down 2.2 percent. Cement production has dropped 4.6 percent, the NBS said.

The Bloomberg report suggests conflict not only between economic and environmental policies but also within economic policy itself, since further price cuts for aluminum may only leave producers with more losses and glut.

The policy strains come as China’s government seeks to support sagging economic growth rates while trying to put the best face on its antipollution efforts before an international climate change conference in Paris next month.

An outline of the government’s new five-year plan for 2016-2020 promises to wage an “energy revolution,” but it offers few specifics.

“Measures will be taken to control carbon emissions in the energy intensive industries of power, steel, chemical and architectural materials,” the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting from the document.

In spite of the environmental consequences, the power price breaks are seen as spreading to other threatened heavy industries like steel.

“I would expect the tariff reduction would be applied to all industries,” Andrews- Speed said. “This can only result in greater energy use and higher levels of pollution, unless the companies fail to sell their products despite offering lower prices.”

Same problem for steelmakers

Despite efforts to shed capacity, China’s steelmakers face much the same problem as the smelters.

On Nov. 2, the official English-language China Daily said that five of the country’s 11 listed iron and steel companies that had reported third-quarter results recorded combined losses of 5.6 billion yuan (U.S. $881 million). Their year-earlier earnings were 1.4 billion yuan (U.S. $221 million), the paper said.

The overcapacity syndrome is mirrored in the power industry. China has continued to add new power plants at a rapid rate, despite a drop-off in demand.

Electricity use this year has grown only 0.7 percent through October, while capacity utilization at thermal power plants fell to 53.7 percent last year, Reuters said in separate reports.

Even after China completes its transition to a services and consumption-led economy, some generating overcapacity will be inevitable.

Consumers draw less power than industry, but they have greater peak load capacity requirements, the South China Morning Post noted last month.

But the huge capacity surpluses in the entire chain of boom-and-bust industries from coal to power, steel, aluminum and cement are symptoms of declining economic growth.

This month, President Xi Jinping said that annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6.5 percent was the minimum needed for China to reach its goal of doubling 2010 GDP by the end of the decade under the 13th Five-Year Plan.

It is unclear whether the government has adopted the minimum as its target, but the trajectory suggests continuing deceleration from the growth rates of 7.3 percent last year, 7 percent in the first half and 6.9 percent in the third quarter of this year.

On Nov. 4, the State Council, or cabinet, announced new guidelines for restructuring state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with participation of investment firms to manage some of their capital and assets.

“The country will also eliminate outdated and excessive capacity of SOEs and dispose of inefficient assets,” Xinhua reported.

“State capital will be removed from SOEs, while others will be restructured or upgraded on the basis of innovation,” the guideline said.

The reforms could ease overcapacity pressures in the smokestack industries, but the process may be a long one as the government seeks to avoid mass layoffs and deeper declines in GDP.

In the meantime, pressure for indirect support like power price cuts seems likely to continue.

The breaks also pose a thorny theoretical problem for the government, which recently pledged to reduce price controls as part of its reforms.

In September, the State Council said it had reduced its control over prices from 13 categories to seven, preserving price-setting in public service sectors including electricity, natural gas, water for irrigation and postal services.

Given China’s surplus of coal, weakening demand and industrial overcapacity, it may be hard to predict what would happen to power rates if all prices were decontrolled.

But in the absence of a significant carbon tax, prices for coal-fired power could fall, perpetuating the cycle of industrial overcapacity, excess production, pollution and losses.

The problems call for a combination of market, regulatory and environmental policies that has yet to be made clear.

France Experiences Its Own 9/11 – OpEd

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By Hadi Khosro-Shahin

The Islamic State (Daesh) operations in the French capital, Paris, amounted to an act of all-out war. This war is a telltale sign that Daesh is now both a caliphate and a network. Daesh is the spinoff of the bittersweet experiences of radical fundamentalism over the past decade and, therefore, is looking for a foothold in the Middle East, while at the same time trying to leave a footprint outside this region. Therefore, it fights its own style of war in the Middle East, while in regions beyond that, chooses the method used by its predecessor, al-Qaeda.

However, the leader of Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not repeating the strategic mistake that the former al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, made, and instead of targeting the United States, wages war against those countries which have one trait in common: social fault lines and gaps. If Daesh is actually advancing unrivaled in Iraq and Syria, the main cause behind this is not an ominous plot hatched by the West or the East, but is the real gaps that exist among various ethnic and religious groups in these countries. Daesh takes its power from these gaps and in a blink of an eye stages its show of force. When it comes to this issue, there is not much difference between the failed states of Iraq and Syria, and the modern and secular France. If Sunnis in Iraq and the Levant throw their weight behind the Daesh caliphate, there are five million Muslim Arabs, most of whom living a marginal life in France, who can lend their support to al-Baghdadi’s tribe, not just on paper, but in the real battleground.

Although democracy has been proven to be the most effective political system in the contemporary history, in times of crisis, it turns into one of the weakest forms of governance. Democratic systems are not powerful enough in fighting insecurity and crisis. The tragic incident of November 13 was neither a product of the social government of the French President Francois Hollande, nor was it a result of the weakness of the rightist French opposition. Democracy was the main cause behind failure of France in fighting radical fundamentalism on the streets of Paris. Therefore, in the early hours after the catastrophe in Paris, democracy stepped back in order to give way to exclusive jockeying of power through use of brute force. Closing borders, stopping city trains, limiting free traffic of citizens and deployment of about 1,500 extra soldiers and ground forces in the streets of Paris were signs of nothing but the withdrawal of democracy. Democratic systems are usually inefficient when it comes to prediction and resolution of security crises and this is why in the early hours of the terror attacks, they lose the ground to brute force.

The effect that the November 13 tragedy will have on the structure of domestic policy in France will not be solely restricted to some temporary and on-the-spot limitations. This incident will change the nature and fabric of politics and society in France, and subsequently in other European countries. Strengthening of the radical right, a return to the era of identity-based and racial conflicts in modern Europe, all-out opposition to the wave of immigration into Europe, weakening of convergent trends within framework of the European Union and, finally, imposing further limitations on democracy will be part of the consequences of this French disaster. Under such tumultuous conditions, the winners of political competitions will be those who are more populist and those who resort to more radical language and measures in the face of minorities, immigrants and all those who are considered “others.” Therefore, radical politicians are sure to see the light at the end of this absolutely dark tunnel. The early reaction that such rightist politicians as Le Pen are sure to show to this incident is a meaningful smile. Strengthening of Le Pen’s position in France will trigger a domino, which would finally travel through all European countries. France and Europe are not similar to the United States and this is why France’s November 13 will not bear the slightest similarity to the United States’ September 11 in terms of what it will do to the domestic structure of the country.

From the viewpoint of foreign policy, however, November 13 in France will bear strange similarities to the United States September 11. Just in the same way that September 11, 2001, influenced the structure and rules of the international system for more than a decade, the tragic incident on November 13 enjoys such a potential and capability. France is among the most important members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Paris was faced with an all-out terrorist onslaught in the ending hours of last Friday. Daesh has officially assumed responsibility for this all-out war. This group has already formed a caliphate in Iraq and the Levant and this means that perpetrators of terrorist attacks on the streets of Paris will be certainly punished on the narrow streets of Iraq and the Levant.

This incident will greatly increase the possibility of military and all-out presence of NATO in the Middle East and, most probably, such a presence would be followed by a long-term political plan for this region of the world. This incident will also put an end to the foolish idea of Americans and the West about reducing their military and costly presence in the Middle East and turning their strategic focus to East Asia. However, such a return to the Middle East will have in its core an escalation in conflicts and clashes between transregional and regional powers. When the dust of terrorist attacks in Paris settles, hostility between the East and the West will increase due to conflict between their interests and it would not be an exaggeration to say that this may even lead to another world war in international system.

More than a decade of struggles by nation-states against subnational actors that use terrorism as a tool shows that these struggles have been practically inefficient and unsuccessful, because neither al-Qaeda has been annihilated through such struggles, nor even the Taliban. The sole outcome of this confrontation has been the birth of sons, who have been less controllable and more violent than their fathers and predecessors. The bitter reality is that subnational actors have been integrated into structure and dynamism of the international system. There is no denial of this reality, but the door is still open to containing it. The structure and rules of game in the international system must be looked upon in a different way in order to make restoration of international peace and security possible. Peace is no more achieved through nation-states. To establish peace, new rules must be accepted and a new model for negotiations and diplomacy must be offered. The state-centered talks in Vienna on the situation in Syria are not efficient enough to restore security to the Levant and, as a consequence, to other critical regions in the Middle East.

The tragic incident of November 13 in France can wreak the same havoc to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his aides, which happened to the foreign policy of the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, following September 11 attacks. The military presence of NATO and subsequent escalation of conflicts in the Middle East can postpone the détente policy of Rouhani’s administration or even bring it to a total halt. However, a consolidated and unanimous foreign policy will be an antidote to possible military interventions in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic of Iran can produce opportunities out of the tragic events of November 13 in France and their immediate aftermath. However, to do this, the Iranian administration must proclaim a policy that would be harbinger of peace and cooperation from Iran. Under the present critical conditions, the Islamic Republic must introduce itself as a moderate country and anchor of stability in the Middle East. To project such an image, the world must hear a single voice from Iran; otherwise the country would be faced with serious and immediate threats.

The tragic attacks of November 13 proved that the strategy of fighting crisis outside borders is not capable of controlling and managing desecuritizing and destabilizing processes. Following terror attacks on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, France sent its fighter jets to Iraq and Syria in the vain hope of averting a war with Daesh at home and to take the war to the Middle East. However, this strategy practically expired last Friday. This is why it is necessary for the Islamic Republic of Iran to think about new and effective measures in its military, security and intelligence strategies in order to ward off ominous plots hatched by such terrorist groups as Daesh. Enforcing more effective control over the country’s borders can be just one of the solutions available to Iran’s intelligence and defense officials. The new measures must be also taken with great speed without losing any possible opportunity. By taking appropriate measures, Iran will continue to remain the anchor of stability in the Middle East.

UN Says El Niño On Track To Be Among Worst Ever

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The current El Niño, a weather pattern of devastating droughts and catastrophic floods that can affect tens of millions of people around the globe, is expected to strengthen further by year’s end, on track to be one of the three strongest in 65 years, according to the latest update from the United Nations weather agency.

But the world is better prepared than ever to deal with the phenomenon, caused by the cyclical warming of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, even though global warming has added a wild card to forecasting the severity of its impact, UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Michel Jarraud told a news conference in Geneva today.

“It’s not entirely clear how El Niño interacts with the changing climate,” he said, warning that it is playing out in uncharted territory due to global warming. “Even before the onset of El Niño, global average surface temperatures had reached new records. El Niño is turning up the heat even further.”

Based on advice from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, the worst affected countries are already planning for the impact on agriculture, fisheries, water and health, and implementing disaster management campaigns to save lives and minimize economic damage and disruption, he added.

“Severe droughts and devastating flooding being experienced throughout the tropics and sub-tropical zones bear the hallmarks of this El Niño, which is the strongest for more than 15 years,” he said, noting that peak three-month average surface water temperatures in the east-central tropical Pacific Ocean will exceed 2 degrees Celsius above normal.

But, he stressed: “We are better prepared for this event than we have ever been in the past.”

Various UN agencies have already issued warnings about the current El Niño, in which oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system significantly impacts global weather, from increased rain and flooding in the southern United States and Peru to drought in the West Pacific and devastating brush fires in Australia.

Last week the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that 11 million children are at risk from hunger, disease and lack of water in eastern and southern Africa alone, while the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said 2.3 million people in Central America will need food aid as El Niño exacerbates a prolonged drought.

Mr. Jarraud released the update on the eve of an international scientific conference in New York, co-sponsored by WMO, which seeks to increase scientific understanding of El Niño the event and its impact, and boost resilience to anticipated global socio-economic shocks.

“Our planet has altered dramatically because of climate change, the general trend towards a warmer global ocean, the loss of Arctic sea ice and of over a million square kilometres of summer snow cover in the northern hemisphere. So this naturally occurring El Niño event and human induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways which we have never before experienced,” he warned.

El Niño has already been associated with a number of major impacts, including coral bleaching hitting US coral reefs disproportionately hard, and tropical cyclones in the Western and Eastern North Pacific basins, such as last month’s Hurricane Patricia in Mexico, reportedly the most intense tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere.

In South East Asia, El Niño is typically associated with drought and has helped fuel wildfires in Indonesia, among the worst on record, causing dense haze there and in neighbouring countries, with significant repercussions for health.

In South Asia, it is believed to have played a key role in a shortfall in rain and Southern Africa countries also report below average rainfall, drought conditions and fears of food insecurity.

In South America, El Niño tends to increase rainfall. In 1997-98 rains in central Ecuador and Peru were more than 10 times the normal, causing flooding, extensive

Sri Lanka’s Sirisena Congratulates Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi

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President Maithripala Sirisena congratulated the leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi on her historic landslide victory in the elections.

Sirisena also referred to her fearless campaigning for democracy in Myanmar for decades.

The bilateral, religious, cultural and trade relations between our two countries are existing for over hundreds of years, Sirisena said.

The full message of the President:

Dear Ms.Aung San Suu Kyi,

As the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and on behalf of my Government and the people I congratulate you following your historic landslide victory in the elections.

As the leader of the National League for Democracy we observed you were fearlessly campaigning for democracy in Myanmar, for decades.

With your historic victory you brought Myanmar into the international family of democracies.

The bilateral, religious, cultural and trade relations between our two countries are existing for over hundreds of years.

Once again please accept my heartfelt congratulations on the people’s victory.

May your wisdom and courage continue to bring progress and happiness to all in Myanmar and, indeed, throughout the world.

Thank you.

The Impact Of Fracking On Local Economies – Analysis

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Fracking has driven an oil and natural gas boom in the US over the past decade. This column examines the impact these mining activities have had on local and regional economies. US counties enjoy significant economic benefits, including increased wages and new job creation. These effects grow as the geographic radius is extended to include neighbouring areas in the region. The results suggest that the fracking boom provided some insulation for these areas during the Great Recession, and lowered national unemployment by as much as 0.5%.

By James Feyrer, Erin T. Mansur and Bruce Sacerdote*

The technological innovation of combining horizontal drilling with hydrofracturing has created an oil and natural gas boom within the US.  Wang and Krupnick (2013) point to several favourable conditions in many US locations such as geology, property rights, market structure, pipeline infrastructure, and water availability. The combination of technological change and pre-existing geology has generated large income shocks in many areas of the country.  Employment in the mining industry grew by 60% during a period when overall US unemployment reached 10%.

New research

In a recent study, we use the fracking revolution to study how income and employment shocks propagate across geography and industries (Feyrer et al 2015). We measure the impacts of new oil and gas production on income, employment and crime. We rely on the location of shale formations (geology) as a source of exogenous variation in which counties have fracking activity. This enables us to estimate the causal impacts of fracking.  Our data allow us to know the exact value of new production taken out of the ground in any county in a given year.  For each county, Figure 1 shows the cumulative value of new fossil fuel extraction per capita between 2004 and 2012.  There are 966 counties in the US that had either new oil or gas production in our sample period.

Figure 1. New production from fracking   Note: This figure plots each county's cumulative value of new production per capita from 2004 to 2012. Data sources: drillinginfo.com and BLS.

Figure 1. New production from fracking
Note: This figure plots each county’s cumulative value of new production per capita from 2004 to 2012.
Data sources: drillinginfo.com and BLS.

Using measures of income from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), we examine how much of the value of new production stays within the county where the production occurs.  These income effects take several forms.  First, wages of workers in the resource extraction and transportation industries are directly impacted through participation in the extraction process.  Second, landowners are paid royalties on the value of production taken from their land.  Finally, we examine the impact on wages and employment in industries not directly related to oil and gas production.

The county may not be the ideal level of observation because workers and landowners may be located in counties adjacent to where new production is occurring.  By examining the impact of new production at increasing distances, we can track the propagation of the shocks over space.  This spatial analysis is important because we are interested in how fracking impacts the entire region, not just the immediate county.  This is particularly important since substantial new fracking activity occurs in sparsely populated counties.  We also examine data aggregated to the state level.

Key findings

Several conclusions emerge from our analysis.

  • First, the counties where extraction occurs enjoy significant economic benefits.

Each million dollars of new oil and gas production is associated with a $66,000 increase in wage income and 0.78 new jobs within the county.

  • Second, the effects grow larger as we widen the geographic area being examined.
Figure 2.  Wage income (BLS) and other income (IRS) effects including neighbors within a given distance (IV)   Notes: We estimate the aggregate one-year change in annual income per capita for circles of various radii. We include all counties for whom the distance between the centroids of the originating county and each other county is within a given distance. Using two stage least squares, we regress this measure on the aggregated total value (in millions of dollars) from wells opened in the current year per capita within the corresponding circle. See text for discussion of the instrument. We control for county and year fixed effects. The figure reports the coefficient estimates and the 95% confidence interval where the standard errors are clustered by state-year.

Figure 2. Wage income (BLS) and other income (IRS) effects including neighbors within a given distance (IV)
Notes: We estimate the aggregate one-year change in annual income per capita for circles of various radii. We include all counties for whom the distance between the centroids of the originating county and each other county is within a given distance. Using two stage least squares, we regress this measure on the aggregated total value (in millions of dollars) from wells opened in the current year per capita within the corresponding circle. See text for discussion of the instrument. We control for county and year fixed effects. The figure reports the coefficient estimates and the 95% confidence interval where the standard errors are clustered by state-year.

Figure 2 shows our estimated impacts on wages and income at increasing levels of geography (namely, the distance from the county producing the oil and gas). The state-level impact on jobs and income is approximately five times as large as the immediate county effect with most of the impact happening within 100 miles of the drilling sites.

  • Third, we find no significant change in crime rates.

Within a 100-mile radius, each $1 million in new production is associated with wage increases of $243,000 and 2.49 jobs, which are about three times as large as the effects at the county level.  We also find regional spillovers for royalty payments – each million dollars generates almost $117,000 of royalty payments within a 100-mile radius.  Since royalty payments are 12-20% of the production value, this suggests that the majority of royalty payments remain local.  Overall, we conclude that 36% of the value of new production shows up in households within commuting distance of the drilling locations.

Figure 3.  Revenue decomposition by distance

Figure 3. Revenue decomposition by distance

Figure 3 provides a breakdown of wages by industry and over space. Roughly 40% of the income increase is in industries not directly related to oil and gas extraction such as finance, leisure, hospitality, and local government.  Of the $66,000 increase in local wages, $39,000 is wage payments to oil and gas industry workers, including trucking, and another $27,000 is wage spillovers to workers in other industries.  There is another $61,000 in royalty payments to lease holders within the county.  The direct effects imply that roughly 10% of the total value of gas and oil extracted remains in the county in the form of wages and royalty payments with another 2.7% in indirect activity.

 

Finally, our results provide some insight into the aggregate impact of the fracking boom. A significant portion of the increase in oil and gas production occurred during the depths of the Great Recession. With the national economy operating at significantly less than full employment, the increased demand for labour generated by the fracking boom almost certainly increased overall employment.  Our employment estimates suggest that an increase of 725,000 jobs were associated with new oil and gas extraction between 2005 and 2012.  Assuming no displacement from other employment, this suggests that the fracking boom lowered aggregate US unemployment by 0.5% during the Great Recession.

*About the authors:
James Feyrer,
Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College

Erin T. Mansur, Revers Professor of Business Administration at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

Bruce Sacerdote, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College

References:
Feyrer, J, E Mansur, and B Sacerdote (2015) “Geographic dispersion of economic shocks: Evidence from the fracking revolution”, NBER Working Paper 21624.

Wang, Z and A Krupnick (2013) “US shale gas development: What led to the boom?” RFF Issue Brief 13-04.

Saudi Arabia: Monitor Dawah Offices To Curb Extremism – OpEd

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It was reported last Sunday that after several complaints concerning administration and finance and several other irregularities, some offices of dawah (the act of preaching Islam) and irshad (guidance) have been closed especially those offices dealing with communities.

A number of recommendations have been made, including the ending of both the collection of funds and the opening of extra offices in residential and commercial areas. The public strongly supports this move. I think that putting such offices on a tight leash is very important. Nobody knows what is going on inside such places and who the people are who are teaching new converts about Islam. In this age of extremism and terrorism, we have to be extremely cautious. I have personally had several unsatisfactory encounters with those associated with such offices.

A few years ago while going to a mosque near my father’s house, a group of five Filipinos asked me where the nearest mosque was located. I told them to accompany me. On the way, I asked them how long they had been Muslims. The average of the five was 17 days. However, their questions shocked me. One asked me whether I was secular or liberal. Another told me that we have to be careful of other Muslim sects and he named a few. I asked him why? And he said the “sheikh” had told him about this. The youngest of the five said that all women who do not cover their faces will go to hell!

Well done, office of dawah and irshad! Extremism and hatred had been planted in the hearts of these five new Muslims. Who knows whether another sheikh may ask them to go and blow themselves up in the name of Islam. These are naive people. I was very concerned and spoke to someone who had connections with dawah and irshad. He just listened and said nothing.

It is clear that we must keep a watch on such organizations so that they are not used by those who wish to further their extremist agendas.

This article was appeared at Saudi Gazette and published with permission.


Is It Wrong To Mourn Paris More Deeply Than Beirut? – OpEd

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By Jeanne Kay*

Since the Paris massacre of Friday the 13th, I’ve witnessed an unraveling of questions and debates on my social media feeds over the question of selective mourning. Who gets to be mourned — and on what grounds?

Who gets to be marked “safe” on Facebook’s Safety Check feature when tragedies occur? Which atrocities deserve public and media attention, and which are relegated as too routine to be noticed?

Of course, all of these questions are based on the premise that the sphere of consciousness that matters most in the West is our own. If it’s not on CNN, in Le Monde, or trending on Twitter, it didn’t happen. It’s an unfair standard, of course. But these are the sources of information that influence public opinion, which in turn affects policymaking — including on foreign policy.

So let’s ask the question: Is it, in fact, wrong for Westerners to mourn the victims of the Paris massacre more acutely and more vocally than those of, say, the recent Beirut bombings?

My father was French and I spent several years of my childhood in France. I’ve lived in Paris and have close friends who live there now. I’ve seen a concert or two at the Bataclan and on any given evening could have taken the Metro to Oberkampf to have dinner at Petit Cambodge. For me, part of the shock of the massacre came from this proximity and familiarity: These places felt safe.

It could’ve been me among the dead, or some of my best friends. It’s like learning that the flight you missed crashed. Or that your best friend’s school burnt down a year after she graduated. When it hits so close to home, who lives and who dies feels crushingly arbitrary.

Yet when it hits farther away — in Beirut, Damascus, or Baghdad — it doesn’t feel nearly so immediate, even if others are suffering in exactly the same way.

I don’t think that it’s fair or helpful to judge these feelings too harshly: There’s a natural, socially engrained tendency to have stronger feelings towards proximate objects with which we have direct links — like the Little Prince caring more about his Rose even though there were many other Roses which were just the same, because il l’avait apprivoisée. Part of the selective mourning by the non-French does come from a sense of familiarity with Paris — having a French friend, for instance, or having a fond memory of a trip there, or perhaps cherishing a romanticized vision of the city acquired through film or literature.

This is understandable. But we can’t ignore that atrocities like these happen every single day in the world, in places that don’t ignite these feelings of recognition, familiarity, or empathy for most of us in the powerful countries of the West. But they’re familiar and recognizable and mournable to many, many others in just as deep and real a way as Paris seems to us.

Others whose humanity is exactly equal to ours, whose capacity for feeling pain, trauma, and loss has in no way been lessened by the frequency with which it is mobilized — others with the same rights to go see a concert on a Friday night without a care in the world. These daily tragedies and crimes are just as horrific, destructive, and unacceptable — and usually afflict many more people on a much more intense rhythm — as the ones we Westerners tend to care more about.

The solution isn’t to “care less” about the Paris massacre, but rather to use those feelings as a window into what others — especially those we routinely forget to recognize or remember — feel on a routine basis. To remind ourselves that we have the privilege and luxury of forgetting about war on most days, because we’re a part of the nexus of power that inflicts violence on those parts of the world that are less familiar to us, less prone to mobilize our empathy or even our concern.

Our feelings of horror, sadness, and even trauma towards victims we instinctively recognize as our own should wake us up to our daily forgetfulness about the identical horror, mourning, and trauma that the nation-states to which we belong inflict on the Others, the Strangers, the unfamiliar Non-Us of our world.

It’s therefore not a question of Paris or Lebanon, or of not having the right to mourn Paris today if we didn’t mourn Beirut yesterday.

Instead, let our current grief over the familiar be a wake up call so that we not only remember to grieve the lives lost in unfamiliar places tomorrow, but actively work to stop our governments from inflicting them in the first place.

Who knows? Through this very struggle for a more just foreign policy, those faraway places might end up becoming just as familiar, just as close to our hearts as those Parisian streets.

*Jeanne Kay is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com

Tunisia Deserves America’s Concrete And Committed Support – OpEd

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By Anthony B. Kim and Joshua Meservey*

On November 13, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Tunisia to hold the second U.S.–Tunisia Strategic Dialogue. Following the inception of the critical dialogue between the two countries in April 2014, the second session of the dialogue is expected to focus on how to ensure Tunisia’s ongoing transition to a stable, free-market democracy. Secretary Kerry’s visit comes at an opportune moment for the United States to reassure Tunisia of its continued and even reinvigorated commitment, as well as to challenge Tunisia to take decisive action on implementing much-needed reforms.

Tunisia’s Record of Ongoing Transition

At a time when countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have descended into prolonged civil war, Tunisia is the only country in the region that has been making measurable progress toward a more open and democratic nation. In 2013, the birthplace of the Arab Spring promulgated one of the most progressive constitutions in the region after a process that was challenging but also characterized by compromise and inclusiveness. In 2014, it held successful parliamentary elections, followed a month later by the country’s first free and fair presidential elections since it achieved independence. In its latest report on political rights and civil liberties around the globe, Freedom House upgraded Tunisia to the rank of “free,” making it the only country in the MENA region to receive such a distinction besides Israel.[1]

The United States has recognized Tunisia’s importance as a democratic toehold in a fragile but vital region, and as a steadfast ally in the fight against terrorism. Since 2011, the United States has pledged nearly $700 million in aid to the country for initiatives designed to bolster its economy, civil society sector, and military.[2] Most notably, on the security front, the U.S. has designated Tunisia a Major Non-NATO ally, which not only highlights the shared value America places in its friendship with Tunisia, but also clears the way for the country to receive more military aid and other upgraded security arrangements.[3]

Challenges Confronting Tunisia

Tunisia’s deepening relationship with the United States and the halting but determined steps it has taken to develop a democratic system have attracted the notice of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). Democracy is inimical to ISIS’s aspiration to create a state ruled by a narrowly defined version of Islamic law. On March 18, 2015, two ISIS terrorists attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis, murdering 22 people, all but one of whom was a tourist. Three months later, another ISIS gunman attacked a hotel in the seaside resort town of Sousse, killing 39, most of whom were British tourists.

Nestled on the shore of the Mediterranean, Tunisia’s attractive beaches and proximity to Europe have long made it a favored tourist destination. The ISIS attacks were designed to cripple the tourism industry that was a pillar of the economy, and they succeeded. The United States, the United Kingdom, and others have issued travel warnings and tourists have stayed away, shrinking tourism revenues and boosting unemployment.

There are other components of the ISIS-related challenge for Tunisia. Despite its small size, it is the world’s largest exporter of fighters to ISIS. To its east, it is contending with one of the world’s most failed countries, Libya, that has spiraled into violent disarray and is spewing instability throughout North and sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Both the Tunis and Sousse attackers were trained in a large ISIS camp in Libya less than 30 miles from the Tunisian border.[4] The insecurity is beginning to wear on Tunisia. In July 2015, the parliament passed a counterterrorism law that rights groups have criticized as ineffective and an infringement on civil liberties.[5] Particularly worrisome is a vague definition of terrorism of the sort that other countries have used in their counterterrorism laws as a pretext to crack down on domestic political opposition.

In addition to the ailing tourism sector, other difficulties are buffeting the Tunisian economy. The youth unemployment rate is nearly 40 percent, and even higher among young women, graduates, and those from the combustible interior of the country.[6] Corruption has shackled the economy for decades and stirred anger among ordinary Tunisians cut out of the spoils system created by the elites. A recent World Bank report argues that previous estimates of corruption costing Tunisia about 2 percent of its gross domestic product per annum significantly understate the problem.[7] Cronyism is an especially damaging part of the problem, as it has produced an anti-competitive regulatory thicket that drives up consumer costs, discourages innovation, and spooks investors.

Time to Revitalize United States Engagement with Tunisia

The second U.S.–Tunisia Strategic Dialogue offers a critical opportunity for the United States to follow through on its rhetoric and demonstrate America’s renewed willingness to invest in Tunisia’s future, whose peace and prosperity dividends will also serve America’s national interest. To that end, the U.S. Administration and Congress should:

  • Ensure and accelerate the planned establishment of a Joint Economic Council (JEC). The Memorandum of Understanding, which was signed during the historic summit between President Obama and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi in May 2015, stipulates the launch of a new JEC in concert with the Strategic Dialogue to support Tunisia’s economic reform priorities and encourage private sector ties between the two countries. Without further delay, this initiative should be followed through effectively.
  • Incentivize greater trade and investment engagement with the U.S. while encouraging Tunisia to pursue greater economic freedom. Notably, Tunisia is one of the three countries in the MENA region whose economic freedom has improved every year since 2013, according to The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. A good launching pad to upgrade our current trade and investment relationship with Tunisia and forcefully encourage the country to embrace much needed structural reforms would be to initiate formal talks on a bilateral free trade agreement.

Tunisia’s Success Matters to the United States

Against all the odds, Tunisia has made measurable progress largely on its own accord. The United States should engage with Tunisia with an effective commitment for a strategic partnership that is value-driven, program-based, and result-oriented.

*About the authors:
Anthony B. Kim is Research Manager of the Index of Economic Freedom and Senior Policy Analyst for Economic Freedom in the Center for Trade and Economics, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Joshua Meservey is Policy Analyst for Africa and the Middle East in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.<

Source:
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation.

Notes:
[1] Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2015, 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.Vj0GH7erRpg (accessed November 10, 2015).

[2] Office of the Press Secretary, “Fact Sheet: Enduring U.S.-Tunisian Relations,” The White House, May 21, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/21/fact-sheet-enduring-us-tunisian-relations (accessed November 10, 2015).

[3] Office of the Spokesperson, “Designation of Tunisia as a Major Non-NATO Ally,” U.S. Department of State, July 10, 2015, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/07/244811.htm (accessed November 10, 2015).

[4] Safa Ben Said, “Libyan Army Spokesperson: Libya’s Largest ISIS Camp just 45K from Tunisia,” tunisialive.net, February 24, 2015, http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/02/24/libyan-army-spokesperson-libyas-largest-isis-camp-just-45km-from-tunisia/ (accessed November 10, 2015).

[5] Sarah Mersch, “Tunisia’s Ineffective Counterterrorism Law,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 6, 2015, http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=60958 (accessed November 10, 2015).

[6] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Investing in Youth: Tunisia: Strengthening the Employability of Youth during the Transition to a Green Economy,” 2015, http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migration-health/investing-in-youth-tunisia/youth-employment-in-tunisia_9789264226470-5-en#page5 (accessed November 10, 2015).

[7] The World Bank, “Cronyism, Economic Performance, and Unequal Opportunity,” September 2014, http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/MNA/tunisia_report/the_unfinished_revolution_eng_chap3.pdf (accessed November 10, 2015).

Spain Overtakes France As Eurozone’s Problem Child

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By Cécile Barbière*

(EurActiv) — France’s budget deficit is unlikely to fall below 3% of GDP by 2017. But the deterioration of Spain’s public finances may save Paris the worst criticisms.

Brussels will deliver its assessment of the EU members states’ budgets for 2016 on 17 November. France, which has been seen as the eurozone’s number one problem since 2014, now appears to have dropped off the Commission’s radar.

But there is no great mystery to this success story. The fact is that Brussels now has to deal with an even more hopeless case: Spain.

Under the Stability and Growth Pact, EU countries all have to respect certain budgetary rules, including keeping their budget deficits below 3% of GDP.

This is a challenge for France, which got into difficulty at the beginning of the economic crisis and has been trying to balance its books ever since.

In the Fall of 2014, the French government obtained another two-years’ grace period in which to bring its deficit back under the 3% limit. The original objective fixed for 2015 was pushed to 2017.

More budgetary slippage?

But these additional two years may not be enough. According to the European Commission’s latest economic forecast, published on 5 November, the French deficit will fall to 3.8% in 2015 and 3.4% in 2016. Progress will slow in 2017.

Although Paris predicts it will cut its deficit to 2.7% of GDP in 2017, honouring its 3% commitment, the European Commission believes the French deficit will remain relatively stable at 3.3%.

Disagreement over potential growth

These differences are partly down to the different prediction methods used by Paris and the European executive, as well as a more optimistic atmosphere in Paris. “The discussion we are having with France is that the nominal deficit objective is good, but that it will only be achieved if everything goes well,” a European source said.

The question of potential economic growth, calculated differently in Brussels and Paris, is one point of contention. Clearly France’s deficit reduction policy is based on an economic scenario that the Commission judges too high risk.

But with Paris already embroiled in an excessive deficit procedure, taking the French predictions at face value is one risk too many for the European executive.

While the French have so far been treated with a relatively light hand, any further delay in the reduction of the deficit would come with sanctions; a first for the Commission.

Along with Greece, Spain and Croatia, France is among the last countries in the eurozone to cut its budget deficit to under 3% of GDP.

Calming Spanish nerves

At the presentation of the 2016 French budget on 30 September, the French Minister of Finance, Michel Sapin was careful to stress how different this exercise was to the melodrama of the 2014 budget.

“The 2016 budget is the budget of achieved objectives and kept promises,” Sapin said.

In Spain, the situation is different. The Commission judged Madrid’s economic growth predictions of 3.3% for 2015 and 2016 to be too optimitstic.

Both Brussels and the IMF have predicted lower growth of 3.1% for 2015 and 2.7% for 2016. In this scenario, the Spanish deficit would still be at 3.6% by the end of 2016.

Whatever government emerges after the Spanish elections on 20 December will have to implement this budget.

By Cécile Barbière translated by Samuel White

Albania Warned To Take Islamist Threats Seriously

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By Fatjona Mejdini

Warnings about attacks by ISIS that were emailed to Albania’s interior minister and several media outlets should not be ignored by the Muslim-majority NATO member state, experts said.

Albanian police spokesperson Genti Mullai told media on Monday that officers are investigating people believed to have been responsible for an Islamist attack threat to Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri.

“We don’t have anyone under arrest yet, but we are interviewing people who have information about this threat and those who might be behind it,” said Mullai.

A threatening email received by Tahiri on Saturday said that “holy war has started against all those who are involved in the war against the Islamic State”.

NATO member Albania has troops serving with the coalition fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and has collaborated with foreign intelligence agencies involved in combatting ISIS.

Threats were also sent to some media after they reported on the email that was sent to the minister.

Fabian Zhilla, an organised crime researcher for the Open Society Foundation in Albania, told BIRN that the threats must be taken very seriously because ISIS has pledged to attack Muslim-majority countries that have alliances with the West.

Zhilla argued however that the Albanian state should not just impose repressive measures but take a more subtle, grassroots community approach.

“We have to have a very professional approach towards the problem and not a repressive one which can bring further damage and create stereotypes for the innocent Muslim community,” Zhilla said.

The head of the Muslim community in Tirana, Hysni Gurra, also told BIRN that Albania should take extremist threats seriously.

“We don’t have any immunity from extremist attacks, Albania has to bear this in mind,” Gurra said.

He said that the Muslim community in Albania and state institutions have been communicating more frequently recently in an attempt to avert any potential problems.

“We have kept in close communication with state structures these days in order to pass on the information we have about every radical religious place in the country and any extremist individual in Albania. It is important that we all collaborate in this difficult moment that the world is facing,” Gurra said.

In the last census in 2011, around 60 per cent of Albanians declared that they are Muslims.

Investigative articles published by BIRN Albania have found that around 90 men, women and children from Albania who went to Syria from 2012 to 2014 to join ISIS.

From 2014 onwards, the Albanian authorities have put more investment into anti-terrorist units as well as tightening up legislation.

APEC 2015 Highlights Regional Goals And Domestic Strengths – Analysis

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The Philippines will play host to the 2015 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit this week, taking on the torch passed by China, which hosted the key regional event last year. The packaging and messaging of APEC’s theme and its priorities by both China in 2014 and the Philippines this 2015 suggest an attempt to reflect their domestic agendas and leverage on their relative strengths as they advance regional goals.

Last year’s APEC theme was “Shaping the Future through Asia-Pacific Partnership,” a very resonant theme considering the flurry of regional, as well as global, initiatives being launched and led by China. China’s the BRICS Bank, “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), both nicely complemented the objectives of APEC. China had also invested strong efforts in cultivating and developing new partnerships (e.g. strategic partnerships) with many countries in the region and the world. Among the actions pledged to be undertaken during the 2014 APEC Leaders’ Declaration were the following: 1) Advancing regional economic integration; 2) Promoting innovative development, economic reform and growth; and 3) Strengthening comprehensive connectivity and infrastructure development. Under advancing regional economic integration, APEC member-economies pledged to pursue free and open trade and investment, advance global chain development and supply chain connectivity, and strengthen economic and technical cooperation among themselves.

In terms of promoting innovative development, emphasis was made on the areas of economic reform, new economy, innovative growth, inclusive support, and urbanization—areas that have also attracted the attention and resources of the Chinese leadership domestically. Deepening the economic reform and moving away from the export-led and manufacturing-driven growth model that propelled it to become the world’s second largest economy has preoccupied Chinese economic planners of late. Stimulating local consumption, support for new business platforms—such as electronic or mobile commerce—and encouraging outward investments have become the new emerging characteristics of the Chinese economy. Working with APEC can and will help China realize this.

Chinese companies are also moving up the value chain, gradually shedding the image of being exporters of inexpensive, but lackluster quality, goods. Acquiring overseas assets enabled many Chinese firms to access sophisticated technology, new managerial know-how and expertise, and penetrate new markets, all of which contribute to the growing international competitiveness of Chinese brands. Accelerating urbanization and improving urban planning and delivery of services to city residents are also key goals for the Chinese government. Furthermore, transport connectivity and infrastructure development also jive with China’s OBOR and AIIB projects. Progress on this front is already being made, such as in the case of the Thai section of the proposed Singapore-Kunming Rail Line, which, when completed, will link all the capitals of mainland Southeast Asia (except Kuala Lumpur) with the Yunnan capital. The convergence of APEC’s regional goals and China’s domestic development and foreign politico-economic policy goals is, thus, very much apparent.

Turning to the Philippines, the theme of this year’s APEC Summit to be held in Manila is “Building Inclusive Economies, Building A Better World,” a theme that suggest the satisfaction of more immediate needs without any allusion to regional leadership aspirations. Inclusiveness, here, has three levels – domestic, regional, and macro. The Philippine economy made significant gains in recent years under the Aquino Administration; however, concerns were raised about the need for these economic achievements to trickle down to those in the bottom rung of society. Hence, part of the government’s goal is to create more jobs, thus allowing for the lower and middle classes to also benefit from the improving economy. In this aspect, the lessons from the Chinese experience in uplifting millions of people out of poverty could be instructive. At the regional level, focus is given on expanding access to economic opportunities facilitating people to realize their full potentials. Finally, at the macro level, inclusive growth aims to bridge the gap between more developed and less developed APEC members in order to maximize the benefits of a more open trade and investment regime. In terms of priorities, 2015 APEC Summit aims to: 1) Invest in human capital development; 2) Foster small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) participation in regional and global markets; 3) Build sustainable and resilient communities; and 4) Enhance regional economic integration agenda. The fourth one is a clear continuation from the 2014 Summit goals.

Like the case for China’s 2014 hosting, these 2015 agenda resonates clear Philippine domestic imperatives. As a major labor exporter and with a burgeoning services sector, the Philippines is projected to work well with investments in human capital development. Encouragement and support for local SMEs is also another policy direction for the country, and working with APEC may enable Filipino SMEs to tap into a bigger regional market. Building sustainable and resilient communities reflects the country’s desire to mitigate the adverse socio-economic impacts of natural disasters, such as typhoons, that perennially hit the country. This vision is also regionally shared due to the location of various APEC members in the Cicum-Pacific Ring of Fire, a string of active volcanoes located along the Western Hemisphere, the Asia-Pacific, and the Pacific monsoon belt. Improving the ability for disaster-prone communities to recover from natural disaster setbacks will greatly help in fostering regional economic stability.

In relation to enhancing regional economic integration, the 2015 APEC Summit envisions adherence to the 1994 Bogor Goals. This goalaims for a phased establishment of a free and open trade and investment regime in the region with developed members set to opening their economies by 2010 and developing members by 2020. Trade in services, which accounts to almost half of APEC member economies’ GDP, is also a major component at the heart of the push for regional economic integration. In line with this, the Summit aims to further promote connectivity, particularly with regards to people-to-people and institutional connectivity within the region. Moreover, this year’s Summit also hopes to create stronger regional financial institutions to better respond to prospective economic shocks such as those that wreaked havoc in the region in 1997 and 2008.  Finally, it also aspires to strengthen the global supply chain and global value chains in the APEC region, another carry-over from the 2014 Summit.

Overall, there appears to be a strong sense of continuity between the past and this year’s APEC Summits. Both Summits look to continue to strengthen and advance supply chain development and regional economic integration. China and the Philippines appear to have made good use of their hosting privilege to marry their domestic agendas with that of the region and to leverage on their comparative advantages. China, for instance, being an emerging outbound infrastructure investor, stressed hard projects, such as infrastructure connectivity, among others, while the Philippines, being a major labor exporter with a vibrant services sector, emphasized soft projects, such as skills development and institutional capacity-building. Thus, despite the obvious challenges in their current bilateral relations, both countries seem to perform their obligations in advancing the common economic interests of the region.

This article was published by China-US Focus and reprinted with permission.

Americans Who Are Afraid Of Refugees – OpEd

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Those now calling for America to close its doors to Syrian refugees are not only betraying the principles upon which this country was founded, but many are also betraying the core of their own faith.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Matthew 25:35

To be afraid of Syrian refugees is like watching crowds of people fleeing from a burning building and being afraid that one among them might be an arsonist.

Fear of refugees is more than callous — it is simple cowardice.

To be afraid of refugees is to be afraid of people who are themselves living in fear because they have lost everything.

The Perils Of Circus Politics – OpEd

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The next president of the United States will confront a virulent jihadist threat, mounting effects of climate change, and an economy becoming ever more unequal.

We’re going to need an especially wise and able leader.

Yet our process for choosing that person is a circus, and several leading candidates are clowns.

How have we come to this?

First, anyone with enough ego and money can now run for president.

This wasn’t always the case. Political parties used to sift through possible candidates and winnow the field.

Now the parties play almost no role. Anyone with some very wealthy friends can set up a Super PAC. According to a recent New York Times investigation, half the money to finance the 2016 election so far has come from just 158 families.

Or if you’re a billionaire, you can finance your own campaign.

And if you’re sufficiently outlandish, outrageous, and outspoken, a lot of your publicity will be free. Since he announced his candidacy last June, Trump hasn’t spent any money at all on television advertising.

Second, candidates can now get away with saying just about anything about their qualifications or personal history, even if it’s a boldface lie.

This wasn’t always the case, either. The media used to scrutinize what candidates told the public about themselves.

A media expose could bring a candidacy to a sudden halt (as it did in 1988 for Gary Hart, who had urged reporters to follow him if they didn’t believe his claims of monogamy).

But when today’s media expose a candidates lies, there seems to be no consequence. Carson’s poll numbers didn’t budge after revelations he had made up his admission to West Point.

The media also used to evaluate candidates’ policy proposals, and those evaluations influenced voters.

Now the media’s judgments are largely shrugged off. Trump says he’d “bomb the shit” out of ISIS, round up all undocumented immigrants in the United States and send them home, and erect a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

Editors and columnists find these proposals ludicrous but that doesn’t seem to matter.

Fiorina says she’ll stop Planned Parenthood from “harvesting” the brains of fully formed fetuses. She insists she saw an undercover video of the organization about to do so.

The media haven’t found any such video but no one seems to care.

Third and finally, candidates can now use hatred and bigotry to gain support.

Years ago respected opinion leaders stood up to this sort of demagoguery and brought down the bigots.

In the 1950s, the eminent commentator Edward R. Murrow revealed Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy to be a dangerous incendiary, thereby helping put an end to McCarthy’s communist witch hunts.

In the 1960s, religious leaders and university presidents condemned Alabama Governor George C. Wallace and other segregationist zealots – thereby moving the rest of America toward integration, civil rights, and voting rights.

But when today’s presidential candidates say Muslim refugees shouldn’t be allowed into America, no Muslim should ever be president, and undocumented workers from Mexico are murderers, they get away with it.

Paradoxically, at a time when the stakes are especially high for who becomes the next president, we have a free-for-all politics in which anyone can become a candidate, put together as much funding as they need, claim anything about themselves no matter how truthful, advance any proposal no matter how absurd, and get away bigotry without being held accountable.

Why? Americans have stopped trusting the mediating institutions that used to filter and scrutinize potential leaders on behalf of the rest of us.

Political parties are now widely disdained.

Many Americans now consider the “mainstream media” biased.

And no opinion leader any longer commands enough broad-based respect to influence a majority of the public.

A growing number of Americans have become convinced the entire system is rigged – including the major parties, the media, and anyone honored by the establishment.

So now it’s just the candidates and the public, without anything in between.

Which means electoral success depends mainly on showmanship and self-promotion.

Telling the truth and advancing sound policies are less important than trending on social media.

Being reasonable is less useful than gaining attention.

Offering rational argument is less advantageous than racking up ratings.

Such circus politics may be fun to watch, but it’s profoundly dangerous for America and the world.

We might, after all, elect one of the clowns.


The Paris Aftermath: Global Manhunts; Halting Refugees – OpEd

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Yesterday morning, the CNN network is scrolling features about a “global manhunt” for those said to have been involved in the Paris attacks on Friday. Attackers are “at large”. The imaginary of global terror feasts yet again on the body of reason. But what should also be featured is a calming campaign against what is becoming a virulent assault on certain vulnerable persons. They did not dictate the narrative of Paris, but they are becoming its victims.

Where there are flows of people, there will always be suggestions of impropriety and poor character. The legitimate asylum seeker is stalked by suggestions that he or she takes the seed of tyranny, or criminality, with them. Australia’s Howard government throughout the 1990s and the first decade of 2000 made a long sport of it, arguing that refugees who sewed their lips up in protest were morally deficient, and dangerous to that unspecified concept called the Australian character.

At every given opportunity, statements were made to harden the Australian populace against these purported charlatans who were attempting to cash in on generous spirit in the antipodes. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s office was stern about strategy towards those intercepted at sea, notably on the injunction against humanising the refugees.

Images of children being thrown overboard by desperate parents were manipulated. “I can’t comprehend,” feigned Howard in 2001, “how genuine refugees would throw their children overboard.” Such a poison still lingers in the Australian body politic.

It is axiomatic that amidst tens of thousands of people, an enterprising bad egg, or moulding apple, will be found. Amongst the concentration camp survivors liberated as the Second World War neared its conclusion, the vigilant guards, sensing an opportunity, attempted to disappear into the crowd. Such an argument was never one to be used against liberating the survivors, let alone allowing refugees in. Nazis and Nazi collaborators did become migrants, as did genuine displaced persons.

It is that sort of argument, at least in some form, that is being used in attempting to further halt the refugee arrivals in Europe. It patterns all too neatly with the paranoid world view of former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who warned in the second Margaret Thatcher lecture at Guildhall that Europe, in embracing a “love your neighbour” policy was slipping into “catastrophic error”.

The Australian experience proves that the only way to dissuade people seeking to come from afar is not to let them in.” Turn them back, he was suggesting. Cut off arrival points. Close borders. Extend the gulag. The conservative Spectator magazine cheered in Thatcherite approval.

The challenge is proving most pressing being in such countries as Germany, which is becoming the “shock absorber” of Europe for those seeking refuge. There are broader matters at play as to why such large numbers are being accepted, not least an economic rationale fronted by German industry.

A bleaker social and security picture, however, is being pushed home by nervous sceptics, not least of all from the governing parties themselves. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian allies are seething, and the immediate aftermath of the attacks in Paris prompted sharp remarks by some members.

The point of contention here was the holder of a Syrian passport found near the body of one of the assailants who perished in the Friday night attacks. He had passed through Greece in October, according to Greek authorities. Not in itself conclusive of anything, but it was enough to link free movement with ISIS penetration even before responsibility was ascertained. It was enough to suggest that open borders constituted open invitations to spread mayhem in Europe.

Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder provided his few Euros worth on the topic: “The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry,” he told Welt am Sonntag, “can’t continue just like that. Paris changes everything.” Such dangerous nonsense slams the door on legitimate attempts to flee oppressive regimes, shifting the focus back on concepts of illegal entry. We cannot trust them, these strange creatures who do not abide by the protocols of processing.

Soeder had inspiration from Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union (CSU), who has called for a border clamp down. Soeder has, in turn, been listening to the railing statements of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has told Merkel in no uncertain terms that there should be no “moral imperialism” at play here.

Orbán has seen his moment underscored in the Paris attacks. Blood has nourished his pan-European Christian rhetoric, a point he managed to put forth in his parliamentary address in Budapest titled “Attack on Europe.” Some of his initial words suggested that he would, in fact, draw a line between desperate refugee and opportunistic terrorist. “In a deliberate and organised way, terrorists have exploited mass migration by mingling in the mass of people leaving their hopes of a better life.”

Then, a truer picture emerges, one that has little to do with compassion, and everything to do with the orthodox righteousness of the nation state. “The right to self-defence is stronger than any other, we should not put European lives at risk on the basis of any kind of ideology or economic arguments.” Except, of course, the ideology of unquestioned sovereignty itself.

This then paved the way for Orbán to strike at apologists and the compassion brigade, a feint suggestion that they had collaborated in the project of undermining European security. “Those who said yes to immigration, who transported immigrations from warzones, those people did not do everything for the defence of European people.”

The dog whistling then became vehement. “We don’t think that everyone is a terrorist but no one can say how many terrorists have arrived already, how many are coming day by day.” Liberal Europe, deemed deluded in its compassion, under assault, and gradually giving way at the seams.

The Nuclear Deal And Militarisation Of The Middle East – OpEd

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Support from the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries for the nuclear deal with Iran was attained with promises of substantial increases in arms sales and intelligence sharing, thereby further destabilising the Middle East.

By Anulekha Nandi*

The nuclear deal with Iran required an inevitable balancing of power in the Middle East. The US could not risk antagonizing their long standing allies, especially Saudi Arabia, the regional hegemon. The support of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries was also required to subvert domestic arguments in the US that such a deal would alienate US allies in the region and undermine US strategic interests. Thus, support was attained with promises of substantial increases in arms sales and intelligence sharing, along with other military assistance in the form of special forces training and exercises, cyber-security and maritime interdiction. Egypt also expressed its support for the deal after the delivery of eight F-16 fighter planes.

The increased armed sales to the GCC countries is meant to act as a deterrent to an ascendant Iran unfettered by the mobilisation of frozen assets, lifting of sanctions and fuel revenues. However, arms sales as a strategic tool has been one of the oldest political manoeuvres used by the US to protect its interests in the region; balancing power and improving its balance of payment against oil purchases. Fatigued by the Vietnam War and in-line with the Nixon Doctrine, arms sales and military support also offered a viable way to secure vital strategic US interests in the Middle East through the development of proxies which were to remain dependent on the US for technology and operational knowledge. Such factors in tandem spurred the exponential weapons proliferation in the region and continue to influence trends to this day.

Iran before the revolution was a part of the US twin pillar policy in the Middle East; the other being Saudi Arabia. The transfer of F-4 Phantom fighter bombers to Iran prompted a Saudi request for advanced military capabilities in 1977. However, the deal with Saudi Arabia only materialised with the coming of the Reagan administration. President Ronald Reagan sidestepped Congressional opposition, which had blocked the deal during the Carter administration, to promise the sale of advance military equipment to Saudi Arabia in 1981. The agreement saw the sale of five Advance Warning and Control Systems (AWACS aircraft) but also 1,177 advanced Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, six KC-135 aerial re-fuelling aircraft, and conformal fuel tanks to enhance the range of about 60 F-15 fighters sold in 1978 – for a total value of $8.5 billion.

The sale was advanced on the rhetoric of ‘serious deterioration’ in US strategic interests in the Middle East with the fall of the Shah and the forfeiture of ‘all credibility’ in the region should Congress block it. The AWACs and the F-15 were then some of the most sophisticated weapons systems; F-15 models continue to be used with upgrades and advancements. It is to be noted that the Shah of Iran’s requisition for the F-15s was against policies of the US Department of Defence and was never fulfilled. However, the Saudi Arabian arms deal required the sale of F-15s to Israel, along with a reversal of the ban on Israel’s export of its Kfir jet fighters – manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) – to other third world countries.

Though the US has been the major arms supplier to the region, political considerations have sometimes allowed other states to enter the lucrative market. Two episodes are of note here. In 1965 the UK transferred arms to Saudi Arabia which was bolstering the Royalists, after the fall of the imamate in Yemen in 1962, against the Egyptian-backed Republican forces that created the Yemen Arab Republic. Subsequently, when AIPAC or the Israel lobby succeeded in blocking the sale of 48 additional F-15s to Saudi Arabia in the eighties, it acquired 50 Tornado fighter-bombers, 60 Hawk jet trainer aircraft, 80 Wetland Blackhawk helicopters, and six mine sweepers in an historic arms deal with the UK. The deal however proved counter-productive to the entire political exercise undertaken by the AIPAC because of the Tornado’s offensive capabilities compared to F-15’s primarily defensive ones.

In the last ten years the region has seen a 56% rise in arms spending, with Iraq showing the biggest rise in spending of 26%. Saudi Arabia continues to be the region’s largest arms buyer and now the fourth largest in the world. Arms supply in the Middle East still continues to be funneled down a vortex of economic, political and strategic interests. However, weak or failed states and a tangible rise in radical militancy, taking advantage of power vacuums and threatening security, has intensified the region’s armed race. When combined with the idea of Iran –  which has already been influencing regional politics as a formidable pole of power even under sanctions, an arms embargo and lack of sophisticated weapons technology – becoming active in the region armed with advanced military capability, it heightens the insecurity of the Gulf states.

Despite advanced weapons proliferation in the region, the purchasing countries, with the exception of Israel, lack the operational knowledge and trained manpower to use advanced weaponry. This makes the countries beholden to foreign military contractors. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel realised its military dependence on the US can restrict it politically and strategically, it created its own research and development and weapons production systems which over the years made it the most militarised country in the world. Israel ranks No. 1 on the Global Militarisation Index 2014. Low wages and low cost of research led to licensing agreements with Western arms manufacturers and co-productions agreements with the US. It also became one of the leading arms exporters in the world, often supplying arms to regimes the US would rather not deal with directly; it also facilitated the Iran-Contra affair.

Arms supplies to the region also facilitates the operation of US bases, which reduces response time whenever US strategic interests are at stake. Arms supply to many countries in the Middle East is also enable and ensure the operation of its bases at strategic locations such as Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain are among the 10 most militarised countries in the region. The military expenditure rating of Oman (5.5) outstrips that of even Saudi Arabia (5.3) and Israel (4.9). Bahrain and Kuwait with ratings of 4.8 each are not too far behind.

However, at present the region’s militarisation cannot be measured by state militarisation alone as it ignores the heavy arms build-up of militant non-state actors like ISIS and other militia and extremist groups. Though their weaponry is not comparable to the State’s in terms of sophistication, they yield sufficient advantage in asymmetric warfare, as proven by the ISIS advances and successes in Iraq. Moreover, unsecured weapons barracks containing advanced heavy weaponry pose a great risk when groups such as ISIS manage to seize weapons when raiding areas in Iraq. Libya also saw the looting of state arsenal by militia in the midst of a political vacuum after the fall of Ghadaffi. It is unrealistic to expect the region’s arms build-up to decline, but it not unreasonable to expect that the arsenals being built are better secured and stacked with weapons that provide a tactical advantage in the asymmetric and unconventional warfare that is becoming the norm in the region.

Anulekha Nandi recently concluded a Research Internship with the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, Calcutta University, India and is currently pursuing a MSc in Media, Communication and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research is into the ever changing dynamics of the theatre of war, conflict, and intelligence studies.

Kenya’s Somali North East: Devolution And Security – Analysis

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Devolved government in Kenya’s newly formed north-eastern counties, designed to address decades of political marginalisation and underdevelopment, has been undermined by dominant clans monopolising power and growing corruption.

Violent clan competition and antipathy between elected county elites and the remaining national administrative structures have allowed the violently extremist Al-Shabaab movement to expand and operate with relative impunity across large areas of the North East. Its attacks exposed security-service disarray and caused a sharp reversal of already stretched state services in this vast and poor region that shares a porous 680km border with Somalia. To end the violence and capitalise on devolution’s potential, county elites must be more inclusive of minorities, cooperate across local boundaries for inter-county peace and recognise the continued role for neutral national institutions. National government should recognise where pragmatism can trump convention and back new security approaches that combine national and county responses.

Rampant criminality, inter-clan animosities and small-arms proliferation stretch policing and render highly insecure the sprawling refugee camps that host more than 350,000 Somali nationals fleeing the conflict in their country. This is compounded by Al-Shabaab infiltration, radicalisation and recruitment – especially in a borderland region where the inhabitants’ national identity is historically contested and suspect. As relations between the refugees and their Kenyan Somali host communities fray, demands for the camps’ closure are becoming more strident.

After lengthy bureaucratic infighting and knee-jerk initiatives that smacked of political score-settling and risked alienating many Kenyan Somalis, a new security approach is finally in place, led by senior national security officers who vitally have local roots (ie, Somali heritage) but are directly accountable to the national executive. This has temporarily helped bridge a breakdown in cooperation, especially in local intelligence-sharing, between county commissioners appointed by the president and newly-elected county governments that resented their security oversight. Whether this approach is applicable to other insecure areas with historically-strained relations with the centre is yet to be seen.

A purely security-focused approach, however innovative, is in any event not a panacea. The new devolved county governments must share responsibility for chronic insecurity instead of continually deflecting blame to the centre. Most importantly, the inclination, with some notable exceptions, for a winner-takes-all approach to county politics will only generate further insecurity, as will the deepening problem of graft. With the second “devolved” elections in 2017 promising to be even more competitive than those in 2013, consensus on minimum provisions for cross-clan inclusion is needed now.

New county elites underutilise existing peace-making structures (“local peace committees”, community-based organisations and clerics) and prefer “county-owned” forums dependent on – often compromised – clan elders, while keeping the national government and its good offices at a distance and ignoring or sidelining women and youth networks. The government should establish an independent commission of national and local experts to offer solutions on the contentious issues at the core of the inter-clan frictions, such as borders, land, wells and justice and restitution for losses.

Finally, the national and county governments urgently need to reestablish social services (especially health and education) at the same time as they strengthen the security sector. Education can help reduce poverty, promote integration among ethnic and religious groups and fight extremism; and, at least in the medium term, more resources should be allocated to lift its standards. Donors, multilateral and bilateral alike, have clear incentives to give developmental aid that supports successful devolution and enhances Kenyan and regional security.

To read the full report click here (PDF)

NASA Measures India’s Deadly Flooding Rains

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During the past week extreme rainfall from two slow moving tropical low pressure areas caused severe flooding in southeastern India. One of the lows, designated System 97B continued to linger along the southeastern Indian coast on November 17. As System 97B and another low pressure area dropped heavy rainfall, NASA and partners around the world gathered data using an array of satellites.

The flooding has caused as many as 70 reported deaths. The city of Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu were hit exceptionally hard, as 59 people were reported killed there.

NASA’s Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) combines all data from 12 satellites into a global map of rainfall at half hourly intervals. The rainfall accumulation analysis above was computed from data generated by IMERG during the past week from Nov. 9 to 16, 2015. An analysis of those data indicates that during the past week up to 550 mm (21.7 inches) of rain drenched India’s southeastern coast in the state of Tamil Nadu. Rainfall totals of over 200 mm (7.9 inches) were measured in large areas of southeastern India and northern Sri Lanka.

The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) creates a merged precipitation product from the GPM constellation of satellites. These satellites include: DMSP (Defense Mapping Satellite Program) satellites from the U.S. Department of Defense, GCOM-W from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Megha-Tropiques from the Centre National D’etudies Spatiales (CNES) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), NOAA series from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Suomi-NPP from NOAA-NASA, and MetOps from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). All of the instruments (radiometers) onboard the constellation partners are inter-calibrated with information from the GPM Core Observatory’s GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR).

On Nov. 16 at 1800 UTC (1 p.m. EST) System 97B was located just 55 nautical miles east of Chennai, India. It was centered near 13.2 degrees north latitude and 81.1 degrees east longitude.

On Nov. 17 at 7:32 UTC (2:32 a.m. EST) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of System 97B. The storm stretched over southwestern Bay of Bengal near and the northern coast of Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh coast. The VIIRS image showed bands of thunderstorms wrapping from the northern quadrant into the southwestern quadrant. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that computer models show that System 97B is expected to move in a northerly direction. Maximum sustained winds are estimated between 20 and 25 knots (23 to 28.7 mph/37 to 46.3 kph), and System 97B has a minimum central pressure near 1004 millibars.

The low pressure area continued to generate heavy rain in Tamil Nadu and at isolated places over south coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Managing The Data Deluge For National Security Analysts

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After a disaster or national tragedy, bits of information often are found afterward among vast amounts of available data that might have mitigated or even prevented what happened, had they been recognized ahead of time.

In this information age, national security analysts often find themselves searching for a needle in a haystack. The available data is growing much faster than analysts’ ability to observe and process it. Sometimes they can’t make key connections and often they are overwhelmed struggling to use data for predictions and forensics.

Sandia National Laboratories’ Pattern Analytics to Support High-Performance Exploitation and Reasoning (PANTHER) team has made a number of breakthroughs that could help solve these problems. They’re developing solutions that will enable analysts to work smarter, faster and more effectively when looking at huge, complex amounts of data in real-time, stressful environments where the consequences might be life or death.

PANTHER’s accomplishments include rethinking how to compare motion and trajectories; developing software that can represent remote sensor images, couple them with additional information and present them in a searchable form; and conducting fundamental research on visual cognition, said Kristina Czuchlewski, PANTHER’s principal investigator and manager of Sandia’s Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems Engineering and Decision Support.

The PANTHER team looked at raw data and ways to pre-process and analyze it to make it searchable and more meaningful. The project’s fundamental research in cognitive science will inform the design of software and tools to help those viewing the data and make information of interest or trends easier to uncover.

PANTHER, which was funded by Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research & Development program, is gleaning deeper insights from complex data sets in minutes instead of months, and covering hundreds of square miles instead of dozens.

“PANTHER developed the foundation for transforming how massive, complex data sets can be quickly analyzed to provide the nation’s decision-makers with new perspectives on situations and circumstances,” said Anthony Medina, director of Sandia’s Radio Frequency & Electronic Systems Center. “If an analyst is collecting information on a specific location over time and learns that something of interest might be occurring there, they probably don’t have the tools they need to quickly gather and analyze information from all relevant data sets that might corroborate the forecast. But PANTHER is probably the nation’s best bet right now to get to that point quickly.”

Tracktable code automates observation of motion, trajectories

Mark Rintoul, a Sandia data scientist, developed the Tracktable code along with Sandia researcher Andy Wilson and others to automate the observation of motion and trajectories. The code could be applied to any problem that involves movement, such as airliners, ships or people.

Current approaches to getting meaningful information from trajectories focus on comparing one trajectory to another. If you have millions of trajectories to consider, that could mean trillions of comparisons, which takes a lot of time and computer power, Rintoul said.

“We’ve developed a way to store and represent trajectories so that computers can compare them all at once in a very fast and effective manner,” he said. Instead of trillions of comparisons, the software does the same job in millions of comparisons, which is manageable.

An analyst concerned about the number of airliners stuck in holding patterns could ask Tracktable about aircraft trajectories that made a certain pattern of turns. Tracktable then calculates geometric features, such as the number of 90-degree turns an aircraft flew or the length of a straight line. By associating a type of motion with these features and assigning a number to each feature, the computer can quickly group flights that behave in similar ways and show them to the viewer for interpretation.

“If you have millions and you’re not interested in precise comparisons, but general groupings of them, this is very effective,” Rintoul said.

PANTHER also examined the predictive capability of the information buried in data. If an analyst looks at the first half of a flight, considers historical data about similar flight paths and then looks at the second half of the flight, any deviation from the pattern might cue an analyst to take a closer look. Finding that outlier from millions of flights that have flown before takes about a second with Tracktable, Rintoul said. The analyst is alerted because PANTHER team members are using the advances in cognitive science to design visual results that will highlight the odd behavior of the single aircraft. By studying how analysts use visual data, Sandia researchers are figuring out ways to make an outlier pop out of a screen full of detail to demand an analyst’s attention.

The team is now looking at integrating motion and trajectories into a system called GeoGraphy.

GeoGraphy helps analysts search for items of interest, shows changes over time

GeoGraphy, initially funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, is a software system that converts remote sensing images expressed in pixels into nodes and edges in a graph to show changes over time and make the data searchable, said Randy Brost, a Sandia computer scientist who led the team that developed the software. Nodes are analogous to the beige hubs in Tinkertoys, while edges are the colored connecting rods.

GeoGraphy breaks the images into categories, such as buildings, trees or rivers. This pre-processing creates a graphic resembling a complex paint-by-number that shows the categories of everything in the image. The program uses nodes and edges to describe relationships between objects, such as distance or time, Brost and Czuchlewski said.

In addition to the imagery, the software package could include such information as phone books or county records, producing a single searchable database of all the information that shows what’s changed over time.

For example, to find a high school, the analyst tells the program to search for large buildings near regions that look like parking lots, football fields and tennis courts and defines those items. The analyst then can choose from among the results the computer provides.

The system is hierarchical, so once analysts identify high schools, they can ask the program to find high schools the next time without describing them. And should they doubt that something is a high school, the software makes the raw data available so they can verify the results, Brost said.

“The purpose of these codes — GeoGraphy and Tracktable — is to assist humans, not to replace them or to automatically do their jobs. It’s to enhance their ability to do their jobs well and to allow them to be more effective in dealing with large sets of evidence,” Brost said. “In the end, basically they are suggestion systems that say, ‘Hey, based on what you told me you’re interested in, you ought to look here, here and here.'”

The PANTHER team also included researchers focused on enhancing the viewer experience. Researcher Laura Matzen and others are conducting cognitive science experiments to learn how analysts’ expertise affects their visual cognition and to create a model of how top-down visual attention — when a user approaches an image with a goal in mind — works. The researchers hope to use the answers they find to such fundamental cognitive science questions to inform the design of new tools that will improve interactions between humans and computers, Matzen said.

The prototype products and ideas developed under PANTHER are ready for the next step in their development: to be tested in real-world environments, Czuchlewski said.

Sandia researchers have proposed research into new problems illuminated by PANTHER, while other agencies are solidifying the foundation PANTHER has developed. Other projects will use PANTHER’s ideas to address real-world problems, the researchers said.

“We went into PANTHER thinking we were going to do one thing, we’re going to improve the lives of image analysts,” Czuchlewski said. “And, in the research process, we did a whole lot more.”

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