By Brian Saady*

Even if the drug war were to end today, there would still be street crime in Mexico. However, these issues would be on a dramatically smaller scale. Mexico’s street gangs could never ascend to the level of an organized crime outfit without the massive profits from illegal drugs to pay for the necessary weaponry, hitmen, political protection, etc.

By the same token, black-market drug money evokes a vicious cycle of rampant criminality that goes far beyond drug trafficking. In other words, Mexico’s cartels are diversified criminal organizations that don’t limit themselves to drug smuggling.

Petroleum theft is a major problem in several countries benefiting crime and terrorist organizations, particularly ISIS. This crime has also rapidly expanded into the most lucrative non-drug-related illegal racket in Mexico. Fuel thieves or “huachicoleros” tap into pipelines and then sell the fuel at highly discounted rates in the black market.

Much of this fuel is sold on the backs of trucks in small water jugs. A large portion is also sold to directly to gas station owners. This has always been a problem for the Mexican government, but it used to be on a much smaller scale. However, this illegal activity has increased by over 2,000% in the last ten years after the cartels became the primary participants. Most huachicoleros are either working directly for the cartels or independently while paying extortion fees.

Every day, roughly 20,000 barrels are stolen from Mexico’s state-owned oil company, PEMEX. This crime resulted in $1.5 billion in losses for the company last year, a sizeable blow to public funding. Fuel theft occurs in various parts of the country, but an area with numerous pipelines known as the “Red Triangle” is where most of this crime occurs. The Red Triangle is in the state of Puebla, which hadn’t historically been a hotbed of cartel activity until this black market expanded. Now, cartel violence is on the rise even though this area is not a focal point for drug trafficking.

A few cartels are competing for control of this flourishing illegal trade, i.e. Los Zetas, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel. Los Zetas is the leading crime group with roughly 40% of the illegal market share. In fact, an ally of Los Zetas, the Meza Flores drug gang, once owned a major gasoline distribution company that received government contracts. Therefore, it appears that Los Zetas actually double-dipped with their criminal endeavors by developing a sophisticated money laundering network that actually sold stolen fuel back to the government.

In response to the fuel theft crisis, approximately 2,000 troops from the Mexican military have been deployed in key regions. Their presence hasn’t decreased the number of barrels stolen, but it has led to several armed conflicts with the huachicoleros. While the Mexican government dedicates massive resources to protect its oil reserves, the average Mexican citizen has to fend for themselves against the terror inflicted by the cartels.

After battling to establish territory, several cartels view many other crimes as the spoils of war, such as rape, murder-for-hire, robbery, extortion, kidnapping, etc. Arguably no cartel terrorizes the residents of its territory more than Los Zetas. The DEA once described them as “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and violent” cartel.

This cartel has a militaristic culture and structure. In fact, it was the first cartel to consistently recruit former members of the military and that has to do with the roots of the organization. Most of the original Zetas had been part of an elite Mexican special forces unit, GAFE, which was known for committing mass atrocities against citizens in their own country.

Ironically, the formation of Los Zetas came about indirectly from America’s intervention in the drug war. The first members of Los Zetas created their organization not long after receiving counternarcotics training in Fort Benning, GA. The training was through the infamous School of the Americas program, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Los Zetas began in 1997 as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel. However, the group branched out on their own and rival cartels took note of their modus operandi. Los Zetas raised the bar for the requisite standard of violence that is necessary to protect a cartel’s business model. Eventually, all major cartels began hiring former government-trained killers.

As a result, warfare has been unleashed upon the citizens of Mexico. ProPublica published a heartbreaking piece, “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,” which fully demonstrated the savagery of this cartel. Back in March of 2011, the DEA notified Mexican government officials about a criminal informant connected with Los Zetas and that information was subsequently leaked to the cartel.

In response, Los Zetas rampaged upon the rural city of Allende searching for this person. Entire homes were reduced to rubble and they killed an unknown number of people with estimates ranging from 60 to 300, including women and children. Despite being bombarded with 911 calls, no one from the government came to the rescue. Even in the aftermath of such a tragedy, the state’s governor, Rubén Moreira, conducted a tepid investigation that has yet to produce a single murder charge.

Two months later, Los Zetas committed a similar atrocity in northern Guatemala. There were 27 deaths in what was the worst massacre to occur in their country since its 36-year civil war ended in 1996. (Over 200,000 people died during that period in Guatemala with 93% of human rights abuses attributed to U.S.-backed government or paramilitary forces.)

One by one, this group of 27 unarmed, peasant farmers were tortured and murdered. Twenty-five of the victims were beheaded. These people were day laborers who had no involvement in drug trafficking. Unfortunately, they worked on a cattle ranch owned by Otto Salguero, who Los Zetas say had stolen a large shipment of cocaine.

One of the leaders of this massacre, Hugo Álvaro Gómez Vásquez, is a Guatemalan national. In fact, he had been part of a notorious U.S. trained special forces group in Guatemala, Kaibiles, which was known for committing numerous war crimes.

Gómez Vásquez was one of several former Kaibiles whom Los Zetas successfully recruited. As a result of this strategy, the cartel began expanding their territory into Guatemala in the early 2000s and eventually eliminated one of the country’s top drug trafficking organizations, Los Leones. Los Zetas power grab was significant enough that they actually made credible death threats in 2009 to then-President Alvaro Colom.

Back home in Mexico, the fact that members of Los Zetas have operated with such impunity has enabled their extortion business to flourish. As a result, Tamaulipas is the kidnapping capital of the country. However, the cartel is involved in this crime across the country. After failing to make “quota” payments, the cartel once set a casino fire in Monterrey that killed 52 people. Afterward, the former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón publicly criticized the U.S. government for not reducing the demand for drugs that is driving this terrorism.

Another extortion-related massacre was covered in the American press this year. Twelve people were wounded and five people were killed, including one American college student, at a nightclub shooting in January. Members of Los Zetas were responsible for this tragedy in touristy Playa Del Carmen. Afterward, the club owner acknowledged that he had refused to pay Los Zetas because he had already given extortion money to the Gulf Cartel and Los Pelones.

All of Mexico’s cartels profit from extortion, some more than others. This vicious crime is particularly visible in Acapulco, which has had Mexico’s highest murder rate for the last two years. Consequently, tourism has declined tremendously in this Pacific resort city that used to be a magnet for A-list celebrities. And, this violence isn’t entirely mutual combat among gangsters as an estimated 150 business owners have been killed in Acapulco since January of 2016.

Make no mistake, extortion isn’t a crime that only the wealthy have to deal with. Practically every profession, from taco vendors to poor farmers, are victims of this crime. In particular, union-controlled, working-class jobs, such as cab drivers and teachers, have been heavily infiltrated by organized crime. The threat has been so severe that 140 schools in Acapulco were once closed due to extortion and kidnapping threats.

Essentially, no one is immune from this exploitation in a cartel-dominated region. As a matter of fact, the Catholic Media Center conducted a poll and found that more than 1,000 priests had been victims of cartel extortion.

One of the most horrific revelations about this type of crime came about when a mass grave of 193 bodies was discovered in 2011 in San Fernando. The victims were migrants from Central America who were en route to the U.S. Alarmingly, these people were delivered to Los Zetas by the local police. Ultimately, the cartel killed whoever couldn’t pay the ransom or refused to work as a drug mule. Notably, another mass grave of 72 migrants, in connection with Los Zetas, was also discovered in San Fernando one year earlier.

Stories like those explain why most victims of extortion don’t bother to report these crimes to the police. After all, many police officers are on the cartels’ payroll, either as informants or in some cases actively participating in organized crime. As a result, Mexico is in a position where the rule of law truly doesn’t exist. If that sounds inflammatory, take note of a study conducted by the Monterrey Institute of Technology. It found that 98.5% of all crime in Mexico in 2010 went unpunished. 

About the author:
*Brian Saady is the author of The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game. His three-book series, Rackets, is about the legalization of drugs and gambling, and the decriminalization of prostitution. You can follow him on Twitter @briansaady.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Last week we learned the Hillary’s law firm, Pekins Coie, was paid a total of roughly $12 million in fees by Hillary’s campaign and the DNC. And while Hillary’s General Counsel, Marc Elias, admitted that some portion of that $12 million went to fund the now infamous Trump Dossier, what we didn’t know, until now, was precisely how much.

Now, according to Reuters, we learn that a total of just over $1 million was paid to Fusion GPS for their “opposition research,” of which $168,000 was sent to British spy Christpher Steele.

A Washington research firm paid a former British spy’s company $168,000 for work on a dossier outlining Russian financial and personal links to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, the U.S. firm said in a statement on Wednesday.

Although it was public knowledge that Fusion GPS paid for the work, the amount had not been disclosed. Fusion GPS hired former MI6 officer Christopher Steele to collect information about Trump and his advisers.

Fusion GPS’ statement said it had told Congress about how $168,000 was paid last year to Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele’s company.

The money paid to Orbis was taken from $1.02 million it received in fees and expenses from the Perkins Coie law firm, the statement said. The law firm represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, although initial research by Fusion into Trump and other Republican primary candidates was commissioned by a conservative website.

Of course, while this incremental information is interesting, the far more important question is how much of the $1.02 million made it’s way into the hand of various Russian operatives on which Steele admittedly relied to collect facts for his salacious report?

As we’ve noted before, most of the sources listed in the dossier were based in Russia and include a “senior Kremlin official” as well as other “close associates of Vladimir Putin.” Moreover, as CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell noted recently, it’s highly likely that some portion of the funds paid to Perkins Coie by the DNC and Hillary campaign made it’s way into the pockets of those “senior Kremlin officials” as compensation for their services.

By Edward Lemon

It is a common assumption that the Bolsheviks, after consolidating their hold on power, sought to destroy Islam in Central Asia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. But Islam during the Soviet era was not so much eradicated as it was institutionalized and rendered subordinate to the state.

The first decades of Soviet rule were indeed harsh ones for the faithful in Central Asia. Soviet authorities carried out a far-reaching campaign in the late 1920s, dubbed the hujum, which sought to overhaul the traditional way of life, focusing on the de-veiling of women and the closure of mosques.

Soviet attitudes toward Islam started shifting in the 1940s. At the height of World War II, in 1943, the Soviet government authorized the establishment of SADUM, the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The hajj was legalized in 1945. And one of Central Asia’s most important seats of Islamic learning, the Mir-i-Arab madrassa in Bukhara, reopened in 1946.

Under SADUM, religion was tightly controlled; SADUM appointed clerics, published books and organized international conferences to showcase the region as a model for the compatibility of socialism and Islam.

Only a certain form of Islam was deemed compatible with socialism. This “good” Islam was represented by the state-appointed clergy and did not require Muslims to practice religion, or even believe in God. As Adeeb Khalid has persuasively argued, Soviet officials promoted Islam as part of Central Asia’s national heritage, a way of distinguishing locals from outsiders, yet framed religion in a manner that did not counterpose it against the interests of the Soviet system.

Conversely, “bad” Islam was characterized as being implacably opposed to the secular Soviet order – dogmatic by nature and used by individuals to trick uneducated citizens into abandoning their ideals. It was likewise seen as operating in spaces beyond the gaze of officials, especially in “underground” mosques often housed in local teahouses or on collective farms. For the Soviets, Islam tended to be seen as a dangerous social force, and a threat to their power. Thus, it was something that needed to be closely managed.

This bifurcated view of Islam persists today among many members of government across the region, even 26 year after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Contemporary state policies towards Islam more closely resemble late Soviet practices, than post-Stalin era policies resembled pre-war Soviet ones.

Two incidents in Tajikistan, separated in time by almost 30 years, highlight this reality.

The first involved 73-year-old Kurbon Mannonov, a representative of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan in the town of Nurek, who was arrested in the summer of 2015 along with a dozen other local men. A 13-minute video produced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs accused Mannonov of “illegally spreading religious ideas” and “attempting to establish an Islamic State” through his clandestine activities in Tajikistan.

The second occurred back in 1986, when Soviet authorities detained Abdullo Saidov, a driver at the Kurgan-Tyube Equipment Inventory-Taking Bureau. Saidov was among 40 individuals arrested for allegedly spreading “religious propaganda.” According to authorities, Saidov’s crime was essentially telling people to stop watching television and to ignore secular holidays; “step by step he slipped into antisocial positions and became socially dangerous.” Saidov would later rename himself Said Abdullo Nuri and go on to become a founder of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan in 1990.

Like authorities during the late Soviet era, officials in Central Asia today tend to view Islam through the lens of security. While state-sanctioned Islam is a source of legitimacy for Central Asia’s autocrats, unmanaged Islam poses a potential threat to stability.

Of course, Central Asian leaders today like to have it both ways when it comes to religion. When independent states emerged in Central Asia in 1991, the leaders sought to enhance their stature among their respective populations by being quick to highlight their Islamic identity.

Uzbekistan’s long-time leader Islam Karimov swore his presidential oath on the Koran in 1992. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov made the hajj to Mecca the same year. All of the republics guaranteed freedom of religion in their constitution. Mosques reopened. Links with the rest of the Islamic world were re-established. Students began studying in madrassas in other parts of the Muslim world, and missionaries arrived to spread awareness of Islam.

But despite this change in form, the substance of post-independence state narratives on Islam continues to echo the practices and attitudes of the late-Soviet era. Secularized officials and members of well-educated elites tend to see it as backwards and antithetical to social progress. According to one Tajik state-employed journalist, while “knowledgeable and well-educated people are making progress in the fields of nanotechnology and astrophysics, mullahs are talking about the length of beards, and the space between people’s feet while they pray.”

Where state-sanctioned Islam forms a part of national identity, practices that fall beyond its reach are often deemed “foreign.” State officials in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have warned against “foreign influences,” including women wearing hijabs and men wearing beards, arguing that it leads people to terrorism. Interestingly, the national clothing that they promote in its stead was codified during the Soviet Union.

And as was the case during the Soviet era, “underground” movements, operating beyond state control, are of particular concern for authorities. Although scholars who have conducted research on radicalization in Central Asia have pointed to the ambiguous role religion seems to have played in the lives of terrorists from the region, governments continue to argue that unmonitored Islamization leads to radicalization. Authorities are quick to blame most security incidents in the region on “Islamic extremism,” often presenting flimsy evidence to substantiate these claims.

State management of religion now, as in the Soviet Union, is assertively secular; the state tightly controls religion and largely tries to remove it from the public sphere. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, each Central Asian state created institutions to replace the function of SADUM, controlling the appointment of imams. Each Central Asian state has passed legislation to restrict the activities of religious groups. Governments have banned groups as diverse as the Salafis, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. Central Asia’s Muslims continue to worship in a controlled space, viewed as a potential threat by the government.

Not only did 70-plus years of Soviet rule shape the way governments think about the links between religion and security, it also heavily influenced the way citizens practice religion in Central Asia. Ironically, as the anthropological research of Johan Rasanayagam in Uzbekistan, David Montgomery and Julie McBrien in Kyrgyzstan and Helene Thibault in Tajikistan, has shown, the Soviet experience in Central Asia rendered Muslims remarkably resistant to mobilization by extremist groups.

Most practicing Muslims remain supportive of or ambivalent toward the secular state, rather than being set on its destruction. For many believers, Islam is about security, but not usually in the way that challenges the prevailing order. Instead, Islam provides a framework that allows many in Central Asia to find meaning and certainty in an insecure world characterized by social change, economic hardship and political dysfunction.

*Edward Lemon is Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. In his research, he examines migration, security, authoritarianism and Islam in Central Asia.

Spanish technology company Indra has signed a contract with the Ministry of Health in Chile (MINSAL) for the development and maintenance of a state-of-the-art system that will integrate all of the support processes for human resources management. The project, worth €4.7 million, has an execution period of 24 months.

The Integrated Human Resources System (SIRH.2.0) will provide the different human resources departments of MINSAL greater efficiency and speed, and will simplify defining processes and decision-making; from the management of recruitment and career development, policies on company compensation, performance, training and labor relations, through to self-service and planning.

Likewise, it will be used by over 145,000 users working in the 35 public bodies dependent on MINSAL. These include the National Health Fund (FONASA), the National Supply Warehouse, the Sub-Secretariat for Public Health, the 29 Health Services comprising the Public Healthcare Network, and two benchmark Health Centers (CRS) that include diagnostics tests and specialized therapies.

This is one of Indra’s most relevant projects in Chile, together with those implemented for the La Florida Dra. Eloísa Díaz Insunza Hospital, in Santiago de Chile, which have turned this center into a benchmark for integrated e-health in Latin America, thanks to the integration of administrative and clinical processes, the implementation of electronic medical record and prescription systems, and the commitment to mobility.

For too long, the relationship between prosperity and environment has been seen as a trade-off. Tackling pollution was considered an unwelcome cost on industry and a handicap to economic growth.

But global trends are demonstrating that this is no longer the case. It’s now clear that sustainable development is the only form of development that makes sense, including in financial and economic terms. The drive towards a pollution-free planet provides an opportunity to innovate and become more competitive.

With the UN Environment Assembly just over a month away, we now have the opportunity to dramatically step up our ambitions.

The energy revolution currently unfolding is a game changer, as is the increased mobilization around climate. The rapidly falling cost of energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, means that the countries leading the shift away from fossil fuels will reap the greatest benefits to their economies, as well as their environments. These countries will have better, faster transport networks and more flexible power grids.

With the transition to green and sustainable development under way, we now need to focus on how to intensify and accelerate these trends in order to protect the environment, combat climate change and curb pollution. As I see it, there are five critical pieces to this puzzle:

We need political leadership and partnerships. A global compact on pollution would ensure sustained engagement at the highest level and make prevention a priority for all. It would also encourage policymakers and other key partners, including the private sector, to integrate prevention into national and local planning, development processes, and business and finance strategies.

We need the right policies. Environmental governance needs to be strengthened – with targeted action on “hard-hitting” pollutants through risk assessments and enhanced implementation of environmental legislation, including multilateral environmental agreements, and other measures.

We need a new approach to managing our lives and economies.Sustainable consumption and production, through improved resource efficiency and lifestyle changes, should be promoted. Waste reduction and management must be prioritized.
We need to invest big. Mobilizing finance and investment in low-carbon opportunities and cleaner production and consumption will drive innovation and help to counter pollution. Increased funding is also needed for research, pollution monitoring, infrastructure, management and control.

We need advocacy for action. Citizens need to be informed and inspired to reduce their own pollution footprint and advocate for bold pollution-beating commitments from the public and private sectors.

With the UN Environment Assembly just over a month away, we now have the opportunity to dramatically step up our ambitions. Science is delivering great advances in our understanding of pollution and its impacts on people, economies and the environment. Citizens are more aware than ever before of how pollution affects their lives and they are demanding action on what has become a critical public health issue.

At the same time, experts and businesses are developing the technology to tackle these problems at all scales, from local to global. Financiers are increasingly ready to support them, while international bodies and forums, including the United Nations, stand ready to help to channel this momentum and turn it into firm action.

The responsibility for driving change on this broad front is shared among and within nations. Government policies and programmes will play a central role, both nationally and internationally. Businesses, consumers, investors, community groups and thought leaders must also be fully involved if we are to succeed. Technology and economic innovation are key, as is mobilizing finance at scale. Investments need to be harnessed to address climate and pollution challenges.

My report to the UN Environment Assembly examines the dimensions of pollution and identifies a way forward through a framework for action. I invite our partners in government, business, and civil society, as well as citizens around the world, to consider the report, act on its recommendations, and join us in the fight to beat pollution around the world.

*Erik Solheim, Head of UN Environment

The Polish authorities have notified the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of their decision to end, effective November 3, 2017, the arrangement under the Flexible Credit Line (FCL) approved by the IMF’s Executive Board on January 13, 2017.

Poland’s first FCL arrangement was approved by the IMF’s Executive Board after the onset of the global financial crisis and was followed by four successor arrangements aimed at providing additional buffers against external shocks. Over these years, Poland has treated the FCL as precautionary and continued to strengthen its foreign exchange reserves and fiscal position.

Since January 2015, Poland has been gradually reducing access under the FCL, in line with its intention to exit from the arrangement once external conditions improve. At the conclusion of the 2017 Article IV Consultation on July 7, 2017 and against the background of reduced external risks for Poland, the IMF’s Executive Board commended the authorities for very strong policy and institutional frameworks, noting that maintaining sound institutions and policies would further strengthen Poland’s resilience against external risks.

The FCL was established on March 24, 2009 and further enhanced on August 30, 2010. The FCL is designed for crisis prevention purposes as it provides the flexibility to draw on the credit line at any time, or treat it as precautionary. Disbursements are neither phased nor conditioned on compliance with policy targets as in traditional IMF-supported programs. The FCL is available to qualified countries with very strong fundamentals, policies, and track records of policy implementation. The FCL is a renewable credit line, which could be approved for either one or two years. There is no cap on access to Fund resources under the FCL, and access is determined on a case-by-case basis.

Poland is a member of the IMF since 1986 and has a quota of SDR 4,095.40 million (about €5,190.8 million).

We get an insight into the dynamics of the conflict in Kashmir with Dr Adfer Shah, departing from his lately-published book. Dr Shah emphasizes the crisis of leadership and the lack of civil society’s involvement in the search for conflict-management options. He focuses on the role of propaganda in hindering the peace process. International mediation and talks are assessed as the key factor in paving the way for a solution which is acceptable to both sides. From a sociological point of view, Dr Shah analyses the impact that the conflict plays on inter-generational and women-men relationships as well as, more broadly, on the cohesion of the social fabrics and collective identity issues. Last but not least, he stresses the importance of establishing a truth and reconciliation commission as a confidence-building mechanism for offering Kashmiri people a sense of justice and providing the victims with acknowledgement of their suffering.

Sara Bonotti: In your recently-published book Kashmir-Yearning for Peace: A Socio-Political History of Uncertainty and Chaos, you analyze the conflict from the angle of a leadership crisis, political inadequacy and lack of legitimacy and vision. When it comes to the grass-roots’ level, do you identify alternative ways of conflict management that can be adopted?

Dr Adfer Shah: Conflict in the state though undoubtedly has reached to the conflict management stage as per the time it had consumed so far but bilateral (India and Pakistan) or trilateral ego (J&K leadership) has crept in which is the real hassle to achieve the conflict termination stage. If at all the idea of a future Jammu and Kashmir is too ambiguous to understand today, the credit goes to the policy paralysis and leadership crisis. The solution after all has to come from the grass roots and masses have to be counted as an equal stakeholder because the very problem or say the brunt of the conflict or turmoil is felt by them to its worst. The political ego has to subside and stakeholders have to be brought in the dialogue table. Had it not been the leadership crisis, political will, visionlessness, lack of charisma, the situation in the Kashmir valley would have been different today.

SB: What has provoked the progressive detachment of masses’ representatives/leaders from their people in Kashmir? Is the political establishment taking advantage in that direction?

Dr Adfer Shah: In the state at the moment there are two types of leaderships, one is the mainstream leadership and another is the separatist leadership. Frankly speaking both enjoy peoples support but the separatist sentiment is much dominant in Kashmir valley whereas in Jammu and Ladakh it is the mainstream leadership which mass support. In a place like Kashmir who really represents the masses’ support is a big question as elections or the process of governance for basic amenities is one idea and the real sentiment to address the prolonged alienation is something else. Time and again even mainstream or pro-India leaders have maintained that their elections or government is to address the people’s issues and provide basic amenities but the Kashmir question has to be resolved for the peace in the state. The power elite know what they are for and where the real issue lies. I would not say they are taking any undue advantage as such major issues don’t get resolved overnight.

SB: What is the role of misinformation and propaganda in fueling the exacerbation of conflict dynamics?

Dr Adfer Shah: Misinformation, rumour mill and propaganda as a deadly trio plays havoc on routine basis and thus gives blow to the peace process. It has created a severe dichotomy between the soldier and the civilian and a greater hatred and trust deficit as well.

SB: You refer to an “illusionary peace” and “deceptive calm” – maintained by the power elite – as a sort of deterrent against a constructive solution to the conflict. Would you please provide us with a deeper insight into such deterrence mechanism?

Dr Adfer Shah: Peace has altogether a different meaning and context in Kashmir. It is a political project. Politically peace here means the absence of violence for a particular time (may be a week or a month or a season) but not the very existence of it. It is like hiding a bomb under the carpet and seeing the carpet as something beautiful .The current version of peace in Kashmir is of the illusionary peace –as it is the official and an imagined/illusionary version of peace that always waits for a spur or even a slightest provocation/aberration to blow up. By deceptive calm, I mean the deceptive /false lull which only appears but is very volatile, very spontaneous, very unpredictable and bloody violent from within.

SB: In your view, does the international community underestimate the gravity of the conflict? Would a supranational mediation be really needed at this stage or you are rather confident in a turning point of endogenous factors?

Dr Adfer Shah: To resolve any grave conflict in the world, international or call it super national mediation is a prerequisite. The international community and its concern for Kashmir is almost a myth as world powers would always talk in their own interests barring some insignificant noise from a few neighbours’. Many of them say that India and Pakistan should resolve it bilaterally. As far the essence of endogenous factors in the resolution, I think it has not worked and needs a serious international mediation. The biggest lie today is that the world feels for Kashmir and supports its cause.

SB: As your approach to the conflict is primarily sociological, do you detect an underlying inter-generational gap emerging within Kashmir’s society? Do youngsters interpret the conflict differently from the elderly, also thanks to a wider education and social networking? Do they represent more of a resource or of an obstacle vis-à-vis conflict resolution?

Dr Adfer Shah: While the inter-generational gap is a social reality everywhere which actually diversifies the opinions of different age groups however something very peculiar with the society in Kashmir especially is that we are witnessing a major shift in this very gap-the gap has been abridged by the prolonged uncertainty, turmoil and absence of peace and sense of security. Therefore vulnerability in such a situation is something that is common to all. Right from children to adolescents to youth to adults to elderly things that have juxtaposed or smashed the inter-generational gap is the sense of insecurity, huge conflict fatigue and huge trust deficit as everyone has a same take on this mess. Everyone interprets the conflict in terms of absence of peace and security and therefore I say inter-generational gap hardly exists in such perilous zones. Social media has no doubt given a vent to the frustrated social collective but it is not just youngsters, people across the age groups express their perceptions and vulnerabilities using the new media.

SB: On the basis of your own observations, how does the conflict impact women-men relationships and could women play a role in a peace-building context?

Dr Adfer Shah: Conflict pushes women to much harsh circumstances and has brought a new crisis to the institution of family and larger Kashmiri society. It snatches their inner peace of mind and makes them more vulnerable like we have Kashmiri pundits who are still in search of their identity and have lost what they call their “wattan” (motherland). Like Muslim community they have faced the worst in terms of the cultural alienation, social life, property, sense of security, horrible and forced dislocation, etc,. Today we have a plethora of widows and half widows in Kashmir who are living a lifeless life and have developed a deeper sense of alienation. As far as women and peace building is concerned and as I conceptualise it, honestly I would say that apart from some self-serving noise, some slogans and a few cross border trips, NGO talks, sharing of experiences at some insignificant foras, I don’t see much happening on the ground as far as women’s initiatives for peace are concerned. For Peace building and role of women we should look at the role played by women in ending Liberia’s civil war or may be in Afghanistan. In the valley so far women have been seen merely as sacrificing lot, sufferers and as victims and less as the activists for mass action or champions of peace.

SB: What you describe as “social breakdown” and “identity crisis” in Kashmir are somehow reversible processes? According to what pace, in your estimation?

Dr Adfer Shah: The pluralistic ethos has significantly declined between the three major divisions of the state, i.e. Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh shaping up a sort of collective identity crisis along with the hatred for each other. I call it hate dichotomies. Even communities like Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims have developed certain social confrontations which I call the confrontations of suffering and conflict frustration. People over a period of time have got divided on regional and religious lines. I don’t see any occasion where all the three divisions of the state unite and look for a unitarian resolution. Identity crisis is the hallmark of such a dirty war that is going on in the valley. In the presence of such a prolonged and unending conflict, social fabric has torn to a larger extent and social breakdown is continuously manifesting itself into many pathological forms but simultaneously the inspiring incidents revealing Kashmiriyat (our rich ethos) keep coming to light.

SB: Do you believe in the potential for setting up truth and reconciliation commissions in this specific case?

Dr Adfer Shah: Yes, absolutely, a sense of justice should prevail and justice must be delivered in all human rights abuse cases. Every victim should feel that he /she counts and state has delivered in its best capability. Such commissions should be more autonomous and even State commission for women must be a completely autonomous body run by credible and socially conscious women activists who really know the happenings at grass roots. It is actually the lack of credibility of such institutions so far, which has actually raised the graph of trust deficit between the masses and the power corridors. Even extra military powers like AF(J&K)SPA should be withdrawn for the sake of peace.

SB: In your studies, do you approach Kashmir’s conflict as a peculiar one, strictly embedded into regional dynamics, or you investigate also its global resonance?

Dr Adfer Shah: It is not either the problem that emanated out of a regional dynamics or out of any global resonance; it must be purely seen through a historical prism and in the light of the voices raised against the prolonged social, political and economic alienation. In a nutshell I would say, it is nothing but some Historical Blunders followed by a plethora of Political Waywardness.

SB: In this line, would you extrapolate a key lesson learned that could apply to other conflict scenarios?

Dr Adfer Shah: Conflict lingering or deliberate delay in resolution is more deadly than the conflict itself. When conflicts are continued and spread over decades needlessly, it takes away every credible and significant social/political/economic institution and leads to a total collapse which may or may not appear in physical terms but is a reality everywhere in the conflict zones. Over a period of time the conflict industry evolves out of such a long pending conflicts and a class of neo-riches also emerges while the victims or say masses keep suffering. Conflicts should be resolved wherever they are and negotiation and talks are the answer not the guerrilla warfare -that has taken a heavy toll on the oppressed everywhere in the globe.

The author of “Kashmir-Yearning for Peace: A Socio-Political history of Uncertainty and Chaos” (ISSN: 978-3-659-55971-6), Dr Adfer Shah is a New Delhi based Social and political analyst. In 2015, he earned doctorate in sociology from Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India. Currently he is the Associate Editor (for south Asia) at Eurasia Review (ISSN 2330-717X) and Editor for Kashmir Affairs at Analyst world. Recently he was also appointed as the Associate Editor of the prestigious peer reviewed journal, ‘Women’s Link’ (ISSN 2229-6409). Besides writing for various prestigious media groups he writes columns for South Asia politics, Kashmir Times, Modern Diplomacy and Kashmir Pen. He has been writing on conflict in Kashmir and wide range of other socio-political issues in south Asia. He can be reached at adfer.syed@gmail

This article was published at Link Campus University’s EDOF Center, War & Peace Studies.

No one in this world would choose to live in misery, and neither does Ricardas Lapaitis, a man who experienced some years of his life in the battlefield, where his soul  traveled to the sorrow and the most painful feelings he ever had in his life.

It is not easy to go back to the time and places where you encountered the people with the scary wounds, suffering from hunger, losing their beloved ones, or were even disgraced by the scariest inhumane treatments in their own bodies, and all those pains are the same in every war, in every place on earth.

Opening the old wounds that have passed for twenty-five years, where feelings and thoughts were imprisoned with all the most frightening events in the history of human tragedy in the Caucasus region, it is really not easy to integrate the conversation written in accordance with the feelings and memories of this Dervish, even though they are still as fresh as when he was on the battlefield that time.

Ricardas was born on July 26, 1968 in the village of Papacha, part of Marijampole that is located on the banks of the Shesupe River, one of the tributaries that empties into the Neman river that is the main river in Lithuania, about 55 km to the southwest of Kaunas. The first inhabitants of Marijampole who settled in the second half of the seventeenth century were peasants and 60% of the population were Jews. German troops occupied the city at the beginning of the First World War until the founding of an independent New Lithuanian State in 1918.

Ricardas, who masters Polish language due to its geographical proximity to Lithuania, has had valuable life lesson even since he was a little boy. His parents’ house burnt down leaving nothing behing, and when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, his parents divorced, and so little Ricardas lost the love from his kind-hearted and honest father. His father travelled the world as an entertainer in a Russian Circus.

From his parents, Ricardas inherited German blood and to this day he is still considered as a “strange” man by the Lithuanian society for helping many Muslims in Azerbaijan and Chechnya. Nevertheless, Ricardas most favorite food is Cepelinai, a typical Lithuanian puree with meat, cheese, and mushrooms served with creamy sauce.

In other part of the world, such as Indonesia and other Asian countries, it is perhaps only a few people who know that this Lithuanian man, who next year will turn 50, was the savior of hundreds of Azerbaijani children and elders during the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1992. Ricardas Lapaitis was just 24 years old that time, young enough to deal directly with the Armenian soldiers. It was the first time that young Ricardas learned that there were citizens of the Soviet Union involved in the armed conflict. Armenia and the CIS announced aggression against Azerbaijan. It was then when Ricardas realized that his presence in Karabakh was coincidentally at the site of the Khojaly Tragedy, where he was at one of most dangerous battlefields in the Caucasus region; from the beginning when the war was raged until it ended, and he became the only journalist who survived the battle that lasted for almost 2 years. Like having nine lives, this religious man recognizes that God is always with him.

Ricardas came personally into contact with the victims, reunited the scattered children from their parents, looked for food supplies for children and the hungry elders. He recorded the pictures in his old camera and wrote notes carefully recording every inch of the land he passed while smelling the blood of the wounded and dead. He did this, while seeking shelter for refugees under the hot bullets of the Armenian soldiers supported by Soviet troop. All the events of brutality against humanity were well recorded in the mind of this journalist. Ricardas was the first journalist who wrote of this bloody event in Lithuanian media, his native country and after his article had been translated, a lot of media in the western country published his narrative.

This Alitusky College graduate has never worked in the field he studied. He was even more memorable when he was at Verstaminay Elementary School where he studied reading and writing that eventually led him as a journalist, writer, and poet.

When he had to go on military service in the era of the Soviet Union, Ricardas dedicated himself as a cryptologist expert and at that time, he seemed to be lost in the earth. After his military service was over, he returned to Lithuania which also gained its first independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. What he had learned in high school from the textbooks during the Soviet’s reign in his country was utterly untrue and he felt like a generation without identity.

Being adventurous ,Ricardas started a journey from Moscow by biking around the 15 Republics of the Soviet Union in 1990. He circled the Ural, exploring every corner of Siberia up to the Japanese sea border, then to Baikal, the world’s oldest lake that has a lot of mysteries, further to the city of Vladivostok, then to the North Pole located on the Taimyr peninsula where he learned about the lives of a handful of tribes known as the community of Cato, Evenki, Ganasany, Dolgans and others. For a year there was no communication with the family, and Ricardas was considered dead.

The event of massive extermination of the Khojaly population on the night of February 26, 1992 was imprinted on Ricardas mind. For his great service in the Khojaly tragedy, in 1993 Azerbaijan’s President Abulfaz Elchibey met him personally and rewarded Ricardas’ courage and dedication as a military journalist at his young age and for his coverage of the events in Nagorno-Karabakh. He was in the war zone from start to end. Not long after that, he met the leader of the Autonomous Region of Nakhchivan Azerbaijan, Geydarom Alievym.

After returning to Lithuania in 1994, Ricardas traveled back to Northern Russia. From 1995 to 1997, he worked as a military journalist in Chechnya. During 1996 a lot of militants were killed, including journalists and Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev. It seems that Ricardas really was born with nine lives because he was the only one who escaped from death even when the city of Grozny was scorched by Russian forces the same year.Alla Dudayeva, wife of the number one person in Chechnya was able to read a series of poems before Ricardas in the middle of the devastated Grozny, and he still remembers the verses of poems uttered in a hysterical sorrow feeling by Alla Dudayeva who was also a poet. In 1998, before the second invasion of Russian forces in Chechnya, Ricardas was already there again.

In 2011, the “Endless Corridor” directed by Aleksandras Brokas from Russia began filming. In the film, Ricardas plays his protagonist role. A 90-minute film has captivated film critics at the international film festivals around the world and gained the best of awards, including ones from Jakarta and Bali. The real movie adapts the true story that happened in Khojaly, which was written very carefully by Ricardas and thas been translated in many languages, has been screened in over 100 countries all over the world, including in Indonesia. The film tells the cruelty of the Armenian soldiers who killed the people of Khojaly and also drove them out of their homes, their own land.

Since then, Ricardas began working as a representative of the IEPF (International Eurasian Press Fund) where he, as a main figure who continues to campaign for justice for the people of Khojaly and who helps through his voice for the Karabakh refugees who now reach to 1 million people. Ricardas travels to big cities in Europe such as Paris, London, Brussels, Prague, Moscow, Berlin, Strassbourg, Geneva, Baku, Vilnius and other cities under the institution of “Justice for Khojaly” chaired by Leila Aliyeva, wife of Azerbaijan President who is also Vice President of Azerbaijan. Ricardas attended many events organized by this institution and gave his testimony to what really happened with Khojaly’s tragedy. The event was widely covered by almost all mass media in Europe.

Ricardas, the man who stood for the Azerbaijani people during the Karabakh’s war, lives far away from the luxury despite receiving certificates and awards from the President of the International Eurasian Press Fund, Umud Mirzayez who has helped him in such ways. Among his daily busy days as an ordinary staff at a small company in the capital Vilnius, Ricardas is the President of the Writers Club in Lithuania called “Lazdiyu Mene”. Ricardas is also a member of the Journalist Association of Lithuania. As a poet, he has published several poetry books.

Ricardas is the hero to the oppressed Muslims of Azerbaijan, as well as Chechnya. The real story of Khojaly tragedy written in his diary and has been filmed, keeps his own sorrow as it turns out that, the film with many international awards in many film festivals in major cities in the world, including was awarded as the best documentary at the Accolade Global Film Competition in 2015 in the United States, is inversely proportional to his modest living condition in a small dwell, without adequate space heater when winter arrives, he calls it as a wolf’s house.

Ricardas has intentions to visit and help some of the families whosaved his life during the tragedy; the survivors who once hid him from the cruelty of the Armenian soldiers. Ricardas still holds hope for Karabakh’s future in a better peace way. He wants the next story to be heard well by people who have a conscience and those who can help him doing even greater for the humanity.

This year is the 25th anniversary of Khojaly’s human tragedy, which according to the documentation, took 613 lives mostly children, women and the old people, and 1,000 people became disabled, eight families were killed at once, 25 children became orphans and 130 children lost one of their parents. More than 1,275 innocent people were taken prisoners, and about 150 were unknown to the present day.

Even after twenty-five years of the tragedy, Ricardas still finds it difficult to tell what he witnessed. Time can heal the wounds of the body, but emotionally it will always be there in our lives.

I watched the video about the Trakai Castle that is located on an island in the lake of Galve, in Trakai city, Lithuania and is a red brick castle built in the 14th century by Kestutis. Suddenly, I heard the sound of the smartphone indicating that there was a message coming in. Ricardas felt grateful that he was interviewed by someone from the distance of 11,000 km away.

He stressed that he just wanted to deliver peace to all the people in the Caucasus region because war will never give happiness but sorrow and permanent wounds to the affected. Ricardas is simply a modest journalist, a real Dervish who never assumes to obtain something that would give him advantages. History is something we should remember and can be regarded as the life’s learning for everyone. No one wanted to be in the war, he did not either. This Lithuanian Dervish is more than happy knowing that there are still people who want to listen to his old story, at least the honest one.

*Nia S. Amira is an Indonesian author, journalist and linguist. She writes on culture, international affairs, multiculturalism and religious studies. Her articles have appeared in over thirty newspapers that are published in Europe, Asia, and United States.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will depart Nov. 5 on a five-day trip to reaffirm key partnerships and alliances in Europe, a Defense Department spokesperson said today.

Army Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza said Mattis will begin his engagements Nov. 6-7 in Helsinki at a meeting of the Northern Group, a multilateral forum of 12 countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

On Nov. 8-9, the defense secretary will attend a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels and, separately, host a meeting of ministers from the coalition to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The trip will underscore the commitment of the United States to the NATO alliance and to defeating ISIS, Baldanza said.

Mattis will conclude his trip Nov. 10 with a visit to London, where he will meet with Britain’s new defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, who was appointed yesterday following the resignation of Michael Fallon.

By Gordana Andric

After a BIRN investigation found that Serbia’s ruling party used proxy donors to pump cash into election campaigns, the president agreed that donors likely used proxies, but claimed his party was in the clear.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that he “assumes” that nearly 7,000 donors who gave the ruling Serbian Progressive Party an identical amount of 40,000 dinars (around 320 euros) during his 2017 presidential campaign, did so “because it was allowed that individuals donate that amount – and not more than that.”

He said that he did not know the process for certain, and neither did he comment on the identity of the donors – some of whom had been on social benefits at the time.

“I don’t know if it was like that, but I assume … [if I say] ‘I want to donate 800 euros, but I cannot give 800 euros, it is [not] allowed,’ [then I would say to another person], ‘here is the money, please pay for our party,’” Vucic stated in an interview with Serbian website Insajder which aired Friday.

Vucic also stated that his Serbian Progressive Party has the cleanest finances and owes nothing to anyone.

The BIRN investigation, published on October 17, showed that Vucic’s party had used proxy donors to disguise the true source of campaign gifts – which are illegal under a Serbian law on the financing of political activities.

One initial smoking gun that suggested the organised nature of the donations was the fact that almost all of the donors – 98 per cent – to the Progressives had given exactly the same amount: 40,000 dinars.

Several donors told BIRN that they had received money from party officials, in party offices, and had been specifically asked to donate it to the party under their own names.

“I just got the envelope with the money and the account number to pay it into,” one woman, who declined to be identified, told BIRN.

Nemanja Nenadic from Transparency Serbia, a local branch of global watchdog Transparency International, told BIRN that Vucic’s claims had no relevance to current legislation.

Nenadic pointed out that that the legal limit for individual donors is 20 times more than the 40,000 dinars that Vucic stated was the limit.

However, the name of every donor that gives a campaign any more than 40,000 must be published during the campaign.

Nenadic told BIRN that even after Vucic’s new interview, the source of the money that thousands of donors gave the Progressives in 2017, 2016, 2014 and 2012 remains unclear.

“It is obvious that the president’s hypothetical example about how proxy donors [operate] … has nothing to do with what happened in reality.

“As several thousand people from all over Serbia gave an identical donation, it definitely is not about some individual who spontaneously wanted to give a specific amount and then gave his friends sums of [nearly] 40,000,” said Nenadic.

BIRN also revealed that anti-corruption authorities called on prosecutors to launch criminal proceedings in relation to suspected money laundering during elections in 2014, but not one person was ever indicted, casting doubt on the independence of Serbia’s legal system of prosecution.

In the interview with Insajder, Vucic said that he is confident that everything will be resolved in accordance with the laws, that the money does not come from tycoons, and that the whole case will be investigated.

“Here, I am pleading to everyone, to the Anti-Corruption Agency, to everyone, to investigate this completely. So, just show a little patience,” Vucic said.

Nenadic said it is good that Vucic called on the agency to react, but added that the case is more suitable for the public prosecutors.

He explained that a Serbian law on financing political activities defines giving or receiving money during a campaign with intent to hide the real donor is a crime.

The penalty ranges from three months to three years in prison.

Colon cancer, Crohn’s, and other diseases of the gut could be better treated – or even prevented – thanks to a new link between inflammation and a common cellular process, established by the University of Warwick.

Led by Dr Ioannis Nezis at Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, new research demonstrates that autophagy – an essential process whereby cells break down and recycle harmful or damaged elements within themselves to keep our bodies healthy – causes tissue inflammation when dysfunctional, which in turn leaves us susceptible to harmful diseases, particularly in the gut.

Understanding this link could lead to more effective treatments for gut diseases – such as colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – giving healthcare professionals the ability to target the root cause of these diseases, by regulating and controlling autophagy.

Foods such as pomegranates, red grapes, pears, mushrooms, lentils, soybeans and green peas contain natural compounds which can activate autophagy, helping to prevent inflammation and gut diseases.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, Dr Nezis and colleagues have identified – for the first time – a protein which is regulated by autophagy. Called Kenny, the protein contains a motif of amino acids that causes itself to be broken down by autophagy. When autophagy is dysfunctional, Kenny accumulates and causes inflammation.

The researchers identified this phenomenon in fruit flies, by turning Kenny fluorescent – so it would be visible – and observing at a microscopic level that the protein was present in the cell where autophagy was occurring.

They also noted that dysfunctional autophagy causes serious inflammation in fruit flies – particularly in the gut – which makes tissue inflamed, causing disease, and making the lifespan of a fruit fly half that of other flies. To prevent serious diseases of the gut caused by inflammation, Dr Nezis and his colleagues state that it is necessary to find ways to control and regulate autophagy.

Humans are in even more danger from the link between autophagy, inflammation, and a dysfunctional or diseased gut – because our bodies lack the regular motif of amino acids which Kenny uses in fruit flies, making its breakdown by autophagy difficult to control or regulate.

Dr Ioannis Nezis, the lead author of the research, commented: “Understanding the molecular mechanisms of selective autophagy and inflammation will help to use interventions to activate the autophagic pathway to prevent inflammation and promote healthy well-being during the life course.

“Natural compounds contained in fruits and vegetables like pomegranates, red grapes, pears, mushrooms, lentils, soybeans and green peas have been shown to activate autophagy, therefore inclusion of the above in our diet would help to prevent inflammation and alleviate the symptoms of gut diseases.”

The paper, ‘Kenny mediates selective autophagic degradation of the IKK complex to control innate immune responses’, will be published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at Colorado State University and The Ohio State University have found that a cultural backlash stemming from the rise of populism may limit opportunities for state fish and wildlife agencies to adapt to changing social values in the United States. The team reached this conclusion by analyzing more than 12,000 surveys from 19 states and studying ballot initiatives related to hunting.

Based on the new study, researchers found that in states with the largest change in social values, individuals who held traditional values had lower levels of trust in the state wildlife agency. In contrast to traditional values, in which people believe wildlife exists for their benefit, the researchers describe an emerging set of values, in which wildlife and humans are seen as part of a connected social community, as mutualism.

In the case of human-wildlife conflict, traditionalists would be more likely to support lethal wildlife control methods while mutualists would be more supportive of restrictions on humans.

“With a growing proportion of mutualists in a state, traditionalists begin to lose trust in the state’s fish and wildlife agency,” said Michael Manfredo, lead author on the paper and head of CSU’s Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. “Based on our research, wildlife agencies, which focus on statewide mandates, increasingly engage with people who are mutualists, looking for common ground, and the traditionalists would feel this challenges their influence in policymaking.”

The team found a growth in ballot initiatives to protect hunting rights from 2000 to 2016, in contrast with the number of ballot initiatives from the previous decade that sought to restrict certain hunting and trapping practices. Researchers said this indicates a culutural backlash that they predict will intensify conflicts over wildlife management and may constrain institutional change. Wildlife management agencies may need to explore new models of governance that encompass diverse values, the study authors said.

The study was published in September 2017 in Biological Conservation.

Populism in politics, wildlife management

The recent trend toward populist politics has occurred, in part, as a result of a cultural backlash, where select segments of society have rallied against progressive social changes of the later 20th and early 21st centuries. This trend includes the Brexit vote in England, election of Donald Trump as U.S. President, and increased representation of populist parties in European parliaments.

In the case of wildlife, researchers examined the clash of values held by different segments of the public. Over the latter half of the 20th century, traditional values that emphasize the priority of human uses of wildlife have slowly been giving way to mutualism values that shape views of wildlife as fellow beings in a common social community.

At the state level, this trend is associated with increases in urbanization, education and income. These opposing values contribute to conflict over support for various forms of wildlife policy.

One area where the researchers looked at for evidence of backlash was in the surge of wildlife-related ballot initiatives. In the 1990s, there was a rise in initiatives that limited certain forms of hunting and fishing. In Colorado, initiatives included a ban on spring bear hunting in 1992 and the elimination of recreational trapping in 1996.

Between the turn of the century and the present, however, there has been a counter surge of ballot initiatives, most of which focus on protecting the right to hunt. This trend, the authors said, offers evidence of actions among traditional groups to fight back against change.

To dig more deeply, the researchers used data from a 2004 study of wildlife values in which 12,673 people from 19 western states were surveyed. The researchers looked to see if they could determine the basis for backlash at what appeared to be a critical transition time.

Findings from the 2004 study support the presence of a backlash. While most agencies are primarily funded by the sale of fishing and hunting licenses, eight out of 10 mutualists support a funding model in which all residents pay and are all represented in the policymaking process. In contrast, only six in 10 traditionalists support that model. Using an approach that measures the potential for conflict across many issues, the authors also found that states with higher proportions of mutualists have a much greater likelihood of disputes over wildlife issues.

“With the diverse values held by citizens, wildlife managers and wildlife commissioners across the country are finding it more challenging to reach decisions that are socially acceptable and politically sustainable,” said Chris Smith, western field representative for the Wildlife Management Institute.

The authors said that in the future, wildlife conservation faces daunting challenges such as resource degradation and overuse, human development, drought and climate change.

“The greatest challenge might be in finding ways to bring oppositional groups in the public together to address those issues,” said Manfredo, a professor in the CSU W

By Jesse Griffiths*

The Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious objectives; business as usual will not deliver them. Speaking on the recent International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the need for new thinking. “The pledge to leave no one behind will require innovative approaches, partnerships, and solutions,” he said.

But this new model will only come about if we radically reshape the national, regional, and global economies that lie behind many of the obstacles to achieving the SDGs. We must rethink the way we govern and manage the global financial and economic system.

In part, that means rethinking the current trend to treat private finance as the default option for development. Private finance is being heavily touted by the World Bank, the G20, and others as the solution to the SDG financing gap — for example, through their enthusiastic promotion of public-private partnerships.

Yet international private capital has proven volatile and is often short term. In fact, since 2015, international private finance has been net negative for developing countries — more money has been flowing out than in. This volatility has led some developing countries to protect themselves from external shocks by building up massive reserves.

This is a sensible strategy given the lack of faith those countries have in the IMF and other global institutions to protect them in times of crises. However, in practice they build reserves by buying safe assets from developed countries. In other words, the poorer countries are lending trillions of dollars to the richest countries, particularly the U.S., at very low rates of interest.

The issue is therefore not how to get more global capital to flow south, but how to make sure that this results in high-quality investments and that developing countries have the tools they need to manage the risks. Most importantly, developing countries also need to make the best use of their own private financial resources, which are almost always several magnitudes larger than foreign capital.

Sadly, international rules and institutions too often restrict rather than enhance developing countries’ efforts to make the best use of private finance. For example, the WTO does not allow companies to apply subsidies linked to sourcing domestically or to export performance, and the proliferation of bilateral trade and investment agreements restricts the use of procurement and competition policies to promote domestic industries. The increasing power of investor-state dispute provisions in these treaties gives multinationals the power to challenge governments’ efforts to promote domestic industries and to protect basic human rights.

The prevailing global financial end economic system also works against poorer countries’ efforts to fund their own development by raising domestic public finance, principally through taxation. Domestic public finance — principally tax revenue — is by far the largest development finance resource for those developing countries, dwarfing international private and public flows combined.

Developing countries have significantly improved tax collection in recent years. However, they naturally have a limited tax base because of high levels of poverty, and this already-limited base has been hurt by a trend to reduce taxes on multinationals by offering generous tax incentives in a destructive “race to the bottom” to woo foreign investors.

Even worse, significant tax revenues are also lost through tax havens, intracompany operations within multinational corporations, and the secret transfer of financial resources out of the global south. As a result, there are significant public resource shortfalls for basic services, social protection, and infrastructure — particularly in least developed countries.

International public financial flows — the money sent from donor to recipient countries — are supposed to help fill this gap. But the figures are confusing, as they include large amounts of money that never leave the donor country, such as administrative expenses and the costs of accommodating refugees. What is clear is that these flows have been lower than stated, less than promised, and have proven volatile and subject to changing priorities in developed countries.

The architecture of global economic governance has been slow to change. There are major gaps, including the absence of any mechanism to prevent and resolve debt crises, which have sadly become a common occurrence. In addition, the majority of developing countries are either excluded from, or have a limited voice in, global rule setting, thereby seriously weakening the quality of those rules. Despite some notable achievements, secrecy and opacity — as opposed to transparency and openness — remain the norm at international financial institutions.

It is clear that the global economic and financial system is severely hindering development progress and that radical changes will be needed if we are to meet the higher level of ambition the SDGs demand. All too often the blockers of reform are the rich countries, which can be accused of “kicking away the ladder” that could allow developing countries to chart their own paths to prosperity.

The SDGs set a universal agenda that applies to all countries. If developed nations are to take the SDGs seriously, they need to show they are willing to make the necessary fundamental reforms to the global financial and economic system.

As a new report from Eurodad sets out, this would mean changes at home, such as cracking down on the tax havens that are conduits for the loss of resources from the global south. It would also mean a new model of international cooperation, where, for example, the countries with major financial centers support rather than oppose sensible reforms such as the creation of a mechanism to rapidly and fairly resolve debt crises. The benefits of these reforms would be felt at home as well as abroad.

The SDGs represent a step change in global ambitions. If they are to be met, they require a step change in efforts to reform the global financial and economic system.

*Jesse Griffiths has been Eurodad director since 2012 and is responsible for strategic planning, fundraising, network building, research, and advocacy. This article was first published on Devex on 30 October 2017.

Described as the “world’s most persecuted minority”, the Rohingya have again been the target of violent attacks, causing as many as 480,000 to flee their homes. G.M.Shoeb Ahmed and Gazi Asif discuss the plight of this group and how local organisations are providing urgent aid on the ground.

By G. M. Shoeb Ahmed and Gazi Asif*

Do we ever examine why we want to be part of a state?  Or why we demand humanitarian support from the state’s authority?

The answer is straightforward: human beings are social animals and the state is bound to meet every societal need because the state itself based on the tacit support of its own people­­. But what if the state denies one’s status?

Welcome to the plight of one of the most buzzed terms of the recent time, “Rohingya”, a stateless ethnic minority group, being labelled as illegal immigrants by the fellow compatriots.

The Rohingya people can be traced back to their ancestors in 8^th Century Burmese history. But having officially stripped the Rohingyas of their citizenship status under the 1982 Myanmar Nationality Law, the military government in Myanmar placed restrictions on the access of the basic humanitarian needs of the Rohingyas.

In the latest outbreak of violence, the worst scenario developed into the infernal scenario of August 2017, as a major military crackdown coupled with Buddhist extremist attacks on the Rohingya people began.

There are many questions that need to be answered. In the most recent outbreak of violence, what is driving the Rohingyas off their land? How are they accepted and treated in Bangladesh? And what can be done to end the suffering many face?

Fleeing to live

The recent “Ethnic Cleansing” of Rohingyas started in the name of an “act of retreat” by the military in response to series of alleged attacks on police by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 25 August 2017. Since then, at least 480,000 Rohingyas fled into Bangladesh, pushing the number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh up to 700,000. Before this, the minority faced military crackdowns in 1978, 1991-1992, 2012 and in 2015.

Before contemplating the plight of the Rohingya, we need to understand the how they are perceived in Myanmar. Rohingyas entered Burma during the British colonial period in search of jobs. During World War II, Rohingyas fought for the British regime whereas their Buddhist compatriots sided with the Japanese, and this eventually led to a communal violence. British authority promised Rohingyas an independent state but later reneged on this.

However, between 1948 to 1961, a failed Rohingya secessionist rebellion put their status in much uncertainty.

The Buddhist community cannot forget the destruction of their holy places during World War II as part of communal violence between them and Rohingyas and thus the Buddhist community holds a grudge against them.

Apart from the Rohingya community, five other Muslim minority groups reside in Myanmar: Kamein, Indian-descended Muslim community, Panthay, Pashu, and Bamar. These groups have been put under pressure from military rulers since 1962, the date many see as the beginning of the systematic removal of Muslims from the military.

Also, the difference between the Rohingya community’s language and appearance and the Rohingya dream of an autonomous state could be a reason that the Rohingya community rarely receives help from other Muslim groups. Another possibility is that the Rohingya community is not solely built upon Islam; a scattered number of Hindus are also part of the Rohingya community.

The journey to Bangladesh from Burma has never been an easy task for the fleeing Rohingya. Inhabitants around Maungdaw, near northern Rakhaine state, just need to cross the Naf River to get into Bangladesh. However, in this process around 60 people have already died as their boats capsized while crossing the River.Those who reside further south than Maungdaw must avoid security camps and cross hilly roads which can take up to 15 days.

This path is covered with land mines, meaning Rohingyas are literally trading their lives with the risk posed by mines.

Aid to the refugees: the Bangladesh chapter

The Bangladesh Government has relaxed the restraints on different aid groups operating in refugee camps, and the Bangladesh Army, along with the district administration, has already begun working on relief efforts and the rehabilitation of refugees following chaotic reports coming from refugee camps. The government’s NGO Affairs Bureau has permitted 30 local and international groups to work in the camps, verified by a Bureau Director, Shadat Hossain.

Since 26 August, around 26,000 shelters in 12 slums in Ukhia and Teknaf have been built by the administration and local groups.

In responding to the crisis, BRAC, one of the largest NGO’s in Bangladesh, has employed 170 staff in 10 makeshift settlements in Ukhia and Teknaf. Water crises in those camps are intense so BRAC has provided 5000 litres of safe water, 54 tube wells and 155 latrines.

BRAC will also have opened 35 health centres and 10 maternity centres by next week.

As of today, a number of local groups of people are working to aid the Rohingyas. One of these such groups is providing food to the Rohingya children and it has opened a Facebook event asking for donations to support this. According to the group, they have already begun working in two sub-groups to feed the children.

However, the district administration requested the local aid group allow them to distribute the relief. The reason is that these refugees are staying in a remote area and the authorities wish to maintain a disciplined environment and ensure proper management of air relief. The transportation around the area is not in good condition, complicating the distribution of aid.

Urgent leadership

The latest UN council meeting, Russia urged not to put pressure on Myanmar government regarding recent scenario in Myanmar, “fearing” that it would aggravate the ongoing situation. China, on the other hand, sees no overnight solution of the matter.On the verge of becoming a real-life modern example of “ethnic cleansing”, Rohingya people are not certainly finding any of the major diplomatic efforts to be on their side.

Global leaders need to step up. They must act with urgency to ensure the Rohingyas, probably one of the most unfortunate ethnic groups, can live a life like normal humans – with dignity and identity.

G. M. Shoeb Ahmed is Peace Direct’s Local Peacebuilding Expert in Bangladesh. He has over 10 years’ experience in peacebuilding, youth development, small arms control, human security, women’s rights and entrepreneurship, and has coordinated and facilitated training, advocacy workshops and national seminars on these issues.

Gazi Asif is an Aeronautical Engineer by profession and youth security activist by passion.

This article was originally published by Peace Insight and is available by clicking here. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of TransConflict.

Arthur James Balfour’s wrote 84 words that sealed the fate of the Palestinian people by ultimately displacing most of them from their historical homeland to live in permanent exile.

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”

That was it. The letter was sent to one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild, who needed the British assurance to rally the leaders of the Jewish community behind Britain in the First World War.

Balfour was anti-Semitic. But that was beside the point. At the time, the man was the Foreign Secretary of His Majesty’s government. He later became a Prime Minister. His clout, and the powerful interests he represented, made his statement the first and most serious commitment made by any government to build a ‘home’ for Jews in Palestine, at the expense of the land’s native inhabitants.

Speaking recently in New York University, Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi described the British commitment then as an event that “marked the beginning of a century-long colonial war in Palestine supported by an array of outside powers which continues to this day”.

The fact that the British government remains committed to Israel after all of these years is irrefutable proof of that country’s complicity in Israeli crimes. It should not take a century for a country to reexamine and apologize for its immoral past. But for Britain, it has, and no apology seems to be coming any time soon.

Starting with the Balfour statement, coupled with the aiding of Israel in the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians in the 1940s, to the sale of heavy water, which Israel required to build its nuclear reactor in the late 1950s, Britain was on Israel’s side from the very beginning. The blind support provided to Israel by former prime minister Tony Blair, or present leader Theresa May are by no means an exception to the norm.

The inescapable fact is this: without Britain, six million Palestinian refugees, now scattered around the world, would have remained in their own homeland.

The Balfour Declaration tried and failed to mask its colonial intentions behind contradictory terms, as in “the establishment in Palestine” – the Palestinian homeland – a “Jewish homeland”, without prejudicing “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

“The national home it promised to the Jews was never clearly defined and there was no precedent for it in international law,” wrote Avi Shlaim, in Wm. Roger Louis’ book Yet More Adventures with Britannia.

Shlaim, an Israeli professor, described the declaration as “arrogant, dismissive, and even racist … and the worse kind of imperial double standard, implying that there was one law for the Jews, and one law for everybody else”.

This arrogance and racism continue unabated.

In a recent statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed his November visit to Britain with the intention of ‘celebrating’ the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

How could the vanquishing of a nation, the destruction of every path leading to a possible peaceful and just resolution of a bloody conflict, the incessant violations of human rights be an event worthy of celebration?

In a visit to occupied Jerusalem last March, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson proved a worthy descendant of Arthur James Balfour as he declared his government to be “rock-like supporters” of Israel.

And like Balfour he spoke with a forked tongue, and followed the same contradiction of terms.

“I should remind you the policy of our government is for a two-state solution and we hope to help bring it about in a modest and humble way. Obviously, we want to remove the obstacles to that,” he told Netanyahu.

But Netanyahu and his rightwing government are the main “obstacle to that”. The British blind support, as a representation of the wider, equally blind support of Israel by western governments, led by the United States, is another “obstacle”.

The Arabs were never the obstacle for they neither invited British colonialism, armed and funded Israeli occupation, supported and defended the illegal colonies or empowered notorious Israeli leaders to flout international law.

It was Britain under Balfour that acted outside the rule of law, and Britain, and other western countries that continue to support Israel in violation of international law.

It is this mindset that had rendered international law mere ink on paper, and relegated the UN into a platform for inconsequential speeches and reports, rarely read or implemented.

One such report was issued last September. Published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the report described Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land as the “longest occupation in recent history”.

“For the Palestinian people, these were five decades of de-development, suppressed human potential, and denial of the basic human right to development, with no end in sight,” the report said.

Sustained by unconditional British, US and western support, which remain committed to the Balfour legacy of 100 years ago, Israel is no rush to end the suffering of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is gearing up for his upcoming celebration in London, while Israel’s friends continue to speak of the ‘miracle’ of Israel. Conveniently, they overlook the fact that millions of Palestinians and other Arabs paid a heavy price to sustain that supposed miracle; that the entire Middle East has been in a perpetual state of war ever since; that the future looks bleak and unpromising.

It is as if nothing has changed and that no lessons were ever learned in the 100 years since Balfour made his promise to establish a Jewish state.

But this also rings true for Palestinians. Their commitment to fight for freedom, also remains unchanged, and neither Balfour, nor Johnson and all the British Foreign Secretaries in between managed to break the will of the Palestinian nation.

That too is worth pondering.

Policymakers, law enforcement and advocates can now better identify and target modern slavery thanks to the work of human rights experts and researchers whose application of unique statistical methods yields more precise figures on its existence and extent. The groundbreaking work appears in the October issue of CHANCE, which features a series of articles written by authority figures on the subject of modern slavery.

The new methods helped inform the 2016 Joint Global Estimates of Modern Slavery–published by the United Nations (UN) International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation–which estimated 24.9 million people in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage.

“For decades, though, the prevalence of modern slavery was difficult to quantify with accuracy. Political sensitivities, unwillingness to share data and questionable data collection and analysis techniques led to inaccurate calculations and subsequently poor, if any, tracking and prevention efforts,” noted Davina P. Durgana, senior researcher at the Walk Free Foundation and report co-author of the Global Slavery Index.

One statistical method gaining worldwide interest is multiple systems estimation (MSE). The method basically involves analyzing three to four concurrent lists of identifiable victims for apparent overlap to estimate a victim population size.

“The ongoing lack of transparency, and the lack of data sharing in the study of slavery, is not just a threat to good science; it prevents comparable analyses that might reduce suffering and the extreme human cost,” said Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Nottingham, co-founder of Free the Slaves–a nonprofit anti-slavery advocacy organization in Washington, DC–and lead author of the Global Slavery Index. “The exploration of the MSE technique to measuring the prevalence of slavery appears to offer a solution to the problem of estimating the extent of slavery in well-developed countries.”

This method and subsequent findings have been widely accepted by the UN’s ILO and International Organization for Migration, as well as advocates and organizations spanning the globe. “MSE and the Global Slavery Index are ‘game changers’ in the way slavery is measured, benefitting developed and underdeveloped countries with potential for application to other human rights issues,” says Durgana.

Deployed in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands in 2014 and 2016, respectively, MSE has attracted the attention of the United States government, which is evaluating its feasibility in the context of human trafficking.

“Success in the US context would encourage many other developed countries to take similar action and contribute substantially to the information that exists about human trafficking in the US, both domestically and abroad,” said Paul Zador, senior statistician at Westat, Inc. Zador recently helped design a survey and analyzed data of bonded laborers in India, as well as a decades-long period of terror in Guatemala.

Specific articles in this special issue of CHANCE include the following:

• “Unlocking the Statistics of Slavery” by Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery, University of Nottingham, and lead author of the Global Slavery Index
• “The Challenge of Counting Victims of Human Trafficking” by Maarten Cruyff, Department of Methodology and Statistics, Utrecht University; Jan van Dijk, emeritus professor of victimology, International Victimology Institute of the University of Tilburg; and Peter G.M. van der Heijden, professor of statistics for social and behavioral sciences and head of the Department of Social Sciences, Utrecht University
• “Modern Slavery–from Statistics to Prevention” by Fiona David, lawyer, criminologist and executive director of global research, Walk Free Foundation
• “Fighting Slavery Through Statistics: A Discussion of Five Promising Methods to Estimate Prevalence in the United States” by Davina P. Durgana, senior statistician and report co-author of the Global Slavery Index, Walk free Foundation, and Paul L. Zador, senior statistician, Westat, Inc.
• “Using Surveys to Estimate the National Prevalences of Modern Slavery: Experience and Lessons Learned” by Jacqueline Joudo Larsen, criminologist and senior research manager, Walk Free Foundation, and Pablo Diego-Rosell, senior consultant, Gallup
• “Strategies to Estimate Global Prevalence of Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation” by Sheldon X. Zhang, professor and chair of the School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Kyle Vincent of Simon Fraser University
• “Measuring Vulnerability and Estimating Prevalence of Modern Slavery” by Jacqueline Joudo Larsen and Davina P. Durgana
• “The Politics of Data Reporting: A Triangulated Solution for Estimating Modern Slavery” by Davina P. Durgana and Graham K. Brown, professor of international development, head of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia
• “The Birth of Statistical Graphics and Their European Childhood” by Howard Wainer, statistician and author of Truth or Truthiness: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction by Learning to Think Like a Data Scientist

The term “modern slavery” encompasses slavery, forced and compulsory labor and forced commercial sexual exploitation. It is the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion.

Located in Giza, Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed around 2560 B.C., it was once safe to assume that no major secrets would reveal themselves after centuries of scientists and researchers studying the 455-foot-tall structure. Yet, after an article in Nature was published revealing a previously unknown chamber, all assumptions have been thrown out the window.

The walls of the Great Pyramid of Giza were first breached in the Middle Ages. It was at that time that most of the inner workings of the great pyramid were first discovered. Nevertheless, there remained a good amount of information still unknown about the largest pyramid in Giza. Which is one of the main reasons why, for centuries, scientists and researchers have dedicated their careers to studying the vast structure, Architectural Digest says.

Archaeologists have long understood that there are three major areas within the space: the King’s chamber, the Queen’s chamber, and the Grand Gallery. Yet, according to the article published in Nature, this new void was discovered by scanning through the rocks with subatomic particles. While researchers are unsure of the exact size of the newly discovered space, or whether it’s parallel to the ground or at an angle, they have concluded that it is comparable to the size of the Grand Gallery (which has a length of 154 feet and a height of 28 feet). What’s more, the teams involved in the project believe the void is around 68 feet above the ground level. What the newly discovered chamber was once used for remains a mystery, and one that may take years, if not decades to solve. “There are still many architectural hypotheses to consider,” the authors wrote in Nature.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was originally built as a testament to architectural aptitude of Pharaoh Khufu. If nothing else, this latest discovery proves that the architects who originally designed the structure were true geniuses, as they are still causing scientists and architects alike to scratch their collective heads, some 4,500 years later.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) the level of CO2 recorded in earth’s atmosphere in 2016 was up 50 % on that of last ten-year average.

Research stations located in 51 countries returned measurements of concentrations of carbon dioxide and other ‘warming gases’ such as methane and nitrous oxide, showing a dramatic rise. Researchers ascribe the increase to a combination of human activity and the El Niño weather phenomenon. The BBC reports scientists fear this rise will make global temperature targets ‘largely unattainable’. The figures published by the WMO indicate the levels after significant amounts of the CO2 had been absorbed by the Earth’s ‘sinks’, which include the oceans and the biosphere. 2016 saw average concentrations of CO2 hit 403.3 parts per million, up from 400ppm in 2015.

The climate observatory Climate Central explains, ‘(…) studies show a wide date range from between 800 000 to 15 million years ago. The most direct evidence comes from tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped in the vast ice sheets of Antarctica. By drilling for ice cores and analysing the air bubbles, scientists have found that, at no point during at least the past 800 000 years have atmospheric CO2 levels been as high as they are now.’

Why now?

The BBC quotes Dr Oksana Tarasova, chief of WMO’s global atmosphere watch programme, ‘It is the largest increase we have ever seen in the 30 years we have had this network.’ A previous spike was recorded in 1997-1998 during a previous El Niño, when, ‘it was 2.7ppm and now it is 3.3ppm, it is also 50% higher than the average of the last ten years’. El Niño causes levels to rise as the droughts that follow in its wake limit the uptake of CO2 by trees and plants.

While emissions from human activity have come down, Dr Tarasova explains that it is the cumulative emissions that are showing in the figures, since CO2 remains aloft and active for centuries. Rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 and other gases have the potential, according to the study to, ‘initiate unpredictable changes in the climate system… leading to severe ecological and economic disruptions.’ The study states that since 1990 there has been a 40 % increase in total radiative forcing, that’s the warming effect on our climate of all greenhouse gases.

The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago, in the mid-Pliocene era. The climate then was 2-3C warmer, and sea levels were 10-20m higher due to the melting of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets. Speaking to the BBC, Prof Euan Nisbet from Royal Holloway University of London says, ‘The 3ppm CO2 growth rate in 2015 and 2016 is extreme – double the growth rate in the 1990-2000 decade.

‘It is urgent that we follow the Paris agreement and switch rapidly away from fossil fuels: there are signs this is beginning to happen, but so far the air is not yet recording the change.’

Methane levels are also on the rise – levels were larger than the ten-year average. Prof Nisbet says there is a fear of a vicious cycle, where methane drives up temperatures which in turn releases more methane from natural sources. ‘The rapid increase in methane since 2007, especially in 2014, 2015, and 2016, is different. This was not expected in the Paris agreement. Methane growth is strongest in the tropics and sub-tropics. The carbon isotopes in the methane show that growth is not being driven by fossil fuels. We do not understand why methane is rising. It may be a climate change feedback. It is very worrying.’

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas has said that without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse emissions we will be heading for dangerous temperature increases by the end of this century.

Cordis Source: Based on media reports

The recent uproar about seats on a British Airways flight crawling with bedbugs is only one of the unintended consequences that urbanization worldwide has on evolution, say Marc Johnson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Jason Munshi-South, who is an associate professor of biological sciences at Fordham University.

“As we build cities, we have little understanding of how they are influencing organisms that live there,” says Johnson, who is also director of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Urban Environments (@CUE_UofT). “It’s good news that some organisms are able to adapt, such as native species that have important ecological functions in the environment. But it can also be bad news that the ability of some of these organisms to adapt to our cities might increase the transmission of disease. Bedbugs, for example, were scarce two decades ago, but they’ve adapted to the insecticides used to keep them at bay and have exploded in abundance worldwide.”

In the first study to take a comprehensive look at the way urbanization is affecting evolution, Johnson and Munshi-South reviewed all existing research studies about urbanization and evolution and synthesized the results.

“Traditionally, we’ve thought about evolution as a long-term process driven by environmental pressures and the interactions between species. But now there is a new driver that is rapidly changing many other species, which is how they interact with humans and our built environment”, says Munshi-South. “Humans and our cities are one of the most dominant forces of contemporary evolution now.”

The study raises questions about which native species can persist during urbanization and whether those that adapt will influence the health of ecosystems and human beings. Loss of habitat and urban barriers (roads, buildings, etc.) pose challenges to all kinds of species and some may adapt in undesirable ways. The researchers assessed various means of genetic adaptation, such as mutation, the movement of genes through dispersal, neutral evolution and adaptive evolution through Darwinian natural selection, concluding that the urban environment has an impact on each of these mechanisms of evolution.

Their work touches on mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and viruses, identifying evolutionary impacts on species as diverse as the common blackbird in Europe to white clovers and white-footed mice in North America. Populations of white-footed mice in New York City, for example, became differentiated from each other after urbanization, due to their isolation in various parks.

“We’ve created a novel ecosystem that no organism has ever seen before,” said Johnson, noting that their study, published Nov. 3 in the journal, Science, is a “wake-up call for the public, governments and other scientists.”

He and Munshi-South suggest that we need to think carefully about how we’re altering our environment in unintended ways when we build cities, influencing the evolution of species that may, in turn, influence our lives. A number of organisms, such as rats, urban lizards, cockroaches, pigeons and bedbugs, have evolved to depend on humans.

There are now mosquitoes, for example, that have evolved to live in the London Underground stations and adapted so that they no longer need to feed on blood to produce eggs. They also have no need to become dormant during the winter. Unfortunately, these mosquitoes can carry a number of diseases and are now found in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, too. Our healthcare systems may be required to adapt in response.

Johnson and Munshi-South suggest that when we’re planning cities, we need to think about the impact our designs have on native species and whether we can design them to “be kinder to ourselves and the environment,” considering ways to conserve native species and mitigate the prevalence of disease-carrying pests.

Given that species are evolving so rapidly in response to urbanization, the outdoors also becomes a classroom that offers an opportunity to see examples of evolution firsthand. Urban evolution can be used as a tool to educate city dwellers and others about the reality and importance of evolutionary biology.

“People who don’t believe in evolution need not go further than their backyards to see evidence of it,” Johnson said.

David Balding of the University of Melbourne, Australia and Mikkel Andersen of Aalborg University in Denmark have developed new, open-source software that can help understand how many people in a population will match a single Y-chromosome profile detected at a crime scene, which they describe in a new study in PLOS Genetics.

Forensic analysis of Y-chromosome DNA is especially useful when a small amount of male DNA is mixed in with a large amount of female DNA, such as occurs in sexual assault cases. Explaining this evidence in court, however, is difficult because the Y chromosome passes down mostly unchanged from fathers to sons, so a single Y-chromosome profile can be shared by dozens of men in a population.

Instead of a match probability or database count, Balding and Andersen propose that courts be told about the likely number of matching males in the population, and the possible consequences of their relatedness, which is often more distant than uncle or cousin but much closer than for a random man.

They also show how the distribution of matching males can be affected by database information, and suggest ways to present this information in court to make clear that Y-chromosome evidence cannot definitively identify the culprit, but can dramatically reduce the number of possible sources of the DNA. The court must then decide if it has enough other evidence to identify the suspect as the source of the Y-chromosome profile, rather than one of his matching (distant) relatives.

After the introduction of DNA profiling using non-sex chromosomes, the procedure had problems that, once addressed, made profiling a powerful tool that has revolutionized forensic science. Now, Y chromosome profiling must undergo the same process to quantify the results in a way that is valid and directly interpretable to courts. The new software presented in this study could be used to improve the accuracy of Y chromosome evidence and to increase its understanding by judges and jurors.

David Balding added: “We think this work is going to make a big improvement to how Y profile evidence is presented in courts. We will soon extend this work to mixtures of Y-chromosome profiles from multiple males, and also address the corresponding problem for the maternally-inherited mtDNA profiles. Our approach also allows us to include information from any relatives of the suspect whose profile is already available, and we will be working to develop that aspect.”