The UK's Invisible Slaves

Boris Johnson’s Looming Brexit Deadline

Why President Essebsi, and Tunisia, Stood Alone

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Ali Babacan - The Man to Take on Turkish President Erdogan?

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Issue 1759- August - 02/08/2019

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The UK’s Invisible Slaves www.majalla.com

Editorial A Weekly Political News Magazine

Slavery did not end with abolition in the 19th century.

Instead, it changed its forms and continues to harm people in every country in the world - including the UK where the British government estimates there are tens of thousands of modern slaves. In this week’s cover story, Yasmine El-Geressi takes an in depth look at the the scandal of human trafficking and slavery happening in every town and city in Britain.

She explores the different forms of slavery, who the victims are and which industries are rife with slaves.

She also discusses the UK government’s slowly improving response the challenges that remain untackled.

Britains new Prime Minister Boris Johnson has begun the task of leading a divided country and party out of the Brexit maze, but what is his game plan? In this week’s issue, Ali El Shamy unpick’s Johnson’s many obstacles on the way to Britain exiting the EU on October 31.

We also bring you the latest in the escalating tensions between Iran and the West. As Britain and Iran continue to hold each other’s oil tankers, Joseph Braude writes that Tehran is taking a page out of its well-worn playbook by responding to the stalemate with a blend of pressure and offers of negotiations as Foreign Minister Zarif signals a diplomatic outreach to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new government, while other elements of the Iranian government opted to ramp up the pressure.

In addition to these articles, we also bring you an interview with Iraqi singer Ismail Fadel following the latest of many performances in Israel organised by the Iraqi-Jewish community. Fadel shares how insults and death threats have not deterred him from using his voice as a tool for peace.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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Editor-in-Chief

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By Selling Melted Ice?

Issue 1759- August - 02/08/2019

Iran and the West : Stalemate in the Gulf

16 and Negotiated Settlement in Doubt

The Venezuelan Refugee Crisis Is Not

26 Just a Regional Problem

Facebook's Libra Change the 38 Will Way the World Banks?

Earth Warmed Faster in the Last Few

34 Decades Than the Previous 1,900 Years

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Iraqi Singer, Ismail Fadel to Majalla: “ I am convinced that music is a way to bring communities together and push towards peace�

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Strategies to Stop Stress50 Simple Related Overeating

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Stranded whales lie on the beach at Lรถngufjรถrur in the Snaefellsnes peninsula. About 50 pilot whales were stranded on the beach, a frequent but rarely fatal phenomenon among these cetaceans and which remains unexplained. (Getty)

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Orthodox nuns look on as they take part in a religious procession during the celebration of the 1031st anniversary of the Christianisation of Kievan Rus in Kiev on July ,27 2019. - Tens of thousand of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow patriarchy) believers took part in the open air service and in the religious procession in Ukrainian capital on July 2019 ,27. (Getty)

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Houthi Attack Kills at Least 39 in Yemen's Aden, Saudi Blames Iran Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement launched missile and drone attacks on Thursday on a military parade in Aden, the seat of government and a stronghold of the Saudi-led military coalition, killing 36 people according to the interior ministry. An explosion hit a military camp belonging to the Yemeni Security Belt forces backed by the United Arab Emirates, which is a member of the Western-backed coalition battling the Houthis, a Reuters witness said. Soldiers screamed and ran to lift the wounded and place them on trucks. Red berets lay on the ground in pools of blood as several soldiers cried near the body of

a commander who was a leading figure among southern separatists. Yemen’s Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and Saudi Arabia’s envoy to Yemen accused Iran of being behind the parade attack and a separate blast at a police station, also in the southern port city on Thursday, involving an explosives-laden car.

powers abandoned by the United States, but that he was sure Tehran would eventually prevail. Fears of a Middle East war with global repercussions have risen since President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 deal and revived a panoply of sanctions meant to push Tehran into wider security concessions. Iran has retaliated by breaching the deal, resuming uranium enrichment seen in the West as a potential conduit to developing an atom bomb, but faces severe economic damage under intensified U.S. sanctions designed to strangle its vital oil trade. The downbeat remarks by Rouhani, architect of the landmark 2015 accord and a strong proponent of negotiations, hinted he was losing hope of avoiding a final collapse of the deal, though he left the door open to further contacts with

Iran Says it's Ready for Worst in Battle to Save Nuclear Deal in Standoff with U.S. President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday Iran was ready for the worst in an uphill struggle to salvage its nuclear deal with world

Europe.

U.S. Puts Sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, Who Says They Won't Affect Him The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, targeting the country’s top spokesman and potentially hurting chances of diplomatic talks amid rising tensions between the two countries. Zarif, a critical figure in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, dismissed the action and said it would not affect him. The sanctions against Zarif would block any property or interests he has in the United States, but the Iranian foreign minister said he had none.

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Sudan Says 87 Killed When Security Forces Broke up Protest in June The head of a Sudanese investigation into the violent break up of a protest by security forces said on Saturday that 87 people were killed and 168 wounded in the June 3 incident in Khartoum, citing a higher death toll than previous official estimates. Fath Al-Rahman Saeed, the head of the investigative committee appointed by the public prosecutor, said some members of the security forces fired live ammunition at protesters who were holding a sit-in to demand the military cede power. He told a news conference that three officers had violated orders by moving forces into the sit-in area outside the Defense Ministry, a focal point for protests that had led to the ouster of longtime President Omar Al-Bashir on April 11.

As Democrats Squabble, Trump Worries Some Republicans with his Twitter Battles

Some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s allies worry his racially charged fights with opponents are hurting his re-election chances even as Democratic rivals make things easier

for him by bickering over their own key policies. Trump faces no serious challenge from within his Republican Party, the economy is growing, and two televised debates this week highlighted the divisions within the Democratic Party over healthcare, immigration and criminal justice reform. That combination of factors could allow Trump to poke fun at the crowded field of Democratic candidates while pushing his record on the economy and his case for re-election.Some Republicans believe Trump would be in a much stronger position if he stayed away from conflict and adopted a more positive message.

Sterling Sinks to 1.21$ as BoE Cuts Growth Forecasts Before Brexit Sterling sank to a -30month low on Thursday

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below 1.21$, hurt by a stronger dollar, renewed worries about a no-deal Brexit and reduced Bank of England forecasts for British economic growth. The pound plunged to a low of 1.2085 GBP=D3, its weakest since January 2017. It came after the U.S. Federal Reserve's less dovish than expected policy meeting on Wednesday spurred dollar buying, and before the BoE kept interest rates on hold but cut its growth forecasts amid mounting Brexit risks.

The pound shed more than %4 of its value in July, its worst month since October 2016, following new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vow to leave the European Union on Oct. 31 whether or not a transition deal can be agreed with Brussels. This sparked panic among investors that Britain was on course for a disorderly divorce after 46 years in the world’s largest trade bloc.

Boko Haram Fighters Kill Dozens at Funeral in Nigeria

More than 60 mourners leaving a funeral in north-east Nigeria have been killed by the militant group Boko Haram according to Nigerian officials and other sources in the area. Ten years after the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was murdered in police custody after a crackdown on his followers, Boko Haram’s factions are continuing to wage a bloody insurgency against the Nigerian security forces and civilians, defying government attempts to destroy the group.

In the latest attack, a number of men were walking back to their village after the funeral prayers for a relative when armed men turned up on motorcycles and opened fire, said the head of the Borno Hunters Association, Bunu Bukar. The village is to the north of Maiduguri, Borno’s state capital, in the area of Nganzai.

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The UK’s Invisible Slaves Thousands of Modern Day Slaves are Hidden in Plain Sight

By Yasmine El-Geressi Although it has been over 200 years since the end of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery sadly isn’t consigned to history - the scale of human trafficking today is staggering. There are close to 41 million people around the world entrapped in modern slavery, more than originally recorded in the 1700s. From

women forced into prostitution or domestic servitude, girls focused to marry older men, children forced to support armed groups, or men forced to work in construction or agriculture, this gross violation of human rights affects people in almost every country in the world - including the UK. Just last month, the largest-ever UK modern slavery ring, which forced more than 400 people from

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There are close to 41 million people around the world entrapped in modern slavery, more than originally recorded in the 1700s. or beat them up, while “house spies” – previously trafficked individuals turned trusted informers – kept an eye on the workers. One man who complained about living conditions and pay had his arm broken and was refused medical care, before being ejected from the accommodation because his injury left him unable to work. The gang’s network - made up of 5 men and 3 men - collapsed after two victims fled their captors in 2014 and spoke with charity modernday slavery charity Hope for Justice who then worked with Anti-slavery investigators and West Midlands Police to uncover the shocking brutality against those who stepped out of line. Investigators believe it is the largest such criminal prosecution of this type in Europe, to date.

WHAT DOES MODERN SLAVERY IN THE UK LOOK LIKE? A rising number of modern slavery victims are being identified by authorities but their masters are not being prosecuted ( National Crime Agency )

Poland- many of them homeless, ex-prisoners or alcoholics - to work for a pittance while their criminal masters earned 2£ million, was smashed following a three year police investigation. The ring lured and then trafficked vulnerable victims to the UK with the promise of good money, but instead housed them in cramped, rat-infested accommodation and paid them as little as 50p for a day’s labour on farms, recycling centres and poultry factories. A Sunday Times investigation revealed that some of the UK’s bestknown supermarkets, including Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, have been selling goods from supply chairs that used workers from the human trafficking network.

Meanwhile, the gang’s bosses enjoyed a lavish lifestyle off the back of the exploitation, wearing expensive clothes and driving luxury cars. If any complained, gang enforcers would humiliate, threaten

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This unprecedented scale of this case meant that discourse on modern slavery entered the mainstream media, yet nobody really knows how many victims of perpetrators of this crime there are in Britain. The government believes that there are about 13,000 victims of slavery in the UK, while earlier this year the Global Slavery Index released a much higher estimate of 136,000.

In 2017, over 5,000 people were referred to British authorities as potential victims of slavery. Up one third from 2016. This includes 2,000 children.

Recent data shows that there is a spike in the numbers of child slavery victims identified, this is largely to do with the fact that children are starting to be identified as victims of country lines drug trafficking and other forms of criminal exploitation, and also that more unaccompanied child asylum seekers are being recognised as having faced trafficking or modern slavery.

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In the under two years since anti-slavery charity Unseen established the Modern Slavery Helpline, it has received over 10000 calls and online reports, working with the police, government, businesses, and the public to help people escape situations of exploitation.

While these statistics provide a snapshot of slavery in the UK, it doesn’t paint the full picture. Adam Hewitt of Hope for Justice told Majalla that as slavery is a hidden crime it is difficult to know the exact number of victims but it's enough that is “affecting every town and city and region.” Many people are unaware, however, that slavery continues to exist in the UK. Research by the Co-op Group this year found that nearly %20 of British people are unaware of modern slavery and %35 don’t think that it exists in their home own or city. Hewitt says that while awareness amongst professionals and the general public has improved and knowledge is slowly becoming more widespread since the establishment of Hope for Justice in 2008, the issue is still not completely widely known with a many of people believing that it is an evil of the past or something that happens in other countries like North Korea, but not in the UK. Modern slavery can take many forms but there are four broad ways in which perpetrators seek to exploit victims in the UK. Labour exploitation involves people being forced into working long hours for no or very low pay, and usually in poor working conditions. Often victims can’t leave because they have built heavy debts to their ‘employer’. Domestic servitude involves victims working in a private home where they are treated badly, humiliated, and

Adam Hewitt of Hope for Justice told Majalla that as slavery is a hidden crime it is difficult to know the exact number of victims but it's enough that is “affecting every town and city and region.”

subjected to unbearable conditions and forced to work long hours or little or no pay. Victims can also be exploited sexually by being coerced into sex work or sexually abusive situations. This includes child sexual exploitation. Criminal exploitation involves the exploitation of person to commit a crime, such as shoplifting, benefit fraud, eternising to sham marriages, for someone else’s gain. There is growing trend is to use children to transport dugs between cities and rural areas.

Communications Manager Hewitt says that UK nationals make up the biggest group of potential victims and the most common source countries outside of the UK include Albania, Poland, Romania, Vietnam and Nigeria. “Vietnam is particularly linked to forced cannabis cultivation and the beauty industry, mainly nail salons. Nigeria is often associated with trafficking for sexual exploitation,” he said.

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Agriculture is one of the industries identified as a risk for modern slavery in the UK ( National Crime Agency )

The signs of human exploitation can be extremely subtle; violence, threats and intimidation are often used by offenders to silence their victims and keep them compliant. construction sites and cannabis farms, had slept rough after escaping their traffickers ad %92 had mental health issues.

Traffickers use manipulation or false promises of stability, good quality accommodation, high-paying jobs, food, transport, and support for anyone who needs help with documentation. Hewitt told Majalla that often in the first few days things may seem normal but it never takes long for the reality of overcrowded, dirty, squalid accommodation that lacks of essential utilities, electricity, water or a decent place to sleep to start coming to the fore.

Industries identified as most high risk in the UK involve informal and lower skilled work such as the beauty industry, car washes and lower skilled factory, agriculture and construction work, painting and decorating, waste and recycling processing and catering.

Hewitt says that what most victims have in common is vulnerability whether that comes in the form of homelessness, deprivation, a recent breakdown of a marriage, people who recently left the military or prison or an institution that previously defined their lives in some way and are now left with nothing.

According to The London charity Hestia, there has been a rise in the exploitation of homeless people.

It found that over %50 of the people it has helped last year who had been forced to work on farms,

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The slave masters and human traffickers coerce and control their victims, keeping them in slavery for weeks, months or years at a time. The signs of human exploitation can be extremely subtle; violence, threats and intimidation are often used by offenders to silence their victims and keep them compliant. They often feel unable to leave or report the crime through fear or intimidation and may not even recognise themselves as a victim. Hewitt recalls once such domestic servitude case that stuck with him over the years involving a couple from Nigeria who worked for the NHS. “To the outside world they seemed like a normal respectable couple but behind closed doors they were using this young boy as a slave for many, many years until he was an adult man. He didn’t know what was happening to him or how strange it was until he watched something on TV about modern slavery which made him realise what was happening to him and reached out for help,� he recalled.

WHAT IS BEING DONE? Britain has described itself as a world leader in the anti-slavery drive, having passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015. The Home office revealed last year that slavery is costing Britain up to 4.3$ billion a year, although campaigners say the figure is likely to be higher with the government underestimating

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the number of people being wrongly detailed as slaves. Publishing the report, the Home Office said it would launch a review of the Modern Slavery Act. Announcing the review, the crime minister, Victoria Atkins, said: “This awful crime is evolving, it is our responsibility as citizens, businesses and governments to do all we can to stop exploitation. This independent review will help us identify what more we can do to tackle this terrible, global injustice by enhancing the Modern Slavery Act where necessary.”

Legislation currently requires every business with an annual turnover of 36£m and above to publish a statement on its website outlining what it is doing to prevent and tackle modern slavery in its operations and supply chain. Campaigners have criticised the measure as toothless.

Hewitt says that although many businesses have complied, enforcement of this aspect of the act has been weak.

The review will also look at what else can be done to strengthen the legislation and minimise the risk that goods and services available in the UK are produced through forced labour and slavery.

Hewitt points out that there have been some tangible improvement since the act came into law. “The act brought together a complicated set of legislation and very different crimes all into one act. It has increased potential sentences that judges can hand down and

A Sunday Times investigation revealed that some of the UK’s best-known supermarkets, including Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, have been selling goods from supply chairs that used workers from the human trafficking network.

the police have been given more resources,” he said.

The number of modern slavery prosecutions rose by a quarter last year but make up a fraction of tens of thousands of cases flagged to authorities. Looking forward Hewitt wants to see more prosecutions and the kind of sentences that will properly deter traffickers. He says at the moment too many of them see this as a low risk, high reward crime. “But it really is a barbaric crime against human beings and some of the stories we hear at the charity are just shocking,” he said.

Support for the often extremely vulnerable people that escapee a situation of slavery is far from what it should be. Often they need medical treatment, legal advice and mental health support. Most of all they need stability while they work out how to rebuild their

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lives. The government currently provides short term support, usually for up to 45 days. Data published this week found that the UK had denied 752 of former slaves the right to stay in the country and access to support or care services, despite authorities confirming that they were trafficking victims. All were from non-European countries such as Vietnam and Nigeria, according to the report by the British Red Cross, Hestia and Ashiana, charities that support slavery survivors. The charities urged the government to extend the support period to 12 months, and to let survivors of slavery stay in the country for at least 30 months in order to rebuild their lives.

Hewitt explains that not having the right to access help leaves survivors at risk of fresh exploitation and means that human traffickers and slave masters go prosecuted. “The next step we see now is to also

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improve victim care because because we found that victims who are properly looked after, who were supported into new lives and opportunities tend to feel safe enough to give evidence against those who do this to them by giving witness statements and standing up in court testify. That is what ultimately means the traffickers get convicted whereas too often we see victims aren't properly supported and are left on their own after a short period of help and that can mean that that vital intelligence evidence never comes to light and that person could end up again destitute or even re-trafficked,” he explains.

“Estimates suggest that there are more people living in a form of slavery today than were enslaved during the world parts of the transatlantic slave trade more than 200 years ago. That fact alone should really shock a lot of people into action.”

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Iran and the West : Stalemate in the Gulf and Negotiated Settlement in Doubt Following a Well-Trod Pattern, Iran Responds with a Blend of Pressure and Offers of Negotiation 16

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by Joseph Braude Iran and the West remain locked in a stalemate as the British and Iranian navies continue to hold oil tankers, each carrying the other’s flag. When the UK resisted Iranian demands to accede to a swap, Tehran responded with a familiar mix of threats and invitations to negotiate.

IRAN AND BRITAIN IN A HOLDING PATTERN In the latest outcome of the ongoing trans-Atlantic campaign to challenge Iranian aspirations, Tehran and London each continue to hold one oil tanker seized from the other. Last week, Iranian President Rouhani implicitly offered to trade the Stena Impero, which the IRGC seized in the Strait of Hormuz, for the Grace 1, which the Royal Navy captured off the coast of Gibraltar. “Should [the British] be committed to international frameworks and give up their wrong actions, including what they did in Gibraltar, they will receive a proportional response from Iran,” Rouhani was quoted as saying.

The new British government swiftly rejected Tehran’s offer, citing a false equivalency. In an interview on the BBC Monday morning, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab ruled out an exchange of captured oil tankers with Iran, saying that London would not accept a “quid pro quo” to end the standoff. The Iranian tanker “was intercepted because it was in breach of sanctions and heading with oil to Syria. The [British] Stena Impero was unlawfully detained. So this isn’t about some kind of barter. This is about international law.”

TEHRAN RESPONDS WITH A MIXTURE OF THREATS AND NEGOTIATION Following a well-trod pattern, Iranian officials have responded with a blend of pressure and offers of negotiation. Positioning himself as a conciliator, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif attempted to shift blame for the impasse onto the now-departed May government and seemingly offered the incoming Boris Johnson government a fresh start.

On July 23, Zarif tweeted, “The May government’s seizure of Iranian oil at the US’s behest is piracy, pure and simple.

I congratulate my former counterpart, Boris Johnson, on becoming UK PM. Iran does not seek confrontation. But we have 1500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline. These are our waters and we will protect them.” These followed on the heels of an earlier comment by Zarif to reporters that "It's important for Boris Johnson to understand that Iran does not seek confrontation." He added, “Starting a conflict is easy, ending it would be impossible.”

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Even as Zarif signaled diplomatic outreach to Boris Johnson’s new government, other elements of the Iranian government opted to ramp up the pressure.

IRAN’S COUNTERMOVES Even as Zarif signaled diplomatic outreach to Boris Johnson’s new government, other elements of the Iranian government opted to ramp up the pressure. These came in three forms: forging closer naval ties with Russia, tying the tanker impasse to the JCPOA, and further weakening Iran’s commitments under the 2015 nuclear accord.

The first form of Iranian pressure on the West was unveiled on Monday, when Iranian naval commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi announced that Iran and Russia had signed a memorandum of understanding, largely centering around the two countries' naval forces. He hailed the agreement as a milestone that "may be considered as a turning point in relations of Tehran in Moscow," and promised that "joint Russian-Iranian exercises in the Indian Ocean are expected to take place soon."

Tehran’s next bid was to abandon Rouhani’s offer of a tanker exchange and tie the fate of the Grace 1 to the 2015 nuclear accord. After emergency talks in Vienna on July 28, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the first explicit link between the seized tankers and the nuclear deal: “Since Iran is entitled to export its oil according to the JCPOA, any impediment in the way of Iran’s export of oil is actually against the JCPOA.” Most critically, Tehran has accelerated its campaign to divest itself of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear and missile programs by the JCPOA. On the nuclear front, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian lawmakers on July 28 that he was planning to reinitiate activity at the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor — a measure expliciutly prohibited by the 2015 nuclear accord — and that Tehran has so far enriched a total of 24,000 kilograms of uranium since 2015, far more than the 300 permitted by the JCPOA. Moreover, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Iran is planning to enter a third phase of reducing its JCPOA commitments in early September.

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Boris Johnson’s Looming Brexit Deadline Can the Prime Minister Get Brexit Done in 90 Days

by Ali El Shamy Though Boris Johnson has achieved his premiership ambitions, his time in office will not be a walk in the park. He is expected to take the UK out of the European Union by October 31, which gives him less than 90 days to do what Theresa May wasn’t able to do in three years. Furthermore, he needs to find a way to unite the ruling Conservative Party, which is experiencing unprecedented divisions due to disagreements over

how to handle the Brexit situation. Such differences were highlighted in Johnson’s cabinet shuffle, which saw the likes of Rory Stewart and Philip Hammond resign over Johnson’s willingness to take the UK out of the bloc without a deal, while staunch Brexiters such as Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg got cabinet positions. Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, is planning to propose a motion of no confidence in the hopes that it will lead to another general election, which would be

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the country’s third one in the last five years. While Johnson has stated time and time again that he is not aiming for a no-deal scenario and that he will go to Brussels for a new and better deal, the top EU negotiators have thus far not shown willingness to go back to the drawing board and come up with an entirely new agreement. As a matter of fact, top EU leaders seem to be adamant towards the deal that they agreed to with Theresa May and many have stated that they will not accept any radically different deal put to the table. Meanwhile, Brexit has shown the potential to divide the country; the Scottish government led by the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has openly admitted that it might consider a second independence referendum due to the fact that most Scottish constituents voted to remain in the EU and the Irish backstop might hinder the special arrangements the UK has with Northern Ireland. All in all, Johnson is facing sharp daggers from nearly all sides of the political spectrum, but if he can find a way to viably get the UK out of the EU by the deadline with a better deal that will keep the country united, then he might just be recorded in the history books as one Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers.

KEEPING THE PARTY UNITED

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during the first meeting of the National Policing Board at the Home Office on July 2019 ,31 in London, England. (Getty)

It cannot be denied that being a Tory was much easier back in the day, after all you were a member of the country’s most successful political party and while differences between party members did exist, most members shared enough major stances to keep the party unified. However, Britain’s membership of the European Union has always been a major point of contention between Tory members ever since the country joined the bloc. Funnily enough, back during the 1975 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Community, it was Labour under Harold Wilson who put the forward the question to the public. Furthermore, it was Labour which was more opposed to Britain’s membership in the bloc, as figures such as Barbara Castle was in many ways the original poster child Brexit. The reason for Labour’s contentions with the EC was due to its original socialist stances which thought that membership in the common market would hinder powers of trade unions. Meanwhile, the Tories led under their new leader Margaret Thatcher campaigned largely in favour of remaining in the common market, but that isn’t to say that all Conservative members were happy with staying in Europe. For instance, Enoch Powell, the Conservative MP who infamously gave the “Rivers of Blood” speech was opposed to the European Common market as he viewed it as a transgression on Britain’s sovereignty. In a 1975

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The year 1992 was a major turning point in this debate, as the Conservative government under Prime Minister John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, which paved the way for further European integration. interview Powell seemed to have predicted the future of the Tory party as he stated that he and other Tories like him would keep voicing their opposition to Britain’s membership. “As the House of Commons, week by week, has to debate the consequences of being in the Common Market, it will, as it tends to do, filter through to wider and wider areas that they were rightly told by people like Edward Heath that this in fact did mean that it (the UK) would become the province of a new state.”

As Labour started to become more centrist under Tony Blair, it no longer became the party that opposes the EU. Meanwhile, on the Tory side the EU became more of a hot topic and the party was largely seen as the one that would be able to take Britain out of the bloc. The year 1992 was a major turning point in this debate, as the Conservative government under Prime Minister John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, which paved the way for further European integration, and other elements we are familiar with today such as European Citizenship and the EU single currency, the Euro. Many Tory MPs opposed the government’s decision and many of them opposed the governments in parliamentary votes on the implementation of the treaty. These challenging figures became known as the Maastricht Rebels and they had the support of senior members of the party such as none other than the former Prime Minister herself, Margaret Thatcher. It was around this time when UKIP was founded with the purpose of persuading the Conservatives to pull out of the treaty and the EU as a whole. The controversial decision led to Tory members leaving the party, for example a certain Nigel Farage left the Conservatives in 1993 and joined UKIP. This contention only grew as the years went by and finally culminated during the 2016 refurundum and its aftermath which showcased just how divided the party has become over the European question. Now it is up to Boris Johnson to somehow unite the party, while also making sure that he keeps

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his promise of taking the UK out of the EU with no ifs or buts.

As the Tories remain divided over a deal or nodeal Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn now seeks to exploit the Conservative’s darkest hour to rise up to the highest office in the country. While Corbyn has largely remained silent on his opinions on Brexit, the party dropped a bombshell last July as it announced that it would support a second refurendum. What happened? Well according to a report in The Guardian, trade union leaders recently agreed that if the Conservatives bring any new deal to parliament (or a date for leaving without a deal), then Labour should call for a second refurendum and campaign for remain. However, the union leaders also said that it Labour were to get into power before a Brexit then it should continue where the Tories left off and try to secure a new Brexit deal with the EU. While such dissaffrimance does not bode well with remainers, Corbyn and Labour are now the most viable hope for preventing Brexit. As it stands, Corbyn has said that he will table a motion of no confidence against Johnson’s government, but hasn’t said when.

DIVISIONS WITHIN THE UK Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland’s ruling SNP hasn’t shown any enthusiam towards the new government in Westminister. Shortly after she met with Johnson

In one corner we have a Prime Minister who seeks to radically change up the deal with the EU and in the opposing corner we have the EU, which is determined to keep the existing Withdrawal Agreement as intact as possible.

for the first time, she said “this government and the path it's pursuing is dangerous” as she thinks that Johnson has steered the country towards an unavoidable no-deal Brexit. The SNP has projected Scotland’s opposition to getting out of the EU, and has repeatedly said that such a prospect in grounds for a new independence referendum. Scotland previously held an independence referendum in 2014, which saw 55 percent of the voters in favor of remaining in the UK, while 45 percent wanted out. For too long the devolved government of Scotland has complained that Westminster does not take its issues into serious consideration, and the Scottish public’s desire to remain in the EU has only highlighted this problem. Sturgeon has said that she intends to hold a second independence referendum in 2021 if the UK exits from the EU, but she also said that she would seek agreement from Westminster before doing so.

But, Theresa May’s official spokesperson said that Scotland already had a referendum in 2014, and voted to remain in the UK, therefore the result should be respected.

BRUSSELS STARTS BRACING ITSELF Then comes the Northern Irish backstop, one of the main reasons why the Tories voted down May’s

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Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomes Prime Minister Boris Johnson outside Bute House on July ,29 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Getty)

It is still unclear if Johnson was bluffing in his calls to take the UK out of the UK even without a deal, but it seems that the EU is preparing to call the Prime Minister’s bluff.

agreement three times. The backstop was put in the deal to preserve the open borders between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and would place the UK in a customs union with the EU for an indefinite period of time. During his campaign, Johnson said he would remove the backstop as to European Chief Negotiator for the United Kingdom Exiting the European Union Michel Barnier arrives ahead of a European Council meeting on Brexit at The Europa Building, the European Council on April 2019 ,10 in Brussels, Belgium.

(Getty)

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ensure a real Brexit. However, Politico recently leaked a letter from Michel Barnier (the EU’s top Brexit negotiator) to EU leaders in which he said that Johnson’s demand for the backstop to be removed is unacceptable. The letter also stated that any new amendments from the UK would have to be in line with the Withdrawal Agreement, which May agreed to with the EU. As such, in one corner we have a Prime Minister who seeks to radically change up the deal with the EU and in the opposing corner we have the EU, which is determined to keep the existing Withdrawal Agreement as intact as possible. Barnier further wrote: "As suggested by his rather combative speech, we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to the planning for 'no deal,' partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27.” It is still unclear if Johnson was bluffing in his calls to take the UK out of the UK even without a deal, but it seems that the EU is preparing to call the Prime Minister’s bluff.

They also seem to preparing for such a scenario as Barnier’s letter also stated: "No deal will never be the EU's choice, but we all have to be ready for all scenarios."

As it stands, Johnson is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If he keeps his promise of a Brexit, even if it means no-deal then he risks the economic and political security of the country. If he seeks an extension he will be faced with opposition from his base and risks the prospect of Corbyn calling for a vote of no-confidence. If Johnson has the finesse and tenacity to somehow negotiate a deal that ensures continued trade relations with the EU, open borders in Ireland and a staunch exit from the EU’s political union then he might go down as one of the greatest Prime Minister’s in British history. If he doesn’t he will have to walk through the Tory walk of shame that has graced the presence of the likes of Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, David Cameron and most recently Theresa May.

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Why President Essebsi, and Tunisia, Stood Alone

He Was Both Link to the Past and Bridge to a Democratic Future

by Allen James Fromherz Last Thursday, Beji Caid Essebsi, the president of the Republic of Tunisia, died in a military hospital

at the age of 92. His death fell on a national holiday of particular resonance: Republic Day commemorates the founding of modern Tunisia on July 1957 ,25, when the country abolished its

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monarchy and became a republic.

Essebsi had an important connection to the events of 1957. He belonged to the party and government of the Republic of Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba, who was among the most important, and most stridently secular, nationalists in the Arabic-speaking world.

Bourguiba was friends with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. He made headlines for drinking orange juice on television in the middle of the day during Ramadan, as well as for policies against veiling. Less famous, but more profound, were the changes Bourguiba made to Tunisia’s economy and social fabric— reforms that propelled Tunisia to become one of the most developed and educated countries in the Muslim world.

Essebsi was an entrenched part of Bourguiba’s government, intimately involved in implementing secularization policies, fostering economic expansion, and defending Bourguiba’s decisions.

He served as director of national security, as foreign minister, and in other senior posts under both Bourguiba and his successor, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, until leaving government service behind in 1994.

Former Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi attends a meeting with political parties, unions and employers on January 2018 ,13 in Tunis, following unrest triggered by austerity measures. (Getty)

Essebsi’s timing was fortunate. Ben Ali was a corrupt strongman disliked by his people—so much so that a popular uprising known as the Jasmine Revolution ousted him in January 2011.

In 2014, an independent tribunal called the Truth and Dignity Commission began investigating the Tunisian government’s human rights abuses since 1955. The commission held Essebsi responsible for a crackdown on dissidents during his time as national security director, following a 1963 attempt on Bourguiba’s life. But this finding did not lose Essebsi the confidence of Tunisians, who looked to him as a stabilizing force during the difficult and often chaotic years following 2011.

As a senior statesman, Essebsi was a flesh-andblood link to Tunisia’s past—specifically to the era of Bourguiba, which many Tunisians remember fondly. When revolutionaries sent Ben Ali packing in January 2011, they quickly removed his image from public spaces and buildings, and

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Essebsi is no longer alive, but the democracy he and the Tunisian people created - vibrant, messy, and magnificent - will survive him. His will be a tough act to follow. the newly free media reported furiously on his abuses and corruption. Now a statue of Bourguiba on a horse stands over the avenue Bourguiba and looks into the heart of Tunis, where so many of the protests occurred. Essebsi brought this statue back to the capital in 2016 from its earlier exile to La Goulette. Not everyone lionizes the first president of the republic, and many young Tunisians criticize the return to power of elites from the previous regime. But plenty of Tunisians viewed Essebsi’s connection to Bourguiba as a link to a proud period of progress—one that offered inspiration as the country stepped into the unknown.

Essebsi returned to Tunisian politics from a long retirement in order to usher his country through a decade of tumult. Like Hercules, whom the Greeks equated with the Carthaginian god Melqart, he slew the many-headed Cerberus of Middle East politics. He showed that a new undemocratic government need not necessarily grow from the root of the previous one. As prime minister of a transitional government in 2011, Essebsi freely handed the reins of government to a former rival, the Ennahda Party. That party’s leader was a charismatic thinker named Rached Ghannouchi, who did not have an official government post but wielded great power and commanded the support of rural, conservative, and religious Tunisians, among others. Essebsi could have chosen to crush or undermine Ennahda by force. Instead he formed his own secularist party, Nidaa Tounes, and won elections in 2014. Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda formed a coalition and governed Tunisia together.

Such were the crucial decisions—to step down from power, to compete with Ennahda as political

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rivals rather than as existential enemies, and then to cooperate—through which Essebsi helped to preserve Tunisia’s transition to democracy. The same actions helped stave off any temptation to a secularist military takeover. Today Ennahda is called the Muslim Democrats, remains fully involved in Tunisian politics, and may well come to resemble the Christian Democrats of modern Germany.

Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, now called simply the Thawra (Uprising) by most Tunisians, began with the suicide of a fruit seller named Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010; became a popular outcry against corruption and lack of representation; and went on to spark the flame of the Arab Spring. Like a wildfire, that flame spread to Egypt, Yemen and Syria. Today the flames are mostly doused and have left devastation in many places. Syria and Yemen plunged into terrible civil wars. Many in Sudan and Algeria, taking Tunisia as their model, still hold out hope for success.

Tunisia stands alone at the end of the era it started, just as it did at the beginning. Scholars already call Tunisia an anomaly and debate why that should be: of all the countries that went through the Arab Spring, why is Tunisia the one that managed to establish a truly democratic system, with free elections and a secular, constitutional government?

Some reasons may be structural or demographic.

Tunisia has a well-developed middle class. Except for some pockets of Berber and Ibadi Muslims and Jews, almost all Tunisians identify themselves as Sunni Muslim Arabs, and they are not divided

Essebsi returned to Tunisian politics from a long retirement in order to usher his country through a decade of tumult.

along sectarian or religious lines. Tunisians are highly educated. Then, too, the country’s political history furnishes other explanations. Tunisians had embraced Bourguiba’s brand of secularization as part of their national character. Essebsi, his team of technocrats, and the military leadership embodied this ethos. During the Jasmine Revolution, the Tunisian military eventually chose to protect the people of Tunisia rather than follow Ben Ali’s orders to fire upon them. Essebsi, by supporting a neutral military, helped ensure such an outcome.

Once the wheels were in motion in the period from 2011 to 2016, Tunisia managed to engineer several peaceful transfers of power, to draft and ratify a democratic constitution, and to overcome political deadlock along the way through the active participation of civil society organizations.

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A supporter of former Tunisian Presidential candidate Beji Caid Essebsi holds up a portrait of him during a campaign rally on Bourguiba avenue in the capital, Tunis, on November 2014 ,21.

(Getty)

Important as each of these factors may be on its own, the one variable that ultimately combined them in just the right way to produce Tunisia’s burgeoning democracy was Essebsi’s leadership.

His decision to reenter politics at a dangerous time for former government officials, his avoidance of military violence, his handing over the reins to Ennahda, his taking back those same reins the hard way—by forming a political party, building a constituency, and entering a coalition with his rivals—and his status as a continuous link to Tunisia’s past as a proud, modern republic have all contributed to Tunisia’s emergence as the true success story of the Arab Spring.

Essebsi is no longer alive, but the democracy he and the Tunisian people created—vibrant, messy,

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As a senior statesman, Essebsi was a flesh-and-blood link to Tunisia’s past—specifically to the era of Bourguiba, which many Tunisians remember fondly. and magnificent—will survive him. His will be a tough act to follow.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The Venezuelan Refugee Crisis Is Not Just a Regional Problem Latin American Neighbors Are Pulling More Than Their Weight

by Cynthia J. Arnson Venezuela’s refugee crisis is the largest in Latin American history. Worldwide, it is now second only to that of Syria. A staggering four million Venezuelans have fled their homeland, the majority since 2015. This number constitutes more than 12 percent of the country’s total population. Leaving behind a collapsed economy and mounting repression, over one

million Venezuelans have fled since last November. The UN projects that the number of refugees will climb to 5.4 million by the end of 2019, while other researchers have predicted several hundred thousand more.

No country in Latin America has escaped the impact of Venezuela’s meltdown. Colombia, which shares a long border with Venezuela, now hosts the largest number of refugees—1.3 million, up from about 300,000 just two

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Venezuelan migrants travel aboard a truck after leaving the CEBAF (bi-national border care center) facilities in Tumbes, Peru, near the border with Ecuador, on November 2018 ,01.

(Getty)

years ago. Another 710,000 Venezuelans traveled through Colombian territory in 2018 in transit to other destinations farther south. Peru hosts the second-largest number of Venezuelans (806,900), followed by Chile (288,200) and Ecuador (263,000). Caribbean states have smaller totals but the most refugees relative to their population.

Yet only a fraction of the international assistance dedicated to other major crises has been devoted to the outpouring of Venezuelan refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) asked the international community for 738$ million to assist migrant-receiving countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2019. By early July, international donors had contributed a scant 23.7 percent of the requested funds. The shortfall, in the words of one senior Bogotá-based aid worker, is a “recipe for disaster.”

Eduardo Stein, the UN special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants, pointed out that “Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis, but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

None of the migrant-receiving countries in Latin America has the financial wherewithal to provide shelter, food, medical care, and employment to such large numbers of hungry and vulnerable people. Public health and education are already overextended and underresourced in many of the receiving countries, and recent migrants are sicker than in the past.

Many arrive having walked thousands of kilometers through rugged terrain and needing urgent medical attention. Some carry infectious diseases, such as measles and tuberculosis.

Public health officials have observed a rise in sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and HIV/AIDS. Colombia sits on the frontlines of this human tragedy, and its capacity to absorb ever hungrier and sicker Venezuelans is diminishing. By mid2019-, Colombian authorities had issued some type of formal documentation to about 52 percent of the Venezuelans in the country, with 46 percent of them receiving temporary residence permits that allow them to work, get health care, and enroll their children in schools. Not that long ago, millions of Colombians sought refuge in Venezuela, during Colombia’s decades of internal armed conflict. The memory has led Colombian officials and citizens to receive Venezuelans generously. In recent interviews in Bogotá at shelters, health clinics, bus stations, and other facilities, Venezuelan migrants spoke of ordinary citizens offering acts of kindness large and small, from food for their children to rides for those making the long journey on foot.

Yet public opinion shows signs of hardening. In a Gallup poll, the proportion of Colombian respondents who said they agree with the government’s policy of welcoming Venezuelans fell by 14 percent from May to June. In May, 55 percent of respondents said they approved of the policy and 41 percent said they disapproved; by June, the numbers were inverted, with 41 percent saying they approved and 55 percent saying they disapproved. Shocking images of

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This crisis is the largest in Latin American history. Worldwide, it is now second only to that of Syria. A staggering four million Venezuelans have fled their homeland. large numbers of people sleeping in streets, parks, and other public places are undoubtedly stoking the negative sentiments. Intense competition for employment is also a factor. Colombia’s growth rate, like that of most countries in the region, is mediocre. The official unemployment rate is more than ten percent, and close to 50 percent of Colombia’s domestic labor force is in the informal sector.

Evidence shows that immigration does not depress wages in the long term, but that does not stop many Colombians from suspecting that desperate Venezuelans willing to work for less than the minimum wage are stealing their jobs. The potential for resentment and xenophobia is especially high in border communities that are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of migrants and where unemployment rates are far higher than the national average. Refugees with no other means of livelihood are vulnerable to being exploited by criminals and lured into the illegal economy, a trend that could worsen Colombia’s crime problem and further erode popular sympathy for individuals in need of protection.

STEPPING UP Can the international community have grown inured to the demands of desperate migrants? The most recent UN report on refugees worldwide puts the total number at 25.9 million, with another 41.3 million people internally displaced. Images of death and destruction flow constantly from such places as Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Individuals, countries, and organizations have only so much to give, by way of both attention and resources.

Yet compassion fatigue hasn’t stopped the international community from providing more than 17$ billion in assistance for Syrian refugees in less than a decade, approximately 3,000$ per person. In the case of Venezuela, the Organization of American States estimates the number to be a scant 100$ to 200$ per individual.

The discrepancy may be explained in part by how other countries view the Venezuelan tragedy: as a regional or subregional crisis, not a global one. Although Spain has seen a recent influx of Venezuelan refugees, the impact of Venezuela’s collapse is largely confined to the hemisphere.

Notably, some 68 percent of the financial support to host

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countries in the region has come from the United States.

The European Union has provided less than six percent of the funding to date for Venezuelan refugees, even though it is the largest contributor to humanitarian assistance inside Venezuela. Furthermore, a number of European donors have long invested considerable resources in the Colombian peace process and may be reluctant to add to or divert that support.

Some in the international community may even be waiting for the “day after” in Venezuela, when the country will have gigantic reconstruction needs.

But the problem is immediate and urgent. In 2018, on average, 5,000 Venezuelans fled conditions in their country every day. Peru, Chile, and Ecuador have imposed new restrictions to make it more difficult for refugees to enter.

But the exodus is unlikely to slow. On the contrary, more migrants will continue to leave as food, medicine, electricity, and clean water in Venezuela approach catastrophic lows, and their journeys will become more dangerous as they are forced to use illegal routes that expose them to the predation of traffickers and armed groups.

International actors should convene a donor conference to address the crisis. United Nations organs that work on this issue, such as the Response for Venezuelans platform of the UNHCR and IOM, should work together with international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and Development Bank of Latin America, not only to increase the commitments of large donors such as the United States but also to coax countries in Asia and Europe, particularly those with economic interests in Latin America, to take on a greater share of the responsibility. Meeting the emergency needs of refugees

It is only a matter of time before political systems throughout the hemisphere will feel the consequences for democratic governance occasioned by a rise in xenophobia and an ever-shrinking faith in the capacity of institutions to resolve people’s basic problems.

is not enough. Receiving countries require resources to strengthen their health and education systems and to generate employment opportunities for refugees along with their host communities.

International financial institutions can lighten the load on receiving countries by offering expanded grants and soft loans with generous repayment terms. In recent years, both the World Bank and the IADB have created special facilities for making grants to middle-income countries facing emergencies, including massive refugee flows. But the amounts offered thus far are modest relative to the need: the World Bank gave 31.5$ million to Colombia in April, and in May the IADB set up a special 100$ million fund for Venezuelan and Central American refugees.

Circumstances call for bolder measures, such as a version of the 2$ billion “regional sub-window for refugees and host communities” that the World Bank recently made available to impoverished African and Asian countries facing protracted refugee crises.

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Venezuelan migrant Jefferson Alexis and his father Jose Agustin Lopez, in a wheelchair, stop to rest as they travel along the road linking Cucuta and Pamplona, in Norte de Santander Department, Colombia, on September 2018 ,15.

(Getty)

Maintaining the oil sanctions amid a deepening humanitarian crisis allows Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to shift blame from himself and his cronies to the United States and the Venezuelan opposition.

AMERICA'S RESPONSIBILITY Ideally, the United States would step up and accept more Venezuelan refugees and asylum seekers, mirroring the generous response of Colombia. Venezuelans are now the largest group seeking asylum in the United States— as of January 31 ,2019 percent of all claims filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were from Venezuelans. Between 2012 and 2017, only about 50 percent of Venezuelan petitions were granted, a number that has changed little in recent years.

Both parties in Congress support granting Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans, which would allow them to live and work legally in the United States until conditions in their home country permit their return. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives failed to muster a two-thirds majority to push through a TPS measure on a procedural vote, even though it had majority support; the Senate has yet

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to act. But the Trump administration’s harsh crackdown on immigration makes such a measure unlikely anytime soon, with or without legislation.

Instead, U.S. foreign policy in Venezuela has inflicted maximum pain on the Venezuelan economy while failing to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of that punishment. The United States has, for example, imposed stringent sanctions on the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.. Starving Venezuela of oil revenues did not provoke the country’s economic collapse. Decades of corruption and mismanagement had already set that catastrophe in motion. But maintaining the oil sanctions amid a deepening humanitarian crisis allows Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to shift blame from himself and his cronies to the United States and the Venezuelan opposition. The U.S. government, the Lima Group, and proponents of a democratic transition should consider relaxing sanctions to permit a neutral third party with experience in humanitarian aid—not the Venezuelan government—to bring food and medicine into the country in exchange for oil. The Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez has argued that such an “oil for food” program, if carefully designed, could help stave off what he warns could be an impending famine. Mitigating desperation within Venezuela could help slow migration to neighboring countries.

The continued flow of Venezuelans to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is not sustainable.

And it is only a matter of time before political systems throughout the hemisphere will feel the consequences for democratic governance occasioned by a rise in xenophobia and an ever-shrinking faith in the capacity of institutions to resolve people’s basic problems. If 55 countries from across the globe can withdraw recognition from Maduro and embrace Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, then surely they can do more to assist the victims of dictatorship within Venezuela and throughout the region.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Can Greenland Win Independence

By Selling Melted Ice? The World’s Biggest Island Taps a Resource It’s Always Had

by Matthew Birkhold In 2018, Thomas Vildersboll founded Inland Ice, a premium water company that bottles freshwater melted from the vast expanse of ice that covers most of Greenland.

In exchange for an exploitation license, Inland Ice pays the Greenlandic government royalties on every liter of meltwater it collects. Vildersboll sells his water in stylish bottles meant to accompany gourmet meals like a fine wine.

The company boasts that the ice used to make its product

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Eighty percent of Greenland’s surface is covered by ice and the Island’s meltwater fits into the government's long-term goal to achieve greater independence from Denmark. government and entrepreneurs such as Vildersboll, it is a business opportunity. Bottled water is a growing global industry, and Greenland, betting that the trend will continue, is inviting other companies to tender for water rights.

The government is even restructuring its outmoded trade policies, creating small cracks in an economic system that has kept Greenland financially dependent upon Denmark, its former colonizer and present-day suzerain. That bottled water will be the revolution that delivers independence to the world’s largest island remains unlikely. But the sale of meltwater has helped further open Greenland to the outside world as this nation searches for financially viable paths to independence.

A PATHWAY TO INDEPENDENCE?

Calved icebergs from the nearby Twin Glaciers are seen floating on the water in Qaqortoq, Greenland.

(Getty)

“has been encapsulated for more than 100,000 years— completely isolated from any contact with layers of soil, and was formed long before the first human being set foot within the Arctic Circle.” For this reason, the marketing material claims, Inland Ice is “in an exceptionally rare category as the purest unprocessed water on earth—with a taste that fully matches its uniqueness.”

Inland Ice need not worry about its supply, because water gushes from the island’s interior. An adviser to Greenland’s government told me she thought of the water as an infinite resource, not like an oil reserve that will eventually run out or fish stocks that must be carefully husbanded.

The Greenlandic ice sheet stretches 1,500 miles long by 680 miles wide. At its thickest point, it stands nearly two miles high. The ice sheet loses 250 gigatons of water each year, enough to fill about 100 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. But even at that astonishing rate, water will be jetting out for the foreseeable future.

The current ice melt is a testament to the astounding power and speed of climate change. But for Greenland’s

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Denmark exercised colonial control over Greenland and its indigenous population from 1721 until World War II, using the island to hunt whales and seals, trade with the Inuit, and proselytize. After Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, the United States built military installations on Greenland to defend it from the Germans, and at the war’s end it even offered to purchase the island from Denmark for 100$ million in gold. Denmark refused, and in 1953, the colony became an official county with representation in the Danish parliament. Over the decades that followed, Denmark gradually devolved powers to Greenland. Today, the island is an autonomous, largely self-governing country of the Kingdom of Denmark. But Copenhagen controls foreign affairs and defense policy and, crucially, pays about 500$ million in annual subsidies to Greenland.

That block grant is contested in both Copenhagen and Nuuk, the -18,000person coastal town that serves as Greenland’s capital. Many Greenlanders deem the subsidy necessary but worry that it has fostered dependence. In Denmark, some consider it a form of reparation for past colonial abuses, including the destruction of indigenous ways of life; others see the annual payment as an unreasonable expense to maintain geopolitical influence in the Arctic.

For now, the block grant covers more than 50 percent of all public expenditures in Greenland. As such, the money is indispensable to the island’s public sector.

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Subtler traces of Danish rule are omnipresent, too. Until the introduction of home rule in 1979, the Royal Greenland Trading Department, a Danish state enterprise, held a strict monopoly on trade to and from the island. The monopoly was long considered an example of Denmark’s “benevolent” colonialism, ostensibly protecting the traditional Greenlandic way of life from the alleged corrupting outside influences that might arise from freer trade. Today the colonial-era company has divided into several successor companies under Greenlandic control.

But geographic quirks have allowed parts of the old monopoly system to survive.

Greenland is 50 times the size of Denmark, but 80 percent of its surface is covered by ice. The island’s 56,000 inhabitants are confined to coastal settlements, none of which are connected by roads. Shipping is thus essential to most Greenlanders’ well-being. The Royal Arctic Line (RAL), one of the successors of the colonial trade model, is not wrong to call itself “Greenland’s lifeline.”

The freight company is wholly owned by the government of Greenland and, like its colonial predecessor, benefits from an exclusive concession for all sea cargo transported to, from, and within Greenland. RAL’sonly connection to mainland Europe, however, is to Aalborg, Denmark, making shipping to and from Greenland too costly for most companies based outside of Denmark. And so, unsurprisingly, 63 percent of all Greenlandic imports still originate in Denmark.

The effects of this strange arrangement can be felt across Greenland, not just in the high prices of imports but in the products themselves. Alongside cuts of muskox and reindeer, grocery stores carry organic vegetarian meatballs from Scandinavia. In Ilulissat, a town of 4,413 people and a popular tourist destination 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle, trampolines dot people’s gardens, just as they do

The current ice melt is a testament to the astounding power and speed of climate change. But for Greenland’s government, it is also a business opportunity—bottled water is a growing global industry.

in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Faxe Kondi, a Danish soft drink, is even more ubiquitous in Greenland than in Denmark, where it faces more competition from Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

Sugary drinks have not masked colonialism’s bitter aftertaste, nor have they instilled a true sense of national belonging. In a recent poll conducted by the Universities of Greenland and Copenhagen, 67.7 percent of Greenlanders favored independence from Denmark within 20 years.

To get there, the island will need to be able to finance its public budget without support from Copenhagen. “We want to rid ourselves of the block grant because we want independence,” Greenland’s prime minister, Kim Kielsen, told The Economist in 2018. Since the establishment of home rule 40 years ago, the government has identified many different paths to financial independence. Most, including oil and mining projects, have not yet panned out—even after oil transports were exempted from RAL’s monopoly on shipping. That is because oil remains largely unreachable under deep seabeds, and Greenland has only limited labor and processing capacity to devote to uranium and rare-earth minerals, let alone to handle the potential consequences for its environment.

In recent years, it seems the government has set its hopes

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A team from the Danish Meteorological Institute travels across the melted sea ice to retrieve equipment.

Photograph (Steffen M Olsen/Twitter)

The Greenlandic ice sheet loses 250 gigatons of water each year, enough to fill about 100 million Olympicsized swimming pools.

on the country’s rich water resources. The government in Nuukhas tested the purity of the water and identified the best places to collect it in bulk. Based on chemical, physical, and microbiological analyses, the Ministry of Industry, Energy, and Research claims that the Greenlandic ice sheet is the “most pristine freshwater reservoir in the Northern Hemisphere.” Locals intuitively know this—Greenlanders have consumed meltwater for centuries—and visiting backpackers are advised that they can drink any water so long as it is moving. An informational leaflet for prospective water companies shows a woman leaning over the edge of a boat, holding a plastic jug into a stream. Bulk collection for commercial purposes is slightly more complicated, but even the water collected in this way requires little processing before it can hit the world market.

Armed with glossy brochures, government representatives have been traveling the globe to entice companies to apply for the five available licenses. According to the pitch, quality drinking water is becoming scarce and “pure meltwater running off the Greenlandic Ice Sheet provides the solution.” Cultivating the bottled water industry will surely come at an environmental cost, given the potential carbon footprint of ships traveling to and

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from remote Greenland and the fact that most bottled water relies on petroleum-based plastic for packaging.

But the Greenlandic government is understandably pushing ahead. In May, a team from the ministry led a group of international visitors to the sites where the water is supposed to be collected.

Whether the project will in fact rake in enough licensing fees and taxes to help plug the hole in the government’s budget remains to be seen. At one of the five locations in the current bidding process, meltwater runoff averages 4.16 gigatonnes every year—far more than a company such as Thomas Vildersboll’s Inland Ice, which markets itself on exclusivity, is likely to collect. The government will have to look for companies willing to create a cheaper, mass-market product.

Several recent legal changes, designed to attract foreign companies, have boosted the government’s optimism.

Authorities in April approved a cooperation agreement between RAL and the Icelandic shipping company Eimskip.

The agreement allows the two companies to share vessels, and it creates shipping links that connect Greenland to Iceland and, indirectly, to new international markets. Still more important, earlier this year the government enacted a law exempting companies licensed to collect meltwater from RAL’s monopoly on seaborne trade—a crucial step to expanding bulk water exports.

The evolution of the shipping monopoly is just one of the big changes afoot on the enormous island. In November 2018, the Greenlandic parliament voted to expand the airports in Nuuk and Ilulissat, neither of which has runways long enough to handle transatlantic flights, with financing from the government. The government has also expressed interest in establishing a representative office in China by 2020, and the United States announced in May that it planned to open a permanent diplomatic presence in Nuuk soon.

Greenland’s embrace of bottled meltwater is part of its mounting effort to reach beyond Denmark and connect with the wider world. Greenland remains remote from just about everywhere. But consumers may be seeing bits of it on supermarket shelves soon. And—who knows?—maybe after that, an independent Greenland, too.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Earth Warmed Faster in the Last Few Decades Than the Previous 1,900 Years

The History of Our Planet’s Climate is Recorded by Nature Herself 34

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The data also suggest that from the late 19th and early 20th century onward, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere dominated the subsequent warming trend.

The data points were recorded by trees, ice, lake and ocean sediment, and mineral deposits in caves, as well as by humans. They come from 648 locations across the globe, including all the continents and major ocean basins.

Scientists have only just begun to mine the PAGES data for insights into trends of the past, but already they have made some intriguing discoveries.

Steam rises from cooling towers of the Boxberg coal-fired power plant next to reconstituted land of the plant's adjacent open-pit lignite coal mine on July 2019 ,09 near Weisswasser, Germany. (Getty)

After analyzing 2,000 years of detailed records kept by both nature and humans, researchers have discovered that the average surface temperature of the Earth has warmed faster in the past few decades than it did in the previous 1,900 years, proving once again that the current warming the planet is experiencing is unprecedented in the past two millenniums. What’s more, the data also suggest that the warming in the most recent decades has been uniform across all regions of the planet, a phenomenon that scientists say has not been seen in the past 2000 years.

by Deborah Netburn It’s not just humans who track long-term trends in the weather. The history of our planet’s climate is recorded by nature herself — written in tree rings and arctic ices, corals and deep ocean sediments.

Each of these records tell only a small piece of the Earth’s climate story, but together they form a sprawling and complex novel of the past, helping scientists better understand how and why certain trends emerged, and foreshadowing what we might expect the Earth’s climate to look like in the future.

In 2017 an international consortium known as PAGES (Past Global Changes) published its largest database yet of climate temperature records, stretching from the present day back 2,000 years, by the start of the Common Era.

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A third study based on the same data shows that for most of the Common Era volcanic events have been the primary driver of global temperature change.

Today, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere play a more dominant role in driving global temperature, the authors said.

Raphael Neukom, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who led two of the three studies said the trio of papers, published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Geoscience, all suggest the same thing: “Climate variability in the pre-industrial period is totally different from what we observe today.”

Some of the findings reported Wednesday contradict, or at least complicate, previously held truths.

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For example, in the Nature paper, Neukom and his colleagues use the PAGES data to poke holes in the widely accepted theory that periods of cooling and warming over the past 2000 years affected the globe uniformly. Perhaps the most well known of these epochs is what scientists call the Little Ice Age — a cool period that persisted from the 16th century to the 19th century. Similarly, the Medieval Climate Anomaly is known as a warm, dry period that lasted from AD 950 to 1250.

“The traditional understanding was that climate over these periods were globally coherent” said Nathan Steiger, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University in New York who worked on the paper. “But when we looked at the PAGES data, we found they are not as coherent as we thought.”

After analyzing the data using multiple statistical methods, the authors found that what were previously assumed to be global trends in temperature were actually regional trends for all known climate epochs except the one we find ourselves in today.

For example, while the Little Ice Age did represent a global cooling, some parts of the planet were coldest during the mid19-th century, while others had their coldest weather several centuries earlier. At the height of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, only %40 of the Earth experienced peak temperatures at the same time.

But when the authors ran the same analysis for our current climatic epoch, known as the Contemporary

The authors found that what were previously assumed to be global trends in temperature were actually regional trends for all known climate epochs except the one we find ourselves in today.

Warm Period, they found that peak temperatures have been seen across all regions of the globe except Antarctica within the past 51 years.

This uniformity was unprecedented in the past 2000 years.

“The familiar maxim that climate is always changing is certainly true,” wrote Scott St. George, a geographer at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis who was not involved in the work.

“But even when we push our perspective back to the Roman Empire, we cannot discern any event that is remotely equivalent … to the warming over the past few decades.”

The authors did not look into what might be causing

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this unique phenomenon, because, as Steiger said, it wasn’t necessary.

“There is a lot of evidence that the Contemporary Warming Period is human caused,” he said. “We don’t need the paleolithic climate data to address that.”

In another study, a team of researchers led by Stefan Bronnimann of the University of Bern in Switzerland used the PAGES data to explore the causes of climate fluctuations from 1300 to 1800. This analysis led them to conclude that in this time period a cluster of volcanic eruptions were the primary drivers of global temperature change and that their effects lingered over many decades.

(Large volcanic eruptions can cause wide-scale

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cooling because their ash gets into the stratosphere and reflects sunlight back into space.)

They argue that at least some of the global temperature increases the Earth experienced starting in the 1830s were probably due to the planet’s slow recovery from the volcanically induced cooling.

However, the data also suggest that from the late 19th and early 20th century onward, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere dominated the subsequent warming trend.

Today, there is little doubt among scientists as to how those greenhouse gases got into our atmosphere.

This article originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

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echnology

Will Facebook's Libra Change the Way the World Banks?

A New Cryptocurrency Vies to Disrupt

by Kevin Werbach The crusaders who left western Europe to “liberate” the Holy Land might seem to have little in common with contemporary Facebook users. But Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency platform, tackles a problem that was

familiar in the twelfth century. The spread of promissory notes (letters of credit) in the High Middle Ages caused an upheaval in Eurasian markets. Libra promises to do the same. And just as medieval financial innovations might require demystification, so, too, does Libra.

The crusaders had no easy way of bringing money with

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A visual representation of a digital cryptocurrency coin sits on display in front of Libra and Facebook logos on June ,24 2019 in Paris, France.

(Getty)

them. They couldn’t exactly wire funds or carry debit cards, and their coins were of little use in foreign lands.

Gold was heavy and hard to move safely. The solution came from an unexpected source: the Knights Templar.

The Templars were originally a Catholic military order that took up residence in Jerusalem, where they pledged to protect Christian pilgrims. They created the economic infrastructure for the Crusades, writing promissory notes in France or England that were redeemable in the Levant. A cipher based on the shape of the cross ostensibly guaranteed the notes’ security. In other words, the Templars created a variant on modern international transfer services, five hundred years before the first central bank.

Today, the demand mounts for a similar system, but on a global scale. Billions of people have no access to banks.

Countless others endure high fees and slow transactions, especially when sending money across borders. What we consider a global financial system is, in reality, hardly global. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank of International Settlements, and the Financial Stability Board provide little more than a multilateral veneer over relationships that are primarily bilateral and dominated by commercial and central banks. Even within borders, moving money involves costly processes of settlement and exchange.

Facebook proposes a new kind of private multilateral institution: the Libra Association. It is based on blockchain technology, which first came to prominence with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. A blockchain-type network creates a public ledger, a universally trustworthy account of who owes what. Just as the Templar cipher verified an otherwise forgeable piece of paper, cryptography will ensure that Libra cannot be spent twice or otherwise duplicated. Such technologically guaranteed, artificial scarcity allows cryptocurrencies to operate as money.

HOW IT WORKS Libra will be redeemable at a fixed price for certain established currencies (such as dollars, euros, and yen).

Members of the association will deposit assets in the Libra Reserve as backing any time someone wants to buy more Libra. As a result, whereas Bitcoin fluctuates wildly in value, Libra should remain relatively stable.

That stability makes Libra potentially useful not only as a store of value but as a medium of exchange. Users will, Facebook argues, be able to send money around the world as easily as they send messages and videos.

Libra’s decentralized structure makes this new

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Facebook proposes a new kind of private multilateral institution: the Libra Association. It is based on blockchain technology, which first came to prominence with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. cryptocurrency both novel and potentially disruptive.

The Libra Association had 28 members at the time of unveiling, including heavyweight firms from Visa to Vodafone. Facebook plans to grow this number to 100 by takeoff. None of the members can stop or reverse transactions—not even Facebook. Every member has a single vote on governance decisions. Bitcoin, by contrast, is even more decentralized. There is no association with any say over what network participants can do—there is only software, which anyone can run. But even though Libra is collectively governed, it is still more open than any established currency or digital payment system. The contents of the Libra transaction ledger will be public, the system will run on open-source software, and anyone will, in theory, be able to build wallets and other applications to operate on the Libra network.

Will Libra undermine financial institutions? Given Facebook’s scale and track record, the possibility deserves to be taken seriously. In addition to banking the unbanked, Libra could replace traditional intermediaries in cross-border transactions, such as remittances, which amount to more than 600$ billion per year. Libra could also end up reducing the power of central banks in countries with weak currencies or strong capital controls, because it will allow people to move their money out of these countries more easily. If enough funds are pledged to the Libra Reserve, Libra could become a gigantic shadow bank distinct from, yet connected to, the existing financial system.

The situation bodes ill for governments tasked with regulating and monitoring transfers of wealth. For one, Libra could hinder efforts to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. Additionally, states will need to apply securities, banking, and other classes of financial regulation to the Libra Association and the Libra currency. How they will do this remains unclear. Finally, Libra will have to answer to public and private actors—

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panicked about financial instability—should users pull money out during a crisis.

These issues will take time to work through, even if Libra successfully runs the gauntlet. At a minimum, Facebook’s mid2020- start date seems wildly optimistic. Ten years ago, regulators might have waited to see what problems emerged over time. Today, they will be significantly more aggressive at the initial stages. Facebook is already in the crosshairs of governments around the world, and the stakes are nothing less than the stability of the global economy.

Ultimately, Facebook’s initiative will accelerate the efforts now under way to fit cryptocurrencies and blockchainbased applications into legal and regulatory frameworks.

By regulating new technologies, governments impose costs and limitations on innovative tools like blockchain.

In the long run, however, such boundaries are healthy.

Blockchain-based systems must themselves be trustworthy to serve as platforms for exchange. Much of the current financial system is antiquated below the surface. Blockchain is a more efficient technology, but the aura of illegality and fraud is a major impediment to its adoption.

LIBRA AND ITS NEMESES The country with the most to lose from Libra also has the most to gain from a revolution in the global financial system. That country is China. China bans Facebook and forbids trading in cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) that could circumvent its capital controls. China is also home to the world’s biggest digital payments systems.

WeChatPay and AliPay together process as many transactions in a day as the United States does in nine months. They operate only with China’s own currency,

The situation bodes ill for governments tasked with regulating and monitoring transfers of wealth. For one, Libra could hinder efforts to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.

the renminbi, and they are centrally controlled, which makes payments easy for the government to access or limit. Facebook’s argument to regulators is that if an American company doesn’t move aggressively into blockchain-based payments, China will. The truth is that Facebook’s entry has accelerated China’s movement in this direction.

No country is more interested than China in displacing American hegemony over global financial institutions.

Cryptocurrency serves that objective. To that end, Beijing established a Digital Currency Research Lab two years ago and is exploring its own alternative to Libra.

Perhaps the next move will be for the G7- countries, who want neither a Chinese-dominated system nor a Facebook-dominated one, to establish their own global digital currency instrument. There is also the IMF, whose director, Christine Lagarde, has already hinted at a possible “IMFcoin” based on the IMF-sponsored assets known as Special Drawing Rights.

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How Libra works (Source: Facebook Newsroom)

In the end, new financial institutions will likely supplement the existing ones rather than replace them.

New systems have to interface with old ones. And there will always be tradeoffs. If you want to make it frictionless for anyone to send money around the world without cumbersome identity verification, you cannot simultaneously make it hard for someone subject to U.S. sanctions to pay terrorist organizations or money launderers. Libra might develop better mousetraps, but at the cost of accessibility and ease of use. Facebook will have to find a balance that works.

Should the company be tempted to push too hard with Libra, the history of the Templars may be instructive.

Money transfer helped the order become one of the wealthiest institutions in medieval Europe—a sprawling financial empire and powerful creditor to kings. After the crusaders were pushed out of the Levant, however, the Templars languished. And then the order collapsed abruptly at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The

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Users will, Facebook argues, be able to send money around the world as easily as they send messages and videos.

French King Philip IV, deeply in debt to the Templars, arrested and tortured many of its members on trumpedup charges of heresy. He eventually convinced the pope to ban the order, coincidentally canceling his debts.

The Templars’ power and wealth were their undoing.

Facebook should take heed.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1759- August - 02/08/2019

Ali Babacan - The Man to Take on Turkish President Erdogan?

www.majalla.com

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Iraqi Singer, Ismail Fadel to Majalla: “I am convinced that music is a way to bring communities together and push towards peace” Building Bridges Through Music Tel Aviv: Amal Shehata The Iraqi community in Israel cares deeply for it heritage and many of its members organise Arabic concerts on a regular basis. When an Iraqi singing voice is heard in Tel Aviv, the Iraqi Jews living in Israel feel a sense of collective celebratory euphoria, as they get the opportunity to commemorate their culture. This joy only increases when someone comes all the way from Iraq to sing to the Iraqi community in Israel. It is during such concerts, that the Iraqi community starts dreaming about visiting Iraq regardless of both states’ political differences. There is a shared notion among many non-Jewish Iraqis that their can never be normalised relations with Israel, but some Iraqi nationals have been able to break barriers by going to Israel with messages of peace.

Ismail Fadel to Majalla: “I think that coming here as a non-Jewish Iraqi can lead to a lasting peace.”

Ismail Fadel, an Iraqi singer, has recently gone on his 21st visit to Tel Aviv, where he regularly participates in concerts organized by the Iraqi Jewish community. This visit came at a time of increased tensions as rumours spread that Israel had recently shelled Northern Baghdad. As such, his concert his time around became a topic of debate over social media, but the Iraqi singer is used to such discourse. He is also accustomed to receiving insults and death threats, which he had been receiving ever since his first concert in Israel. “I am convinced that music is a way to bring communities together and push towards peace. I think that coming here as a non-Jewish Iraqi can lead to a lasting peace.”

His latest concert took place at the Iraqi Heritage Centre in Or Yehuda, which has the largest Iraqi community in Israel and is thus dubbed “Little Iraq” Ramat Gan, meanwhile, has the second largest Iraqi community in Israel.

LEAVING FRIENDS AND FAMILY BEHIND Many Iraqi figures, such as diplomats, have visited Israel before without causing any media or social media stir. Fadel’s first visit to Israel marked the last time he ever saw Iraq and his family and friends. His is now residing in Australia, and his absence from Iraq has caused him great pain and homesickness, but he finds joy in his messages of peace. This raises the question of how could

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Many Iraqi figures, such as diplomats, have visited Israel before without causing any media or social media stir. world, but the one concert that will forever be ingrained in his memories is the one he did in London for the Arab and Iraqi community. “During this concert I sang many songs written by the Kuwaiti lyricist Saleh, a I person I highly respect. At the end of the concert an audience member gave me an intense hug, he then told me that he was Sholomo, Saleh the Kuwaiti’s son. He then offered me the opportunity to go to Israel and perform a concert for the Iraqi Jewish community. I instantly accepted his offer and arrived in Israel in 2008. As much as I enjoyed first trip to Israel, it caused me a number of problems back home. Since then, many Iraqis and Arabs have considered me an agent for Israel and I was met with a storm of threats, some people even threatened to kill me if I ever stepped onto Iraqi soil again.”

Fadel told us that the threats did not bother him as he views his job as a musician as one that spreads peace and love around the world. He also chooses to turn his back on those who curse him and accuse him of treachery.

WHO IS ISMAIL FADEL?

Iraqi Singer, Ismail Fade

I attended his concert at the Iraqi Heritage Centre, which was teeming with a loud and ecstatic audience. Fadel was met with a thunderous applause when he appeared on stage and sang Iraqi songs. “It was a great concert.” He told Majalla. “And this time it felt different. Today I think we are closer to achieving peace and I am convinced that my voice will be a bridge towards this goal..”

Ismail Fadel was born on April 1965 ,12. He left Iraq in 1999 after he received his bachelor’s degree. He lived in Oman for five years and afterwards he went to the US as a political refugee. But, he then left the US in 2005 and went to Australia where he settled with his wife and two daughters. In 2006, Fadel was named an Ambassador of Peace in Australia and he considers himself today as an Ambassador of Peace through his concerts in Israel and around the world. “In all honesty, we need to be brave and honest in our calls to peace. Music isn’t just a sound or concert; it’s a magnetic force that can bring people together. Music sends the same message of tolerance to all its listeners. I don’t want a war, I want to spread peace around the world and I’ll do that through the path I have chosen. I have nothing else to lose.” His presence among Iraqi Jews brings him pleasure. The way he sees it is that Iraqi Jews were forced to leave their homes during a wonderful cultural period. “My presence here reminds them of that beautiful period in their heritage.”

FROM TEL AVIV TO LONDON

HIS FANS AND HATERS

Ismail Fadel has performed hundreds of concerts around the

Fadel’s concert in Israel was live streamed on many Iraqi Jewish

someone prioritise regional peace over reuniting with his family and homeland?

Fadel tells us that he doesn’t feel any homesickness for Iraq, since he finds hospitality among Iraqi Jewish families in Israel who welcome him with open arms.

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social media pages. The livestreams were bombarded with comments, many of which were arguments between Jewish and non-Jewish Iraqis/Arabs. Some comments were positive while

others (from the Iraqis and Arabs) had death threats. “They threatened to kill me and they insulted me, but I focused on the comments that recognised my message and aim of my concert. I said that I’ll no longer have anything to lose and I will remain on the path to achieve what I’m dreaming of.”

Ismail Fadel has performed hundreds of concerts around the world, but the one concert that will forever be ingrained in his memories is the one he did in London for the Arab and Iraqi community.

BETWEEN TEL AVIV AND BAGHDAD Iraqi Jews are a large community in Israel. In 140,000 ,1948 Iraqi Jews came to Israel and a further 131,000 migrated there between 1948 and 2006. Iraqi Jews are also an active community that interacts with the wider Israeli society. Linda Menouhin, is one of the most prominent social activists who has interacted with the Iraqi Jews in Israel, Iraq as well as those living in diaspora. Menouhin left Iraq 50 years ago but she still values the years she spent in Iraq as she says they’re what solidified her Iraqi identity.

As an activist, Menouhin has been trying to mend bridges

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broken by politics. “Social media platforms have widened communications and there is a new generation in both Israel and Iraq who, for several reasons, seek to resolve the root cause of conflict between both nations.” She went on to say, “This has resulted in academic cooperation and reinvigorated interest in Iraq’s history and discourse on Jewish contribution to Iraqi civilization. Moreover, the older Iraqi Jewish generations still song Iraqi songs, the same can be said for a portion of the younger Iraqi Jewish generations. The reason why Iraqi Jews are dedicated to such artistic memory is because such heritage has remained alive.” Menouhin now hopes that she can invite young Iraqis to Israel, where they can meet up with Iraqi Jews. That way both sets of youth will see the connection they share.

IRAQI HERITAGE IN TEL AVIV Israel has an interest in preserving Iraqi Jewish heritage.

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The Iraqi community in Israel cares deeply for it heritage and many of its members organise Arabic concerts on a regular basis.

For instance, it brought over the manuscript of an Iraqi Torah, which is said to be the world’s oldest version of the Torah. According to Israeli publications, this manuscript is 200 years old and is written on camel skins.

Moreover, the ink used on it is made of concentrated pomegranate juice, which was an old writing habit in Northern Iraq.

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Ali Babacan - The Man to Take on Turkish President Erdogan?

Majalla - London Ali Babacan was born in Ankara in 1967.

He graduated first in the Class of 1985 from Ankara College. In 1989, he received a Bachelor of Science Degree (BS) in Industrial Engineering from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where he ranked first among the graduates of that year. In 1990, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and attended the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing, Organizational Behavior and International Business in 1992.

From 1992 to 1994, he worked at a Chicagobased company providing financial consulting services to top executives of major banks in the United States. Subsequently, he returned to Ankara to run his family business from 1994 until 2002.

He entered politics in 2001 as one of the founding members and a Board member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and was elected to parliament at the general elections held in November 2002. Soon after he was appointed Minister of State in charge of Economy, becoming the youngest member of the cabinet. He retained his position throughout the 58th and 59th Governments of the Republic of Turkey until August 2007.

Babacan has a reputation for being a quick thinker, calm under pressure, accessible and a shrewd reader of Turkey’s political landscape. He is also known to be a skilled negotiator and possesses a knack for creating a conducive atmosphere during even the most tortured deliberations. His negotiating skills were put to the test when he was tasked with steering a painful economic reform program which was backed by multi-billiondollar International Monetary Fund loans and successfully bailed Turkey out of its -2000 2001 crisis.

In June 2005, he was appointed as Chief Negotiator in Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Union, a position he held for 4 years. Babacan was seen as one of three candidates for the job. The discussions were long and hard and focused largely on whether the person should be a technocrat or politician. Babacan was seen as being more of technocrat than a politician before entering politics but also earned himself a reputation for being a dynamic and skilled negotiator as a cabinet minister. Along with his language skills, these qualities made him the right man for the job.

In August 2007 29, he was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the 60th Government of the Republic of Turkey.

He then held the position of Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Affairs from 2009 to 2015.

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In 2019, Babacan sent shockwaves through the country when he resigned from the ruling AKP, citing “deep differences” over the party’s direction as a reason. In a statement July 8 declaring his resignation. Babacan declared: “In recent years, deep differences have emerged over the principles, values and opinions in which I believe and the implementations [of the AKP] in separate areas. The current situation necessitated a brand-new vision of the future in Turkey because we have new, dynamic and promising generations that have completely different demands.”

His statement was widely seen as an indication of his plans to establish a rival political party. With economic recession, unemployment and inflation hurting Turkish voters and eating into Present Recep Erdogan’s support base, any further erosion even just a few percentage points – could be deeply damaging for his party, which already has to rely on an alliance with nationalists for its parliamentary majority. Analysts suggest the tipping point for an AKP split and whether a new party succeeds is the economy. Criticism of Erdogan's leadership within the party has also been building, with his centralizing of power and accusations of increasing authoritarianism. Following the 2016 failed coup, hundreds of thousands have been purged from their jobs or jailed, in a crackdown that continues.

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Simple Strategies to Stop Stress-Related Overeating Managing Emotionally Driven Weight Gain Requires Planning Ahead Harvard Health How much and when you eat isn’t driven just by hunger, which you likely already know if you’ve ever found

yourself hunched over a bowl of ice cream after having a particularly stressful day. Stress can set off a cascade of physical reactions in your body that may not only drive you to eat more and make you crave less nutritious,

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fattening comfort foods, but also help you pack on extra pounds much more easily.

“Stress drives up levels of a hormone called cortisol in the blood,” says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that helps to regulate your metabolism. It also plays a role in blood sugar management and memory. When levels of cortisol rise, it can promote inflammation and may spur the body to start stockpiling fat around the midsection. “Stress might also disrupt sleep and drive people to seek out food when they wouldn’t normally — such as in the middle of the night,” says Dr. Stanford.

In earlier times this biological reaction to stress may have been beneficial, helping the body store up fuel for tough times ahead. But today, there’s typically no famine to outlast, no bear to outrun. Consequently, stress may just lead to unhealthy weight gain.

WOMEN UNDER PRESSURE There is some evidence that women are disproportionately affected by stress. A 2012 survey by the American Psychological Association found that women reported higher stress levels than men (5.3 out of 10 points for women, compared with 4.6 for men). And a higher percentage of women, %23, reported experiencing extreme stress, compared with %16 of men who said the same. In addition, women were more likely to say that their stress levels were increasing (%43, versus %33 for men). For many of these women, it’s this persistent stress that leads to weight gain.

CHRONIC VERSUS ACUTE STRESS Stress itself can be either short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic). Acute stress is the kind you might experience if you’re in a car accident. Chronic stress might come from spending years toiling in a high-stress workplace or caring for a family member with a long-term illness.

However, while stress is an inevitable part of life, the weight gain that can accompany it isn’t. Changing your response to stress and adopting strategies to reduce it can keep the numbers on your scale from moving in the wrong direction, says Dr. Stanford.

Here are some of those strategies: Burn off tension. Exercise is a crucial component of stress management, because physical activity can actually reduce cortisol levels. But you will find excuses to avoid workouts if you dread them. Finding an activity you love

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A lack of sleep can increase the amount of stress hormones circulating in your body, so ensuring you get enough restful slumber is crucial to managing stress effectively.

— your “soulmate workout,” as Dr. Stanford calls it — can help you maintain the regular physical activity you need in order to dissolve daily stress. For some people it might be yoga, for others, high-intensity exercise — or a combination of the two.

Prioritize sleep. A lack of sleep can increase the amount of stress hormones circulating in your body, so ensuring you get enough restful slumber is crucial to managing stress effectively. “Avoid screen time at least an hour prior to bedtime,” says Dr. Stanford. This includes your smartphone. The blue light emitted by smartphones can interfere with sleep.

Change your outlook. The amount of stress someone experiences is based not only on circumstances, but also on the perception of those circumstances. Two people may do the same job, yet only one perceives it as stressful.

In addition, individuals vary in their ability to manage stress, based on personality or early life experiences.

Working to change the way you think about challenges can consequently help to reduce stress.

Plan ahead. If you are going into a high-stress period, prepare by setting up supports. “One woman I worked with gained weight at the same time each year around the anniversary of her child’s death,” says Dr. Stanford. If you’re getting ready for a stressful event or facing a work deadline, seek out additional support to help you through.

This might include adjusting your schedule to add extra exercise, or making a healthy eating plan to help you resist the impulse to snack on unhealthy food.

Talk to your doctor. If you’re having problems coping with stress or controlling emotional eating, talk to your primary care physician. He or she may be able to refer you to a health coach, support services, or an obesity specialist. Medication might help some women, but they must be taken long term or you may regain the weight.