UK threatens to return radioactive waste to EU without nuclear deal

Brexit department warns EU counterparts it will ‘return waste to its country of origin’ if an agreement on nuclear cooperation cannot be reached

The Sellafield plant in Cumbria has been reprocessing spent nuclear field from Europe since the 70s. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Daniel Boffey in Brussels-Wednesday 19 July 2017

Britain has warned the EU that it could return boatloads of radioactive waste back to the continent if the Brexit talks fail to deliver an agreement on nuclear regulation.

In what is being taken in Brussels as a thinly veiled threat, a paper setting out the UK position for the negotiations stresses the right “to return radioactive waste … to its country of origin” should negotiations collapse.

The UK paper, detailing the British government’s hopes for future cooperation once it leaves the Euratom treaty, at the same time as leaving the EU, further stresses the “strong mutual interest in ensuring close cooperation in the future”.

Britain currently has a 126-tonne stockpile of radioactive materials originating from EU countries such as Germany, Italy and Sweden.

The state-owned Sellafield plant in Cumbria has been reprocessing spent nuclear field from across Europe since the 1970s, producing reusable uranium, plutonium and radioactive waste. Almost a fifth of the UK’s stockpile of civilian plutonium at Sellafield originates from overseas.

Nuclear experts who have advised the British government told the Financial Times that the Department for Exiting the European Union’s none-too-coded warning over the future ownership of radioactive waste might just encourage a more flexible approach from the Europeans over the issue.

“It might just be a reminder that a boatload of plutonium could end up at a harbour in Antwerp unless an arrangement is made,” one nuclear expert told the FT.

Britain has signalled that while it is leaving the Euraotom treaty, of which it has been a member since 1957, it wants to continue to cooperate on nuclear regulation after the UK leaves the union in March 2019. The treaty regulates the civilian use of atomic technology and critics of the government’s position fear there is a threat of disruption to UK supplies of nuclear reactor parts, fuel and medical isotopes vital for the treatment of cancer if a new agreement outside membership of the EU is not reached.

Around 500,000 scans are performed in the UK every year using imported radioisotopes. In May the House of Commons energy select committee urged the UK to postpone leaving Euratom. It claimed that power supplies could be threatened if a new regulator was not ready.

The EU insist, however, that such cooperation on nuclear regulation would require the UK to recognise the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, which is a red line for Theresa May.

EU diplomats told the FT that they had noted the veiled threat on nuclear waste. One reportedly joked that they would have “the coastguard ready”.

The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy told the paper, however, that negotiations would focus on the “legal ownership not physical location” of nuclear materials. What happens to materials once ownership has been settled “will be a matter for the owner and the UK to agree on commercial terms,” the Whitehall department added.

The Dawn of Pax Germanica

Like it or not, Angela Merkel is now the main guardian of the norms, values, and institutions that make up the Atlantic alliance.

BY PAUL HOCKENOS-NOVEMBER 14, 2016

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s message of congratulations to a newly victorious President-elect Donald Trump was markedly unlike that of her European counterparts. In it, she was neither fawning nor curt: “Germany and America are bound by their values,” she reminded the new president-elect dispassionately, “democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political conviction.” She continued: “On the basis of these values, I offer the future president of the United States, Donald Trump, close cooperation.”

The message was immediately seized by some commentators as an admonition on Merkel’s part — a sign that the German leader was subtly chastising the incoming president for bad behavior on the campaign trail. But this is likely wrong. Insiders in the German government say Merkel has no intentions of setting herself up for a fight with Trump or to serve as some kind of moral foil. This, I was told, would be pure folly — and not in Merkel’s cautious character.

Rather, Merkel was making a strategic offer of cooperation and delineating the parameters within which it could happen. Maintaining a good relationship with Germany — and, by implication, all of Europe — she intoned, was straightforward: It required upholding the basic principles and values espoused by the West.

If this congrats-with-a-caveat sounds familiar, it’s because the United States once handed out these sorts of messages to unpredictable leaders with whom it nonetheless hoped to have productive relationships — back when it was the undisputed heart of the community of nations and values known as the “Atlantic alliance.” Her words underscored that Europeans are still very much interested in working closely with the United States, in the North Atlantic and beyond, as long as that cooperation takes a somewhat familiar form. Merkel’s statement, in other words, wasn’t an admonition — it was an offer.

The day after Trump’s victory, Europeans, and especially Germans, are looking at their world with new eyes, and — wholly unprepared for a Trump victory — they’re completely flummoxed by what they see. Political insiders admit that like so many others around the world, they have no idea what to expect from a Trump administration and that they must be prepared for the worst. Berlin’s top diplomats say they don’t even know Trump’s foreign-policy advisors — an unprecedented state of affairs. “With Trump’s election, Germans are standing in front of a black hole,” opined Stefan Braun of the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The world could change for Germany in a way greater even than it did with the fall of the Wall.” One commentator grimly called it the “end of the West.” Berthold Kohler, publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, declared, “If Trump does in foreign policy what he promised in the campaign … then the already stressed Atlantic alliance and geopolitical structures system of the West are facing a revolution.”

What does seem likely is that Germany — and thus, Merkel, whether she likes it or not — will now be thrust to the forefront of international affairs on Europe’s behalf, as the main proponent of the norms, values, and institutions that comprise an alliance that has been the foundation of world order for the past seven decades. With her words on Wednesday, Merkel signaled that she understands that the United States now has other options but that Germany remains committed to the values that America taught it after World War II.

The Atlantic alliance, formed in the wake of World War II as a bulwark against Soviet expansion with the United States at its center and European countries like (West) Germany loyally beside it, has shaped the world for the past seven decades. The alliance was based on shared interests, such as free trade and collective security structures, including, first and foremost, NATO. But it was also based on a commitment to shared values, including human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and pluralism; it promoted these values at home, and selectively abroad, with both soft and hard power.

Germany is not the new leader of the free world, and it’s far too soon to call the United States a dangerous transgressor. But Europe now finds itself facing the sudden possibility that a President Trump makes good on his campaign promises to withdraw from world politics and, as part of this neo-isolationist strategy, pull back from NATO, the alliance’s keystone. Europe is a region currently beset by crises, including the increasingly authoritarian regimes in Russia and Turkey, EU acrimony, a weak French government, and a Brexiting Britain.

Berlin is suddenly much more important to maintaining any semblance of the current order, for the simple reason that there is no one else to take the wheel.

Berlin is suddenly much more important to maintaining any semblance of the current order, for the simple reason that there is no one else to take the wheel.

Most Europeans recognized long ago that the postwar Atlantic alliance’s ambitions had shrunk since the Cold War. During the two terms of George W. Bush, relations between the United States and its European partners descended into naked hostility over the Iraq War. Under Barack Obama, the alliance’s prominence shrank further still, as the president made clear that his priorities lay not with Europe but with Asia and other parts of the world.

And yet, despite this, the continent never formulated a Plan B. The EU, which has had aspirations of joint foreign and security policies for decades, has struggled — and largely failed — to produce anything coherent and effective. Europe’s ever deeper divisions and the union’s deficits prevented it from integrating on the level of foreign affairs, with the exception of trade, and today its prospects to do so look worse than ever.

Nor did most European countries bolster their military spending to meet NATO targets, despite the express disapproval of the United States. On the campaign, more than once Trump said U.S. support for NATO depended on countries paying up. This is suddenly on the table in Germany and will probably be across Europe, even though such a move has been politically unpopular in many countries. (Germany, for its part, buckled to pressure from Washington this year by declaring it would increase its defense spending, although no precise figure was mentioned.)

The U.S. election has already altered the political calculus on this issue in Europe. Due in part to its history, Germany and Merkel will never be able to fulfill the role the United States played in the alliance — that is, the military superpower, providing the nuclear umbrella under which other countries found shelter. But what it may be able to do is steer the European Union as a whole in a more self-reliant direction when it comes to security. “This could be a wake-up call. Europeans have to wake up and grow up fast,” says Michael Bröning, an international politics specialist at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German think tank close to the country’s Social Democrats. “Having the U.K. out of the way has already given integration some momentum.”

Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said Trump’s election could provide an “important stimulus” to upgrading the EU’s military capacity and bolstering its structures. “The defense of liberal democracy,” she said, “has become our highest priority.” This means that “the EU has to take over more responsibility in foreign and military affairs.” EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has again brought up the possibility of an “EU army,” an idea that has been periodically rolled out and then quickly mothballed in the past but could find more traction under a President Trump. EU foreign ministers met on Sunday in Brussels to parley over the implications of a Trump presidency at a special dinner, called for by Germany.

And with illiberal forces gaining ground everywhere, including within the EU itself in countries like Poland and Hungary, Berlin could also play a role in setting the tone when it comes to values in the alliance going forward.

In many ways, Merkel is the anti-Trump, Bröning said. “In terms of temperament, she’s very sober, rational, and controlled. She a physicist by profession and rarely shows emotion. And, on the other hand, she has a strong moral approach to politics, as you see on issues such as climate change, migration and borders, and EU integration. At the root of her positions are strong moral convictions,” he said.

According to Alan Posener, a columnist for the daily Die Welt, Merkel’s congratulatory words to Trump were actually meant for her fellow Europeans, not for the U.S. president. “She was telling them: ‘Don’t abandon our values when making deals with Trump,’” he said. Europe’s commitment to Ukraine, for example, “can’t be traded away, even if Trump decides to do a grand deal with Putin.” Posener argues that Merkel and the rest of Europe are going to have to learn to deal with a new U.S. president who thinks like a businessman: “They’re going to have to offer him something to get something. Like the Europeans finally beef up their militaries, and in exchange Trump sticks with NATO and doesn’t sell us down the river to Putin.”

Though not mentioned explicitly in her words to Trump, the specter of Russia and the possibility of closer U.S.-Russia relations — to the exclusion of Western Europe and democratic principles — hung over them. Merkel was underscoring the choice that the new president will have and that breaking with the status quo of the North Atlantic alliance will have enormous implications. The Europeans are extremely nervous that an undemocratic Russia embraced by a U.S. administration that itself flaunts liberal values will put European democracy under severe pressure. Obama, who is due to visit Europe this week, is likely to find himself besieged with urgent questions about where his country is headed.

Germany hasn’t been the little brother of the United States for some time now, arguably since unification in 1990. Yet it has relied on Washington and its security guarantees to avoid making tough decisions on its own security and its role in the world.

“The Brexit decision and the election in the United States have set a new course” for Europe, said von der Leyen, the German defense minister. Merkel and her fellow Europeans are now scrambling to determine exactly what that will be.

Photo credit: Jochen Zick – Pool / Getty Images

India's economy set to reclaim top spot for growth this year: Reuters poll

A worker forges a piece of metal in an industrial unit manufacturing automotive spare parts in Mumbai, India May 31, 2017.

A Kochi Metro train leaves Changampuzha Park station during its trail run in Kochi, India, June 7, 2017.

Vivek Mishra and Anu Bararia-JULY 19, 2017

BENGALURU (Reuters) - India will reclaim its position as the fastest growing major global economy this year, partly propelled by benefits from a new tax system and bolstered by an expected central bank interest rate cut, a Reuters poll showed.

Having been in the offing for close to two decades, the goods and services tax (GST), which the government touts as the biggest domestic tax reform since independence, was introduced on July 1 and has bolstered economists' outlook.

The new national tax will replace multiple cascading taxes levied by the central and state governments which economists in the poll were unanimous in saying would have either a positive or very positive effect on long-term GDP growth.

The median forecast from the poll of over 35 economists showed India's economy is expected to expand 7.3 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2018, after slowing sharply at the start of 2017 following last year's government move to scrap high-value banknotes.

While that is a downgrade from the previous poll's forecast of 7.5 percent, it is better than the International Monetary Fund's projection of 7.2 percent.

It is also stronger than a similar Reuters poll of economists predicting China will grow by 6.6 percent in calendar year 2017.

"The GST is likely to add one-two percentage points to GDP growth in the medium to long term with dismantling of tax barriers and by creating a unified market, further improving the competitiveness of exporters and in general, the ease of operating in India," said Tushar Arora, senior economist at HDFC Bank.

Indian shares are on the rise for the same reasons.

The NSE Nifty hit a record high on Monday. It has surged 20 percent so far this year and a separate recent Reuters poll showed the rally is expected continue over the remainder of the year.

Adding to the brighter outlook, monsoon rains this year are forecast to be above average - a boon for the farm sector that accounts for about 15 percent of India's $2 trillion economy and employs more than half the country's 1.3 billion people.

If the rains are good, that would lead to bumper grain production and a further slide in food prices which economists said could lend support to Asia's third-largest economy.

India's annual retail inflation eased to 1.54 percent in June, its slowest pace in more than five years, but is expected to begin rising again through to mid-2018.

With inflation currently well below its target, the central bank is expected to cut borrowing costs by 25 basis points (bps) at its next meeting on Aug. 2. It last cut rates, by the same amount, to 6.25 percent in October 2016.

Having changed its monetary policy stance to neutral from accommodative at the start of the year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) softened its position on policy in June in view of the sharp drop in retail inflation.

"We believe the RBI has space to undertake some modest easing over the next few months and yet meet its 4 percent target comfortably," noted Pranjul Bhandari, chief economist at HSBC Securities and Capital Markets.

After the expected cut in August, analysts believe the RBI will stand pat until at least the end of next year.

Polling by Shaloo Shrivastava and Khushboo Mittal; Editing by Ross Finley and Kim Coghill

The Truth and Reconciliation struggle on the Balkans

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by Senadin Lavić-Jul 18, 2017

( July 18, 2017, Vienna, Sri Lanka Guardian) We live in a post-genocidal society, divided into ethnic-religious ghetto by means of war. In such broken society are continually inserted seductive and controversial concepts that serve the goals that are not realized by means of war. The terms such as federalism, unitarism and separatism come mainly as political games of political life actors in our country, but regarding the separatism of the entities RS, the Greater Serbian policy is absolutely focused on this goal. The shaping of political reality and the main ideas in it is a work of the ideology – par excellence, which then means that these terms are mostly ideologically determined and conceived in the minds of their constructors.

We should remember that M. Kasapović (Zagreb) in 2005 imposed and installed the term of consociation as territorial separation of the people in Bosnia and as the only possible model for the organization of the political system in Bosnia, followed by an orchestrated story of federalization and electoral units. The vague concept about the “impossible state” by N. Kecmanović (Banjaluka) is added to this in 2007 and till today, these two, assembled Serbian-Croatian projects of the dissolution of Bosnia stifled us and taken to a blind track of history. Kasapović has already come to Cyprisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These two names, Kasapović and Kecmanović, are witnesses to the great moral problem that has dampened our present social reality! We did not forget that on the ground of Bosnia, “pure ethnic territories” were created. On the objection that separatism must be halted, separatist forces respond that separatism is a reaction to unitarism and the non-recognition of entity “RS” or the necessity of federalization because of the vulnerability of Croats by Bosniaks. Thus, the syntagm of “unitarist politics” is a good excuse to continue the policy of division, ghettoization, hatred, great Serbian policy and similar enterprises. The Dayton political system with imposed Constitution in Anex IV has brought peace to Bosnia, but, it should be emphasized, left the hope of anti-Bosnian forces to continue what they did not end in the war. This was immediately understood by the Greater Serbian policy and the entity RS was called the “Serbian state”, “war booty” or “the rest of the remnants of the Serbian ethnic territory” west of the Drina River. The name of the entity itself allows this in perspective! Many people are already “trained” to speak “Serbian entity” regardless of the fact that it was made by genocide against Bosniaks. Unitarianism is falsely identified with majorization in the explanations of separatist policies that, in fact, do not want the state of Bosnia or want only the formally present state institutions that are subordinate to the entity. The unitary system of government means that there is a state power that is accomplished throughout the territory of the state. Relating to this idea, Bosnia is a highly decentralized state divided into entities and cantons, which considerably slows down its functioning. The key matter is that separatism and federalism as parts of the political ideology of anti-Bosnianism do not want strong state of Bosnia. In such divided state, there we cannot talk about unitarism. The expansionist nationalism of Serbs and Croats sees its goal in the assimilation of the Bosnian territory, then the “territorial authority” of ethnics means suppressing everything different from our “territory” and disregarding that in “our territory “state power or some national (state) institution has any influence. From here to dissolution, it is just a step. This is the way that tribal games go to the extreme. Serbian and Croatian national projects are seeking a “Bosniak policy” that would agree to implementation of Bosnian state’s dissolution in this way and end with its political and historical existence. A brave Bosnian policy should offer the concept of regionalization of the state area and constantly insist on it regardless of all Serbian-Croatian agreements against Bosnia. Bosnia has five historical regions that derive their meaningful existence from medieval times and that should not be ridden of the mind. In addition, the Bosnian ethatist political philosophy must be reaffirmed, therefore, a new development of awareness of the importance of the state. By this, it should be ended the Bosniak jeremiad in the last twenty years and defeated the anti-politics.

The ideologized vocabulary of anti-Bosnian politics

We must not agree to accept the ideologized vocabulary of anti-Bosnian politics at all. Unfortunately, we still do not have a sufficiently strong Bosnian policy that could deal with numerous subversives, simulacrums, deceptions and abuses of the system institutions, and we are all troubled by the failure of the rule of law. Parts of the law apply only to powerless or politically unbounded. It seems that the system of law in this country is the main source of corruption and manipulation of citizens, such a monstrous system that we have not even imagined. Organized groups have appropriated “right” of rights institutions and it appears as “party” and “ethnic” property, plus family clans, and the state is catastrophically damaged and turned into a “super-market” for robbery. The law system is subordinate to political groups that implement their constructions of social life. Weak state institutions open the space to all degenerative phenomena that undermine political stability. The state is vulnerable, institutionally deprived and does not breathe full of lungs. It would be good if the unitary system of government worked and organized the political life in the state through the devolution. It would be much more order, responsibility and better life. There would be no anarchy, hunting in the fog, ethnophulism in the education system, anachronistic ideologies, mythical consciousness, Chetniks and Ustasha, denying of genocide, denying the right to Bosnian language for children in schools … In post genocidal society, a strong and responsible state is needed in order to overcome war trauma and reached legal satisfaction. What we have now is a knock-together form of war achievements and fulfilled wishes of the Milosević’s regime.

The bureaucrats from the so-called International community

We should not be naive and believe to bureaucrats from the so-called International community, to people like for example, B. B. Ghali, J. Akashi, J. Mayor, M. Lajčak or C. Bildt and many others, known and unknown. They consider Bosnia as a regular working task and they did not carry out anything to improve life in Bosnia. Let remember José Cutilliero, Lord Carrington, David Owen, Philippe Morillon and dozens of others who have done everything to carry out an anti-Bosnian idea in Bosnia and led us to the madness of the division of the country towards the ethnic-religious lines of war conquest. They were “just mediators” – that sounds innocently. They came here as maharaja with their colonial narrations. Today’s generations must not forget these people and must save a real memory about them. It is important, for example, to leave a recorded memory of F. Mitterrand and similar figures of modern cynicism that convinced us that we could walk across the city under the siege of Serbian howitzers and snipers beside the burnt City Hall or Markale. They turned our disaster into a “humanitarian issue” and shamefully closed their eyes against the genocide against Bosniaks all over the Bosnia. In addition, Bosnia is settled at the heart of the former South Slavic area and it is “ideal” as a focal point in which Western, European, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, civilized mediators “experts” can be involved for the division of territories leaving the peoples in conflicts. When “bureaucrats” stop working this in the Balkans, it is absolutely certain that peace will be here – to avoid saying eternal peace, because we have never started wars. Let’s look back to the 20th century – everything was transparent. Egoistic bureaucrats do not need civil Bosnia or peace among South Slavic “tribes”, because what would they do then and how they deal with their problems. European bureaucrats have been watching aggression on Bosnia for four years and wrote letters to Milošević. They did not provide protection and defence of an independent state with the UN forces. In today’s constellation, they worry about the Bosnian and South Slavic “primitives” who do not know what “civil society” is and play the role of a civilizing factor.

The political matrix of ethnic-religious representation of people

It would be worth to express a sceptical attitude towards the “civil political option” syntagm, because it does not have clear semantic structure, as well as a “nationalist policy”. Until we begin to name precisely the phenomena around us, we will not know what is happening to us! Since the 1990s in Bosnia the political matrix of ethnic-religious representation of people has been imposed, so that they have not appeared as individuals, citizens, free citizens, but only and exclusively as members of the team/collective, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Others. In that wretched matrix, people of Bosnia are not autonomous and free individuals. They have to think as the “team/collective says” or the priest on behalf of the team/collective (tribe, people, nation, religion) and in such way their individuality is reduced of them, and then they are only “cannon flesh” of some great “Načertanija” (1844) and pathological conditions of hegemonic politics. Such a collectivist spirit is controlled by religious institutions and ruling political oligarchs. Here, the religion is the basis of the nation – and it tells us where we are! It is an illusion to present the policy throughout the conceptual pair of “nationalist” and “civil” politics when we know that this is only the seductive surface of the project of tribal division of the people of the South Slavic area and the imposition of a matrix to Bosnia that opposes against its historical political philosophy.

Our heroic peoples, who have neglected their production of knowledge and general culture, managed by people with suspicious projects, they will be slaves and serfs in the upcoming establishment of the world order as a system of hegemony of several powers. The pair of terms “civil” and “nationalist” does not correspond to the essential meaning of the historical process in which we are overtaken by a sub-national political culture, a feudalized landscape in which neither citizens nor nationalists “can” appear. We have not yet learned to participate freely in a democratic culture as citizens with their opinions and interests. We still need tribal chiefs and priests who do not know anything about the Bosnian political future! We need to ask questions that help us to focus primarily. For example, first of all – how did it happen that we are the only ones in today’s Europe who has a “tribal political system” or a “state of tribes”, such a constitutional arrangement imposed by Annex IV? Who set us this up as the Constitution of the State? Why all European diplomats are silent on this issue and say that we should “agree” when they, as the International Community, have fulfilled the wishes of the aggressors and nationalist forces in the Balkans and against Bosnia? This cynical European bureaucracy, above all, regardless of European ideals, is a self-sufficient, static and enlarging political group that accumulates great power in its hands. It pretends as awkward in front of the Balkan fascists, the Nazis, the fundamentalists, because such characters serve it as an example of the “primitive Balkans” and “wild Slavic tribes” who are slaughtered each other without mercy. This colonial background and the orientalistic image about us disable a realistic approach to solving problems in this area. There are also quite low and hypocritical moves of Croatian “European” policy that plays its petty-bourgeois super-ordination to this area and shows itself to others as an “heir of European values” while supporting the Hague convicts with Tompson’s songs and ideology.

This Croatian unilateralism has led to the incomparable exodus of Bosnian Croats from their homeland – Bosnia and has torn them away from their Bosnian state. The second guidance that helps us to orient ourselves is focused on understanding the distinction between national and ethnic, civil and ethnicity. First of all, it should be reminded that in the area of South East Europe, where the South Slavic nations were located, the state structure of these nations failed because they were mostly obsessed with their own mythical, religious and ethnic constructions or fabrications that served them to represent themselves as a nation superior to others. In Bosnia, this has been happening during the whole 20th century in big noises of the Serbian and Croatian national determinations. Thus, the national question was shaped at a very primitive level as a question of creating an ethnic-religious state from which all who are not “ours” by religion and nationality will be excluded. This incompetence for the difference led the national question under the control of religious institutions of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. In one-track politics, the nuances of the fascist-shape relation to the different are noticed, as R. Konstantinović wrote about it, so knowledgeable and anticipatory, as well as Miodrag Popović. So, it could be said that the South Slavic peoples, as well as the peoples of Bosnia, have not yet developed and tested a political culture that surpasses the “tribal image of the world” and prefers free man as the greatest value of the social life of people.

We need to teach people that nationally are not a tribal, ethnic, folk, regional or ethnic-religious definition of a person, but it is meant that a free citizen belongs to a state-nation that assures him all human rights as to its citizen. Nationality is thus a civil definition, a legal-political concept of people’s life who does not exclude their cultural perceptions of themselves. So, it is time to learn to distinguish the political-legal level of human life in the community from the cultural-historical dimension through which a certain national identity is recognized as specific among others. The Bosnian Serbs were captured in the mythologist of the 19th century about the “great Serbian state” in which all Serbs will live and – only Serbs. In front of them there is a great historical task to overcome their own misconceptions, self-denial and historical blind alley. A similar process of liberation from the “Ottoman image of the world” has already begun by the Bosniaks and they are carrying it out. In the end, it should be emphasized that in our country the civil has not yet matured in citizenship awareness, but it entails historicist narratives of Tito-statehood, fraternity and unity, communism and a one-party world, the monolithic Left, existence without identity, misunderstanding of anti-Fascism, bipolar diversity of the world, unable to anticipate the new Bosnian idea of life, and so on.

In fact, the civil has never come to life in this region as a political culture of respecting a man, an individual, a free citizen of the Bosnian nation. We still do not know what it means to be a citizen, free and conscious again in our own Bosnianhood? We have not considered this in the past thirty years under the siege of collective metaphysics of ethnic-religious groups. In today’s monstrous political systems, this seems to be utopian, unreal and unachievable before the dictatorship of party oligarchies, leaders and their assistants. In that danger is growing the rescue-thing – Heidegger would remind to Hoelderlin.

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Senadin Lavić is a professor at the Department of the Sociology of Political Sciences Faculty Sarajevo, at University of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prolific author of numerous books and seminal works, prof. Lavić is the Chairman of the Bosnian Cultural Union ‘Preporod’.

‘It’s an insane process’: How Trump and Republicans failed on their health-care bill

President Trump on July 18 said he was “very disappointed” with the GOP health-care bill’s collapse while the Senate leadership vowed to end Obamacare with no immediate replacement. (Bastien Inzaurralde, Rhonda Colvin, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

By Robert Costa, Kelsey Snell and Sean Sullivan July 18 at 11:30 PM

Vice President Pence arrived at the National Governors Association summer meeting with one mission: to revive support for the flagging Republican plan to rewrite the nation’s health-care laws.

He failed.
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Instead of rousing cheers on the waterfront in Providence, R.I., Pence was greeted with an icy air of skepticism Friday as he pitched the legislation, which would reduce federal Medicaid funding and phase out coverage in dozens of states.

By Monday evening, when President Trump and Pence gathered a cluster of GOP senators in the Blue Room of the White House over plates of lemon ricotta agnolotti and grilled rib-eye steak, the measure was all but dead.

“The president talked about France and Bastille Day,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said in an interview Tuesday, recalling the president’s tales during dinner of parades and pomp from his recent trip to Paris.


President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, speaks Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, speaks Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Daines described the group’s conversation, which also touched on issues ranging from health care to the debt limit, as loose — as if Trump “sat down and went out to dinner with friends, acquaintances, people you work with. It was just dinner to talk about what’s going on.”

As the dinner ended, reality returned. Two more Republican senators had suddenly bolted from supporting the health-care bill, lifting the total number of Republicans opposed to four and effectively killing it.

“I was very surprised when the two folks came out last night,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “We thought they were in fairly good shape.”

Yet the dramatic collapse of the GOP proposal in the Senate was hardly a shock to most, especially those intimately involved in a venture that has been stalled and fitful since the House passed its version in May.

The upheaval Monday night was a tipping point after weeks of burbling discontent within the party about whether passing the legislation made sense. Nearly every GOP senator was eager to check the box of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act they had long opposed — but many were also distressed by the possible costs of upending a law that has grown deep roots in states, risen in popularity and is relied upon by some Republican governors.

Moderates were always skittish about the drastic Medicaid cuts opposed by many of their governors. Conservatives were always unhappy with the scope of the Senate’s legislation, which they felt did not go far enough to gut the law.

And Trump was frequently disengaged, sporadically tweeting and making calls to on-the-fence senators but otherwise avoiding selling the bill at the kind of big rallies that he often holds on issues he champions.



“It has been obvious to me for some time, and likely obvious to the leaders, that up to 10 Republicans were uncomfortable with the bill and were thinking about voting against the motion to proceed,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critic of the bill, said in an interview Tuesday. “So it’s surprising to me that after the administration failed to win over the governors this past weekend, there wasn’t more of a recognition of the fact that the bill was probably in fatal trouble.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has long cultivated a reputation as a canny operator, found it nearly impossible to wrangle together his conference amid the mounting concerns. He could offer them tweaks and adjustments but not the political cover that they coveted.
Neither could the White House, which kept tabs on GOP senators but did not drive the negotiations at all.
“None of us knew what the meeting was about last night. We just were invited to the White House,” Daines said. “There was no topic given to us.”

Still, a false sense of confidence from the White House and Senate GOP leadership came to define the entire process. Each day seemed to bring a wave of new assertions that Senate Republicans were committed to fulfilling what has been the party’s signature pledge for nearly a decade — and then there would be new twists that threatened that ambition.

With Trump engulfed in the fallout from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Pence became the Trump administration’s main advocate for the legislation. He went to Senate lunch after Senate lunch, and eventually to the governors’ meeting.

But Pence, like the bill, never caught on.

While Pence has clout with conservatives nationally, he drew blank stares from those in front of him in Rhode Island — despite being a former Indiana governor. When he targeted Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who opposed the bill, he sparked outrage for appearing to incorrectly link waiting times for disabled people in Ohio to the expansion of Medicaid.

Kasich was newly furious about the hardball tactics. Other influential GOP critics of the bill, such as Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, also would not budge, in turn keeping Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) almost certainly in the “no” camp.

“This is a dramatic change to what most of us have reacted to within the last four years,” Sandoval told reporters over the weekend. He likened the health-care push to shaking an Etch-a-Sketch.
Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D), who attended the governors’ conference, summed up the Democratic view in a Tuesday interview: “If he’s treating a Republican governor in Ohio that way, how would he treat me?”

Malloy singled out a private breakfast session Saturday, in which administration officials sought to win over governors on the Senate legislation, as particularly problematic for the White House’s sale. He said one official sought to discredit the Congressional Budget Office; less than a minute later, another official cited a CBO statistic to defend his argument.

“It was heavy handed. It was ham-handed,” Malloy said of the administration’s approach at the summit.

The CBO had been set to release another report as soon as Monday on what the bill would do to insurance coverage levels, premium costs and the federal budget deficit. But it ended up not being released. A CBO report on an earlier version of the legislation projected that it would result in 22 million fewer Americans with insurance by 2026 than under current law.

Delays in the past week gave opponents of the bill more time to protest, over the July 4 recess and again this week due to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s surgery.

Inside the West Wing, Pence and Trump advisers continued to operate as if passage was possible, regardless of the unsuccessful turn in Providence. When the dinner convened Monday, Pence was scheduled to dine at his residence later that week with undecided Republicans.

Regardless of the negative feedback, the White House believed that the NGA meetings went as well as they could have expected considering that the governors were expected to be clamoring for more federal money than the bill would provide. Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price — both former House members — teamed up on the call list, wooing Sunday and Monday by phone.

Among the members who were being monitored closely by Pence was Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), according to a person familiar with the negotiations. In multiple discussions with Pence, Lee indicated that he had reservations but was not a firm “no” and was open to further talks.

But it was Lee and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) who ended up announcing their opposition on Monday night as Pence and Trump dined with other lawmakers at the White House — a final, vivid reminder of how the rosy view among many senior Republicans rarely, if ever, tracked with the actual state of play.

Lee and Moran made it four Republican “no” votes. They joined Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Collins, who had declared their opposition days earlier. With a 52-seat majority, Republicans could afford to lose only two votes to pass the bill since all 46 Democrats and two independents were expected to vote against the proposal, with Pence as the potential tiebreaker.

One sign that the White House and McConnell didn’t see it coming: the senators who were in the Blue Room on Monday night. They were not holdouts but mostly heavyweights of the Republican leadership: Sens. John Cornyn (Tex.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), and Roy Blunt (Mo.), among others.

Trump, impatient with the Senate’s glacial pace, asked for a candid assessment of the legislation’s status from the veteran lawmakers, according to officials familiar with the meeting. He implored them to hurry up and get the bill to his desk. But it was Paris and the flag-waving festivities he had witnessed alongside French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday and Friday that occupied much of his attention during the conversation, the officials said.

As difficult as the health-care debate had been, there was a pervasive feeling that McConnell would somehow prevail.

“I wouldn’t put it on him,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Tuesday about Trump. “The bottom line is there are members here who understood the president’s preference and were willing to vote against it anyways.”

Some Senate Republicans said McConnell’s strategy of working an inside game and largely leaving Trump to observer-cheerleader status was misguided from the start. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said the public should have been far more informed about the bill.

“We didn’t have the courage to lay out exactly what caused premiums to increase,” Johnson said. “We don’t even have the [CBO] score on this latest version. It’s an insane process. If you don’t have information how can you even have a legitimate discussion and debate?”

Tuesday brought more tension. There was finger-pointing and faction-forming as Pence and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus worked to repair relationships with senators, many of whom saw the president and his team as perhaps well-intentioned but fumbling in their understanding of Congress.

During a Senate lunch, when McConnell broached voting Wednesday on a bill that would simply repeal Obamacare, he was met with resistance, according to aides familiar with the meeting. McConnell had speakers lined up to support his plan, but a number of senators, fuming over the Monday drama and other issues, asked for a pause rather than quick legislative action.

After the lunch, McConnell did not say when a health-care vote would happen, other than the “near future.” By the end of the day, he said it would happen “early next week.”

Abby Phillip, Ed O’Keefe and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.

The low of higher education

2017-07-19

It was in my teens that I first read Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and came face-to-face with his “law” which states that “The number of hypotheses that can fit a given set of facts is infinite”. The statement was anathema for a budding young math and science person. If it was correct, it meant that both those fields of inquiry were going nowhere fast.

Fast-forward to school at the University of Murdoch where my Vietnamese mathematical genius friend Duong Pham and I were taking a course in “Structure, Thought and Reality”. That was where we both first got to know about Thomas Kuhn, Immanuel Kant, Naom Chomsky and other such philosophers of science (We had both already gotten waist deep in the incompleteness theorems of the philosopher of mathematics Kurt Gödel before we got there).

Discussing, collating, correlating and analyzing was (and is) the great and honorable exercise of all academics and career achievers of worth and we were no different back then.   
So, Doung and I were in the habit of hitting the school pub to discuss outcomes after each class as well as the voracious back reading we did to understand how the world worked both in general as well as when viewed through the lenses of mathematics and science.

One cloudless, blameless day, as we sat there discussing Khun over a beer, he happened to casually say to me (paraphrased), “you know Jun, around 200,000 math discoveries are made each year by masters and doctoral students. Each is seen by about 6 members of the student’s friends and family list who don’t understand a word of it and read by about six people on the student’s thesis defense team who actually understand it and hopefully, give the student the sought-after degree.

No surprise that the rediscovery rate is greater than 70%”. That was a shocking revelation that brought home to me the sheer uselessness of our 400 year old education system and its utter waste of human effort, money and resources.   

"How many of us actually use any of the learning we absorb after years of what is tantamount to forced labor in our various portals of education?"

How many of us actually use any of the learning we absorb after years of what is tantamount to forced labor in our various portals of education? In my years of life, I’ve seen very few whose life work can be directly linked to the education leading to their degrees. If what we slave over is useless, then the immediate next question we must ask ourselves is “why do this?”.   

Well, since at the highest level, higher education is largely useless, I must reluctantly recognize that its importance is merely cosmetic. You see, it is fashionable to have a degree or three. It doesn’t really matter if its owner is actual a master or doctor of the skill area that he or she claims lordship over.

There is a general perception that they are people of some account. However, if we take a step back and look at the conduct of millions of these people proudly armed with their diplomas, we must understand an inconvenient truth – quite a lot of these folks have no clue about anything at all.   

The best proof of this is that if they were of any worth, our world would not be in the place it is. A place where our doctors, engineers, scientists, lawyers, financiers, business people, policy makers and leaders have actually managed to retrograde development and bring us to our knees.

Pandemics, epidemics, development disasters, natural disasters, money market crises, food crises, climate crises – all point to that uncomfortable conclusion. If a review is done of the sum total of human effort in the last century or so, I have to affirm that most of the things that actually eased the burden of life on people were things created by people who never saw the insides of a university. Diplomas were never the reason why they did what they did and their effort was based on accomplishing something good for the world – not achieving something that was only of good to the industry that overarches all other industries – the social-fashion industry and its attended manufacturing of a vote for things that are mostly made of air.   

It’s not their fault. They acquire these three letter dirty words because they feel that those will give them stability, position, recognition, money, power and acceptance in the world. Hitherto, to a large extent, that, indeed, has been the case. However, the world is now well past the time when it can be satisfied with gaseous diplomas or window-dressing degrees. Those bought us a world of fear and alarm. Now, knowledge has necessarily taken precedence over learning and insight has taken precedence over education. Hanging above it all, wisdom has become the great need of the day and folks, wisdom comes from getting one’s hands muddied in this kickass reality we call the world.   

On that matter, I can share some great, positive news with you. Wisdom doesn’t require us to pass the O’Level or the A’Level or get degrees or masters or PhDs or post-docs. It can be acquired by all regardless of the social, economic or academic sub-stratum to which they belong. It’s the outcome of a kind of self-service where the effort is worthy because it; a) is part of a greater collective effort, b) is simple, responsible, replicable and useful and c) requires no validation or adoption by anyone.  

"Diplomas were never the reason why they did what they did and their effort was based on accomplishing something good for the world – not achieving something that was only of good to the industry that overarches all other industries – the social-fashion industry and its attended manufacturing of a vote for things that are mostly made of air"

 A wise person is generally not a scientific person or career person. Nor is he or she a discussing, arguing, researching, collating, correlating, analyzing person. Those are things that are the vacuous mainstream indulgences of people who, hell-bent on getting an education for a living, have completely lost contact with life.

Wise people will take time off to grow a chillie plant in a pot instead of complaining that the price of chillies is Rs.1,600 a kilo. They will have a small composting bin on their balcony and not be the cause of the Meethotamulla disaster. They will have a solar panel on their rooftops instead of screaming at CEB tariffs. They will switch off their lights instead of railing at power cuts. They will use public transport at non-peak hours and weekends instead of howling about congestion.

In short, they are problem solving people not problem-complaining people or problem-contributing people and as they proceed down this road, they acquire greater and greater insight into the working of the world. Insight that is impossible for the PhD holding specialists and qualified career people who naively believe that they are worth something when they aren’t.   

Twenty nine years ago, as I studied Duong over that pitcher of beer, I said (paraphrased) “The intellectuals are able, only. The intellectually intelligent are enabled, only. The intellectually intelligently creative are knowledgeable, only. The intellectually intelligently creatively emotionally stable are wise and Doung wisdom cannot be if we are thrilled by our intellect, intelligence, creativity, mental stability and what it can personally give us in this world ”.   

He grinned, turned to me and said “Yup! so, whatcha gonna do doc?”. I looked him straight in the eye and said “You reminded me why I should get the hell out of education because it can give me absolutely nothing of worth”. And so it happened. Both Duong and “Jun” as he was wont to call me, walked out of the convenient, fashionable, useless, conventional route of becoming someone through the stifling, mind stilting, insight killing, resource guzzling, world destroying path of higher education – happily, positively and very productively, never to return.    

PET scans show many Alzheimer’s patients may not actually have the disease

 Here's what happens in the body when it undergoes an PET scan. (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)

By Tara Bahrampour July 19 at 3:12 PM

A significant portion of people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia who are taking medication for Alzheimer’s may not actually have the disease, according to interim results of a major study underway to see how PET scans could change the nature of Alzheimer’s diagnosis and treatment.

The findings, presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, come from a four-year study launched in 2016 that is testing over 18,000 Medicare beneficiaries with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia to see if their brains contain the amyloid plaques that are one of the two hallmarks of the disease.

So far, the results have been dramatic. Among 4,000 people tested so far in the Imaging Dementia-Evidence for Amyloid Scanning (IDEAS) study, researchers from the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California at San Francisco found that just 54.3 percent of MCI patients and 70.5 percent of dementia patients had the plaques.

A positive test for amyloid does not mean someone has Alzheimer’s, though its presence precedes the disease and increases the risk of progression. But a negative test definitively means a person does not have it.

The findings could change the way doctors treat people in these hard-to-diagnose groups and save money being spent on inappropriate medication.

Here's what happens in the body when it undergoes an PET scan. (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)

“If someone had a putative diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, they might be on an Alzheimer’s drug like Aricept or Namenda,” said James Hendrix, the Alzheimer Association’s director of global science initiatives who co-presented the findings. “What if they had a PET scan and it showed that they didn’t have amyloid in their brain? Their physician would take them off that drug and look for something else.”

For decades, diagnosing Alzheimer’s has been a guessing game, based on looking at a person’s symptoms rather than testing for definitive evidence of the brain disorder. A firm diagnosis was not possible until an autopsy was performed.

Now, a spinal tap or PET scan can detect the telltale amyloid deposits, and researchers are trying to develop a simple blood test that would do so. PET imaging can quantify the amount of amyloid and also show where it is in a person’s brain.

But spinal taps are invasive, and PET scans cost $3,000 to $4,000 and are typically not covered by insurance. In 2013 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) declined to cover the tests, citing insufficient evidence that they would make a difference for patients with a disease for which there is no cure and limited treatment available.

But CMS agreed to fund the bulk of the $100 million IDEAS study by reimbursing participants for their PET scans, and researchers hope positive results will persuade them to cover it in the future.

Over 400 physicians enrolled their patients in the study, and they initially filled out forms describing how they would care for them based on their clinical symptoms. After seeing the PET imaging results, they changed their care plans for two-thirds of the patients in the study.

“We thought we would be able to see about a 30 percent change, but we’re getting a 66 percent change, so it’s huge,” Hendrix said. “We see high percentages of people who are on a drug and didn’t need to be on those drugs.”

When a friend or loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, you may not know how to treat them. Here are some tips for navigating around symptoms, so you can enjoy your time together. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

Also on Wednesday, the Alzheimer’s Association announced the launch of a $20 million two-year clinical trial to see if lifestyle changes can prevent cognitive decline.

Modeled after a larger 2014 study in Finland that showed positive results, the U.S. POINTER study will work with 2,500 older adults at risk for cognitive decline. It will test whether two years of intervention that includes physical exercise, nutritional counseling, social and cognitive stimulation, and improved self-management will help cognitive function in participants 60 to 79 years old.
Similar studies are also underway in Singapore and Australia.


Research has shown that each of these factors contributes to cognitive health, but researchers believe that, as with heart disease, combating Alzheimer’s is likely to require a multipronged, or “cocktail” approach combining drugs and lifestyle changes.

Torture by Sri Lankan police routine, says human rights lawyer

Country’s judicial system and tolerance of abuse a stain on country’s international reputation, reports Ben Emmerson QC

Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. The visit by Ben Emmerson QC was conducted with the full cooperation of the country’s government. Photograph: Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images

A ‘heavyweight’ of AG’s department on the road to perdition ! Refrain from saving murderers for your own good !

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic Editor-Friday 14 July 2017

The use of torture by Sri Lankan security services has become routine, a UN special rapporteur has concluded following a visit to the country. 

The four-day visit by Ben Emmerson QC was conducted with the full cooperation of the Sri Lankan government, but the British lawyer found that the country’s judicial system, and tolerance of torture, is a “stain on the country’s international reputation”.

Government explanations for the state of the judicial system were entirely inadequate and unconvincing, said the independent expert, who was appointed by the Human Rights Council.

Emmerson’s report also concluded that the coalition government’s plans for a path to reconciliation after a 26-year internal war, has “ground to a virtual halt”.

Draft revised anti-terror laws prepared by the government, he warned, will leave unchecked the routine police use of torture to extract confessions.

“The use of torture has been, and remains today, endemic and routine, for those arrested and detained on national security grounds,” the report stated. “Since the authorities use this legislation disproportionately against members of the Tamil community, it is this community that has borne the brunt of the state’s well-oiled torture apparatus.”

He added that 80% of those most recently arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in late 2016 complained of torture and physical ill-treatment following their arrest.

The torture included beatings with sticks, the use of stress positions, asphyxiation using plastic bags drenched in kerosene, the extraction of fingernails, the use of water torture, the suspension of individuals for several hours by their thumbs and the mutilation of genitals, he said.

Emmerson said that while some individuals supposedly involved with the Liberation Tigers of Tamils Eelam (LTTE) had benefited from amnesties and rehabilitation, many more had been treated under controversial terrorism legislation.

“Entire communities have been stigmatised and targeted for harassment and arbitrary arrest and detention and any person suspected of association, however indirect, with the LTTE remains at immediate risk of detention and torture,” the report said, adding that there was little evidence of torture being discouraged.

“Only 71 police officers had been proceeded against for torturing suspects since available records began.”

Emmerson also reported that 70 prisoners “had been in detention without trial for over five years and 12 had been in detention without trial for over 10 years. These staggering figures are a stain on Sri Lanka’s international reputation”.

Sri Lanka emerged from a brutal Tamil war of independence in 2009 after 26 years of fighting and terrorism. A coalition government was formed in 2015, and Emmerson held meetings with all the relevant ministers, as well as security officials, legal officers, prisoners and human rights specialists.

The lawyer said he was given personal assurances by the most senior Sri Lankan ministers that they were on a path of reform, but pointed out that these commitments have previously been given, and simply not met.

He warned that if government inertia over reform does notend, the authorities will have created “precisely the conditions likely to produce festering grievances, to foster unrest and even to reignite conflict”.