This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site.

The situation in Turkey is bad and getting worse.

It’s not just the deterioration in security amidst a wave of terrorism. Public debt might be stable, but private debt is out of control, the tourism sector is in free-fall and the decline in the currency has impacted every citizen’s buying power.

There is a broad sense, election results notwithstanding, that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is out of control. He is imprisoning opponents, seizing newspapers left and right and building palaces at the rate of a mad sultan or aspiring caliph. In recent weeks, he has once again threatened to dissolve the constitutional court.

Corruption is rife. His son Bilal reportedly fled Italy on a forged Saudi diplomatic passport as the Italian police closed in on him in an alleged money laundering scandal.

His outbursts are raising eyebrows both in Turkey and abroad. Even members of his ruling party whisper about his increasing paranoia which, according to some Turkish officials, has gotten so bad that he seeks to install anti-aircraft missiles at his palace to prevent airborne men-in-black from targeting him in a snatch-and-grab operation.

Turks—and the Turkish military—increasingly recognize that Erdogan is taking Turkey to the precipice. By first bestowing legitimacy upon imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan with renewed negotiations and then precipitating renewed conflict, he has taken Turkey down a path in which there is no chance of victory and a high chance of de facto partition.

After all, if civil war renews as in the 1980s and early 1990s, Turkey’s Kurds will be hard-pressed to settle for anything less, all the more so given the precedent now established by their brethren in Iraq and Syria.

Erdogan long ago sought to kneecap the Turkish military. For the first decade of his rule, both the U.S. government and European Union cheered him on. But that was before even Erdogan’s most ardent foreign apologists recognized the depth of his descent into madness and autocracy.

So if the Turkish military moves to oust Erdogan and place his inner circle behind bars, could they get away with it?

In the realm of analysis rather than advocacy, the answer is yes. At this point in election season, it is doubtful that the Obama administration would do more than castigate any coup leaders, especially if they immediately laid out a clear path to the restoration of democracy.

Nor would Erdogan engender the type of sympathy that Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi did. When Morsi was ousted, his commitment to democracy was still subject to debate.

That debate is now moot when it comes to the Turkish strongman. Neither the Republican nor Democratic front-runners would put U.S. prestige on the line to seek a return to the status quo ante. They might offer lip service against a coup, but they would work with the new regime.

Coup leaders might moot European and American human rights and civil society criticism and that of journalists by immediately freeing all detained journalists and academics and by returning seized newspapers and television stations to their rightful owners.

Turkey’s NATO membership is no deterrent to action: Neither Turkey nor Greece lost their NATO membership after previous coups. Should a new leadership engage sincerely with Turkey’s Kurds, Kurds might come onboard.

Neither European nor American public opinion would likely be sympathetic to the execution of Erdogan, his son and son-in-law, or key aides like Egemen Bağış and Cüneyd Zapsu, although they would accept a trial for corruption and long incarceration.

Erdoğan might hope friends would rally to his side, but most of his friends—both internationally and inside Turkey—are attracted to his power. Once out of his palace, he may find himself very much alone, a shriveled and confused figure like Saddam Hussein at his own trial.

I make no predictions, but given rising discord in Turkey as well as the likelihood that the Turkish military would suffer no significant consequence should it imitate Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s game plan in Egypt, no one should be surprised if Turkey’s rocky politics soon get rockier.

The moon may not have always had the same face pointed toward the Earth. Instead, the “Man in the Moon” nodded up and down, due to heating and volcanic eruptions on the side facing Earth.

Researchers made the discovery while trying to explain maps of lunar polar hydrogen. The hydrogen, discovered by NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission in the 1990s, is believed to represent water ice, protected from the sun’s rays in cold, permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s north and south poles. If ice were exposed to direct sunlight on the moon, it would boil off into space, so it is a very sensitive tracer of the moon’s orientation with time.

graphic of a hotspot on the moon
A vast hotspot of intense volcanism underneath the dark, blotchy “face” of the moon known as Oceanis Procellarum (red area on right) resulted in less density there than in other parts of the moon. To restore balance, the moon’s axis shifted by six degrees. Traces of water ice deposits near the poles outline the movement from the location of the ancient (blue) to the present pole (teal). (Credit: James Keane)

“Weirdly, the moon’s ice isn’t exactly at the coldest spots on the north or south poles of the moon,” says Matt Siegler, a scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona and first author of a new paper published in Nature.

Instead, the polar ice is shifted off the poles by about six degrees, and in exact opposite directions at either pole. (On the Earth, six degrees is about equal to the distance from Tucson to Los Angeles.)

This precisely opposite (“antipodal”) relationship indicates that the moon’s spin axis—the imaginary line that runs from the north pole, through the center of the moon, to the south pole, and around which the moon rotates—shifted over the last few billion years. As the moon reoriented, it left behind a trail of water ice, effectively “painting out” the path that the poles took with time.

moon’s ancient north pole
The moon’s ancient north pole was located near the impact site of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, which provided evidence for the presence of water ice on today’s lunar surface. (Credit: James Keane)

When researchers realized that the moon’s ice might be telling a story of reorientation, it turned to James Keane and Isamu Matsuyama, planetary scientists at the University of Arizona.

“Usually we think of planets as ‘spinning on’ in the same unchanging way with time, but that’s not true,” says Keane, a graduate student at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “We know that the Earth and a handful of other planetary bodies have changed their spin axes with time.”


“This gives us a way to model exactly where…astronauts might find a drink on future missions to the moon.”

On the Earth, this reorientation can be measured with GPS and techniques that we don’t have on other planets. This forces scientists to look for clues in other, more unusual datasets. For example, Matsuyama, a professor of planetary science at LPL and Keane’s doctoral advisor, recently used gravity measurements and observations of ancient valley networks on Mars to infer reorientation on that planet.

The new study is the first to use lunar ice to infer the change in the spin of the moon.

The spins of planetary bodies are set by how mass is distributed within the planet: A planet’s denser spots try to drag the planet toward its equator, less dense spots toward the pole. On the moon, tidal forces from the Earth also can drag dense spots toward—or away from—the Earth-facing side of the moon. Scientists refer to this reorientation phenomenon as “true polar wander.”

Path etched in polar ice

Using this idea that the moon’s ice traces an earlier spin pole, researchers used a combination of theoretical models and measurements of the moon’s mass distribution from NASA missions to identify what could physically cause this polar wander.

“I was shocked when the models outlined Oceanus Procellarum as the only possible geologic feature that could have done this,” Keane says.

schematic drawing of the moon’s polar wander
A schematic drawing of the moon’s polar wander. The shift in the moon’s axis covered a latitudinal distance equivalent to that between Tucson and Los Angeles. (Credit: James Keane)

Oceanus Procellarum is a vast, volcanic province on the Earth-facing side of the moon. It contains all of the dark splotches we see forming the “face” of the moon, which is actually a giant field of ancient lava flows. When the moon formed, many of the body’s radioactive elements ended up in the Procellarum.

“This radioactive crust acted like an oven broiler heating and melting the mantle below,” Siegler says.

The giant Procellarum hotspot was less dense than the rest of the moon and caused the whole moon to move. As the moon slowly moved over billions of years, it etched a path into the polar ice.

[Why the moon doesn’t have two faces]

The paper shows that the moon may have once had much more ice near its poles and the ice we see today is the tiny portion, which has survived this polar migration. Large amounts of ice could have been brought to the moon by comets and icy asteroids early in the moon’s history or potentially outgassed from the lunar mare themselves.

Figuring out the origin of this ancient lunar water might also help scientists understand how water was delivered to the early Earth.

“This gives us a way to model exactly where the ice should be, which tells us about its origin and where astronauts might find a drink on future missions to the moon,” Siegler says.

“Up until this work, most researchers thought that the moon’s water was just recently deposited, as a late veneer,” Keane says. “Since we’ve shown that the moon’s water is linked to volcanic activity on the moon several billion years ago, this means it might be a time capsule of primordial water. Directly sampling this ancient ice will allow us to investigate many still unanswered questions around the origin of the Earth’s water.”

Scientists from California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Alabama, and the University of California, Los Angeles are coauthors of the study.

NASA’s SSERVI VORTICES node, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the NASA Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research, or LASER, program supported the work.

Source: University of Arizona

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

ISLAMABAD: Iran's Hassan Rouhani arrived Friday in Pakistan on a landmark visit, his first since becoming president, at a time when Saudi Arabia is courting Islamabad to increase participation in a new Saudi-led military alliance of mostly Sunni nations, a coalition perceived by Tehran as an anti-Shiite block.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif received President Rouhani at the airport. Twenty-one gun salute was given to the visiting dignitary upon his arrival.

The Iranian President is accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising Ministers, senior officials and businessmen.

PM Sharif and President Rouhani held wide ranging talks covering all aspects of bilateral relations, regional situation and global issues of mutual interest.

The two leaders first had one to one meeting this afternoon which was following by delegation level talks. The focus of discussions was strengthening of economic and trade ties between the two brotherly countries.

The visit comes at a time when Saudi Arabia has been leading a coalition of mostly Gulf Arab states in a blistering air-campaign against the Houthis in the conflict in Yemen, widely seen as a proxy Saudi-Iran war.

Last year, Pakistan refused a Saudi request to send troops into Yemen after a vote in Parliament delivered an overwhelming "no." Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited the kingdom in January, expressing support for the alliance but without making any military commitment. Local Pakistani papers have carried unconfirmed reports that Saudi Arabia asked Pakistan's military chief, Raheel Sharif, to head the alliance.

Rouhani's visit is also a landmark moment for Iran, after international sanctions in the wake of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

"This visit means a lot," said Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, adding that Pakistan is still "ambivalent" about its participation in the new Saudi-led alliance.

Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country of 180 million, has a Shiite minority that makes up about 15 percent of the population.

The country frequently sees Sunni militant groups attacking the Shiite minority, which in turn has accused Saudi Arabia of financing groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, blamed for many such deadly attacks. For their part, the militant Sunni groups accuse Iran of financing a Pakistani militant Shiite group, Tehreek Nafaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jafariya.

On the eve of his visit, Rouhani said that "constructive relations with neighbors and the Islamic world are at the priority list of our foreign policy."

Rouhani tweeted:







"Destabilization of others causes everlasting conflicts that benefit nobody," he said in a veiled reference to Saudi Arabia.

"I believe that at this crucial moment of the history of relations between the two countries, it is essential that Pakistan and Iran ... lay the cornerstone of a new bilateral engagement based on the mutual interests of the two countries," Rouhani added in his statement.

Rouhani's visit is also expected to discuss a controversial gas pipeline from Iran, through Pakistan to India. Work has stalled on the Iran-Pakistan section, which was designed to help Pakistan meet its energy needs. Iran has invested over $2 billion in the project, but Pakistan has yet to finish construction on its half of the pipeline


SOURCES: THE NEWS

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

ISLAMABAD: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on a landmark visit to Pakistan, his first since becoming president, on Friday called for political solutions to the regional problems and conflicts.


The visit of Iranian president comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is courting Islamabad to actively participate in a Saudi-led 34-state anti-terrorism military coalition, being perceived by Tehran as an anti-Shia block.


“Destabilisation of others causes everlasting conflicts that benefit nobody,” Rouhani had said, in a veiled reference to Saudi Arabia, on the eve of his two-day visit to Pakistan.


Speaking to reporters after one-on-one and delegation-level meetings on Friday, President Rouhani and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said they wanted to build a relationship based on shared interests and economic development.


Rouhani said terrorism was a scourge both countries faced and that Pakistan’s security was as important to Iran as its own. “Pakistan and Iran consider each other’s security as their own. There is a will and resolve among two countries to combat extremist and terrorist elements and not to allow such groups to destroy peace in the region,” he told a joint press briefing.


The two sides announced to set up two additional border crossing points to bolster bilateral trade and economic relations that suffered a huge blow due to years of crippling international sanctions against Tehran. They also signed several memorandums of understanding in fields such as energy, health, diplomatic training, trade and commerce.


Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the trade and economic cooperation between the two countries suffered due to internationals sanctions against Iran. “Now, we have decided to strengthen our bilateral relations in areas of trade, economy and energy,” he said.


The prime minister said the decision to open two additional crossing points along Pak-Iran border has been taken to encourage trade and economic interaction as well as to facilitate people-to-people contacts between the two countries. He said Islamabad and Tehran enjoyed close and fraternal relations that were rooted in the shared history of culture and religion. He said his third meeting with the Iranian president in less than three years depicted the depth and warmth of bilateral relations.


Nawaz expressed hope that the relations between Pakistan and Iran will continue to grow for the mutual benefit of the two countries. He said Hassan Rouhani’s election as president depicted the confidence of the people of Iran in his leadership.


He also extended Nauroz greetings to the Iranian president and his delegation.


Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the two sides discussed ways and means to explore new avenues of cooperation in energy sector, including the export of electricity from Iran to Pakistan, besides diversification of trade and economic relations between the two countries. He said the two sides also deliberated on the ways to boost bilateral trade by means of preferential trade and move forward for a free trade agreement between Pakistan and Iran.


The Iranian president said the two sides also explored the possibility of sea trade through Pakistan’s Gwadar Port and Iran’s Chahbahar Port.The Iranian president was of the view that the two sides needed to enhance cultural relations as well as regional cooperation.President Rouhani also extended greetings to the people and government of Pakistan on the Pakistan Day.


Rouhani’s visit is also a landmark moment for Iran after international sanctions were lifted in the wake of the nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and the world powers. “I believe that at this crucial moment of the history of relations between the two countries, it is essential that Pakistan and Iran lay the cornerstone of a new bilateral engagement based on the mutual interests of the two countries,” Rouhani said in a statement on the eve of his maiden visit to Pakistan. President Rouhani, during his visit, is also likely to discuss the gas pipeline from Iran, through Pakistan to India. While Iran has invested over $2 billion in the project, Pakistan has yet to finish construction on its half of the pipeline.


(DAILY TIMES, MARCH 26TH 2016)

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

Six MoUs signed to cement Iran-Pakistan ties


ISLAMABAD, Mar. 26 (MNA) – Iran and Pakistan signed six memorandums on Fri. in Islamabad in a bid to expand bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

The memoranda of understanding were inked on Friday in Islamabad in the presence of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Pakistani Prime Minister Navaz Sharif.

The six MoUs include a 5-year cooperation document on strategic trade; MoUs between the Federation Of Pakistan Chambers Of Commerce & Industry and the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA); Iran’s Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) and Karachi Council on Foreign Relations (KCFR); Central Insurance of Iran and Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan; cultural and academic cooperation between Pakistan Academy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Relations School of the Iranian Foreign Ministry; as well as mutual cooperation on health and education.

Following the signing of the MoUs, President Rouhani stressed that the two countries are fully determined to expand mutual cooperation, particularly in the economic field.

He also considered the perseverance of Pakistan’s security as Iran’s security, saying the two countries are resolved to undertake a joint fight against terrorism.

Heading a high-ranking politico-economic delegation including 60 Iranian businessmen, Rouhani was officially welcomed by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif upon his arrival in Islamabad on Friday. The two-day visit is Hassan Rouhani’s first time in Pakistan since he took office in 2013. Following his meeting with Sharif, Rouhani is also scheduled to hold talks with President Mamnoon Hussain and Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif among others during his stay.


MEHR NEW AGENCY

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

The esteemed Harvard Kennedy School’s research institute “Belfer centre” has published a report reviewing the nuclear security measures of the countries having nuclear weapons. The Report “Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?” was released ahead of fourth nuclear security summit scheduled for end of this month.



The report warns Pakistan against the risk of a nuclear theft, but expressed satisfaction over the measures in place to ensure the safety of nuclear weapons.



“By some estimates, the Strategic Plans Division, which manages Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, has 25,000 troops available to guard Pakistani nuclear stocks and facilities. Pakistani officials report that sites are equipped with extensive barriers and detection systems, that the components of nuclear weapons are stored separately and that Pakistani weapons are equipped with locks to prevent unauthorized use.” said the report.



The report also pointed out to the unstable political situation in Pakistan, “The possibilities of state collapse or extremist takeover cannot be entirely ruled out, though the near-term probability of such events appears to be low”.



The report warns that Pakistan must protect its nuclear assets against almost overwhelmingly adversary threats, including terrorist groups that have previously launched complex and well-coordinated attacks on heavily defended military targets within Pakistan.



“Although India has taken significant measures to protect its nuclear sites, recent reports suggest that its nuclear security measures may be weaker than those of Pakistan,” it added.



The Report also stated that United States and Pakistan will continue meaningful dialogues to ensure nuclear security and that High Officials from United States including Obama and US Joint Chiefs of Staff have repeatedly expressed confidence in Pakistani Nuclear Security arrangements.



“Despite a variety of negative reports in the U.S. press on Pakistani nuclear security, U.S. officials from President Obama to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have repeatedly expressed confidence in Pakistani nuclear security arrangements. It is notable, however, that these statements of confidence have not been repeated at recent high-level U.S.-Pakistani meetings—suggesting that the United States has concerns about some elements of Pakistan’s nuclear security approach. The Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, however, testified in February 2015 that improvements were continuing.” The report stated.



On the occasion of sixth ministerial level strategic dialogue between Pakistan and United States in February, US Secretary of State John Kerry, in his opening remarks, had asked Pakistan to realize that keeping a large nuclear programme “does not make sense” and that Pakistan needs to “process that reality and put it front and centre in its policy”. He also expressed hope that both countries will continue to discuss the obligations of being a responsible nuclear state.



Speculations arose in the media that United States and Pakistan had differences over nuclear security issues and that US was pushing Pakistan to cut down on its nuclear programme. Prime Minister’s Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told the house that “We have clearly told the US that our nuclear programme is for our own security and it has by and large helped prevent an armed conflict in the region”.



He made the remarks during a debate on the statement of US Secretary of State John Kerry that Pakistan might sell nuclear bombs to Saudi Arabia. Sartaj Aziz denied the speculations and said that Pakistan’s nuclear program is not for sale. He also added that the statement of the US Secretary of State was misquoted by the media.



Sartaj Aziz informed the house that Pakistan will not lend its nuclear technology to any other country. He added that Pakistan s nuclear programme is for its own deterrence and entire world appreciates its impeccable command and control system.



“We enjoy friendly relations with Saudi Arabia, but under no circumstances Pakistan will share its nuclear technology with any other country”, Mr. Aziz informed the house.



Last week, Pakistan hosted a Nuclear Safety Training Conference in which officials from 29 countries participated, it was the first of its kind conference held outside International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) headquarters. United States has praised Pakistan nuclear engagement with the IAEA. US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a congressional hearing that Pakistan’s nuclear engagement is excellent for safeguarding its nuclear assets.



Another significant development was recorded as Pakistan ratified the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) on the recommendation of National Command Authority (NCA). The original CPPNM, which entered into force on 8 February 1987, is a legally binding international instrument in the area of physical protection of nuclear material. It establishes measures related to the prevention, detection and punishment of offences related to nuclear material.



Last Month, the Marshall Islands- a small pacific island nation, filed cases against Pakistan, India and Britain before the International Court of Justice stating that “Pakistan is in breach of its obligation owed to the international community as a whole, when it comes to reducing its nuclear arsenal.” The lawyers informed the court that “even a limited nuclear war involving the two countries would threaten the existence of small Pacific Island nation”, reported the agencies.



It is necessary for every nation on the earth to process the reality that nuclear weapons symbolize only destruction. In order to ensure a safer future, all nations of the world must come together to get rid of this menace. It is absolutely essential that the possibilities of armed conflicts be minimized and eventually eliminated for human race to progress and prosper.


DUNYA NEWS

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

US plans to raise troop numbers in Iraq amid fresh strikes on IS


The Pentagon is moving to increase the number of American troops in Iraq in the wake of new strikes that killed the Islamic State's finance minister and other top leaders of the terror group.


But senior US defence officials say the deaths will not "break the back" of the extremist group, which is in a fierce fight for an ancient city in Syria and has said it carried out the bombing at a football stadium in Iraq on Friday.


Defence secretary Ash Carter said the US progress in eliminating members of IS' "cabinet" was hampering its ability to conduct and inspire attacks against the West.

The announcement came as the battle to retake the Syrian city of Palmyra entered its third day and Iraqi forces continued their march to recapture Mosul. And the suicide bombing at the stadium south of Baghdad, which killed nearly 30 people, underscored the difficult fight ahead.


General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recommendations on ways to increase US support for Iraq's ground fight against IS would be discussed with US president Barack Obama soon.





"The secretary and I both believe that there will be an increase in US forces in Iraq in coming weeks, but that decision hasn't been made," he said. He did not say how big that increase might be.


Gen. Dunford and Mr Carter said accelerating the campaign against IS would include more assistance like the artillery fire and targeting help that the US Marines provided earlier this week to Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul. But they said American forces remained well behind the front lines.


Using an acronym for the militant group, Mr Carter said the US was "systematically eliminating Isil's cabinet", killing several key members in strikes this week.


He would not provide details about the strikes, but a senior US official said the group's financial minister was killed along with two associates in a US raid in Syria.


Mr Carter said the finance minister, known by several names including Abdul-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and Haji Imam, was a "well-known terrorist" who had a hand in plots outside Iraq and Syria.


He said al-Qaduli had been associated with IS dating back to its earliest iteration as al Qaida in Iraq. He said he had worked under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a liaison for operations in Pakistan and was "responsible for some external affairs and plots".


Mr Carter said he was not aware of any link between al-Qaduli and this week's terrorist attacks in Brussels.


In a separate operation, a US air strike in Mosul killed another top IS leader, identified by Mr Carter as Abu Sarah. He said he was one of the leaders tasked with paying militant fighters in northern Iraq.


The successful attacks are part of a string of recent strikes targeting the leadership of the group, which has lost territory in both Iraq and Syria.


Earlier this month the Pentagon said it killed Omar al-Shishani, described as IS's "minister of war", in an air strike in Syria. In November, the Pentagon said an air strike in Libya killed Abu Nabil, another top IS leader.


Earlier this week military officials confirmed the creation of a US Marine outpost, dubbed Fire Base Bell, in Iraq.


Marines operating from the small base provided targeting assistance and artillery fire to support Iraqi troops retaking several villages in the initial stages of their march to Mosul. It's the first such base established by the US since it returned forces to Iraq in 2014.


Mr Carter has also said the US is looking at a number of options to "accelerate" the fight against IS. Those options have not yet officially been submitted to the White House for approval.


They could include sending additional US forces to Iraq, using Apache helicopters for combat missions, deploying more special operations forces or using American military advisers in Iraqi units closer to the front lines


SOURCES: IRISH EXAMINER

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

US confirms death of IS number two, sees blow to its operations



US forces killed the Islamic State group’s second-in-command this week, dealing a blow to the extremists’ ability to conduct operations in Iraq, Syria and abroad, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Friday.


“We are systematically eliminating ISIL’s cabinet,” Carter told reporters, referring also to the killing early in the month of Omar al-Shishani, the man known as “Omar the Chechen,” who was effectively IS’s defense minister.


The latest killing “will hamper the ability for them to conduct operations inside and outside of Iraq and Syria,” Carter said of Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, referring to him as Haji Imam. He said al-Qaduli served as the group’s finance minister and had been behind some foreign plots.


“The momentum of this campaign is now clearly on our side,” the defense secretary said, adding that “we’re broadening both the weight and the nature of our attacks on ISIL.”

Carter declined to say whether al-Qaduli had been killed by a drone strike or in a bombing raid involving manned aircraft; nor would he specify whether the attack occurred in Syria or Iraq, though he said that any action in Iraq would only have been taken with Iraqi government approval.


The US Justice Department had offered a bounty of up to $7 million for information leading to al-Qaduli.


“A few months ago when I said we were going to go after ISIL’s financial infrastructure, we started with storage sites, and now we’ve taken out the leader who oversees their finances, hurting their ability to pay and hire recruits,” Carter said.


Carter was asked whether al-Qaduli could have had a link to the November terror attacks in Paris or to this week’s bombings in Belgium and said he could not confirm a specific link to the Brussels attacks.


But whether Islamic State group militants in Iraq and Syria like al-Qaduli had specifically directed or simply inspired such attacks, the US-led forces would do their best to eliminate them, Carter said.


“Our campaign plan is first and foremost to collapse ISIL’s parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, focusing on the power centers in Raqqa and Mosul,” he said.


Carter said local forces supported by the US-led coalition had “severed the main artery between Syria and northern Iraq,” making it “much harder for ISIL’s leaders and forces to travel between Raqa and Mosul.”


But to a reporter’s question of whether the US-led forces had turned a corner in their fight against IS, Carter and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, struck a measured tone.


“While ISIL has not been able to seize ground in the past several months, that hasn’t precluded them from conducting terrorist attacks or operations more than the conventional operations,” Dunford said. “I think the momentum is in our favor.”

But, he added, “By no means would I say we’re about to break the back of ISIL or that the fight is over.”


Al-Qaduli was born in Mosul, according to Iraqi security sources. He was in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.


He joined al-Qaeda in 2004, and became a deputy to the feared Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006 by an American drone strike.Al-Qaduli was captured and imprisoned, but joined the Islamic State group in Syria after he was freed in 2012.


DAILY TIMES

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

Volcanic activity brought about a shift in Moon’s axis 3 billion years ago


Moon has joined a super-exclusive club of celestial objects that have witnessed a permanent in their axis, a new study published in Nature has revealed.

According to researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and colleagues, the axis of moon shifted at least six degrees over a course of 1 billion years some 3 billion years ago – a change that was caused by shift of a large, single mantle “plume.”

Researchers explain in their study that the internal changes in Moon that caused the shift in axis involved melting of a large portion of the moon’s mantle caused by volcanic activity. This melting caused the mantle to bubble up towards its surface – something the researchers liken to goo drifting upward in a lava lamp.

According to Matt Siegler at Southern Methodist University moon has a single region of the crust, a large basaltic plain called Procellarum. The radioactive elements ended up in the crust when the moon was forming and it was this radioactive crust that acted like an oven heating the mantle below. Some of the material melted, forming the dark patches we see at night, which are ancient lava, he said.

“This giant blob of hot mantle was lighter than cold mantle elsewhere,” Siegler said. “This change in mass caused Procellarum — and the whole moon — to move.”

The moon likely relocated its axis starting about 3 billion years ago or more, slowly moving over the course of a billion years, Siegler said, etching a path in its ice.

Over time, the axis shifted 125 miles or 200 kilometers — about half the distance from Dallas to Houston, or equal the distance from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia.

The inspiration behind the study was the data captured by NASA missions that is known to indicate lunar polar hydrogen. The hydrogen, detected by orbital instruments, is presumed to be in the form of ice hidden from the sun in craters surrounding the moon’s north and south poles. Exposure to direct sunlight causes ice to boil off into space, so this ice — perhaps billions of years old — is a very sensitive marker of the moon’s past orientation.

An odd offset of the ice from the moon’s current north and south poles was a tell-tale indicator to Siegler and prompted him to assemble a team of experts to take a closer look at the data from NASA’s Lunar Prospector and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions. Statistical analysis and modeling revealed the ice is offset at each pole by the same distance, but in exactly opposite directions.

SOURCE: DISPATCH TRIBUNAL

The inspiration behind the study was the data captured by NASA missions that is known to indicate lunar polar hydrogen.


By Ravi Mandalia -

March 26, 2016

__________________
I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..

According to a global survey conducted by Gallup International in 2014, the U.S. is the “overwhelming choice … for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today.”



Even among our closest allies, including Spain, Germany, Sweden and Australia, the U.S. wins first place as the greatest danger. No doubt this has a lot to do with the ignominious foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush administration. But the 2014 Gallup poll was conducted during the tenure of Obama, who, let’s not forget, was once awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. If the world saw us as this dangerous two years ago, how might it perceive the leading superpower if Donald Trump were voted into the Oval Office?

Fortunately, there are some hard data available to help us answer this question. And the answer doesn’t bode well for our future standing as a member of the international community. While Trump has repeatedly claimed that “the world does not respect us” because “we’re being run incompetently,” there’s overwhelming evidence that a Trump presidency would result in a catastrophic deterioration of our already compromised moral authority in the world.

Let’s begin with Trump’s favorite rhetorical punching bag when it comes to all things trade-related: China. While the Chinese government initially referred to Trump’s rise as a mere “disturbance,” a recent op-ed in the state-owned newspaper Global Times doesn’t hold back in criticizing Trump as a demagogue whose “remarks are abusively racist and extremist.” Titled “Trump opens Pandora’s box in U.S.,” the article suggests that the violence at Trump’s rallies is reminiscent of a developing country, not “one of the most developed and mature democratic” states, as the U.S. “boasts.”

It claims that Trump, “a rich, narcissist and inflammatory candidate,” was initially supposed to “act as a clown to attract more voters’ attention to the GOP,” but “the clown is now the biggest dark horse.” The article proceeds to assert that the rise of a “big-mouthed, anti-traditional, abusively forthright … racist in the U.S. political arena worries the whole world.” Both Mussolini and Hitler gained political power through elections, it notes, so “the U.S. had better watch itself for not being a source of destructive forces against world peace.”

(It doesn’t help, by the way, that Trump has “used a broken-English accent … to mock the negotiating style of Chinese businessmen.” How ironic that Trump would knock the professionalism of Chinese businessmen in such an extraordinarily unprofessional manner.)

But Trump has not only received a brutal response from Chinese media, he’s also managed to upset pro-democracy Chinese activists. For example, during one of the Republican debates, Trump described the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 as a “riot” that was “kept down” by a “strong, powerful” response from the Chinese government. (The term “riot” is, incidentally, the same word that the Chinese Communist Party uses to describe the massacre.)

In response, one of the 1989 student protestors, Wang Dan, who now holds a PhD from Harvard, wrote in a Time magazine article that he’s “disappointed by and angry at Mr. Trump’s words. If a bloody repression can be praised as a ‘strong, powerful’ action, what does this mean about American values, especially when this blatant mischaracterization comes from a presidential candidate.” Wang adds, “As a long-time resident of the United States, I am deeply worried about a great country’s future.”

Similarly, another leading Tiananmen dissident named Wu’er Kaixi took to Facebook, writing that Trump is “an enemy of the values that America deeply defines itself by — the same values that have long provided hope to the victims of oppressive power worldwide.” He concludes with the ominous warning that “Those of us who have fought for freedom anywhere in the world worry that something is about to change in America. Let us hope that is not so.”

Trump’s comments about the “riots” in Tiananmen Square 27 years ago are consistent with his praise of authoritarian world leaders, such as the Russian president Vladimir Putin. During a Republican debate, Trump described Putin as a “strong leader for Russia.” In fact, Trump is currently the only presidential candidate on either side of the political spectrum who approves of Russia’s military action in Syria, which has largely targeted “legitimate opposition groups” fighting against the Bashar al-Assad regime, rather than the Islamic State. As Trump put it, “Let [Putin] bomb them [meaning ISIS]. I think we probably work together much more so than right now.” In return, the Russian leader has showered praise on Trump, calling him “a really brilliant and talented person, without any doubt,” and “the absolute leader in the presidential race.”

As for Putin’s history of assassinating journalists and political adversaries, Trump has repeatedly asserted that “it’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody,” despite the fact that the Committee to Protect Journalists catalogues some “56 journalists of various nationalities [who] have been killed in the country” since 1992. As it happens, Trump himself has actually joked about killing journalists, who he refers to as “lying, disgusting people,” and he’s even declared that, “We’re going to open up those libel laws so when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

What exactly counts as a “hit piece”? Of course, this could end up being quite subjective, especially when it’s being decided by an insecure, narcissistic, authoritarian leader. As Trump added, “We’re going to open up libel laws and we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before.”

Moving now to the Middle East, Trump has repeatedly said that he would “bomb the shit out of them,” meaning the Islamic State. Perhaps this sounds like a good plan to the predominantly uneducated white people who support Trump, but to scholars who actually study the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, bombing in the group would have catastrophically negative consequences for U.S. national security. As one of the leading scholars of Islamic militancy, Will McCants, recently stated in an interview I conducted with him, “Jihadism thrives in chaos,” and dropping explosives on Syria and Iraq would only foment more chaos, thereby fueling more apocalyptic extremism.











The most sagacious strategy for defeating the Islamic State is rather “to end the multiple civil wars raging in the Middle East” — not an easy task, McCants acknowledges. If this were accomplished, though, the decrease in societal entropy would significantly “hurt the jihadist cause.” While Trump likes to claim that the 2003 U.S.-led preemptive invasion of Iraq was a monumental foreign policy blunder, he apparently hasn’t learned a thing from our militaristic misadventures overseas.

Making matters worse, Trump has claimed that “torture works,” calling those who came up with international laws against torture “eggheads.” (Seriously.) Thus, Trump says that he would reinstate the use of waterboarding, a technique that is widely condemned by scholars, politicians and people around the world as morally indefensible. In fact, the U.S. executed several Japanese soldiers after World War II for using waterboarding against their enemies.

As Trump put it in a recent NBC interview, authorities “should be able to do whatever they have to do” to extract information from suspected terrorists, adding that, “Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding.” Consistent with this position, Trump has also declared that he would not shut down the “detention camp” inside the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base — the “world’s most notorious prison” — where so-called “detainees” are held in an existentially nightmarish state of indefinite detention without due process, and in fact he would “add more prisoners.” Yet, as one expert notes, the prison has only resulted in “angry foreign allies, a tarnishing of America’s image, and declining cooperation in the Global War on Terrorism.” It’s making the U.S. less, rather than more, secure. And expanding it would only amplify this undesirable effect.

As if this isn’t enough to provoke outrage throughout the international community, Trump has stood by his blanket assertion that “Islam hates us.” Consequently, he’s argued that the U.S. should implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until we “figure out what the hell is going on.” The problem is that, as Jeb “can fix it” Bush has pointed out, implementing this idea would seriously alienate our Muslim allies in the Middle East, some of whom are crucial partners in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State.

Indeed, Trump’s ban-the-Muslims scheme resulted in global outrage, with adherents “all over the world” denouncing the front-runner as “a bigot who promote[s] violence.” In the words of a prominent human rights lawyer in Pakistan, Asma Jahangir, “This is the worst kind of bigotry mixed with ignorance. … Although we are not as advanced as the U.S., we have never elected such people to power in Pakistan.” Similarly, the Dar al-Iftaa religious institute in Egypt claimed that Trump’s proposal “will lead to conflict … and increase hate, which will be a threat to social peace in the United States.”







Finally, turning to the centerpiece of Trump’s xenophobic platform: his proposed 1,000-mile concrete wall between our southern neighbors and the American homeland. Initially estimated to cost around $4 billion, Trump has gradually increased the likely expense to $10 or $12 billion, although conservative estimates from other sources put construction alone at about $25 billion. The purpose of this Great Wall? To keep out Mexican criminals, drug dealers, and “rapists.”

But the question at hand is how Mexico has reacted to Trump’s idea. Well, as the treasury secretary of Mexico, Luis Videgaray, recently put it, “I say it emphatically and categorically: Mexico, under no circumstance, is going to pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing.” And two Mexican ex-presidents so far have “slammed the idea,” with Felipe Calderon angrily saying that “Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall, and they need to know that,” and Vicente Fox even more angrily exclaiming to Jorge Ramos, “I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall. He should pay for it.”

As it happens, Hispanic voters overwhelmingly dislike Trump, with current surveys showing that a whopping 70 percent hold a “very unfavorable” opinion of the likely Republican nominee. More generally, Trump leads all the current presidential candidates with a historic unfavorability rating of 57 percent and an overall score of -33, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll. By comparison, John McCain’s score back in 2008 was +7.

The point is that years before Trump’s meteoric rise in the political arena, the U.S. was already ranked the number one threat to world peace. But come January 2017, our standing in the world could take a far more serious hit. As CNN recently learned in a series of interviews with people from numerous countries, “There’s a lot of fear” swirling around the idea of a Trump presidency. A Hong Kong woman, for example, told CNN, “I’m actually very, very worried” about Trump, and a student in Cairo said that the “melting pot we know America as is going to change a lot.” Similarly, a woman in Berlin declared that “Americans could go back in time with this president,” and an Iranian in Tehran opined that Trump “is not a good man. … There are some that are creating problems all over the world. And it doesn’t matter if it’s ISIS, Islamists — they are radicals. And [Trump] is a radical just like them.” Furthermore, a woman from Johannesburg, South Africa, simply exclaimed “Hell no!” when asked if Trump should become president.

As Trump told his supporters at a Las Vegas rally held earlier this year, “We’re not going to be the dummies anymore, folks. We’re going to be the smart ones.” The problem is that, to paraphrase the Monty Python comedian John Cleese, recognizing one’s own stupidity requires a certain degree of intelligence. Thus, I suspect that Trump and his followers will never know just how much his unprofessional, incendiary, uninformed approach to politics will compromise our wounded reputation and even-more-wounded moral authority in the world today.


Phil Torres :(The founder of the X-Risks Institute and author of The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse).

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I Am The Captain Of My Soul .. !
--- Nelson Mandela ..