Naji Jerf, Syrian Journalist And Anti-ISIS Activist, Killed In Turkey

Members of Free Syrian Army clash against Syrian regime forces in Aleppo, Syria on Dec. 8, 2014.

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Smoke rises after military airstrikes hit the town of Talbiseh in the Homs province, Syria, on Sept. 30, 2015.

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A Syrian girl who took shelter in Turkey sleeps on the ground before she crosses into Kobani through Mursitpinar border crossing in the Suruc district of Sanliurfa, Turkey on March 6, 2015.

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A man prepares to attack Syrian regime forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 8, 2015.

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A member of the Syrian opposition prepares to attack Syrian regime forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 8, 2015.

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A car passes an area that was destroyed in a clash between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and the Islamic State in Kobani, Syria, on April 18, 2015.

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Smoke rises from the Dareyya district after a Syrian Air Force barrel bomb attack in Damascus, Syria, on March 6, 2015.

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People inspect the debris caused by an airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria, on Sept. 30, 2015.

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Smoke rises after airstrikes in Kafr Nabel, a town in the western Syrian province of Idlib, on Oct. 1, 2015.

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Syrian oppositions attack Syrian regime forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 8, 2015.

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Damaged buildings are seen following clashes between regime forces and the Damascus Front in Damascus, Syria on March 6, 2015.

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A Syrian man prays over the grave of his son, who was killed during shelling, at a cemetery in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma, on March 5, 2015.

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A member of Syrian opposition group linked to Damascus Front launches a rocket toward Assad's forces in Aleppo, Syria, on March 7, 2015.

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A rocket is fired toward Assad's forces in Aleppo, Syria, on March 7, 2015.

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A Syrian boy who took shelter in Turkey with his family crosses into Kobani through Mursitpinar border crossing in the Suruc district of Sanliurfa, Turkey on March 6, 2015.

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Syrian fire fighters put out a blaze at the scene of a reported barrel bomb strike by Syrian government forces on the Qadi Askar rebel-held district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, March 5, 2015.

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Syrians inspect the debris of houses in Dareyya district after a Syrian Air Force barrel bomb attack in Damascus, Syria, on March 3, 2015.

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A rebel fighter holds his rifle inside a damaged building during clashes between regime forces and the Damascus Front in Damascus, Syria on March 6, 2015.

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Syrian opponents stage a missile attack against the Hemeimeem military airport, which was being used by the Russian military at the time, in Latakia, Syria, on Sept. 28, 2015.

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A vehicle arrives to the scene of an airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria, on Sept. 30, 2015.

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Syrians search for survivors in the rubble of destroyed buildings following barrel bomb attacks by the Syrian air forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 8, 2015.

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A man sits by a damaged building after Syrian regime army helicopters dropped barrel bombs in opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo, Syria, on July 16, 2014.

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A man carries a child following barrel bomb attacks by Syrian air forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Dec. 23, 2013.

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A member of Syria's opposition group launches a rocket toward Assad's forces in Aleppo, Syria, on March 7, 2015.

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A member of Syria's opposition group fires toward Assad's forces in Aleppo, Syria, on March 2, 2015.

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Supermarkets Are The 'Final Frontier' Of The Cage-Free Egg Movement

The movement by major food companies to end the use of eggs laid by caged hens hit critical mass this year. 

It began when McDonald's, which uses 2 billion eggs each year in the U.S. alone, pledged in September to eliminate eggs laid by hens held in cramped wire cages from its supply chain by 2025.

Others quickly followed suit. In the last two weeks alone, Nestlé and Subway -- the world's largest food producer and fast food chain, respectively -- announced hard deadlines by which they will convert their supplies.

But changing the habits of corporate food giants isn't the holy grail for animal welfare activists. The real target hits much closer to home. 

"It's when we are going to start seeing change at the supermarkets," David Coman-Hidy, executive director at the animal welfare nonprofit Human League, told The Huffington Post by phone on Sunday. "The final frontier is for retailers to catch up to consumer sentiment."

Hens that lay eggs in cramped battery cages live in squalor, unable to spread their wings or even walk around. Such factory farm techniques have been banned in the European Union since 2012, but are used to produce the vast majority of eggs sold in the United States. Of the nearly 7.5 billion eggs laid in the U.S. in September, just 4.5 percent were from cage-free hens, according to data from the industry group United Egg Producers.

The push, then, for corporate food behemoths to adopt cage-free eggs has been largely symbolic.  

“These commitments from players like McDonald’s or Nestlé are really more about signaling to the egg industry that it’s time to retrofit all the barns and switch over production to cage-free eggs,” David Coman-Hidy, executive director at the animal welfare nonprofit Human League, told The Huffington Post by phone on Sunday. “That time has come.”

Coman-Hidy said the next step for the cage-free movement will be lobbying supermarket chains to eliminate all but cage-free eggs from their shelves.

“People are against cages and overwhelmingly vote to ban them when given a choice,” Coman-Hidy said. “It’s time for supermarkets to reflect that.”

But that change, as with any other in the egg industry, will take time.

“We’re hoping to see change in the coming year or two,” Coman-Hidy said. “In a big way.”

The egg industry isn't taking the push for cage-free eggs lightly.

The movement came after a national egg shortage last summer that resulted from the country's worst avian flu outbreak in history. By July, more than 48 million birds died in a dozen states. 

In an open letter to newspaper editors published last week, the National Association of Egg Farmers, an industry group, called the idea that cage-free farms provide better lives to hens "the greatest fraud of 2015."

"This is simply untrue and any person who watches chickens roaming about on the ground will see the reasons why," the organization wrote in the letter, sent to editors of major metropolitan newspapers in the United Kingdom and United States. "Food companies are reacting to the pressure from the misinformation from animal activists that more space means better conditions."

To be sure, ridding grocers of eggs from caged hens will be more difficult than removing the eggs from certain food chains. Whereas food providers buy a specific type of egg in bulk as ingredients on their menus, supermarkets can offer choice. 

"They have cage-free, conventional, omega-enriched," Charlie Arnot, chief executive of the industry-funded group Center for Food Integrity, told HuffPost by phone on Monday. "The marketplace will dictate how much of the case is actually consumed by cage-free farms."

More on HuffPost:

Why Russia Can Only Go Backward

MOSCOW -- The Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey this month asking Russians two questions: "What was the main event of the year in Russia?" and "What was the main global event of the year?"

Noteworthy is that fully 40 percent of the respondents had trouble answering either question. And the most brutal political murder in modern Russia -- the assassination of my father -- did not even figure in the responses. State-controlled television hardly mentions it, with the exception of the first few days after the killing, when commentators spoke of him in contemptuous tones.

But the problem is not only the silence of the Kremlin's official propaganda. The problem is the condition of Russian society. A Levada Center survey conducted in March of this year found that one-third of all Russians are indifferent to my father's murder. That is a moral numbness best conveyed by the popular Russian sentiments of "It does not concern me" and "That does not affect me." The well-known military journalist Arkady Babchenko refers to that type of thinking by his countrymen as "infantilism." Perhaps he is right.

This attitude finds expression not only in widespread apathy, but also in people's inability to recognize even obvious causal relationships. It is understandable why some people cannot see the medium-term and long-term negative consequences of the annexation of Crimea, but it was not so difficult to predict that consumer prices would rise as a result of Moscow's food embargo and the hefty tolls imposed on trucks traveling on federal highways.

People have short memories, and that makes life easier for Putin and his inner circle -- who are constantly confusing their facts.

The political system that President Vladimir Putin has built robs the Russian people of the ability to think, analyze, ask questions, formulate positions or remember the past. It offers no stimulus for that: Putin's Russia has no need of people who think for themselves. It has reduced competition to a minimum in all areas, including the political field. And it is not always the smartest that succeed in this system.

It is a sad and potentially dangerous situation when the political playing field lies decimated and debates and discussions have been replaced with sometimes violent pressure from the authorities. That has also compromised the quality of the opposition itself and made it a truly heroic feat to even take part in the opposition movement in Russia. There are no democratic institutions and the activists are fighting for survival. Under such conditions, opposition figures have no chance to become public figures and the public has no way of knowing who is who.

People have short memories, and that makes life easier for Putin and his inner circle -- who are constantly confusing their facts. First they claim there are no Russian soldiers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and then they admit to their presence. First they promise not to raise taxes and fees, and then they impose new tariffs on long-haul truckers. Forgetfulness is a handy human tendency, and the Kremlin's television propaganda exploits it to the fullest.

This explains why leaders have no personal reputations and remain unaccountable before the public. Perhaps the social apathy and the public's lack of interest in politics is a defense mechanism, people's way of responding to the flood of lies and aggression from the authorities. Nobody can figure out where the truth lies, and so it is best not to even go looking for it.

The authorities and the ruling elite are out for their own survival.

All politics in Russia are situational and as volatile as oil prices. Even loyal politicians and officials do not always manage to fall into line exactly as they should. For example, it is amusing to see how famed film director and die-hard Putin fan Nikita Mikhalkov gets outraged over the way his own patriotic show on state-controlled television is subjected to censorship.

The authorities and the ruling elite are out for their own survival. That end justifies all means, including the tactic of keeping military tensions high at all times. As a result, Russia is increasingly moving away from humanistic values and toward a confrontational relationship with the world. But perhaps that is not putting it strongly enough: maybe Russia is moving toward total apathy. However, war is becoming the context for all other issues in life.

Russian journalists often ask me why I fight for a fair and impartial investigation into my father's murder. For me, the very wording of that question is sickening because it shows that medieval values now reign supreme in Russia: nobody understands that it is not just I who needs such an investigation, but all Russians if this country is to ever move forward.

We must wage a long and grueling fight for human rights. If we simply give up that struggle and accept the fact that, in Russia, someone can just go and kill a prominent public figure, a statesman and leader of the opposition with absolute impunity, then we must also come to terms with the fact that the same thing could one day happen to any of us.

If we simply accept the fact that, in Russia, someone can just go and kill a prominent public figure, then we must also come to terms with the fact that the same thing could one day happen to any of us.

Today's opposition members are now at greater risk than ever before. I see the condescending attitude shown toward the small handful of people who continue to struggle for democracy in Russia. I have grown accustomed to the eternal question: "What do they offer?" But just imagine if one day even that small group would no longer exist. Who, then, would conduct anti-corruption investigations, participate in even nominal elections, initiate investigations into wrongdoings by Duma deputies or provide support for political prisoners? No one, that's who.

My father long experienced that condescending attitude from others who behaved as if they were looking down on him from up high. And now he has been murdered -- for his views, for daring to express his position, for his unwillingness to be indifferent or apathetic. And suddenly, his absence is sorely felt.

Putin's Russia has not brought a revival of spiritual values, as state-controlled TV tries to convince us. It has caused Russia's moral decay. And as long as Russians approach every problem through the filter of whether it will affect them personally, this country can move in only one direction -- backward.

Earlier on WorldPost:

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• Russian police investigate the the body of Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and opposition leader at Red Square with St. Basil Cathedral in the background in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015.(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

• Russian police investigate the the body of Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and opposition leader at Red Square with St. Basil Cathedral in the background in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

• Police and medics surround the body of Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition figure and former deputy prime minister, who was shot and killed near the Kremlin, Moscow in the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015.

• In this file photo taken on Saturday, March 15, 2014, Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and opposition leader addresses demonstrators during a massive rally to oppose president Vladimir Putin's policies in Ukraine, in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

• Police guards the place of murders of Boris Nemtsov on Moskvoretsky bridge in Moscow, Russia on February 28, 2015. (Dmitry Kuchev/Kommersant Photo via Getty Images).

• The body of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, covered by plastic, lies on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge near St. Basil cathedral (background) in central Moscow on February 28, 2015. (DMITRY SEREBRYAKOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Perishing Of Thirst In A Pacific Paradise

MAJURO, Marshall Islands -- A few yards from the crashing waves of the Pacific, on a precariously narrow strip of land, precious rainwater pools on the runway of the Marshall Islands' main airport. This is how the government hydrates tens of thousands of its citizens: the rainwater runoff from the airstrip. The water -- complete with bird droppings and whatever else has landed on the tarmac -- is funneled via pipes to earthen storage reservoirs. From there, it gets filtered and treated and pumped to people down the atoll.

During a normal week the water only flows for 12 hours. In prolonged droughts, which are almost certain to happen in 2016, the reservoirs can get depleted to the last drop. The country can hold on for only a few months without rain. Thirsty Marshallese, many of whom rely on their own much smaller rainwater catchment containers, won’t have anything to drink or wash with. Dehydration, starvation, malnutrition and disease have been known to follow. Crops fail. Sensitive groundwater reservoirs become contaminated.

This is a bleak outlook for a vulnerable country in the remote Pacific, halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The Marshall Islands are a heavenly chain of white sandy beaches and coral reefs, but they are paradoxically one of the most inhospitable and challenging places to build a nation. Climate change will have numerous, complicated effects here. Access to freshwater, already in limited supply on the archipelago, is likely to become the most serious issue.

"It can become very complex very quickly," Bill Shuster, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told The WorldPost. "Nothing really prepared me for how closely connected everything is, how tightly coupled public health is to rainfall."

Peter Mellgard/The WorldPost

The water hours on Majuro Atoll are displayed outside the Majuro Water and Sewer Company office.

As the world enters the age of climate change, the tiny islands and atolls that make up the Marshall Islands are on the front lines. Here on the capital island, the Majuro Water and Sewer Company is already preparing for droughts that are predicted to be more intense and longer-lasting than what the country has seen before. Distant outer atolls are even more at risk than Majuro, the largest and most developed island. Some of the outer landmasses are so tiny and remote that only a few people live there. Many rely entirely on rain or imported bottled water.

“Before I came here, I’d never seen anything like this,” said Allen Gale, an Australian adviser to MWSC, which is the sole official gatekeeper of the water supply on the capital atoll. “It’s a tough life.”

The seven reservoirs near the airport hold about 34 million gallons total, according to Gale. MWSC gets about 140 million gallons of water off the runway each year. To give a sense of how little water that is, New York City withdraws nearly 9 billion gallons of water from its environs each day. That's about 1,100 gallons per person per day, compared to Majuro's 14 gallons.

Only about one-quarter of the people on Majuro are connected to the municipal water supply from the airport, however. The vast majority of people rely on rain, collecting it off the roofs of their homes. The rainwater trickles down gutters and into drums that hold 1,500 gallons at most. For most people on the island, this is their sole source for everything freshwater is used for -- drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning. Each household has, on average, six to eight people to hydrate. During a drought, the drums can hold out for a month, maximum, at which point only the municipal supply remains viable.

This precarious situation is why Alington Robert, a longtime manager at MWSC, gets on the radio every Thursday evening and encourages his countrymen to connect their households to the more reliable and resilient municipal supply. Some years, like this one, he warns them to do what they can to prepare for drought.

Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

Majuro beach, Marshall Islands.

Water scarcity is a perpetual worry in the Marshalls. The northern atolls get less than 50 inches of rain every year, according to a 2013 Australian government report. Atolls to the south get about double that. Bad droughts seem to be happening more often these days, a combined result of climate change and normal atmospheric oscillations. According to the latest climate change forecasts for this part of the Pacific, the Marshall Islands on average will get more rain in the coming decades, not less -- but they'll also get hotter temperatures, rising seas and longer and more intense droughts.

Only Majuro has a catchment system as sophisticated as the airport runway. Many other islands -- and actually, much of Majuro as well -- rely on underground water reservoirs that geologists call lenses. Shaped like the front of an eyeball, freshwater lenses are fed by rainwater and lie just below the surface of some atoll islands -- but only the bigger ones, as Curt Storlazzi of the U.S. Geological Survey explained.

“The islands have to be wider than a few hundred meters to sustain a freshwater lens,” Storlazzi told The WorldPost. “Otherwise there’s just not enough surface area of the island to catch enough rain for freshwater to accumulate.”

Freshwater lenses are extremely sensitive and constantly shifting. They are often depleted during the dry season, getting so brackish that they can become undrinkable. When rain finally comes, it replenishes the lens, filtering down through the sandy soil and into the porous coral rock that forms the base of the atoll. The thickness of the lens depends on the size of the island, the amount of rainfall and the height of the ocean. As you go deeper, the water gets more and more saline. Eventually, it becomes pure seawater.

“If you were to put a well down, you’d get freshwater,” Storlazzi said. “But it’s a limited resource. That resource is tied to rainfall. If rainfall were to decrease in the future, that freshwater lens would not be replenished as frequently and [would] become thinner.”

Climate change poses a unique risk to islands that rely on freshwater lenses. In other vulnerable parts of the world -- Miami, for instance -- rising sea levels can lead to dangerous and damaging floods. But on an atoll island, rising sea levels threaten the survival of everything that lives there -- people, animals and crops. Humans can't really live in a place where the access to freshwater is unreliable.

As ocean levels rise, overwash events -- where seawater flows over the surface of an island and seeps into its freshwater lens -- will become more common. Storms are another cause of flooding, and as the height of the ocean increases, smaller and smaller storms can cause the same amount of flooding that the bigger, rarer storms do now. It can take months, even years, before the freshwater is suitable for drinking again. Even Majuro's airport runway is vulnerable. 

"If we get overtopping, where saltwater gets into our catchment, we have to dump [the freshwater] out into the lagoon," Gale said. "As climate change comes in, it’s going to increase that danger." 

Majuro Water and Sewer Company

Workers deliver a solar-powered desalination machine to one of the outer islands.

Securing a reliable water supply in a more extreme climate is going to be a huge challenge for residents of the outer islands in the Marshalls -- one that perhaps will prove insurmountable in the coming years. Out there, during drought, if the freshwater lens gets too saline to drink, it can take days for help to arrive. 

One island on Maloelap Atoll, about 115 miles north of Majuro, appeared to be particularly vulnerable when Halston deBrum, MWSC's operations manager, went to check on its freshwater situation not long ago. 

“There is almost no land at all," he said -- so, very little groundwater. "It was just hand-dug wells. These kinds of communities are very, very reliant on rainwater. If they go two or three weeks without rainwater, they have to search within the atoll for other sources of water."

"[They] can’t drive," deBrum added. "They go on a boat -- from their island to another and another.”

When things get really bad, MWSC, alongside the Marshallese government and international aid agencies, rushes solar-powered portable desalination machines to the outer islands, some of which are over a day's journey by boat from Majuro. MWSC has 15 such machines, each of which produce about 360 gallons of water per day. There are far fewer machines than there are remote outer islands.

"It makes me nervous, yes," said Joseph Batol, the head of MWSC. "Climate change here is real." 

Brazil's Unpromising New Year

A president fighting impeachment names a finance minister not trusted by markets as Brazilians, dismayed by the country's politics, prepare for more hardship in 2016.

The debilitating political and economic crisis that engulfed Brazil in 2015 is bound to continue, regardless of the outcome of the opposition effort to impeach a discredited President Dilma Rousseff. The impeachment process started in early December is expected to drag on for months. Procedural wins by the president at the Supreme Court before Christmas dissipated a sense of inevitability of her removal from office, but did not improve her chances of regaining credibility to govern in the three years remaining in her second term. The political battle that paralyzed the congressional agenda in 2015 will deepen, undermining efforts to address the growing fiscal and structural problems that turned Brazil from a once promising emerging economy into an economic disaster in the first year of Rousseff's second term.

The negative outlook was reinforced as the year ended by the departure of Finance minister Joaquim Levy, a fiscal conservative Rousseff named after her narrow reelection in October 2014 to rebalance the nation's fiscal accounts and restore investors' confidence. "It looks like the government is afraid of the reforms," a frustrated Levy said in an exit interview.

His replacement, Nelson Barbosa, an economist trusted by the president, favors a more gradual adjustment. As Planning minister, he was the chief antagonist of Levy's austerity plan, reflecting Rousseff's own misgivings about fiscal tightening as a remedy for economic recession. "The president is the one who sets economic policy, and if she thinks it is time to modulate the adjustment, it's her decision", said her chief of staff, minister Jacques Wagner, before Barbosa's nomination, leaving no doubt about who is in charge. A few days later, Wagner described the Supreme Court decisions as a "pacifying" event that will derail the impeachment in Congress and help create a positive environment for a national debate on taxes, social security and labor laws that Brazil badly needs. This assumes Rousseff has undergone a political epiphany at Christmas time and will now advance reforms that she failed to propose in her first five years in power and her Workers Party and allies to the left vehemently oppose.

Brazil's "Russian roulette politics"

As Rousseff's deputy finance minister from 2011 to 2013, Barbosa was credited as the architect of a failed program of economic stimulus known as "New Economic Matrix" that paved the way to the ongoing disaster. "We are focused on the fiscal adjustment and reduction of inflation," Barbosa said in his inaugural speech as minister, vowing to work also on long term structural reforms. Critics and sympathizers alike expect the new minister to follow a pragmatic approach, since - they say - there is no room in the 2016 budget for increasing federal expenditures or repeating budget accounting gimmicks known as "pedaladas fiscais," that Barbosa helped to engineer in his two previous posts and are now at the core of the opposition argument to impeach the president. The new minister is himself vulnerable to a negative decision on the matter by the country's auditing tribunal that could force him to step down. Former Finance minister Antonio Delfim Neto said the change of the country's economic policy chief "is irrelevant in this [Brazil's] Russian roulette politics," which, he added, is driving the country "into a hole."

Predictably, markets reacted coldly to Barbosa and his promise to control the fiscal deficit. The currency fell sharply, reinforcing the negative outlook made evident in the previous week by the downgrading of Brazil sovereign debt by Fitch, the second rating agency to lower the country's papers to junk status after S&P last September. Moody's is expected to follow suit soon and add to economists' forecast of a new year of adversities for Brazilians, with growing unemployment on top of 1.4 million jobs lost in 2015. Union leaders fear the worst is still to come. Brazil's own Central Bank says GDP fell 3.6 percent in 1915 and will contract an additional 1.9 percent in 1916. Continuing gridlock in a politically fragmented Congress, and ongoing criminal investigations of Petrobras-related corruption involving some fifty of its members will likely prevent passage of meaningful expenditures cuts or taxes hikes, let alone more ambitious reforms.

Impeachment favored by 60 percent

Public rallies for and against Rousseff's impeachment held in mid-December were small in comparison to mass demonstrations held in the past three years and did not tell much about voters attitudes, other than revealing their current disengagement from a political process perceived as rotten to the core.

It would be a reach, however, to interpret the prevailing popular apathy as hopeful news for the president. Or to assume that a failure of the impeachment - supported by 60 percent of Brazilians in opinion polls - will strengthen the president politically and allow her to deal effectively with the consequences of the crisis she helped create.

A homemade political tragedy

The outlook is bleak also for other leading political actors. Popular perceptions of Vice President Michel Temer, who started positioning himself in October to replace Rousseff, are mostly negative. According to an Ibope poll, Brazilians would expect more of the same, if not worse, from a Temer-led government. The vice-president's PMDB, the largest party in the coalition that nominally supports Rousseff, is hopelessly divided in an internal war, with factions led by himself, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, and the president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros. Cunha and Calheiros are discredited politicians under federal criminal investigation on numerous corruption charges in the Petrobras scandal.

Investigations on the assault on Petrobras and other government entities are expected to continue. They involve, among others, imprisoned PT Workers' Party senator Delcídio do Amaral, who was the leader of Rousseff's government in the upper chamber of Congress until his arrest on November 25, along with investment banker André Esteves, on obstruction of justice charges. Esteves was put on house arrest after Amaral told authorities he had fabricated allegations, caught on tape, that the banker had taken part with him in a conspiracy to block a criminal investigation against a key defendant of the Petrobras scandal.

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rousseff's mentor, is also seen as vulnerable. The arrest in November of a close friend, José Carlos Bumlain, confirmed yet another ramification of the multilayered "Petrolão" scandal, as it is popularly known. Leaders of the PSDB, the largest opposition party, predict that public pressure to impeach Rousseff will gain momentum in the first quarter of 2016. But they are also divided on strategy, have not offered a credible alternative to the PT-PMDB unraveling alliance, and do not seem to be interested in inheriting Rousseff's messy legacy.

Impeaching the president would take a two thirds majority vote of the 513 lower house members - a tall order. The opposition counts on a deteriorating economy and mounting public pressure to convince the congressmen to impeach Rousseff by March. The Senate would then decide by a simple majority whether to accept the case. If it does, Rousseff would step down and wait for the senators final decision, by a two thirds vote, to remove her from office. A hidden danger in this political war is that it may prolong the crisis beyond what local investors are willing to wait and could convince many to leave the country, sparking the type of old-fashioned balance of payment crisis many thought had been left to Brazil's history books. A senior economist at a major Brazilian bank summarized the situation at a recent private talk with investors. "Brazil faces a number of improbable scenarios in 2016, and one of them will materialize."

Why Latin America Needs PEN

MEXICO CITY -- Early in November some 4,600 people flocked to a 12-hour long Day of the Dead Festival at East London's Tobacco Dock. The festival was the brainchild of Crispin Somerville, an Englishman enamored of Mexico who spent a decade in the restaurant and public relations business in Mexico City.

The Mexican way of death is unique, issuing from a symbiosis of indigenous beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals. To celebrate the return of the souls of the dead every November, Mexicans set up altars laden with the departed's favorite food and drink and sugar skulls emblazoned with that person's name, while images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints flank a photo of the deceased. Marigolds festoon the altars and the graves where relatives gather to share a meal and news of the past year with the visiting spirits.

The somber side of the festivities in London this year featured altars to Mexico's murdered journalists and debates hosted by English PEN with the likes of historian Simon Schama, courageous Mexican journalists Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, Alfredo Corchado and Ioan Grillo, actor Diego Luna and myself about threats to freedom of expression and the dangers of reporting from Mexico. On this year's Day of the Dead, I hoped that Mexico would not continue to be a sacrificial altar for journalists and that every day would not become a day of the dead.

When it comes to violence, our country is one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists, photographers, cartoonists and bloggers.

When it comes to violence, our country is one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists, photographers, cartoonists and bloggers who write about or witness bloody acts, political corruption, police injustice or are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. These crimes are rarely investigated, and we seldom hear about the outcome of an inquiry or the arrest of the actual perpetrator of a crime against a man or woman who risked their life, and the safety of their family, to report the news without fear of reprisal, often for a meager fee, out of a professional responsibility to inform society and the world of the violence which is lashing the country.

Journalists are not only pursued by organized crime in all its forms, but also by local, state and federal governments, police forces, the military, and even by people whose job it is to impart justice. Not only must the federal government guarantee the safety of journalists, it must also resolve pending cases and punish the criminals, even if they work in government. Otherwise, as time passes most of the cases become enveloped in a tangle of conflicting lines of investigation where the real one is lost or the victim is morphed into the guilty party. A journalist friend recently told me about how when dealing with a notorious political crime, officials often present a new line of inquiry every once in a while which leads the investigation further away from reality, until it reaches a point where nobody knows anything for sure, a kind of legal shell game with the truth.

That English PEN should co-sponsor this event is a reflection of the ever-increasing attention paid to Latin America within PEN International over the past two decades.

At the 1996 PEN Congress, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, Panamanian novelist Gloria Guardia and Colombian writer Cecilia Balcazar proposed that Spanish join English and French as one of PEN's official languages. At the following year's Congress in Edinburgh I was elected international president. At the 1998 Congress in Helsinki, Spanish was accepted as PEN's third official language and Guardia founded the PEN Ibero-American Foundation, a pioneering regional and linguistic network of centers which would provide translation to ensure access to all PEN documents and proceedings for Spanish-speaking members and to act as a working group on freedom of speech issues. Many of Latin America's 18 PEN centers did not exist before 1998.

During my presidency of PEN International (1997-2003), I championed freedom of expression and was a resolute defender of writers whose human rights were violated by withholding of information, censorship, repression, slander and defamation, libel suits and legal action, harassment, death threats, physical intimidation, imprisonment and death. I had personal experience of this. In 1997 and 1998, after speaking at a Committee to Protect Journalists meeting in Mexico City about threats to journalists in Latin America, death threats were repeatedly left on my answering machine that were judged serious enough for Mexico's equivalent of the FBI to give me and my family bodyguards for a year.

A Mexican journalist takes part in a demonstration against violence towards journalists in Mexico, on August 7, 2010 in Mexico City. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images.

There have been tremendous advances since my time.

Under International President John Ralston Saul (2009-2015), PEN stepped up its activities in response to ongoing harassment of writers in the Americas. We are now hailing suspension of the work ban imposed in 2014 by the government of Honduras on Globo TV journalist Julio Ernesto Alvarado in reprisal for his coverage of alleged corruption by a university official. He was charged with criminal defamation, a common ploy to smother freedom of expression. PEN Honduras (launched in October 2014) and PEN International had brought his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in a landmark ruling on November 5, 2014 ordered Honduras to suspend the ban. A PEN report released in 2014 revealed that "journalists who cover organized crime, government corruption and other sensitive issues are increasingly facing threats and lethal attacks in Honduras, with almost complete impunity for perpetrators." Honduras also happens to have one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Former General José Francisco Gallardo, condemned in 1993 to 28 years of prison on trumped up charges after publishing a critical article about Mexico's armed forces and the need for a military ombudsman, was declared a prisoner of conscience by PEN International.

After defending Gallardo for nine years and three months after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took his case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in 2002 PEN celebrated his release nine days before the Mexican government was to appear before the court. He was the hero of the 2003 Congress held in Mexico City, my last as international president. In his address to the Congress he said that "Without the work of the Writers in Prison Committee, it would have been so difficult for the Mexican government to open up the gates for my release ... I would like to thank God and PEN International. I owe them my freedom."

Now Gallardo is running for governor of the state of Colima on behalf of Morena, the National Regeneration Movement, in the upcoming election on January 17, 2016.

Winds of charge are sweeping Latin America.

Winds of charge are sweeping Latin America, and PEN will continue its vigilant defense of our professionals of the word, with newly elected International President Jennifer Clement, a long-time resident of Mexico City, at the helm, buttressed by Guardia's crucial Ibero-American Foundation. In Central America's Northern Triangle -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- racked by drug trafficking, gang violence and official corruption, violence against journalists is of great concern, and impunity rates are high. In the wake of the presidential election, PEN Argentina has protested blocking of the web edition of Página/12, warning of attacks on freedom of expression.

Despite the resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, there have been no signs of any change in government policy regarding freedom of speech. There was not a single journalist or blogger among the 3,522 prisoners pardoned on the occasion of Pope Francis's September visit to the island. Dozens of journalists covering the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) demonstrations have been briefly arrested in past months. No PEN center has existed in Cuba since 1959; the Cuban Writers in Exile Center was founded in 1997 by Angel Cuadra, exiled in Miami after 15 years' imprisonment in Cuba.

Foreign television crews arriving in Caracas to cover the Dec. 6 parliamentary elections in Venezuela were detained and harassed in the airport. The government controls distribution of newsprint, there is an official censorship organ, independent newspapers and TV channels have been virtually expropriated, journalists and twitterists jailed. Is there a future for freedom of expression in Venezuela, now that the ruling party has lost control of the National Assembly?

Courageous media and bloggers are forced to practice self-censorship in self-defense against the drug cartels.

Mexico is ranked #148 on the Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index. Fifty-five journalists have been murdered in Mexico during the last five years, about one-third of the some 150 who lost their lives in that time throughout the Americas, making Mexico the most dangerous place on the continent for professionals of the word.

Courageous media and bloggers are forced to practice self-censorship in self-defense against the drug cartels, while ubiquitous government advertising in print and electronic media is a much more subtle form of coercion. Investigation and prosecution of crimes against journalists is rare, and impunity prevails.

Last August, a few weeks after the brutal murder of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa in an apartment in Mexico City, more than 500 writers addressed an open letter to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The letter stated that "Today, journalists in many parts of the world are under attack, and Mexican reporters in particular are in deadly peril. Organized crime, corrupt government officials, and a justice system incapable of prosecuting criminals all contribute to reporters' extreme vulnerability."

There's a lot of work for PEN to do in Latin America. I look forward to a time when we can celebrate the Day of the Dead festival without reference to writers and journalists.

Earlier on WorldPost:

Everyone Deserves Internet Access, Mark Zuckerberg Says

Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring Internet access to everyone.

In a column published Monday in the Times of India, the Facebook CEO once again made his case for "free basic internet services." The column arrived just days before the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is slated to rule on net neutrality -- a decision that could have a major impact on Facebook's ability to provide services to people in India. 

"In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people’s wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely," Zuckerberg wrote.

He compared basic access to the Internet to basic healthcare, basic education and basic library books. We repeat the word "basic" because the Facebook CEO did, underscoring that the Internet he envisions bringing to everyone is not the same thing you're likely reading this article on right now.

Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Instead, Zuckerberg's talking about Facebook's Free Basics platform. Free Basics, which operates under the Internet.org umbrella, provides limited services -- things like weather, health information, messaging and, yes, Facebook -- to people who otherwise might not be able to access the Internet at all. Facebook works with traditional service providers where possible, but is also developing new technology -- drones and lasers, for example -- to bring the Internet to remote areas. Internet.org's entire mission is to provide Internet access to regions of the world that don't have it.

It's easy to see how this could be a great thing: Access to online information can help people live better lives. But there may be a dark side. While Zuckerberg has insisted time and time again that his motives are pure, critics allege that the social media giant is creating a "ghetto for poor users" on the basis that Facebook provides limited services that it has complete control over. 

Some call it a walled garden. If you're in a remote part of the world and you want to get online, it's Facebook's drone beams or nothing. Fortune's Mathew Ingram put it succinctly earlier this year: Perhaps Facebook is harnessing its power to "become the Internet" in certain regions.

"This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests." Mark Zuckerberg

Essentially, critics claim that Free Basics and Internet.org violate the principles of net neutrality, which dictates that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

Zuckerberg has argued against that point for months. 

"This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests -- there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics. If people lose access to free basic services they will simply lose access to the opportunities offered by the Internet today," Zuckerberg wrote in Monday's column.

Still, good intentions aside, there's no denying that India is a potentially lucrative market for an organization that manages to provide Internet access. While it's the second most populous country in the world, only 375 million of its 1.25 billion people use the Internet. That's about 30 percent compared to 84 percent in the United States.

Inside The Islamist War On Secular Bloggers

On the afternoon of February 26th, Avijit Roy was in Dhaka, finishing a column for BDNews24, a Bangladeshi Web site of news and commentary. Its title, in Bengali, was “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?,” and it adapted ideas from his new book, a primer on cosmology. For Roy, who was forty-two, science trumped religion.

Your Video Binging Is Killing The Planet, But There May Be A Solution

We know we shouldn’t throw plastic six-pack rings in the ocean, that we shouldn’t take long luxurious showers during droughts, and that we shouldn’t burn toxic waste in our backyards. But when it comes to protecting the planet, we don’t usually think about cutting back on our streaming addiction. Yet it’s true; our binge-watching has a serious environmental footprint.

It’s estimated that the U.S.’s data centers -- the computer farms where web companies like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Facebook, Spotify and Vimeo store their content -- consume as much power as the entire state of New York. Recent reports suggest their carbon emissions are on the rise, growing by more than 10 percent a year. Much of that is driven by video streaming, with Netflix estimated to take up nearly 37 percent of the Internet bandwidth in the U.S. during peak hours.

Our appetite for video is unlikely to wane any time soon. That’s why researchers from the University of California-Berkeley, MIT and the University of Colorado are so excited about a new computer chip they’ve developed that promises to increase efficiency and decrease the carbon footprint of cloud computing. In a recently published paper in the science journal Nature, the researchers describe an electronic-photonic chip, the first computer chip that uses light, instead of electricity, as the highway for information. It’s theoretically a win-win: it would lessen the ecological toll of our computers, plus nothing travels faster than light.

This “is a real tour-de-force,” said Rajesh Menon, a photonics expert at the University of Utah who wasn’t involved in the study.

It’s up to 50 times faster than today’s commercially available chips, according to the researchers. The chip, which can run simple programs, won the $200,000 MIT Clean Energy Prize earlier this year.

To understand why this is so momentous -- and why it might herald the era of green(er) computing -- you have to understand a bit about machine anatomy.

* * *

In a computer, you have memory, where data is stored, and then a processor that crunches that data. If you want to watch a video, for example, that huge file needs to travel from memory to the processor. Engineers have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make that trip speedier. One trick is to put the memory and processing units as close together as possible -- but this has obvious physical limitations. Another, more ambitious, alternative is to revamp the connections between the two. That’s what the authors of the Nature paper did.

Right now, those roadways consist of copper wires that transmit electrons. Electricity is just the fast flow of electrons -- and it’s that flow that carries your data. But copper is like Amtrak, slow and inefficient, with lots of friction. So a lot of resources are spent propelling those electrons forward, hence all the power consumption.

In contrast, the “route” in this new chip is like a minuscule Hyperloop, the high-speed, energy-efficient concept train dreamed up by Elon Musk. Tiny fiberoptic cables transmit photons, or particles of light, which create much less friction, reducing the power needs of the system. And because photons travel considerably faster than electrons, data transfer happens almost instantaneously. In fact, light travels so fast that it doesn’t much matter if the memory and processor are kilometers away. Researchers can also use different wavelengths of light simultaneously to transfer data.

Here’s the hard thing though -- and where physics comes in. You can’t use copper wires to transmit photons. Copper is good at shuttling small particles, like electrons, but not relatively humongous photons. Think of a freight truck trying to fit underneath a small tunnel. So you have to build from scratch.

The relays between the memory and processor must be optical to harness the power of the speed of light. Yet, the memory and processor have to be electrical because scientists haven’t figured out how to make optical versions. (Whether that’s even possible is hotly debated topic, experts told me.) Making a hybrid system is difficult because the electrical and optical components are built using different, often incompatible, methods, but the researchers figured out a way around this. They built their new computer chip in facilities used to mass-produce the ones inside our laptops and mobile devices without altering the manufacturing process at all.

“This wasn’t possible before,” Laurent Vivien, a silicon photonics researchers at the Insitut d’Electronique Fondamentale in Paris, told me. “Now they can make what they want … with no extra [investment in] development. It’s something that can have a huge impact.”

And the prototype chips work, meaning that they run software, like an image rendering program, and data does travel from memory to processor and back -- using light!

The semiconductor industry -- the companies that build the world’s chips -- is worth a whopping $300 billion. Companies like Intel and IBM are super hesitant to change how their chips are mass-produced because the financial repercussions could be huge. The fact that these researchers were able to incorporate optics manufacturing into existing factory production lines is potentially revolutionary, as Vivien implies.

It means that it’s more likely that these new hybrid computers will be assembled cheaply and make their way into the data centers that feed our video-binging addiction. Making data centers more efficient would mean our entire online experience would get better. Eventually, these energy-efficient chips could also make their way into consumer devices like sensors, robots, vehicles, smartphones and laptops.

“Imagine if you didn’t have to plug your computer in for a week,” Vivien said. “This could be very powerful.”

For that to happen, though, the chip needs to be beefed up so it can run the complex operations our current machines are capable of. It only has 70 million transistors, the switches that actually run computer programs. To put that in context, the Intel chip that’s in my Mac has 731 million. Some of the most high-tech chips on the market today for video processing have 8 billion. The more transistors a chip has, the more calculations it’s able to do in a set period of time. To make the new chip truly revolutionary, scientists will need to add more.

* * *

The Nature study is the culmination of 10 years of work, Chen Sun, one of the authors of the study told me. The research is part of a booming field called integrated photonics, which aims to miniaturize optical computing elements, usually in tandem with electrical ones, to supercharge the capabilities of machines.

There has been lots of interest from industry, governments and academics in the field because everyone is hungry for faster, energy-efficient machines. In July, the Department of Defense established the American Institute for Manufacturing of Photonics, a public-private partnership whose goal is to foster the development of electronic-photonic chips, with a $110-million grant. (The work that led to the new paper was funded by DARPA, the DoD’s research wing.) An additional $500 million has been pledged by private institutions.

“Integrated photonics is clearly seen as the next logical evolution of the multi-billion-dollar semiconductor industry,” said Menon, the University of Utah photonics expert. “The dream is that this would create a whole new industry.”

That’s starting to happen. In May, computing giant IBM announced they had developed a photonic transceiver, which can shuttle data between computers in data centers. Intel has 19 job openings listed for its photonics team. Other computing companies, like HP, are also investing heavily in this field.

The new computer chip described in Nature, which took five years to build and was Sun’s PhD dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, is now the foundation of a new startup called Ayar Labs. The small company recently joined Silicon Catalyst, a chip-startup incubator. Sun and his co-founders are in the process of raising $3 million to commercialize their work.

“We don’t want this technology to sit in the lab forever,” the 28-year-old researcher told me. “We have high-enough confidence [in it] to take it on as a full-time thing.”

Physicist and Nobel laureate William Bragg once said that “light brings us the news of the universe.” It may also bring us faster, greener computers.

Also on WorldPost:

Iraq Military Flies National Flag Above Ramadi After Liberating City

BAGHDAD, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Iraq's military flew the Iraqi flag above the main government complex in the city of Ramadi, a military spokesman said on Monday, the day after the army declared the provincial capital captured in its first major victory over Islamic State fighters.

"Yes, the city of Ramadi has been liberated. The Iraqi counter terrorism forces have raised the Iraqi flag over the government complex," joint operations spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said in a statement broadcast on state television.

Victory in Ramadi, which was seized by Islamic State fighters in May, is the most significant triumph for Iraq's U.S.-trained army since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the hardline Sunni Muslim militants 18 months ago.

Soldiers were shown on state television publicly slaughtering a sheep in an act of celebration.

Gunshots and an explosion could be heard as a state TV reporter interviewed other soldiers celebrating the victory with their automatic weapons held in the air, minutes after the military announcement. A separate plume of smoke could be seen nearby.

U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces, said: "The clearance of the government center is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work."

He said the coalition had provided more than 630 airstrikes in the area over the past six months as well as training, advice and equipment to the army, counter-terrorism forces and police.

The U.S.-led coalition, which includes major European and Arab powers, has been waging an air campaign against Islamic State positions in both Iraq and Syria since mid-2014, when the fighters seized a third of Iraq's territory.

The Iraqi army was humiliated in that advance, abandoning city after city and leaving fleets of American armored vehicles and other weapons in the militants' hands.

One of the main challenges of the conflict since then has been rebuilding the Iraqi army into a force that can again capture and hold territory.

Baghdad has long said it would prove its forces' rebuilt capability by rolling back militant advances in Anbar, the mainly Sunni province encompassing the fertile Euphrates River valley from Baghdad's outskirts to the Syrian border.

After encircling Ramadi for weeks, Iraqi forces launched an assault to retake it last week and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday. Their progress had been slowed by explosives planted in streets and booby-trapped buildings.

Security officials said the forces still need to clear some pockets of insurgents in the city and its outskirts.

KEEPING CONTROL

Authorities gave no immediate death toll from the battle for the city. They have said most residents were evacuated before the assault.

Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters the capture of Ramadi was "a done deal" but said the government had to do more to rebuild the city and encourage displaced people to return.

"The most important thing is to secure it (Ramadi) because Daesh can bounce back," he said in an interview in Baghdad.

Should Ramadi stay under government control, it would be the first major city seized from Islamic State by Iraq's military, which in past battles against the militants had operated mainly in a supporting role alongside powerful Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias.

The militias were held back from the battlefield in Ramadi this time to avoid antagonizing the mainly Sunni population. Washington had also expressed reluctance about being seen as fighting alongside the Iranian-backed groups.

Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, swept through a third of Iraq in June 2014 and declared a "caliphate" to rule over all Muslims from territory in both Iraq and Syria, carrying out mass killings and imposing a draconian form of Islam.

Since then, the battle against the group in both countries has drawn in most global and regional powers, often with competing allies on the ground in complex multi-sided civil wars.

The Baghdad government says the next target after Ramadi is the northern city of Mosul, by far the largest population center controlled by Islamic State in either Iraq or Syria. Washington had hoped that potentially decisive battle would take place in 2015 but it was pushed back after the fighters seized Ramadi.

The government, led by a Shi'ite Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, has said Ramadi would be handed over to local police and a Sunni tribal force once it was secured, a measure aimed at winning over the community to resist Islamic State.

Such a strategy would echo the U.S. military's "surge" campaign of 2006-2007, which relied on recruiting and arming Sunni tribal fighter against a precursor of Islamic State. Anbar, includingRamadi, were major focuses of that campaign at the height of the 2003-2011 U.S. war in Iraq. (Additional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Peter Graff)

Saudi Arabia's Anti-Terror 'Coalition' Is a House of Cards

Earlier this month Saudi Arabia's young and inexperienced Defense Minister announced a military coalition made up of nearly three dozen mainly Sunni Muslim-majority states, stretching from Morocco to Bangladesh. The Saudi-led alliance's stated purpose is to defeat global terrorism in five nations: Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

This followed months of increased pressure from Western officials on Gulf Arab nations to fight Daesh ('Islamic State') more forcefully. However, given the conflicting interests and lack of military experience on the part of the coalition's members, there is ample reason to conclude that this alliance lacks substance.

A 'Coalition' of the Weak, Divided and Unwilling

The Saudi-led 'coalition' includes Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE and Yemen. A number of these nations are failed states or just above that classification, beset by their own civil wars, Islamist insurgencies, and endemic corruption. Several are among the world's poorest countries.

For a variety of reasons, the announcement of this so-called 'coalition' was bizarre and surprising. The leaders of Pakistan - one of Saudi Arabia's most important allies - never officially agreed to join, and learned of their purported membership from news organizations. Similarly, Malaysian officials also expressed reservations and ruled out the possibility of Kuala Lumpur making any military contribution to the alliance.

Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf Arab states took part in the U.S.-led campaign against Daesh in September 2014. However, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members' contributions to the campaign were insignificant and came to an end after the coalition's initial missions were completed. Like Saudi Arabia, the smaller GCC members, particularly the UAE, have shown a deeper commitment to fighting the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen (viewed in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as an extension of Iranian influence) in Yemen than to combatting Daesh in Iraq and Syria. It is unlikely that the GCC members' priorities will change in light of Riyadh's announcement.

Among the Saudi allies with relatively powerful militaries - including Turkey, Egypt and the UAE - it is doubtful they will cease to pursue their own respective interests, which certainly conflict. Ankara's top priorities in Syria entail toppling the Assad regime and preventing the Syrian Kurds from establishing a proto-state governed by a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) affiliate group along Turkey's southern border. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that NATO member Turkey has actively supported Daesh's sale of oil to the global markets in order to advance these two objectives.

As Russia has stepped up its direct military involvement in Syria to fight certain militias, which Saudi Arabia sponsors yet the Kremlin considers 'terrorist' organizations, it is difficult to imagine how the Riyadh-led coalition would interact with Moscow given the conflicting interests among the member nations. Saudi allies in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo and Manama welcome Russia's intervention in Syria, sharing the Kremlin's interest in preserving the Syrian nation-state. On the other hand, Ankara and Doha staunchly oppose Russia's direct military intervention in Syria, as underscored by the Turkish military having shot down a Russian fighter jet last month. Such geopolitical divisions undermine the potential for Riyadh to unite the Sunni Muslim world against 'terrorism'.

Moreover, the stated objectives of this coalition are vague. Aside from Daesh, which other 'terrorist' groups in these five countries will this pan-Sunni alliance combat? Where will the intelligence to combat them be derived? Which countries in this coalition will deploy most of the troops? How many troops will be required to be effective?

Although many of these coalition members have combatted extremist groups unilaterally, the task of defining terrorism will be problematic if they are to effectively fight such organizations within the framework of a NATO-like alliance. Among these 34 states there is ample disagreement as to which non-state actors are 'terrorist' organizations.

Turkey, Sudan and Qatar support the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Yet Egypt and the UAE consider the Islamist movement to be a terrorist organization. Saudi Arabia and other members of this coalition consider Hezbollah and other Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite militias in Syria and Iraq to be terrorist organizations. Given that these groups (along with the Syrian and Iranian militaries, and Kurdish fighters) serve as the most effective fighting force against Daesh, will the Saudi-led military coalition combat both Hezbollah in addition to the Daesh fighters? Certainly, the objectives of the coalition are unclear and most likely highly unrealistic.

All of these questions leave one wondering why Riyadh bothered to make this surprising announcement. The answer has to do with Iran, not Daesh. Given that Saudi Arabia's coalition deliberately omitted the 'axis of resistance' (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah), Riyadh is determined to create a pan-Sunni alliance committed to countering Iranian influence in the Arab world. The declaration of this alliance underscores new geopolitical realities in the Middle East, in which Washington left the Saudi leadership with the impression that the U.S. had abandoned much of its commitment to the kingdom's security in favor of a rapprochement with Iran, Riyadh's archrival. Saudi officials undoubtedly came to believe that they had little option to but to rely on itself and its perceived allies to establish a Sunni Muslim equivalent of NATO to provide a counter weight to Tehran.

The absence of a serious commitment on the GCC's part to fight against Daesh has been a source of frustration for many in Washington and other Western capitals. The Obama Administration and members of the U.S. Congress may issue statements expressing support for this anti-terrorism alliance led by Saudi Arabia. Yet both President Barack Obama and his successor will find Riyadh to be an awkward and highly problematic ally in the battle against groups such as Daesh. Given the history of the kingdom's religious establishment promoting anti-Shi'ism and other forms of religion-inspired bigotry, there is little reason to wonder why Saudi Arabia has more of its own citizens fighting on behalf of Daesh than any other nation in the world (apart from Tunisia).

Now that the caliphate has set its sights on the Kingdom, and has expressed its commitment to not only rid the Arabian Peninsula of Shi'ite Muslims, but also toppling the House of Saud, Riyadh faces an enemy largely of its own making. Despite Saudi Arabia's proclaimed 'coalition' against Daesh and other terror groups, the reality is that this unlikely and disparate collection of nations is unlikely to weaken the 'caliphate', as its members are neither capable nor interested in doing so. Indeed, if the Saudis were genuinely committed to weakening Daesh, officials in Riyadh would cease to finance religious schools worldwide that spread Wahhabism, Daesh's ideological foundation. Without making such efforts aimed at addressing this root cause of jihadist terrorism in the broken Middle East, there is little reason to expect this coalition to effectively weaken the 'Islamic State'.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and Founder of Gulf State Analytics. Daniel Wagner is the CEO of Country Risk Solutions.

This article first appeared in Fair Observer.

Bomb Blasts Hit Syrian City, Killing At Least 32 And Wounding 90

BEIRUT, Dec 28 (Reuters) - At least 32 people were killed and 90 wounded in two bomb explosions in the Syrian city of Homs on Monday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The blasts, one from a car bomb and another from a suicide attack, struck the Zahra district in the middle of the city, the Britain-based Observatory said.

It was the second major attack in the city since a ceasefire deal between warring sides took effect earlier this month, paving the way for the government to take over the last rebel-controlled area of Homs.

You Can Now Buy Cow Dung Patties Online In India

NEW DELHI (AP) â€" With the holiday season in full swing, Indians are flocking to the online marketplace in droves. But there's one unusual item flying off the virtual shelves: Online retailers say cow dung patties are selling like hot cakes.

The patties -- cow poop mixed with hay and dried in the sun, made mainly by women in rural areas and used to fuel fires -- have long been available in India's villages. But online retailers including Amazon and eBay are now reaching out to the country's ever-increasing urban population.

Some retailers say they're offering discounts for large orders. Some customers are asking for gift wrapping.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

An Indian village woman makes cow dung cakes in Allahabad

"Cow dung cakes have been listed by multiple sellers on our platform since October and we have received several customer orders" since then, said Madhavi Kochar, an Amazon India spokeswoman.

The orders come mostly from cities where it would be difficult to buy dung cakes, she said.

In India, where Hindus have long worshipped cows as sacred, cow dung cakes have been used for centuries for fires, whether for heating, cooking or Hindu rituals. Across rural India, piles of drying cow dung are ubiquitous.

Radhika Agarwal of ShopClues, a major online retailer in India, said demand for the cow dung cakes spiked during the recent Diwali season, a time when Hindus conduct prayer ceremonies at their homes, factories and offices. On a recent day, ShopClues' website showed that the patties had sold out.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cow dung cakes to be used as fuel in traditional mud stoves are laid on the ground to be sun dried

"Around Diwali, when people do a lot of pujas in their homes and workplaces, there is a lot of demand for cow dung cakes," said Agarwal, referring to rituals performed during the popular festival.

"Increasingly, in the cold weather, people are keeping themselves warm by lighting fires" using them, she said, adding that people who grew up in rural areas find the peaty smell of dung fires pleasant.

"It reminds them of the old days," she said.

The cakes are sold in packages that contain two to eight pieces weighing 200 grams (7 ounces) each. Prices range from 100 to 400 rupees ($1.50 to $6) per package.

Dung cakes are also used as organic manure, and some sellers are marketing them for use in kitchen gardens.

Also on HuffPost:

Ten Reasons Why Iran's Upcoming Elections Are Highly Important

Two nationwide elections will be held in Iran on 26 February 2016. One is for the new Majles (parliament), and the second one for the Assembly of Experts, a Constitutional body that appoints the Supreme Leader. Throughout the history of the Islamic Republic, the latter elections have always been viewed with indifference by the people, as the hardline clerics and their supporters believe that the people must be absolutely obedient to the Supreme Leader. However, the upcoming elections have suddenly taken on high importance. As I explain below, in due time the outcome of the elections for the Assembly will also be important to the West. The question is why have the elections for the Assembly become so important? There are at least ten reasons.

One is that there are widespread rumors and speculations about the health of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the possibility of his death in the near future. If he passes away, the Assembly must select his successor. Khamenei has ordered the Assembly to begin considering the qualifications of a few as his possible successor. Members of the Assembly are apparently doing so, but have said that they will only reveal to Khamenei the names of the possible candidates. Undoubtedly Khamenei will play the most important role in selecting his own successor.

A second reason is Khamenei's absolute power. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is trying to change the composition of the Assembly by sending young clerics, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's grandson Hassan Khomeini, to the Assembly so that they can influence the selection of Khamenei's successor. Unlike previous elections, 801 persons, including sixteen women, have registered as candidates. This is nine times more than the required number of candidates, which is 88. The hardliners characterize Rafsanjani's efforts as the "enemy's plot" to be implemented by penetrating the structure of the regime.

Rafsanjani has also been speaking about the necessity of monitoring the performance of the Supreme Leader [which the Constitution mandates]. The hardliners have attacked him for expressing this view, even though Khamenei himself said in a speech on 28 February 2001 that,

Even the Supreme Leader is not beyond monitoring, let alone the organs [of state] that operate directly under him, because naturally governance implies accumulation of power and wealth, and thus monitoring is essential.

The third reason is the ongoing power struggle, which used to be between the conservatives and the reformists, but now includes the moderates and pragmatists such as Rafsanjani, President Hassan Rouhani, and their supporters who oppose the hardliners. Rouhani's opponents accuse him of viewing the United States as the world's "alderman" with which Iran must compromise. Hardliners in the Majles have claimed that the nuclear agreement between Iran and 5+1 is dangerous for the country and represents the first step by the United States to regain influence in Iran.

Another important reason is that Rafsanjani has been advocating the formation of a "leadership council" to replace the post of the Supreme Leader. When Iran's Constitution was revised in 1989, the possibility of such a council was eliminated from its Article 107, but Rafsanjani has been speaking about the council, claiming that when the elder Khomeini passed away in 1989, both him and Khamenei favored the formation of such a council, but the idea was opposed by the majority of the Assembly at that time.

On December 18 Major General Hassan Firoozabadi, chief of staff of the armed forces, declared that the idea of a leadership council is the "enemy's new trick" to destroy the unity of the people and the state and creating multiple voices for the supreme leader, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, adding, "No nation throughout history has had a leadership council [instead of a commander-in-chief] for its armed forces."

The fifth reason is that since new faces who have differences with Khamenei and the hardliners have decided to run in the elections, disqualifying them from running by the Guardian Council, a Constitutional body that vets the candidates for almost all elections, will not be without political cost for the hardliners. Undoubtedly, the Council will disqualify many candidates using excuses. Rafsanjani said on December 20"the elections for the Assembly of Experts must be better than those for the Majles because the nation's national security depends on it.The Council should not disqualify people en masse, in order for the conservatives to control the Assembly. If there is [unjustified] elimination [of the candidates] or fraud, the results of the elections will not be acceptable to the people, the credibility of the state will be hurt, and shortsighted [hardliners] will hurt the nation's stability. It is dangerous to make people suspicious about the electoral process."

Hardline cleric Ahmad Jannati, secretary-general of the Guardian Council, has claimed that those who protest the Council's disqualifying of many candidates are part of a U.S. plot. In his Friday prayer sermon in Tehran on December 25 he spoke about Francis Fukuyama's article in the Wall Street Journal, Iran, Islam, and the Rule of Law, published in 2009, and claimed incorrectly that Fukuyama has told the U.S. officials that they should try to eliminate Velaayaat Faghih political system [Guardianship of the Supreme Leader, the backbone of Iran's political system]. And to do so, according to Jannati's lie about Fukuyama, the Guardian Council must be eliminated. In fact, Fukuyama has made no such statement in his article, even though he has several mistakes in his analysis, including confusing the Guardian Council with the Assembly of Expert, believing the Khamenei heads the Council, and the legal ability of the Council in firing Khamenei.

The sixth reason for the elections for the Assembly taking on additional importance is that, since the nuclear accord of last July Khamenei has been talking about the U.S. efforts to "infiltrate" Iran, hence giving his supporters the excuse to crack down on his opponents as the U.S. "influence agents." Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the hardline Basij militia, said on December 17, "The U.S. may soon hold Friday prayers [in Iran to gain influence]." The Assembly's Chairman, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, said on the same day, "The seminary students should not receive English currency [dollar]" [meaning not act as foreign agents]. GholamhosseinMohseni Ejei, the judiciary's chief deputy and spokesman called Rafsanjani a "hypocrite" that has acted as the U.S. mouthpiece, and a man who prides himself on his friendship with the "enemy." He then threatened, "I promise you that, with the help of the Basij, we will identify the hypocrites and the infiltration agents and give them the maximum punishment." Thus, the conservatives' competitors have been turned into the enemy's agents.

The seventh reason is that hardline military leaders have begun expressing alarms over the elections for the Assembly. Major General Mohsen Rezaei, former IRGC chief, said on December 23, "The U.S. wants to influence the elections and arrange for the liberals to attract votes. Regarding the Assembly, [the U.S.] would like issues such as a leadership council [instead of the Supreme Leader] to be discussed so as to weaken the Supreme Leader." Another former IRGC chief, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi who is also senior military adviser to Khamenei, said on December 5, "The next members of the Assembly must be from amongst those who took a revolutionary stance against the [college] students' protest in 1999 and the Green Movement of 2009."

The eighth reason for the significance of the elections for the Assembly is that, it appears as if Rafsanjani's fate is tied to the elections. He was the most powerful politician after Ayatollah Khomeini during the first post-revolution decade. He wanted to run in the presidential elections of 2013, but the Guardian Council rejected him. Thus, the Council might again prevent him from running in the elections, or he might be put under house arrest (similar to former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, and former Speaker of the Majles Mehdi Karroubi). Alternatively, he might win the elections and become Chairman of the Assembly again, or become the leader of its minority.

If Rafsanjani, Hassan Khomeini and Rouhani are allowed to run in the elections for the Assembly, they will put together a list of candidates that they support with the pictures of the three on top of the banners and the list. If that happens, the hardliners will lose the elections. Thus, to prevent such an outcome, Khamenei and hardliners might be forced to prevent the three men from running in the elections.

The ninth reason is that the opposition to the hardliners has also decided to run in the elections, because they do not want Iran to become another Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or Libya. The opposition prefers gradualreform for transition to democracy, believing that the upcoming elections represent a small but significant step toward the goal. Thus, they hope that, even if they cannot take control of the two elective bodies, they can eliminate the hardliners from them. Rouhani's great achievement in foreign policy, namely, signing the nuclear agreement, should help the moderates and reformists to achieve their small but significant domestic goal.

Last, but not least, many Western governments are following the news to see what happens if he passes away, and who will be his successor. Will he have views similar to Khamenei's regarding the West? If the memberships of the Assembly changes in favor of the moderates, will it pressure Khamenei to reconsider his views and take on more moderate and pragmatic positions?

These are important questions that will influence greatly the future of Iran and the Middle East.

This article was translated by Ali N. Babaei.